More of the Essential John Wyndham: The Pulp Fiction Collection
Author: Christopher Broschell; John Wyndham
Date: 2021-07-11 04:00:00+00:00
Description: 20 short stories from the legendary author of Children of the Damned and Day of the Triffids. The Troons of Space, The Moon A.D. 2044, The Thin Gnat-Voices, Space Is a Province of Brazil, The Asteroids, 2194, Worlds to Barter, The Lost Machine, The Venus Adventure, Exiles on Asperus, Wanderers of Time, The Third Vibrator, Spheres of Hell, Invisible Monsters, The Moon Devils, The Man from Beyond, Phoney Meteor, Dumb Martian, A Stitch in Time, Time Stops Today and But a Kind of Ghost.

More of The Essential John Wyndham
copyright ©2021 by Christopher Broschell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced of transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

The Troons of Space

The Moon A.D. 2044

The Thin Gnat-Voices

Space Is a Province of Brazil

The Asteroids, 2194

Worlds to Barter

The Lost Machine

The Venus Adventure

Exiles on Asperus

Wanderers of Time

The Third Vibrator

Spheres of Hell

Invisible Monsters

The Moon Devils

The Man from Beyond

Phoney Meteor

Dumb Martian

A Stitch in Time

Time Stops Today

But a Kind of Ghost

The Troons of Space

1958

THE SPACE STATION A. D. 1994

Ticker Troon emerged from his final interview filled with an emulsion of astonishment, elation, respect, and conviction that he needed refreshment.

The interview had begun formally, as he had expected. Announced by the clerk, he had marched in smartly, and come to attention before the wide desk. The old boy behind it had turned out to be a considerably older boy than he had been prepared for, but his type was authentic. Lean, he was, with a handsome, slightly weathered, aristocratic face, carefully trimmed hair that was quite white, and rows of ribbons on his left breast.

He had raised his eyes from a clipful of forms to inspect his visitor carefully, and even at that point Ticker had begun to have a suspicion that the interview was not going to be entirely routine, since the old boy— or, to identify him more fully, Air Marshal Sir Godfrey Wilde — did not employ simply that keen-eyed air of summing one’s man up at leisure and appearing incompletely satisfied, which had been the drill at lower grades of interview. He was really looking at Ticker as a person, and somewhat oddly, too. Still looking, he nodded slowly to himself, two or three times.

“Troon,” he said, reflectively. “Flight-Lieutenant George Montgomery Troon. Very probably known in some circles, I suspect, as Ticker Troon?”

Ticker had been startled. “Er — yes, sir.”

The old boy smiled a little. “The young are seldom very original. G. M. Troon — G.M.T. — hence, deviously, Ticker.” He had gone on regarding Ticker steadily, with a length of inspection that passed the bounds of custom, and of comfort. Ticker grew embarrassed and had to resist the temptation to shift uneasily. The old boy became aware of the awkwardness. His face relaxed into a smile that was friendly, and reassuring.

“Forgive me, my boy. I was fifty years away,” he said. He glanced down at the forms. Ticker recognized some of them. His whole life history was there. Troon, G.M., aged twenty-four, single, C of E. Parentage… education… service details… medical report… C.O.’s report… security report, no, doubt… probably a private-life report… notes on his friends, and so on, and so on. Quite a bundle of stuff, altogether. The old boy evidently thought so, too, for he pushed it all aside with a touch of impatience, waved his hand at an easy chair, and slid over a silver cigarette box.

“Sit down there, my boy,” he invited.

“Thank you, sir,” Ticker had said. And he had taken the offered cigarette, doing his best to give an impression of ease.

“Tell me,” said the old boy, in a friendly tone, “what made you apply for transfer from Air to Space?”

It was an expected, standard question, to which there was a standard answer, but it was not put in the standard way and, with the man’s eye thoughtfully upon him, Ticker decided against giving the standard reply. He frowned, a little uncertainly. “It isn’t easy to explain, sir. In fact, I’m not honestly sure that I know. It — well, it isn’t exactly that I had to do it. But there is a kind of inevitable feeling about it — as if it were a thing I was bound to do, sooner or later. My natural next step ...”

“Next step,” repeated the air marshal. “Not your crowning ambition, then? Next step towards what?”

“I don’t really know, sir. Outwards, I think. There’s a sort of sense I can’t explain ... a kind of urge onwards and outwards. It is not a sudden idea, sir. It seems always to have been there, at the back of my mind. I’m afraid it all sounds a bit vague…” He let himself trail off, inadequately.

But the old boy did not seem to find it inadequate. He gave a couple of his slow nods and leant back in his chair. For a few moments he gazed up at the cornice of the ceiling, seeming to search his memory. Soon, he said:

“‘…for all the night

I heard their thin gnat-voices cry,

Star to faint star across the sky.’”

He brought his gaze down to Ticker’s surprised face. “That mean anything to you?” he asked.

Hesitantly, Ticker said: “I think so, sir. Where does it come from?”

“I was told it was Rupert Brooke — though I’ve never found the context. But the man I first heard it from was your grandfather.”

“My — my grandfather, sir?” Ticker stared at the older man.

“Yes. The other George Montgomery Troon and does it surprise you to know that he was Ticker Troon, too? Grandfather!” He shook his head, ruefully. “It always seems to be a word for old fellows like me. But Ticker — well, he never had the chance. He was dead, you know, before he was your age.”

“Yes, sir. Did you know him well?”

“I did indeed. We were in the same squadron when it happened. You look amazingly like him. I was expecting you, of course; nevertheless, it gave me quite a shock when you came in.” The air marshal had paused at that, somewhat lengthily. Then he went on: “He had that feeling, too. He flew because that was as far outwards as we could get in those days — as far as most of us ever expected to get. But not Ticker. I can remember even now the way he used to look up at the night sky, at the moon and the stars, and talk about them as if it were a foregone conclusion that we’d be going out there someday — and sadly, too, because he knew that he’d never be going out there himself. We used to think it comic-strip stuff in those days, but he’d smile off the ragging and the arguments as if he just knew.” There had been another long pause then before he added: “God, I’m sorry old Ticker can’t know about this. If there’s one thing that’d make him as pleased as Punch, it’d be to know that his grandson wants to go ‘out there’.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s good to know that,” Ticker had told him. And then, feeling that the ball had been passed to him, he added: “He was killed over Germany, wasn’t he, sir?”

“Berlin. August 1944,” said the air marshal. “A big op. His aircraft blew up.” He sighed, reminiscently. “When we got back, I went to see his wife, your grandmother. She was a lovely girl, a sweet girl. She took it hard. She went away somewhere, and I lost touch with her. She is still alive?”

“Very much so, sir. She married again in, I think, 1949.”

“I’m glad of that. Poor girl. They were only married a week before he was killed, you know.”

“Only a week, sir. I didn’t know it was as short as that. Really no time at all.”

“It was. So your father, and consequently yourself, may be said to exist at all, only by a very narrow margin. They had married a little earlier than they intended. Perhaps Ticker had a premonition: most of us did, though some of us were wrong.” There was another pause which lasted until the air marshal roused himself from his thoughts to say: “You have stated here that you are single.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Ticker. He became abruptly conscious of the special license in his pocket, and all but looked down to see if it were protruding.

“That was a condition of application, of course,” said the old man. “Are you, in fact, unmarried?”

“Yes, sir,” Ticker said again, with an uneasy feeling that the pocket might have become transparent.

“And you have no brother?”

“No, sir.”

The air marshal remarked, consideringly: “The stated purpose of this qualification is at variance with my experience. I have never found in war that the married officer is less redoubtable than the single man, rather the other way, in fact. One is led to suspect, therefore, that the matter of pensions and subsequent responsibilities is allowed inappropriate weight. Would you say that it is a good principle that our fittest young men should not infrequently be dissuaded from procreation while the less fit retain the liberty to breed like rabbits?”

“Er — no, sir,” Ticker said, wonderingly.

“Good,” said the air marshal. “I am very glad to hear it.”

He maintained such a steady regard that Ticker was all but impelled to confess the presence of the license; prudence, however, still kept a fingertip hold on him. When the old boy had spoken again, it was to turn the interview onto more conventional lines for a change.

“You understand the need for top security in this work?” he inquired.

Ticker felt easier. “Security has been very much stressed all along, sir.”

“But you don’t know why?”

“I’ve been given no details, sir.”

“Nevertheless, as an intelligent young man you must have formed some ideas.”

“Well, sir, from what I have heard and read about experimental space missiles, I should think the time can’t be far off now when we shall start to build some kind of space station — possibly a manned satellite. Would it be something of that sort?”

“It would indeed, my boy — though your deductions are not quite up to date, I’m glad to say. The space station already exists — in parts. And some of the parts are already up there. Your job will be to help in the assembly.”

Ticker’s eyes widened, lit up with enthusiasm. “I say, sir, that’s wonderful. I’d no idea ... I thought we were rather behind in this sort of thing. Assembling the first space station…!” He trailed off, incoherently.

“I did not say it was the first,” the old man reminded him. “In fact, there may be others.”

Ticker looked shocked. The air marshal amplified: “It doesn’t do to take things for granted. After all, we know that the Americans, and the Other Fellows, too, have been working hard on it — and our resources are nothing like theirs.”

Ticker stared. “I thought we’d be working with the Americans, sir.”

“So we ought to be. We’re certainly not working against them, but it just so happens that our people remember their love of public announcements at politically happy moments; and they remember certain leaks in our security system. Result: we go our different ways — with a great waste of time and energy in duplication of work. On the other hand, it will allow us to stand on our own feet in space — if that expression may be permitted — instead of being taken along as poor relations. That might one day turn out to have its advantages in definite terms.”

“I suppose so, sir. And the Other Fellows…?”

“Oh, they’re at work on it, all right. They were known to be working on an unmanned satellite forty years ago when the Americans stole their thunder by making the first public announcement on satellites. One would guess they were thought to be ahead then, hence the announcement. But just how far they’ve got now is a matter on which this department would like a lot more information than it has.

“Now, as to yourself: first of all there’ll be conditioning and training.”

Ticker’s thoughts were far too chaotic for him to give proper attention to the details that followed. He was looking beyond the walls of the sunlit office and already seeing the fire-pointed blackness of space. In imagination he could feel himself floating in the void. In a — abruptly he became aware that the air marshal had ceased to talk and was looking at him as if after a question. He tried to pull himself together. “I’m awfully sorry, sir. I didn’t quite follow…”

“I can see I’m wasting my time now,” the old man had said, but without rancour. Indeed, he had smiled. “I’ve seen that look before. I think you’ll do. But perhaps one day you’ll be good enough to explain to me why a Troon is habitually thrown into a form of hypnotic trance at the thought of space.” He rose. Ticker jumped up, quickly. “Remember the security — this is top secret. The kind of thing you would not let even your wife guess — if, of course, you were so fortunate as to have one. You appreciate that?”

“I do, sir.”

“Goodbye, then— er — Ticker. And good luck.”

Ticker had thanked him in a not quite steady voice.

Afterwards, in the first convenient saloon bar, with a whiskey in front of him, he pulled the special marriage license out of his pocket and considered it again. He wished now that he had not been so carried away; that he had listened with more care to what the old boy had been telling him. Something about a conditioning course of twelve weeks, and studying the space station, both in plan and mock-up. And something about a bit of leave, too. Could that be right? After all, if they had some of the sections up there already, wouldn’t they be about finished by the time he was trained and ready to go? He was momentarily alarmed — until his common-sense asserted itself: you couldn’t just throw the pieces of a space station up into the sky and let them come together. Every part must be ferried there, laboriously, monotonously, very, very expensively, and in quite small bits at a time. It would be far and away the costliest structure ever built. There would have to be heaven knew how many journeys up there before they had enough even to start on the assembly. Thinking of only that aspect of the problem caused him to swing gloomily to the other extreme — why, it was more likely to take years before it could be fully assembled and in working order. They would most probably seem to be very long years.

He dredged around in his mind for what the old boy had said about spells of duty: four weeks on, four weeks off — though that was hypothetical at present and might need modification in the light of experience. All the same, the intention sounded generous enough, not bad at all…

He returned his attention to the marriage license in his hand. There could be no doubt that from an official point of view, no such document should exist — on the other hand, if an air marshal chose to reveal clearly what he thought of the ban – with such eminence on his side, even though unofficially...

Well, why delay? He’d got the job.

He folded the paper carefully and restored it to his pocket. Then he strode purposefully to the telephone box...

Ticker, standing in the mess-room of the hulk, and gazing out of the window, took his breakfast gloomily. The hulk, as it had become known, even on official memos, was the one habitable spot in thousands of miles of nothing. It was the local office of works, and also the hostel for the men serving their tour of duty. Down its shadow side, windows ran almost the full length, giving a view of the assembly area. The few ports to sunward were kept shuttered. On the outer sunside of the hull was mounted a ring of parabolic reflectors, none more than a foot across, and all precisely angled. When the eye of the sun shone full in the center of the ring they were inactive, but it never did for long, and a variation of a degree or two would bring one or other of the reflectors into focus, collecting intense heat. Soon, a small, invisible explosion of steam would correct the error by its recoil, and slowly the hulk would swing a little until another reflector came into focus and give another correction. It went on all the time save for the brief “nights” in the Earth’s shadow, so that the view from the leeward windows never altered: it was always the space station assembly.

Ticker broke a roll, still warm from the oven operated by a larger reflector on the sunside. He left the larger part of it hanging in the air while he buttered the lesser. He munched absent-mindedly and took a jet of hot coffee. Then he relinquished the plastic coffee bottle, and let it float while he reached back the rest of the roll before it could waft further. All these actions he performed without conscious thought. They had quickly ceased to be novelties and become part of the natural background conditions to one’s tour of duty — so customary that it was, rather, a propensity to poise things conveniently in midair when one was at home on leave that had to be checked.

Munching his roll, Ticker continued to regard the view with distaste. However enthusiastic one might be about the project as a whole, a sense of ennui and impatience to be away inevitably set in during the last few days of a spell. It had been so on the verge of his five previous leaves, and this time, for special reasons, it was more pronounced.

Outside, the curve of the Earth made a backdrop to half the windows’ span, though there was no telling which continent faced him at the moment. Cloud hid the surface and diffused the light as it did most of the time, so that he seemed to be looking, not at a world, but at a segment of a huge pearl resting in a bed of utter blackness. As a foreground, there was the familiar jumble of work in progress.

The main framework of the station had already been welded together, a wheel-like cage of lattice girders, one hundred and forty feet in diameter, and twenty-four feet thick. It sparkled in the unobstructed sunlight with a harsh silver glitter that was trying to the eyes. A few panels of the plating were already fixed, and small, bulbous-looking figures in spacesuits were maneuvering more sheets of metal into positions within the framework. The littered, chaotic impression of the whole scene was enhanced by the web of lines which criss-crossed it. Safety lines and mooring lines ran in every direction. There were a dozen or more from the hulk to the main assembly, and no single component, section, or instrument was without a tether to fasten it to some other. None of the lines was taut; if one became so, it remained like that for no more than a second or two. Most of them were continually moving in loops, like lazy snakes; others just hung, with barely perceptible motion. Every now and then one of the workers on the framework would pause as a case or an item of the structure as yet unused came nuzzling gently at the girders. He would give it a slight shove, and it would drift away again, its cable coiling in slow motion behind it.

A large cylinder, part of the atmosphere regeneration plant, swam into Ticker’s view, on its way from the hulk to the assembly. The spacesuited man who was ferrying it over had hooked himself to it, and was directing their mutual slow progress by occasional, carefully aimed blasts from a wide-mouthed pistol. He and his charge were floating free in space but for his thin lifeline undulating back to the hulk. There was no sense whatever that all this was taking place as they hurtled round the Earth at a speed of thousands of miles per hour. One was no more aware of it than one was of the pace at which the Earth hurtles round the sun.

Ticker paused in his eating to appreciate the skill of the pistol user; it looked easy, but everyone who had ever tried it knew that it was a great deal easier to set oneself and the load spinning giddily all ways over. That did not happen so often now that the really ham-handed had been weeded out, but a little misjudgment could start it in a moment. He grunted approval, and went on eating, and reflecting…

Four days now, four more days, and he would be back home again. And how many spells before it would be finished? he wondered. They were holding a sweep on that, with quite a nice prize. The schedules drawn up in comfortable offices back on Earth had gone to pieces at once. In real experience of the conditions progress with the earlier stages had been a great deal slower than the estimates had reckoned. Tricks, techniques, and devices had to be evolved to meet difficulties that the most careful consideration had overlooked. There had also been two bad holdups: one, because someone in logistics had made a crass error in the order of despatch, the other on account of a parcel of girders that had never arrived and was now presumably circling the Earth as a lonely satellite on its own account — if it had not shot away into space.

Working in weightless conditions had also been more troublesome than they had expected. It was true that objects of great bulk and solidity could be shifted by a touch, so that mechanical handling was unnecessary; but, on the other hand, there was always the “equal and opposite reaction” to be considered and dealt with. One was forever seeking anchorage and purchase before any force whatever could be applied. The lifetime habit of depending on one’s weight was only slightly less than an instinct; the mind went on assuming that weight, just as it went on trying to think in terms of “up and down” until it had been called to order innumerable times.

Ticker left off watching the guided drift of the cylinder and took a final jet of coffee. He looked at the clock. Still half an hour to go before the shift changed; twenty minutes before he needed to start getting into his space suit and testing it. He lit a cigarette, and because there was nothing else to do, found himself moodily contemplating the scene outside, once more. The cigarette was half finished when the ship’s speaker system grated and announced: “Mr. Troon please call at the radio cabin. Radio message for Mr. Troon, please.”

Ticker stared at the nearest speaker for an apprehensive moment, and then ground out the remains of his cigarette against the metal wall. With a clicking and scraping of magnetic soles he made his way out of the mess-room. In the passage, he disregarded the rules, and sent himself scudding along with a shove. He caught the radio-cabin’s door handle and grounded his feet in one complicated movement. The radio operator looked up.

“Quick work, Ticker. Here you are.” He handed over a folded piece of paper.

Ticker took it in a hand that irritated him by shaking slightly. The message was brief. It said simply: “Happy birthday from Laura and Michael.”

He stood staring at it for some seconds, and then wiped his hand across his forehead. The radio man looked at him thoughtfully. “Funny things happen in space,” he remarked. “Must be quite six months since you last had a birthday. Many happy returns, all the same.”

“Thank you very much,” said Ticker vaguely, and pulled himself out of the cabin.

Outside he stood reading the short message again. Michael, they had decided, if it were a boy: Anna, for a girl. But early, by at least a fortnight. Still, what did that matter? — except that he had hoped to be on hand. The important thing was “happy birthday,” which meant “both doing well.”

He dropped his trance suddenly and pushed back into the radio cabin. The dressing bell for the next shift went while he was scribbling his reply. A few moments later he was whizzing down the passage, headed for the suit store. When the Ticker’s turn came, he stepped to the edge of the open airlock, clipped the eye of his short lead round the guideline, and then with a two-legged push off against the side of the hulk, sent himself shooting out along the line towards the assembly. Practice had given all of them a pride in their ability to deal dexterously with the conditions; a quick twist, something like that of a falling cat, brought his feet round to act as buffers at the end of his journey. He unhooked from the guideline, and hooked on to a local life- line, obeying the outside worker’s Rule Number One — that he should never for a moment work unattached. Then he pushed across to the far side of the frame where assembly was going on. One of the workers there saw him coming and turned his head towards him so that his tight-beam radio sounded in Ticker’s helmet louder than the all-round reception. His words were clear.

“All yours,” he said. “And welcome to it. This plate’s a rough one.”

Ticker came up to him. They exchanged lines. “Be seeing you,” said the other, and gave a yank on the line which took him back the way Ticker had come. Ticker shook his new safety line to send it looping out of his way and turned to give his consideration to the plate.

The new shift adjusted their general intercom radios to low power so that they could converse comfortably between themselves. They noticed the progress made since their last spell, compared it with the plan, identified the sections at hand, and started in.

Ticker looked his plate over, and then twisted it so that the markings lined up. It was not such a tough one after all and slipped quite easily into place. He was not surprised. One got tired, and not infrequently a little stupid, by the end of a shift.

With the plate fixed, he paused, looking out at Earth with his eyeshield raised so that he saw it fully, in all its brilliance — a great shimmering globe that filled half the sky. Quite extensive patches here and there were free of cloud now, and through them there was blue; the sea, perhaps — and then again, perhaps not, because whenever one saw the surface it looked blue, just as the blackness of space seen from the Earth in daylight looked blue.

Somewhere over there, on that great shining ball, he now had a son. The idea came to him as a marvel. He could picture Laura smiling as she held the baby to her. He smiled to himself, and then chuckled. He had smuggled himself a family in spite of the regulations, and if they did find out now— he shrugged. And anyway, he had a well-grounded suspicion that he was not the only family man among his supposedly celibate companions. He did not underestimate the Security boys; he simply thought it likely that others besides the air marshal found a blind eye convenient. In just four days more — A nudge at his back interrupted him. He turned to find another plate that someone had pushed along for his attention. Gripping a girder between his knees for anchorage, he started to twist it into position.

Half an hour later a tight-beam radio voice from the hulk overrode their local conversation. “Unidentified object coming up,” it announced, and gave a constellation bearing. The working party’s heads turned towards Aries. The great stars flaring there against the multitudinous speckling of the rest looked no different from usual.

“Not a dispatch, you mean?” someone asked.

“Can’t be. We’ve had none notified.”

“Meteor?” someone else suggested, with a trace of uneasiness.

“We don’t think so. There’s been a slight change of course since radar picked it up a couple of hours ago. That seems to rule out meteors.”

“Can’t you get the telescope on it?”

“Only for a glimpse. The damned hulk’s hunting too much, we’re trying to steady her up.”

“Could it be that parcel of girders, do you think? The lot that went astray. Couldn’t it be that its homing gear has just got the range of us?”

“Might be, I suppose,” admitted the voice from the hulk. “It’s certainly got a line straight on us now. If it is, the proximity gear should stop it and hold it about a couple of miles off, and you’ll need to send somebody out with a line to make it fast. Plenty of time to see about that later. We’ll keep you informed once we can get this damned tub steady enough to keep the glass on it.”

His wave cut off, and the assembly party, after vainly scanning the Aries region again, turned back to their work. Nearly an hour passed before the voice from the hulk spoke once more. “Hullo there, Assembly!” it said, and without waiting for acknowledgement, went on: “There’s something damned funny about that thing in Aries. It certainly isn’t the girder package. We don’t know what it is.”

“Well, what’s it look like?” inquired one of the working party, patiently.

“It’s — er — well, it’s like a               large circle, with three smaller circles set at thirds round the perimeter.”

“You don’t say!”

“Well, that’s what we see, damn it! The thing’s head on to us. The circles may be mile-long cylinders, for all we can tell.”

Again the helmeted heads of the working party turned towards Aries.

“Can’t see anything. Is it blasting?”

“There’s no sign of blast. It looks as if it’s free-falling at us. Just a minute — ” He broke off. Five minutes passed before he came in again. This time his tone was more serious. “We radioed a description to base, asking for info, and identification. Their reply is just in. It reads: ‘No repeat no dispatch you since Number 377K four days ago stop Design of object as described not repeat not known here stop Pentagon states not repeat not known them stop consider possible craft/missile hostile stop treat as hostile taking all precautions ends.’ ”

For some moments no one spoke. The helmets of the working party turned as they looked at one another in astonishment.

“Hostile! For God’s sake! Why, every bloody thing out here’s hostile,” somebody said.

“Precautions!” said another voice. “What precautions? What is there?”

Ticker inquired: “Have we any interception missiles ?”

“No,” said the voice from the hulk. “They’re scheduled, but they are away down the fitting-out list yet.”

“Hostile?” murmured an- other voice. “But who?”

“Who do you think? Who’d rather we didn’t have a station out here?”

“But ‘hostile,’” the man said again. “It would be an act of war — to attack us, I mean.”

“Act of nothing,” said the second man. “Who even knows we’re up here, except the Department; and now, apparently, the Other Fellows. Say we were attacked, and blown up — what’d happen? Sweet damn all. Nothing but hush from both sides. Not even denials, just hush.”

“Everybody seems to be taking a lot for granted, considering that nobody even knows what the thing is,” someone pointed out.

That, Ticker admitted, was true enough, but somewhat legalistic, because it was difficult to believe that anything could happen to be travelling this particular section of space by sheer accident, and if it were not accidental, then it followed that the intention of any visiting object that did not originate with their Department must be either observatory, or hostile.

He turned his head again, surveying the myriad suns that flared in the blackness. The first comment had been right; it was all hostile. For a moment he felt that hostility all about him more keenly than at any time since he had first forced himself to push out of the hulk’s airlock into nothingness. His memory of that sensation had been dulled, but now, abruptly, he was the intruder again; the presumptuous creature thrusting out of his natural element; precariously self-launched among a wrack of perils. Odd, he thought, in a kind of parenthesis, that it should need the suspicion of human hostility to reawaken the sense of the greater hostility constantly about them. Odd, indeed.

He became conscious that the others were still talking. Someone had inquired about the object’s speed. The hulk was replying: “Difficult to estimate more than roughly, head on, but doesn’t seem to be high, relative to our own. Certainly unlikely to be more than two hundred miles an hour difference, we judge— could well be less. You ought to be able to see it soon. It’s starting to catch the earthlight.”

There was no sign of it in the Aries sector yet. Somebody said: “Should we get back aboard, Skip?”

“No point in it ... It wouldn’t help at all if that thing does have a homer set on the hulk.”

“True,” agreed someone, and sang gently : “‘Dere’s no hidin’ place out here.’”

They went on working, casting occasional glances into the blackness. Ten minutes later, two men exclaimed simultaneously; they had caught one small, brief flare among the stardust.

“Starboard jet correcting course,” said the voice from the hulk. “That settles one thing. It’s live, and it is homing on us. Swinging now. It’ll recorrect in a moment.”

They watched intently. Soon, nearly all of them caught a glimpse of the little jet of flame that steadied the object’s swing. A man swore: “Damn it! And us here, like sitting pigeons. One little guided missile to meet it. That’s all that’s needed. Pity one of the Department’s great brains didn’t allow for that, isn’t it?”

“What about an oxygen tube?” someone suggested. “Fix up one of the dispatch homers on it, and let it jet itself along till they meet.”

“Good idea — if we had a day or so to fix the homer,” agreed another.

Presently the object caught more of the earthlight, and they were able to keep its location marked, though not yet able to distinguish its shape. A consultation went on between the leader of the working party and the commander of the hulk. It was decided not to take the party inboard. If the thing were indeed a missile and set to explode on contact or at close proximity, then the situation would be equally hopeless wherever one was; but should it, on the other hand, fail to explode on contact and simply cause impact damage to the hulk, it might be useful to have the party outside, ready to give what help it could.

On that decision, the men in spacesuits started to push themselves off, and drift through the web of girders towards the hulkward side of the assembly. There they exchanged their local safety lines for others attached to the hulk, and were ready to pull themselves across, if necessary.

They waited in an uneasy group, a surrealist cluster of grotesque figures anchored to the framework at eccentric angles by their magnetic soles while they watched the oncoming object, the “craft/missile” grow slowly larger. Soon they could distinguish the outline described; three small circles set about a larger. It was from the small circles that a correcting puff of flame came now and then.

“It’s my guess, from the general look of the thing, and its slow speed,” the hulk commander’s voice said, dispassionately, “that it’s half-missile, half-mine – a kind of hunting mine. I’d guess, too, by the way it is aligned on us that it is a contact type. Might be chemical, or nuclear — probably chemical; if it were nuclear a proximity fuse would be good enough. Besides, a nuclear explosion would be detectable from Earth. With a chemical explosion out here you’d want all the concentration of force you can get— hence contact.”

No one seemed disposed to question the commander’s deductions. There could be no doubt that it was aligned on them. The swinging was so slight that they could see no more than the head-on view. “Estimated relative speed about one hundred and twenty miles an hour,” added the commander.

Slow, Ticker thought, very slow — probably to keep maneuverability in case of evasive action by its target. There was nothing one could do but stand there and wait for it.

“E.T.A. now five minutes,” the voice from the hulk told them, calmly.

They waited.

Ticker found a new understanding of the stringent security regulations. Hitherto, he had taken it for granted that their purpose was to preserve the lead. Clearly, once it should be known that any nation had a space station under construction, those who had it only in the drawing-board stage would press on, and the pace would grow warmer. The best way to avoid that was secrecy, and if necessary to show astonishment that any such device was being seriously contemplated. That had seemed reasonable; there was nothing to be gained by creating a situation where construction would have to be rushed, and possibly a lot might be lost by it. The thought of an attack on the station before it was even finished had never occurred to him.

But if this were indeed a missile, and if it should get the hulk, nobody would survive. And if the Department were to be stung into denouncing the aggression? Well, the Other Fellows would just shrug and deny. “What, us ! Why, we never even knew it existed. Obviously an accident,” they would say. “An accident which has now been followed by a vicious and despicable slander in an effort to cover up those responsible.”

“Three minutes,” said the commander.

Ticker took his eyes from the “craft-missile” and looked about him. His gaze loitered on the moon, a clear, sharp coin, recently risen from behind the blue pearl of Earth. Scarred but serene, it hung on the sky; a silver medal, still waiting to be won. The next leap.

First there had been this little hop of ten thousand miles to make a steppingstone for the leap of two hundred and twenty-four thousand miles, more or less — and then, not in his time, but someday, there would be still greater leaps beyond. For him, for now, the moon would be enough.

“The moon,” murmured Ticker. “‘The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other: the moon is my sister, the dawn is my brother.’”

Suddenly he was swept with a shaking anger. A fury against stupidity and littleness, against narrow, scheming minds that were ready to wreck the greatest adventure of all, as a political move. What would happen now if their work were destroyed? The cost had been in proportion to the ambition. If all this were lost, would the government be willing, could they even afford, to make a new allocation, and start again? Might it not be that, with such an example, all the rival nations would content themselves with arrangements to blow any other attempted space stations out of existence? Would that be the end of the great adventure — to be kept earthbound by stalemate and futility?

“Two minutes,” said the voice.

Ticker looked at the missile again. It was swinging a little more now, enough to give glimpses of length, instead of a flat diagram of circles. He watched it curiously. There was no doubt that the roving action was increasing. Correction and re-correction were stronger and more frequent.

“What’s happening to it now?” a voice asked. “Kind of losing its touch, isn’t it?”

They stared at it in horrid fascination, watching the yawing motion grow wider while the correcting jets spat more fiercely and rapidly. Soon it was swinging so much that they were getting broadside views of it — a fat, droplet-shaped body, buttressed by three smaller droplet shapes which housed its driving tubes. The small correcting tubes, so busily employed at this moment, branched laterally in radial clumps from the main-tube nacelles. Its method of working was obvious. Once the homing device had found a line on the target, the main tubes would fire to give directional impetus. Then, either to keep down to maneuverable speed, or simply to economize, they would cut out, leaving it to coast easily to the target while the homer kept it on course by correcting touches from the side tubes. Less obvious, was what had got into it now, and was causing it to bear down on them in a wildly drunken wobble.

“Why the devil should it go nuts and start ‘hunting’ at this stage?” muttered the leader of the working party.

“That’s it,” said the commander from the hulk, with a sudden hopeful note in his voice. “It has gone nuts; all bewitched and bewildered. It’s the masses, don’t you see ? The mass of the hulk is about the same as that of the assembly and parts now. The thing is approaching on a line where they are both equidistant. Its computers are foozled: they can’t decide which to go for. It would be bloody funny if it weren’t serious. If it can’t decide in another few seconds at that speed it’ll overshoot any possibility of correcting in time.”

They kept on watching the thing tensely. It had, in fact, already lost a little speed, for it was now yawing so widely that the steering tubes’ attempts to correct the swing were having some braking effect. For half a minute there was silence. Then someone breathed out, noisily. “He’s right, by heaven! It is going to miss,” he said.

Other held breaths were released, and the earphones sounded a huge, composite sigh of relief. It was no longer possible to doubt that the missile would pass right between the hulk and the assembly. In a final desperate effort to steady up, the port tubes fired a salvo that spun it right round on its own axis as it hurtled along.

“Bloody thing’s started waltzing now,” observed a voice.

Still wobbling wildly it careened on, in a flaring, soundless rush. Closer it reeled, and closer, until it was whirling madly past, between them and the hulk.

Ticker did not see what happened next. There was a sudden violent shock which banged his head against the inside of his helmet and turned everything into dancing lights. For a few seconds he was dazed. Then it came to him that he was no longer holding on to the framework of the assembly. He groped and found nothing. With an effort, he opened his eyes, and forced them into focus. The first thing they showed him was the hulk and the half-built space station dwindling rapidly in the distance.

Ticker kicked wildly, and managed to turn himself round, but it took him several moments to grasp what had happened. He found that he was floating in space in company with a collection of minor parts of the assembly and two other spacesuited men while, close by, the missile, now encumbered with a tangle of lines, was still firing its steering tubes while it cavorted and spun in an imbecilic fashion. By degrees he perceived that the missile had in its passage managed to entangle itself in a dozen or more tethers and safety lines, and torn them away, together with whatever happened to be attached to them.

He closed his eyes for a moment. His head throbbed. He fancied that it was bleeding on the right side. He hoped the cut was small; if there was much blood it might float around loose in his helmet and get into his eyes. Suddenly the commander’s voice in the phone said: “Quiet everyone.” It paused, and went on: “Hullo, hullo there ! Calling you three with the missile. Are you all right? Are you all right?”

Ticker ran his tongue over his lips and swallowed. “Hullo, Skipper. Ticker here. I’m all right, Skip.”

“You don’t sound so all right, Ticker.”

“Bit muzzy. Knocked my head on my helmet. Better in a minute.”

“What about the other two?”

A groggy voice broke in: “Nobby here, Skipper. I’m all right, too — I think. Been sick as a dog — not funny at all. Don’t know about the other. Who is it?”

“Must be Dobbin. Hullo there, Dobbin! Are you all right?”

There was no reply.

“It was a hell of a jerk, Skipper,” said the groggy voice.

“How’s your air?”

Ticker looked at the dials. “Normal supply, and reserve intact,” he said.

“My reserve isn’t registering. Fractured, maybe, but I’ve got nearly four hours,” said Nobby.

“Better cut loose, and make your way back by hand tubes,” said the commander. “You right away, Nobby. Ticker, you’ve got more air. Can you reach Dobbin? If you can, link him on to you, and bring him back with you. Think you will be able to do it without danger?”

“Shouldn’t be difficult, I think.”

“Look, Skip — ” Nobby began.

“That’s an order, Nobby,”               the commander told him briefly.

Kicking himself over, Ticker was able to see one of the spacesuited figures fumbling at its belt. Soon the safety line floated free, though the figure still kept along in company. It drew the pistol-like hand tube from the holster, and held it in front with both hands, kicking a little as it maneuvered to get the hulk dead behind it in the tube’s mirror sights. Then the tube flared, and the figure holding it dropped away, slowly at first, then with increasing speed.

“Be seeing you, Ticker,” said its voice. “Bacon and eggs?”

“Done both sides, mind,” Ticker told him.

He drew his own tube. When he had the second spacesuited figure in the mirror, he gave the briefest possible touch on the trigger to set himself drifting towards it. A few moments later he reported: “I’m afraid old Dobbin’s through, Skip. It was quick, though. Bloody great rip in the left leg of his suit. Damn bad luck. Shall I bring him back?”

The commander hesitated a moment. “No, Ticker,” he decided. “It’d just mean an additional hazard for you. Dobbin wouldn’t want that. No, cast off his line and let him go, poor chap. Take his reserve air bottle, though — and his tube, too. It’ll help you to catch up on Nobby.”

There was a brief silence, then: “That’s funny,” Ticker murmured.

“What’s funny?” demanded the commander.

“Just a minute, Skip.”

“What is it, Ticker?”

“The lines have tightened, Skipper. A minute ago, we and the odd bits were all in a clump, with the missile acting daft alongside. Now it’s steadied up, seems to be pulling away. Hell, this is confusing — you aren’t where you ought to be, either. The — oh, I get it. The thing’s turning; swinging us round after it…I’m letting old Dobbin go now...” There was a pause. “He’s drifting off on a different line, away from me. The thing must be making a wide turn, I think. Difficult to tell just what it is doing; it’s giving lots of little bursts as it steadies up. I don’t care much for this, Skipper. All the towed bits, including me, have swung together in a jumble.”

“Better cast off now and shove yourself clear.”

“Just a minute, Skip. I want to see — ” His voice tailed away. “Yes, yes, she is. She’s pulling, pulling steadily round.” Ticker was hanging out at the end of his lifeline, watching the constellations wheel slowly, and twisting slowly himself, which made it the more confusing.

The random element introduced into the missile by the conflict of purpose had been sorted out. It was coordinated again, and its change of direction was steady, smooth, and purposeful. It was, in fact, back on the job. Its radar had searched for, and found, the target it had missed in its temporary derangement, and was bringing it round to bear once more. Somewhere inside the fat metal droplet there were relays ready to go in once it was steady in the aim; a brief burst on the main tubes would send it back to the attack.

“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed Ticker, and began to haul himself hand over hand along his safety line, shoving aside the trailing flotsam of assembly items as he went, and making for the missile itself.

“What’s that about? Why haven’t you cast off yet?” inquired the commander.

Ticker did not reply. He had come close to the missile, swung a little out from it by the continuing turn, but able to reach it. Now he could touch it and brought round a leg to kick himself clear of the steering tubes. He pulled himself forward on the length of line remaining and caught hold of the member which joined one of the nacelles to the main body. It was round all three of these members that the lines had tangled as the missile had swept past the assembly, and he tied his safety line short to a loop in the tangle that looked as if it would hold.

“What the devil are you doing, Ticker?” asked the commander.

“I’m aboard the missile. Skipper,” Ticker told him.

“For heaven’s sake — ! You mean you’re on the damned thing? Look, I told you to cast off. Do I have to make it an order?”

“I hope you won’t, Skipper, because I rather think that if you did, and if I obeyed it, I’d very likely have nowhere to go.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, it looks to me as if this thing is in the process of getting round to have another go at you.”

“Is it, by hell! You sure of that, Ticker?”

“’Fraid so. Don’t see what               else it can be doing. It’s certainly making a steady arc, and if that’s its game, this seems to be as good a place as any.”

“Wouldn’t be my choice. What do you mean?”

“Well, if I’d stayed where I was I’d be fried when it tires its main tubes. And if I cast off now and it does go for you, I stand to die slowly in a spacesuit. Not nice, at all. Whereas this way I get a free ride home. If it misses you, I can roll off: if it doesn’t, well, it’ll be the same for all of us…”

“That’s a lot more logical than agreeable. What’s it doing now?”

“Still coming round. You lie to port as we go. About twenty degrees more to swing yet. You should be able to observe easily.”

“We’ve got you on the radar, all right, but we can’t bring the glass to bear so far to sunward.”

“I see. Try to keep you informed,” said Ticker.

He worked forward on the metal body. There was enough iron in it to give some traction for his magnetic soles. “Turn still gradual, but steady,” he reported. “This thing has a number of knobs and protuberances and so on round the nose,” he added. “Five major and several minor. God knows what they are. One or more must be radar.”

“With limited range, obviously,” said the commander.

“Must be, or it would go off chasing the moon, or the Earth, instead of us. That looks as if they must know our distance and the plane of our orbit pretty accurately, damn them. Given that, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make it sure to find us sooner or later. If you can sort out which is the radar, it might be helpful to have a good bash at it.”

“Trouble is they aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” complained Ticker. “It’d be just too bad if the one I bashed turned out to be a fuse.”

“Take your time, and make sure. How’s she bearing now?”

“Nearly on. Three or four degrees more.”

He slid back a bit to a position where he could brace himself on a nacelle member. The intermittent vibration from the starboard tubes ceased, and a new tremor ran through the missile as the port tubes fired to check her. “She’s round now,” he told the commander. “Lined up on you and steadying.”

He waited tensely, gripping with arms and knees as best he could. The main tubes spurted briefly. He felt the missile surge forward. There was a jerk as the lines to the flotsam tightened and checked it. The tubes fired again. The missile and its tow jerked to and fro on their loose coupling, but only one of the lines parted, to let a girder section spin off into space on its own. The rest joggled, and the lines looped about until presently the whole conglomeration was in motion on the new line, headed now for the distant hulk, but at a speed somewhat below that of the missile’s former attack.

“On our way now, Skip,” Ticker reported. “I’ll get forward again and try to see about that radar.”

On the nose once more, he tried shielding the protuberances in turn with his gloved hands. There was no apparent effect; certainly no tendency to deviate from the course. He slackened off the lifeline a little and hung over the front to shield as many as possible at once with his body, also without noticeable result. Again he examined the projections. One of them looked as if it might be a small solar-energy cell, but the rest were unidentifiable. He was sure only that some of them must be relaying information to the controls, he sat back, astride the nose of the missile, and feeling the need of a cigarette as he had seldom felt it before.

“Got me beat,” he admitted. “I just don’t know, Skip. Almost any of them might be any damned thing.” He turned his attention to the spangled blackness about him. The hulk and the assembly, lying dead ahead, were shining more brightly than anything but the sun itself.

“One thing, Skipper,” he said. “It won’t be like the other try. The turn’s brought it round so that you and the assembly are almost in line from here.”

“There must be some way of disabling or disarming the brute. Don’t any of those projections unscrew?”

“A couple of them look as               if they ought to, but I’ve no spanners, and I lost the grips when I was snatched off.” Moving forward again, he braced himself as well as he could, and tried to unscrew a graspable portion with his gloved hands. It was a waste of effort. He gave up and gazed ahead while he recovered his breath. The missile was steady on its course, with barely a tremor of correction to be felt. Distance was difficult to judge but he guessed that he could not be much more than twenty miles from the hulk. Not many minutes...

Ticker became aware of sweat trickling down his forehead and stinging in the corners of his eyes. He shook his head and worked his eyebrows to try to get rid of the drops. Presently he slithered clumsily back to the member connecting the port nacelle. He sat on it, lashing himself there as best he could with the lifeline. He pressed back on the main body, bracing his feet against the nacelle itself. He drew the two hand tubes, his own and Dobbin’s. He checked their power settings, and then held them on either side of him, their wide mouths pointing outwards, their butts firmly grounded against the metal casing at his back. Like that, he waited.

“Ticker. Bale out now,” said the commander.

“I told you, Skip. I’m not for dying slowly in a spacesuit.”

The hulk, and the assembly beyond it, seemed to be rushing towards him now. His spine was prickling, partly with sweat, partly with the knowledge of the explosive just behind it. He found himself becoming more conscious of it, crawlingly aware of the vast tearing power held in a thin shell, waiting for the impact that would release it. The sweat ran out of every pore, soaking his clothes.

He sat with his head turned to the right, watching the hulk grow bigger and nearer from eyes that stung with salt. “Not too soon,” he told himself. “It mustn’t be too soon.” But it mustn’t be too late, either. He was aware of the commander’s voice in the phone again, but he took no notice of it. Would one-mile distance do? — Or would that not be soon enough? No, it should give him just time enough at the rate he was going. He would make it one mile as near as he could judge. He went on watching, both hands clenched on the tube grips.

Must be about a couple of miles now...

He set his teeth and pulled both triggers right back for a moment. The hulk seemed to slide to the left as the missile kicked over more sharply than he had expected. The thing keeled for a moment, like a dancer caught off balance. Then the steering tubes fired a correcting blast. The nose swung back on to the target, and then beyond it. The tubes on the near side fired to correct the overswing: at the same moment Ticker pulled both triggers back and held them there. With the combined blast reinforcing her new backswing, the missile leapt sideways and swung broadside to her course at the same time. The constellations whirled round Ticker’s head. He looked wildly round for the hulk and found it back over his left shoulder — and not much more than half a mile away. He prayed that there was not time enough for a correction.

An air missile, with air to grip, and fins to grip it, might have managed a quick correction; but in space, where every movement is a delicate matter of thrust and counter-thrust, time, too, is a highly important factor; oscillation cannot be killed at a stroke, lost equilibrium cannot be regained in a moment. The angle of diversion needed to get back on course grew more acute every second. Ticker knew suddenly that the thing could not do it. Only the main drive could have exerted enough force to jump it back in time to hit — and experience showed that the main drive liked to be steady in the aim before it fired.

But the side-tubes tried. Ticker braced himself where he sat while the heavens reeled as the missile spun. Then the hulk rushed past in a blur, fifty yards away.

“Done it, by Jiminy! Bloody good show, Ticker!” said a voice.

“Quiet there!” snapped the commander. “Ticker, that was magnificent. Now come off it. Bale out quick.”

Ticker, still held by his line, relaxed, feeling all in. The missile, still swinging from side to side, scudded on with him into space. “Ticker, do you hear me? Bale out!” repeated the commander.

Ticker said wearily: “I hear you, Skip. But there won’t be enough power left in these tubes to get me back to you.”

“Never mind. Use what there is as a brake. We’ll fetch you in. But get clear of it now!”

There was a pause. Ticker’s tired voice said: “Sorry, Skip. But we don’t know what this thing is going to do next, do we?”

“For heaven’s sake, man — ”

“Sorry, Skip. Mutiny, I’m afraid.”

Ticker rested as he was, with his eyes closed. The sight of the constellations swooping to the missile’s swings was making him feel sick. He was tired out, his head ached badly, he was soaked through with sweat, it was an effort to think. He sat as he was until he became aware that the pull on the line that held him in place had changed and become constant. He opened his eyes and found himself looking full at the moon.

It was sliding slowly leftwards, and the great curve of the Earth was rising on his right. “She's going about again,” he said drearily. “I wonder if these babies ever run out of fuel?”

Looking down, he found that he was still gripping the hand tubes. He let them go, and float on their safety cords while his gloved hands fumbled at the knot of the line which held him. He managed to slacken it off and dragged himself back on to the main body again. The thing was fairly steady once more, with the starboard tubes firing now and then to turn it; there could be little doubt that it was in the process of coming round for yet another attack. He pulled himself forward on to the nose again, and sat astride of it, holding on to the projecting knobs.

Perched there, and summoning up his strength, he looked about him. Under his left foot lay the pearl-like Earth, with the night-shadow beginning to creep across her. The sun blazed high to his right. Up to the left the pallid moon lay in a bed of jet scattered with diamond dust. Lower to his left, but sliding slowly round towards the front, floated the hulk and the glittering spider work of girders that would one day be the space station.

Once more he turned his eyes down to the great globe creeping past his left foot. He watched it steadily for some moments; then he lifted his right hand, and turned the air supply up a little. “Skipper?” he inquired.

“Receiving you, Ticker,” acknowledged the commander. “We’ve just managed to get the glass on you. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m going to have a shot at disabling the thing, Skip. I think the line is to have a bash at this short, thick rod thing in front of me. Can you see it?”

“Yes. I can see it. Might be anything. You’re satisfied it’s part of the radar gear?”

“Obvious, Skipper.”

“Ticker, you’re lying. Leave it alone.”

“Might be able to dent it a bit. Enough to mess it up.”

“Ticker—”

“I know what I’m doing, Skip. Here goes.”

Ticker hooked his toes under two of the projections, and gripped with his knees, for the best possible purchase. He took up the hand tubes, one in each hand, and slammed away at the short, thick rod with all his might. Soon he paused, panting. “No damned weight. Like hitting with matchsticks,” he complained. “Not a mark on it.”

He turned the air on a little more and screwed up his eyes to squeeze the sweat out of them. The missile was still coming round in its big curve. Twenty degrees more would bring it on to the line of attack again.

“Going to try another of them this time,” he said, lifting the tubes once more.

Through the telescope the commander watched him start to belabor one of the more slender projections: from the right, from the left, from the right, from the…

There was a flash so brilliant that it stung his eyes.

That was all; a vivid, silent flash, shining for its brief moment as brightly as the sun. Then, where it had been, the glass showed nothing but empty darkness, with small, uncaring stars, thousands of lightyears beyond.

The air marshal spread the message on his desk, and studied it for several long, thoughtful moments. His mind went back to the night fifty years ago when the other Ticker had not come back. The same job for grandson as for grandfather. Only it had been easier the first time, with a war on, and the news half-expected. He felt old. He was old. Too old, perhaps. If they had not changed the regulations he would have been on the shelf ten years ago at his age.

Still, here he was. And he’d tell her himself. Tell this poor girl — just as he had told the other one, long ago. So piteously little he could tell her. Lost on a secret mission ... So cruelly blank...

She would know later on, of course — when Security considered it safe. Oh, yes, she should know. He’d see to that. He would throw all his weight there... For sheer cold courage… Nothing less than a V.C. – Nothing less.

He looked back at the security report for the previous day. “Subject dispatched radio to Troon. Message: ‘Happy birthday from Laura and Michael.’ (N.B. Presumed code reference to subject’s birth of child, male, on previous evening. Supporting this: (a) Troon’s birthday 8th May; (b) his radio reply: ‘I love you both.’”

The air marshal sighed and shook his head in a philosophic manner. “But at least she has the boy,” he murmured. “And she knows he knew about the boy. I’m glad he did. The old Ticker never even knew there was to be a child…I hope they meet up there. Ought to get on well together. ...”

The Moon A.D. 2044

1958

There was a double knock on the alloy door. The Station Commander, standing with his back to the room, looking out of the window, appeared for the moment not to hear it. Then he turned, just as the knock was repeated. “Come in,” he said, in a flat, unwelcoming tone.

The woman who entered was tall, well-built, and age about thirty. Her good looks were a trifle austere, but softened slightly by the curls of her short, light-brown hair. Her most striking feature was her soft, blue-grey eyes; they were beautiful, and intelligent, too. “Good morning, Commander,” she said, in a brisk, formal voice.

He waited until the door had latched, then: “You’ll probably be ostracized,” he told her.

She shook her head slightly. “My official duty,” she said. “Doctors are different. Privileged in some ways, on account of being not quite human in others.”

He watched her come further into the room, wondering, as he had before, whether she had originally joined the service because its silky uniform matched her eyes, because she could certainly have advanced more quickly elsewhere. Anyway, the uniform certainly suited her elegant slenderness. “Am I not invited to sit?” she inquired.

“By all means you are, if you care to. I thought you might prefer not,” he told her.

She approached a chair with the half-floating step that had become second nature and let herself sink gently on to it. Without removing her gaze from his face, she pulled out a cigarette case.

“Sorry,” he said, and held the box from the desk towards her. She took one, let him light it for her, and blew the smoke out in a leisurely way. “Well, what is it?” he asked, with a touch of irritation.

Still looking at him steadily, she said: “You know well enough what it is, Michael. It is that this will not do.”

He frowned. “Ellen, I’ll be glad if you’ll keep out of it. If there is one person on this Station who is not directly involved, it is you.”

“Nonsense, Michael. There is not one person. But it is just because I am the least involved that I have come to talk to you. Somebody has to talk to you. You can’t afford just to let the pressure go on rising while you stay in here, like Achilles sulking in his tent.”

“A poor simile, Ellen. I have not quarreled with my leader. It is the rest who have quarrelled with theirs — with me.”

“That’s not the way they see it, Michael.”

He turned and walked over to the window again. Standing there, with his face pale in the bright earthlight, he said: “I know what they are thinking. They’ve shown it plainly enough. There’s a pane of ice between us. The Station Commander is now a pariah. All the old scores have come up to the surface. I am Ticker Troon’s son — the man who got there by easy preferment. For the same reason I’m still here at fifty-five, years over the usual grounding age; and keeping younger men from promotion. I’m known to be in bad with half-a-dozen politicians and much of the top brass in the Space-House. Not to be trusted in my judgment because I’m an enthusiast — i.e. a man with a one-track mind. Would have been thrown out years ago if they had dared to face the outcry — Ticker Troon’s son, again. And now there’s this.”

“Michael,” she said calmly. “Just why are you letting this get you down? What’s behind it?”

He looked hard at her for a moment before he said, with a touch of suspicion: “What do you mean?”

“Simply what I say — what is behind this uncharacteristic outburst? You are perfectly well aware that if you had not earned your rank you would not be here — you’d have been harmlessly stowed away at a desk somewhere, years ago. As for the rest — well, it’s mostly true. But the self-pity angle isn’t like you. You could simply have cashed in and lain back comfortably for life on the strength of being Ticker Troon’s son, but you didn’t. You took the name he left you into your hand, and you deliberately used it for a weapon. It was a good weapon, and of course it made enemies for you, so of course they maligned you. But you know, and hundreds of thousands of people know, that if you had not used it as you did we should not be here today: there wouldn’t be any British Moon Station: and your father would have sacrificed himself for nothing.”

“Self-pity — ” he began, indignantly.

“Phoney self-pity,” she corrected, looking at him steadily.

He turned away.

“Would you like to tell me what the proper feeling is when, at a time of crisis, the men that you have worked with, and for — men that you thought had loyalty and respect, even some affection, for you, turn icy cold, and send you to purgatory? It certainly is not the time to feel pride of achievement, is it?” She let the question hang for a moment, then: “Understanding?” she suggested. “A more sympathetic consideration of the other man’s point of view — and the state of his mind, perhaps?”

She paused for several seconds. “We are none of us in a normal state of mind,” she went on. “There is far too much emotion compressed in this place for anyone’s judgment to be quite rational. It’s harder for some than for others. And we don’t all have quite the same things uppermost in our minds,” she added.

Troon made no reply. He continued to stand with his back to her, gazing steadily out of the window. Soon, she walked across to stand beside him. The view outside was bleak. In the foreground an utterly barren plain; a flatness broken only by various sized chunks of rock, and occasionally the rim of a small crater. The harshness of it was hard on the eyes; the lit surfaces so bright, the shadows so stygian that, if one looked at any one part too long, it dazzled, and seemed to dance about.

Beyond the plain, the mountains stuck up like cardboard cut-outs. Eyes accustomed to the weathered mountains of Earth found the sharpness, the height, the vivid jaggedness of them disturbing. Newcomers were always awed, and usually frightened, by them. ‘A dead world,’ they always said, as they looked on the view for the first time, and they said it in hushed voices, with a feeling that they were seeing the ultimate dreadful place.

Too facile, too earthbound a sensation, Troon often thought. Death implied corruption, decay, and change, but on the moon there was nothing to corrupt, nothing that could change. There was only the impersonal savagery of nature, random, eternal, frozen, and senseless. Something that the Greeks had glimpsed in their conception of Chaos.

Over the horizon to the right hung a fluorescent quarter-segment of the Earth; a wide wedge bounded on one side by the night line and serrated at the base by the bare teeth of the mountains.

For more than a minute Troon gazed at its cold, misted blue light before he spoke. Then: “The idiot’s delight,’’ he said.

The doctor nodded slowly. “Without doubt,” she agreed. “And there — there we have it, don’t we?”

She turned away from the window and went back to the chair. “I know,” she said, “or perhaps I should say, I like to think I know, what this place means to you. You fought to establish it; and then you had to fight to maintain it. It has been your job in life; the purpose of your existence; the second foothold on the outward journey. Your father died for it; you have lived for it. You have mothered, more than fathered, an ideal: and you have to learn, as mothers learn, that there has to be a weaning.

“Now, up there, there is war. It has been going on for ten days — at God knows what cost: the worst war in history — perhaps even the last. Great cities are holes in the ground ; whole countries are black ashes; seas have boiled up in vapor and fallen as lethal rain. But still new pillars of smoke spring up, new lakes of fire spread out, and more millions of people die.

“‘The idiot’s delight,’ you say. But to what extent are you saying that because you hate it for what it is; and to what extent are you saying it from fear that your work will be ruined — that there may come some turn of events that will drive us off the moon? Can you answer that?”

Troon walked slowly back and seated himself on a corner of the desk. “All reasons for hating war are good,” he said, “but some are better than others. If you hate it and want to abolish it simply because it kills people — well, there are a number of popular inventions, the car and the airplane, for instance, that you might do well to abolish for the same reason. It is cruel and evil to kill people — but their deaths in war are a symptom, not a cause. I hate war partly because it is stupid — which it has been for a long time — but still more because it has recently become too stupid, and too wasteful, and too dangerous.”

“I agree. And then, too, of course, much of what it wastes could otherwise be used to further Project Space.”

“Certainly, and why not? Here we are at last, close to the threshold of the universe, with the greatest adventure of the human race just ahead of us, and still this witless, parochial bickering goes on — getting nearer to race suicide every time it flares up.”

“And yet,” she pointed out, “if it were not for the requirements of strategy we should not be here now.”

He shook his head. “Strategy is the ostensible reason perhaps, but it is not the only reason. We are here because the quintessential quality of our age is that of dreams coming true. Just think of it. For centuries we have dreamt of flying; recently we made that come true. We have always hankered for speed; now we have speeds greater than we can stand. We wanted to speak to far parts of the Earth; we can. We wanted to explore the sea bottom. We have – and so on and so on, and, too, we wanted the power to smash our enemies utterly; we have it. If we had truly wanted peace, we should have had that as well. But true peace has never been one of the genuine dreams — we have got little further than preaching against war in order to appease our consciences. The truly wishful dreams, the many-minded dreams are now irresistible — they become facts.

“We may reach them deviously, and almost always they have an undesired obverse: we learned to fly and carried bombs; we speed and destroy thousands of our fellow men; we broadcast and we can lie to the whole world. We can smash our enemies, but if we do, we shall smash ourselves. And some of the dreams have pretty odd midwives, but they get born all the same."

Ellen nodded slowly. “And reaching for the moon was one of what you call the truly wishful dreams?”

“Of course. For the moon, first; and then, one day, for the stars. This is a realization. But there — ” He pointed out of the window at the Earth, “ — down there they are seeing us as a hateful silver crescent which they fear — that is the obverse of this particular dream.

“Nobody hated the moon until we reached it. For thousands of years it has been worshipped, honored and prayed to. Lovers sighed to it and children cried for it. It was Isis, and Diana, it was Selene, kissing her sleeping Endymion — and now we have identified it with Siva, the destroyer. So they are hating it now, because of us; and well they may. We have violated an ancient mystery, shattered an infinite serenity, trampled down antique myths, and smeared its face with blood.

“That is the obverse, ugly and ignoble. Yet it is better that it should have been done at this cost than that it should not have been done at all. Most births are painful, and none are pretty.”

“You’re very eloquent,” said the doctor, a little wondering.

“Aren’t you, on your own subject?”

“But would you be telling me, in an elaborate way, that the end justifies the means?”

“I am not interested in justifying. I am simply saying that certain practices which may be unpleasant in themselves can produce results which are not. There is many a flower that would not be growing if the dung had not happened to fall where it did. The Romans built their empire with savage cruelty, but it did make European civilization possible; because America prospered on slave labor, she was able to achieve independence; and so on. And now, because the armed forces wanted a position of strategic advantage, they have enabled us to start out into space.”

“To you, then, this Station — ” she waved an encompassing hand, “—this is simply a jumping-off place for the planets?”

“Not simply,” he told her. “At present it is a strategic outpost — but its potentialities are far more significant.”

“Far more important, you mean ?”

“As I see it — yes.”

The doctor lit a cigarette and considered in silence for a few moments. Then she said, “There seems to me very little doubt that most people here have a pretty accurate idea of your scale of values, Michael. It would not be news to you, I suppose, that with the exception of three or four — and the Astronomical Section, which is starry-eyed anyway — almost nobody shares them?”

“It would not,” he said. “It has not been, for years ; but it is only lately that it has become a matter of uncomfortable importance. Even so, millions of people can be wrong — and often have been.”

She nodded, and went on, equably: “Well, suppose we take a look at it from their point of view. All the people here volunteered and were posted here as a garrison. They did not, and they do not, consider it primarily as a jumping-off place — though I suppose some of them think it may become that one day — now, at this moment, they are seeing it as what it was established to be — a Bombardment Station : a strategic position from which a missile can be placed within a five-mile circle drawn anywhere on Earth. That, they say, and quite truly say, is the reason for the Station’s existence; and the purpose for which it is equipped. It was built — just as the other Moon Stations were built — to be a threat. It was hoped that they would never be used, simply because the knowledge of their existence would be an incentive to keep the peace.

“Well, that hope has been wiped out. God knows who, or what, really started this war, but it has come. And what happened? The Russian Station launched a salvo of missiles. The American Station began pumping out a systematic bombardment. The moon, in fact, went into action. But what part did the British Station play in this action? It sent off just three, medium- weight missiles!

“The American Station spotted that Russian Freighter-rocket coming in, and got it, with a light missile. The Russian Station — and, by the look of it, one of the Russian Satellites — thereupon hammered the American Station, which erupted missiles for a time, both local and Earthward-bound, and then suddenly went quiet. The Russian Station kept on sending missiles at intervals for a time, then it, too, went quiet.

“And what were we doing while all this was going on? We were sending off three more, medium-sized missiles. And since the Russian Station stopped, we have contributed another three. Nine medium-sized missiles! Our total part in the war, to date!

“Meanwhile, the real war goes on up there. And what’s happening in it? Nobody knows. One minute’s news is corrected, or denied, a few minutes later. There’s propaganda to dishearten; there’s wishful thinking, obvious lying, clever lying, incoherence, and hysteria. There may even be a few grains of truth somewhere, but nobody knows which they are. All we do know for sure is that the two greatest powers there have ever been are out to destroy one another with every weapon they possess. Hundreds of cities and towns must have vanished, and all the people in them. Whole continents are being scorched and ruined. Is either side winning? Can either side win? Will there be anything left? What has happened to our own country, and our homes? We don’t know!

“And we do nothing! We just sit out here, and look at the Earth, all calm and pearly-blue, and wonder hour after hour — day after day, now— what horrors are going on under the clouds. Thinking about our families and friends, and what may have happened to them…

“The wonder to me is that so few of us, as yet, have cracked up. But I warn you, professionally, that if things go on like this, more of us will before long. Of course the men brood and become more desperate and rebellious as it goes on. Of course they ask themselves what we are here for at all, if not to be used. Why have we not fired our big missiles? Perhaps they would not count a great deal in the scale of things, but they’d be something: we’d be doing what we can. They were the reason we were sent here — so why haven’t we fired them? Why didn’t we fire them at the beginning, when they would have had most effect? The other Stations did. Why have we still not fired them, even now? Can you tell us that?”

She ended, looking at him steadily. He looked back at her, just as steadily. “I don’t plan the strategy,” he said. “It is not my job to understand top-level decisions. I am here to carry out the orders I receive.”

“A very proper reply, Station Commander,” commented the doctor, and went on waiting. He did not amplify, and she found the continuation thrown back on her. "They tell me,” she observed, "that we have something like seventy major missiles with atomic warheads. It has frequently been pointed out that the earlier the big blows fall, the more effective they are in destroying the enemy’s potential — and in preventing retaliation. The aim, in fact, is the quick knock-out. But there our missiles still rest — unused even now.”

“Their use,” Troon pointed out again, “is not for us here to decide. It is possible that the first intercontinental missiles did what was required — in which case it would simply be a waste to launch these. It is not impossible, either, that if they are held in reserve there could be a point when our ability to continue the bombardment might be decisive.”

She shook her head. “If the strategic targets have been destroyed, what is there left for decisive bombardment? These aren’t weapons for use against armies in the field. What is worrying our personnel is, why weren’t our weapons used — on the right kind of targets, at the right time?”

Troon shrugged. “This is a pointless discussion, Ellen. Even if we were able to fire without orders, what should we aim at? We’ve no idea which targets have been destroyed, or which are only damaged. Indeed, for all we know, some of the target areas may now be occupied by our own people. If we had been needed, we should have had the orders.”

The doctor remained quiet for a full half minute, making up her mind. Then she said, forthrightly: “I think you had better understand this, Michael. If there is not some use made of these missiles very soon, or if there is not some intelligible statement about them from HQ, you are going to have a mutiny on your hands.”

The Commander sat quite still on the corner of the desk, looking not at her, but towards the window. Presently: “As bad as that?” he asked.

“Yes, Michael. About as bad as it can be, short of open rebellion.”

“’M. I wonder what they think they’ll get out of that.”

“They aren’t thinking much at all. They’re worried sick, frustrated, feeling desperate, and needing some kind — any kind — of action to relieve the tension.”

“So they’d like to unhorse me, and poop off major atomic missiles, just for the hell of it.”

She shook her head, looking at him unhappily. “It’s not exactly that, Michael. It’s — oh dear, this is difficult — it’s because a rumor has got around that they should have been sent off.”

She watched him as the implication came home. At length, he said, with icy calmness: “I see. I am supposed to have the other Nelson touch — the blind eye?”

“Some of them say so. A lot of the rest are beginning to wonder.”

“There has to be a reason. Even a Commanding Officer must be supposed to have a motive for dereliction of duty amounting to high treason.”

“Of course, Michael.”

“Well, I’d better have it. What is it?”

Ellen took a deep breath. “It’s this. So long as we don’t send those missiles we may be safe: once we do start sending them we’ll probably bring down retaliation, either from the Russian Station, if it still exists, or from one of their Satellites. Our nine medium missiles haven’t been a serious matter — not serious enough to justify them into provoking us to use our heavies. But, if we do start to use the major ones, it will almost certainly mean the end of this Station. Your own view of the primary importance of the Station is well known — you admitted it to me just now. So, you see, a motive can be made to appear – ” She paused. “The American Station has almost certainly gone; possibly the Russian, too. If we go as well, there will no longer be anyone on what you called the ‘threshold of the universe.’ But, if we were able somehow to ride out the war, we should be in sole possession of the moon, and still on the ‘threshold,’ Shouldn’t we?”

“Yes. You make the motive quite uncomfortably clear,” he told her. “But an ambition is not necessarily an obsession, you know.”

“This is a closed community, in a high state of nervous tension.”

He thought for some moments, then: “Can you predict? Will it produce a revolution, or a mass uprising?” he asked her.

“A revolution,” she said, without hesitation. “Your officers will arrest you, once they have plucked up the courage. That could take a day or two yet. It is a pretty grim step — especially when the CO happens to be a popular figure, too ...” She shrugged her shoulders.

“I must think,” he said. He went around behind the desk and sat down, resting his elbows on it. The room became as quiet as the construction of the Station permitted while he considered behind closed eyes. After several minutes he opened them. ‘‘If they should arrest me,” he said, “their next move must be to search the message files — (a) to justify themselves by finding evidence against me, and (b) to find out what the orders were, and whether they can still be carried out.

“When they discover that, except for three sets of three medium missiles, no launching orders have been received, there will be a panic. Such of my officers as may have been persuaded into this will be utterly shattered — you can’t just apologize to your CO for arresting him as a traitor and expect it to be left at that.

“There will be just one hope left, so someone more decisive than the rest will radio HQ that I have had a breakdown, or something of the kind, and request a repeat of all launching orders. When that brings nothing but a repetition of the same three sets of three, they’ll be really sunk.

“Then, I should think, there will be a split. Some of them will have cold feet, and be for taking the consequences before matters get even worse; a number of men are bound to say, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and want to launch the missiles anyway. Some will have swung back and argue that if HQ wanted launchings they would have said so — so why risk a further act of wanton insubordination which will probably bring enemy reprisals, anyway.

“Even if good sense and cold feet were to win, and I should be released, I should have lost much of my authority and prestige, and there would be a very, very sticky situation all the way round. On the whole, I think it would be easier for everyone if I were to swallow my pride and discourage my arrest by anticipating their second move.”

He paused, contemplating the doctor. “As you know, Ellen, it is not a habit of mine to reflect aloud in this manner. But I think it would do no harm if some idea of the probable results of my arrest were to filter round. Don’t you agree?”

She nodded, without speaking. He got up from the desk. “I shall now send for Subcommander Reeves — and I think we will have Subcommander Calmore as well — and explain to them with as little loss of face as possible that, the chances of war being what they are, and the chances of leakage now being nil, I am lifting security on messages received. This is being done in order that all senior officers may fully acquaint themselves with the situation, in readiness for any emergency.

“This should have enough deflationary effect to stop them making that particular kind of fool of themselves, don’t you think?”

“But won’t they just say that you must have destroyed the relevant messages?” she objected.

“Oh, that one wouldn’t do. There’s service procedure. They will be able to compare my file with the Codes Section’s files, and that with the Radio Section’s logbook, and they’ll find they all tie up.”

She went on studying him. “I still don’t understand why our missiles have not been launched,” she said.

“No? Well, perhaps all will be revealed to us one day. In the meantime — suppose we just go on obeying our orders. It’s really much simpler.” He changed his tone. “But I am extremely grateful to you, Ellen. I had not thought it had got so far, yet. Let’s hope that tomorrow will show, if not a great change of feeling, at least a less awkward choice of scapegoat. And now if you will excuse me, I will send for those two.”

As the door closed behind her, he continued to stare at it for fully a minute. Then he flipped over a switch and requested the presence of his Subcommanders. With the interview over, Troon allowed a few minutes for the officers to get clear. They had gone off looking a little winded, one carrying the message file, the other his signed authority of access to the code files. Then, feeling the need for a change, he, too, left his room, and made his way to the entrance port. In the dressing room the man on duty jumped to his feet and saluted.

“Carry on, Hughes,” Troon told him. “I’m going outside for an hour or so.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man. He sat down and resumed work on the suit he was servicing. Troon lifted his own scarlet pressure suit from its pegs and inspected it carefully. Satisfied, he shed his uniform jacket and trousers, and got into it. He carried out the routine checks and tests; finally, he switched on the radio, and got an acknowledgement from the girl at the main instrument desk. He told her that he would be available for urgent calls only. When he spoke again his voice reached the duty man from a loudspeaker on the wall. The man got up, and moved to the door of the smaller, two-man airlock.

“An hour, you said, sir?” he inquired.

“Make it an hour and ten minutes,” Troon told him.

“Yes, sir.” The man set the hand of the reminder dial seventy minutes ahead of the clock. If the Station Commander had not returned, or had failed to notify an extension by then, the rescue squad would automatically be summoned.

The duty man operated the lock, and soon Troon was outside; a vivid splash of color in the monochrome landscape, the only moving thing in the whole wilderness. He set off southward with the curious, lilting moon step which long service had made second nature.

At half a mile or so he paused and made a show of inspecting one or two of the missile pits there. They were, as they were intended to be, almost invisible. The top of each shaft had a cover of stiff fibre which matched the color of the ground about it. A scatter of sand and stones on top made it difficult to detect, even at a few yards. He pottered from one to another for a few minutes, and then stood looking back at the Station.

It was dwarfed and made toy-like by the mountains behind it. The radar and radio towers, and the sun bowls looking like huge artificial flowers on the top of their masts, gave a rough scale; except for them it would have been difficult to judge whether the Station itself was the size of a half-inflated balloon, or half a puffball. It was hard to appreciate that the main body was a hundred and twenty yards in diameter at ground level until one looked at the corridors connecting it with the smaller, storage domes, and remembered that the roofs of those corridors were four feet above one’s head.

Troon continued to regard it for some moments, then he turned round, pursued a zigzag course between the missile pits, and when he was hidden from the Station by a rocky outcrop, sat down. There he leaned back and, in such modified comfort as the suit allowed, contemplated the prospect dominated by the bright segment of Earth — and also the shape of the future in a world ruined by war.

All his life — and, for the matter of that, all his father's life, too — the possibility of such a war had lurked in the background. Sometimes it had seemed imminent, but there had been rapprochements; then again, it had seemed inevitable, but in one way or another it had been avoided. Again and again the tensions had increased, and relaxed. There had been conferences, concessions, compromises, bluffs, crises, and occasional panic moves, but through them all the taper had somehow been kept at a safe distance from the touchhole.

Three years ago, when he had once more, and certainly for the last time, managed to stave off “grounding,” he had felt an increased sense of imminence. It was difficult to be sure that the placidity of his spells on the moon did not give a distorted impression that life at home was becoming more febrile and exhausting each leave, but of one thing he was convinced — he had no intention of spending his retirement in one of the regions that grew tense with the jitters two or three times every year.

It was for that reason he had sold his house — the house that had been presented to his mother in tribute to the memory of his father — and moved his family four thousand miles to a new home in Jamaica. Ridding himself of the house had been satisfactory in another way, too, for to him it had symbolized the superhuman obligation of living up to his father’s legendary reputation; it had been a solidification of the shadows that his father had unwittingly cast over him since he was twelve years old.

Looking back on his life, it was only those years before he was twelve that appeared sunlit and halcyon. He, his mother, and his grandfather had then lived quietly and happily in a roomy cottage. They had their friends and neighbors; he had his own school friends in the village; beyond that small circle they had been, except for his grandfather’s reputation as a classical scholar, unnoticed and unknown. And then, in the September of his thirteenth year, had come the break-up.

A man called Tallence had somehow stumbled across the story of Ticker Troon and the missile and had applied to the authorities for the lifting of the security ban. After twelve years there was no good reason for silence — and, indeed, had been none for some time. Four Satellite Stations had for several years been known to be in position — the British one, two fair-sized Russian ones, and the huge American one. The existence of space mines was no longer a secret, nor was the fact that all the Stations now carried means to combat them. Tallence, therefore, had managed to carry his point and, soon, to produce his book.

It was a good book, and the publishers spared nothing on the publicity that launched it; the conveniently timed citation of a posthumous V.C. for Ticker Troon helped, too; and the book went straight into the epic class. It sold by the hundred thousands; it was seized upon by translators at once and went into all languages save those allied with the Intransigent Sixth, where it was believed that the first Satellite was Soviet invention. It was filmed, televised, digested, and strip-treated until, a year later, there was scarcely a man, woman, or child outside the Soviet Empire who did not know of Ticker Troon and his exploit.

For his son, it had been all very exciting at first. Suddenly to discover that one had a hero father, to be invited to big parties, to have news writers and cameramen besieging, to take the seat of honor at a premiere, to be introduced on platforms, were great thrills. Soon, however, he had become awkwardly conscious of his ignorance, and of people’s disappointment when their talk of space meant nothing to him. To overcome that, he had begun to read books on astronomy and spacework. In them he learnt that his grandfather had not been fully informative in teaching him that the Pleiades were the seven daughters of Atlas, that Venus emerged from the sea, that Orion was the great hunter who met his match in Diana. And as he read he, too, had seemed to hear “the far gnat-voices cry, star to faint star across the sky.”

The excitement of being a public figure had soon worn off. The sense of being watched became distasteful. The feeling that he was expected to be exceptional weighed upon him at school, and only slightly less when he went up to Oxford. The house that his mother had accepted with a feeling of reluctant obligation never had the quality of home that there had been in the cottage. His mother seemed to be forever socially busy now; his new interests were not shared by his grandfather; it seemed impossible to remain unreminded for an hour that he was the son of Ticker Troon — and that was rather like finding one had Sir Francis Drake, Lord Nelson, or the National Gallery, for a father.

His discovered fascination with the problems of space made it worse ; as if a part of him had turned traitor and conspired to draw him away from his old interests, and deeper into his father’s shadow. He tried hard to retain the belief that Phoebus Apollo was more interesting than Phoebus, the Eye of Heaven; that Mars, as the alias of the roughneck son of Zeus and Hera, had more significance than Mars, the nearest and potentially most attainable of the planets; that Aristotle, the Peripatetic, was of more importance than the crater on the moon that had been named after him, but in vain. An unquenchable curiosity had sprung alight in his mind, and presently he had been forced to admit that though his father’s qualities might be beyond him, he had certainly inherited his one passionate interest. With that once decided, he had been willing to set about using his name to further it, and he had entered the Service.

He had, at first, used it quite diffidently. He did not seek publicity; that was not necessary, but neither did he shun it any longer. He avoided the cheaply sensational, but he was not unaware that more restrained publicity was gradually building him into a somebody in the public mind. When the press asked for his opinion on spatial questions, he gave it with careful consideration — and he was in a strong enough position to cause trouble over any misrepresentation. He adopted a deliberate policy, and, little by little, by the time he was twenty-five, he had built the space-hero’s son into the ordinary man’s oracle on space.

He did not do it without arousing jealousies, but his popular position was solid, his discretion carefully judged. He was known to work hard, he saw to it that his service record was good, he knew that his opinions had started to carry weight.

Troon’s first brush with the politicians had followed the announcement (a premature announcement, in point of fact) that the Russians were about to set up a Moon Station. The immediate effect of this was that the Americans, who had got into the habit of regarding the moon as a piece of US-bespoken real estate that they would get around to developing when they were ready, were shocked into intense activity. The press wanted, as usual, to know Lieutenant Troon’s views on the situation. He had them ready, and they made their first appearance in a responsible Sunday newspaper with an influential circulation.

He was well aware of the situation. A Moon Station was not a thing that could be set up for just a few million pounds. It could not but entail an expenditure that the government would be alarmed to contemplate, and he knew that the official policy would be to discourage any suggestion of a British Moon Station as a frivolous and profligate project, minimizing, or brushing aside, all arguments in its favor.

In his short article, Troon had mentioned the advantages to strategy and to science but had dwelt chiefly upon prestige. Failure to establish such a Station would be a turning point in British policy; it would amount to the first concrete confession that Britain was content to drop out of the van; that, in fact, it was now willing to admit itself as a second — or third-rate power. It would be public confirmation of the view, held in many circles for some time now, that the British had had their day, and were dwindling into their sunset; that all their greatness would soon lie with that of Greece, Rome and Spain — in their past.

Troon’s first carpeting over the matter was by his CO. He then trod a number of ascending carpets until he found himself facing a somewhat pompous Under-Secretary who began, as the rest had done, by pointing out that he had broken Service regulations by publishing an unapproved article, and then worked round by degrees to the suggestion that, he might, upon reconsideration, find that a Moon Station had little strategic superiority to an armed Satellite Station, and that if the Americans and Russians did build them, they would be wasting material and money.

“Moreover, I am able to tell you confidentially,” the Under-Secretary had added, “that this is also the view of the American authorities themselves.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Troon. “In that case it seems odd that they should be doing it, doesn’t it?”

“They would not be, I assure you, but for the Russians. Clearly, the moon cannot be left entirely to Russian exploitation. So, as the Americans can afford to do it, they are doing it in spite of their views on its worth. And since they are, it is not necessary for us to do so.”

“You think, sir, that it will do us no harm to be seen standing on American feet instead of on our own in this enterprise?”

“Young man,” said the Under-Secretary severely, “there are many pretensions which are not worth the price they would exact. You have been unpatriotic enough to suggest in print that our sun is setting. I emphatically deny that. Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that whatever we have been, and whatever we may yet be, we are not, at present, one of the wealthier nations. We cannot afford such an extravagance for mere ostentation.”

“But if we do keep out of this, sir, our prestige cannot fail to suffer, whatever arguments we may advance. As for the American denial of strategic value, I have heard it before; and I continue to regard it as wool-pulling. A Moon Station would be far less vulnerable, and could mount vastly greater firepower, than any Satellite Station.”

The Under-Secretary’s manner had become cold. “My information does not support that statement. Nor does the policy of the Government. I must therefore request you ...”

Troon had heard him out politely and patiently. He knew, and he was sure that the Under-Secretary must know, too, that the damage already done to the declared policy was considerable. There would be a campaign for a Moon Station, certainly. Even if he were publicly to reverse his views, or even if he were to remain silent, the newspapers would enjoy tilting at those who had brought pressure to bear on him. He had only to behave circumspectly for a few weeks while the campaign gathered force, to refuse to give opinions where he had been ready to give them before, and perhaps look a little rueful in his silence. There would have been a campaign in some of the popular papers in any case; the main effect of his making his views known early was that in the public mind he appeared as the Moon Station's most important advocate.

In a few weeks, feeling among the electors had become clear enough to worry the government, and produce a rather more conciliatory tone. It was conceded that a British Moon Station might be considered if the estimates were satisfactory. The prodigious size of the estimates which were produced, however, came as a shock which sharpened the divided opinions.

At this point, the Americans took a kindly hand. They had apparently changed their views on the value of Moon Stations, and, having done so, felt that it would be advantageous for the West to have two such Stations to the rival’s one. Accordingly, they offered to advance a part of the cost, and supply much of the equipment. It was a generous gesture.

“Good old Uncle Sam,” said Troon, when the offer was announced. “Still the genial patron with two left feet.”

He was right. There was a considerable body of opinion to demand: “Whose Moon Station is this supposed to be, anyway?” Nevertheless, the number of noughts to the cost remained intimidating.

Soon there was a rumor in circulation that the wrong kind of thinking — to put it at its least slanderous — was going on at high levels, and that there was actually in existence a scheme by which a Station could be established at a cost very considerably under half the present estimates; and that Troon (you know, son of Ticker Troon) thought well of it.

Troon had waited, quietly.

Soon, he found himself again invited to high places. He was modestly surprised and could not think how the proposal came to be connected with his name but, as a matter of fact, well, yes; he did happen to have seen a scheme…Oh no, it was quite an error to think it had anything to do with him, a complete misunderstanding. The idea had been worked out by a man called Flanderys. It certainly had some interesting points. Yes, he did know Flanderys slightly. Yes, he was sure that Flanderys would be glad to explain his ideas…

The American and Russian expeditions seemed, in so far as their claims had ever been sorted out, to have arrived on the moon simultaneously; the former landing in Copernicus, the latter in Ptolemy — both claiming priority, and both consequently announcing their annexation of the entire territory of the moon. Experience with the Satellite Stations had already shown that any romantic ideas of a pax coelestis should be abandoned but, as each expedition was highly vulnerable, both concerned themselves primarily with tunneling into the rock in order to establish strongholds from which they would be able to dispute their rights with greater confidence.

Some six months later, the smaller British expedition set down in the crater of Archimedes, with the Russian six hundred miles away beyond the Apennine Mountains to the south, and the American four hundred miles or so to the northeast. There, in contrast with their intensively burrowing neighbors, they proceeded to establish themselves on the surface. They had, it was true, one drilling machine, but this, compared with the huge tunneling engines of the others that had cost a good many times their weight in uranium to transport, was a mere toy which they employed in sinking a series of six-foot diameter pits.

The Flanderys Dome, essentially a modification of Domes used in the Arctic for some years, was a simple affair to erect. It was spread out on a leveled part of the crater floor, coupled with hoses, and left to inflate. With only the light gravity of the moon weighing down its fabric, the outer casing was fully shaped at a pressure of eight pounds (Earth) per square inch, at fifteen it was perfectly taut. Then the contents of the various rockets and containers went into it through the airlocks, or the annuli. The air regenerating plants were started up, the temperature controls coupled, and the work of building the Station inside the dome could begin.

The Americans, Troon recalled, had been interested. They reckoned it quite an idea for use on a moon where there did not happen to be any Russians about; but on one where there were, they thought it plain nuts and said so. The Russians themselves, he remembered with a smile, had been bewildered. A flimsy contrivance that could be completely wrecked by a single, old-fashioned high-explosive shell was in their opinion utter madness, and a sitting temptation. They did not, however, yield to the temptation since that would almost certainly precipitate untimely action by the Americans. Nevertheless, the presumption of a declining Power in arriving to settle itself blandly and unprotected in the open while two great Powers were competing to tunnel themselves hundreds of feet into the rock was a curious piece of effrontery. Even a less suspicious mind than the Russian could well have felt that there was something here that was not meeting the eye. They instructed their agents to investigate.

The investigation took a little time, but soon the solution came — an inconvenient clarification. As had been assumed, the pits that the British had been busily drilling at the same time that they built their Station into the Dome, were missile shafts. This was similar to the work being done by the other two parties themselves — except that where the Americans also used pits, the Russians favored launching ramps. The more disturbing aspect of it came to light later.

The British system of control, it appeared, was to use a main computing engine to direct the aim and setting of any missile. Once the missile had been launched, it was kept on course by its own computer and servo systems. The main computer was, unlike the rest of the Station, protected in a chamber drilled to a considerable depth. One of its more interesting features was that in certain conditions it was capable of automatically computing for, and dispatching, missiles until all were gone. A quite simple punched-card system was used in conjunction with a chronometer; each card being related to a selected target. One of the conditions which would cause this pack of cards to be fed to the computer was a drop in the Station’s air pressure. Fifteen pounds per square inch was its normal, and there was allowance for reasonable variation. Should the Dome be so unfortunate, however, as to suffer a misfortune sufficient to reduce the air pressure to seven pounds, the missile-dispatching mechanism would automatically go into action. All things considered, it appeared highly desirable from the Russian point of view that the Flanderys Dome should not suffer any such misadventure.

During the years that had intervened between the establishment of the Station, and his succeeding to command of it, Troon had taken part in a number of expeditions. Some, such as that which had visited the Apennines, had consisted of fourteen or fifteen men traveling with their supplies on tractors, surveying, mapping, photographing as they went; spending their sleeping periods in small Flanderys Domes holding several men, where they could remove their pressure-suits to eat and attain some degree of comfort. Others, ranging further, were two, three, or four-man trips on jet-borne platforms. Tractor operations were limited by the huge cracks which radiated from the crater to form impassable obstacles, many of them more than a hundred miles in length and a mile wide. The cracks were at most times awesome clefts of unknown, inky depth. Only when the sun was overhead, or shining up their length, was one able to see the rocky debris which choked them, several miles below and it was only at such times that the geologists, turned selenologists, were able to take their jet-platforms down, and make their brief notes while the light lasted.

Troon, who had rapidly become something of a selenologist himself, had nursed from the time of the landing an ambition to see and record something of the moon’s other side. According to rumor, the Russians had, within a year of their arrival sent an ill-fated expedition there, but the truth or otherwise of the report remained hidden by the usual Slav passion for secrecy. It was one of Troon’s regrets that exploration would have to wait on further development of the jet-platforms, but there was no reason to think that the invisible side held any surprises; photographs taken from circling rockets showed no more than a different pattern of the same pieces — mountains, "seas,” and craters innumerable.

The regret that exploration               must fall to someone else was no more than minor; most of what he had wanted to do, he had done. The establishment of the Moon Station was the end to which he had worked, maneuvered, and contrived. He had given Flanderys the idea of the Dome, and helped him to work it out; and, when that looked like being rejected for its vulnerability, he had briefed another friend to produce the solution of automatic reprisals which they had called Project Stalemate. It was better, he had thought then, and still thought, that the affair should appear to be a composite achievement rather than a one-man show. He was satisfied with his work.

He had almost reconciled himself to handing over the command in another eight months with the thought that the Station’s future was secure, since however much it might be grudged as a charge on the armed forces, the discovery of rare elements had given it practical importance, the astronomers attached great value to the Station, and the medical profession, too, had found it useful for special studies.

But now there had come this war, and he was wondering whether that might mean the end of all the Moon Stations. If this one survived, would there be the wealth, or even the technical means, left to sustain it when the destruction was finished? Was it not very likely that everybody would be too busy trying simply to survive in a shattered world to concern themselves with such exotic matters as the conquest of space?

Well, there was nothing he could do about that — nothing but wait and see what the outcome was and be ready to seize any opportunity that showed. And it was still possible that there might be no one left on the moon by the time it was over. The signs were that the two giants had felled one another already. One could do no more than hope that the threat of Project Stalemate would continue to ward off attack by the Russian Satellite Stations — if they were still in working order. After all, the descent of some seventy fission – and fission-fusion – bombs on one’s country would seem, even though that country was spread over one sixth of the habitable globe, to be a heavy price to pay for the destruction of one small Moon Station. Yes, given luck and some sense of relative values in the enemy’s mind, the British Moon Station still had quite a chance of survival.

Troon got up and walked out from behind the rock. He stood for some moments, a lone scarlet figure in the black and white desert, looking at his Moon Station. Then, picking his path carefully between the missile pits, made his unhurried way back to it.

At the end of dinner he asked if he might have the pleasure of the doctor’s company at coffee in his office. Looking at her over the rim of his cup, he said: “It would seem to have worked.’’

She regarded him quizzically through her cigarette smoke. “Yes, indeed,’’ she agreed. “Like a very hungry bacteriophage. I felt as if I were watching a film speeded up to twice natural pace.’’ She paused, and then added: “Of course, I am not familiar with the usual reactions of Commanding Officers who have been suspected of treason and stood in some danger of lynching, but one would not have been surprised at a little more — er — perturbation.’’

Troon grinned. “A bit short on self-respect?’’ He shook his head. “This is a funny place, Ellen. When you have been here a little longer your own sense of values will seem a little less settled.’’

“I have suspected that already.’’

“But you still need to get the measure of it. My immediate predecessor once said: ‘When I am on this singularly unheavenly cinder, I make it an invariable rule to assume that the emotional content of any situation is seventy-five percent above par.’ I don’t know how he arrived at the seventy-five, but the principle is entirely right. You know, you yourself weren’t far off sharing the general opinion this morning — it gave you a sense of the dramatic, an angle for the feeling of tension, and helped to relieve the boredom of the place. You would not have felt like that at home; and I should not have behaved as I did at home; but here, the occasions for standing firm and for bending are different. Technically, I am the CO, with all the authority of the Crown behind me, and because of that we preserve certain forms; in practice, my job is more like a patriarch’s. Sometimes rank and regulations have to be invoked; but we find it better to use them as little as we can.”

“I have noticed that, too,” she agreed.

“We realized when we came here that there would be particular problems, but we could not foresee all of them. We realized that we’d need men able to adapt to life in a small community, and because they would be restricted almost all the time to the Station, we had them vetted for claustrophobic tendencies, too. But it did not occur to anyone that, out here, they would have to contend with claustrophobia and agoraphobia at the same time. Yet it is so; we are shut in, in a vast emptiness — it made a pretty grim mental conflict for a lot of them, and morale went down and down. After a year of it the first Station Commander began to battle for an establishment of women clerks, orderlies and cooks. His report was quite dramatically eloquent. ‘If this Station,’ he wrote, ‘is required to keep to its present establishment then, in my considered opinion, a complete collapse of morale will follow in a short time. It is of the utmost importance that we take all practical steps which will help to give it the character of a normal human community. Any measures that will keep this wilderness from howling in the men’s minds, and the horrors of eternity from frostbiting their souls, should be employed without delay.’ Good Lyceum stuff, that, but true, all the same. There was a great deal of misgiving at home — but no lack of women volunteers ; and when they did come, most of them turned out to be more adaptable than the men. And then, of course, the patriarchal aspect of the CO’s job came still more to the fore. It is no sort of a place for a disciplinarian to build up his ego; the best that can be done is to keep it working as harmoniously as possible.

“I have been here long enough to take its pulse fairly well as a rule, but this time I slipped up. Now, I don’t want that to happen again, so I’d be glad of your further help to see that it doesn’t. We’ve dislodged this particular source of trouble, but the causes are still there; the frustrations are still buzzing about, and soon they are going to find a new place to swarm. I want the news early, the moment they look as if they have found it. Can I rely on you for that?”

“But, seeing that the cause — the immediate cause, that is — is HQ’s failure to use us, I don't see that there is anything here for them to concentrate the frustration on.”

“Nor do I. But since they cannot reach the high-brass back home, they will find something or other to sublimate it on, believe me.”

“Very well, I’ll be your ear to the ground. But I still don’t understand. Why — why doesn’t HQ use these missiles? We know we should be plastered, wiped out, in an attempt to put the main computer out of action. But most of the men are past caring about that. They have reached a sort of swashbuckling, Gotterdammerung state of mind by now. They reckon that their families, their homes and their towns must have gone, so they are saying: ‘What the hell matters now?’ There is still just a hope that we are being reserved for a final, smashing blow, but when that goes, I think they’ll try to fire them themselves.”

Troon thought a little, then he said: “I think we have passed the peak of likelihood of desperate action. Now that they are sure that no firing orders were received, they must most of them swing over to the proposition that we are being conserved for some decisive moment — with the result that if our missiles are not available when they are called for, the whole strategy of a campaign could be wrecked. After all, could it not come to the point where the last man who still has ammunition holds the field? For all we can tell, we may at this very moment be representing a threat which dominates the whole situation. Someone could be saying: ‘Unconditional surrender now. Or we’ll bomb you again from the moon.’ If so, we are a rather emphatic example of ‘they also serve…’ ”

“Yes,” she said, after reflection. “I think that must be the intention. What other reason could there be?”

Troon looked thoughtfully after her as she left. Her predecessor would have spread such a theory, offered as her own, all round the Station in half an hour. He was not quite sure yet how much Ellen talked, and who listened to her. However, that would soon reveal itself. In the meantime he turned to the day’s reports, and spent an hour filling in the Station Log, and his own private log in its turn.

Before leaving the office, he went over to the window again. The scene had not changed greatly since “morning.” The crater floor was still harsh in the sunlight of the long lunar day. The cut-out mountains looked just the same, just the same as they had for ten million years. The nacreous Earth had moved only a few degrees, and still hung with the nightline half across her face, and the other half veiled. Soon he sighed and turned towards the door of his sleeping cabin.

The jangle of the bedside telephone woke Troon abruptly. He had the handpiece to his ear before his eyes were well open. “Radar Watch here, sir,” said a voice, with a tinge of excitement behind it. “Two UFOs observed approaching southeast by south. Height one thousand; estimated speed under one hundred.”

“Two what?” inquired Troon, collecting his wits.

“Unidentified flying objects, sir.”

He grunted. It was so long since he had encountered the term that he had all but forgotten it. “You mean jet-platforms?” he suggested.

“Possibly, sir.” The voice sounded a little hurt.

“You have warned the guard?”

“Yes, sir. They’re in the lock now.”

“Good. How far off are these — er — UFOs?”

“Approximately forty miles now.”

“Right. Pick them up visually as soon as possible and let me know. Tell switchboard to cut me in on the guard’s link right away.”

Troon put down the telephone and threw back the bedcovers. He had barely put a foot on the floor when there was a sound of voices in his office next door. One, more authoritative than the rest, cut across the babble.

“Zero, boys. Open her up.”

Troon, still in his pajamas went through to his office, and approached his desk. From the wall speaker came the sound of breathing, and the creak of gear as the men left the lock. A voice said: “Damned if I can see any bloody UFOs. Can you, Sarge?”

“That,” said the sergeant’s voice patiently, “is southeast by south, my lad.”

“Okay. But I still can’t see a bloody UFO. If you — ”

“Sergeant Witley,” said Troon, into the microphone. A hush fell over the party.

“Yes, sir.”

“How many are you?”

“Six men with me, sir. Six more following.”

“Arms?”

“Light machinegun and six bombs, each man, sir. Two rocket tubes for the party.”

“That’ll do. Ever used a gun on the moon, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.” There was a touch of reproof in the man’s voice, but one did not waste ammunition that had cost several pounds a round to bring in.

Troon said: “Put your sights right down. For practical purposes there is no trajectory. If you do have to shoot, try to get your back against a rock; if you can’t do that, lie down. Do not try to fire from a standing position. If you have not learnt the trick of it, you’ll go into half a dozen back somersaults with the first burst. All of you got that?”

There were murmured acknowledgements.

“I don’t for a moment suppose it will be necessary to shoot,” Troon continued, “but be ready. You will not initiate hostilities, but at any sign of a hostile act you. Sergeant, will reply instantly, and your men will give you support. No one else will act on his own. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Carry on now, Sergeant Witley.”

To a background sound of               the sergeant making his dispositions, Troon hurried into his clothes. He was almost dressed when the same voice as before complained: “Still I don’t see no bloody — yes, I do, though, by God! Something just caught the light to the right of old Mammoth Tooth, see?”

At the same moment the telephone rang. Troon picked it up.

“Got the telly on them now, sir. Two platforms. Four men on one, five on the other. Scarcely any gear with them. Wearing Russian-type suits. Headed straight this way.”

“Any weapons?”

“None visible, sir.”

“Very well. Inform the guard.”

He hung up and listened to the sergeant receiving and acknowledging the message, while he finished dressing. Then he picked up the telephone again to tell the switchboard: “Inform the WO’s mess that I shall observe from there. And switch the guard link through to there right away.” He glanced at the looking glass, picked up his cap, and left his quarters, with an air of purpose, but carefully unhurried.

When he arrived at the WO’s mess on the southeast side, the two platforms were already visible as shining specks picked out by the sunlight against the spangled black sky. His officers arrived at almost the same moment, and stood beside him, watching the specks grow larger. Soon, in spite of the distance, the clear airlessness made it possible to see the platforms themselves, the pinkish-white haze of the jets supporting them, and the clusters of brightly colored spacesuits upon them. Troon did not try to judge the distance; in his opinion, nothing less precise than a range-finder was any use on the moon. He clicked on the hand mike. “Sergeant Witley,” he instructed, “extend your men in a semicircle, and detail one of them to signal the platforms down within it. Control, cut my guard link now, but leave me linked to you.”

“Guard link cut, sir.”

“Is your standby with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell her to search for the Russian intercom wavelength. It’s something a little shorter than ours as a rule. When she finds it, she is to hold it until further notice. Does she speak Russian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. She is to report at once if there is any suggestion of hostile intention in their talk. Cut me in on the guard link again now.”

The two platforms continued smoothly towards them, dropping on a long slant as they came. The sergeant’s men were prone, with their guns aimed. They were deployed in a wide crescent. In the middle of it stood a lone figure in a suit of vivid magenta, his gun slung, while he beckoned the platforms in with both arms. The platforms slowed to a stop a dozen yards short of the signaller, at a height of some ten feet. Then, with their jets blowing dust and grit away from under them, they sank gently down. As they landed, the spacesuited figures on them let go of their holds and showed empty hands.

“One of them is asking for you, sir, in English,” Control told him.

“Cut him in,” Troon instructed.

A voice with a slight foreign accent, and a trace of American influence said: “Commander Troon, please allow me to introduce myself. General Alexei Goudenkovitch Budorieff of the Red Army. I had the honor to command the Moon Station of the USSR.”

“Commander Troon speaking, General. Did I understand you to say that you had that honor?” He gazed out of the window at the platforms, trying to identify the speaker. There was something in the stance of a man in a searing orange suit that seemed to single him out.

“Yes, Commander. The Soviet Moon Station ceased to exist several earth days ago. I have brought my men to you because we are — very hungry.”

It took a moment for the full implication to register and then Troon was not quite sure. “You mean you have brought all your men, General?”

“All that are left, Commander.”

Troon stared out at the little group of nine men in their vivid pressure-suits. The latest Intelligence Report, he recalled, had given the full complement of the Russian Station as three hundred and fifty-six. He said: “Please come in, General. Sergeant Witley, escort the General and his men to the airlock.”

The General gazed round at the officers assembled in their mess. Both he and his aide beside him were looking a great deal better for two large meals separated by ten hours of sleep. The lines of hunger and fatigue had left his face, though signs of strain remained.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have decided to give you an account of the action at the Moon Station of the USSR while it is fresh in my mind, for several reasons. One is that I consider it a piece for the history books — and for the military experts, too. Another is that, although it appears to have brought the campaign in this theater to a close, the war still continues, and none of us can tell what may happen to him yet. With this in mind, your Commander has pointed out that knowledge carried in a number of heads has a better chance of survival than if it is restricted to two or three, and suggested that I, who am in a better position to give the account than anyone else, should speak to you collectively. This I am not only honored, but glad, to do, for it seems to me important that it should be known that our station fell to a new technique of warfare— an attack by dead men.”

He paused to regard the faces about him, and then went on: “What you call in English the boobytrap — something which is set to operate after a man has left it or is dead; a kind of blind vengeance by which he hopes to do some damage still — that is nothing new; it is, one would imagine, as old as war itself. But a means by which dead men can not only launch, but can press home an attack — that, I think, is new indeed. Nor do I yet see where such a development may lead.”

He paused again and remained so long looking at the table in front of him that some of his audience fidgeted. The movement caught his attention, and he looked up. “I will start by saying that, to the best of my knowledge, all life that still exists upon the moon is now gathered here, in your Dome. Now, how did this come about? You are no doubt aware in outline of the first stages. We and the American Station opened our bombardments simultaneously. Neither of us attacked the other. Our orders were to disregard the American Station and give priority to launching our Earthbound missiles. I have no doubt that their- orders were similarly to disregard us. This situation persisted until, of our heavy missiles, only the strategic reserve remained. It might well have continued longer had not the Americans, with a light missile, destroyed our incoming supply rocket. Upon this, I requested, and received, permission to attack the American Station, since we had a second supply-rocket already on the way and hoped to save it from the same fate.

“As you know, the use of heavy, ground-to-ground missiles is not practicable here, nor would an attempt to use our small reserve for such a purpose have been permitted. We therefore retaliated with light missiles on high angle, betting to clear the mountains around the Copernicus crater. Again as you will know, the low gravity here gives a wide margin of error for such an attempt, and our missiles were ineffective. The Americans attempted to reply with similar missiles, and they too were highly inaccurate. There was slight damage to one of our launching ramps, but no more.

“Then, one of our Satellite Stations which chanced to be in a favorable position dispatched two heavy missiles. The first they reported as being two miles off target; for the second, they claimed a direct hit. This would seem to be a valid claim, for the American Station ceased at once to communicate, and has shown no sign of life since.

“A reprisal attack on our own Station for the American Satellite was to be expected, and it came in the form of one heavy missile which landed within a mile of us. Our chief damage was fractures in the walls of the upper chambers, causing a considerable air leakage. We had to close them off with bulkheads while we sent men in spacesuits to caulk the larger fissures and spray the walls and roofs with plastic sealing compound. The area of damage was extensive, and the work was hampered by falls from the roof, so that I decided to remain incommunicado, in the hope of attracting no more missiles until we had stopped the leaks. It was to be hoped, too, that now the Satellites had been brought into the action ours might succeed in crippling the American with their wasps by the time we had made good.”

“Wasps?” somebody interrupted.

“You haven’t heard of them? I’m surprised. However, it can do no harm now. They are very small missiles, used in a spread-out flock. A Satellite can easily meet one, or several, ordinary missiles with counter missiles and explode them at a safe distance, but with missiles that come to the attack like a shoal of fish, defense is difficult, and some will always get through — or so it is claimed.”

“And did they, General?” Troon asked. He gave no indication of knowing that the British Satellite which his father had helped to construct, was disabled, and nothing had been heard from the American Satellite since the second day of hostilities.

The General shook his head. “I cannot say. By the time we had our leaks repaired and our mast up again, there was a message from HQ saying that it had lost touch with our Satellites.” His earlier formality had eased, and he went on more easily, as a man telling his story. “We thought then that we had, as you say, come through. But it was not yet certain that there would be no further attack, or that more cracks in the roof might not open, so we kept our suits handy. That was very fortunate for some of us.

“Five Earth days ago — that is four whole days after the American Station was hit — the man on television watch thought he caught a glimpse of something moving among the rocks on the crater floor to the north of us. It seemed improbable, but he held the masthead scanner on the area, and soon he caught another movement —something swiftly crossing a gap between two rocks — and he reported it. The Duty Officer watched, too, and soon he also caught a snatch of movement, but it occurred too rapidly for him to be sure what it was. They switched in a telephoto lens, but it reduced the field of view, and showed them nothing but rocks, so they went back to the normal lens just in time to see what looked like a smooth rock appear from the cover of one ordinary jagged rock, and slither behind another. At this point the Duty Officer reported to me, and I went down to join them in the main control chamber.

“Viewing conditions were difficult on account of the cross light — the dawn had only begun the previous Earth day, so that the long shadows gave dark bars of cover, but anything that moved in the sunlight also threw a long shadow to catch the eye. After a few minutes’ watching I had to agree that something, though I could not distinguish what, was moving out there, apparently in sharp, sudden dashes. Once, it paused in the open. We hurriedly cut in the telephoto lens again, but before we could focus, the thing had flashed away, and become invisible in a dark patch.

“We alerted the guard to stand by with rocket tubes and went on watching. The thing kept on dodging about, suddenly shooting out of a black shadow, or from behind a rock, and vanishing again. There was no doubt that it was gradually coming closer, but it seemed in no hurry to reach us.

“Somebody said: “I think there must be two of them.'

The appearances and disappearances were so erratic, that we could not be sure. We tried radar on it, but at that angle and among so much broken rock, it was practically useless. We could only wait for the thing to reach more open ground and show itself more clearly. Then there was a report from the guard of another moving object, somewhat further west. We turned the scanner that way and observed that there was indeed a similar something there that dodged about among the rocks and shadows in the same, unidentifiable way.

“Over an hour went by before the first of them reached the more open ground at a range of eleven kilometers from us. But even then it was some time before we could get a real idea of it — it was too small on the normal lens to show detail, and too erratic for the telephoto to follow it. Before long, however, there were three of the things all skirmishing wildly about the crater floor with sudden rushes forwards, sideways, any direction, even back, and never staying still long enough for us to make them out clearly in the cross light.

“If our armament had included short-range bombardment missiles, we should have used them at the first sighting, but they were not a weapon that had seemed reasonable equipment for a Moon Station, and we could only wait for the things to come within practicable range of the portable rocket tubes.

“Meanwhile they continued to dash hither and thither zigzagging madly about the crater floor. It was uncanny. They made us think of huge spiders rushing back and forth, but they never froze as spiders do ; their pauses were no more than momentary, and then they were off again; and one never could tell which way it would be. They must have been traveling nearly thirty or forty meters to make an advance of one meter, and they were in an extended line so that we could only get one, or perhaps, for a moment, two of them, on the screen at the same time.

“However, during the time it took them to cover the next two kilos we were able to get better views and impressions of them. In appearance they were simple. Take an egg, pull it out to double its length, and that is the shape of the body. Put long axles through it near the ends, and fasten tall, wide-tired wheels on them — tall enough to give it a good ground clearance. Mount the wheels so that they have a hundred and eighty degrees of traverse — that is, so that the treads can be turned parallel with the lines of the axle, whether the wheels themselves are before or behind the axle. And you have this machine. It can move in any direction — or spin in one spot, if you want it to. Not, perhaps, very difficult once you have thought of the idea. Give it a motor in each wheel, and an electronic control to keep it from hitting obstacles. That is not very difficult, either.

“What is not so clear, is how you direct it. It was not, very clearly, by dead reckoning. We thought it might be responding to our radio, or to the rotation of our radar scanner, or to the movements of our television pickup, but we tested all those, and even switched off our screen for some minutes, but the guard outside reported no effect. Nor was it detecting and seeking any of our electric motors; we stopped every one of them for a full minute, without any result. It was just possible that the things were picking up an emanation from our power pile, but that was well shielded, and we already had decoy radiators to deflect any missiles that might try that. I myself think it probable that they were able to detect, and to respond to, the inevitable slight rise of temperature in the Station area. If so, there was nothing we could have done about it.”

The General shrugged, shook his head and frowned. He went on: “What we faced, in essence, was a seeking missile, on wheels. Not difficult to construct, though scarcely worth attempting for use in a simple form — too easy a target for the defense. So what those Americans had done, the frightening thing they had done, was to introduce a random element. You see what I mean? They had put in this random stage, and somehow filtered the control through it. ”

He thought again for a moment. “Machines do not live, so they cannot be intelligent. Nevertheless, it is in the nature of machines to be logical. The conception of an illogical machine seems to be a contradiction in terms. If you deliberately produce such a thing, what have you? Something that never existed in nature. Something alien. What you have done is to produce madness without mind. You have made unreason animate and set it loose. That is a very frightening thing to think about.

“But here, among these not-quite machines that were scuttering about the crater floor like water boatmen on a pond, there was a controlling thread of ultimate purpose running through the artificial madness. Their immediate actions were unpredictable, insane, but their final intention was just as sure as the bomb that each was carrying in its metal belly. Think of a maniac, a gibbering idiot, with one single continuing thread of intention — to murder.

“That is what those machines were. And they kept on coming with short, or very short, or not so short crazy rushes. They darted and dodged forward, sideways, backwards, obliquely, straight, or in a curve; one never knew which would be next — only that, after a dozen moves, they would be just a little closer. “Our rocket men opened fire at about five kilos. A sheer waste of course; one could as well have hoped to hit a fly on the wing with a peashooter. Mines might have stopped them — if they did not have detectors — but who would have sanctioned the use of valuable rocket space to bring mines to the moon? All our men could do was to hope for a lucky shot. Occasionally one of them would be hidden for a moment or two by the burst of an explosion, but it always reappeared out of the dust, dodging as crazily as ever. Our eyes and heads ached with the strain of trying to follow them on the screen, and to detect some pattern in their movements — I’m sure myself that no pattern existed.

“At three kilos the men were doing no better with their shooting and were starting to show signs of panic. I decided that at two kilos we would withdraw the men and get them below. The things kept on coming, as madly as ever. I tell you, I have never seen anything that frightened me more. There was the dervish-like quality of the random madness, and yet the known deadly purpose. And all the time there was the suggestion of huge, scuttering insects so that it was difficult not to think of them as being in some alien way alive.

“Some of the rocket bursts did succeed in peppering them with fragments now and then, but they were not harmed. As they approached the two-kilo line I told Colonel Zinochek here to withdraw the patrol. He picked up the microphone to speak, and at that moment one of the things hit a rocket bomb. We saw it run right into the bomb.

“The explosion threw it off the ground, and it came down on its back. The diameter of the wheels was large enough to allow it to run upside down. It actually began to do so, but then there was a great glare, and the screen went blank. Even at our depth the floor of the chamber lifted under us, and cracks ran up two of the walls. I switched on the general address system. It was still live, but I could not tell how much of the Station it was reaching. I gave orders for everyone to put on spacesuits and stand by for further instructions.

“One could hope that the explosion of one machine might have set off the others, but we could not tell. They might have been shielded at the moment or even if they were not, either or both of them might have survived. Without air there is not the usual kind of blast and pressure wave; there is flying debris, of course, but what else? So little work has been done on the precise effects of explosions here. Our mast had gone again, so that we were without radar, or television. We had no means of telling whether the danger was over, or whether the machines were still scurrying about the crater floor like mad spiders; still working closer.

“If they were, we reckoned               that it should take them about thirty-five minutes to reach us, at their former rate. No half-hour in my life has been as long as that one. Once we had our helmets on, and the intercoms were working, we did our best to learn what the damage was. It appeared to be fairly extensive in the upper levels, for there were few replies from there. I ordered all who could to make their way down to the lowest levels, and to stay there.

“Then there was absolutely nothing we could do but wait…and wait… and wait…Wondering if the things were indeed still skirmishing outside and watching the minute hand crawl round. It took them — or it — exactly thirty-one minutes.

“The whole place bounced and threw me off my feet. I had a glimpse of cracks opening in the roof and walls, then the light went out, and something fell on me.

“I don’t need to go into details about the rest. Four of us in the control chamber were left alive, and five in the level immediately above. None of us would have survived had the rock had Earth weight — nor should we have been able to shift it to clear a way to the emergency exit. Even so, it took us four Earth days to dig our way through the collapsed passages. All the Station’s air was gone, of course, and we had to do it on dead men’s air bottles, and emergency rations — as long as the rations lasted — and with only one two-man inflatable chamber between us to eat in.

“The emergency exit was, of course, at some distance from the main entrance, but even so, a part of the roof of the terminal chamber had fallen in and wrecked one of the platforms there; fortunately the other two were scarcely damaged. The outer doors of the airlock were at the base of a cliff, and though the cliff itself had been a shield from the direct force of the explosion, a quantity of debris had fallen in front of the doors so that we had to blast them open. That gave us a big enough opening to sail the platforms through and avoid any radioactive contamination — and I think by reason of the airlock’s position, any serious exposure to radiation ourselves.’’

He looked round at the group of officers. “It has been chivalrous of you, gentlemen, to take us in. Let me, in return, assure you that we have no intention of making ourselves a liability. On the contrary. There is a large food store in our Station. If the cisterns have remained intact, there is water; also, there are air-regeneration supplies. But we need drilling gear to get at these things. If, when my men are rested, you can let us have the necessary gear, we shall be able to add very considerably to your reserves here.”

He returned to the window and looked at the shining segment of Earth. “ — And that may be as well, for I have a feeling that we may be going to need all the supplies we can collect.”

When the meeting was broken up, Troon took the General and his aide along to his own office. He let them seat themselves, and light cigarettes before he said: “As you will understand. General, we are not equipped here to deal with prisoners of war. I do not know your men. Our Station is vulnerable. What guarantee can you give against sabotage?”

“Sabotage!” exclaimed the General. “Why should there be sabotage ? My men are all perfectly sane, I assure you. They are as well aware as I am that if anything should happen to this Station it must be the end of all of us.”

“But might there not be one — well, let us call him a selflessly patriotic man — who might consider it his duty to wreck this Station, even at the cost of his own life?”

“I think not. My command was staffed by picked, intelligent men. They are well aware that no one is going to win this war now. So that the object has become to survive it.”

“But, General, are you not overlooking the fact that we, here, are still a fighting unit — the only one left in this theatre of war.”

The General’s eyebrows rose a little. He pondered Troon for a moment, and then smiled slightly. “I see. I have been a little puzzled. Your officers are still under that impression?”

Troon leaned forward to tap his cigarette ash into a tray. “Perhaps I don’t quite understand you. General.”

“Don’t you. Commander? I am speaking of your value as a fighting unit.”

Their eyes met steadily for some seconds. Troon shrugged. “How high would you place our value as a fighting unit, General?”

General Budorieff shook his head gently. “Not very high, I am afraid. Commander,” he said, and then, with a touch of apology in his manner, continued: “Before the last attack on our Station you had dispatched nine medium missiles. I do not know whether you have fired any more since then, therefore the total striking power at your disposal may be either three medium missiles — or none at all.”

Troon turned, and looked out of the window towards the camouflaged missile pits. His voice shook as he asked, slowly: “May I inquire how long you have known this, General?”

Gently the General said: “About six months.”

Troon put his hand over his eyes. For a minute or two no one spoke. At length the General said: “Will you permit me to extend my sincere congratulations, Commander Troon? You must have played it magnificently.”

Troon, looking up, saw that he was genuine. “I shall have to tell them now,” he said. “It is going to hurt their pride. They thought of everything but that.”

“It would, I think, be better to tell them now,” agreed Budorieff, “but is not necessary for them to know that we knew.”

“Thank you. General. That will at least do something to diminish the farcical element for them.”

“Do not take it too hard. Commander. Bluff and counterbluff are, after all, an important part of strategy — and to have maintained such a bluff as that for almost twenty years is, if I may say so, masterly. I have been told that our people simply refused to believe our agents’ first reports on it. Besides, what was our chief purpose here — yours, mine, and the Americans? Not to make war. We were a threat which, it was hoped, would help to prevent war — and one imagines that all of us here did do something to postpone it. Once fighting was allowed to start, it could make really very little difference whether our missiles were added to the general destruction or not. We have all known in our hearts that this war, if it should come, would not be a kind that anyone could win.

“For my part, I was greatly relieved when I received this report on your armament. The thought that I might one day be required to destroy your quite defenseless Station was not pleasant. And consider how it turns out. It is simply because your weapons were a bluff that your Station still exists; and because it exists, that we still have a foothold on the moon. That is important.”

Troon looked up. “You think so too, General? Not very many people do.”

“There are not, at any time, many people who have — what do you call it in English? — Divine discontent? Vision? Most men like to be settled among their familiar things with a notice on the doo : ‘Do Not Disturb’. They would still have that notice hanging outside their caves if it were not for the few discontented men. Therefore it is important that we are still here, important that we do not lose our gains. You understand?”

Troon nodded. He smiled faintly. “I understand, General. I understand very well. Why did I fight for a Moon Station? Why did I come here, and stay here? To hold on to it so that one day I could say to a younger man; ‘Here it is. We’ve got you this far. Now go ahead. The stars are before you…’ Yes, I understand. But what I have had to wonder lately is whether the time will ever come for me to say it.”

General Budorieff nodded. He looked out, long and speculatively at the pearl-blue Earth, “Will, there be any rocket ships left? Will there be anyone left to bring them?” he murmured.

Troon looked in the same direction. With the pale earthlight shining in his face he felt a sudden conviction. “They’ll come,” he said. “Some of them will hear the thin gnat-voices crying. They’ll have to come. And, one day, they’ll go on.”

The Thin Gnat-Voices

1958

During the hundred years which have elapsed since the action of the first ‘Troon’ story even the family name has undergone a change and ‘Ticker’s’ grandson is of Brazilian birth. Indeed South America and Australasia are now the remaining centres of world culture and the first landing on Mars has been accomplished.

MARS A.D. 2094

The calendar-clock tells me that, at home, it is breakfast time on the 24th of June. There’s no reason, as far as I can see, why that should not be so: if it is, I must have been on Mars for exactly ten weeks. Quite a time and I wonder how many more weeks to follow?

One day, other people will come here and find, at least, the ship. I ought to have tried to keep a regular log, but it did not seem worthwhile — and, anyway, it wouldn’t have been regular for long. I have been — well, I had not been quite myself. But now that I have faced facts I am calmer, almost resigned and I find myself feeling that it would be more creditable not to leave simply a mystery. Someone is sure to come one day; better not to leave him to unravel it by inference alone, and perhaps wrongly. There are some things I want to say, and some I ought to say — besides, it will give me something to occupy my mind. That is rather important to me; I don’t want to lose my hold on my mind again if I can help it. Funny, it is the early things that stick. There used, I remember, to be an old drawing room song to impress the ladies: ‘Let me like a soldier fall!’ Hammy, of course, and yet…

But no need to hurry. There is, I think, still some time to go. I have come out on the other side of something, and now I find in the thought of death a calmness ; it is so much less frightening than the thought of life in this place. My regrets have turned outwards — the chief of them is for the distress my Isabella must now be feeling, and for the anxieties I must leave her to face alone as George and Ana grow up.

I do not know who is going to read what I am writing. One supposes that it will be some member of an expedition that knows all about us, up to the time of our landing. We gave the bearings of our landing place on the radio, so there should be no great difficulty in finding the ship where she now lies. But one cannot be sure. Possibly the message was not received: there may be reasons why a long time will pass before she is found. It could even be that she will be discovered accidentally by someone who never heard of us…so, after all, an account may serve better than a log.

I introduce myself: Trunho. Capitao Geoffrey Montgomery Trunho, of the Space Division of the skyforce of Brazil, lately of Avenida Oito de Maio 138, Pretario, Minas Gerais, Brazil, America de Sul. Citizen of the Estados Unidos do Brazil, aged twenty-eight years. Navigator, and sole-surviving crewmember, of the E.U.B. Spacevessel, Figurao.

I am Brasileiro by birth. My grandfather, and my father, were formerly British subjects, and became Brazilian by naturalization in the year 2056, at which time they changed the name from Troon to Trunho, for phonetic convenience.

Our family has a space tradition. My great-great-grandfather was the famous Ticker Troon — the one who rode the rocket, at the building of the first Space Station. My great-grandfather was Commander of the British Moon Station at the time of the Great Northern War, and it is likely that my grandfather would have followed him there later, but for the war. It so happened, however, that the war broke out during my grandfather’s term of groundwork at the British Space-House — or, to be more accurate, at one of the Space-House’s secret and deep-dug operational centres; and it happened, further, that the actual outbreak of hostilities occurred when he was off-base. He was, in fact, on leave in Jamaica, where he had taken his wife (my grandmother) and my father, then aged six, on a visit to his mother’s recently bought house.

Many books have been written since the event, showing that that war was inevitable, and that the high councils knew it to be inevitable, but my grandfather always denied that. He maintained that on the highest levels, no less than in the public mind, it had come to be thought of as the-war-that-would- never-happen.

Our leaders may have been foolish. They may, in a long state of deadlock, have been too easily lulled, but they were not criminal lunatics, and they knew what a war must mean. There were, of course, incidents that caused periodical waves of panic, but however troublesome they may have been to trade and to the stock markets, they were not taken very seriously on the higher political levels, and from a service point of view were even felt not to be a bad thing. Had the never-happen attitude been quite unperturbed there would, without doubt, have been cuts in service allocations, technical progress would have suffered in consequence, and too much of a falling behind could conceivably mean that the Other Fellows would have gained enough ascendancy and superiority in armament to make them think a quick war worth risking.

In the opinion of his own Department, my grandfather asserted, an actual outbreak seemed no more likely than it had seemed two years or five years or ten years before. Their work was going on as usual, organising, re-organising, and superseding in the light of new discoveries, playing a kind of chess in which one’s pieces were lost, not to the opponent, but to obsolescence. There never has been, according to him, any conclusive proof that the war was not touched off by some megalomaniac, or even by accident. It had long been axiomatic on both sides that, should missiles arrive, the form was to get one’s own missiles into the air as soon as possible, and hit the enemy’s potential as fast and as hard as one could — and, in 2044, there was little that could not be considered a part of his potential, from his factories to the morale of his people, and the health of his crops.

So, one night, my grandfather went to sleep in a world where peace was no more restive than it had been for years and in the morning he woke in one that had been at war for four hours, with casualties already high in the millions. All over North America, all over Europe, all over the Russian Empire there were flashes that paled the sun, heatwaves that seared, and set on fire, whole country-sides. Monstrous plumes were writhing up into the sky, shedding ashes, dust, and death.

My grandfather was immediately obsessed by his duty — his obligation to get back somehow to his post, which was that section of the British Service located in northern Canada. For two days he spent nearly all his time in Kingston, badgering the authorities, and anyone else he could find.

There were plenty of aircraft there, plenty of all kinds, large airliners, crowded freighters, small, owner-flown machines, but they were all coming from the north ; most of them pausing only to refuel, and then fleeing on like migrating birds, to the south. Nothing took off for the north. Communications were chaotic. No one could tell what fields were still available, still less how long they would remain so. Pilots resolutely refused to take the risk, even for large sums, and the airport authorities backed them up by refusing to sanction any northward flights with an impregnability against which my grandfather, and members of anxious United States citizens battered in vain.

On the evening of the second day, however, he succeeded in buying someone out of a seat on a southbound aircraft and set off with the intention of making a circuit via Port Natal, in Brazil, Dakar, and Lisbon, and so to England where he hoped to be able to find a service machine to get him to Canada. In point of fact, he arrived at Freetown, Sierra Leone, about eight days later, and got no further. News there was still scarce and contradictory, but there was enough of it to convince not merely pilots, but everyone else, that even if an aircraft should safely get through, a landing almost anywhere in Europe would mean delayed, if not immediate, suicide.

It took him two months to get home again to Jamaica, by which time, of course, the Northern War was almost history. It was however, such recent history that the non-combatants were still numbed by the shock. The near-paralysis of fright which had held everyone outside the war-zone for a month was relaxed, but people had still not fully got over their astonishment at finding themselves and their homes surviving undamaged. Still persisting, too, was that heightened awareness which made each new, untroubled day seem a gracious gift, rather than a right. There was a dazed pause, a sense of coming-to again before the worries of life swept back.

And all too soon the worries were plentiful — not only over radiation, active dusts, contaminated waters, diseases threatening both flora and fauna, and such immediate matters but also over the whole problem of re-orientation in a world where most of a hemisphere had become a malignant, unapproachable desert.

Jamaica, it was clear, was not going to have much to offer except exports for which there was virtually no market. It could sustain itself ; one might be able to go on living there, with much diminished standards, but it was certainly no place to build a new life.

My grandmother was in favour of a move to South Africa where her father was chairman of the board of a small aircraft company. She argued that my grandfather’s knowledge and experience would make him a useful addition to the board, and that with most of the great aircraft factories of the world now destroyed, a tremendous growth of the company was inevitable. My grandfather was unenthusiastic, but he did go as far as to pay a visit there to talk the matter over with his father-in-law. He returned unconverted, however. He was not, he said, at all taken with the place – there was something about it that made him uneasy. My grandmother, though disappointed, refrained from pressing the matter — which turned out to be fortunate, because a little over a year later her father, and all her relatives there, were among the millions who died in the great African Rising.

But before that took place my grandfather had made his own decision.

“China,” he said, “is not out, but she has been very badly mauled and reduced — it will take her a long time to recover. Japan has suffered out of proportion to the material damage there because of the concentration of her population. India is weakened, as usual, by her internal troubles. Africa has been kept backward. Australia is the centre of the surviving British and may one day become an important nation — but it will take time. South America, however, is intact, and looks to me to be the natural focus of world power in the immediate future and that means either Brazil or Argentina. I should be very much surprised indeed if it were to turn out to be Argentina. So we shall go to Brazil.”

To Brazil, then, he went, offering his technical knowledge. Almost immediately he was put in charge of the then rudimentary Space Division of the Brazilian Skyforce to organise the annexation of the battered Satellites, dispatch provision missiles to the British Moon Station, and then to direct its relief, the rescue of its company — including his father — and its annexation, together with that of the entire Lunar Territory, to the Estados Unidos do Brasil.

The cost of this enterprise, particularly at such a time, was considerable, but it proved to be well justified. Prestige has varied sources. In spite of the fact that the moon Stations and the Satellites had exerted an infinitesimal, and almost self-cancelling, effect upon the Northern War, the knowledge that they were now entirely in Brazilian hands — and perhaps the thought that whenever the moon rose one was being overlooked from Brazilian territory — undoubtedly made a useful contribution to the ascendancy pf the Brasilieros at a time when the disordered remnant of the world was searching for a new centre of gravity.

Once he had the space project well in hand, my grandfather, though not yet a Brazilian citizen, was given the leadership of a mission to Guyana, where he pointed out the advantages that the small country would derive from integration, on terms of full equality of citizenship, with a powerful neighbour. Already uneasily conscious of pressure on its western border from Venezuela, accepted the offer. A few months later, Suriname and French Guiana followed its example and the Caribbean Federation signed a treaty of friendship with Brazil. In Venezuela, the government, bereft of North American support and markets, fell to a short, sharp revolution whose leaders also elected for integration with Brazil. Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru hastened to sign treaties of support and friendship. Chile concluded a defensive alliance with Argentina. Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay were drawn together into nervous neutrality, and declarations of goodwill towards both their powerful neighbours.

My grandfather took out his naturalization papers and became a loyal and valued citizen of the Republic. My father graduated from the University of Sao Paulo in 2062 with a Master’s degree in Extra-Terrestrial Engineering, and then spent several years at the government testing station in the Rio Branco.

It had long been my grandfather’s contention that the development of space craft was not simply a matter of prestige, as some thought, and certainly not the expensive frivolity that others proclaimed it, but a wise precaution that would some day prove its worth. For one thing, he argued, if Brazil were to neglect space, someone else would take it over. For another there would arise, sooner or later, the need for an economic space freighter. The whole foundation of modern technology rested upon metals and with the rich metalliferous areas of Canada, Siberia and Alaska now unworkable, with Africa absorbing all she could mine, India in the market for all she could buy and South America consuming at an increasing rate, the shortages already apparent in the rarer metals would become more extensive and more acute. The cost, when it should become necessary to seek them in sources outside the Earth, was bound to be great. At present it would be prohibitive, but he did not believe it need remain prohibitive. If practical freighters were developed it could mean that one day Brazil might have a monopoly of at least the rarer metals and metalliferous earths.

How much faith my father had in the argument behind the policy, I do not know. I think it possible that he did not know, either, but used it simply for the problems it raised and out of all these his hardiest and most favourite concerned what he called ‘the crate’ — his name for an economical, unmanned freighter — and the space-assembled cruiser. Numbers of crates of various types exist on his drawing-boards, but the cruisers — craft radically different in conception from those that must resist the stresses of take-off against the pull of gravity — still remain somewhat fluid in conception.

I myself, though I inherit my family’s almost pathological interest in matters beyond the ionosphere, do not share my father’s ability to sublimate it in theory and design, wherefore, after taking my degree at Sao Paulo, I attended the Skyforce Academy, and was duly commissioned in the Space Division.

A family connection has its uses. I should not, I am sure, have received preference over better qualified men, but when the original list of twenty volunteers for the appointment of navigator aboard the Figurao had been whittled down to four, all equally qualified, I suspect that the name Trunho — and Troon, before it — had some influence on the decision. Paul Capaneiro, our Commander, very likely owed his selection to not unsimilar circumstances, since his father was a Marshal in the Skyforce. But it was not so with Camilo Botoes — he was with us simply because he was unique. His intention of visiting another planet seems to have formed about the time he was in his cradle, and, not a great deal later it would appear, he had conceived the idea that some unusual qualification would give him an advantage over the one-line man. He set out to acquire it, with the result that when the call for volunteers came, the Skyforce discovered with some surprise that it had among its personnel a capable electronics officer who was also a geologist, and not merely a dabbler, but one whose published papers made it impossible to ignore his competence to produce a preliminary study in areology.

My own appointment to the crew troubled my mother, and distressed my poor Isabella, but its effect on my father was dichotomous. The Figurao, the Big Shot, was the product of his department, and largely of his own ideas. Its success would give him a place in history as the designer of the first interplanetary link. If I were to go with it, his connection would be still more personal, making the venture something of a family affair. On the other hand, I am his only son and he was sharply conscious that the very best of his skill, care, and knowledge must still leave the ship at the mercy of numerous unguessed hazards. The thought that he would be exposing me to risks he had been unable to foresee and could not guard against, was in painful conflict with his awareness that any objections he might make to my going would be construed as Jack of confidence in his own work. Thus, I put him in a terribly difficult situation and now I wish, almost more than anything else, that I had the means to tell him that it is not through any shortcoming of his that I shall not be going home to Earth.

The launch took place on the 9th of December, a Wednesday. The preliminary jump was quite uneventful, and we followed the usual supply-rocket practice in our intersection with the Satellite orbit, and in taking up station close to the Satellite itself.

I felt sentimentally glad that the Station was Estrellita Primeira. It made the expedition even more of a family affair, since it was the first space station, the one that my great-great-grandfather had helped to build though I suppose that most parts of it must have been replaced on account of war and other damage since those days.

We crossed over to Primeira and put in more than a week of earth-days there while the Figurao's atmosphere-protection envelope was removed, and she was refuelled, and fully provisioned. The three of us carried out tests in our various departments and made a few necessary minor adjustments. Then we waited, almost wishing there had been more readjustments to keep us occupied, until Primeira, the moon, and Mars were in the relative positions calculated for our takeoff. At last, however, on Tuesday, the 22nd of December at 0335 R.M.T., we made blast, and launched ourselves on the main journey.

I shall not deal here with the journey itself. All technical information concerning it has been entered by Raul in the official log, which I shall enclose, with this supplementary account, in a metal box. What I have written so far has two purposes. One is, as I have said, to cover the possibility that it may not be found for a very long time. The other is to provide factual material by which any more imminent finder may check my mental condition. I have read carefully through it myself, and to me it appears to offer sufficient evidence that I am sane and coherent, and I trust that that will be the opinion of others who may read it, and that they may therefore consider what follows to be equally valid.

The final entry in the log will be seen to record that we were approaching Mars on a spiral. The last message we sent before landing will be found on the file:  About to attempt landing area Isidis — Syrtis Major. Intended location: Long, 275: Lat, 48.’

When Camilo had despatched that message, he swung the transmitter across on its bracket to lock it safely against the wall, and then lay back on his couch. Raul and I were already in position on ours. My work was finished, and I had nothing to do but wait. Raul had the extension control panel clamped across his couch in a position where he would still be able to operate it against a pressure of several gravities, if necessary. Everything had gone according to expectations except that our outer surface temperature was somewhat higher than had been calculated — suggesting that the atmosphere is a trifle denser than has been assumed — but the error was small, and of little practical significance.

Raul set about adjusting the angle of the ship, tilting her to preserve the inclination in relation to the braking thrust as we slowed. Our couches turned on their gimbals as the speed decreased and the braking thrust of the main tubes gradually became our vertical support. Finally, when the speed was virtually zero, and we were standing balanced on our discharge, his job, too, was over. He switched in the landing control, and lay back, watching the progress of our descent, on the dials.

Beneath us, there now splayed downwards eight narrow radar beams matched for proximity, and each controlling a small lateral firing tube. The least degree of tilt was registered by one or more of the beams and corrected by a short blast which restored the ship to balance on the point of the main drive. Another beam directed vertically downwards controlled the force of the main drive itself, relating it to the distance of the surface below, and thus regulating the speed of descent. The arrangement lowered us, smoothly, and there was only the slightest of lurches as our supporting tripod set down. Then the drive cut out, vibration ceased, and an almost uncanny peace set in.

No-one spoke. The completeness of the silence began to be broken by the ticking and clicking of metal cooling off. Soon Raul sat up and loosed his safety straps. “Well, we’re there. Your old man did a good job,” he said to me.

He got off his couch carefully, cautious of the unfamiliar feeling of gravity, and made for the nearest port. I did the same and started to unscrew its cover. Camilo swung the radio over on its bracket and transmitted: “Figurao landed safely Mars 0343 R.M.T. 18. 4. 94. Location believed as stated. Will observe and verify.” Then he, too, reached for the nearest port-cover.

The view, when I had my port uncovered, was much what I had expected – an expanse of hummocky, rust-red desert sand reaching away to the horizon. Anywhere else, it would have been the least exciting of all possible views. But it was not any where else: it was Mars, seen as no-one had ever seen it before. We did not cheer, we did not slap one another on the back. We just went on staring at it.

At last Raul said, rather flatly: “There it is, then. Miles and miles of nothing and all of it ours.”

He turned away and went over to a row of dials. “Atmosphere about fifteen per cent denser than predicted. That accounts for the overheating,” he said. “We’ll have to wait for the hull to cool down a bit before we can go out. Oxygen content very low indeed — by the look of things, most of it has been tied up in oxidizing these deserts.” He went over to a locker and started pulling out spacesuits and gear. He did it clumsily. After weeks of weightlessness it is difficult to remember that things will drop if you let go of them.

“Funny that error about atmosphere density,” said Camilo.

“Not so very,” Raul replied. “Just that someone’s crackpot theory about air leaking away into space got written into the assumptions, I reckon. Why the devil should it leak away unless there is a large body around to attract it? Might as well suggest that our own atmosphere is leaking to the moon, and then back again. Beats me how these loony propositions get a foot in, but I expect we’ll find plenty more of them.”

“Were they wrong about gravity, too ?” I asked. “I seem to feel a lot heavier than I expected.”

“No. That’s as calculated. Just a matter of getting used to weight itself,” he said.

I crossed the floor and looked through the port that he had uncovered. The view was almost the same as through mine — though not quite, for in that direction the meeting of sand and sky was marked by a thin dark line. I wondered what it was. At that distance I could see no detail — nor, indeed, judge how far away the horizon was. I turned back, intending to find the eyepiece that would adapt the telescope, but at that moment the floor shifted under my feet.

The whole room canted over suddenly, sliding me across the floor. The heavy port cover swung over. It just missed me, but it caught Raul and sent him slamming against the main control-board. The room tilted more. I was flung back on the couch I had just left, and I clung to it. Camilo came sliding past, trying to grab at the couch supports to stop himself. There were several thuds, a clatter, and finally a kind of crunching crash which set me bouncing on the couch springs.

When I looked round I found that what had, for the brief period since our landing, been the floor, had become a vertical wall. Obviously the Figurao had toppled over and now lay on its side. Camilo was huddled in the angle made by the erstwhile floor and the curved wall, all mixed up with spacesuits and their accessories. Raul was spreadeagled over the control board and I could see blood trickling across it.

I dropped off the couch and approached Raul. I started to lift his head, but it did not come easily. Then I found out why. It had crashed down on one of the control levers, and the handle had gone in at the temple. There was nothing to be done for him. I scrambled across and looked at Camilo. He was unconscious, but there was no visible damage. His pulse was strong enough, and I set about trying to bring him round. Several minutes went by before his eyes opened, then they looked at me, screwed up, with lids fluttering, and closed again. I found some brandy. Presently he sighed, and his eyes opened again. They looked at me, wandered about the control room, and came back to me again.

“Mars,” he said. “ Mars, the bloody planet. Is this Mars?” There was a silly look about him that made my spirits sink.

“Yes, this is Mars,” I told him. I lifted him on to one of the couches and made him comfortable there. His eyes closed and he went off again.

I looked around. The only part of the equipment, other than the spacesuits, that had been loose was the radio transmitter. Camilo, after using it had pushed it aside, leaving it free to swing on its bracket. It had done just that and been stove-in when it met one of the couches turning in its gimbals. It looked suitable for writing off. I couldn’t just sit there, doing nothing but look at the other two, so I disentangled one suit, and coupled it up with its air supply and batteries, and tested it. It worked perfectly. The thermometer giving the outside hull reading was down quite a bit from what it had been, and I decided to go outside to find the trouble.

Fortunately, as the ship lay, the airlock was at the side, the right side as one faced forward. Had it been underneath, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have got out at all. Even as we lay, it was awkward enough, for the lock had been built to accommodate two men standing and now one had to sit doubled up inside it. It worked, however — though when the outer door opened, the telescopic ladder could not be made to project at a suitable angle. I had to get out by jumping down six feet or so, and my first contact with the surface of Mars was undignified.

To stand there at last was, in the event, depressing. Not just because the only view was arid miles of red sand, but more and more because I was alone. It was the moment we had thought and talked of for so long, worked so hard for, risked so much for — and this was all. Anti-climax there would surely have been, but it would have been less dreary with someone to share it, with a little ceremony to mark the occasion. Instead, I just stood there, alone. Under the small, weak sun in the purplish sky I was dwindled to a tiny living mote with the barren wilderness pressing all about me.

Not that it was different from my expectations — in fact, it looked only too like them — and yet I knew now that in all my imaginings I had never remotely touched its real quality. I had thought of it as empty and neutral, never suspected its implicit hostility. Yet there was nothing there, nothing to be afraid of — except the worst thing of all: fear itself. The fear that has no cause, shape or centre, that same amorphous fear that used to come creeping out of the dark, massing to invade the safety of one’s childish bed.

I could feel the old panic, forgotten for so many years, rising up again. I was back in my infant self. All that I had learnt in the years between seemed to vanish. Once more, I was the defenceless, beset by the incomprehensible. I wanted to run back to the ship, as to my mother, for safety. I all but did that.

Yet not quite ... A vestige of my rational mind held me there. It kept on telling me that if I gave in to panic now, it would be far worse the next time, and the time after. And gradually, while I stood, the vestige gathered the strength to push the panic back. Soon I could feel it winning, like warm blood flowing in. Then I felt better. I was able to force some objectivity.

I looked carefully round. From this low viewpoint there was no trace anywhere of the dark line that I had seen through the port when the Figurao was vertical. All the way round, red sand met purple sky in an endless, even line. There was nothing, nothing at all, on the face of the desert but the ship and me under the centre of a vast, upturned bowl.

Then I made myself pay attention to the ship. It was easy to see what had happened. Below the light dust of the surface the sand had formed a crust. Our weight had caused the pediment plate on one of the tripod legs to break through the crust, and we had toppled over. I wondered for a moment if Raul would be able to contrive some way of getting us vertical again — and then suddenly recollected why he would not.

I went back into the ship and looked for something to dig with. Camilo had not moved, and appeared to have fallen into, a natural sleep. Luckily, someone had thought of equipping the ship with a sort of entrenching tool. It was small, but it would have to do. Getting Raul outside was unpleasant, and far from easy, but I managed it, and laid him on the sand while I dug. That was not easy work, either, in a spacesuit, and I thought it might take me several shifts. But at about twelve inches down I suddenly broke through and found myself looking into a black hole. Considering the misadventure to the ship, it seemed possible that the place was honeycombed with such cavities. I enlarged the hole a little until I was able to slide poor Raul into it. Then I blocked the opening with a slab of caked sand, covered it as best I could, and went back to the ship again. I came out of the airlock to find that Camilo was now awake — not only awake, but sitting up on his couch, regarding me with nervous intensity.

“I don’t like Martians,” he said.

I looked at him more carefully. His expression was serious, and not at all friendly. “I don’t suppose I would, either,” I admitted, keeping my tone matter-of-fact.

His expression became puzzled, then wary. He shook his head. “Very cunning lot, you Martians,” he remarked.

After we had had a meal he seemed a little better, though from time to time I caught him watching me carefully out of the corner of his eye. Indeed, he was paying so much attention to me that it was some time before it occurred to him that there should be three of us. “Where’s Raul?” he asked.

I explained what had happened to Raul, showed him the switch lever that had done the fatal damage, and pointed out through the port the place where Raul now lay. He listened closely, and nodded several times, though not always where a nod seemed appropriate. It was difficult to know whether he was not quite grasping the situation, or whether he was making reservations of his own. He did not show distress about Raul, only a quiet thoughtfulness, and after he had sat in silent rumination on the matter for a quarter of an hour, it began to get on my nerves.

To break it up, I showed him the radio transmitter. “It’s taken a pretty nasty bash,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily. “Do you think you can get it going again?”

Camilo looked it over for some minutes. “ It certainly has,” he agreed.

“Yes,” I said impatiently, “but the point is, can you fix it?”

He turned his head and looked at me steadily. “You want to get into touch with Earth,” he announced.

“Of course we do. They’ll be expecting reports from us right now. They know our time of landing, but that’s all, so far. We’ve got to put in an immediate report about Raul, and about the state of the ship. Tell them the mess we’re in.”

He considered that in an unhurried way, and then shook his head, doubtfully. “ I don’t know,” he said. “You’re so cunning, you Martians.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake — !” I began, but then made a quick decision that it might be unwise to antagonise him. Rather than drive him into obstinacy, I tried to put across a calmly persuasive line.

He listened patiently, with a slight frown, as one taking into consideration every possible angle. At the end, still without committing himself on whether he thought he could make the radio work or not, he said that it was an important matter that required thinking over. I could only hold my temper for fear of setting up a worse conflict in his mind.

He retreated to his couch and lay on it, presumably to do his important thinking. I stood looking out of the port a while, and then, realising that the day would soon be coming to an end, got out the colour camera, and busied myself with making the first records ever of the stages of a Martian sunset.

This was not a spectacular affair. The small sun grew somewhat redder as it dropped towards the horizon. As it disappeared from sight, the sky turned immediately from purple to black — all except a wispy stretch of cloud, quite surprising to me, which still caught the rays, glowing pinkly for a minute or two, and then vanished. Looking through another port I could see a small bright disc just above the rim and climbing almost visibly up the spangled blackness. I took it to be Phobos and turned the telescope on to it. It does not appear to be of any great interest, not unlike our own moon, but less mountainous, and much less cratered.

All the time I was uneasily conscious of Camilo. Whenever I took a look in his direction I found his head turned my way, and his eyes watching me in speculative fashion that was difficult to disregard. I did my best, however, and busied myself with fixing the camera to the telescope. The speed of the satellite rendered it none too easy to keep it centred in the field of view, but I made a number of exposures. Camilo had fallen asleep again by the time I had finished, and I was tired enough to be glad to get on my own couch.

Once I had dropped off I slept heavily. When I woke, there was daylight outside the ports, and Camilo standing beside one of them looking out. He must have heard me move for he said, without turning: “I don’t like Mars.”

“Nor do I,” I agreed. “But then, I never expected to.”

“Funny thing,” he said. “I got it into my head last night that you were a Martian. Sorry.”

“You had a nasty knock,” I told him. “Must have shaken you up quite a bit. How are you feeling now?”

“Oh, all right — bit of a muzzy headache. It’ll pass. Damn silly of me thinking you were a Martian. You’re not a bit like one, really.”

I was in the middle of a yawn and failed to finish it properly. “What,” I inquired, with some caution, “what are Martians like?”

“That’s the trouble,” he said, still looking out of the port. “It’s so hard to see them properly. They’re so quick. When you’re looking at one place, you see a flicker of them moving in another, just out of the corner of your eye, and by the time you look there they’re somewhere else.”

“Oh,” I said. “But you know, I never noticed any when I was outside yesterday.”

“But you weren’t looking for them,” Camilo pointed out, and truly.

I swung my feet off the couch. “What about some breakfast,” I suggested. He agreed but remained by the window while I set about getting things ready — an awkward job with a curved wall for a floor, and everything at right angles from its intended position. Now and then he would glance quickly from one side of the view to the other, often with a little sound of exasperation as though he had just missed something again. It was irritating, but on the whole a slight improvement on being taken for a Martian myself.

“Come and eat,” I told him when I had the food ready. “They’ll keep.”

He left the port with some reluctance but started in on the food with a good appetite. “Do you think you’ll be able to fix the radio?” I inquired presently.

“Maybe,” he said, “but is it wise?”

“Why the devil shouldn’t it be?” I demanded, with some restraint.

“Well,” he explained, “they might intercept our messages. And if they learn what a mess we’re in it could very likely encourage them to attack.”

“We’ll have to take a chance on that. The important thing for us now is to get into touch with home and see what they suggest. It seems to me possible, just possible, that we may be able to get the ship back to the vertical somehow — with the gravitation as low as it is. I can plot the course and time of take off, and look after that side, but can we manage her without Raul? He was the one with experience and special training. I have a general idea of the controls, and I suppose you have, but it is only general. This ship isn’t built to stand up to the strains of ordinary takeoffs — that’s why she had to have a special casing to get her from Earth to Primeira.

“She must have a specially calculated programme of safe velocities for takeoff from here — and that will have to be amended on account of the atmosphere being denser than was reckoned. We don’t want to bum her up or melt her tubes. As things are, I don’t begin to know about her acceleration schedule, her safety factors. Damn it, I don’t even know, off hand, the escape velocity of Mars.”

“It should take you all of two minutes to work that out,” Camilo interrupted.

“I imagine, but there are a hell of a lot of things we can’t work out without the data. Some of it we’ll be able to get from Raul’s technical papers, no doubt, but there are bound to be all kinds of questions arising that we shall need advice about.”

“M’m,” said Camilo, doubtfully. His eyes strayed towards one of the ports for a moment, and then came back to me, looking suspicious again. “You didn’t talk to them while you were out there?” he asked.

“Oh, hell,” I said impatiently, and unwisely. “Look, there’s nothing out there — nothing but sand. Come out with me and see for yourself.”

He shook his head slowly and gave me the smile of a man who knows a trick worth two of that. I was at a loss to know what line to take next. After I had thought about it a bit, it seemed to me that we were not going to get far while he was worried by these Martian phantoms, and the sooner they could be laid, the better.

Perhaps I was wrong there. Perhaps I ought simply to have waited, hoping that the effect of the concussion would wear off. After all, except for the anxiety that must be going on at the other end of our radio link, there was no pressing hurry. The sun-charger would keep our batteries up, even at this distance from the sun. Water is on an almost closed circuit, with very little loss, air-regeneration, too. There was enough provisions to last two of us for eighteen months. I could have waited. But it is one thing to consider a situation retrospectively, and quite another to be at close quarters with a single companion who is slightly off his head and wondering whether time is likely to make him better or worse.

However, as the radio seemed to be in some way entangled in his mind with the intentions of his cunning Martians, I decided to lay aside that subject of the moment and tried tackling him on his other speciality. I pulled out a lump of the caked sand that I had brought inside and handed it to him. “What do you reckon that is ?” I asked.

He gave it the briefest of glances. “ Haematite — Fe_2O_3, ”he said, looking at me as if I had asked a pretty stupid question. “Mars,” he said, patiently, “is practically all oxides of one kind or another. Tin’ll be the commonest.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “One of our main objects, after getting here at all, is to bring in a preliminary report on the geology of Mars.”

“Areology,” he corrected me. “You can’t possibly talk about the geology of Mars. Doesn’t make sense.”

“All right, areology,” I agreed, finding his lucidity encouraging and irritating at the same time. “ Well, we can at least make a start on that. There is a dark line on the horizon, over that way, that wants looking into — might be vegetation of some kind. If we get the platform out, we could have a look at it, and at the topography in general, too.”

I suggested with a casual air, and awaited his answer with some anxiety, for I felt that if I could use his geological — or areological — interests to lure him outside, even a brief expedition might serve to dispel this notion of lurking Martians, and once that had been achieved, he would be willing to get on with the repair of the radio. He did not reply immediately, and I restrained myself from looking up for fear of seeming anxious enough to rouse his suspicions. At last, when I had started to consider the next step, he said: “They wouldn’t be able to reach us once the platform lifted, would they?”

“Of course not — if they are there at all. I’ve not seen one yet,” I said, trying not to give any encouraging support to his delusions.

“I nearly saw one half a minute ago. But they’re always just too damned quick, blast them,” he complained.

“There’d be no hiding from overhead observation in this desert,” I pointed out. “If they are there, we’ll be able to spot them easily from the platform.”

“If— ” he began indignantly, and then stopped, apparently struck by an idea. After a pause he went on in a quite different tone: “All right. Yes, that’s a good idea. Let’s locate the platform and start getting it out.”

His change of front was sudden enough to make me look at him in astonishment. His expression now was enthusiastic, and he gave an encouraging nod. Apparently I had chosen the right line, though I hoped he would not back off the idea with the same unexpectedness that he had veered on to it. At the moment, however, he was certainly all for it, and pulled a file of papers out of a locker.

“The lading plan ought to be here,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the platform was stowed in Number Two hold-section.”

It was soon pretty clear that Camilo’s ‘let’s’ was a manner of speaking. What he meant was that I should get the platform out. I made one attempt at persuading him to put on a spacesuit, and give me a hand, but he was so clearly averse to that that I gave up rather than risk having him turn against the whole idea. Once I had it assembled, and he could step straight on to it, I could lift it at once, and show him that nothing could be lurking in that desert. So I went out alone and opened up Number Two hold-section to get the platform out.

There had been something of a tussle over the provision of a jet platform for us. The type that had proved itself on the moon over fifty years ago would not do. There, an object has only one sixth of its Earth weight – on Mars, it weighs double its moon weight, and therefore any carrier must be heavier and more powerful. A wheeled vehicle would have been much lighter, but we were opposed to that for use on an unknown terrain. A platform could skim safely above any kind of surface, and my father had supported us. In the end, he had designed a suitable platform in three sections which were dispatched to Primeira to be stowed aboard the Figurao when she called there. Thus, for the main lift we had been spared the weight of the biggest single piece of equipment that we carried and could simply jettison it on Mars when we took off for the return.

I found the three main sections, even at their Martian weight, quite as much as I wanted to handle, encumbered by my spacesuit. Once I had them laid out side by side on the sand, however, the bolting together was comparatively easy. Camilo had switched on the helmet radio belonging to one of the other spacesuits. From time to time he inquired: “Have you seen any of them yet ?”

Each time I assured him that I had not but, somehow, whether he answered, or remained silent, he managed to convey scepticism. When the main floor was assembled, I went ahead fixing the control pillar. Thoroughly absorbed in the job, I lost all sense of my surroundings, remembering the empty stillness only when Camilo spoke. But when, after some two and a half hours, I had the assembly complete, and needing only a final check before the mounting of the fuel containers, my attention slackened and, with that, the bleakness and loneliness all about seemed to press closer and crowd me.

I decided I had put in a long enough spell outside for one day and would be wiser to get back to the familiarity of the ship and the comfort of a meal before the willies could encroach enough to trouble me badly. As I came through the airlock I found Camilo seated on the pull-out stool in front of my charting board. He turned round and watched me attentively. When I took off the helmet he seemed to relax and looked somewhat relieved. I glanced at the radio transmitter, hoping that he might have started to tackle that, but it was clear that it had not been touched.

He asked how things were going and nodded when I told him. “We’ll need the two-man dome, and gear for it, and of course the fuel containers — might as well unload the lot of them while you’re at it ; just as well to have them stacked handy. No point in leaving them in the ship. And some cases of food, and bottles of water, and — ”

“Steady on,” I protested. “We won’t be going on a week’s expedition right away. All I expect to do tomorrow is to try the thing out, and perhaps have a short flip over to see what that dark line is. We can take the dome and some food against an emergency, but there’s no point in loading up useless extra weight.”

“Tomorrow ?” he repeated. “I thought — I mean, there’s about five hours of light yet...”

“Possibly,” I admitted, “but I’ve just done nearly three hours steady work in a spacesuit. If you are so anxious to hurry it on, you try a shift on the job yourself.”

I had scarcely expected him to rise that, and he didn’t. Instead, he watched me for a minute or two without speaking while I collected some food. Then he went back to looking out of the window. He’d stand there, motionless, peering intently for a time, then he would suddenly turn his head quickly from side to side, like a spectator watching an unnaturally fast rally at a tennis match, and draw his breath in quickly. After that, there would be another motionless interlude for a bit. I was already edgy from the spell outside, and it soon began to get on my nerves.

“You won’t see anything,” I told him. “ Come over here and have some food.”

Rather surprisingly, he came without demur. “I suppose you told them to keep out of sight,” he said. “Well, they’re doing it, but they aren’t fooling me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake — !” I began, letting my temper slip a bit at last.

“All right — all right,” he said, hurriedly. “Perhaps they told you not to let on about them. It doesn’t matter, really. Comes to the same thing.”

I gave up trying to follow that, and simply grunted. During the rest of the meal, and after it, we maintained a state of tactful truce, but when this had been disturbed some live times by his leaping to a port in an attempt to catch his Martians unaware, I was driven to suggesting a game of chess to keep our attention occupied. It worked pretty well, too. For a time he seemed to forget all about hostile Martians, played a well-considered game, and beat me by a better margin than usual. At the end of it, things felt much more normal until he remarked.

“That’s just it, you see. You Martians are cunning, all right, but not quite cunning enough. We can beat you every time if we put out minds to it.”

The next morning I went outside, and finished checking over the platform, then I got a couple of fuel containers out of the hold section and mounted them. Camilo, watching through the port, repeated on the helmet radio his suggestion of unloading them all. I appreciated that by lightening the ship there would be an advantage when it came to an attempt to raise her to the vertical, but they were heavy, and I did not see why I should do all the work — that part could wait until Camilo was in a state where he was willing to come out and help. I did add a case of food, a couple of bottles of water — and also the two-man Flandrys Dome, for it isn’t much good carrying rations against an emergency unless you also provide somewhere to take off your helmet so that you can eat them. And then there had to be the recompression gear to deflate the dome after use, and a matter of a half-dozen small standby air bottles for the suits. Altogether, it took me nearly an hour to stow and make fast that lot, but then, at last, I was ready to make a test.

I stepped aboard and told Camilo to stand by and observe. I tried the under-jets individually first, and they all responded satisfactorily. Then I put them in concert. The platform throbbed, and a large cloud of red dust blew out from beneath it. It lifted, slightly up by the rear right-hand corner. I trimmed and levelled her off about eighteen inches above the ground. Then, when she was stabilised, took her up to ten feet. At that height I slanted and slid her a bit in each direction, and she answered well. She felt more solid and steadier than a lunar-type platform. A little less sensitive, too — better that than the other way, I thought. I raised her to a hundred feet of so, with a smooth lift.

From there I had a real view. The dark line was revealed as no longer just a line, but as a wide stretch of darker ground reaching away into the distance. To the north and to the south the desert was spread out in utter monotony, but on the eastern horizon there were hills — once mountains, perhaps, but now ground down and rounded off like very old molars.

I reported to Camilo, but he was not interested in the landscape. He demanded: “Can you see any of them?”

“No,” I told him. “There aren’t any.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Very well. Just put on a spacesuit, and come up and see for yourself,” I suggested.

“Oh, no you don’t. I wasn’t born yesterday. That’s how you got Geoff.”

“What the hell are you talking about ? I am Geoff,” I protested.

“It’s no good trying that on me. I know your game, and it’s not going to work this time.”

“But look here, Camilo — ”

“I know what happened. When poor old Geoff went outside soon after we landed, you were waiting for him. You jumped him, invaded him, turned the real Geoff out and you’ve just been using his body as a disguise. But I spotted you right away. Now you want to get me outside so that another of you can do the same to me. Well, you aren’t going to bring that off. Poor old Geoff hadn’t been warned but I have, so it won’t work.”

I started to bring the platform down. “Camilo,” I told him, “stop talking a lot of bloody nonsense, there’s a good fellow. If you don’t know me after being cooped up with me all these weeks, you damned well ought to. I never heard such a fantastic, dodgy — ”

“Oh, you put up a very good show,” said Camilo generously. “Very cunning you are — but it’s just because I do know Geoff so well that I could spot you.”

I hovered at a foot or so and let her down gently. She made a nice easy touch, though she blew a cartload of dust about. “I’ve seen through your little idea, too,” he went on. “You’ve spotted a chance to get away from this god-forsaken planet. And I don’t blame you. Anybody in his senses would do his best to get off this ball of sand. So you want to take over this ship and get to Earth on her. But you aren’t going to do it. Not this time, you’re not.”

I tried my most authoritative voice. “ Lieutenant Botoes,” I ordered, “put on a suit and come out here.”

He laughed. “Think you’ve got me, don’t you? You toppled the ship over, and killed Raul, then you pushed Geoff out of himself, and took him over. I’m the only obstacle now, aren’t I? But you haven’t got me yet. I’ll soon show you.”

Then there was a clang that hurt my ears. I guessed he had been holding the helmet to speak into its radio and had now dropped it. Then I saw the outer door of the lock swing shut. I ran to it and battered on it, telling him not to be a fool. I had the winding key to open it from outside, but it would be no good trying that for a minute or more — to attempt it while the automatic mechanism was still securing it would simply have taken me round with the handle.

I went to the port. It was just a little too high for me to see in, so I jumped, in order to get a glimpse of what he was up to. At the same moment the port went blank as the cover closed. I hurried back to the airlock door, put the key in and began to wind the locking-bolts back. The telltale inside must have shown him what I was up to, for the key suddenly reversed in my hands as the mechanism started again. I swore and snatched it out.

“Camilo !” I called, hoping my voice would reach him from the dropped helmet. “Camilo, you’ve got it all wrong. Don’t be a damned fool! Let me in!”

His only reply was, very faintly, a jeering laugh.

“Camilo — ” I was beginning again, when suddenly the ship trembled, and there was a huge spurt of dust and sand, forward. I hadn’t a moment’s doubt what that meant and I ran for my life. Even encumbered with the suit, I covered the ground with great, leaping strides a dozen yards long, and was some eighty yards away in a few seconds, before I misjudged my step, and fell.

Still sprawling, I looked back at Figurao. A cloud of dust and sand was spurting from beneath her forepart. Some of the grit was pattering on my helmet. As I watched, the forepart swayed, and then lifted clear of the ground. Most of the loose stuff had been blown away, and I could see the ship better now – well enough to guess what Camilo was trying to do. The three lowermost steering jets were fiercely blasting as they lifted her nose. I could see the idea, but I doubted whether he would get enough thrust out of those small jets to push her back to the vertical.

He turned up the power, and she lifted a little more on the two exposed legs of the tripod. No longer nose down but tilted a little above the horizontal. I judged he had the jets on full power. They were holding her up, making a third supporting leg, but they weren’t raising her nose any further. I suddenly understood why he had been so anxious to have the platform out of her, and the fuel, and the rest of the stuff, too. Freed of them, she might just have had power enough, but with most of the gear still aboard, she was still inclined only very slightly above the horizontal. The jets kept on roaring and gushing, but still they gave her no more lift. I wondered if it was the leg that had broken through the crust that was keeping her anchored. Clearly she was not going to be able to make it.

Then the main drive fired! Crazy…crazy!

I suppose he thought that, if he could tear the buried leg free, the side jets would be able to tilt her nose skyward. She leapt forward, almost horizontal, and with the pediment of the trailing leg dragging a furrow through the sand, like a huge plough-share. She dipped by the head, bounced her belly on the sand, rose again on the supporting side jets, and he let the main drive have it again.

By God, it was well tried! For a moment I thought he had done it. She lifted until the foot of the trailing leg was barely touching the sand. She was accelerating fast, but at such an angle to me that I could see little more than a cloud of dust with an exhaust flare in the middle of it.

She must, I suppose, have dipped again — and touched. I can’t say. All I saw was the silver shape leaping suddenly above the dust cloud, turning over and over in the air, with her drive still flaring. She fell back into the dust and bounced to appear again. She didn’t go so high, and she was spinning differently this time. Then once more she disappeared, and the dust and the sand sprayed up, looking like a shell burst at sea.

I put down my head, hugged myself to the ground and waited. She was, I guessed, nearly three miles away by now, but that was unpleasantly close for the kind of explosion I was expecting. I held my breath as I waited… and waited…

The explosion did not come.

At last, I looked up, cautiously. Of the Figurao herself I could see nothing. There was just a dust cloud — with a red flare still burning steadily in the middle of it. I went on waiting. Nothing happened except that the lighter dust was blown away, and the cloud grew smaller. After some more minutes I risked standing up. Scarcely taking my eyes from the spot, I made my way back to the platform. I found it half-buried in sand thrown up by the Figurao’ s blast, but it lifted all right, and the sand slid off as I tilted it and slid it away to a safer distance, to land again.

For over an hour I sat on the platform, watching. Gradually the loose sand and dust had been blown away, and I could see the silver glint of the ship herself, and the steady flame from her tubes. I realised that somehow, perhaps on the first bounce, the main drive had been reduced to a pretty low power, or the ship would have gone a lot further and fared a lot worse, but I still did not know whether she was going to blow up or not and, if not, how long the fuel would continue to burn at the present setting.

Perhaps Camilo had been able to check the power at the moment of the first bounce, but he could have had no chance after that. One could not imagine that even strapped to the couch, as he would be, either he himself, or the gimbal system could have withstood what the Figurao had been through. And at that thought I was suddenly swept by the terrifying realisation that, whether the ship blew up or not, I was now alone.

Almost in the same moment I became aware again of the hostile desert all around. I began to feel the awfulness of utter desolation stalking in on me once more. I pulled the two-man dome off the platform and set it up. Flimsy though it was, one could find some illusion of protection inside it. The howling of the wilderness was not quite so close to my elbow, the prowling of the agoraphobic monsters was kept a little further off.

The day wore on. The puny red sun declined and disappeared. The constellations shone out, familiar still, for against the panorama of the heavens the leap from Earth to Mars is the tiniest of hops. One day, I am sure, the constellations will look different, when our hops have indeed become great leaps — for me, that is an article of faith — but it won’t be for a long time yet.

The night closed down. Through the dome’s small windows all but the stars was dark — except at one point where, across miles of sand, I could see the glow of the Figurao's main jet, still flaring where she lay. I broke open a packet of rations and ate some food. I felt no hunger, but the familiarity of the simple act of eating held some comfort. The food did me good, too. It gave me strength, and I felt better able to resist. Then suddenly, I became aware of silence.

Looking out of the window again, I saw that the flare of the rocket tube had vanished. There was nothing but blackness and the stars. All sound had ceased and left such a silence as was never known on Earth. Nor was it just that, not just the negative absence of sound – the silence was hard, positive, a quality of eternity itself. It rang in one’s ears until they sought relief by hearing sounds that did not exist – murmurings, far off bells, sighs not so far off, ticking, whispers, faint ululations.

A bit of verse that my grandfather used to quote came into my mind:

... for all the night

I heard their thin gnat-voices cry

Star to faint star across the sky.

and I seemed to hear them, too. They had no words, they were on the threshold of sound, but they encouraged me. And, God knows, I needed encouragement, crouched there in my flimsy dome.

The voices cry — but the elemental terrors prowl. We need numbers to sustain us. In numbers we can dispel the terrors. Alone, we are weak, mutilated. Taken from our pool of corporate strength we gasp, we wriggle defencelessly while the terrors circle round, slowly closing in.

Perhaps the voices are just sirens— but I think not. I think they are the calls of destiny, leading, not luring, onward and outward. I think we shall, we must, follow them — but not like this! Never again like this! Not, oh God — alone!

The little sun rode over the horizon like a delivering knight. I almost knelt in worship of him as he drove the lingering terrors from my side— not away, but further off, giving me the room, and the courage, to move. I had meant to eat again, but I could not wait for that. I craved only for the security of the ship. I put my helmet on with shaking hands, packed the dome aboard the platform, lifted to a few feet, and sped across the sand towards the Figurao as fast as I could.

Two of the tripod legs were twisted and bent, and the third torn off, but the hull was surprisingly little damaged. I had to clear a lot of sand to get at the airlock as the ship now lay. Much of it I managed to blow away with the platform’s jets, but the rest I had to scrape out. The lock worked perfectly. Inside the ship there was far less damage than I had expected — expect to poor Camilo.

I take some pride in having been able to force myself outside again to bury him, as I had buried Raul. I knew that it must be done at once if I were to be able to face it at all so, somehow I did it. And then hurried back.

It was after that that the gap comes — a long gap, according to the calendar-clock. It looks as if I spent some part of it trying to repair the radio transmitter. For some reason I seem to have rigged up a light to shine out of each port. The platform is still outside, but not quite as I left it when I first came in. Probably there are other things ... I don’t know ... I can’t remember.

Perhaps someone will come…

I have food enough for nearly three years.

Food enough— but not, I fear, spirit enough.

There is a letter here for my dear Isabella. Give it to her, please.

Space Is a Province of Brazil

1958

VENUS A.D. 2144

After George Troon had read the message, he pushed it across to his second-in-command. Arthur Dogget took it, considered it, and then nodded slowly. “So it’s out at last. I’d give a lot to see the Rio papers today. Apoplectic’ll be an understatement for ’em,” he said, with some satisfaction. “Ought to be fun. Two hundred million Brasileiros all steamed up and demanding immediate action. What do you think’ll happen ?”

Troon shrugged.

“ As far as we are concerned, no change. Even a million wrathful Brasileiros can’t affect celestial mathematics. The powers that be have still got to wait for next conjunction before they can come after us. Meanwhile, I suppose the government will throw a few Ministers to the wolves and assure everybody that retribution is well in hand.”

“They’re lucky they’ve only got six months of it to weather. What surprises me. is that they managed to keep it dark so long,” Arthur said. “Anyway,” he added, “as far as I’m concerned, the thing that matters is that we beat ’em to it — such as it is — and that’s one thing they can’t undo.”

“No,” Troon nodded in agreement, “there’s nothing they can do about that.” The two of them turned as if by common consent to look out of the window.

The prospect there was an average Venusian day. The sky was simply a luminous white mist. Visibility was that within a layer of thin cloud, changing range quite rapidly as the mist drove along in a twenty-mile-an-hour wind. Most of the time one could see the sparse, high reeds that began forty yards away from the dome. They were slightly bent and rippled in the wind like stiff hairs. Now and then the mist cleared enough for some minutes to reveal the tall, astonishingly flexible trees that someone had named feather-tops, swinging back and forth in great arcs, two hundred yards away. The ground itself, both near and further, was covered with a matting of pale succulent tendrils, the Venusian equivalent of grass. Even at its clearest, it was not a view to inspire. Almost a monochrome study, shadowless, with only here and there a fleshy stalk showing a faint flush of pink, or a slight tinting of green to break the monotony of pallor. And overall, and all the time, there was the mist condensing – drops of water running down the etiolated stems, showers of them torn from the plants by sudden gusts of wind, endless rivulets of them trickling down the windowpanes.

“It’s all very well for us,” Arthur remarked. “We’ve been financed to do what we wanted to do — make the first successful landing. Now, as far as I’m concerned, anybody can have it, and welcome.”

Troon shook his head. “We weren’t financed just to make a record, Arthur — nor just to give it away again. Part of our contract is to hold on to it.”

“Maybe if your Cousin Jayme could see what it’s like he’d think again,” Arthur suggested.

“Not Jayme,” said Troon. “ He knows what he’s doing, always did. The trouble is that, like his old man, he has such big ideas that you only see bits of them. No, he’s satisfied, he’s pleased.”

Arthur Dogget looked out of the window again and shook his head. “If he’s pleased with this, there must be a lot more to it than we can see,” he said.

“I’ve no doubt. He and his old man are campaigners in a big way — kind of civilian field-marshals, and with complete confidence in themselves. The old man was never a bit impressed by the mere size of a job he took on, so he always kept his head — Jayme’s the same way.”

“One of the things I’ve never understood,” Arthur said, “ is how a cousin of yours, and an Aussie citizen, comes to have a Brazzie name like Jayme Gonveia?”

“ Oh, that isn’t too difficult. When my grandfather Geoffrey Trunho died on the first expedition to Mars, he left three children: Anna, George and Geoffrey – my father – who was born either posthumously, or at least after he reached Mars. My Aunt Anna subsequently married one Henrique Polycarpo Gonveia — old man Gonveia, in fact — she emigrated with him to Australia, and Jayme is their son.

“Now, Jayme’s grandfather Gonveia was a friend of my grandfather’s, and when my grandfather failed to return from Mars, it was this Grandpa Gonveia who did most of the agitation for a second Martian expedition. In the end he got together a group who put up half the money for it and shamed the Brazilian government into finding the rest. And his highly speculative share in the success of the expedition there in 2101 was half of the exclusive rights to any botanical finds. To everyone’s surprise, some were actually made, along the bottom of the canal rifts, and he promptly bought the other fellow out of the half-share.

“For about twenty years his experts grew, developed, and adapted the seeds and plants and then, as a result. Grandpa Gonveia and his two sons and daughter set out to conquer the world’s deserts — which they are still doing. Joao, the eldest son, took north Africa for his territory. Beatriz went to China and my Uncle Henriques went off, as I said, to Australia.

“Anna’s brother, my Uncle George, stayed in Brazil, and his son, Jorge Trunho, is a Commander in the Spaceforce there. My own father was sent to Australia to school, and then to Sao Paulo University. After taking his degree, he returned to Australia, married the daughter of a ship owner there, and was soon sent to manage his father-in-law’s office in Durban. At the time of the Second African Rising, when the Africans threw out the Indians, he was accidentally killed in a riot. My mother left with me, still a small baby, went home to live in Australia where she changed our name back to its original form of Troon.”

“I see — but it doesn’t really explain how your cousin Jayme comes to be involved in this business. I’d have thought he’d be much too busy reclaiming deserts.”

“Not while his old man is still in the chair. They’re too much of a kind. After he had had a year or so of the desert-blossoming business Jayme could see a lot of will-clashing ahead, so he started putting his main interest into other things. Well, I suppose that, what with the Gonveia strain and the Troon strain together, it was more or less a natural that he should get to thinking about space. He hasn’t the Troon urge to get out into space – the Gonveia strain is stronger — he only wants to operate it — and the more he looked at space, lying out here with nobody doing anything about it, the more it irked him. After a bit, he got his old man interested, too, and then other people — which is why we’re here today.”

“Until the Brazzies arrive to throw us, and his interests, out,” Arthur put in.

Troon shook his head. “Don’t you believe it. Jayme isn’t the kind that gets thrown out — nor’s the old man. I’d put the old man down as the richest, as well as the most valuable, immigrant Australia ever had ; and there must be a goodish part of the Gonveia family fortune sunk in this. No, take it from me, they both know what they’re doing.”

“I hope you’re right. The Brazzy in the street must be tearing mad now he’s heard about it — he’s pretty proud of that ‘Space is a Province of Brazil’ stuff.”

“True enough — even though he’d have more to be proud of if he’d done more about it. All the same, when you look at the difference the Gonveia family has made to the face of the Earth with the hundreds of thousands of square miles of deserts they’ve salvaged, I think they’re a good bet.”

“Well, I hope you’re right. Things’ll be a lot less sticky for us if you are,” Arthur Dogget replied.

Shortly, when Arthur had gone off leaving him alone, Troon looked at the message again, and wondered how his cousin was handling things back on Earth. His thoughts returned to a day, three years ago, when a small private aircraft, dead on its appointed time, had hovered over his house, and then put down his landing lawn.

Out of it had emerged Jayme Gonveia, a large, active young man in a white suit, white hat, and blue silk shirt, looking rather too big to have fitted into the craft that had brought him. For a moment he had stood beside the machine, looking round George Troon’s estate, noting the carefully spaced, thick-limbed Martian-derived trees that were something like spineless cacti, and the no less carefully arranged bushes of complementary kinds, examining the mesh of wiry grass beneath his feet, and the blades of wider leafed grass coming up, sparsely as yet, through it. George, as he approached, could see that, somewhat cheerlessly institutional as the calculated precision of the prospect appeared at present, Jayme was approving of it. “Not doing badly,” he had greeted George. “Five years?”

“Yes,” said George. “Five years and three months now, from the bare sand.”

“Water good?”

“Adequate.”

Jayme nodded. “In another three years you’ll be starting real trees. In twenty you’ll have a landscape, and a climate. Should do nicely. We’ve just developed a better grass than this. Grows faster, binds better. I’ll tell them to send you some seed.”

They walked towards the house, across a patio, and into a large, cool room. “I’m sorry Dorothea’s away,” said George. “She’s gone to Rio for a couple of weeks. Dull for her here. I’m afraid.” Jayme nodded again.

“I know. They get impatient. The first stages of reclamation aren’t exciting. Is she a Brazilophile?”

“No — not really,” George told him. “But you know how it is. Rio is lights, music, dresses, centre of the world, and all that. It recharges her batteries. We usually go a couple of times a year. Occasionally she goes on her own. She’s plenty of friends there.”

“Sorry to miss her,” said his cousin.

“She’ll be sorry not to have seen you. Quite a time since you met,” George responded.

“Nevertheless,” said Jayme, “it does make it a little easier to talk confidential business.”

George, in the act of approaching the drink cupboard, turned around and looked at his cousin, with a lifted eyebrow. “Business?” he remarked. “Since when am I supposed to have known anything about business? And what sort of business?”

“Oh, just the usual Troon sort — space,” said Jayme.

George returned with bottles, glasses and syphon, and set them down carefully. “‘Space,’” he reminded his cousin. “‘Space is a Province of Brazil’.”

“But it is also a kind of madness in the blood of the Troons,” Jayme replied.

“Now put under restraint for all of us — except, I suppose, for Jorge Trunho.”

“Suppose there were an escape route?”

“I should be interested. Say on.”

Jayme Gonveia leant back in his chair. “I have by now,” he said, “grown more than a little tired of this ‘Province of Brazil’ bluff. It is time it was called.”

“Bluff?” exclaimed George.

“Bluff,” Jayme repeated. “Brazil has had it easy. She’s been sitting on the top of the world so long that she thinks she’s there for good, as a provision of nature. She’s going soft. In the chaos that followed the Northern War she worked, and worked hard, to put herself on top ; and since then, there have been no challengers to keep her on her toes. She’s just sat back over the matter of space, too. When she first proclaimed it a Province she reclaimed the damaged Satellites, and made three of them spaceworthy again, and she took over and improved the old British Moon Station. But since then…

“Well, look at the record…Nothing at all until Grandpa Trunho’s unlucky Mars expedition in 2094. There wouldn’t have been a second expedition there unless Grandpa Gonveia and his pals had pressed for it in 2101. The third, 2105 was financed entirely by public subscription, and since then no-one has set foot on the place.

“They abandoned the smallest Satellite back in 2080. In 2115 they abandoned another, keeping only Primeira in commission. In 2111 a newspaper and radio campaign on the neglect of space forced them into sending the first Venus expedition — and a shabby affair that was, scandalously ill-equipped. Never heard from once it had entered the Venus atmosphere, and no wonder. Ten years later they allowed a learned society to send another ship there — by subscription again. When that, too, disappeared, they just gave up. In the twenty years since then nothing further has been done, nothing at all. They’ve spent just enough to keep Primeira and the Moon Station habitable, so that they can hog their monopoly of space and, if necessary, threaten the rest of us from there, and that’s all. What a record!”

“Far from admirable,” agreed George Troon. “And so—?”

“And so they are going to pay the usual penalty of neglect. Someone else is going to step in.”

“Meaning Jayme Gonveia?”

“With a kind of syndicate I’ve got together. It’s unofficial, of course. The Australian government just can’t afford to know anything about it. Support for any idea of the kind would definitely be an unfriendly act towards the Brazilian people. However, we naturally had need of designers, and of the use of yards to build the ships, so that there is — well, a little more than a liaison between us and certain government departments. Nominally, however, it has to be an adventure with a rather old-world title — privateering.”

George kept the excitement that was speeding up his pulses carefully imperceptible. “Well, well,” he said, in a tone that matched his cousin’s. “ Would I be astray in suspecting that there is a part for me in these plans ?”

“So perceptive of you, George. Yes, I remember you as a boy on the subject of space – the veritable Troon obsession. As they never outgrow it, I am assuming that you still hear the ‘thin gnat-voices calling’?”

“I’ve had to muffle them, Jayme, but they are still there.”

“I thought so, George. So now let me tell you about the job,” Jayme had said.

A year later, the Aphrodite with a complement of ten, including George Troon in command, had set out. She was a new kind of ship, since she had a new kind of task — Venus in one leap, with no help from Satellite or Moon Station. As such, she was devoid of all unnecessary weight – supplied and found only for one voyage and a few weeks more. Everything beyond bare necessities were to follow her in supply rockets.

A supply rocket (or ‘shuttle,’ or ‘crate’) could be built for a fraction of the cost of a manned rocket. With living quarters, insulation, air supply, water-purifying system, and all the rest of the human needs eliminated, the payload could be over fifty per cent higher. Launching, too, was more economical. A shuttle could be given a ground boost, and a quick step-boost producing an acceleration several times greater than a human cargo could survive. Once launched, and locked on to its target, it would continue to travel by inertia until it should pick up the coded radio signals that would check and take charge of it. There was no more difficulty in directing a supply rocket to Venus than in aiming it for a Satellite, or for the moon, and no more power was needed to get it there — though it would require extra fuel for a safe landing against the planetary pull.

The questions of supplies, therefore, raised few difficulties. The problems arose over the key ship, the manned Aphrodite, because she must take off under full load, sustain her crew for the voyage, and, above all, be manoeuvrable enough in atmosphere to choose her landing when she should arrive.

It was the last proviso that called for modified design. Both the previous expeditions were known to have entered the Venus atmosphere. It was after that that something fatal had befallen them, and the general opinion among spacemen was that neither had proved sufficiently manoeuvrable to pick, and, if necessary to change, its choice of, landing place with accuracy. On a vapour-bound planet where inspection could not be visual until the last moments, that was essential.

Many years ago it had been supposed that Venus was entirely, or almost entirely, water-covered. That had later given way to the theory that the perpetual clouds were not vaporous but were formed of dust swept up from an arid surface by constant fierce winds. Several times since then, opinions had swung this way and that between the two extremes until there was general acceptance of the view that the planet was probably waterlogged, but scarcely likely to lack land masses entirely. Radar, however, would not be able to distinguish accurately between marshland and solid ground — or even, with certainty, between either and floating weed beds, should such exist. Infrared would tell more, but from a comparatively low altitude.

It might well be that the true nature of the ground would be indiscernible above a few hundred feet, and it was imperative, therefore, that a ship which discovered itself to be descending upon a mudbank, or a morass, should have the ability to draw off and search for better ground. It was a problem that had not occurred with Earth landings where a ship was brought in by an alliance of radio and electronic control, nor had it arisen on Mars, with its dry surface and normally perfect visibility.

In the event, the last stage of the Aphrodite's journey had proved the worth of the designers’ trouble. Had she not been able to cruise at moderate altitude in search of a landing place, there would have been an end of her. The cruise gave her the opportunity to discover that the proportion of land to sea over the area she covered was extremely small, and none of it was the high, firm ground she sought.

At last, Troon decided to return to the largest island so far observed — a low-lying mass about one hundred and fifty miles long, and a hundred miles across at its widest, misted over, and sodden under continuous rain. Even then it had been difficult to find a suitable landing area ; hard to tell whether the monotonous grey-white vegetation they saw below was low-growing bushes, or densely packed treetops – impossible to know what sort of ground lay beneath it. One could do no more than make a guess from the apparent configuration of the ground.

Troon had made six unsuccessful attempts to land the ship. On two of them she got as far as touching the mud, and starting to sink into it, before blasting free again. At the seventh try, however, the tripod supports had squelched through only two or three inches of mud before they found a firm bottom. Then, at last, Troon had been able to switch off, and stagger over to his bunk, past caring or wanting to know anything more about the planet he had reached.

The Aphrodite's landing took place two weeks ahead of conjunction. A week later they had picked up the signal of the first supply rocket, switched on contact, and put it into a spiral. They lost it for an hour or two when it was on the other side of the planet on its first circuit, but picked it up again as it came round, and held it thereafter. It was brought in and landed successfully in a roughly surveyed area a mile or so to the south of the ship.

Of the seven that followed it in the course of the next two weeks, only Number 5 gave trouble. In the final stages of descent she developed a fault which cut out the main drive and dropped her like a stone for two hundred feet. She split open as she hit, but luckily it had been possible to salvage most of her contents. The unloading priority had been the Dome from Number 2 rocket. It was badly needed to get them out of the cramped cabin of the Aphrodite and give them shelter from the eternal rain and drizzle into a place where there would be room to live and work and protect the stores. Even before it was fully ready, however, there had come a message from Jayme, saying laconically: “They’re on to you, George. You have 584 days, or a little less, to get ready for them.”

‘They,’ it quickly became clear, meant only certain official circles in Brazil, and their knowledge was severely restricted. A public admission that an expedition had not only made an unauthorised incursion into the Brazilian ‘Province of space,’ but had stolen a march on its nominal administrators by achieving the first successful landing on Venus, would involve not only the Space Department, but the whole government in a serious loss of face. The evident intention was to avoid publicity, if possible while counter measures were prepared, possibly in the hope that if the secret could be kept until a Brazilian expedition had been despatched at the next conjunction there might be no need of the admission at all.

Absence of publicity suited both parties for the present. So long as it lasted, no awkward representations could be made to the Australian Government, and no overt, or even covert, reprisals taken. Meanwhile, both of them employed the interlude which the laws of planetary motion imposed.

On Venus, once the essentials of the Dome were erected, the entire party busied itself with collecting, photographing, preserving and crating specimens of Venusian air, water, soil, rock, plants, seeds, and insect-type life, working against time to get at least these preliminary, and as yet unclassified, specimens loaded aboard the emptied Number 2 supply rocket, and dispatched as soon as possible towards the now receding Earth. Only when that had been accomplished did they relax, and, turning their attention to the other shuttles, set about making the Dome into as comfortable a habitation as possible.

Back in Rio, the higher levels of the Space Force pulled schemes for Venusian expeditions out of their pigeonholes, called in technicians, and started to get down to the task of creating a commando which must be ready, not only to reach Venus by the time of the next conjunction, but to take police action when it should arrive.

When the matter of assigning personnel arose, it was almost inevitable that Space-Commander Jorge Manuel Trunho should be among those chosen. His qualifications and records were first-class, and his family’s history and tradition would have made failure to include him invidious.

In Sydney, Jayme Gonveia, through his own peculiar channels, received the news of the appointment with satisfaction. There was a place in his plans for Commander J. M. Trunho.

The satellite, Primeira, now alerted, detected Number 2 supply rocket in the course of its return journey to Earth, and inquired whether it should intercept with a guided missile. A hurried council called in Rio was divided in its opinions. The members could not know that the object detected was simply a freighter. It might be the expedition returning. It was true that messages originating upon Venus were still being picked up, in an as yet unbroken code, but they might be dummy messages, originating from an automatic transmitter left there as a bluff. If the returning rocket were to be summarily blown to bits, and then turned out to have contained the expedition, or even a part of it, somebody would certainly give the matter publicity, and the public reaction would be bad. The government would be reviled for an act scarcely to be distinguished from murder, and the victims would very likely become heroes overnight. In the end, therefore, Primeira was instructed to make no attack, but to continue observation, and home stations were ordered to be ready to track the object as it approached the Earth. This they did but had the misfortune to lose it somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, and no more was heard of it.

Thereafter, for more than a year, all parties had worked secretly, and without alarms.

Now that the cat was, at last, publicly out of the bag it caused political ructions in Rio but made little practical difference. Not even to appease the wrath of the Brazilian people could the conjunction of planets be hastened. Time had been short enough anyway, and, whatever ministers might say in speeches, preparations could only go ahead as planned.

In Sydney, Jayme Gonveia boarded a Brazil-bound aircraft in order to study reactions at their centre. It was a stage that called for careful observation and assessment, with perhaps a little influence thrown in at critical moments. His only surprise was that the breakdown of security had not come sooner, A leakage he had expected, but he had not foreseen the source of it, and hoped that by the time George Troon returned the details would have been forgotten.

For Dorothea, Mrs. George Troon, after a year of a preoccupied husband, followed by more than a year of grass-widowhood tediously spent in the slowly regenerating wilderness that was her home, was in the habit of making periodical visits to Rio to break up the depression induced by these things. Taken by friends one night to a party which she found unamusing, she had attempted to improve it by several glasses of iced aguardiente and passion-fruit, dashed with quinine and bitters. Her intention of raising her spirits had somehow gone wrong, and she had lifted, instead, the sluices of self-pity. She became woefully the neglected wife. And though in the course of lamenting this, she did not actually mention her husband’s whereabouts, it became clear that she had not seen him for some little time — clear enough to catch the attention of one Agostinho Tarope, a fellow guest who happened also to be a columnist on the Diario do Sao Paulo.

It occurred to Agostinho that a prolonged absence of a member of the Troon family could have interesting implications, and if his subsequent inquiries did not produce many hard facts, he collected enough indications to convince himself that it was worth taking a risk with some pointed comment. Other papers pounced upon, and inflated, his speculations. Nobody was able to produce George Troon to refute the rumours, and the row was on.

The Brazzy in the street was, as Arthur Dogget had suggested, tearing mad. He turned out in large numbers, carrying banners which proclaimed Space to be a Province of Brazil, and demanded action against Australian aggression. Replying to an official approach, the Australian government denied any knowledge of the matter, but undertook to look into the rumours, while pointing out that Australia was a free country of free citizens.

Political and official circles in Brazil were far from unanimous. Factions started to form. Some held the forthright chauvinist view of holding on to space at any cost, others saw it as a regrettable expense, but a strategic necessity, one group considered it a waste of money to maintain Stations and a force which could bring no return, strong complaints about the lack of enterprise in the development of space began to be heard again.

The Space Force itself was split several ways. Those at the top, and previously in the know, were already resentful at being shaken out of a comfortable routine and reacted with bluster to the newspaper comments on the inefficiency of the service. The youngest stratum of officers and men began to look forward to action and excitement in the defence of space. Among the men with longer service, however, there was variety of opinion. Many of those who had joined for the great adventure of exploring space only to find themselves stagnating for years in sentry duty showed a cynicism little short of subversive. Plenty of disillusioned voices could be heard asking: ‘Why stop ’em? All we’ve done out there for a hundred years is play dog-in-the-manger — and it’ll be no better if we do chuck ’em out. If there are others ready to have a shot at really doing a job out there, then let ’em, I say. And good luck to ’em.’

It was to this stratum of opinion that Jayme Gonveia was giving his most careful attention at the moment.

Meanwhile, the party on Venus had found its forbearance severely tested. Once the Dome had been made comfortable, the three jet platforms assembled and the island mapped by infrared photography, exploration, in its wider sense, had virtually come to an end. The land was found to be monotonously low lying, with a backbone of raised ground which at its highest points barely exceeded one hundred feet. Much of the coast was hard to determine, for it shelved gradually into a tideless sea in great stretches of swamp and marsh, and the weeds growing out of the muddy water had little to distinguish them from those that covered the saturated land. Animate life on the island was restricted to insects, a few wandering crustaceans not unsimilar to spider crabs which seldom came far from the shore, and a few lunged fish, apparently in the process of becoming amphibians. In the sea there was plenty of life, large and small, but the coastal marshes cut off all surface approach, and the disturbance caused by the jets made it all but impossible to net specimens from hovering platforms.

Cautious descents were made in various parts of the island to take samples. Landing on the lower ground was usually out of the question, and even on the higher slopes it was risky. The platform had to hang cautiously just above the growths while one member of its crew probed with a long rod. With luck, there might be rock a few inches below the surface, and it could put down. Far more often there was a bed of dangerous mud where the probe would go feet deep into a mush made by generations of rotting plants, discovering no bottom at all. So there, too, most of the specimen taking had to be conducted with scoops wielded from the platforms.

“A fiery hell,” Dogget had proclaimed, “seems a nice clean conception when you compare it with the stinking, rotting slime under the godamned, never-ending rain in this place.”

Any exploration beyond the bounds of the island was out of the question, since observation had already shown how rare land was, and the platforms were not equal to long range travel. There was, therefore, no disposition whatever to risk taking them out over the uncharted seas. The biologists of the party had far the best of it. Poring over sections through microscopes gave them endless interest.

Once the shuttles had been unloaded there was little temptation to go outside the Dome for anything other than a specimen collecting expedition. Inside, kept dry and comfortable by a desiccating plant, there was increasing boredom for all but the four biologists. They remained happily busy and, by degrees, the rest drifted into lending them a hand, and into becoming biologists, or at least biologists’ assistants themselves.

Troon observed the development with approval. “Good,” he said, “it saves me getting round to the cliche of ‘They also serve — ’ I’d hate that, because it’s not really the statement it appears to be. More often it is an indication that the speaker is getting troubled about morale. So anything for some interest, even if it is only water bugs. Conjunction is a bit too infrequent. Five hundred and eighty-four days is a long time to be stuck on a mudbank.”

“I’d doubt if the Brazzies could mount an expedition in less, anyway,” Dogget said, “ — or whether, if they knew what this place is like, they’d bother to send one at all.”

“Oh, they would. Matter of principle. As long as we are here, space is not entirely a Province of Brazil. Besides, it may not turn out to be quite as useless as it seems to us at present.”

“H’m,” Arthur Dogget said, dubiously. “Anyway, it was a bit of intolerable bombast ever to claim it. Space should be there for anyone who is willing to explore and exploit it.”

Troon grinned. “Spoken like a true Briton. Just what the English said about the undiscovered world when there was the same sort of bombastic assumption over that. In the days of real Papal dictatorship, Alexander VI reckoned the whole place was his to allocate, so in an open-handed way, he gave the Portuguese the East, and the Spaniards the West. And what happened ? The very next year that arrangement came unstuck, and the Portuguese enterprisingly claimed the whole of South America, and six years later Cabral took possession of Brazil for them.”

“Did he, now? And what did the Pope have to say to that?”

“He wasn’t in a position to say anything. That particular Spiritual Servant happened to be a Borgia and died of a bowl of poisoned wine he had prepared for a friend. But the point is this, claiming things is rather in the Portuguese blood. Vasco da Gama claimed India for them, but they held only Goa. Of South America, they held only Brazil — until they lost it. Now their descendants claim all space, but hold only a Satellite Station, and the Moon. Their earlier grandiose claims did not keep the British, and the Dutch, and the rest, out of undeveloped territories, and there’s no good reason why the present ones should.”

“H’m,” said Arthur again. “Times have changed, though. We’ve got here. But I don’t see how, even if the place were worth hanging on to, we could keep up any regular communications between Earth and this gob of mud — not with guided missiles out hunting for us each trip. I’d like to know the real plan. Sometimes I get a nasty feeling that we could be— just bait.”

“In a way, of course, we are,” Troon admitted. “ The existing situation had to be cracked open some way. I think this is a pretty good one. As the matter stands now, a lot of people in Brazil will be calling us pirates, and other, ruder things — though not all of them, by any means. But what about the rest of the world ? They’ll be taking a very different view of it. I don’t mind betting we are popular heroes now, in most places — and on two counts: one, that we have made a successful landing here at last, and the other, that we’ve wiped the Brazzy eye. Everybody will be delighted over that — which will be the chief reason that the Brazzies are wild. What is more, it puts them in a spot.

“They have foreign relations to preserve, so they can’t just drop a bomb on us, because they would then appear as the big, crude bully. They’d earn worldwide hostile contempt, and very likely plenty at home, too. In fact, if they actually turn any kind of weapons on us at all, they’ll be in for a lot of opprobrium. So it looks as if the only way they can handle it, without losing even more prestige than they have already, is to capture us, and run us as ignominiously as possible out of what they claim to be their territory — being careful, on account of public relations, to do us as little physical damage as possible.

“Very well, then. They will arrive with the intention of netting us. But we are here first. We can make preparations for that. We have at least as good a chance of netting them, if we work it right. And that’s what we’ve got to do.’’

“And when we have ?’’ Arthur asked.

“I’m not sure. But at least we shall have hostages.”

“Your cousin Jayme must have a plan for the next stage?”

“I don’t doubt it. But that is as far as he is telling, at present.”

“I just hope your degree of confidence in him is justified.”

“My dear Arthur, a great deal of money has been sunk in this affair — including a large part of the Gonveia family fortune. It is evident that cleverer men, with more to lose than you and me, are satisfied that Jayme knows what he’s doing.”

“I hope you’re right — I’d just like to be able to see more of the picture, that’s all.”

“We shall. I’m willing to bet that the overall strategy is being taken good care of, from the little I know of it. But the local tactics are our affair, of course, and it seems to me the best thing we can do is to work out several plans to suit different circumstances. When we know more about how they are going to tackle it, and what their equipment is, we can fill in the details of the most suitable plan. At present, our information on their plans is still pretty slim, but we shall get more. In the meantime, my idea of preparing a reception for them is this.”

The Brazilians, being under no obligation to make their Venus-bound lift direct from Earth, had no intention of trying it. The Satellite, Primeira, offered them a means of starting and building up. speed without the drag of gravity, and, naturally, they made use of that. Gone, therefore, even a few weeks after the first intelligence of the Troon expedition’s presence on Venus, were Primeira’s leisurely days when the only interruptions of her comfortable lethargy were the supply shuttles and the monthly relief rockets. Orders started to pour in. Sections of the Satellite that had been closed-off and put out of commission years ago were opened up, examined, tested, repaired where necessary, and made habitable again. Quantities of supplies came up in shuttles and, presently, technicians followed them. Soon, long cylinders of a new, ballistic type, containers of air, water, stores, fuel, and the rest were arriving, to be captured, and tethered electronically about the Station. Later on, came sections of larger shuttles. Engineers in spacesuits emerged from Primeira and jetted themselves across the void to start assembling them. In a few months, the whole neighbourhood of the Satellite was littered with floating masses of metal, and containers of all shapes and sizes, gradually being drawn together and bolted, welded, and sealed into comprehensible shapes.

The work went on continuously in shifts, with artificial lights blazing during the brief ‘nights’ in the Earth’s shadow, until gradually the chaos was tidied into the form of five large, new shuttles. Activity then became less spectacular while the engineers worked inside them, lifting the new hulks with their electronic circuits, linking the remote-controls to the main drive, and stabilising and correcting jets, testing, adjusting, and readjusting the gear’s responses to radio signals which would be their only pilots.

While that was still going on, the ballistic cylinders were opened, and again the area was littered with spacesuited men gently propelling cases of all shapes and sizes towards one or another of the shuttles, for stowage. The ballistic cylinders themselves were expendable — it would have cost more to get one safely back to Earth and recondition it than to make a new one, so that when they were emptied a charge was clamped on to them, and they were despatched to crash harmlessly among the lunar crags, where they could no longer be a hazard to navigation.

The work went well, and in spite of setbacks, it was completed a full month ahead of schedule. The area was then clear. The five fully-loaded shuttles, linked by cables, hung in a bunch, revolving about the Satellite at a range of twenty miles, and linked to her by radio beam. The Satellite itself, the intricate machine, that had grown up from the first of all the Space Stations, kept smoothly on its orbit, with two small rocket-ships in attendance, waiting.

“They are using shuttles, as I told you,” Jayme Gonveia informed Troon. “They have, however, improved on our method — presumably because had they to await the arrival of their shuttles as you did of yours, they would be in a weak position and unable to take any action against you until the shuttles should arrive. The idea they have adopted, therefore, is one of unified control whereby they and their shuttles will travel together and arrive simultaneously. The whole group is intended to handle as one ship. This means that you must be prepared to take very swift action before they have a chance to deploy.”

The Key ship, the Santa Maria, came up two weeks before the calculated starting date, and hung in space a mere mile or so from Primeira. She had left Earth with only five men aboard. The rest of her full complement of twenty were awaiting her on the Satellite. With her arrival, activity broke out again. Figures emerged from Primeira’s locks, some of them jetting across the gap immediately, others manoeuvring containers out of the dock-doors, and guiding them into a drift towards the ship. Once more, there began a process of testing and checking, which, with the provisioning and final fitting out, continued in shifts for a week.

Inspected and passed at last, the Santa Maria moved off a few miles. The cluster of the five waiting shuttles was brought closer and broken up. Each of them was urged and juggled into approximately its proper relation to the rest. When the last was placed, the small tug-shells and thrusters drew off, and made back to Primeira, leaving on each shuttle a party of only four space-suited men, linked together by lines, and equipped with portable jet tubes to steady their charges and correct drift. In the centre, roughly equidistant from all five shuttles, the Santa Maria waited. Aboard her, Capitao Joao Camarello, and his first officer Commander Jorge Trunho, watched the tugs draw clear of the area.

“Ready, shuttles?” the Capitao asked.

A man on each shuttle acknowledged.

“Good,” approved the Capitao. “ Keep ready. We shall make contact with you in exactly ten minutes from…now.''

The spacesuited men clinging to the shuttles continued to check twist and drift in their charges as well as they could.

“Two minutes to alignment,” said the Capitao. “Get clear of all tubes now and check your short safety lines. No trouble? Fine. One minute to go now…Thirty seconds…Ten seconds…Now!”

The Chief Electronics Officer pressed his first key. Little jets of flame broke from the steering tubes of the shuttles. Each turned over, rolled, and twisted, swinging round to align itself with the parent ship, firing more small jets to correct and steady the over swing. Soon, all were lying in exactly the same orientation, with their main driving tubes pointed towards the gleaming crescent of the Earth.

“Phase One completed. All well?” inquired the Capitao.

One after another the men tethered to the shuttles reported. He went on: “Positioning will take place in two minutes from — now!”

The Electronics Officer regarded the hand of the clock, pressed his second key, and turned his attention to a small screen in front of him. Outside, more little twinkling bursts came from the shuttles. On the screen, small, illuminated figures started to drift very slowly. Soon, the white figure turned green, and ceased to drift.

“Number Four fixed, sir,” he" reported.

The Capitao glanced at the screen. “Good. Use that as the axis.”

Gradually the other figures changed the direction of their drift. One after another they, too, turned green. As the last, one altered, the Officer reported. “Formation complete, and locked, sir.”

The Capitao lifted the microphone. “Good work boys and thank you. Commander you can take your men home now. We shall test control.”

The men in spacesuits unhooked, kicked off into the void, then levelled their hand-tubes, and set themselves scudding through emptiness towards the Satellite. When they reached it, they were able to look back and see the pattern of their operation complete.

The Santa Maria lay relatively motionless. About her, each at a distance of more than two miles, hung the shuttles, at the angles of a huge pentagon. Invisible proximity beams linked them all, each to the Santa Maria in the middle, and to both of its neighbours. Occasionally one or another would show a brief twinkle of flame as the automatic gear cut in to correct the least loss of position.

Six Earth days later, the personnel on Primeira collected around the stationary screen in their spinning home to watch the start. The farewells and good wishes were over, and they watched in silence. A voice aboard the Santa Maria came through the loudspeaker, counting the seconds, then Capitoa Camarello’s order: “Fire!”

From the main tubes of the Santa Maria, and from those of all the five shuttles, belched jets of flame, quickly growing fiercer. The whole formation began to move as one. The blast of the driving tubes grew whiter, and fiercer still. In a few minutes the expedition was gone and, to mark it, a new constellation hung in a bright pentagon against the jet-black sky.

“Of course we keep up radio communication,” Troon explained patiently, “and of course they’ll locate us by it. This is a showdown. It’s no damn good their landing in some other part of this pestiferous planet where neither of us can get at the other, is it ? The nearer to us they land, the better, because the sooner we can reach them, the better. But God knows what sort of a mess their landings going to be. We had quite enough trouble in getting just one ship down safely.”

“As I understand it,” said Arthur, “the whole unit works on a kind of servo system which whatever the manned key ship does, the rest do the same. That must be so, I think. The elaborations and complications of five men in one ship controlling five shuttles independently while that ship is descending are beyond contemplation. Therefore, the intention must be to land in the same formation they travel in — a pentagon, though I suppose they may be able to contract, or expand, its size a bit. That being so, all their attention will have to be concentrated on the safe landing of the key ship, and the shuttles must more or less take their chance. Those chaps certainly can’t know what they’re in for. You might bring off a trick like that fairly neatly on a dead flat prairie, but not on a mud pie. My betting is that it will be only luck if one of their shuttles stays upright, and most likely that all of them will sink in the swamps.”

“We can’t be bothered about that,” Troon told him. “What we have to concentrate on is being as close as we can to the key ship when she comes down, and without having any of the shuttles coming down on top of us. It would help if we knew what distances they intend to keep. We’d better get on to Jayme again, and see if he has any information on the landing drill.”

Excellent as Jayme’s information service was, it could not help there. Any decision to expand or contract the pentagon formation must obviously, he pointed out, be left to the captain’s discretion. His sources continued, however, to give reliable information on the expedition’s progress, and as its ETA drew near, the radar was set searching for it beyond the Venus cloud cover. The formation was first faintly detected at a great height, still moving fast, and presumably closing on a spiral. Troon promptly despatched a message announcing its approach. On its second circuit, still at a considerable distance, but travelling more slowly, it had altered direction, from which he judged that the point of origin of his message had been plotted.

“Make ready,” he ordered. “They ought to be down next time.”

The party checked that its weapons and supplies in waterproof covers were aboard the three jet platforms, then they climbed into their spacesuits, as. the best form of protection against the never-ending rain outside, and waited, with their helmets handy.

At last the formation showed up on the screen, seen now from a different angle, travelling slowly in from the north at a mere twenty-five thousand feet. All six ships had tilted almost to the vertical, but the pentagon formation was still perfect, and now in the same plane with the surface of the ground. As they came closer, standing on their main drives they showed simply as a pattern of circular spots which drifted almost to the centre of the screen.

The party in the Dome put on its helmets, and made for the platforms, leaving a single man at the radar. He hooked up a microphone, and his voice reached them all. “ Key ship east-north-east. Estimate five miles. Separation from servo ships, estimate one mile. Appears constant.”

The platforms rose a little and skimmed out of the locks, climbing on a gentle slant. “Don’t bother about the shuttles unless the separation alters. Concentrate on the key ship,” Troon told the operator.

“Right, George. Rate of descent slow and cautious. I’d say around twelve hundred a minute. Now a little under eighteen thousand. Steady and vertical.” |

The platforms sped on travelling a few feet above the tops of the trees which rose out of the tangle of pallid, slimy growths that hid the ground. Presently, Troon brought his to a halt, and sent the other two out on the flanks. Hanging there with the fronds of the feather-top trees swinging across just beneath him, he switched on the outside microphone, and heard for the first time the roar of the rockets overhead. The thunder of six rocket ships descending at once was almost unnerving. He switched off again, and the three of them stood peering anxiously into the clouds above. A few minutes seemed a long time.

“Eight thousand,” said the radar man. And a little later, “Five thousand.”

One could hear the noise now through the helmet and feel the buffeting of the sound waves. A man on one of the other platforms exclaimed suddenly: “There’s one of them!”

Almost at the same moment Troon’s neighbour caught his arm and pointed up. Troon looked, and saw a brilliant, diffused, reddish light with a quality of sunset, breaking through above them. He sent the platform swooping forward, out of harm’s way. The buffeting grew, until the platform was trembling with it. He could see four glows in the clouds now. The one behind, one ahead, two dimmer ones on either side, but all of them growing brighter. The platform began to sway as if the roaring billows of sound were tossing it.

“Under one thousand,” said the radar man’s voice.

“They’re lucky — dead lucky. Quite a bit of firm ground round here,” came Arthur’s voice.

Troon did his best to look all ways at once. The flare behind was still the closest. He edged a little further away from it, and then kept his eyes on the one ahead. That, he calculated, must be that of the key ship. All three men clung fast to their holds as the platform rocked.

It became barely possible to look at the brilliance. Hanging on with one hand, he raised the other in front of his helmet and peered through slits between his gloved fingers. At two hundred feet the flames were stabbing into the ground, and the steam was rising in thickening clouds, to blot everything. A moment later, there was nothing to be seen but a dazzling white nimbus, with its centre slowly growing more intense. Troon looked quickly around again – all about them was whitely shining steam. Then suddenly, the noise stopped. The platform ceased to tremble. The vivid white spots in the steam died. In the abrupt silence of his helmet Troon asked: “ Arthur, have you marked the key ship?”

“I reckon so, George.”

“You, Ted?”

“Pretty sure of her, George. I’ll make certain when this steam lets up. She’ll have ports. The others won’t.”

“Well, both of you stay where you are until you can be sure. Then find her airlock side, and close in to fifty yards.”

He edged his own platform forward. The air was clearing, but it was not possible to see the ship yet. She was still hidden somewhere in the cloud of steam vaporizing from the sodden ground, but it seemed fairly certain that her landing, at any rate, had been successful, whatever might have happened to the shuttles.

Visibility gradually improved. Before long, he could see the outline of her top. Soon he could make out the upper part clearly enough to see the ports and be sure that she was the Santa Maria and no unmanned shuttle. She was leaning a little, but not dangerously at present. He drove the platform forward towards the steam that still shrouded her base.

Gradually that thinned, too. He was able to see that she had indeed been lucky in her landing place, and the tripod foot on the tilt side showed no sign of sinking further. He took the platform down to a few feet above the ground, and a little closer. The ends of the ship’s main driving tubes were still glowing, and the rain was vanishing into little steam puffs before it could actually touch them ; the area directly beneath her was seared clear of vegetation and muddy water was seeping back into it, steaming gently. Troon brought his platform down to within inches of the ground and steered it in between two of the tripod legs. “Let it go!” he said.

His two companions undipped the straps of a rectangular bale sealed into a waterproof cover and tumbled it over the side to fall in the mud with a squelch. Skilfully Troon checked the upward bounce of the platform as it lost the weight, then he backed off and sped away.

“Arthur? Ted? Have you located the airlock yet?”

“Arthur here. Yes, George. It’s facing due south.”

“Good. Keep it covered. I’ll be round there with you.” He handed control of the platform over to one of his companions, and turned a knob on his helmet, putting his headset on to one of the Brazilian Space Force’s intercom wavelengths. In Portuguese, he called: “ Troon calling! Troon calling! Troon calling Capitao Camarello.”

There was a short pause during which his platform approached Arthur’s, and drew up beside it, then a voice replied: “This is the Santa Maria, Spaceship of the Estados Unidos do Brasil. Capitao Joao Camarello.”

“Bone dias, Capitao,” said Troon. “And my felicitations, Senhor, upon your excellent landing.”

“Muito obrigado, Senhor Troon. And my congratulations to you upon your survival of the rigours of this singularly unattractive-looking planet. It is, however, my regrettable duty to inform you that, by order of the Congress of the United States of Brazil, you and your companions are under arrest, charged with violating the sovereignty of Brazilian territory. One hopes that you will recognise the situation and accept it.”

“ Your message is not unexpected, Senhor,” Troon told him. “But in return I must inform you that since the Brazilian claim to this territory rests neither on its discovery by Brazil, nor upon Brazil’s prime establishment here, it cannot be considered to have any validity. I am therefore entitled on the grounds of your unauthorised landing to require that you and your crew should put yourselves under my orders. Until I have your assurance that this will be done, I cannot grant you permission to leave your ship.”

“Mr. Troon, you have been informed, I do not doubt, of the strength of our expedition, so may I remind you that there are two of us to one of you — if, indeed, your party has survived the tribulations of such a detestable climate as this appears to be, intact.”

“That is quite true, Capitao Camarello, but we are not caught in a metal trap. Furthermore, I ought, I think, to tell you that we have your airlock covered. And I must also warn you against an attempt to take off again, should it occur to you to look for a more hospitable landing area. There is, beneath you at this moment, a considerable bale of TNT. You cannot fire your drive without igniting it before you lift, whereupon it may do your ship considerable damage, and will certainly overturn her, thus making takeoff impossible for you. Your situation, therefore, is awkward, Capitao.”

After a pause, the voice replied: “Ingenious, Mr. Troon. I will take your word for it. But at least we do not have to sit out in the rain in order to maintain our side of the impasse.”

“But neither do we, Senhor. Unless I receive your capitulation very shortly, we shall simply fix a wire cable round your ship in such a position as to prevent the outer door of your airlock from opening. We shall then be able to wait indefinitely, and in somewhat more comfort than yourselves, for your decision.”

Troon caught sight of Arthur Dogget signalling him from the next platform. He switched over to their usual wavelength. Arthur said: “If he does agree — and I can’t see that he’s got any choice — what do we do with them, George? Keep ’em handcuffed all the time? After all, they’re two to one, as he said. Why should he keep any agreement to surrender?”

“All right,” Troon told him. “Just you wait a bit and see. We’ll set down now to save power — but keep an eye on that door. Give it a bullet if it so much as moves.”

The three platforms descended carefully, seeking spots where the matting growth was thick enough to keep them out of the mud, and waited. Troon switched back to the other wavelength, but a full hour passed before any sound could be heard on it, and then it was another voice that spoke: “ Hallo,” it said, “ George Troon ?”

Troon acknowledged.

“Jorge Trunho here,” said the voice.

“I was hoping to hear from you. Cousin Jorge,” said Troon. “What’s the reply?”

“A change of authority,” Jorge Trunho told him. “I have now taken command of this ship. With the exception of Capitao Camarello and four other men whom we have put under arrest, we are now willing to carry out your orders.”

“I am glad you appreciate that there was no sense in prolonging the situation,” said Troon, and issued his instructions.

As he switched over, Arthur Dogget said: “ What goes on, George? I don’t like this at all. It’s a whole lot too easy.”

“You don’t need to worry,” Troon told him. “ The Brazilian Space Force is riddled with young men who’ve been frustrated for years and know they’re likely to stay that way as long as Brazil has the monopoly of space. They’re overripe for a change. All that was needed was the opportunity, and someone to organise.”

Arthur considered. “You mean — this was all fixed? You put ’em in a spot to give Trunho the chance to take over? You knew he would?”

“That was the plan, Arthur. The awkward spot made it easier for him to sway the undecided ones.”

“I see. All nicely arranged in advance — and by Cousin Jayme, I suppose?”

Troon nodded. “Under his auspices, at any rate. I told you Cousin Jayme knows what he’s doing.”

The slow twist on the Santa Maria was about to bring the sun into view, but before it could come searing through the port Arthur Dogget pushed the cover across and fixed it. He looked round the bare, tank-like compartment in which they were confined, then he pushed himself across to his acceleration couch, fastened the straps to give some illusion of weight, and lay there frowning. At length, he said: “What makes me kick myself — what really burns me up, is that I knew at the time it was all too damned easy — I even said so. God, what a mug!”

Troon shook his head. “It should have been easy — it was intended to be. That part of it would have gone just the way it did even if Jorge hadn’t been double-crossing. The whole thing went quite according to plan, until he pulled that fast one when we got back to the Dome. It’s no good blaming ourselves for trusting Jorge. We had to. Ten of us couldn’t have kept twenty of them under restraint indefinitely. It was a calculated risk. Jayme was gambling on Cousin Jorge’s Troon blood — that his spaceward urge would be greater than his loyalty to the Brazilian Space Force. Well, that was a bad bet — or was it ? I’m still not quite sure. It may not have been loyalty. It could easily be that he was reckoning the chances differently. He could be calculating that after this shake-up the Brazzies’ll really get down to doing something in space — and that he’s likely to be in the forefront of whatever they do.”

“And getting a medal for turning us in for piracy won’t do him any official harm either,” added one of the others, bitterly.

“No,” Troon agreed, “but if the thought of the charge is worrying you, I shouldn’t let it. They’ll have to put us on trial, of course, but luckily there’s been no bloodshed, so the odds are they’ll pardon us, or just give us a token penalty. After all, we did get there ; and we are no longer a danger, sentiment will swing round. They’d lose a devil of a lot of public favour if they tried to keep us in jail for it.”

“Well, that’s something — and I reckon you’re right,” Arthur admitted. “Most of the worrying is going to come the way of that organizing genius, your Cousin Jayme — and whoever else puts up the money. I never did think they’d get much for all they spent to exploit that lousy planet, anyway, but whatever there is there, the Brazzies are going to get it now. Just a bit too clever for one another, your relatives.”

“Maybe,” admitted Troon, “but I’d not be sure yet. After all, we did ship Jayme one shuttle-load of specimens, remember. His people, working on them, will have about two years’ start of any Brazzy researchers — and that’s quite a lot, with old man Gonveia’s botanical organisation behind it.”

“All right. Your Cousin Jayme may be a marvel, commercially,” Arthur conceded, “ but your Cousin Jorge has certainly taken him, and all of us for a ride, strategically. And thanks to him, damn it, the Brazzies have now got the lot — our ship, our Dome and supplies, all our research work, and us. As profitable a bit of double-crossing as ever there was — with laurels and promotion for Jorge Trunho.”

“Look here,” put in one of the others, “the Troon family, as everyone knows, has a deserved reputation for gambling with space in a big way. Some of their gambles have come off, and some of them haven’t. The first half of this one did, and the second half hasn’t. Now I suggest that we agree to drop the subject. We’ve a long journey ahead and chawing the subject over and over isn’t going to sweeten it or get us anywhere. Agreed?”

The journey was tedious indeed. Nothing broke it but the regular arrival of meals — covered cans floated into the compartment by one member of the Brazilian Space Force, while another guarded the door. The captives received no bearings, no progress reports, they simply waited timelessly for it to end.

At last it did. For the first time during the trip a concealed speaker broke silence with a click and a scratch. “Secure all loose objects,” it instructed twice, in Portuguese.

The crew of the Aphrodite stared at one another, scarcely able to believe that the imprisonment was coming to an end at last. Half an hour later the voice spoke again: “All loose objects should have been made fast by now. Everyone to couches and make ready. All to couches, fasten all straps. Deceleration will begin in ten minutes from now.”

Troon opened a port-cover. The slow turn gave him a view of a huge Earth crescent sliding smoothly up the black sky. He secured the cover again and got on to his couch. “Not an Earth landing,” he said. “Must be putting in at Primeira.”

“Four minutes,” announced the loudspeaker.

Primeira, thought Troon, the old threshold of space. I wonder what its builders would have to say if they could see the first successful Venus expedition coming in as prisoners?

The speaker was counting now. He composed himself to wait for the thrust and the onset of weight. One after another Troon’s crew jetted themselves across from the Santa Maria to Primeira. Once through the airlock there, they took off their spacesuits and waited, with a guard in charge of them. During the considerable delay they sat watching other men entering the airlock to go outside. There seemed to be a great many of them. More than an hour passed before the Capitao Camarello and his second in command, Jorge Trunho arrived, and removed their spacesuits to reveal themselves dressed in immaculate uniforms for the occasion. It was evident that the handing over of their prisoners to the Commander of the Satellite was to be a formal affair. Troon was not much impressed. He smiled and tried to catch his cousin’s eye. Jorge caught it stonily once and thereafter avoided it.

Two more armed guards appeared. The party was marched to the Satellite Commander’s cabin and lined up in two ranks. After that, there appeared to be a hitch. For five minutes they waited in silence, then Camarello spoke to Trunho who went back to the door to inquire. They waited another five minutes, then the inner door of the room opened, and a voice said, in English: “ My apologies for keeping you waiting, gentlemen.” And into the cabin, dressed in an ordinary suit, stepped Jayme Gonveia. He nodded to Troon. “Glad to see you, George. I trust you didn’t have too uncomfortable a trip.”

“But how did you do it?” Troon wanted to know, later on, when they were alone together.

“Less difficult than you might think,” Jayme told him. “We put parties aboard the two mothballed Satellites six months ago and prepared them for action which we hoped would not be necessary. We infiltrated undercover groups both here and on the Moon Station. The rest was mostly a matter of suitable timing.

“I made a mistake over Jorge, though. Perhaps I did not tell him enough. If he had had a better idea of the scale he’d very likely have played straight with us. However, its only effect was to delay the next phase of the operation. We did not want an alarm raised for fear the Santa Maria should be diverted, and we need her intact.

“The radio operators were the key men in the take over. A week ago, the one here, on Primeira, put over the internal speaker system a message announcing that the Moon Garrison had mutinied, imprisoned its officers, and called upon the Primeira crew to do the same. The moon operator put over a similar message, transposing the places. Both of them put their radios temporarily out of action, for safety, but continued to announce previously concocted messages over the internal system. During this stage, small shuttle-type rockets that we had been holding at the other Satellites appeared close to Primeira, and one landed close to the Moon Station.

“Well, as you know, the Space Force was shot through with disaffection. Our undercover groups had worked on the men, and not found it very difficult. They were organised and ready and were able to take over with very little trouble. Those who wouldn’t join us have been transported to one of the mothball Satellites for now. The only thing that had gone wrong was at your end. The Santa Maria was on the way back here. If we made an announcement she would be diverted, in which case we should lose not only your valuable selves, but a very valuable ship. So we made no announcement. We reopened radio communications with excuses about electrical interference and resumed routine messages as though nothing had happened. We have been bluffing for a week while we waited for you and the Santa Maria — and during that time we have acquired a couple of shuttles of provisions, as well.

“But in an hour or so now, the news will be broadcast. Camarello and our cousin Jorge have gone over to join the rest of the unpersuadables on the minor Satellite where they will remain until their government sends a ship to fetch them. The exact date and time for that will depend on how long it takes to sink into the official Rio minds that Space is no longer a Province of Brazil.”

Troon thought the position over silently for some moments, then he said: “I had no idea you were brewing anything on such a scale as this, Jayme.”

“Perhaps I should apologize to you for that, George, but it seemed wise to keep the compartments of the plan separate, as far as possible. And I think it was — it spared you the necessity of acting and the need to watch yourself for slips.”

“But now the operation is complete, and you are all set to spring it on them that space has now become a State of Australia.”

“A State of Australia!” exclaimed Jayme. “Good God, man, do you think I want to start a war between Brazil and Australia? Certainly not! Space will declare itself an independent territory — if the use of the word ‘ territory ’ is valid in the circumstances.”

Troon stared at him. “Independent! For heaven’s sake, Jayme, space is — well, I mean, out here, in nothing, like this. I never — why, it’s utterly impossible, Jayme!”

Jayme Gonveia smiled gently and shook his head. “On the contrary, George. If you will consider the original raison d’etre of the Satellites and the Moon Stations, I think you will see that Space, as an entity, is in an excellent position to propose terms. One day it may be in a position to do a useful trade, but until then, it can at least be the policeman of the world — and a policeman is worthy of his hire.”

George Troon continued to gaze reflectively at the floor for a full minute. When he looked up, his expression had lost its incredulity. He did not speak, but Jayme Gonveia replied as if he had. “Yes, George,” he said. “From today, your gnat-voices are just a little closer.”

The Asteroids, 2194

1961

My first visit to New Caledonia was in the summer of 2199. At that time an exploration party under the leadership of Gilbert Troon was cautiously pushing its way up the less radioactive parts of Italy, investigating the prospects of reclamation. My firm felt that there might be a popular book in it and assigned me to put the proposition to Gilbert. When I arrived, however, it was to find that he had been delayed, and was now expected a week later. I was not at all displeased. A few days of comfortable laziness on a Pacific island, all paid for and counting as work, is the kind of perquisite I like.

New Caledonia is a fascinating spot, and well worth the trouble of getting a landing permit — if you can get one. It has more of the past — and more of the future, too, for that matter — than any other place, and somehow it manages to keep them almost separate.

At one time the island, and the group, were, in spite of the name, a French Colony. But in 2044, with the eclipse of Europe in the Great Northern War, it found itself, like other ex-colonies dotted all about the world, suddenly thrown upon its own resources. While most mainland colonies hurried to make treaties with their nearest powerful neighbours, many islands such as New Caledonia had little to offer and not much to fear, and so let things drift.

For two generations the surviving nations were far too occupied by the tasks of bringing equilibrium to a half- wrecked world to take any interest in scattered islands. It was not until the Brazilians began to see Australia as a possible challenger of their supremacy that they started a policy of unobtrusive and tactfully mercantile expansion into the Pacific. Then, naturally, it occurred to the Australians, too, that it was time to begin to extend their economic influence over various island groups.

The New Caledonians resisted infiltration. They had found independence congenial, and steadily rebuffed temptations by both parties. The year 2194, in which Space declared for independence, found them still resisting; but the pressure was now considerable. They had watched one group of islands after another succumb to trade preferences, and thereafter virtually slide back to colonial status, and they now found it difficult to doubt that before long the same would happen to themselves when, whatever the form of words, they would be annexed— most likely by the Australians in order to forestall the establishment of a Brazilian base there, within a thousand miles of the coast.

It was into this situation that Jayme Gonveia, speaking for Space, stepped in 2150 with a suggestion of his own. He offered the New Caledonians guaranteed independence of either big Power, a considerable quantity of cash, and a prosperous future if they would grant Space a lease of territory which would become its Earth headquarters and main terminus.

The proposition was not altogether to the New Caledonian taste, but it was better than the alternatives. They accepted, and the construction of the Spaceyards was begun.

Since then the island has lived in a curious symbiosis. In the north are the rocket landing and dispatch stages, warehouses, and engineering shops, and a way of life furnished with all modern techniques, while the other four-fifths of the island all but ignores it, and contentedly lives much as it did two and a half centuries ago. Such a state of affairs cannot be preserved by accident in this world. It is the result of careful contrivance both by the New Caledonians who like it that way, and by Space which dislikes outsiders taking too close an interest in its affairs. So, for permission to land anywhere in the group one needs hardly-won visas from both authorities. The result is no exploitation by tourists or salesmen, and a scarcity of strangers.

However, there I was, with an unexpected week of leisure to put in, and no reason why I should spend it in Space-Concession territory. One of the secretaries suggested Lahua, down in the south at no great distance from Noumea, the capital, as a restful spot, so there I went.

Lahua has picture-book charm. It is a small fishing town, half-tropical, half-French. On its wide white beach there are still canoes, working canoes, as well as modern. At one end of the curve a mole gives shelter for a small anchorage, and there the palms that fringe the rest of the shore stop to make room for the town.

Many of Lahua’s houses are improved-traditional, still thatched with palm, but its heart is a cobbled rectangle surrounded by entirely untropical houses, known as the Grande Place. Here are shops, pavement cafes, stalls of fruit under bright striped awnings guarded by Gauguinesque women, a statue of Bougainville, an atrociously ugly church on the east side, a pissoir, and even a Mairie. The whole thing might have been imported complete from early twentieth century France, except for the inhabitants — but even they, some in bright sarongs, some in European clothes, must have looked much the same when France ruled there.

I found it difficult to believe that they are real people living real lives. For the first day I was constantly accompanied by the feeling that an unseen director would suddenly call ‘Cut,’ and it would all come to a stop.

On the second morning I was growing more used to it. I bathed, and then with a sense that I was beginning to get the feel of the life, drifted to the Place, in search of an aperitif. I chose a cafe on the south side where a few trees shaded the tables and wondered what to order. My usual drinks seemed out of key. A dusky, brightly sarong-wearing girl approached. On an impulse and feeling like a character out of a very old novel I suggested a Pernod. She took it as a matter of course. “Un Pernod? Certainement, monsieur,” she told me. I sat there looking across the Square, less busy now that the dejeuner hour was close, wondering what Sydney and Rio, Adelaide and Sao Paulo had gained and lost since they had been the size of Lahua, and doubting the value of the gains.

The Pernod arrived. I watched it cloud with water and sipped it cautiously. An odd drink, scarcely calculated, I felt, to enhance the appetite. As I contemplated it a voice spoke from behind my right shoulder. “An island product, but from the original recipe,” it said. “Quite safe, in moderation, I assure you.”

I turned in my chair. The speaker was seated at the next table; a well-built, compact, sandy-haired man, dressed in a spotless white suit, a Panama hat with a coloured band, and wearing a neatly trimmed, pointed beard. I guessed his age at about thirty-four though the grey eyes that met my own looked older, more experienced, and troubled.

“A taste that I have not had the opportunity to acquire,” I told him. He nodded.

“You won’t find it outside. In some ways we are a museum here, but little the worse, I think, for that.”

“One of the later Muses,” I suggested. “The Muse of Recent History. And very fascinating, too.”

I became aware that one or two men at tables within earshot were paying us — or, rather, me — some attention; their expressions were not unfriendly, but they showed what seemed to be traces of concern.

“It is — ” my neighbour began to reply, and then broke off, cut short by a ramble in the sky.

I turned to see a slender white spire stabbing up into the blue overhead. Already, by the time the sound reached us, the rocket at its apex was too small to be visible. The man cocked an eye at it. “Moon-shuttle,” he observed.

“They all sound and look alike to me,” I admitted.

“They wouldn’t if you were inside. The acceleration in that shuttle would spread you all over the floor — very thinly,” he said, and then went on; “We don’t often see strangers in Lahua. Perhaps you would care to give me the pleasure of your company for luncheon? My name, by the way, is George.”

I hesitated, and while I did I noticed over his shoulder an elderly men who moved his lips slightly as he gave me what was without doubt an encouraging nod. I decided to take a chance on it. “That’s very kind of you. My name is David — David Myford, from Sydney,” I told him. But he made no amplification regarding himself, so I was left wondering whether George was his forename, or his surname.

I moved to his table, and he lifted a hand to summon the girl. “Unless you are averse to fish you must try the bouillabaisse — speciality de la Maison,” he told me.

I was aware that I had gained the approval of the elderly man, and apparently of some others as well, by joining George. The waitress, too, had an approving air. I wondered vaguely what was going on, and whether I had been let in for the town bore, to protect the rest. “From Sydney,” he said reflectively. “It’s a long time since I saw Sydney. I don’t suppose I’d know it now.”

“It keeps on growing,” I admitted, “but Nature would always prevent you from confusing it with anywhere else.”

We went on chatting. The bouillabaisse arrived, and excellent it was. There were hunks of first-class bread, too, cut from those long loaves you see in pictures in old European books. I began to feel, with the help of the local wine, that a lot could be said for the twentieth century way of living. In the course of our talk it emerged that George had been a rocket pilot, but was grounded now — not, one would judge, for reasons of health, so I did not inquire further.

The second course was an excellent coupe of fruits I never heard of, and, overall, iced passion-fruit juice. It was when the coffee came that he said, rather wistfully I thought: “I had hoped you might be able to help me, Mr. Myford, but it now seems to me that you are not a man of faith.”

“Surely everyone has to be very much a man of faith,” I protested. “For everything a man cannot do for himself he has to have faith in others.”

“True,” he conceded. “I should have said ‘spiritual faith.’ You do not speak as one who is interested in the nature and destiny of his soul — nor of anyone else’s soul — I fear?”

I felt that I perceived what was coming next. However if he was interested in saving my soul he had at least begun the operation by looking after my bodily needs with a generously good meal. “When I was young,” I told him, “I used to worry quite a lot about my soul, but later I decided that that was largely a matter of vanity.”

“There is also vanity in thinking oneself self-sufficient.” he said.

“Certainly,” I agreed. “It is chiefly with the conception of the soul as a separate entity that I find myself out of sympathy. For me it is a manifestation of mind which is, in its turn, a product of the brain, modified by the external environment, and influenced more directly by the glands.”

He looked saddened and shook his head reprovingly. “You are so wrong — so very wrong. Some are always conscious of their souls, others, like yourself, are unaware of them, but no one knows the true value of his soul as long as he has it. It is not until a man has lost his soul that he understands its value.”

It was not an observation making for easy rejoinder, so I let the silence between us continue. Presently he looked up into the northern sky where the trail of the moon-bound shuttle had long since blown away. With embarrassment I observed two large tears flow from the inner corners of his eyes and trickle down beside his nose. He, however, showed no embarrassment; he simply pulled out a large, white, beautifully laundered handkerchief, and dealt with them.

“I hope you will never learn what a dreadful thing it is to have no soul,” he told me,, with a shake of his head. “It is to hold the emptiness of space in one’s heart: to sit by the waters of Babylon for the rest of one’s life.”

Lamely I said: “I’m afraid this is out of my range. I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. No one understands. But always one keeps on hoping that one day there will come somebody who does understand and can help.”

“But the soul is a manifestation of the self,” I said. “I don’t see how that can be lost — it can be changed, perhaps, but not lost.”

“Mine is,” he said, still looking up into the vast blue. “Lost — adrift somewhere out there. Without it I am a sham. A man who has lost a leg or an arm is still a man, but a man who has lost his soul is nothing— nothing — nothing...”

“Perhaps a psychiatrist — ” I started to suggest, uncertainly.

That stirred him and checked the tears. “Psychiatrist!” he exclaimed scornfully. “Damned frauds! Even to the word. They may know a bit about minds; but about the psyche! — why they even deny its existence!”

There was a pause.

“I wish I could help...” I said, rather vaguely.

“There was a chance. You might have been one who could. There’s always the chance,” he said consolingly, though whether he was consoling himself, or me, seemed moot. At this point the church clock struck two. My host’s mood changed. He got up quite briskly. “I have to go now,” he told me. “I wish you had been the one, but it has been a pleasant encounter all the same. I hope you enjoy Lahua.”

I watched him make his way along the Place. At one stall he paused, selected a peach-like fruit, and bit into it. The woman beamed at him amiably, apparently unconcerned about payment.

The dusky waitress arrived by my table and stood looking after him. “O le pauvre monsieur Georges,” she said sadly. We watched him climb the church steps, throw away the remnant of his fruit, and remove his hat to enter. “Il va faire la priere,” she explained. “Tous les jours ’e make pray for ’is soul. In ze morning, in ze afternoon. C’est si trieste.”

I noticed the bill in her hand. I fear that for a moment I misjudged George, but it had been a good lunch. I reached for my notecase. The girl noticed and shook her head. “Non, non, monsieur, non. Vous etes convive. C’est d’accord. Alors, monsieur Georges ’e sign bill tomorrow. S’arrange. C’est okay,” she insisted, and stuck to it.

The elderly man whom I had noticed before broke in. “It’s all right— quite in order,” he assured me. Then he added: “Perhaps if you are not in a hurry you would care to take a cafe-cognac with me? ”

There seemed to be a fine open-handedness about Lahua. I accepted and joined him. “I’m afraid no one can have briefed you about poor George,” he said.

I admitted this was so. He shook his head in reproof of persons unknown and added: “Never mind. All went well. George always has hopes of a stranger, you see. Sometimes one has been known to laugh. One doesn’t like that.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told him. “His state strikes me as very far from funny.”

“It is indeed,” he agreed. “But he’s improving. I doubt whether he knows it himself, but he is. A year ago he would often weep quietly through the whole dejeuner. Rather depressing until one got used to it.”

“He lives here in Lahua, then?” I asked.

“He exists. He spends most of his time in the church. For the rest he wanders round. He sleeps at that big white house up on the hill. His grand-daughter’s place. She sees that he’s decently turned out and pays the bills for whatever he fancies down here.”

I thought I must have misheard. “His grand-daughter!” I exclaimed. “But he’s a young man. He can’t be much over thirty ...”

He looked at me. “You’ll very likely come across him again. Just as well to know how things stand. Of course it isn’t the sort of thing the family likes to publicize, but there’s no secret about it.”

The cafe-cognacs arrived. He added cream to his and began: “About five years ago (he said), yes, it would be in 2194, young Gerald Troon was taking a ship out to one of the larger asteroids — the one that de Gasparis called Psyche when he spotted it in 1852. The ship was a space-built freighter called the Celestis, working from the moon-base. Her crew was five, with not bad accommodation forward. Apart from that and the motor-section these ships are not much more than one big hold which is very often empty on the outward journeys unless it is carrying gear to set up new workings. This time it was empty because the assignment was simply to pick up a load of uranium ore — Psyche is half-made of high-yield ore, and all that was necessary was to set going the digging machinery already on the site, and load the stuff in. It seemed simple enough.

But the Asteroid Belt is still a very tricky area, you know. The main bodies and groups are charted, of course — but that only helps you to find them. The place is full of outfliers of all sizes that you couldn’t hope to chart but have to avoid. About the best you can do is to tackle the Belt as near to your objective as possible, reduce speed until you are little more than local orbit velocity, and then edge your way in, going very canny. The trouble is the time it can take to keep on fiddling along that way for thousands — hundreds of thousands, maybe— of miles. Fellows get bored and inattentive, or sick to death of it and start to take chances. I don’t know what the answer is. You can bounce radar off the big chunks and hitch that up to a course deflector to keep you away from them. But the small stuff is just as deadly to a ship, and there’s so much of it about that if you were to make the course-deflector sensitive enough to react to it you’d have your ship shying off everything the whole time and getting nowhere. What we want is someone to come up with a kind of repulse mechanism with only a limited range of operation — say, a hundred miles — but no one does. So, as I say, it’s tricky. Since they first started to tackle it back in 2150 they’ve lost half-a-dozen ships in there and had a dozen more damaged one way or another. Not a nice place at all. On the other hand, uranium is uranium. Gerald’s a good lad though. He has the authentic Troon yen for space without being much of a chancer, besides. Psyche isn’t too far from the inner rim of the orbit — not nearly the approach problem Ceres is, for instance — what’s more, he’d done it several times before.

Well, he got into the Belt, and jockeyed and fiddled and bothered his way until he was about three hundred miles out from Psyche and getting ready to come in. Perhaps he’d got a bit careless by then. In any case he’d not be expecting to find anything in orbit around the asteroid. But that’s just what he did find — the hard way.

There was a crash which made the whole ship ring around him and his crew as if they were in an enormous bell. It’s about the nastiest — and very likely to be the last — sound a spaceman can ever hear. This time, however, their luck was in. It wasn’t too bad. They discovered that as they crowded to watch the indicator dials. It was soon evident that nothing vital had been hit, and they were able to release their held breaths.

Gerald turned over the controls to his First, and he and the engineer, Steve, pulled spacesuits out of the locker. When the airlock opened they hitched their safety-lines on to spring hooks and slid their way aft along the hull on magnetic soles. It was soon clear that the damage was not on the air-lock side, and they worked around the curve of the hull.

One can’t say just what they expected to find — probably an embedded hunk of rock, or maybe just a gash in the side of the hold— anyway it was certainly not what they did find, which was half of a small spaceship projecting out of their own hull. One thing was evident right away — that it had hit with no great force. If it had, it would have gone right through and out the other side, for the hold of a freighter is little more than a single- walled cylinder: there is no need for it to be more, it doesn’t have to conserve warmth, nor contain air, nor to resist the friction of an atmosphere, nor does it have to contend with any more gravitational pull than that of the moon; it is only in the living-quarters that there have to be the complexities necessary to sustain life.

Another, which was immediately clear, was that this was not the only misadventure that had befallen the small ship. Something had, at some time, sliced off most of its after part, carrying away not only the driving tubes but the mixing chambers as well, and leaving it hopelessly disabled.

Shuffling round the wreckage to inspect it, Gerald found no entrance. It was thoroughly jammed into the hole it had made, and its airlock must lie forward, somewhere inside the freighter. He sent Steve back for a cutter and for a key that would get them into the hold. While he waited he spoke through his helmet radio to the operator in the Celestis’ living quarters and explained the situation. He added: “Can you raise the moon-station just now, Jake? I’d better make a report.”

“Strong and clear, Cap’n,” Jake told him.

“Good. Tell them to put me on to the Duty Officer, will you?”

He heard Jake open up and call. There was a pause while the waves crossed and re-crossed the millions of miles between them, then a voice: “Hullo Celestis! Hullo Celestis! Moon-station responding. Go ahead, Jake. Over!”

Gerald waited out the exchange patiently. Radio waves are some of the things that can’t be hurried. In due course another voice spoke. “Hullo Celestis! Moon-station Duty Officer speaking. Give your location and go ahead.”

“Hullo Charles. This is Gerald Troon calling from Celestis now in orbit about Psyche. Approximately three-twenty miles altitude. I am notifying damage by collision. No harm to personnel. Not, repeat not, in danger. Damage appears to be confined to empty hold-section. Cause of damage ...” He went on to give particulars and concluded: “I am about to investigate. Will report further. Please keep the link open. Over!”

The engineer returned, floating a self-powered cutter with him on a short safety cord, and holding the key which would screw back the bolts of the hold’s entrance-port. Gerald took the key, inserted it in the hole beside the door and inserted his legs into the two staples that would give him the purchase to wind it.

The moon man’s voice came again. “Hullo, Ticker. Understand no immediate danger. But don’t go taking any chances, boy. Can you identify the derelict?”

“Repeat no danger,” Troon told him. “Plumb lucky. If she’d hit six feet further forward we’d have had real trouble. I have now opened small door of the hold and am going in to examine the forepart of the derelict. Will try to identify it.”

The cavernous darkness of the hold made it necessary for them to switch on their helmet lights. They could now see the front part of the derelict; it took up about half the space there was. The ship had punched through the wall, turning back the tough alloy in curled petals, as though it had been tinplate. She had come to rest with her nose a bare couple of feet short of the opposite side. The two of them surveyed her for some moments. Steve pointed to a ragged hole, some five or six inches across, about halfway along the embedded section. It had a nasty significance that caused Gerald to nod sombrely.

He shuffled to the ship, and on to its curving side. He found the airlock on the top, as it lay in the Celestis, and tried the winding key. He pulled it out again.  “Calling you, Charles,” he said. “No identifying marks on the derelict. She’s not space-built — that is, she could be used in atmosphere. Oldish pattern — well, must be — she’s pre the standardization of winding keys, so that takes us back a bit. Maximum external diameter, say, twelve feet. Length unknown— can’t say how much after part there was before it was knocked off. She’s been holed forward, too. Looks like a small meteorite, about five inches. At speed, I’d say. Just a minute…Yes, clean through and out, with a pretty small exit hole. Can’t open the airlock without making a new key. Quicker to cut our way in. Over!”

He shuffled back and played his light through the small meteor hole. His helmet prevented him getting his face close enough to see anything but a small part of the opposite wall, with a corresponding hole in it. “Easiest way is to enlarge this, Steve,” he suggested.

The engineer nodded. He brought his cutter to bear, switched it on and began to carve from the edge of the hole. “Not much good. Ticker,” came the voice from the moon. “The bit you gave could apply to any one of four ships.”

“Patience, dear Charles, while Steve does his bit of fancywork with the cutter,” Troon told him.

It took twenty minutes to complete the cut through the double hull. Steve switched off, gave a tug with his left hand, and the joined, inner and outer, circles of metal floated away. “Celestis calling moon. I am about to go into the derelict, Charles. Keep open,” Troon said.

He bent down, took hold of the sides of the cut, kicked his magnetic soles free of contact, and gave a light pull which took him floating head-first through the hole in the manner of an underwater swimmer. Soon his voice came again, with a different tone: “Charles, there are three men in here. All in spacesuits — old-time spacesuits. Two of them are belted on to their bunks. The other one is…Oh. his leg’s gone. The meteorite must have taken it off…There’s a strange — Oh God, it’s his blood frozen into a solid ball!”

After a minute or so he went on: “I’ve found the log. Can’t handle it in these gloves, though. I’ll take it aboard, and let you have particulars. The two fellows on the bunks seem to be quite intact — their suits, I mean. Their helmets have those curved strip-windows so I can’t see much of their faces. Must’ve — That’s odd…Each of them has a sort of little book attached by a wire to the suit fastener. On the cover it has: ‘ Danger — Perigoso ’ in red, and, underneath: ‘Do not remove suit — Read instructions within,’ repeated in Portuguese. Then: ‘Hapson Survival System.’ What would all that mean, Charles? Over!”

While he waited for the reply, Gerald clumsily fingered one of the tag-like books and discovered that it opened concertina-wise, a series of small metal plates hinged together printed on one side in English and on the other in Portuguese. The first leaf carried little print, but what there was, was striking. It ran: “ CAUTION! Do NOT open suit until you have read these instructions or you will KILL the wearer.”

When he had got that far the Duty Officer’s voice came in again: “Hullo, Ticker. I’ve called the Doc. He says do NOT, repeat NOT, touch the two men on any account. Hang on, he’s coming to talk to you. He says the Hapson system was scrapped over thirty years ago — He — oh, here he is ... ”

Another voice came in: “Ticker? Laysall here. Charles tells we you’ve found a couple of Hapsons, undamaged. Please confirm and give circumstances.”

Troon did so. In due course the doctor came back: “Okay. That sounds fine. Now listen carefully. Ticker. From what you say it’s practically certain those two are not dead — yet. They’re — well, they’re in cold storage. That part of the Hapson system was good. You’ll see a kind of boss mounted on the left of the chest. The thing to do in the case of extreme emergency was to slap it good and hard. When you do that it gives a multiple injection. Part of the stuff puts you out. Part of it prevents the building-up in the body of large ice crystals that would damage the tissues. Part of it — oh, well, that’ll do later. The point is that it works practically a hundred percent. You get Nature’s own deep-freeze in Space. And if there’s something to keep off direct radiation from the sun you’ll stay like that until somebody finds you — if anyone ever does. Now I take it that these two have been in the dark in an airless ship which is now in the airless hold of your ship. Is that right?”

“That’s so, Doc. There are the two small meteorite holes, but they would not get direct beams from there.”

“Fine. Then keep ’em just like that. Take care they don’t get warmed. Don’t try anything the instruction sheet says. The point is that though the success of the Hapson freeze is almost sure, the resuscitation isn’t. In fact, it’s very dodgy indeed — a poorer than twenty-five percent chance at best. You get lethal crystal formations building up, for one thing. What I suggest is that you try to get ’em back exactly as they are. Our apparatus here will give them the best chance they can have. Can you do that? ”

Gerald Troon thought for a moment. Then he said: “We don’t want to waste this trip — and that’s what’ll happen if we pull the derelict out of our side to leave a hole we can’t mend. But if we leave her where she is, plugging the hole, we can at least take on a half-load of ore. And if we pack that well in, it’ll help to wedge the derelict in place. So suppose we leave the derelict just as she lies, and the men, too, and seal her up to keep the ore out of her. Would that suit?”

“That should be as good as can be done,” the doctor replied. “But have a look at the two men before you leave them. Make sure they’re secure in their bunks. As long as they are kept in space conditions about the only thing likely to harm them is breaking loose under acceleration and getting damaged.”

“Very well, that’s what we’ll do. Anyway, we’ll not be using any high acceleration the way things are. The other poor fellow will have a space-burial...”

An hour later both Gerald and his companion were back in the Celestis' living-quarters, and the First Officer was starting to manoeuvre for the spiral-in to Psyche. The two got out of their spacesuits. Gerald pulled the derelict’s log from the outside pocket and took it to his bunk. There he fastened the belt and opened the book.

Five minutes later Steve looked across at him from the opposite bunk, with concern. “Anything the matter, Cap’n? You’re looking a bit funny.”

“I’m feeling a bit funny, Steve. That chap we took out and consigned to space, he was Terence Rice, wasn’t he? ”

“That’s what his disc said,” Steve agreed.

“ H’m.” Gerald Troon paused. Then he tapped the book. “This,” he said, “is the log of the Astarte. She sailed from the moon-station third of January 2149 — forty-five years ago — bound for the Asteroid Belt. There was a crew of three: Captain George Montgomery Troon, engineer Luis Gomez, radio-man Terence Rice…

“So, as the unlucky one was Terence Rice, it follows that one of those two back there must be Gomez, and the other — well, he must be George Montgomery Troon, the one who made the Venus landing in 2144. And, incidentally, my grandfather.”

“Well,” said my companion, “ they got them back all right. Gomez was unlucky, though — at least I suppose you’d call it unlucky — anyway, he didn’t come through the resuscitation. George did, of course . . .

“But there’s more to resuscitation than mere revival. There’s a degree of physical shock in any case, and when you’ve been under as long as he had there’s plenty of mental shock, too.  He went under, a youngish man with a young family, he woke up to find himself a great-grandfather; his wife a very old lady who had remarried; his friends gone, or elderly; his two companions in the Astarte dead.

“That was bad enough, but worse still was that he knew all about the Hapson System. He knew that when you go into a deep-freeze the whole metabolism comes quickly to a complete stop. You are, by every known definition and test, dead. Corruption cannot set in, of course, but every vital process has stopped; every single feature which we regard as evidence of life has ceased to exist.”

“So you are dead.”

“So if you believe, as George does, that your psyche, your soul, has independent existence, then it must have left your body when you died.  And how do you get it back? That’s what George wants to know — and that’s why he’s over there now, praying to be told ...”

I leant back in my chair, looking across the Place at the dark opening of the church door. “ You mean to say that young man, that George who was here just now, is the very same George Montgomery Troon who made the first landing on Venus, half a century ago? ” I said.

“He’s the man,” he affirmed.

I shook my head, not for disbelief, but for George’s sake. “What will happen to him? ” I asked.

“God knows,” said my neighbour. “He is getting better; he’s less distressed than he was. And now he’s beginning to show touches of the real Troon obsession to get into space again.

“But what then? ... You can’t ship a Troon as crew. And you can’t have a Captain who might take it into his head to go hunting through Space for his soul. Me, I think I’d rather die just once ...”

Worlds to Barter

1931

Outside the tall laboratory windows the sun shone brightly on the gardens. It was that kind of June morning when one forgets the deficiencies of our civilization and everything seems for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Certainly in the minds of Professor Lestrange and myself there was no suspicion of any untoward occurrence. We had already been working for some three and a half severely practical hours.

Lestrange, in that year 1935, was not unlike the photographs, taken ten years later, which now adorn the physics textbooks. Already, at forty, his most striking characteristics were that broad white forehead where so many mysteries were solved and those piercing eyes which saw so much that was hidden from ordinary men. Already his adaptations and improvements marked him for success though he had made none of those revolutionary discoveries individual enough to be understood and acclaimed by the public.

The time was yet to come when the name of Lestrange would be more familiar than that of Edison had ever been and when his commanding face would peer out from a million printed pages.

The critical moments of our present experiment were approaching. I was attempting to fight down my rising excitement so that no trembling might show in my hands. Lestrange was, to all appearances, as calm as a frozen sea. During his work he preserved the mien of a poker player. Not a hurried movement betrayed any anxiety as in the silence of the long laboratory he tested the last connections and inspected the final adjustments.

“Stand by,” he ordered at length, in an unemotional voice.

As I moved aside, his hand was on the switch. My eyes were fixed upon the intricate apparatus before us. In a few seconds now, the throw of a copper bar would prove whether we faced a marvellous discovery or the symbol of wasted months of labor.

There was a mighty crash behind us.

That noise, so dreaded in our surroundings, hit my taut nerves like a hundred volts. I whirled round. Lestrange’s scientific abstraction was shattered. Slowly his hand left the switch and his mouth dropped open. At any other time the way blank amazement succeeded intelligent concentration might have amused me, but, now, I myself, was too bewildered.

Two thirds of the way up the room, in the middle of what had been a clear floor space, lay a piece of machinery. A few feet from it sprawled the figure of a man. As we stared, the man sat up. He was dressed in a close-fitting black suit of a texture and finish resembling leather and apparently made in one piece. His build was tail and strong and his face, though it bore an expression of confusion at the moment, showed firmness of character.

For a few seconds he gazed about wonderingly, then alarm seized him. His voice was urgent as he addressed us. “Quick,” he said. “Some string. Quick.”

Something in his manner caused me to search my pockets without question. “Here,” I said, holding out a length of packing twine.

He snatched it and turned to the machine behind him. Hurriedly he raised the contraption from its side to a vertical position. More than anything else it seemed to resemble the skeleton framework of a mini ture building using, instead of steel, bright silvery bars which crisscrossed in all directions. Enmeshed in them was a bucket seat before which were arrayed two rows of dials. There was no time for a further examination.

The stranger leaned over the instrument board, adjusted several dials, tied a loop in the end of my bit of string and slipped it over a small lever. He took as many steps away as the length of the string permitted and gave a jerky pull…

There was no machine. Before our startled eyes stood only the stranger, the string dangling from his hand. A sigh of relief broke from his lips as he turned towards us. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I owe you an apology.”

“You do, sir,” replied Lestrange. “I should be pleased to know by what right you intrude.”

“I admit, I have no right. I can plead only what they used to call in the old days, sanctuary. You are Mr. Lestrange — the inventor of the battery? My own name is Lestrange — Jon Lestrange.”

“My name is Lestrange,” the Professor admitted, “but I have invented no battery.”

“Not yet?” said the stranger. “I am earlier than I thought. You must excuse me, my dates were never good.”

There was puzzlement on Lestrange’s face as he replied.  “I do not understand you. No doubt you will explain later. Meanwhile, am I to infer from your name that you claim relationship ? ”

“Certainly we are related, but — er — distantly.”

“The matter must be examined. I cannot pretend ever to have heard of you before. Let me present my assistant, Henry Wright.”

The stranger held out his hand,  “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Wright,” he said with a smile. “Your rescue of Mr. Lestrange was an act of real bravery.”

It was my turn to be puzzled. In all the six years I had known Lestrange he had never been in more danger than anyone who crosses a busy street.

“I see I have made another blunder. Please forgive me,” the man apologized. A change came over his expression. The smile of greeting gave way to a look of anguish. His eyes seemed to plead as he asked:  “Tell me, have you ever, either of you seen or heard of another machine like the one I came on?” We shook our heads. I could recall no invention bearing any resemblance to it.

“There was really no chance, not one in a hundred million,” he said slowly, “I knew it wasn’t possible, but I had to ask.”

His gaze wandered round the room pausing here and there upon apparatus until it came to rest upon the material of our thwarted experiment. His eyes brightened and he took a few steps towards it. Lestrange and I were recovering now from our sense of unreality. Our eyes met and we knew that the same thought was in both our minds. All mystery was ripped from the affair with a jerk — the man was a spy, with the minutest care he was examining the product of our secret months of labor. Lestrange pulled a revolver from a drawer.

“Put your hands up,” he snapped. The other obeyed, a slight smile on his lips.

“I’ve heard that these were troubling times,” he remarked.

“Come over here,” Lestrange ordered, “and tell us just why you are so interested i that experiment.”

The other, who called himself Lestrange, opened his eyes wide in evident surprise. “Surely,” he expostulated, “it is reasonable to show interest in the discovery which changed the face of the world? Besides, I may be mistaken, but it seems slightly different from what I remember. It’s a couple of years since I saw a picture of it, but I have a distinct impression that several of the connections ran differently .... that terminal on the left should be coupled direct to –”

“What on earth are you talking about?” roared Lestrange. “You must be mad. The thing’s only been assembled four days.”

“Oh, Lord,” said the stranger, “I’ve put my foot in it again. I’ll have to try to explain it all to you, but it’s a long story. May I have some food first — I haven’t eaten for twenty-four hours.

CHAPTER 2

The Man From the Future

By the end of the meal the visitor’s status had changed. He was no longer an interloper, but a guest whom we were calling, at his own request, Jon. Somehow in that desultory form of conversation appropriate to the lunch table, we had lost our suspicions though we were no nearer to understanding him. He was curiously ignorant at the same time that he was well informed. His broad outlines of current politics were good, but of the details he seemed to know nothing.

In speaking of well-known characters he appeared to hesitate as though he might commit himself. His knowledge of literature was excellent though occasionally he referred to works of which I had never heard, by authors whose fame was worldwide. My condensed impression was that while he appreciated the high lights of most matters, he was sure of himself only in a few subjects.

“You’ll smoke?” inquired Lestrange as we retired to his comfortable study.

“Tobacco?” asked Jon.

“Of course,” replied the Professor with a touch of surprise, “What else?”

There are many things to smoke where I come from — one has to be careful.”

He settled himself comfortably in a big chair and lit a cigar.

“Now,” he said, “if you can put up with a long tale, I would like to explain this intrusion. Our experiment –” I began.

“Would not be a success in its present form. Believe me, I can tell you where there is a miscalculation.”

I accepted his statement. He seemed to know something of our work. Lestrange, too, nodded agreement.

Jon began: “I think the first thing to be explained is why I chose to thrust my company upon you rather than upon anyone else. Perhaps the first reason is our relationship and the second that my studies have informed me that you. Professor, have probably a more open mind and a greater grasp of possibilities than any man now living.”

“This relationship?

“Our family has been proud of its direct descent from you and your wife, Joy.”

Lestrange and I looked at one another. Now there was no doubt that the man was off the rails somewhere. “But I’m not married, I –”

“Please let me go my own way. It is a difficult situation, but I hope I shall convince you. Very few men can have had the chance of convincing their great-great-great grandfathers of anything. I am now an anachronism. You see, I was born in the year A.D. 2108, — or should it be, I shall be born in 2108? — and I am — or will be a refugee from the twenty-second century. I assure you that you will be married shortly, but I can’t remember when — I think I told you 1 was bad at dates.

“It will probably be easier for you if I tell the story in the past tense. Certainly it is a past life for me. You saw me burn my bridges when I tied the string to that machine. Of the nature of time, we of the twenty-second century knew little more than you of the twentieth. Habit of thought still caused us still to think of it in terms of progression along a straight line. Though we were aware, of course, that this was inaccurate, yet for all practical purposes it served us as well as it had served the world for thousands of years before.

“Because I am here now, time is somehow folded or circular so that it is all co-existent, or non-existent. But of the working principle of that machine which brought me here, I am as ignorant as you. I set the dials, pulled the lever — and there was your laboratory. I don’t risk keeping the thing to examine it. It’s even betting that the owners had some way of tracing it and that was not a risk worth taking.

“The world I was living in was not all you twentieth century men expected. It would have disappointed Wells and his fellow prophets to have had a true vision of 2135. We were on another swing of the pendulum. Scientific progress in the sense of physics, chemistry and engineering had slowed its advance to a minimum while the world caught up and readjusted. By the end of the twentieth century science was so far advanced that civilization was becoming seriously lopsided so that nature tended to restore the balance. Even today I expect you can begin to see how large-scale production has begun to upset politics and social conditions which were designed to cope with a simpler way of life. It is making war no longer the solution of difficulties, it is uprooting the old order of things, but not reorganizing.

“So you will see that I come from a world in which Mr. Wells’ ‘Sleeper’ might awake, but from an age which had spent the previous century in improving its institutions rather than its machines. Since the year 2000 the Lestrange battery, of which you heard me speak, had been almost the only driving agent for machinery. In 2000, Mr. Lestrange, the internal combustion engine will have passed away. The whole world’s trains, ships, planes, radios, cranes, everything save the most ponderous machines will be depending upon your discovery.

“It is strange to tell a man of his results before the experiment has been made. Nevertheless, I assure you that your little storage battery is going to have a greater effect upon the whole world than any other single invention in the history of mankind. Even the machine which brought me here depended upon a modified form of your battery to carry it across half a million years.”

“But you said — ”

“Oh, yes, I have taken only a little local trip on it. A mere jaunt of a couple of centuries.”

The Coming of the Menace

“Looking back, I can see that the first sign of the crisis we were to face occurred about a year ago — to me — in the summer of 2134. An account was published by newspapers and radio of the derailing of a train. (It was still more economical for heavy, imperishable goods to be carried by rail.) An investigation of the accident, so far from clearing up the reason, had obscured it.

Among the debris was found the crooked frame of what we later learned to call a ‘time traveller.’ Attention was first attracted to the silvery bars by their strength. Though the joints of the structure had been strained by the impact, rods, a quarter of an inch thick, were found to be supporting tons of wreckage without a bend. This unknown, silvery metal itself set a problem, but a greater puzzle was the body found lying near the track.

There could be no doubt that the corpse was human, though to us whose standards were still those of ancient Greece, the thing appeared a travesty. It must have stood about five feet. The head had twice the volume of ours though the enlargement was mainly frontal. The neck was thickened in order to support the weight until the shoulders barely projected. Puny arms ended in small hands of which no finger carried a nail and none was longer than two inches.

Each foot was just a pad showing no articulation of the toes. When the dissectors got to work on the body, they noticed many other curious malformations such as abbreviated intestines, atrophied aural system and absence of teeth.

Speculation ran rife. Everyone made the creature’s origin a sort of guessing game. It was suggested that the thing was a natural freak, a product of vivisectional experiment, a sensational hoax, an attempt at artificial creation and a dozen other things all equally wide of the mark. The only explanation which attempted to account for the machine was offered by an ingenious gentleman who claimed that the body was that of an interplanetary explorer who had selected a singularly unfortunate spot for his landing. It was curtly pointed out that a metal framework is not the best protection against a vacuum. It nevertheless transpired later that the only thing seriously wrong about this explanation was the inclusion of the word ‘interplanetary.’

As the controversy began to cool, it suddenly received fresh fuel from the finding of a similar body in a coastal rock pool. The boy who reported it said that there had been a shiny machine near, but when he touched a lever, it had disappeared. Again the crop of surmise sprouted. Every suggestion which could be made, was made except the right one — that the people of 2134 had gazed on the bodies of their own remote descendants. Could we have read in the mystery the warning it carried, it would have been useless to us.

Three months ago, the curtain rose on the last act of our drama — only three months.”

Jon paused and looked at us with bitterness in his eyes. ‘Then,” he said, “it was a happy world. A civilization progressing serenely, as it thought, to its appointed goal. Now it is swept away. All time and space are warped, distorted and incomprehensible.

“It was my happiest night. A dream had started its flow towards reality — now Fate has ordained that the dream remains a dream. Somewhere in the intricate tissue of time, Mary may still live, but the dream can never be fulfilled now. Across that evening, which surely was made for lovers to discuss their future, clashed the voice of our doom. Over the whole broadcast belt in all the world those unemotional tones were heard.

“‘People of the Twenty-Second Century,’ the voice began. ‘We of the 500022nd century offer peace. We come from a period in the world’s history which holds no hope for us. We have conquered time that we may gain the Earth. We offer two kinds of peace, one is elimination, the other, submission to our will.’

“‘We are not cruel. We do not wish to kill you, our ancestors. Instead, we give transportation — you will exchange your world for ours. We will carry you across the gulf of half a million years to a world in which you, a short-lived race, will be well suited as will your sons and your sons’ sons. For us who count our years by thousands as you count by tens, the end is too near. We have broken through time that we may continue our work. Prepare yourselves and your possessions that you may be ready for the time and places we shall appoint.’

“Neither Mary nor I knew what to make of it — indeed, we heard it only subconsciously. Tomorrow would explain. Tonight we had more important matters to discuss.

“The next day did not explain; it complicated. Where did the voice originate? How had it compassed all wavelengths? How was it of equal strength at antipodes? Why did no picture of the speaker come through on the television screens? It caused a vague uneasiness. Though no one understood nor took much interest in the message itself, the curious form of transmission was disturbing to a world unused to new inventions.

‘The general attitude to science had resulted in the feeling that things were very well as they stood and that tamperers should be put down with a firm hand. Even the type who immediately attributes the incomprehensible to a form of practical joke felt that easy solution to be inadequate. The mass of the people wondered unintelligently suggesting hazily that ‘something ought to be done about it. Governments officially disregarded it and privately did not know what to make of it.

“A few days later, came the second worldwide call. Mary and I were sitting at the open window when the voice made us jump round.

“‘But I shut the radio off,’ said Mary by surprise.

“I crossed the room and inspected the switches. Undoubtedly they were out — there might be a short somewhere. I pulled the leads from the speaker and then stared at the thing in amazement, because the voice still continued. ‘ — seems in view of the fact that no preparations have been made, that you have not understood our intentions.’

“It was uncanny. I picked up the speaker and carried it across the room. I know a few tricks to make an unattached speaker work, but none of them was being used here. The voice went on: ‘ — not our wish to hurt anyone, but such as do not accede to our demands must be eliminated. It is suggested that for the purpose of convincing yourselves that this is no empty threat, a committee will be appointed to visit us and report its findings to the world. You will be convinced that obedience to our will is the only course not leading to elimination. This committee will gather at the Paris Air Station whence we will provide a means of travel one week from today at exactly this hour.’

“I looked at Mary and she at me. There was trouble in our eyes. There was something behind that unemotional voice which told us that this affair was far from a practical joke. Feeling, not reason, told us it was serious.

“‘I am going on that committee,’ I said at last. ‘Somehow or other I’ll join it and find out what’s at the bottom of all this!”

“Mary nodded. ‘Good, Jon, that’s like you,’ she approved. Then a little frown appeared. ‘You don’t think it’s dangerous?’

“‘Not a bit,’ I assured her. ‘There’d be no point in assembling a committee just to kill its members — or ‘eliminate’ them, as the voice puts it. They might just as well start ‘eliminating’ right away. No, I think whoever they are, they’re on the square and though the whole show sounds insane, there’s something pretty big behind it.’

CHAPTER 3

A Mysterious Adventure

Far below we had seen the coast of France slip away from beneath our strange craft. Now, through the thick glass windows, the blue waves of the Mediterranean twinkled at us. Around me, as I gazed down, buzzed the tentative suggestion of a puzzled committee.

“Such influence as I possessed had been exerted with successful results. A large air liner had carried me rapidly from home to drop our gliding tender at Le Bourget, the Paris airport. There I had found a group awaiting the craft promised by the radio voice. It was a cosmopolitan collection of Americans, Germans, English, French, Japanese, Chinese, Indian and most other nationalities.

“Not one of them officially represented his government. The rulers assumed an ignorance of the ultimatum, nevertheless they had assisted brilliant men to attend. The unknown had managed to infuse into his short speeches some quality which attracted many intellectuals. I had left myself a narrow margin, because within an hour of my arrival our craft was sighted. At a great height the watchers saw a silver cylinder hurling itself towards us. At that moment, I believe, some began to realize the possibility of a menace. All eyes gazed up.

“Only random guesses as to its size could be made at such a distance, but as it drew nearer we judged it to be about equal to one of our larger airships. Built of silvery metal, it tapered at each end. Along the sides there ran rows of windows. Nothing more was to be seen, it gave no clue to the manner of its propulsion.

“Suddenly from ail the loudspeakers both in the control tower and around the ground snapped the one word: ‘Landing.’

“The ground crew used for the lighter-than-air machines hurriedly assembled and then found that there was nothing for them to do. Down and down the great cylinder dropped to land as lightly as a leaf.

“’The committee will come aboard,’ said the voice we were beginning to know so well.

“Simultaneously sections of the hull opened outwards, the hinges at the bottom so that the doors themselves formed ramps. For a moment we looked at one another in hesitation, then we stepped forward as though by common consent. There was no one to welcome us on board. Into a great saloon — seemingly the full length of the ship— we flocked. With a click the doors closed and we were off to heaven knew where. Thousands of feet above the ordinary traffic levels we turned and sped to the south. After the first surprise of departure had worn off, we found our tongues again. It seemed as though most of us found them at the same moment.

“‘I do not like this affair, not at all, no,’ said a little Frenchman whom I recognized as M. Duvain of the French Air Roads. “‘It is all too mysterious. Are we children that they make to us the effect of the stage thrill? It is a bad begin, such nonsense, for the serious investigation, no?’

“‘Damn ridiculous, the whole thing,’ replied Sir Henry Deen, standing near. ‘Silly scare by some jokers in my opinion. However, they're in for it now, we’ll soon show ’em what’s what.’

“The Frenchman nodded his agreement. ‘And you, m’sieur,’ he said turning to me. ‘Do you not think it is as an insult to treat a so distinguished party as a flock of the sheep? No reception, no speeches.’

“‘If it is a practical joke,’ I suggested, ‘you don’t want to be made more of a fool, do you?’

“’Then you, too, think that it may be a practical joke?’ asked Sir Henry.

“I informed him that I had come to observe and to draw conclusions from those observations. I had no intention of muddling myself by prejudice nor of building theories without foundation. Not a polite answer, but the pair irritated me.

“‘The desert,’ shouted someone. I turned back to the window and saw that we were heading over miles of rolling sands towards the heart of the Sahara.

Three quarters of an hour later, the familiar voice gave its laconic ‘Landing’. Below us lay a building. It was shorter than the craft we were in, some three hundred feet by one hundred and fifty and rising about sixty. The whole place was entirely constructed of the silvery metal. The ship settled without a jar. The doors fell open and we walked out to find ourselves face to face with a seamless, shining wall in which one patch of darkness framed a waiting figure.

“Exclamations of surprise rose from the party. There can hardly have been one of us who did not realize in that moment that we now faced a living replica of those two bodies which had puzzled the medical world. The same massive neck supported the same front-heavy head from which two intelligent eyes examined us. For clothing he wore nothing but a brown, shapeless tunic and a pair of soft boots. As we stared, a voice commanded us to follow, but the dwarf’s lips showed no movement.

“We passed into a large hall lit by some sourceless diffused radiance. In rows of chairs we seated ourselves as if for a lecture. The five-foot figure took a chair in front of us. It was curious that in facing the man I felt none of the distaste one has for an abnormality. It became forgotten that by our standards he was stunted, malformed, hairless, toothless and deaf. He was of another race — no more abnormal than a Pygmy or a Tibetan. He addressed us, but still no movement broke his lips.

“‘People of the Twenty-Second Century,’ he formally began, ‘you are evidently less advanced than we had anticipated. So far, it would appear that you do not accept our offer of transportation, but neither do you reject it — you completely fail to understand it. You must therefore be treated like children to some simple demonstrations of our power. First, you shall see the world we offer.’

“Upon the wall behind him a scene ‘faded in’. Not like a picture, but rather as if we gazed at a real if fantastic countryside. A level plain stretched away to the distant mountains. In the foreground stood buildings; a city of gleaming metal, each structure beautiful in line and proportion, but none rising higher than two or three floors.

“‘The town of Cyp,’ said the voice. ‘It stands on the bottom of the old Mediterranean Sea close by Mount Cyprus. You will notice that it is low built. This is necessary as the air at such high altitudes is rarefied. On the Atlantic or Pacific beds’ — here the scene changed — ‘the towns are loftier since the atmosphere remains dense at such depths. Though the oceans have dried, it is no barren world. The great deeps still contain enough water and will do so for some hundreds of years. After that is gone, there are the machines.’

“A gloomy looking lake flashed before us. Deep in its darkness was a reflected glimmer of the red ball of fire above. ‘The sun is getting old,’ said the voice. ‘Slowly he is dying as he must, but there is a long time yet before his end.’

A Confusion of Time

“The view began to chase view rapidly across the screen. The voice went on: ‘All this is what we offer in exchange for your world. Buildings which will still be standing proudly when the Earth has become cosmic rubbish as the moon. Machines to make food, supplement air, create warmth and produce water, all are waiting for you. Machines which are proof against wear; proof against breakdown; wheels which will go on turning when the untenanted world snuffs out the last smouldering fragment of her fiery life.

“‘Though much of it will defy your minds, you will have all the accumulation of wisdom and invention that the wit of man has produced since he began — all save one thing — the secret of time, that is our safeguard which even we must use with care lest order become chaos.’

“Still the scenes flashed and faded before us. Mighty machines, beautiful cities, intricate flowers, limitless plains, vast halls, huge flying cylinders, a panorama of a world shown to us half a million years before it should exist.

“Most of us were dazed, but we did not doubt. Conviction that this was the truth came not entirely from the voice, nor yet entirely from the pictures, but from some power which seemed to accompany both. In the presence of the dwarf the fantastic ceased to be fantastic and any thought of bluff  had long been banished. The case was stated with plain force. He had made us feel that the plan was as feasible as for two nations to change territories — as feasible and as inconceivable.

“That our population could, if it chose, move half a million years, we had no doubt. But that it would not so choose, we were certain. If the invaders thought that they had but to say the word and we would relinquish our healthy middle-aged world for one tottering on the brink of senility, they could not know much of our stubbornness.

“The tall Professor Toone of Harvard rose from his seat. ‘On behalf of all of us, I want to know the reason for this plan,’ he said. ‘You appear to offer us much — what do you gain that we lose?’

“‘You lose,’ came the reply, ‘nothing but familiar surroundings — we offer better surroundings.’

“‘But,’ objected someone, ‘what about our children? Several generations are safe you say, but you condemn the rest to extinction?’

“‘Some, but not all. You ensure for the others an infinite future (if you understand such a term) — that is the object of the plan,’

“‘But—’

“‘Do you not yet realize that we are your descendants — the descendants of your children? We are the race your stock has bred and, though we have climbed far, the end is too near for us. Were we to stay in our age we should die when the Earth died? Instead we will take the more youthful Earth, because our need is the greater. From it we will climb to infinity as life climbed from the sea to the land. We, your children, approach the closer to our destiny. It was not meant that life should cease with the Earth — evolution was delayed. Do you understand?’

“‘Hanged if I do,’ murmured the man next to me. ‘What’s he getting at? Is it religion?’

“I did not answer him. I was trying to understand. The speech had been far longer than the repetition I have given you. Much of it I still cannot grasp. The vista was too big, the muddle of time too involved, but I thought I had the main drift. The next speaker almost voiced one of the questions which troubled me though his manner was facetious. He was an Englishman whose voice sounded tired as he asked: “‘Am I to understand that though we are your ancestors, you are likely to become your own ancestors?’

“‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘and no.’

The Englishman looked helplessly around. “‘I give up,’ he announced in tones even more tired than before.

“‘You cannot understand that until you know the nature of time,’ was the reply. ‘While you continue to imagine time in terms of progression, you put more stumbling blocks before you than did ever the flat-earth theorists.’

“Professor Toone arose again to put a question. I cannot remember what it was for at that point the discussion started to leave me behind. Voices went on wriggling into an abstruseness beyond my mental grasp. It was a kind of knock out contest — the survival of the mentally fittest. When Sir Henry Deen rose to his feet a long time later there can only have been two or three of the company who retained any pretensions to following the slender thread of explanation. He broke the spell. ‘Can we be shown something of your works, something concrete upon which we can report? So far we have done nothing which will profit either you or those who sent us. The public we represent will scarcely be impressed by hearing merely of a philosophical discussion which most of us have failed to follow. Any intimation we could give them of the forms of armament upon which you rely to carry out this plan would be vastly more impressive than an unlimited amount of discussion.’

“‘You shall look around our building, though there is little to see. In the matter of armament, we must disappoint you.’

“Sir Henry grunted. ‘Intending to keep that secret, eh? Very sensible too, from your point of view, but if you could give a demonstration of your weapons’ power… ’

“‘You mistake us,’ the voice reproved. ‘We cannot show armament because we have none.’

“‘Ha. Then the whole thing is a piece of humbug — a bluff. I had suspected so from the beginning. You think that by tricks –’

“‘Again you do not understand. Why should we have any need of those guns and shells which are, after all, merely the extension of the stone-age man’s sling and throwing flint? Intellect has no use for such uncertain toys— shells which may kill one man or one hundred men. We wish to kill no one.’

“Sir Henry snorted again to show his contempt for such an attitude (or perhaps to be on the safe side in the event of this proving itself an extension of the bluff). There was a pause during which several more dwarfs entered and approached our instructor in a manner which revealed them as inferiors. It was explained that we should be shown around the building in parties.

“‘It’s a strange thing,’ said my neighbour as we rose, ‘but did you notice that the old boy never opened his mouth all the while he talked to us — nor has this one.’ He nodded towards the back of our guide.

“‘Also, we know they can’t hear, yet they understand everything we say. Rum, I call it, just you watch this fellow now.’

“The dwarf strode straight at the metal wall and a space appeared before him. “‘Nothing odd about that,’ I said. ‘I know plenty of doors at home which open when you tread on the mat.’

“‘No, it’s not that. You watch next time. That bit of wall neither swung back nor slid — it just disappeared. Same thing happened when we first came in,’

CHAPTER 4

A Battle of Wills

“The guide was frankly contemptuous. His was the manner of a major-domo taking the lapdog for a walk. He threw out occasional curt references to the objects we passed. These machines were water producers, those, food makers. One and all were equally mysterious to most of us. We trailed blankly along gaping as vacantly as any savage at his first radio. Perhaps the dwarf was justified in his contempt, for these machines, unlike the ‘travellers,’ did not use Lestrange batteries and the source of power was to us as obscure as the methods of operation were unintelligible.

“At length we reached a large hall which at first glance seemed to be a jumble of birdcages. ‘Travelling machines,’ came abruptly from the guide.

“We approached them and he became so informative over what we guessed to be a recent invention that contempt was momentarily forgotten. One of the two rows of dials, he explained, determined the amount of time to be traveled. It contained seven indicators ranging from an hour to ten thousand years. The lower row regulated the position.

“A certain amount of interaction between the two rows was necessary. For one thing, it prevented the machine from maintaining its position in space without reference to the motion of the earth. Within the limits set by this interaction, position could be calculated almost to a foot.

“‘What’s that for? ’ asked one of the party reaching towards a lever. As he lifted his hand, the dwarf saw him and he reeled back, crashing to the floor. Afterwards, he told us that it had felt like a tremendous blow between the eyes.

“‘What did I tell you?’ said my neighbour excitedly, ‘Force of mind, that’s what these people use; that’s why their hands are vestigial. Pure willpower.’

“The dwarf seemed to hear him since he looked towards us. ‘I am surprised,’ he sneered, ‘that you even know of such a thing as willpower. I judged by your reflexes that you had only instincts.’

“‘You are insulting,’ said a voice behind me.

“‘There are thirty of you,’ he continued to sneer. ‘Let us see if your combined wills assist you against mine.’

“We stared around us in amazement. The walls had gone, the machines, too, everything. There was nothing to be seen in any direction except unbroken desert. ‘Playin’ Aladdin’s lamp tricks,’ growled my neighbour, bending down to grasp a handful of sand.

“The dwarf almost smiled at our confusion. ‘You know perfectly well where you are,’ he said. ‘But all you can see or feel is the open desert. That’s how much all your wills are worth against mine. Try now to see whether you can bring the walls around you again.’

“I suspect that it was the mind of that remarkable man Professor Toone which tipped the scales in our favour. For a moment we felt the heat still beating up from the sand, then the shadowy outlines of the hall began to reform. Slowly from mistiness they grew more substantial, for a few seconds they began to fade again, then, in a flash, we were back indoors. The dwarf lay on the floor before us, panting.

“‘Lord,’ said someone, ‘played out like he’s run ten miles — anyway, we’ve got some wills between us.’

“When I had been home three days I began to understand Professor Toone’s decision that the committee should meet and discuss in Paris before scattering to report. He made the suggestion during the flight back to Le Bourget. The alacrity of acceptance was such as to make one suspect that the delegates were so uncertain of what their reports should contain that they were eager for a few pointers. Toone by common consent opened the proceedings. ‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘each of us will be called upon in a few days to give his comments upon the results of our investigation. The questions we shall be asked will appear ridiculous in the light of our experience, but, they will not seem so ridiculous to us as will our answers to our governments. They will say: ‘What form of power supported and propelled the flyer you traveled in?’ We shall reply that we have no idea. They will be irritated.

“‘They will ask: ‘How many of these dwarfs are there?’ We shall have to reply that we saw at most about fifty. They will smile. This will be followed up with: ‘What kind of armament?’ — We saw none and have reason to believe that they possess none. ‘How many flyers?’ — We saw only one, ‘What is their silvery metal?’ — We do not know.

“‘So it will go on until with their amusement and their contempt we shall be in danger of becoming a laughingstock. If that is allowed to occur, we have no hope of any warning we may give being regarded as anything but further embroidery to a great joke. Seldom, gentlemen, can any committee of investigation have produced less concrete results. Had we found great guns, strange rays, new gases, they would have listened to us — instead, we have found a menace of pure force beside which such weapons would be childish.

“‘We have found this, I say, but because we cannot comprehend it, we cannot describe it. The grand total of our observation is one strange ship, one equally strange building, a few dwarfs, a number of machines reputed to be time travellers, other unknown machinery and what our critics will call a cinematograph show — that is all we saw. We can’t tell them what we felt. This, then, is the problem confronting us: How can we convey to a skeptical world the sensation we received of potential force?

“‘The people must know of that seething mental battery, that surging power of will beside which we are scarcely reasoning creatures — they must know, and they must believe. The burden of their conviction lies upon us.’

Fruitless Efforts

“The conference had continued for two days. Two wasted days they seemed to me. Speeches drifted more and more from the main issue and steadily tended to confine themselves to suggestions for combating the menace. Again and again Professor Toone dragged the members back from their talk of tactics by his insistence that the governments must first be convinced of the need for tactics. No solution could be suggested short of the governments themselves experiencing our sensations.

“Back home, I was sitting in a palatial office trying to convince a bored official who felt that his time was being wasted. I was growing irritated.  ‘Can’t you think,’ I demanded, ‘in any terms but guns and gases?’

“‘They might have ignition rays,’ he assented.

“I groaned. ‘Of course they might have, but can’t you see what I’m getting at? They simply haven’t been developing along those physical lines.’

“‘They seem to have developed physically a great deal if your description is accurate.’

“‘Their present form was probably reached tens of thousands of years ago — to them, that is. It’s their minds which have progressed since then — if only you could meet them, you’d begin to feel that terrifying force. Man alive, it was as much as thirty of us, most of them brilliant men, could do to overthrow the mental suggestion of one of their inferior servants.’

“The official smiled.”

“‘And their flyer. Do you realize that there was no one except the committee on board – no pilot, no crew? The whole blasted thing was worked by a telepathic control of some kind.’

“‘We also have radio control,’ he reminded me gently.

“I began to admit to myself what I had known from the first — that it was hopeless. But still I hammered on. ‘You don’t realize what they are working for. We speculate mildly about the future of mind — they know its future. They are out for discarnate intelligence. They know that, given time, they can achieve it.’

“‘Nonsense, there can’t be a mind without a brain.’

“‘Why not? The brain is only the organ of the mind, a sort of central control for the other organs. Already they can project their minds, but they still have to use the body for a base for operations.’

“‘You seriously expect me to believe that?’

“‘There’s proof of it. Did you hear the voice which issued their ultimatum?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘And it came from the loudspeaker?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Then perhaps it will surprise you to know that in London they took a record of one of the messages. When they put it on the machine, not a sound was to be heard — the thing was blank. Those messages never came out of the loudspeaker, but the dwarfs, for some reason of their own, made you think — made us all think that they did.’

“In the evening when I met Mary, I was X tired and discouraged. Nothing I had been able to say had even dented that wall of mechanical materialism. My most trenchant arguments had either bounced off or missed fire. The final blow had been when, in the middle of my efforts to convey my impressions of mental strength, he had asked with the air of one who draws the conversation back to realities, whether I thought that they might have tanks hidden in the neighbourhood.

“‘It isn’t,’ I said to Mary, ‘for or against acceptance of the dwarfs’ terms, — as for that, I only know that I, personally, am going to no dying world, — my job was to try to make the fools realize that they really were terms. For two and a half hours I tried to tell that smug know-all that an overwhelming danger threatens him, the nation and the whole world — I made just as much impression as I would throwing snowballs at a pyramid.’

“Mary gazed at me intently. ‘It’s very difficult to grasp,’ she said. ‘Even yet I don’t really understand what this great danger is if they haven’t got any weapons.’

“‘That’s the devil of it. They may even have some weapons in the way you mean — though I don’t think so, — but that is nothing to do with their strength. Oh, if I could only convey that sensation which scared us all, something might be possible, but I’m utterly incompetent. If you asked a horse to explain the activities of men, he’d be no more at sea than I am over this business.’

“‘But, dear, if there are so few of them, why should they want the whole world? Surely they could make a sort of colony somewhere?’

“‘I don’t know, but I think this is a sort of advance guard — supervisors of emigration and immigration; we don’t even know how many of them there are. Probably the world couldn’t support both populations at once so that the only way is a complete change over. Half the worry about this affair is that we know nothing of the details — we’re just expected to do as we’re told.’

“Mary bent towards me and tried to smooth out the furrows of anxiety. ‘Darling,’ she said firmly, ‘you must slop worrying about it. Put it all away for the present.’

“She took my arm and we strolled out to the terrace. A soft breeze pressed the trees so that they swayed gently. Slips of torn cloud were gliding across the moon. Far, far away we could see the misty outline of the hills. ‘It’s all so beautiful,’ she whispered, her eyes on the dim distance. ‘I think it makes me afraid.’

“My arm went round her. ‘Our lovely world,’ said my voice. But how long ours? asked my mind.

CHAPTER 5

A World at Bay

“A month later, hell was loose. Our civilization was broken up. The herd instinct which built it had given way. All the climbing from individuals to groups, from groups to clans, from clans to nations meant nothing to men who roamed the dead cities as their ancestors had prowled the jungles. The veneer was off. All our vaunted progress had taken us no higher than the first rung of the ladder. That rung broke and we were back where we started.

“The dwarfs had stolen our power. They had hit us literally where we lived. All the Lestrange batteries went dead and with them our world stopped. Save in the great tide-stations which still made power for the useless batteries, not a wheel could turn. It was chaos.

“Planes fluttered from the skies, ships wallowed in the seas, airships floated away on the winds, factories were silent, elevators dropped, trains were checked, ovens cooled, radios died, cars were pulled up and every light failed.

“It was nine o’clock at night when the great stoppage came and it was the darkness which caused the panic. Across the world in the sunlight they cannot have had that catastrophic madness in which crowds rushed, milled and swirled without reason, without object. How it was done nobody knew. Perhaps it was a ray against which they shielded their travellers. Perhaps — but what is the use of speculating on the possibilities of such minds?

“I was in the city, the roar of the city’s life rose through my open windows. One moment, busy hubbub and bright lights, the next, silence and darkness. I stumbled across the room and looked out into a pitchy gulf which might have led to the bowels of the Earth, so quiet — a quiet which seemed to wait — a quiet during which men died. During which cages dropped down mines, divers got no more air, loads fell from cranes, acrobats missed trapezes, surgeons cut too deep.

“From below there came a scream and as if at that signal a murmur rose. The voice of the crowd growing louder and louder, wilder and wilder. My eyes could see nothing, but my mind saw devilish things happening in that street. Bodies crushing at the walls, ribs cracking under pressure, eyes bursting from their sockets, lungs labeling for air, corpses trampled under foot and corpses unable to fall, while above it all rose now the senseless roar of that wild beast, the mob, destroying itself.

“I moved back and sought the telephone only to find it as dead as the lights. It was not until then that the full meaning of the crisis came to me. It had seemed an unusual failure of current only, now I realized in a flash what it meant and knew it for the dwarfs’ masterstroke. They had been roused from their patience at last. Of the several messages sent out on their worldwide system since our useless investigation, I had heard only one. It was almost pleading in tone.

“‘Our destinies must be worked out, nothing shall stop that. We wish you no harm — we are not butchers — but you are leaving us no alternative.’ The voice went on to appoint ‘stations’ for transportation. In the northern plains of Italy; North and South France, near Johannesburg, South Africa; Salisbury Plain in England; in Florida, California and Illinois for the United States and so on to the number of sixty or more.

“‘I wonder,’ said one of my companions, ‘why they always make these announcements in English?’

“Another listener, a blond young man looked at us. ‘You will excuse?’ he said. ‘But I have just heard them use perfect German, not English.’

‘‘I attempted to explain that the messages were conveyed directly to their minds without the use of sound. That they merely thought they heard. After this, each obviously considered me more of a fool than he thought the other.

“In the set days crowds flocked to the starting places. Except for a few cranks such as daily expect the end of the world, nobody save the cameramen went from any motive than idle curiosity. A holiday spirit was abroad. There was the prospect of a free show of some sort and the likelihood of a good laugh at the dwarfs’ expense. The cameramen were the only survivors.

“All the world saw the films of what occurred. It was announced that the cinematographers had been allowed to return in order that we might see the simplicity with which transportation was effected and thereby lose any nervousness restraining us. The particular version I witnessed was taken at one of the American stations and was, I was told, typical of all. Around a structure resembling an enormously enlarged ‘time traveller’ stood a cordon of police and guards.. The space enclosed was about two hundred yards square. Reliable witnesses stated that a couple of hours earlier there had been no sign of the glittering framework with the result that among the majority — still incredulous of the idea of time traveling — there was a tendency to regard it as a magical piece of construction work rather than accept the fact that it had just made the journey across five hundred thousand years.

“Beyond the cordon the sightseers parked their cars and got out to examine the machine with awe. Whatever they had expected in their inmost minds, it was not this huge silver cage; they were impressed in spite of themselves. The murmur of the crowd as we heard it through the speakers seemed to betray a nervous tension, but curiosity backed by a sensation of safety in their numbers kept them waiting for the show to begin.

“Without warning, parts of the enclosure on all four sides fell apart making entrances. A gasp of surprise went up from the house as we saw that the guards whose duty it was to keep the public clear, had stood aside from the gaps. Some of them even motioned the crowd forward.

“Not a sound now came from the speakers. As though in a dream the sightseers trailed slowly into the enclosure. Suggestion? Hypnotism? Heaven knows, but in they flocked solemn faced, vacant-eyed, old men, young men, women and girls alike, even the dogs joined the procession. It was as though some pied piper led the way. Then, when the last had entered, the police and the guards followed.

“In the darkness of the theatre, Mary gripped my arm. ‘Now I begin to understand what you mean by their ‘power’,’ she whispered.

“As the last guard entered, the entrances snapped shut. Simultaneously a few yards from the great ‘transporter’ a dwarf appeared on a one man ‘traveller’. Mary grew tense and another gasp rustled through the audience — it was the first time any of them had looked upon one of those men of the far future. He jumped from his machine and ran towards the enclosed crowd whose apathetic eyes appeared not to notice him.

“In a comer of the transporter we saw for the first time that a small cabin was divided off from the main bulk. We saw him enter it, we saw him turn the dials, we saw his hand upon the lever and— nothing. Nothing before us but the empty plain and a little one-man traveller.

‘The picture continued; there was more to come. For five minutes the audience sat in silence or whispered speculation. Then, as suddenly as it had gone, the machine was back again, but except for the dwarf in his cabin, it was empty.

A World Aroused

“The world was roused at last. No type was heavy enough for the newspapers, no terms weighty enough for the radio announcers. The casualties (as they were determined to call them) at the sixty odd stations came well on towards the 200,000 mark. The old cry went up — something ought to be done. The prestige of governments was at stake. The vermin must be wiped out.

‘The members of the investigation committee were hastily summoned and this time received a better though no more profitable hearing. A stern-faced official faced me across a broad desk. His manner suspected me of complicity, his method savoured of third degree. ‘What we want to know first is, where’s this base of theirs?’

“‘I’ve told you as near as I can. All I know is that we seemed to go south-south-east from the Algerian coast, as far as I could tell by the sun. We went that way for about three hours so if you know the speed of the ship, it ought to give you a rough idea of the district.’

“‘You must’ve seen some landmarks at the height you were.’

“‘Precious lot of landmarks in that desert — and as we didn’t know beforehand where we were likely to be going, nobody happened to have a pocket map of the Sahara on him.’

“‘No need to get fresh. We’ve got to get a line on this business somehow, and it’ll be belter for you if you help us all you know how.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ll tell you this. If you ever find that base, you’ll have to thank luck — not cross-questioning.’

“‘What’re you gettin’ at?’

“‘Just this. Not one of us has any idea where this place is, or what makes it different from any other place that has a lot of sand, but even if you get there it’s pretty good odds against you seeing the building. Do you seriously think that a gang who hypnotize a crowd of three or four thousand men and women into an overgrown birdcage can’t stop a few pilots from seeing them?’

“The man snorted. ‘When one of our pilots knows where they are — he began.

“‘— then there’ll be one less pilot in the force,’ I finished for him. Of course they got none of the information they wanted from us — we hadn’t it. Even then I had begun to realize that if we knew a whole lot we’d still be as helpless as sheep against men.

“Italian, French, English and German scoured the desert but failed to find a trace and brought home their bombs. A report of the position of the base reached Tripoli. In their hurry, the Italian officers in charge omitted to verify the information. Their rocket shells destroyed a French desert fort. Feelings already ran high against France who was thought in some circles to be in league with the dwarfs. Undoubtedly they were on French territory. A French pilot made matters no better by announcing his destruction of the dwarfs’ cylindrical flyer at approximately the same moment that the Germans reported that one of their airships had been bombed by a French plane. Notes began to pass between countries and the threat of war added fuel to the excitement.

“It was then that someone at the Suez English base made an inventory with the startling result that five days of profitless searching showed twelve English airships and nearly a hundred planes unaccounted for.

“The French, German, Italian and Egyptian authorities investigated and revealed a similar state of affairs in their own air forces. The fate of all those craft remained a mystery. Solo searching over, the desert became less popular with the result that, instead of single machines disappearing, whole flights vanished together.

“It fell to an Italian pilot to do the world the worst possible service with the best possible intentions. He had become separated from his unit and was heading for home in accordance with the regulations that single planes must not be risked, when he saw almost below him the shining building which all the world was searching. Whether his mind was not susceptible to their control (as was found to be the case with a few) or whether they were off their guard, never was known and did not really matter. What did matter was that his five great bombs flashed down together.

“It must have been a rude shock to that pilot when, during his congratulations and celebrations, the voice spoke again. “’People of the Twenty-Second Century,’ it began with usual formality, ‘we appealed to you first as reasoning creatures. You failed to reason. You even failed to understand that if we are not successful, man will count for nothing — he will have lived in vain. Then we treated you as children who must be led — you spoke of it as a tragedy. You described as ‘casualties’ men and women who are now living in the future, not one cell’s life the worse for the journey.

“‘Now you have taught us to know you for savages. Your ridiculous bombs did no harm to our building, but you killed thirty of our men who were outside. Those thirty were worth a thousand of you and you killed them by an action no more reasoned than that of a frightened brute. We shall not kill you in revenge — the art of living is not killing, but we warn you that those who remain here three weeks from now will start to kill one another. For the rest the transporters will be at their stations. Make good use of them.”

“Hundreds of thousands laughed. ‘We’ve killed some of ’em — we’ll beat the lot,’ was their attitude. But other thousands heeded the warning, surging in crowds to the machines.

“Mary and I were of neither party. I suppose it was sentiment which held us. The road to safety was plain, since the dwarfs never lied, yet the call of familiar things was too strong. We were standing by the world we loved till the last. Going down with our civilization.

CHAPTER 6

Nearing the End

“All governments published futile edicts forbidding approach to the transporters. Planes were headed off, trains stopped, roads blocked, but still the crowds swept forward on foot. Infantry and tanks sent to turn the stream, joined it. The authorities reached their wits’ end.

“The English sent rocket shells against the Salisbury Plain station. Hundreds of their own people died. The transporter was scarcely scratched. In California two men finding themselves immune from the dwarfs’ influence, attempted to steal a small-time traveller – they were never seen again. Thereafter the dwarfs arrived in pairs, one to work the transporter while the other guarded their travellers.

“For the full three weeks the huge machines made their two or three journeys a day, but the hundreds of thousands they carried were like a few spoonsful from a full bucket. And now, standing in my dark room, I knew that the end had come. Men and women had started to fight insanely in frenzy of fear. Soon they would become hungry. They would prowl like famished beasts, ready to eat even each other. The dwarfs had thrust our ultimatum upon us. It would not be long now before the multitudes were besieging the only means of escape from a maddened world — the transporters.

“In my mind a plan was growing, a slender chance. First I must get out of this crazy city and find Mary.

“Together we lay in a clump of low bushes. Not far from our hiding place, a line of haggard men and women was struggling towards a transporter. ‘The evacuation of a world,’ I heard Mary murmur.

“Some dragged barrows of possessions, some could barely drag themselves. There was no need now for suggestion to impel the crowds. They were striving their utmost towards those feared or despised machines which had become glittering symbols of rescue. Many staggered from fatigue to fall in their tracks.

“‘If the dwarfs use suggestion to help on the fallen ones — count,’ I said. ‘They won’t need much power and if you keep your mind full it can’t touch you. Fill it up with figures. Multiply and multiply so that there’s room for nothing else. It’s our only safeguard.’

“Luckily there was no test of our concentration. Friends pulled the stragglers up and urged them along the last lap of the journey. At last the transporter was filled. The entrances clicked together. Those who were shut out retired to throw themselves on the ground. They would have to wait for the next load.

“‘Get ready,’ I whispered to Mary as I drew a rocket pistol from my pocket.

“The two small time travellers appeared. One dwarf ran to the transporter; the other sat on guard in his saddle. I reckoned that the big machine would be away in about twenty minutes since it would take that long for the weary crowd to file out. As the first dwarf vanished with the transporter, I drew my aim on the second.

“It is a horrible thing to kill a man who is off his guard, but it was necessary. Merely wounded, he might bring his friends about in a few seconds.

“‘Now,’ I cried. Together we sprang for the travellers as the dead dwarf rolled from his seat. ‘Get on,’ I ordered, setting the dials. I put Mary’s hand on the lever. ‘Pull,’ I said. But, instead, she leaned out and pressed her lips to mine.

“‘I love you,’ she said. She said it as though she knew the end had come. Then her hand flew back to the lever. I shouted to stop her, but it was too late — she had gone.”

Jon paused in his tale. We did not interrupt; the grief in his face held us silent. “Where is she now, I wonder?” he said slowly.

“When she drew back her hands it brushed one of the dials. I had been so careful — worked out the position of each to a hair so that there might be no delay in our coming here. So that we might travel together far away from our world of chaos, far away, too, from the threat of a dying world. One hasty move she made which may have carried her further than the Earth’s death or beyond its birth. She is a castaway somewhere in the jumble of time and space.”

“But you?” asked Lestrange. “How — ?”

“Oh, I jumped on the other machine. The crowd had seen us. A hundred or more of them were pelting across the field. It was as though I had the one lifebelt on a sinking ship. They jumped at me. The traveller rocked as they hit it. It was falling as I pulled the lever — it fell in your laboratory.

“But what’s the good of it all? I’m alone. Belter to have gone on to the end with the people of my time. Why did I come here when I knew she couldn’t be here? If I’d kept the machine, I might have searched— I’d have searched all time to find her.”

A bell on the wall shrilled suddenly. “Quick, Wright,” said Lestrange, jumping from his chair. “The laboratory alarm. Somebody’s spying — take this.”

He handed me a pistol and held one himself. Silently we raced to the laboratory wing and flung back the door. A familiar silver framework glittered at us. Beside it stood a figure clad like our visitor. “Mary, by heaven,” said Jon’s voice behind us.

“Jon, Jon,” the figure cried and ran towards us.

A few moments later Jon Lestrange walked over to the traveller and examined its controls curiously. He looked up with a smile. “Obviously, Mary,” he said, “some patron saint guides your hand. You might have altered the setting by six hundred years or six thousand, but you did only alter it by six hours.”

He turned towards Professor Lestrange. “If you please, great-great-great-grand-father,” he said, “I should like another piece of string.”

The Lost Machine

1932

"Father, here quickly," Joan's voice called down the long corridor.

Dr. Falkner, who was writing, checked himself in mid-sentence at the sound of his daughter's urgency.

"Father," she called again.

"Coming," he shouted as he hastily levered himself out of his easy chair. "This way," he added for the benefit of his two companions.

Joan was standing at the open door of the laboratory. "It's gone," she said.

"What do you mean?" he inquired brusquely as he brushed past her into the room. "Run away?"

"No, not that," Joan's dark curls fell forward as her head shook. "Look there."

He followed the line of her pointing finger to the corner of the room. A pool of liquid metal was seeping into a widening circle. In the middle there rose an elongated, silvery mound which seemed to melt and run even as he looked. Speechlessly he watched the central mass flow out into the surrounding fluid, pushing the edges gradually further and further across the floor.

Then the mound was gone — nothing lay before him but a shapeless spread of glittering silver, like a miniature lake of mercury. For some moments the doctor seemed unable to speak. At length he recovered himself sufficiently to ask hoarsely: "That— that was it?"

Joan nodded. "It was recognizable when I first saw it," she said.

Angrily he turned upon her. "How did it happen? Who did it?" he demanded.

"I don't know," the girl answered, her voice trembling a little as she spoke. "As soon as I got back to the house I came in here just to see that it was all right. It wasn't in the usual corner and as I looked around I caught sight of it over here — melting. I shouted for you as soon as I realized what was happening."

One of the doctor's companions stepped from the background. "This," he inquired, "is — was the machine you were telling us about?" There was a touch of a sneer in his voice as he put the question and indicated the quivering liquid with the toe of one shoe.

"Yes," the doctor admitted slowly. "That was it."

"And, therefore, you can offer no proof of the talk you were handing out to us?" added the other man.

"We've got film records," Joan began tentatively. "They're pretty good..."

The second man brushed her words aside. "Oh, yes?" he asked sarcastically. "I've seen pictures of New York as it's going to look in a couple of hundred years, but that don't mean that anyone went there to take 'em. There's a whole lot of things that can be done with movies," he insinuated.

Joan flushed, but kept silent. The doctor paid no attention. His brief flash of anger had subsided to leave him gazing sadly at the remains before him. "Who can have done it?" he repeated half to himself.

His daughter hesitated for a moment before she suggested: "I think — I think it must have done it itself."

"An accident? — I wonder," murmured the doctor.

"No — no, not quite that," she amended. "I think it was — lonely," the last word came out with a defiant rush.

There was a pause.

"Well, can you beat that?" said one of the others at last. "Lonely — a lonely machine: that's a good one. And I suppose you're trying to feed us that it committed suicide, miss? Well, it wouldn't surprise me – nothing would, after the story your father gave us." He turned on his heel and added to his companion: "Come on. I guess someone'll be turnin' this place into a sanitarium soon — we'd better not be here when it happens."

With a laugh the two went out leaving father and daughter to stare helplessly at the residue of a vanished machine. Eventually Joan sighed and moved away. As she raised her eyes, she became aware of a pile of paper on the corner of a bench. She did not remember how it came to be there and crossed with idle curiosity to examine it. The doctor was aroused from his reverie by the note of excitement in her voice. "Look here, father," she called sharply.

"What's that?" he asked, catching sight of the wad of sheets in her hand. As he came closer he could see that the top one was covered with strange characters. "What on earth…?" he began.

Joan's voice was curt with his stupidity. "Don't you see?" she cried. "It's written this for us."

The doctor brightened for a moment; then the expression of gloom returned to his face. "But how can we…?"

"The thing wasn't a fool — it must have learned enough of our language to put a key in somewhere to all this weird stuff, even if it couldn't write the whole thing in English. Look, this might be it, it looks even stranger than the rest."

Several weeks of hard work followed for Joan in her efforts to decipher the curious document, but she held on with painstaking labor until she was able to lay the complete text before her father. That evening he picked up the pile of typed sheets and read steadily, without interruption, to the end.

Arrival

As we slowed to the end of our journey, Banuff began to show signs of excitement. "Look," he called to me. "The third planet, at last."

I crossed to stand beside him and together we gazed down upon a stranger scene than any other fourth planet eyes have ever seen. Though we were still high above the surface, there was plenty to cause us astonishment.

In place of our own homely red vegetation, we beheld               a brilliant green. The whole land seemed to be covered with it. Anywhere and everywhere it clung and thrived as though it needed no water. On the fourth planet, which the third planet men call Mars, the vegetation grows only in or around the canals, but here we could not even see any canals. The only sign of irrigation was one bright streak of water in the distance, twisting senselessly over the countryside — a symbolic warning of the incredible world we had reached.

Here and there our attention was attracted by outcroppings of various strange rocks amid all this green. Great masses of stone which sent up plumes of black smoke. "The internal fires must be very near the surface of this world," Banuff said, looking doubtfully at the rising vapors.

"See in how many places the smoke breaks out. I should doubt whether it has been possible for animal life to evolve on such a planet. It is possible yet that the ground may be too hot for us — or rather for me."

There was a regret in his tone. The manner in which he voiced the last sentence stirred my sympathy. There are so many disadvantages in human construction which do not occur in us machines, and I knew that he was eager to obtain firsthand knowledge of the third planet. For a long time we gazed in silent speculation at this peculiar, green world. At last Banuff broke the silence. "I think we'll risk a landing there, Zat," he said, indicating a smooth, open space.

"You don't think it might be liquid," I suggested, "it looks curiously level."

"No," he replied, "I suppose it's a kind of close vegetation. Anyway, we can risk it."

A touch on the lever sent the machine sinking rapidly towards a green rectangle, so regular as to suggest the work of sentient creatures. On one of its sides lay a large stone outcrop, riddled with holes and smoking from the top like the rest, while on the other three sides, thick vegetation rose high and swayed in the wind. "An atmosphere which can cause such commotion must be very dense," commented Banuff.

"That rock is peculiarly regular," I said, "and the smoking points are evenly spaced. Do you suppose…” The slight jar of our landing interrupted me.

"Get ready, Zat," Banuff ordered.

I was ready. I opened the inner door and stepped into the airlock. Banuff would have to remain inside until I could find out whether it was possible for him to adjust. Men may have more power of originality than we, and they do possess a greater degree of adaptability than any other form of life, but their limitations are, nevertheless, severe. It might require a deal of ponderous apparatus to enable Banuff to withstand the conditions, but for me, a machine, adaptation was simple. The density of the atmosphere made no difference save slightly to slow my movements. The temperature, within very wide limits, had no effect upon me.

"The gravity will be stronger," Banuff had warned me, "this is a much larger planet than ours." It had been easy to prepare for that by the addition of a fourth pair of legs. Now, as I walked out of the airlock, I was glad of them.

The pull of the planet was immense. After a moment or so of minor adjustment, I passed around our machine to the window where Banuff stood and held up the instruments for him to see. As he read the air pressure meter, the gravity indicator and the gas proportion scale, he shook his head. He might slowly adapt himself partway to the conditions, but an immediate venture was out of the question.

It had been agreed between us that in such an event I should perform the exploration and specimen collecting while he examined the neighborhood from the machine. He waved his arm as a signal and, in response, I set off at a good pace for the surrounding green and brown growths. I looked back as I reached them to see our silvery craft floating slowly up into the air.

A second later, there came a stunning explosion – a wave of sound so strong in this thick atmosphere that it almost shattered my receiving diaphragm. The cause of the disaster must always remain a mystery. I only know that when I looked up, the vessel was nowhere to be seen — only a rain of metal parts dropping to earth all about me.

Cries of alarm came from the large stone outcrop and simultaneously human figures appeared at the lowest of its many openings. They began to run towards the wreck, but my speed was far greater than theirs. They can have made but half the distance while I completed it. As I flashed across, I could see them falter and stop with ludicrous expressions of dismay on their faces. "Lord, did you see that?" cried one of them.

"What the devil was it?" called another.

"Looked like a coffin on legs," somebody said. "Moving some, too."

Flight

Banuff lay in a ring of scattered debris. Gently I raised him on my fore-rods. A very little examination showed that it was useless to attempt any assistance: he was too badly broken. He managed to smile faintly at me and then slid into unconsciousness.

I was sorry. Though Banuff was not of my own kind, yet he was of my own world and on the long trip I had grown to know him well. These humans are so fragile. Some little thing here or there breaks — they stop working and then, in a short time, they are decomposing. Had he been a machine, like myself, I could have mended him, replaced the broken parts and made him as good as new, but with these animal structures one is almost helpless.

I became aware, while I gazed at him, that the crowd of men and women had drawn closer and I began to suffer for the first time from what has been my most severe disability on the third planet — I could not communicate with them.

Their thoughts were understandable, since my sensitive plate was tuned to receive human mental waves, but I could not make myself understood. My language was unintelligible to them, and their minds, either from lack of development or some other cause, were unreceptive of my thought radiations. As they approached, huddled into a group, I made an astonishing discovery — they were afraid of me.

Men afraid of a machine.

It was incomprehensible. Why should they be afraid? Surely man and machine are natural complements – they assist one another. For a moment I thought I must have misread their minds — it was possible that thoughts registered differently on this planet, but it was a possibility I soon dismissed.

There were only two reasons for this apprehension. The one, that they had never seen a machine or, the other, that third planet machines had pursued a line of development inimical to them. I turned to show Banuff lying inert on my fore-rods. Then, slowly, so as not to alarm them, I approached. I laid him down softly on the ground near by and retired a short distance. Experience has taught me that men like their own broken forms to be dealt with by their own kind. Some stepped forward to examine him, the rest held their ground, their eyes fixed upon me.

Banuff's dark coloring appeared to excite them not a little. Their own skins were pallid from lack of ultraviolet rays in their dense atmosphere. "Dead ?" asked one.

"Quite dead," another one nodded. "Curious looking fellow," he continued. "Can't place him ethnologically at all. Just look at the frontal formation of the skull — very odd. And the size of his ears, too, huge. The whole head is abnormally large."

"Never mind him now," one of the group broke in, "he'll keep. That's the thing that puzzles me," he went on, looking in my direction. "What the devil do you suppose it is?" They all turned wondering faces towards me. I stood motionless and waited while they summed me up.

"About six feet long," ran the thoughts of one of them. "Two feet broad and two deep. White metal, might be — (his thought conveyed nothing to me). Four legs to a side, fixed about halfway up — jointed rather like a crab's, so are the arm-like things in front: but all metal. Wonder what the array of instruments and lenses on this end are? Anyhow, whatever kind of power it uses, it seems to have run down now."

Hesitatingly he began to advance.

I tried a word of encouragement.

The whole group froze rigid.

"Did you hear that?" somebody whispered. "It — it spoke."

"Loudspeaker," replied the one who had been making an inventory of me. Suddenly his expression brightened. "I've got it," he cried. "Remote control — a telephony and television machine worked by remote control." So these people did know something of machinery, after all. He was far wrong in his guess, but in my relief I took a step forward.

An explosion roared. Something thudded on my body case and whirred away. I saw that one of the men was pointing a hollow rod at me and I knew that he was about to make another explosion. The first had done no injury but another might crack one of my lenses.

I turned and made top speed for the high, green vegetation. Two or three more bursts roared behind, but nothing touched me. The weapon was very primitive and grossly inaccurate.

Disappointment

For a day and a night I continued on among the hard stemmed growths. For the first time since my making, I was completely out of touch with human control, and my existence seemed meaningless. The humans have a curious force they call ambition. It drives them, and, through them, it drives us. This force which keeps them active, we lack. Perhaps, in time, we machines will acquire it. Something of the kind — self-preservation which is allied to it — must have made me leave the man with the explosive tube and taken me into the strange country. But it was not enough to give me an objective. I seemed to go on because — well, because my machinery was constructed to go on.

On the way I made some odd discoveries.

Every now and then my path would be crossed by a band of hard matter, serving no useful purpose which I could then understand. Once, too, I found two unending rods of iron fixed horizontally to the ground and stretching away into the distance on either side. At first I thought they might be a method of guarding the land beyond, but they presented no obstacle.

Also, I found that the frequent outcroppings of stone were not natural, but laboriously constructed. Obviously this primitive race, with insufficient caves to hold its growing numbers, had been driven to construct artificial caves. The puzzling smoke arose from their method of heating these dwellings with naked fire — so wasteful a system of generating heat that no flame has been seen on the fourth planet,* save in an accident, for thousands of years.

It was during the second day that I saw my first machine on this planet.

It stood at the side of one of the hard strips of land which had caused me so much wonder. The glitter of light upon its bright parts caught my lenses as I came through the bushes. My delight knew no bounds — at last I had found a being of my own kind. In my excitement I gave a call to attract its attention.

There was a flurry of movement round the far side and a human figure raised its head to look at me. I was able to tell that she was a woman despite the strange coverings that the third planet humans put upon themselves. She stared at me, her eyes widening in surprise while I could feel the shock in her mind. A spanner dropped from her hand and then, in a flash, she was into the machine, slamming the door behind her. There came a frantic whirring as she pressed a knob, but it produced no other result.

Slowly I continued to advance and as I came, the agitation in her mind increased. I had no wish to alarm her — it would have been more peaceful had her thought waves ceased to bombard me — but I was determined to know this machine.

As I drew clear of the bushes, I obtained a full view of the thing for the first time and disappointment hit me like a blow. The thing had wheels. Not just necessary parts of its internal arrangements, but wheels actually in contact with the ground. In a flash the explanation of all these hard streaks came to me. Unbelievable though it may seem, this thing could only follow a track specially built for it.

Later I found that this was more or less true of all third planet land machines, but my first discouragement was painful. The primitive barbarity of the thing saddened me more than any discovery I had yet made. Forlornly, and with little hope, I spoke to it.

There was no answer.

It stood there dumbly inert upon its foolish wheels as though it were a part of the ground itself. Walking closer, I began to examine with growing disgust its crude internal arrangements. Incredibly, I found that its only means of propulsion was by a series of jerks from frequent explosions. Moreover, it was so ludicrously unorganized that both driving engine and brakes could be applied at the same time.

Sadly, as I gazed at the ponderous parts within, I began to feel that I was indeed alone. Until this encounter, my hope of discovering an intelligent machine had not really died. But now I knew that such a thing could not exist in the same world with this monster.

One of my fore-rods brushed against a part of it with a rasping sound and there came a startled cry of alarm from within. I looked up to the glass front where the woman's face peered affrightedly. Her mind was in such a state of confusion that it was difficult to know her wants clearly. She hoped that I would go away — no, she wished the car would start and carry her away — she wondered whether I were an animal, whether I even really existed. In a jumble of emotions she was afraid and at die same time was angry with herself for being afraid. At last I managed to grasp that the machine was unable to run. I turned to find the trouble.

As I labored with the thing's horrible vitals, it became clear to me why men, such as I had met, showed fear of me. No wonder they feared machines when their own mechanisms were as inefficient and futile as this. What reliance or trust could they place in a machine so erratic — so helpless that it could not even temporarily repair itself? It was not under its own control and only partially under theirs. Third planet men's attitude became understandable— commendable — if all their machines were as uncertain as this.

The alarm in the woman's mind yielded to amazement as she leaned forward and watched me work. She seemed to think me unreal, a kind of hallucination: "I must be dreaming," she told herself. "That thing can't really be mending my car for me. It's impossible, some kind of horrid nightmare..."

There came a flash of panic at the thought of madness, but her mind soon rebalanced. "I just don't understand it," she said firmly and then, as though that settled it, proceeded to wait with a growing calm.

At last I had finished. As I wiped the thing's coarse, but necessary oil from my fore-rods, I signalled her to push again on the black knob. The whirr this time was succeeded by a roar — never would I have believed that a machine could be so inefficient. Through the pandemonium I received an impression of gratitude on my thought plate. Mingling traces of nervousness remained, but first stood gratitude.

Then she was gone. Down the hard strip I watched the disgusting machine dwindle away to a speck.

Then I turned back to the bushes and went slowly on my way. Sadly I thought of the far away, red fourth planet and knew that my fate was sealed. I could not build a means of return. I was lost — the only one of my kind upon this primitive world.

The Beasts

They came upon me as I crossed one of the smooth, green spaces so frequent on this world. My thought cells were puzzling over my condition. On the fourth planet I had felt interest or disinterest, inclination or the lack of it, but little more. Now I had discovered reactions in myself which, had they lain in a human being, I should have called emotions. I was, for instance, lonely: I wanted the company of my own kind. Moreover, I had begun to experience excitement or, more particularly, apathy.

An apathetic machine!

I was considering whether this state was a development from the instinct of self preservation, or whether it might not be due to the action of surrounding matter on my chemical cells, when I heard them coming.

First there was a drumming in my diaphragm, swelling gradually to a thunderous beat which shook the ground. Then I turned to see them charging down upon me. Enormous beasts, extinct on my planet a million years, covered with hair and bearing spikes on their heads. Four-footed survivals of savagery battering across the land in unreasoning ferocity.

Only one course was possible since my escape was cut off by the windings of one of the imbecile-built canals. I folded my legs beneath me, crossed my fore-rods protectively over my lenses and diaphragms, and waited. They slowed as they drew close. Suspiciously they came up to me and snuffled around. One of them gave a rap to my side with his spiked head, another pawed my case with a hoofed foot. I let them continue – they did not seem to offer any immediate danger. Such primitive animals, I thought, would be incapable of sustaining interest and soon move off elsewhere.

But they did not. Snuffling and rooting continued all around me. At last I determined to try an experimental waving of my fore-rods. The result was alarming. They plunged and milled around, made strange bellowing noises and stamped their hooves, but they did not go away. Neither did they attack, though they snorted and pawed the more energetically.

In the distance I heard a man's voice. His thought reached me faintly. "What the 'ell's worritin' them dam cattle, Bill ?" he called.

"Dunno," came the reply of another. "Let's go an' 'ave a look."

The beasts gave way at the approach of the man and I could hear some of them thudding slowly away, though I did not, as yet, care to risk uncovering my lenses. The men's voices drew quite near. "'Strewth," said the first, "'ow did that get 'ere, Bill?"

"Search me," answered the other. "Wasn't 'ere 'arf an hour ago — that I'll swear. What is it, any'ow?"

"'Anged if I know. 'Ere, give us a 'and we'll turn it over." At this moment it seemed wise to make a movement. My balancers might be slow in adjusting to an inverted position.

There was a gasp, then: "Bill," came an agitated whisper, "did you see that rod there at the end? It moved, blessed if it didn't."

"Go on," scoffed the other. "'Ow could a thing like that move? You'll be sayin' next that it…"

I unfolded my legs and turned to face them.

For a moment both stood rooted, horror on their faces, then, with one accord, they turned and fled towards a group of their buildings in the distance. I followed them slowly – it seemed as good a direction as any other. The buildings, not all of stone, were arranged so as almost to enclose a square. As the men disappeared through an opening in one side, I could hear their voices raised in warning and others demanding the reason for their excitement. I turned the corner in time to face a gaggling group of ten or twelve. Abruptly it broke as they ran to dark openings in search of safety. All, except one.

I halted and looked at this remaining one. He stared back, swaying a little as he stood, his eyes blinking in a vague uncertainty. "What is it?" he exclaimed at last with a strange explosiveness, but as though talking to himself.

He was a sorely puzzled man. I found his mental processes difficult to follow. They were jumbled and erratic, hopping from this mind picture to that in un- controlled jerks. But he was unafraid of me and I was glad of it. The first third planet man I had met who was not terror-ridden. Nevertheless, he seemed to doubt my reality.

"You fellowsh shee the shame s’I do ?" he called deafeningly. Muffled voices all around assured him that this was so. "Thash all right, then," he observed with relief, and took a step forward.

I advanced slowly not to alarm him and we met in the middle of the yard. Laying a rough hand on my body case he seemed to steady himself, then he patted me once or twice. "Goo' ol’ dog," he observed seriously. "Goo' ol' feller. Come 'long, then."

Looking over his shoulder to see that I followed and making strange whistling noises the while, he led the way to a building made of the hard, brown vegetable matter. At openings all about us scared faces watched our progress with incredulous amazement. He opened the door and waved an uncertain hand in the direction of a pile of dried stalks which lay within. "Goo' ol' dog," he repeated. "Lie down. There'sh a goo' dog."

In spite of the fact that I, a machine, was being mistaken for a primitive animal, I obeyed the suggestion — after all he, at least, was not afraid.

He had a little difficulty with the door fastening as he went out.

The Circus

There followed one of those dark periods of quiet. The animal origin of human beings puts them under the disability of requiring frequent periods of recuperation and, since they cannot use the infrared rays for sight, as we do, their rests take place at times when they are unable to see.

With the return of sunlight came a commotion outside the door. Expostulations were being levelled at one named Tom — he who had led me here the previous day. "You ain't really goin' to let it out?" one voice was asking nervously.

"'Course I am. Why not?" Tom replied.

"The thing don't look right to me. I wouldn't touch it," said another.

"Scared, that's what you are," Tom suggested.

"P'raps I am — and p'raps you'd 've been scared last night if you 'adn't been so far gone."

"Well, it didn't do nothin' to me when I'd had a few," argued Tom, "so why should it now?"

His words were confident enough, but I could feel a trepidation in his mind. "It's your own funeral," said the other. "Don't say afterwards that I didn't warn you."

I could hear the rest of them retire to what they considered a safe distance. Tom approached, making a show of courage with his words. "Of course I'm goin' to let it out. What's more, I'm takin' it to a place I know of — it ought to be worth a bit."

"You'll never…"

"Oh, won't I?" He rattled open the door and addressed me in a fierce voice which masked a threatening panic. "Come on," he ordered, "out of it."

He almost turned to run as he saw me rise but managed to master the impulse with an effort. Outwardly calm, he led the way to one of those machines which use the hard tracks, opened a rear door and pointed inside. "In you get," he said.

I doubt if ever a man was more relieved and surprised than he, when I did so. With a grin of triumph he turned around, gave a mocking sweep with his cap to the rest, and climbed into the front seat. My last sight as we roared away was of a crowd of open-mouthed men.

The sun was high when we reached our destination. The limitations of the machine were such that we had been delayed more than once to replenish fuel and water before we stopped, at last, in front of large gates set in a wooden fence.

Over the top could be seen the upper parts of pieces of white cloth tightly stretched over poles and decorated by further pieces of colored cloth flapping in the wind. I had by this time given up the attempt to guess the purposes of third planet constructions, such incredible things managed to exist on this primitive world that it was simpler to wait and find out.

From behind the fence a rhythmical braying noise persisted, then there came the sound of a man's voice shouting above the din: "What do you want — main entrance is round the other side."

"Where's the boss?" called Tom. "I got something for him."

The doors opened to allow us to enter. "Over there in his office," said the man, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

As we approached I could see that the third planet mania for wheels had led them even to mount the "office.” Tom entered and reappeared shortly, accompanied by another man. "There it is," he said, pointing to me, "and there ain't another like it nowhere. The only all-metal animal in the world — how'll that look on the posters?"

The other regarded me with no enthusiasm in his eyes and a deal of disbelief in his mind. "That long box thing?" he inquired.

"Sure, 'that box thing.’ Here, you," he added to me, "get out of it."

Both retreated a step as I advanced, the new man looked apprehensively at my fore-rods. "You're sure it's safe?" he asked nervously.

"Safe?" said Tom. "'Course it's safe."

To prove it he came across and patted my case. "I'm offering you the biggest noise in the show business. It's worth ten times what I'm asking for it — I tell you, there ain't another one in the world."

"Well, I ain't heard of another," admitted the showman grudgingly. "Where'd you get it?"

"Made it," said Tom blandly. "Spare time."

The man continued to regard me with little enthusiasm. "Can it do anything?" he asked at last.

"Can it — ?" began Tom indignantly. "Here you," he added, "fetch that lump of wood."

When I brought it, the other looked a trifle less doubtful. "What's inside it?" he demanded.

"Secrets," said Tom shortly.

"Well, it's got to stop bein' a secret before I buy it. What sort of a fool do you take me for? Let's have a look at the thing's innards."

"No," said Tom, sending a nervous look sideways at me. "Either you take it or leave it."

"Ho, so that's your little game, is it? I'm to be the sucker who buys the thing and then finds the kid inside, workin' it. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the police'd like to know about this."

"There ain't no kid inside," denied Tom, "it's just — just secret works. That's what it is."

"I'll believe you when I see."

Tom waited a moment before he answered. "All right," he said desperately, "we'll get the blasted lid off of it…Here, hey, come back you,"

The last was a shout to me but I gave it no notice. It was one thing to observe the curious ways of these humans, but it was quite a different matter to let them pry into my machinery. The clumsiness of such as Tom was capable of damaging my arrangements seriously. "Stop it," bawled Tom, behind me.

A man in my path landed a futile blow on my body case as I swept him aside. Before me was the biggest of all the cloth-covered constructions. "Here," I thought, "there will be plenty of room to hide."

I was wrong. Inside, in a circular space, stood a line of four-footed animals. They were unlike the others I had met, in that they had no spikes on their heads and were of a much slenderer build, but they were just as primitive. All around, in tier upon tier of rings, sat hundreds of human beings.

Just a glimpse, I had, and then the animals saw me. They bolted in all directions and shouts of terror arose from the crowd. I don't remember clearly what happened to me, but somewhere and somehow in the confusion which followed I found Tom in the act of starting his car. His first glance at me was one of pure alarm, then he seemed to think better of it. "Get in," he snapped, "we've got to get clear of this somehow — and quick."

Although I could make far better speed than that preposterous machine, it seemed better to accompany him than to wander aimlessly.

The Crash

Sadly, that night I gazed up at the red fourth planet. There rolled a world which I could understand, but here, all around me, was chaos, incredible, unreasoning madness.

With me, in the machine, sat three friends of Tom's whom he had picked up at the last town, and Tom himself who was steering the contraption. I shut my plate off from their thoughts and considered the day I had spent.

Once he was assured that we were free from pursuit, Tom had said to himself: "Well, I guess that deserves a drink." Then he stopped on a part of the hard strip which was bordered by a row of artificial caves.

Continually, as the day wore on, he led me past gaping crowds into places where every man held a glass of colored liquid. Strange liquids they were, although men do not value water on the third planet. And each time he proudly showed me to his friends in these places, he came to believe more firmly that he had created me.

Towards sunset something seemed to go seriously wrong with his machinery. He leaned heavily upon me for support and his voice became as uncertain as his thoughts were jumbled. "Anybody comin' my way?" he had inquired at last and at that invitation the other three men had joined us.

The machine seemed to have become as odd as the men. In the morning it had held a straight line, but now it swayed from side to side, sometimes as though it would leave the track. Each time it just avoided the edge, all four men would break off their continuous wailing sounds to laugh senselessly and loudly. It was while I struggled to find some meaning in all this madness that the disaster occurred.

Another machine appeared ahead. Its lights showed its approach and ours must have been as plain. Then an astounding thing happened. Instead of avoiding one another as would two intelligent machines, the two lumbering masses charged blindly together. Truly this was an insane world.

There came a rending smash. Our machine toppled over on its side. The other left the hard strip, struck one of the growths at the side of the road and burst into naked flames. None of the four men seemed more than a little dazed. As one of them scrambled free, he pointed to the blaze.

"Thash good bonfire," he said. "Jolly good bonfire. Wonder if anybody'sh inshide?" They all reeled over to examine the wreck while I, forgotten, waited for the next imbecility to occur on this nightmare world.

"It'sh a girl," said Tom's voice.

One of the others nodded solemnly.

"I think you're right," he agreed with difficult dignity.

After an interval, there came the girl's voice.

"But what shall I do? I'm miles from home."

"'S'all righ'," said Tom. "Quite all righ'. You come along with me. Nishe fellow I am."

I could read the intention behind his words— so could the girl.

There was the sound of a scuffle. "No, you don't, my beauty. No runnin’ away. Dangeroush for li'l girlsh— 'lone in the dark."

She started to scream, but a hand quickly stifled the sound. I caught the upsurge of terror in her mind and at that moment I knew her. The girl whose machine I had mended— who had been grateful.

In a flash I was amongst them. Three of the men started back in alarm, but not Tom. He was contemptuous of me because I had obeyed him. He lifted a heavy boot to send it crashing at my lens. Human movement is slow – before his leg had completed the back swing, I had caught it and whirled him away. The rest started futilely to close in on me. I picked the girl up in my fore-rods and raced away into the darkness out of their sight.

Discouragement

At first she was bewildered and not a little frightened, though our first meeting must have shown that I intended no harm. Gently I placed her on top of my caseworks and, holding her there with my fore-rods, set off in the direction of her journey. She was hurt, blood was pouring down her right arm.

We made the best speed my eight legs could take us. I was afraid for fear that from lack of blood her mind might go blank and fail to direct me. At length it did. Her mental vibrations had been growing fainter and fainter until they ceased altogether. But she had been thinking ahead of us, picturing the way we should go, and I had read her mind.

At last, confronted by a closed door she had shown me, I pushed it down and held her out on my fore-rods to her father. "Joan…?" he said, and for the moment seemed unsurprised at me — the only third planet man who ever was. Not until he had dressed his daughter's wounds and roused her to consciousness did he even look at me again.

There is little more. They have been kind, those two. They have tried to comprehend, though they cannot. He once removed a piece of my casing — I allowed him to do so since he was intelligent — but he did not understand. I could feel him mentally trying to classify my structure among electrically operated devices — the highest form of power known to him, but still too primitive. This whole world is too primitive. It does not even know the metal of which I am made. I am a freak ... a curiosity outside comprehension.

These men long to know how I was built. I can read in their minds that they want to copy me. There is hope for them. Some day, perhaps, they will have real machines of their own, but not through my help will they build them, nothing of me shall go to the making of them.

...I know what it is to be an intelligent machine in a world of madness...

The doctor looked up as he turned the last page.

"And so," he said, "it dissolved itself with my acids." He walked slowly over to the window and gazed up to Mars, swimming serenely among a myriad stars. "I wonder," he murmured, "I wonder."

He handed the typewritten sheets back to his daughter.

"Joan, my dear, I think it would be wisest to burn them. We have no desire to be certified."

Joan nodded. "As you prefer, father," she agreed.

The papers curled, flared and blackened on the coals —but Joan kept a copy.

The Venus Adventure

1932

You may have read in the history books of Joseph Watson or, as he later called himself, Noah Watson but it is probable that you have not found more than a slanting reference to his exploit. History is like that. As we go on with a longer and longer written record behind us, either events must be foreshortened and incidents dropped out, or else the earlier centuries must be lopped from our knowledge.

It is too much for any but a specialist or a group of specialists to study all the strange phenomena of human history. We have therefore, in this year 2926, chosen the former expedient of compressing our knowledge and whittling it down to the main facts and causes, with the inevitable result that many figures, once of world importance, are now remembered only in the museum libraries.

No one, except perhaps his own followers, could have ascribed world importance to Joseph Watson, but there can be no doubt that he was a remarkable figure in his day.

He was born in Scotland in May 2104. It was a natural birth, since in the more rural northern districts the people still clung with a Puritan obstinacy to the superstitious belief that an incubated child was bound to be abnormal in some way. The Anti-Incubation Society’s pamphlets with their spurious and harmful “proof” that no incubated child could possibly be considered to have a soul, were distributed in enormous numbers and with telling effect among the partly educated and the simple-minded. Such a prejudice dies hard and, even today, one sometimes hears of atavism to the extent of natural birth occurring in the obscurer corners of the Earth.

Watson’s mother paid the penalty for her crudity and credulity by dying at the birth of her son — a very frequent sequel to such a primitive mode of reproduction, as will be well understood — and the fact that she handed her life on to him seems to have had a profound effect on his character. He is reported all through his schooldays to have been an “erratic youth, given to introspection and not without flashes of misleading genius.” The phrase “misleading genius” is puzzling, but there is little doubt that it refers to his strange, retrogressive mental outlook frequently shown by a firm adherence to principles long exploded.

It was during his university career that he entered upon a form of enthusiasm which will be understandable to few persons today, and therefore requires some explanation.

In 2123, the belief which all the world holds today, that of the Fundamental Order or Prime Origins, was known only to a small group. The rest of humanity grasped only a fragment of this whole and each section of people interwove its particular fragment with a different set of customs and superstitions to produce what it called a “religion.” These “religions,” it must be understood, all had the same basis but differed in form according to the climate and the ancestry of the different races. Thus there would be found in the colder countries a hardy and stern “religion,” and in the warmer zones, a more colorful, less practical belief.

Joseph Watson, a Puritan at heart, gathered around himself a similarly-minded group and left his university with the firm determination to start a “Revival.” He began his campaign with the powerful backing of the Anti-Incubation Society. Quite what mental twist led him to ally himself with the very body whose pamphlets were responsible for his mother’s death, it is difficult to understand, but there can be no doubt that its views gave him his later war cry of “What’s natural’s right.”

From the very beginning his meetings were a success. An eyewitness of one of the earliest wrote: ‘The great, gaunt figure of Joseph Watson as he appeared on the platform would have impressed any man. He started to speak with a deceptive quietness of voice and mildness of manner, but as he continued this wore away.

“His mane of fair hair tossed and shook with the emphasis of his gestures and his deep, Scottish voice boomed sonorously through the hall. His eyes took on a fire as his enthusiasm rose and it was hard to believe that they did not look out beyond the audience at some mystic vision. I can safely assert that there was not a man nor a woman in all the great gathering who was not at least temporarily held under his sway.”

Watson climbed from triumph to triumph. His meetings became occasions for turning out special police to control the crowds. Even the overflow halls were besieged by throngs who struggled to hear him, if only through a loudspeaker. The Anti-Incubation Society began to develop an active following in Scotland numerically surpassing its wildest dream. Money poured into its war chests until it became a power to be reckoned with. Nor was it alone in reaping the golden harvest which Watson’s voice fostered.

“What’s natural’s right,” Watson would roar and then proceed to trounce the vivisectionists, the vaccinationists, the birth controllers, the alcohol drinkers, the smokers, the gamblers, before winding up the exhibition with another blow at his old enemies, the incubationists.

At the end of each meeting he would drop his ferocity with a suddenness which took his audience by surprise and kneel in prayer. In three years his own supporters were raised to such peaks of enthusiasm that they made Scotland too hot to hold him. A mob in Glasgow went straight from one of his meetings to the local Incubation Home and wrecked the place from cellar to roof. Not only was the damage to property considerable, but the outrage started a controversy which was debated hotly all over the civilized world. Briefly, the problem raised was: “Is it, or is it not, murder, to destroy a fetus which is developing in its incubating tank?”

A similar attack was made on the Edinburgh Home. The crowd was beaten off with casualties, but a number of police were killed outright. In Dundee, Watson’s too enthusiastic followers attempted to enforce prohibition by the simple expedient of wrecking all licensed premises. Whole streets were wet with spilled drink and a policeman’s head seemed as good a place to smash a bottle as any other.

The Government decided to act and warrants were issued for the arrest of Joseph Watson as the instigator of unrest in most of the towns and cities of Scotland. But the warrants were never executed because Watson chose to disappear. The Government was saved a great deal of trouble by his action.

He was next heard of in America, some seven years later. The date of his arrival and the manner in which he filled the intervening time must remain forever a mystery. Furthermore, he was no longer Joseph Watson, but had become Noah Watson, though whether by his own design, or by gradually acclimating to a nickname, is doubtful. It remains, however, quite certain that Joseph and Noah were one and the same: no one who had once seen him could mistake the man.

He was still reforming and still trouncing those sections of the community who attempted to improve on nature, but now he was even more general in his accusations of wickedness and fierier in his breathings of warnings about the ‘‘wrath to come.” Somewhere during the last few years he had picked up a seed of thought which grew in his fertile mind to the conviction that the world was due to end very soon, or if not to end, at least to be punished for its wickedness in some catastrophic and highly unpleasant manner.

It seems odd to us now that a man should be able to believe such a thing — not only believe it himself but persuade others of its truth. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that in the twenty-second century knowledge of our world was, like many other forms of knowledge, in an extremely rudimentary state. It was even easy for anyone to predict the end of the world and find educated persons to accept the prophecy without the slenderest data.

Watson would never reveal whence he obtained his information of the imminence of a “judgment day” by earthquake. He said merely that it was coming and soon. He called upon everyone to repent, claiming that each was a sinner though he might not know it.

“Noah,” said this new Noah, “was sent to warn the world before the Flood. You have read what happened to those who did not heed him. Now I have a warning for you. Do you forget the way in which they mocked Noah? Do you mean to mock my warning too?”

But his second campaign did not repeat the success of his Scottish days. Perhaps it lacked the sentimental appeal. Perhaps his moment was not well-chosen. His meetings, though vast, lacked the worshiping silence of those former gatherings where the audience hung upon each word. Now, some even came to scoff. It was one of these who cut in on him with the question: “Where’s your Ark, Noah?”

A number of persons laughed. Watson faltered in his speech and lost the thread of his whole discourse as he was greeted with cries from all parts of the building: “Yes, where’s your Ark? Show us your Ark, Noah.” Someone at the back started to sing “The Animals went in Two by Two,” and for a while, the meeting was in an uproar.

Watson, for one of the few times on record, lost his temper. “I’ve got an Ark,” he roared. “I’ve got an Ark and when it saves me you’ll be sorry you didn’t believe. You won’t be inside it — you’ll be burning, all of you.”

Watson was telling the truth. He had an Ark.

In 2133, at the beginning of his “end of the world” campaign, he had contrived somehow to meet Henry Headington and right from the start he had managed to impress that gentleman. Headington was among the richest men in the world. His aircraft factory in Chicago had netted him such a fortune that his wealth could never be accurately estimated. Or rather it should be said that by the time the computation was complete, the value of the holdings had altered to a degree which rendered the estimate useless. He was hedged around, as were all wealthy men of his time, with secretaries and guards, but Watson had not only approached him but enlisted him as a supporter.

Into the Unknown

Henry Headington was not a great deal interested about the future of his soul, about which Watson appeared to worry a great deal, but he was concerned at the possible results to his comfortable existence should the Earth indeed blow up. In the course of the many serious consultations which took place between the two, Headington became more and more convinced until his belief in the imminent catastrophe grew firm as Watson’s own. But Henry was a man of different mettle. At the end of one sitting, he slowly removed his cigar (of which Watson disapproved) and regarded the other impressively.

“You talk a lot,” he said. “You get around telling people to repent. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, either way it’s not going to help them a lot when it comes to a flare-up. Of course, talking’s your line and I don’t blame a man for following his line, but it’s not mine. I don’t talk things; I do ’em.”

That was Headington’s way. His experts were all assembled and instructed, and within a few weeks the first fruits of their labor began to appear in the shape of a gigantic shed raising itself in a corner of the Headington Experimental Rocket-Drome. Throughout the Headington concerns there was more than a little speculation as to its purpose. Obviously, the hangar was intended for a craft of a size previously not attempted. Rumors crept out and flew around, as rumors always will.

It was reported as an intention to build the biggest stratosphere plane in the world. Others gave it as their opinion that old man Headington had gone mad and wanted to get to the moon. The opinion of all outside the knowledgeable few was that the machine would be a colossal failure. Probably such a huge bulk would never lift from the Earth, and even if it did the payload would be infinitesimal.

But the work went steadily ahead. The designers sweated in their offices, bending over intricate plans and drawing till their backs and eyes ached. They may have been skeptical of their power to fulfill the boss’ demands to the letter, but they did not show it. The pay was good, but even more important to men who had spent all their lives complying with government aircraft regulations, was the allowance of a free hand. No longer were they bound by the Governmental restrictions regarding noise, power to bulk ratio, size and position of crew’s quarters, multiplicity of safety devices where one efficient instrument would serve, and all the other hundred and one trials of their profession.

The object this time was perfection and no worry about working to cost limits. All Headington’s fortune was behind them if they wanted it. And so they feverishly drew line after line with the delirious intoxication of the power to make their dreams come true.

The pattern makers at the foundries were presented with problems which caused them to swear and scratch their heads, but then they too caught the enthusiasm of the designers and solved each difficulty as it came. The instrument builders were asked to produce such gauges and measures that their heads ached with inventive effort. The metallurgists gleefully produced the formulae of alloys previously considered too expensive to be of any practical use, and gradually a huge hulk began to grow inside its huger shed.

Headington had developed a simple faith in Watson which raised the latter to a combination position of a minor prophet and a good-luck mascot. He was insistent that the reformer should attend the keel-laying ceremony of the great ship and make frequent visits to observe the progress of the work. “She’s going to be a marvel. Nothing like her has been tried in the history of the world,” the billionaire said proudly.

“The Ark” murmured Watson. There was a far-away look in his eyes as though he stared back through history at that other Ark waiting on its mountain to save the faithful.

The Ark, when finished, was condemned by every government inspector, without exception. It was not even permitted a trial flight and some went as far as to recommend its destruction in case someone were tempted to create a public danger by taking it up. Headington’s money and influence served to dispel the danger of the latter threat being carried into execution, but even his backing failed to accomplish the granting of a license for the craft.

So the Ark stood untested in its shed for many months. It was kept fully provisioned and loaded to its limit with fuel and supplies of all kinds. The owner’s faith in Watson never wavered, even many of the mechanics and engineers were converted from their former scoffing, but the Ark itself gradually became a laughingstock for the world. Photographs of its stupendous shed occurred in newspapers everywhere. Misinformed articles on its builder’s hopes, fears and intentions were sure of a ready sale. Watson encountered increasing jeers at his meetings once his association with Headington was known, and the two of them figured frequently in popular cartoons. The world, in fact, treated the new Ark much in the same way as it had treated the old.

Then Watson’s wife, a woman as inflammatory as her husband, publicly announced that she had been granted a vision. “And in my vision,” she cried, “I saw the world spew forth flames. It was split asunder on account of its wickedness and from the great clefts its fiery life surged out, turning the oceans to clouds of steam, rolling over the land in a wave of fire which melted the very mountains in its path. And as I stood in awe of the great punishment visited upon evildoers, a voice seemed to whisper in my ear. ‘November,’ it said, ‘November the twenty-second.’” It is impossible in these well-ordered days for us to appreciate the weight carried by such an unsupported assertion. Some were wise enough to take no notice of the woman’s raving, but the names of Headington and Watson were so much in the public ear that the report was circulated all over the world to become in many a distant land the subject of apprehensive speculation or the cause of skeptical laughter.

But there was one group which took it seriously, neither arguing nor debating, but accepting it as a fact. Headington forced on what final preparations were necessary with a growing agitation since it was already late September. Watson grew more impassioned and his meetings became wilder until it was rare for them to end without the intervention of the police. There is a description of him in those last days throwing out his arms in gestures of the most violent oratory while his wife knelt before him on the platform, facing the audience and praying it to repentance. A month before the catastrophe was due, the police forbade the holding of any more meetings, and Watson and his wife passed from the public sight.

The night of the twenty-first of November 2134, was long remembered. All over the world groups of nervous persons remained watching and praying with an irrational sense that death was better met fully clad than in night clothes, even if it be instantaneous destruction.

An observer of the final scenes in the great shed of the Ark luckily remained alive to tell of the events he saw there. “Headington had gathered together all his family, most of his engineers and designers and their families and even many of the workmen in addition to the crew and its relatives. All were aboard and ready save for a small knot of watchers to one side of the colossal flier.

“Once midnight had struck, the whole shed was heavy with an apprehensive silence. The group comprising Headington, Watson, Mrs. Watson and one or two more hung breathlessly over a solid stone table. Their eyes never for a moment left the needle of a seismograph for which it served for a mounting base. At the end of an hour the silence was so ominous that one would have given a mint of money for the relief of breaking it, but still nobody spoke. Occasionally the sound of someone moving uneasily inside the vessel’s entrance port rustled out into the shed to disturb the tomb-like stillness.

“There was a sudden intake of breath. Had the needle kicked? The group bent still closer. The needle kicked once more, definitely and decisively. The end had come. There was a wild stampede into the shining safety of the Ark.”

There is little need to tell most people how the Ark left, how the passengers were in such terror that they even neglected to open the doors of the shed. How the shed itself was so shattered by the impact that it collapsed, killing most of those left inside. But there can seldom have been a more gorgeous and awe-inspiring sight than that monstrous rocket as it took off. A curving tail of fire spread golden behind it lighting the countryside with the glare of a man-made comet. Scorching the Earth beneath it, it passed in glory, head-on for the stars.

The rocket did far more harm as it went than had been caused by the small subsea earthquake in the Pacific a few minutes before. Many imaginations played with its probable fate, but no evidence came to support them, and gradually, like a million other incidents of history, it slipped into the all-but-forgotten past.

Some maintained that it had managed to leave the sphere of Earth’s attraction and that such a feat, once accomplished, could be performed again, but no one knew how. The chemists, the designers, the engineers had gone with their ship and their knowledge had gone with them. It was not until Hal Newton made his famous expedition that any knew for certain the fate of the Ark.

The First Plans

The story of Hal Newton’s exploit properly begins more than a year after he married Davida Jonson or, as she is now known the world over, Vida. The two had left their incubators within a month of one another. They had played together as children and grown up with their brilliant minds racing until in the spring of the year 2920 they had decided to pull together.

Hal graduated from his college the youngest rocket-pilot ever created. The thunder of the rockets was the throb of life to him and he handled his planes as though there existed an understanding between himself and the machinery. Man and craft worked together with the smoothness of perfect accord.

Vida was little less outstanding in her chosen calling of chemist. She slid through her classes collecting the envy and amazement of her professors, for she seemed to learn in months what others painfully acquired in years. Already, at twenty-four, she had interesting discoveries behind her and a future of brilliant promise. It was given to her to leap where others plodded.

The marriage was scarcely popular in their set. There were too many broken hearts at Vida’s feet and too many sighs behind Hal’s back, but none could doubt that the match would be a success. For a year the two pursued their occupations as before. Hal hurtling through the sky, his body still no higher than the stratosphere while his imagination, as ever, reached out to the stars. Vida coercing her chemicals and dreaming of a future far different from that which fate held in store. Then the great Gordon Jonson, Vida’s father died, and all his millions came to her.

On July the fifth, 2922, the great Newton venture received the first gentle push which was to launch it into space. The Newtons and their guests finished an excellent dinner and adjourned for coffee and cigarettes to their comfortable lounge. Hal had shown himself somewhat preoccupied during the meal and now he plunged into talk in the manner of one determined to get the matter off his chest.

“Vida and I have a proposition to lay before you people,” he said. “It’s not going to be a simple little jaunt so I don’t ask any of you to give me your final answers at once — it is the kind of thing which will be the better for thinking over.”

He surveyed his guests for a moment. There was Temberly, the biologist, barely thirty, but already going a little bald on the crown, short-sighted and sharply bird-like in his movements. Next to him sat the bulky Bill Crawshaw. Bill’s father had been the last of the famous explorers and his son would no doubt have followed in his footsteps had there been a single corner of the world left unexplored.

As things stood, he was forced to the substitute of roaming the Earth, looking for trouble, an occupation at which he was said to excel both in finding and settling. Lastly there was Lucy Kramer with the face of a Madonna hiding under its placidity a genius for chemistry nearly equal to that of her co-worker, Vida.

“The proposal is this,” Hal continued. “Vida has discovered a truly remarkable explosive which has, we think, solved the problem of opposing the Earth’s gravity. Ever since I was a kid, it has been my ambition to get out into space. With Vida’s discovery and a special ship which I have almost finished designing, I think it can now be done. Now, the suggestion is this: are you willing to come with us?”

There was a moment’s pause during which no one spoke. Hal went on: “Of course it is impossible to tell you what the odds are against our ever returning. There are plenty of known dangers as well as the thousands of unknown, but Vida and I have enough faith in ourselves to risk them and we want to know if you have.”

The biologist looked at his host with an expression of doubt. “Er — I don’t quite see what I could usefully do in space. After all, I don’t think it is likely that you will find any forms of life there — though, of course, you might,” he amended hastily.

Vida looked at him and smiled encouragingly. “We don’t expect to, but you see we don’t intend to stay in space for long. We shall land.”

“Where?” demanded Temberly and Crawshaw simultaneously.

“On Venus,” Vida said as she cast a glance in her husband’s direction.

“I had thought of Mars,” Hal admitted, “but Vida’s converted me. I think she’s right when she says that it would be unwise on a first trip to land on a dead or dying world where there may be insufficient air. It is quite possible that some readjustments may have to be made before the return journey and that would prove awkward.”

“There’s a chance of good sport there?” inquired Crawshaw.

“My dear Bill, how can I possibly tell you? At a rough guess I should say that you will probably be granted more than you expect. Venus is considered to be in a very primitive condition — it may be in a reptilian age. Trying to hit a brain the size of a walnut in an animal as big as a house ought to be a good test of marksmanship even with a rocket-shell rifle.”

Bill beamed. “I’m your man, Hal.”

“Good. But don’t hesitate if you want to reconsider it.”

“That’s all right — I won’t want to.”

“What do you think about it, Tem?” Hal asked.

Temberly’s eyes wandered uncertainly round the room. He appeared to be seeking inspiration. “Well — er — ” he began.

Vida broke in. After favoring her husband with a glance of irritation, she turned to the girl beside her. “Lucy?”

“Of course.” Lucy spoke in a soft, deep voice which matched the calmness of her face.

Temberly was understood to mumble that he, too, would join the party. The rest of the evening was spent in arranging responsibilities. Hal, of course, was to be chief pilot and he had his eye on a likely man called Heerdahl for a relief. The air conditioning plant, atmosphere testers, concentrated foods, etc., fell naturally into the province of Vida’s and Lucy’s interests. Crawshaw was to have charge of munitions and armaments and was with difficulty restrained from there and then delivering a lecture on the science of gunnery. Temberly went off into a brown study of contemplation as he made mental lists of his biological necessities.

“There must be someone whose job it is to keep a full account of the expedition,” Vida declared.

Crawshaw who had grown abstracted suddenly brightened. “I know the very person for that job. Lots of experience and a good all-round general knowledge. Nobody better — if she’ll come,” he ended doubtfully.

“She?” said Hal. “What’s all this. Bill? Who is she?”

“You must have heard of her — Freda Linden.”

Vida looked relieved. Bill Crawshaw had a reputation for being a little erratic in his friendships. “I’ve met her,” she said. “She’ll probably come.”

“That leaves only three vacancies,” Hal observed. “They must be filled by technical men — say two engineers and an electrician.”

The party broke up late. Each had been allotted his or her part and accepted with a steadiness which warmed Hal’s heart. As he watched the visitors drive off, he was full of an affection for these people who were going to help his dream towards realization. “You were right, darling. I ought to have known better than to ask Temberly before he knew what Lucy intended. When do you suppose those two idiots are going to do something about it?”

But Vida was not listening. There was a far-away look in her eyes. “You know, dear, there is one thing we must do before we go off on this adventure.”

“Lots of things, darling. What’s this particular one?”

“We must pay a visit to the home and see about railing an incubator.”

On Venus

Setbacks and worries crowded thick and fast upon the Newtons during the next few months. Parts arrived below specification and had to be returned. The alloy for the exhaust tubes proved unequal to the strains it would have to bear. Jonite, Vida’s new explosive had to be rendered more stable. But gradually, as the year wore on, the Nazia began to take shape.

Hal conducted the others over the ship and asked for their advice on points of interior fitments. In about one hundred feet of overall length they found several cabins; one main living room with windows of fused quartz; a cooking galley and pantry and a small laboratory which would have to serve for the chemists, the biologist and the photographer as occasion demanded. Vida and Lucy criticized the cooking arrangements and demanded alterations, while Crawshaw stipulated for weapon racks to be fixed to certain walls “just in case.”

Apart from such details, very little appeared to have escaped Hal’s attention. They marveled at the ingenious disposal of fuel tanks and the compactness of the machinery which was to undertake the stupendous task of shooting them through space. Crawshaw regarded the simple control-board and its attendant array of pressure dials for the different rocket exhausts, almost with misgiving. It looked, he thought, more like a typewriter and a collection of clocks than the nervous system control upon which they would all depend. But he shrugged his shoulders and moved on – engineering, electrical or otherwise was not in Crawshaw’s line. He inspected the ammunition lockers and small-arm store with approval.

When they left the ship, it was to gaze up at the shining hull with a still greater respect for its marvels of compactness and comfort. The ship’s name in large letters on the bow caught Crawshaw’s eye. “Why the Nazia?” he asked.

“It means ‘fiery’ and this craft is going to have more  fire in her than ever was gathered together before,” Hal explained.

At the end of June 2923, she was declared ready for t a trial flight — an unfortunate necessity. So far the work had progressed, if not in secret, at least without publicity, but the Nazia’s trials brought the Newtons on to the front page. Reporters saw the chance of a scoop in this new, winged ship which thundered through the skies at incredible speed. They saw it pass over as a gleam of silver with roaring red ports and, with hastily gathered information, they rushed to their desks.

“A new day has dawned in the history of aviation — ”

“Epoch making discovery by young pilot — ”

“Previously undreamed-of speeds in the lower atmosphere have been attained by — ” they scribbled.

Hal refused to give any information to the newspapers. He was, he said, merely carrying out experiments and had no intention yet of publishing any results. Nevertheless, from an obscure source the truth leaked out. Hal Newton was to challenge space. Even the date of his intended departure was coaxed into print so that the world might gape at the adventurers. “On August the twentieth Hal Newton will set out on his attempt to reach the moon,” said one paper with a magnificent disregard for accuracy.

People were no longer so skeptical as they had been, of man’s ability to conquer space. They had become, in fact, so used to the idea that they were beginning to grow irritated over the many unsuccessful attempts which had been made. The papers gave lists of Hal’s predecessors. There was Jornsen who had fallen into the Pacific. Craig who, like Headington, had never been heard of again. Drivers who had succeeded only to the extent of making his machine forever a satellite of Earth, Simpson who had fallen in Chicago and wrecked a fifth of the city in the resulting explosion and the rest of the gallant army of would-be explorers who had laid down their lives.

Thanks to the efforts of the press, coupled with its own morbid desires to stare at doomed persons for the last time, an enormous mass of people surrounded Newton’s flying ground on August the twentieth. The crowd was more than annoyed when told that the Nazia had taken off the day before.

Hal had spread orders to his complement to be ready to start on the evening of the nineteenth, and to keep the date secret. He and Vida were awaiting them aboard the ship. The first to come were the two excellent engineers, Mackay and Freeman. Then Heerdahl, the second pilot, arrived with a clatter in a single-seater sports rocket, a speedy and essentially unsafe machine of his own design. Bill Crawshaw loomed out of the night accompanying little Freda Linden who possessed half her escort’s height and twice his assurance. Smith, the electrician, stumbled frantically on to the steps of the Nazia apologizing breathlessly for his lateness, only to discover that he had mistaken the time. Lucy Kramer explained that Temberly had suddenly remembered some essential at the last moment and dashed back for it. He turned up some ten minutes later in a depressed condition, having failed to find this important article.

“And that’s the lot,” Hal said as he ran his eyes round the group. “All ten of us. There’s no point in delaying longer.” He leaned out to wave farewell to the little bunch of pilots and engineers which stood enviously by, then withdrew and watched the door settle into its sealing gaskets. “Couches everyone — and don’t forget your safety straps.”

Vida pressed her husband’s hand as he passed her on the way to his own slung couch. He gave her an encouraging smile. “We’ll make it, darling.”

He gave a final glance round the room to see that nothing swung loose. “Ready?” he called. All settled themselves as well as possible to resist the effects of acceleration. He fastened the safety strap around him and laid a hand on the control desk at his side. “Here we go.” He pressed a group of keys. Again a rocket of Earth’s venturers shot out, head-on for the stars.

It is kinder to say little about the actual flight. No doubt means will one day be evolved to make such a journey more of a pleasure and less a test of endurance than it is at present. The human constitution is ill-adapted to withstand the effects of rapid acceleration or deceleration, and lack of gravity, while not so serious in its results produces extremely distressing reactions at first. Not until the Nazia was several days out could her occupants be certain that the eating of, a meal would prove worth the trouble.

The effect of the start was little more than negligible on the two pilots and engineers. In their years of training and practice they had learned how best to resist and how to recover. Of the rest it may be said that there were torturing moments when they one and all wished that they had been left at home to die comfortably in bed. But, even with its failings, the human machine is the most adaptable form that we know. Not only that, but it has a special facility for unpleasantness of minimizing it in retrospect.

Five days out, each was wondering why he had been so fussed about little discomforts and making mental vows that he never would be again. Vows to be as easily broken as made.

At first there was novelty to occupy the travelers. The great empty blackness of space with its myriad sparks of stars, the sun itself flaming and flaring undiffused, seeming away to one side as they traveled in a great curve to intersect with Venus’ orbit. But the unchanging soon grows dull, and soon they left the fused windows to seek occupation.

Without exception they admit that the first fortnight aboard the Nazia was the crudest test of nerves they had ever undergone. None felt well and all were insufficiently used to the surroundings to be able to settle down and forget the vast nothingness outside. Their restless minds were forever urging and willing the ship to greater speed in the anxiety to have done with the journey and to know what lay before them. Hal has written in his log of his admiration for the restraint they exercised to keep from breaking into open quarrels.

The worst period must drag to its end. Hal had calculated a month for the duration of the flight. When he was able to announce that the ship was up to time and that the fortnight had seen them past the halfway mark, it seemed as though that invisible milestone out in space had lifted a spell from the whole company. It was almost as if, until that moment, they had not believed in the reality of what they were doing nor in the fact that ahead, Venus indeed waited with tasks to be performed and problems to be solved. With one accord they woke from their dejection, threw off the lethargy and went to work.

Crawshaw overhauled his armory. Temberly looked to his slides and specimen boxes. All began to accept weightlessness, with its attendant inconveniences, as a mere discomfort instead of a cause for permanent grumbling. Hal watched with satisfaction the morale of his ship improve. He had known that they were a good lot at heart for he had chosen them with care, but there were moments in the early part of the journey when he suffered from misgiving — perhaps he himself was not so unaffected by the monotony and cramped quarters as he thought.

Venus, at long last, hung like a great frosted globe close by. It had the appearance of a huge, fleecy ball for none of its surface was visible through the swathing of clouds. Eager eyes watched the planet incessantly for some revealing rift, but Venus was keeping her secrets till the last.

The Nazia had been gently decelerating for some days. After the strain caused by the start, Hal considered it wiser to treat his company to an easier stop. Not until they were comparatively close was it necessary to order: “Couches everyone.”

With rockets blasting fiercely from her bow ports the Nazia began to nose down. Soon she was roaring through Venusian skies like a fiery dragon seeking a resting place on this alien planet. The ship landed with only a slight concussion. She slithered for a few yards on her shining belly, lurched a trifle to one side and then settled to rest. The eagerness of the travelers caused them to forget the lingering discomforts of deceleration. There was a hasty unbuckling of safety straps followed by a rush across the sloping floor to the windows. A surprised silence was their first reaction to the strange world.

A soft white light filtered through the thick layer of clouds to reveal a queerly unfamiliar scene. They were resting almost in the center of an oval space which appeared to be a natural clearing. It was dotted here and there only with low shrubs. Further back the edge of a forest was visible. The trees were of moderate height and smooth-stemmed until they broke into a flourish of small, broad shoots at the top. The shoots appeared to be more fragile than branches, yet stronger than leaves.

Creepers were slung in great loops from each shock-headed tree to its neighbors and below grew a thickness of shrubbery, some ten to twelve feet high. Every one of the plants visible was different from anything they had known. Instead of the familiar soothing green of Earthly landscapes, they faced a vista where all was of the same white-grey color. The trees, with their vague likeness to palms, the lesser hushes and even the bed of thick, twisted stalks which covered the whole clearing, all had that same look of being bleached and rendered lifeless by some all-pervading blight. The first inspection damped all spirits.

“Venusian grass is a pretty poor imitation of the real thing,” said Heerdahl peering at the foreground. “Looks like a million fat, white worms frozen stiff.”

Vida shuddered slightly. “It’s not very welcoming,” she agreed. “I can imagine all sorts of queer things creeping silently in that tangle of forest.”

Lucy’s deep voice expressed the sensations which lurked in them all. “It’s a ghostly world, full of pale horrors. Nothing moves but a few curls of mist in the distance. You see, the leaves just hang tiredly, there’s not a living breath to stir them. Perhaps any moment they will be parted by some grey ghost.”

Smith, the electrician, moved uneasily. “Do you want to give us all the horrors?” he inquired. “It looks bad enough without all the spook stuff.”

Temberly who had been goggling wordlessly out of the window, suddenly turned and ran down the room.

“Hi. Where are you off to?” Hal called.

“Outside,” the little man replied, choking with excitement.

Hal dashed after him and caught him as his hand was on the opening lever of the main port. “Steady on, man. You might kill us all. We’ve not tested the air yet Vida,” he added, “get your sample and tell us if it’s safe.”

While they waited impatiently for the result of the analysis, Freda, with the help of Crawshaw, set up her large camera and started it clicking at the view. “Might as well take a still and have done with it — it’s a waste of movie film,” Crawshaw muttered disgustedly. He glowered out at the silence scene and added dejectedly to Hal: “Where are all these monsters you talked about? I can’t see anything more dangerous than a few washed-out cabbages.”

Hal smiled. “I never knew a pair of people in such a hurry as you and Tem. He wants to dash out and pick plants without caring if he dies in the attempt, and your first thought on reaching a strange world is to start a massacre. You wait a bit — it looks as though there ought to be plenty for you to do in there.” He waved a hand to indicate the thicker, misty forest in the background.

“Oxygen content a little higher than normal, otherwise much the same as our own atmosphere,” came Vida’s voice from the little laboratory. “Quite safe, though rather dense. You’d better equalize the pressure in here slowly.”

Hal busied himself for a moment with gauges and then turned to address the rest. “Now we’ve got to settle who is to go out on the first expedition and who stays with the ship. Temberly must come, of course, forcible restraint is the only alternative in his case. And we’ll need Crawshaw with his weapons. Three people, at least, must stay on the Nazia. What about you, Smith?”

Smith nodded and cast a contemptuous glance at as much of Venus as was visible through the window. “I’m quite willing to keep out of that stuff,” he said.

“I’ll stay, too,” Lucy volunteered. “It’s more — more human in here.”

“That’s two then. What about you, Freeman?”

Freeman glanced questioningly at Mackay. “I guess we’ll both stay if you don’t mind,” said the latter.

“I might have known it,” Hal laughed. “Has anyone ever succeeded in separating you two?”

“Not for long,” Mackay said with a grin.

“Right, then that’s settled. You four stay and the rest of us make a short exploration tour. Bill, I think some machetes would be useful in that stuff.”

Exploring

It was a subdued party of six which tramped away towards the trees. The strange silence and lack of motion in their surroundings seemed to quell even the cheerful Heerdahl as they emerged from the Nazia.

Each was lightly-clad as a result of Hal’s warning. “The temperature isn’t as high as we feared it might be. The air’s so dense that it probably eases it off a bit. But we’ve got to remember that we’re twenty-five million miles or so nearer the sun, so wear only essentials.”

Though shirts and shorts weighed little, they were encumbered with other necessarily heavy paraphernalia. All carried pistols in belt holsters and the men, except for Temberly, slung rocket-shell rifles across their backs. The little biologist was already so laden with two large, black specimen boxes that he could not be further impeded with the weight of a rifle. Hal carried several instruments including a short-range radio transmitter for communication with the Nazia. Freda was laden on one side by film box and on the other by camera and firmly refused Crawshaw’s offers to relieve her of their weight. Crawshaw, himself, and Heerdahl bore rucksacks containing a small quantity of food, while at their belts, as at Hal’s, dangled heavy machetes.

The only sounds to break the stillness were those they made themselves – the rattle of accoutrements and the soggy, squashing noise as the fat tendrils covering the ground were crushed by their progress. Temberly, after a rapid inspection of the growths underfoot, forged ahead with swinging specimen boxes in the direction of the forest.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on him,” Vida said loudly.

Hal looked at her in surprise, wondering why she found it necessary to raise her voice. “Yes. It’ll be easy to get lost in that stuff,” he found himself shouting in reply.

Vida laughed at the startled expression with which he heard his own voice. “It’s this thick atmosphere. Makes things sound much louder,” she said.

“Well, this beats tombs for silence. I haven’t heard a sound yet except the row we’re making ourselves,” Heerdahl observed.

They reached the fringe of the forest, to catch up with Temberly who was staring in a puzzled manner at a curious plant. “Look at this thing!” he cried excitedly.

“Ghastly looking object,” commented Crawshaw unimpressed. “What’s up with it? Looks the same beastly color as all the rest, to me.”

“Well, it is a flower.”

“Humph. Try again,” Crawshaw advised.

“It is. It’s just got two main petals — those upper and lower things looking like jaws.”

They ail gazed at the growth. It measured some three feet across and its petals were indeed like jaws, giving the impression that an enormous head was gaping at them. “You see,” said Temberly pointing eagerly inside, “it has stamens with pollen on them.”

“Well, why not?” asked Crawshaw in bored tones.

“Even I can see that. It hasn’t any color to attract insects and cause pollination,” Freda said.

“But suppose the Venus insects hate color — they might, you know?”

“Don’t be a fool. Bill. Of course —”

“Incidentally, has anyone seen any insects?” Vida interrupted.

Nobody had.

“It’s very odd,” Temberly puzzled. “I suppose there are no insects here, but in that case how does the thing manage to get fertilized?” He peered more closely at the great, pallid flower and leaned over to gaze short-sightedly inside. He put one hand against the lower petal. With a sudden swish the upper half swept down upon the lower, blowing a cloud of pollen into his face. The rest of the party laughed heartlessly at the sight of the little man choking and spluttering over the flower dust he had swallowed.

“Well, there’s your answer. Tem,” said Vida. “The plant is very sensitive when it is touched. It blows out the pollen and hopes for the best.”

Temberly, recovered, regarded the plant with admiration, as though it had accomplished something very clever. “Ingenious — most ingenious,” he said with the air of one paying a compliment “A sort of natural bellows.”

They paused while Freda took her photograph of the great flower, and then decided to work into the forest. “We must keep close together. No dashing off to one side (particular application to Temberly). Remember, we don’t yet know die period of Venus’ rotation. There might be serious consequences if it were to grow dark suddenly and we were separated. You had better lead. Bill. You’ve got a machete in case of heavy going? Good. Now Temberly second, and for heaven’s sake don’t hold up the procession too much, you’re going to have weeks to examine all this stuff. Everybody ready? Let’s go.”

They forged ahead with but little conversation. Occasionally there was a pause while Crawshaw cleared a way through the soft growths and Freda seized another opportunity for a camera shot. Otherwise they plodded steadily. After two hours the conviction was rapidly growing in the mind of everyone, except Temberly, that Venus was a remarkably dull place.

“Just a damned great forest of celery,” observed Heerdahl. “I say, Tem,” he shouted up the line, “why is all this stuff so corpse-like?”

“I don’t know — been wondering about it. Obviously these plants have no chlorophyll; they must use something else instead. It may be that they don’t break down carbon dioxide the same way, or perhaps they don’t use it at all. I can’t tell you anything about them until I’ve had a chance to do a few experiments.”

The party continued its advance in silence. There was a sudden shout and an explosion ahead. “What is it?”

“Missed it,” said Bill’s voice disgustedly. “Little thing a bit bigger than a rabbit — same color as everything else in this rotten world.”

“A mammal?” inquired Temberly excitedly.

“How the devil should I know — I only caught a glimpse of it running. Anyhow, it shows that there is something besides plants in the miserable place.”

He called back down the line a few minutes later. “I say, it seems to be getting clearer out there on the right. What about making that way?”

“You’re leading.”

They came out at the head of a shallow dip of land leading down to the shore of a large stretch of water. Whether sea or lake, it was difficult to tell. The limit of visibility being always low on Venus, the water appeared to stretch away until it indefinably mixed with the ever-hanging mist. Hal tasted the water and was just opening his mouth to pronounce it fresh, when away on the left came the sound of a long, rumbling bellow, followed by that of a colossal splash.

Quick as a flash, Crawshaw had unslung his rifle and torn off over the adjoining rise in the direction of the noise, leaving the rest unrecovered from their alarm of the unearthly roar. “Damn the man,” said Hal. “I’ll go and fetch him back. You look after the others, Heerdahl.”

“What do you think that can have been?” Vida asked, watching her husband disappear in the wake of Crawshaw.

“God only knows,” Heerdahl said. “There’s no reasoning to go on in this place — might have been anything from one of those obsolete reptiles he talked about, to a factory hooter. Beastly mournful whatever it was.”

“Don’t you think we ought to go too?”

“No, we might easily miss them. Besides, orders are orders. I think we might have a cigarette and pollute the air of Venus for the first time with tobacco smoke.” The two sat down and leaned back against a rock. Heerdahl put his rifle across his knees, lit Vida’s cigarette and then his own. He inhaled deeply and with satisfaction. “That’s good.”

Temberly had wandered down to the water’s edge and was busily filling little vials and packing them in his specimen case for future examination. He then bent down to examine some subwater growths with a deep attention which rendered it possible to consider him safe for the moment. Freda was indefatigably brandishing her camera at a variety of likely and unlikely objects.

“You know,” Heerdahl reflected, “this might be quite a pleasant world if only it didn’t look so drearily monotonous. I don’t think I ever realized before what a difference color can make.”

Vida nodded. “It’s rather like living in a photograph — nothing but whites and greys and darker greys. With this diffused light there aren’t even any clear-cut shadows.”

“Not much use for sundials in this place — I wonder if the sun does ever truly shine? By the way, how long is it since we left the Nazia?”

“About three hours.”

“Then I should think we’ll have a fair spell of daylight yet. We’d only just left the shadow when we landed, so it was not very long after dawn. Hullo, what’s Tem up to?” Temberly was knee-deep in the water looking agitatedly down and pouncing from time to time, apparently without making any catch. “What is it?” Heerdahl called.

“Fish — come and look at them.”

“Oh, hang fish. I prefer to be comfortable.”

He and Vida continued a desultory conversation during the following half hour. No further bellow broke the silence, though once or twice big ripples on the surface of the water gave an indication of unknown creatures stirring in the depths.

“I hope they’re both all right,” Vida said nervously. “Oh, they know how to look after themselves, besides we’d have heard shots if there had been any trouble.” Even as Heerdahl finished speaking, a hail reached them as they saw two figures striding over the skyline.

“Nothing,” said Crawshaw with deep disgust, in answer to their inquiries. “We poked around a bit and found footprints the size of dining tables leading down to the water, but we never got a smell of the creature itself.”

“No need to be so gloomy. You could scarcely have carried the thing home if you had shot it,” Heerdahl pointed out.

Temberly left his dabbling and walked up to the party. “Most interesting,” he announced. “A three-eyed fish. One eye set in the top of its head. Of course there were such things on Earth, but I never hoped to see more than a vestigial third eye, at best. This is a very interesting place, you know.”

“Glad you think so,” grunted Crawshaw. He turned to Heerdahl.

“Where’s Freda got to?”

They all looked around. There was no sign of Freda. Crawshaw turned glaring upon Heerdahl. “You were left in charge here — why did you let her go? It was your business to look after her.”

Heerdahl colored angrily. “Protection was my job and I’d have done it if it had been necessary. I wasn’t told to be a nursemaid. I couldn’t keep the girl here by force.”

“You ought to have forbidden her to go out of sight.”

“A lot of notice she’d have taken of orders from me — or from anyone else.”

“Shut up, you two,” said Hal. “You won’t get anywhere by reviling one another. Bill, you’ve got a voice like a foghorn. Let it go.”

Bill obeyed with a stentorian bellow which, in the thick air, sounded very similar to a foghorn. They listened tensely for a reply and Vida thought she heard a faint answering hail on the right. Heerdahl agreed.

“Anyhow, she must have gone in that direction. If she went back into the forest the way we came, Vida and I would have seen her, and if she’d gone along the shore to the left you two would have met her.”

Hal nodded. “We’d better get along. We can leave signs marking our way so that she can follow on if we miss her. Now, for God’s sake, everybody keep together this time.”

Their way along the waterside was easy. The main forest did not begin within some hundred yards of the brink and left a walking surface covered only with the usual matted tendrils. Visibility, however, was rendered poorer than ever by the constant undulations of the land. Hal Newton has recorded that for the atmosphere to be so dry and clear as to allow sight of even a large object more than a mile away, is a rare occurrence indeed on Venus.

At intervals Crawshaw emitted another powerful shout and the party paused to listen vainly. “Heaven knows what she wanted to come along here for,” he grumbled, “it’s all just the same as the place we stopped at.”

“Freda!” he bawled again. This time there came an unmistakable answering shout from somewhere ahead. The whole party took to its heels.

“Just over the next rise, I should think,” Hal said jerkily as they pelted down the side of a shallow gully.

They reached the next vantage point and paused, breathing heavily, to look about. Some three or four hundred yards ahead they could make out the figure of Freda. Her head was bent over her inevitable camera, while around her clustered a group of some eight or nine small creatures.

“Put that up you fool,” snapped Crawshaw to Heerdahl. “You can’t use a rocket-shell rifle at this range — you’d blow the whole lot of them to bits. Besides we’d have heard her pistol if they had attacked her.”

“The best thing we can do is to get in close quietly, we don’t want to scare the things and spoil her chances of a good photograph,” advised Hal.

“I say, did you see that,” Vida asked.

“What?”

“I did — she spoke to them,” Heerdahl said.

“Don’t be a fool,” Crawshaw began. “How the blazes—?”

“Hands up,” called a high-pitched voice behind them.

Dingtons and Wots

The five swung round.

“What the—?”

“Hands up’’ demanded the voice.

At the sight of six leveled barrels they obeyed swiftly. Then followed a silence as the explorers gazed amazedly at their captors. The holders of the insistent weapons returned the stares unblinkingly. They bore more resemblance, perhaps, to monkeys than to any other earthly form of animal, yet the likeness was remote. For one thing, they stood upright with the straightness of man though their legs were very short in proportion to the rest of the body. For another, the close, silvery grey hair which covered them, grew even on their faces. The average height must have been somewhere between four feet four inches and four feet six, and their heads showed evidence of no mean mental development.

The faces of the creatures were given an oddly half-human look by reason of their high-bridged noses. And the hands, with thumbs set in opposition, differed from the human hand only in possessing a curved claw at the end of each finger.

Six of these claws were hooked menacingly round the triggers of six weapons. Crawshaw broke the silence, and with it, the spell of indecision which seemed to hold both parties. “Did — did they speak in English?” he asked incredulously.

Hal wore a puzzled frown. “It certainly seemed that way,” he admitted, “but — hang it, it must be a form of mental suggestion. We only thought we heard the words when they transmitted the thought. They couldn’t —”

As though to contradict Hal’s theory, one of the creatures spoke and they could see its lips form the words. “Take their guns,” it said.

A companion laid his rifle carefully on the ground and approached. Crawshaw lowered one hand threateningly. “Stop it, Bill. Do you want to get us all killed? We better submit gracefully for the moment — they’ve got the drop on us now.”

The creature relieved them of all their pistols and rocket-shell rifles, looked doubtfully for a moment at Hal’s radio transmitter and, intent on taking no chances, removed that as well with the air of one who is going to be on the safe side. He handed the haul to his companions who regarded them curiously before slinging them to their own trappings.

“Look out,” Heerdahl called involuntarily as the leader fingered a rocket-rifle trigger in a meditative fashion.

The creature looked up at him solemnly for a moment, then nodded and resumed his examination of the mechanism. He appeared puzzled by the rocket-shell cartridges, though he accorded the bullet cartridges of the pistols a barely interested glance. Evidently the former were new to him. At length he too slung the rifle on his back and advanced to peer closely into the faces of the captives. Again he seemed puzzled, but whatever his problem was he decided it could wait until later and turned to give an order to his followers. The whole party moved off from the rise towards the spot where Freda was still to be seen plying her camera.

“Well, I’ll say that girl’s got the reporter’s mind right enough — that’s the spirit which made the front page what it is today,” Heerdahl said admiringly.

As they approached, Freda broke off an animated conversation to greet them. “Hullo,” she said. “I hoped you’d be along soon.”

“Well of all the — ” Crawshaw began.

“Very kind of you,” Hal remarked coldly. “May I ask what the devil you think we’re going to do now?”

Freda shook her head. “The question more properly is — what is going to be done with us? And there seems to be rather a difference of opinion about that. It all depends apparently whether we are Dingtons or Wots.”

“Whether we’re what or what?”

“No. Whether we’re Dingtons or Wots.”

“Or—?”

“Don’t you understand? They want to know whether you are a Dington, or whether you are a Wot.”

“Oh, I see. Well, what are they, anyway?”

“That’s just what I’m trying to find out.” Freda turned back to her group of the creatures and resumed conversation. Hal rumpled his hair and scratched his head thoughtfully. As far as could be judged, the grey animals intended no harm. They seemed a placid and unexcitable breed, but on the other hand they carried weapons, and their first act had been to disarm himself and his party. At the moment there seemed to be no desire to make a move of any kind, all attention was concentrated on Freda and her conversation. Her conversation, that was the wildest improbability since they had landed.

“Hang it all,” Hal murmured, “it’s a bit steep. We come across twenty-five million miles of space — more than that — and what happens? The first inhabitants we meet on a strange planet address us in English. Damn it all, something’s wrong somewhere.”

He turned to the leader of the guards in an attempt to clear up the anomaly and listened closely as the creature tried to reply to his question. Despite the unusual pitch and hardness of tone in the voice, he was able to detect the presence of an unfamiliar accent and of other slight differences. His inquiry was misunderstood. Apparently the word “English” conveyed no meaning to the other though he spoke the language itself. Hal reshuffled his thoughts and tried another start. He indicated the members of his party.

“We are men — what are you?”

“Gorlaks,” replied the creature promptly and then added: “Are you Dingtons or Wots?”

“Oh, damn,” said Hal.

Temberly from the first had been observing the Gorlaks with the closest attention. “Look,” he said, pointing to the furry grey figure to which Freda was talking. They followed the line of his finger. From a kind of pocket in the creature’s front protruded the doll-like head of a miniature Gorlak whose bright little eyes were following their movements with solemn interest.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet?” said Vida advancing to the mother and her furry baby.

“Marsupials,” Temberly remarked half to himself.

The Gorlak leader’s sharp ears overheard him. He shook his head. “Monotremes,” he corrected proudly.

Temberly looked surprised and nodded thoughtfully. “I know what a marsupial is, hut I’m hanged if I’ve ever knowingly met a monotreme before. What is it?” Heerdahl asked.

“A step beyond reptiles. That is, it has warm blood and grows hair, but it still lays eggs and carries them in a pouch to hatch them out.”

“That sounds a pretty efficient sort of system.”

“So one would think, but for some reason or other monotremes never made great headway on Earth. We went on to the mammal stage and there are very few of this intermediate stage left. They seem to have taken well here and developed a high intelligence.”

He turned back to the Gorlak. “Are there many kinds of monotremes?”

“Five.”

“And mammals, have you any of them?”

“Only Dingtons and Wots.”

“Oh, hang it all, can’t somebody clear up this business?” groaned Heerdahl. “Now, listen to me — ” he began but he got no further.

A plaintive sound on a high, carrying note came floating from the direction of the forest. Every Gorlak became suddenly alert. “Dington,” said the Gorlak leader. He produced a curiously shaped whistle and blew on it to cause the same mournful note. In a few seconds came an answer, at which the Gorlak blew again.

“Well, we look like finding out what a Dington is at last,” said Hal as they watched the forest expectantly.

Again the note sounded. It was evident that the creature, whatever it was, was approaching, because the sound was much louder. The Gorlaks burst for a moment into high-pitched conversation which was impossible to follow. “Good heavens, it’s a bird — Look there, just over the trees!” cried Crawshaw.

Something with slowly flapping wings of tremendous span was looming out of the mist. “It’s pretty low — only just clearing — Good Lord, that’s no bird, it’s a machine,” Hal gasped. “An ornithopter, sure as I’m alive.”

They all stared at the leisurely-approaching craft. “It’s sinking too fast. It’ll hit those trees as sure as — there, that bent it some.”

The plane had just failed to clear the last outpost of the forest. Its wing tips, at the bottom of their stroke, fouled the bushy heads of the white trees and the whole contraption was knocked into a forward somersault. For a moment it threshed furiously before coming to rest inverted and asprawl, among the lower bushes. Shrill cries of alarm arose from the Gorlaks. With one accord they rushed off in the direction of the capsized flier, leaving their prisoners to shift for themselves.

“Well, we’d better go, too, seeing that they’ve got all the weapons,” said Hal.

With the advantage of their longer legs they easily overtook the Gorlaks and arrived well in the van at the wreckage. Somewhere in the jumble of broken wings and tangled bushes something was struggling. It evidently heard their approach. “Hullo. Help me out of this damned thing, will you?” called an unmistakably human voice.

The aviator, when extracted, proved to be a tall, well-built man. A mop of fair hair surmounted a face which would have seemed remarkably pallid on Earth, but all were now growing so used to the grey-whites of Venus that they were able to make allowances for it. There was a twinkle of amusement in his eyes as he looked from one to another of their astounded faces and his mouth twisted with a smile as he spoke.

“You’ve been a long time,” he said, “but you are very welcome.” There seemed no possible reply to this remark, and they remained silently surprise. The man seemed more amused than before. He turned to the leader of the Gorlaks. “Arrul. Get us some food.”

Several of the Gorlaks scurried around and began to pull up neighboring plants. As they laid the bulbous roots before the party, the flying man picked one up and offered it to Vida, indicating that the rest should help themselves.

“You will find these quite good, though perhaps not very tasty,” he suggested. “Explanations are so much easier when one is reinforced with a meal, and I haven’t had anything to eat since before dawn.”

The rest picked up the vegetables. The flavor was weak, but they were not unpleasant, and a good cure for growing hunger.

Attack!

The guard of four aboard the Nazia was finding time hanging heavy on its hands. They had all watched the rest of the crew disappear into the forest, with mixed feelings. In Lucy a definite sense of misgiving arose. She had been startled to see Temberly’s misadventure with the strange Venusian flower and, though it had luckily turned out to be nothing more than a cause for laughter at his expense, it seemed to her to hint of mysterious dangers.

It was with uncomfortable apprehension, therefore, that she saw the forest swallow them up. Whether this had its root cause in a fear for them, and Temberly with them, or in a feeling that the four in the Nazia were now marooned in this strange place, she could not tell. She turned to Smith, at her side. “It would have been better if they had left Heerdahl with us. Suppose they are gone a long time or get into some kind of difficulties, we can’t take the ship to look for them.”

Smith nodded agreement. He, too, was feeling depressed. “Yes, we ought to have had a spare pilot — though Mackay might be able to move the ship if it should come to a pinch.”

For the next two hours or so they occupied themselves about the Nazia in cleaning up the cabins and making shipshape after the inevitable disorders of the run. Lucy, with her characteristic appearance of having allowed her thoughts to wander far away from her surroundings, was straightening out the chaotic condition of the pantry, when Smith’s voice recalled her to the window. “I say,” he shouted excitedly, “come and look here.”

Mackay and Freeman also crowded close to the fused panes. ‘What is it?”

To answer, Smith pointed silently at the edge of the at which the others had disappeared and, consequently less distinct. Through the misty air they could dimly make out a white figure moving slowly towards them — without doubt a biped. They offered no comment as they watched it approach. At last it came to a range at which it was clearly visible as a man. He paused for a while in interested contemplation of the ship. It was obvious that he had not yet seen the watchers in the windows and they were granted a good chance of observing him.

He stood a little less than six feet, as nearly as could be judged. His head was covered with thick, black hair which fell in a tangled mass about bis shoulders. A beard, no less unkempt, straggled down across his chest. The only attempt at clothing was a short kilt of woven, whitish cloth and a broad belt to secure it. To the belt were attached a number of small pouches and a few hooks from which implements dangled. In the crook of one arm rested unmistakably a rifle.

The four looked at one another in surprise. Of the many things they had been prepared to meet, man had been one of the least expected. The figure moved out of their field of vision, still regarding the ship intently. “Gone around to starboard,” announced Mackay.

“Is the entrance port closed?” Smith inquired nervously.

Freeman set off to meet the visitor, or to close the port should it seem necessary, while the rest moved over to the starboard windows for a view of the encounter. The result was disappointing. The prowler’s jaw dropped for a second, then he turned and scuttled for cover like a rabbit.

“Strange,” remarked Lucy. “Did you notice that he was white all over, like everything else here?”

Freeman returned. “Guess he didn’t like my face. Wasn’t long in making up his mind, either. What happened to him?”

“Went back round the bow and streaked for the forest,” Mackay replied.

“I suppose you’ve closed the port?” asked Smith.

Freeman looked at him. “Sure, I closed it. Though it hardly seems necessary when the natives are as frightened as mice. What are you scared about, anyway?”

Smith shifted uncomfortably. “I — I don’t know. I reckon the whole damned place looks pretty nasty to me. I wouldn’t care so much if something would happen; it’s all this hanging fire feeling that I don’t like.”

He looked ashamed of himself but brightened as Lucy backed him up. “I know just how you feel. This place affects me the same way,” she said.

The two engineers returned to their interrupted work and Lucy to her pantry while Smith kept watch at the window for a possible reappearance of the native. It was almost an hour later when he called to the other again. “He’s come back. Seems to be beckoning or something of the sort.”

“Yes, he’s beckoning,” Mackay agreed. “I wonder why this sudden change of front — he wasn’t too keen on us before?”

“After all, one would expect a savage to be scared at first,” Lucy pointed out.

“Not too much of the savage about him. That looked like a fairly useful gun to me.”

Mackay turned an inquiring look on Freeman. “Well, what about it?”

“Sure, I’m game,” Freeman agreed. “We’ll just take pistols — you two cover us with rocket-rifles,” he instructed Lucy and Smith.

The two men set out side by side across the squashing growths, towards the beckoner. They signed to him to advance and meet them, but he appeared to prefer his own choice of ground. Half the distance from the ship had been covered when the man slid back into the foliage. “What the — ?” Mackay began, but his question was answered before it was expressed.

The sharp crack of an explosion reached them. Simultaneously Freeman dropped. Mackay hit the ground a split-second later. The rapidity of his taking cover tokened an adventurous life. “Blast him,” he muttered, but his words were drowned as the two on the Nazia sent replies crashing into the forest. The two rocket-shells exploded in the same flash among the trees.

“And that’s settled him,” thought Mackay, but he was canny. He unbuckled the holster of his pistol and raised it above cover. A shot drilled it promptly. Again there came the crash of rocket-shells as the ship answered. Mackay crawled over to Freeman and inspected the wound with some relief. The bullet had just flicked him lightly, enough to stun and to draw a trickle of blood, but the most serious result would probably be a bad headache for a while. He grasped the other by one leg and started to crawl back, towing him towards the ship. Bullets still whistled over his head from the forest, and crashes behind him told that Lucy and Smith were returning the fire with interest. Gradually the attackers slackened and ceased, but Mackay was taking no risks. He crawled until he was near the spot where he must rise to climb aboard the Nazia.

“Give them hell while I make a bolt for it,” he called up to the pair.

Under cover of a furious burst of rocket-shells, he stood up with Freeman across his shoulders, tipped the other into the entrance port and climbed in himself. The door closed with a thud as Smith pulled over the control. Lucy put up her rifle and went in search of water and bandages while Mackay, over the insensible form of his friend, made unprintable remarks about the Venusian natives and their ancestors. “Well, thank God the fools hadn’t got the sense to wait until we were closer,” he ended.

Under Lucy’s ministrations. Freeman soon came to. He lifted one hand to his head, simultaneously producing a flood of language which rivaled Mackay’s outburst, then: “Did you get him?” he asked.

“Him?” said Smith. “There must have been dozens of the devils. We blew the part where the one man vanished into little bits and then churned up the stuff for a good few yards on either side. But they’re at it again. Listen.”

Through the thick armor of the Nazia an intermittent tapping was audible. “Bullets.”

Mackay smiled slightly. “Let ’em waste the stuff. A peashooter would be as useful to them — and just as effective against this bus. Let ’em try rocket-shells, if they like.”

Smith crossed to one of the windows and called back: “They’re advancing. A whole big ring of them closing in. Several hundred of them. I’d guess.”

“I suppose they think that they’re safe now that we’ve shut the entrance,” Mackay growled. “The aggravating thing is that they’re damn well right — our windows aren’t made to open, and we can’t do a thing but sit here like sardines in a can.”

Freeman, almost recovered by now, looked up with a grin. “We can give them a nasty jolt when they come closer.” He stood up and swayed a little uncertainly before staggering off forward in the direction of the controls.

“What’s his little game?” Smith asked.

Mackay gave a broad smile. “Come and see,” he replied, motioning them to the window.

At their appearance a spatter of lead rained against the fused glass. Lucy started back in alarm. “It’s all right,” Mackay advised. “This stuff beats six-inch steel.”

The crowd was now clustered closely round the ship. They could see the pale men’s mouths opening and shutting and knew that they were shouting as they brandished their weapons. Some were even battering on the hull with rifle butts, though not a sound was audible inside, save the occasional flick of a bullet.

“Watch,” said Mackay.

The ship trembled slightly as there came a growling rumble. From fore and aft sprang sudden belches of flame, while a line of fire ran spurting swiftly down each side. The enemy broke and ran to a respectful distance. “He turned the rockets on them. First the main driving and braking bunches, then a flip on the side steering tubes,” explained Mackay. “I guess he was feeling sore about that bullet he turned.”

“And now?” asked Lucy.

Mackay shrugged his shoulders. “Checkmate. We just wait for something to happen.” The enemy’s reaction to the situation was similar. A number detached themselves to fetch food from the forest and then all settled down comfortably — though well out of range of the rocket tube flames.

Freeman came back looking worried. “We don’t want the others to run into this gang when they come back. Can’t you get them a warning on the radio. Smith?”

“I’ve tried. Couldn’t raise a chirp from them. I guess Hal’s set must have packed up or something.”

A few minutes later, an unusual glitter caught Lucy’s eye. She pointed: “Look. There’s something flashing among the trees.”

Explanation

The fair-haired young man looked around the group. “Permit me,” he said, “to introduce myself — Knight Dington.”

Hal briefly introduced his party and himself. “Now would you be so kind as to explain a few of these anomalies?” he suggested.

“Such as—?”

“Well, how you come to be speaking English, for instance, and the nature of all this Dington and Wot business.”

“Then you didn’t know?”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That we were here.”

“Look here, suppose we start this thing at the beginning,” Crawshaw interrupted. “Now, how is it that you and these — er — Gorlaks, speak English?”

“Because, apart from the Gorlaks’ own peculiar language, it is the only one known on Venus,” Knight replied with a mischievous twinkle. “But I’ll try to explain. I suppose you have heard of Noah Watson’s Ark?”

“You mean to say that the Ark really — ?”

“Yes. In spite of the jeers it caused, it achieved its purpose. It left the Earth and landed on Venus.”

“Then you are — ?”

“I’ll try to make it short. In the Ark, as you probably know, there were roughly one hundred and twenty persons — it was a large machine. Now, Noah Watson and Henry Headington were two men whose principles were vitally opposed. They agreed, in fact, about only one thing, and that was the imminent destruction of the Earth — a matter in which they were both entirely wrong.

“Headington soon found out that he had been misguided, but Watson to the end would never admit that he had been wrong. Headington looked back from space at the world from which he had exiled himself and cursed because there was no turning back. From that moment he began to hate Watson. And Watson, still convinced that the Earth was now barren, unveiled the dislike he had hitherto concealed for Headington’s way of life. By the time they reached Venus, it was quite clear that they would never cooperate to build up a new civilization. They separated the moment they could leave the ship and never saw one another again.

“The Ark made a very rough landing. Only some seventy-two of the passengers survived it. Of these, thirty followed Headington, while the other forty attached themselves to Watson. The two parties, with enmity in their hearts, set off in opposite directions and founded communities according to their different lights.

“All this, as you know, took place nearly 800 Earth years ago — about 1298 Venusian years — plenty of time to build nations were food grows readily to hand. Our records tell us that in the course of time various modifications have occurred. Our skins have lost their pigmentation and our chests are a little smaller since lung capacity does not need to be as great. Our muscular strength, on the other hand, has remained at an approximately constant average since the pull of gravity is only a trifle less.

“The language has undergone a few, very slight changes in colloquialisms and metaphors, mostly derived from the names we were forced to coin to describe phenomena peculiar to Venus. Otherwise we believe we have changed very little.”

“Then your nations are — ?” Hal began.

“They are named after their leaders. Headington gradually became contracted to Dington in popular speech, just as Watson became Wot. I, myself, claim direct descent from the original Henry Headington, but the surname, too, has become Dington. The things which most puzzled Arrul and the other Gorlaks, when they found you, was really your complexions. Although the fact that you are fully-clad pointed to your being Dingtons, yet you were not normal Dingtons, but neither did you look like Wots. They can never have really thought you were Wots, or you would not be alive now.”

Knight looked at their faces again and smiled. “You will excuse me,” he said, “but no wonder the poor Gorlaks were worried. You see, except when fashion decrees it to some of our women, pigmented faces are unknown here.”

Vida looked curiously at the young man. “You didn’t seem very surprised at seeing us,” she remarked.

“I was searching for you.”

“But how did you know — ?”

“An Earth ship was bound to come sooner or later. Once the secret of space travel had been solved, it was certain to be rediscovered. The thing which most surprises us is that you have been so long in coming. From the first, old Henry Headington used to gaze up at the clouds which hid the stars and the Earth he loved so well, saying that soon you would come and rescue him. But the months drew into years and the years into centuries, and so, for eight hundred years we have watched and waited, though no longer from any desire to be rescued.”

Vida felt a surge of pity for the poor old man, far back in the past, watching the rolling clouds for the help which never came. Knight’s voice was continuing: “Last night we heard the roar of rockets and saw the red glow in the sky. There was an uproar and shouting; all the cities went wild. Everyone knew that the old man’s faith was upheld at last. But you passed over us, heading into the Wot country. As soon as it became light — it was almost dawn when you passed — we sent out a fleet of scouts to find you.”

They had risen to their feet during the last few sentences, and were preparing to depart “Can we go straight to your ship?” Knight inquired eagerly.

Hal nodded and produced from his pocket a small instrument in which a needle swung. The Dington looked at it curiously. “I’ve heard of that. A compass, isn’t it? I’m afraid it’s no good here.”

“No,” said Hal, “I tried a compass before we set out and found that it just idled. This little thing is specially built so that it is always attracted to the ship.”

He steadied it for a moment. Then they turned their backs on the lake and plunged into the forest in the direction indicated by the needle. Knight hung back a moment and applied a light to the crumpled remains of his ornithopter. As the machine went up in a sheet of flame he came running after the rest. “Doesn’t do to let Wots get hold of them,” he explained.

Less than two miles had been covered when distant crashes became audible ahead. “Rocket shells,” said Crawshaw. “Rifle size, I’d judge.”

“What are they?” asked Knight.

Hal briefly explained the principle of the self-propelling, explosive bullet.

“Never heard of them,” Knight assured him.

“Then it must be our folks. Let’s get a move on.”

A while later there came a short, thunderous blast from the Nazia’s driving rockets. “What on earth — ? Anyway, they can’t have moved her,” Hal added, after waiting in vain for a repetition of the sound. Half an hour later they came suddenly to the edge of the clearing.

An exclamation broke from Knight, and he motioned the party back with one hand. “Look there,” he said.

They gazed in consternation at the shaggy headed, half-nude crowd surrounding the Nazia. “Wots,” said Knight in answer to their unspoken question. “This is going to be difficult.”

“There must be hundreds of them. We can’t attack that lot. How are they armed?”

“Rifles — they always carry them. Although their motto is ‘What’s natural’s right’, they unfortunately make an exception in the matter of rifles — they’re pretty fine shots, too. Though, even unarmed, they’d tear you to bits.”

“But we don’t want to hurt them,” Vida objected.

“Doubtless, but you don’t understand these people; they are fanatics — dangerous fanatics. If they got hold of you — ”

Bill Crawshaw interrupted rudely. His trigger finger was itching. “This isn’t any time for lectures. What are we going to do?”

“You better tell your people to sit tight where they are if you’ve got any means of getting a message through,” Knight suggested.

Hal took his radio transmitter from the Gorlak who still carried it. Everyone watched as he tried for connection. “No good. Can’t raise them although there’s a wire out.”

He thought for a moment. “I suppose nobody’s got a lamp?”

“I have,” said Heerdahl unexpectedly.

“Good man, that’s lucky. A heliograph’s no good in this diffused light. Smith knows Morse, he used to be on telegraphs.” He slipped the torch into a pocket and turned to one of the white trees. “Don’t go higher than about ten feet. These don’t stand much weight,” Knight advised.

For a few moments there was no reply, then an answering flash appeared in the Nazia’s window. “All safe?” Hal flashed.

“All ok.”

“Those men outside are really dangerous.”

“We’ve had some.”

“Then keep where you are. Don’t open port until we have driven them off. Going for help now.”

“Ok.”

Either the exchange of messages had been unobserved by the Wots, or else, as seemed more likely, they had not realized that the ship’s flashes were anything more than accidental. Hal descended and handed the lamp back to Heerdahl. “What now?” he asked Knight.

“We’ve got to rouse Chicago and get them on the job.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Knight grinned. “I suppose it does sound a bit strange to you. You see, old man Headington came from a place of that name, on Earth, so he chose to call our main city after it for old time’s sake — he thought it sounded homey.”

“Lead on. Now that I know the others are safe, I’m all for seeing your idea of Chicago.”

Ambush

Temberly plucked at Hal’s arm, his face was white with anxiety and his eyes pleaded for reassurance as he asked: “You’re sure they’ll be all right, Hal? I mean, Lucy’s in there and if anything should happen to her — ” He left the sentence uncompleted.

“They’ll be all right, old man. They’re as safe there as any place in the universe. I’ll bet a twelve-inch rocket shell would only dent the Nazia.”

“Yes, of course,” said Temberly. “I thought so, it’s only — well, you know.”

“I know.”

A hoarse, sawing kind of whisper came from Crawshaw. “Freda, for God’s sake, come back. We’re going now.” Freda, who had wriggled forward to the very edge of the clearing, stopped her camera, sighed and came squirming back to them.

“Lucky I brought a telephoto lens — it’s a pretty long shot, and about the worst possible kind of light. Still, I think I’ve got it here,” she said calmly, patting her camera.

“You’ll drive me grey,” said Crawshaw. “You little devil, how many times have I told you — ?”

“Now, Bill dear, don’t be a bear. You know perfectly well that I will not be ordered — ”

“Come on,” said Knight. “The sooner we get away, the better. It’s not healthy here. Arrul is leaving five of his Gorlaks to watch. He and the rest are coming with us. He’s given orders that one of them is to overtake us and report if anything seems to be moving here.”

The procession took up its march while the Gorlaks who were to remain slid among the bushes. They seemed to disappear almost uncannily, so like was their color to that of their surroundings. Knight led them in silence through the monotonous forest with a sureness and lack of hesitation which puzzled Hal. At last he inquired how it was done. Knight looked surprised.

“That’s odd. I never thought of it. I just know which is the general direction of Chicago — that’s all.”

“But how?”

“Sort of instinct. You use a compass on Earth, but as it doesn’t work here, I suppose we’ve subconsciously developed a high sense of direction. But even if I were wrong, Arrul would tell us. Gorlaks always seem to know where they are.”

As they trudged on, Hal put another question on a subject yet unexplained. “We expected to find this world teeming with primitive monsters. So far we’ve only heard one, and seen a number of little, rabbit-sized creatures? Aren’t there many big reptiles?”

“According to history, there were plenty, but they’ve mostly been killed by us or by the Wots. You see, rifles can do a lot in eight hundred years. A land reptile, that is, a large land reptile, is rare now, but there are plenty of weird things in the seas and rivers. That’s been one of our greatest stumbling blocks. We think it probable that, although there is a great deal of water, there is more land than the continent we know, but we can’t find out for certain.”

“But surely, in all this time — ”

“Think of our conditions. Nobody has yet managed to make a ship able to withstand the bigger marine monsters. If such a ship were built, there would then be the fuel problem. Such coal as we have is, geologically speaking, very recent and very poor, at that. On Earth you are said to have hard wood which burns well, but all our vegetation is soft, with a high percentage of water. Some of us have been drilling for combustible oil, but we have found none. It is no good depending on wind, for there seldom is more than a breath stirring.

“We have been able to manage a compact storage battery for our planes and other purposes, but it is no good for long-distance work. Besides, even in this continent there are some parts where planes are attacked by Pteranodons, almost as big as the machines themselves — even the pterodactyl, which is comparatively small, is likely to wreck a plane if it should fly at it. Luckily they have learned to avoid these parts.”

“What a happy planet,” remarked Heerdahl, who had joined them. “But the things which really get me are how and why you use ornithopters — we were never able to do anything with them on Earth?”

“Oh, that’s easy. None of our ground is clear for takeoff or landing, what’s more we can keep very little of it clear if we try. It’s always like this again if left for a few days.” Knight kicked a bunch of tangled white growths. “The water’s out of the question for a plane, as it is for a ship. So that killed the idea of a screw-driven plane. None of our chemists has been successful in duplicating the explosives which drove the Ark, and the only men who knew the secret were killed when the ship landed. So that puts rockets out. The only thing to do was to evolve something which would cope with both our conditions and limitations.”

“But the lift?”

“You must remember the denseness of our atmosphere, and the way design advances when concentrated upon.”

Heerdahl nodded. “I’d like to examine one of these machines of yours.”

“You’ll have a chance soon.”

Vida had been looking worried ever since they had left the clearing. Now, with a quick glance round to see that none of the Gorlaks was within hearing, she asked: “Are you sure that it was quite safe to leave the Gorlaks to watch?”

“Safe?” Knight looked puzzled.

“I mean are they quite trustworthy? There’s no chance, for instance, of them giving warning to the Wots that we are here?”

For a moment Knight looked indignant at the questioning of the little creature’s loyalty. Then he remembered that Vida could not be expected to understand. “The Gorlaks are our friends,” he said with slight reproof in his voice. “They keep well away from Wots – in fact we gave them rifles to shoot Wots.”

“You gave them rifles to use against your own kind?” Vida asked incredulously. “Why?”

“Partly because Gorlaks are a delicacy to Wots.”

“You don’t mean — ?”

“Yes, they eat them.”

Vida’s eyes widened with surprise and horror. Instinctively, she looked back along the line to the mother Gorlak and that little furry-headed baby which regarded the world so solemnly. She shuddered and felt suddenly sick. “No,” she said.

Heerdahl burst in. “But they’re — they’re — good heavens man, it’s almost cannibalism.”

“That’s how we look at it,” Knight nodded. “The Wots, however — ”

A high-pitched cry in the rear, cut him short and brought the party to a halt. Arrul came up the line, bringing with him a Gorlak who panted heavily. “What is it?” Knight asked. The messenger reported that about fifty of the Wots had left the clearing where the ship lay and made off into the forest. “Following us?”

No, the Gorlak said. They were away on the left somewhere, but he had thought it better to report. “Quite right,” Knight agreed. He considered for a moment. “I don’t suppose it means anything but, Arrul, you might scatter your folks and keep a lookout.”

“Gorlaks,” he remarked as the march was resumed, “are wonders for not being seen. They’ll find out what is happening, all right.”

“You were talking about the Wots,” Heerdahl prompted.

“It is difficult to explain them without delivering a lecture,” said Knight. “You see, so many causes have combined to make them as they are. Firstly, you must remember that they are descended from a fanatic or the close followers of a fanatic. It is even probable that Watson became thoroughly unhinged towards the end. He certainly compiled a remarkable book which seems to consist in part of an old work called the Bible, but mostly of his own instructions and prophecies.

“The Wots have so based their customs upon him, that in the course of time the teaching of Watson, himself, has become more important to them than the earlier part of the book. I have heard some of our scholars say that as Moses was to the Israelites so is Watson to the Wots – that conveys little to me but, perhaps, more to you.”

“You mean that they almost worship him?”

“Some of them go further than that. There are figures and shrines set up to him in many places.”

“But their attitude to the Gorlaks?” asked Vida.

“That is an outcome of Watson’s teaching. He might not have approved of their manner of treating the Gorlaks, but he wrote that man is the supreme work of God and is the only possessor of a soul — therefore the Gorlaks are considered to be animals just as much as any of the reptiles. The slaughtering of the little grey people has become almost a point of honor with the Wots — a sort of defence of their own status.”

‘That sounds like a kind of logical madness.”

“It is. You see, not only do they practice natural birth and disallow incubation, but in the absence of any food problem or any form of control, they have been able to breed promiscuously and at random — with some strange results. While we Dingtons realized that breeding, in such a small community, must be carefully watched so that no one strain will become over-emphasized, the Wots took no such care.

“Inbreeding is not harmful provided that the stock is well-matched, but among them the strain of Watson’s mania — and possibly that of several of his followers — was allowed to run riot. The result is that the unstable and fanatical race of Wots is more than twice as numerous as our carefully-raised nation of Dingtons. We are beginning to be faced with a number of very grave problems.”

“So the Wots really went native.”

Knight looked puzzled; the phrase was evidently unfamiliar to him. Hal explained: “I mean that we have a similar problem, though a small one, on Earth. In the tropics we find that a white man either conquers the conditions or is conquered by them. There is no maintaining an easy level. It would seem, from what you say, that the Dingtons have conquered Venusian conditions, while the Wots have been beaten by them.”

“That just fits it,” Knight agreed. “Except that you flatter the Dingtons. We still have an uphill fight.”

“What I can’t understand about these Wot people,” interposed Crawshaw, “is why the devil they want to attack us. We arrive on a perfectly friendly visit, and the first thing they do is to lay siege to our ship. Why?”

“Just because you are blasphemers.”

“We are?”

“Watson told his lot that the Earth was destroyed — they’ve always hated us because we said it was not. Now you have turned up and, from their point of view, you are a set of living blasphemies.”

“But surely — well, hang it all, don’t we prove that the Earth still does exist?”

‘That annoys them all the more — you obviously have not had much to do with a fanatical religion. Its very strength is its own immense obstinacy. If they once ad- mitted that you have really come from Earth, then all the doctrine of Watson would begin to totter.”

“But—”

“Look out,” Knight cried, in sudden alarm.

Hal checked immediately. There was a sweet flavor in his mouth and nose. He tried to speak but the words would not come. His head swam and he had a sense of horrible sickness. Dimly he was aware of a hand firmly gripping his arm.

The Wots’ Ruse

Hal’s first sensation when he opened his eyes was a splitting headache. He lay for a moment on his back, looking up through the pale branches. The sky was darkening, but still shot with vivid streaks of color. Something stirred beside him and in a flash he remembered recent events. He sat up with a groan at the stabbing ache which the movement caused. At one side, Knight crouched with his head in his hands, while on the other Arrul squatted, looking at them both with concern.

“Oh, Lord,” he muttered, putting both hands to his temples.

“It’ll pass in a few minutes,” Knight’s muffled voice assured him.

To Hal’s astonishment, the prediction proved true. The ache lifted as suddenly and definitely as if an actual weight had been removed. He looked around for the rest of their party. No one else was in sight, and he turned anxiously upon the other. “Where are they? What’s happened?”

Knight looked at him miserably and shamefacedly. “Wots,” he said. “Arrul thinks that the large party of them which left the clearing, made a quick march and cut us off. He couldn’t get back in time to give us any warning.”

“But why didn’t they take us with the others?”

“Overlooked us. Arrul turned up at the last moment and dragged you into the scrub. I managed to stagger there as well, and he contrived to hide us both. Don’t talk too loudly — there may be some of them still about.”

“But, man, they’ve got Vida, Temberly, all of them.”

“I know, but we can’t help them if we get caught too.”

“What will they do with them?”

Knight shook his head. If he knew he was not going to tell. ‘To think that I was caught with an old trick like that,” he said, with a mixture of disgust and remorse.

“Like what?”

For answer, the other pointed to a plant which grew close by. Hal could see that it was the same kind of Venusian flower which had earlier covered Temberly with pollen. “They wedge the petals apart with a little rod and pour a kind of powder inside. Then, having attached a fine wire to the rod, they clear off to a safe distance either leaving the wire in the victim’s path, or taking the loose end in their hands. The moment the wire is jerked the rod slips, and down comes the upper petal, puffing the powder out like a poison-gas cloud. Then they just come up and collect those who were near enough to breathe any of it and tie them up before they have time to recover — it’s a common Wot trick.”

The last of the light had almost gone. Knight turned to Arrul. “Can you take us through the dark?”

The Gorlak nodded. He never spoke unnecessarily. Knight seemed a little cheered. “With luck, we’ll be in time. They won’t have got the others to the clearing yet. Wots never travel by night — they’d have to use lights and that would make them too good a mark for the Gorlak snipers. If we can get somewhere and send Chicago a message, we ought to be well on the way by dawn.”

“I suppose they will be taking the others to the clearing?”

“It’s an even bet. Let’s get on.”

Led by the little Gorlak, they stumbled on through the dark forest.

Lucy, on the Nazia, spent an uneasy night. It had been decided that, since they were perfectly safe, the best course was to follow ordinary routine. Accordingly, after supper they retired to bed. She soon found that the prospect of sleep was remote, seeming momentarily to recede further. She tossed restlessly listening to the snores which drifted down the corridor from those two hardened campaigners, Mackay and Freeman. She envied them their power of detachment.

Her Madonna-like face bore wrinkles as she worried over the safety of the other party. The message flashed to Smith, “Going for help now” had been so brief and uninformative. She wished it had told more, though, of course, there had been the risk that' the besiegers might have noticed.

“Going where? And to get help from whom?” Lucy asked herself.

Several times she crept quietly from her cabin to the main living room and peered out at the attackers. In the dim light she was able to see that they had not left their posts but lay sleeping on the open ground. What were they waiting for? Surely they must realize that the Nazia's stores could support those inside for weeks, if necessary. But, if it came to that, why should they be hostile at all? None of the crew had fought until attacked. Once more she climbed back to her berth and this time, while her thoughts wandered off after Temberly and the others, sleep overtook her.

It was Smith who woke her in the morning. “Come here,” he was whispering from the doorway.

“Go away while I get dressed,” she commanded. “What is it?”

“It’s the men outside. Come and watch them a bit.”

The half-naked savages were all awake now. Some had made off for the forest, presumably in search of food, others were obviously on guard duty, while still more amused themselves according to their lights. It was to a group of the latter that Smith pointed. He and the girl watched them in silence. “What’s wrong with ’em? Have you ever seen people behave like that before?”

Lucy turned her head away. She was feeling sickened and disgusted and her face showed it. “Yes,” she said. “Once. It was amongst the more dangerous patients in a mental home.”

Smith nodded. “I wondered if that was it. But the oddest thing is that the others don’t seem to take any notice of them. Do you suppose they’re all mad?”

“Either that, or they are so used to it that they don’t notice,” Lucy replied. With an effort, she had overcome her instinctive revulsion and was watching critically again. The two engineers entered the room and stood behind them.

“What is it?” Mackay asked. Lucy told him.

“By gosh, you’re right,” he agreed after a few minutes’ inspection. He gave a grimace of distaste; the normal man’s first reaction.

“No good thinking of parleying with that lot,” he said decisively. “We stay right here until the others bring along an army of keepers, or whatever it is they’ve gone to fetch.”

He turned away from the spectacle outside and shepherded the rest to the middle of the room. “Now we are going to eat,” he announced. “What shall it be for breakfast?”

“I don’t think I — ” Lucy began.

“Oh, yes, you are, young woman. You needn’t think I’m going to let you be put of your food by a bunch of lunatics, not even if I have to stuff it into your mouth myself. Come along and see what there is in the pantry.” Under Mackay’s spell of cheerfulness, they almost managed to forget the loose-lipped creatures and their unpleasant antics outside. By the end of the meal, they felt a great deal improved in spirits. Mackay asked: “Now what are we going to do? We don’t know when the rest will be back, so we might as well get on with something useful in the meantime. Now you, Lucy — ”

Smith, who had drifted across to the window again, called back over his shoulder. “Something’s doing in the forest. There’s a whole lot of these brutes streaking over there as fast as they can leg it, and there’s another lot coming out to meet them.”

Lucy picked up the field glasses and joined him. She twisted the focusing screw for a moment, then the glasses fell clattering to the metal floor. She swayed and went suddenly pale. “What the — ? Catch her, she’s fainted!”

Mackay snatched up the fallen glasses. “My God,” he said, “they’ve got them!”

Nobody spoke for a moment.

“Hal’s not there. Good man, Hal, he’s dodged them. There’s still a hope that he will be able to get help unless — ” He stopped abruptly as the possibility of a grimmer cause for Hal’s absence struck him.

The advancing Wots brought their prisoners close to the ship and arranged them in a row before the window. All had their arms tied behind their backs and looked weary and disheveled. Various of the Wots had proudly possessed themselves of the rocket-shell rifles and pistols, but the other accoutrements remained with their owners, even Freda’s camera still being slung upon her side, and Crawshaw’s machete dangling from his belt, tantalizingly out of reach of his bound hands.

Temberly, white-faced, looked up at them and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. Mackay caught his meaning and nodded, pointing behind him to where Lucy lay. Vida stood among the captors with a cool aloofness, while Heerdahl appeared to be testing the effect of a potent flow of rocket-service language. One of the Wots hit him a blow across the mouth, sending him staggering to his knees.

“Swine,” said Mackay under his breath.

“I don’t like the looks of this,” Freeman murmured.

“You’re right — it’s pretty ugly.”

There was a pause while several of the Wots consulted. One pointed to the two women, but the rest shook their heads. Then Temberly appeared to catch their notice, and they nodded agreement to some plan. The little biologist was roughly pushed nearer the window while the rest of the prisoners were drawn aside. One of the Wots produced a length of thin cord, tied it into a loop, and placed it about Temberly’s head. Mackay’s fists clenched whitely as he glared in futile helplessness.

“This is hell,” muttered Freeman.

The Wot slipped a short rod through the loop, and began to twist…

A sound which was half whimper and half scream startled the two engineers. They swung around to see Lucy rushing from the room. “By heaven, she’s right,” cried Mackay, “we can’t stand for that.”

He charged after the girl, catching up a machete as he passed.

The Wots’ ruse was successful,” Heerdahl told Hal afterwards. “It was bound to be. Those four could not stay quietly inside the Nazia watching poor Temberly’s eyes almost start from his head and seeing his face go livid with agony while the Wots gleefully tightened the cord. Crawshaw and I struggled like mad, but we couldn’t do a thing other than tell the Wots what we thought of them. Yes, they got the others out of the ship, all right, but you ought to have seen them come.

“There was a big bunch of Wots waiting by the port, all ready to pounce — you could see them crouch for the spring as the door began to open. But they didn’t know Mackay and Freeman — nor did we until then. Those two plunged out with heavy machetes whirling like wild buzz-saws. Man, it was astounding – they must have mowed down half the gang in the first rush, then a lot more Wots ran up to help.

“Mackay and Freeman stood back-to-back and hewed at the ring around them. I could see Mackay’s face, and I’ll never forget the way he grinned as he laid about him. Over his shoulder I could see Freeman’s head bobbing about, bound with a white bandage — he wasn’t doing too badly, either. None of the Wots dared to try a shot at such close quarters. And, believe me, those Wots in the front were just sliced, there was no dodging, because their pals at the back were pressing them forward.

“There was another bit of fireworks going on round Temberly. Lucy came out of the port, slid around behind the mill the other two were making, and rushed for the man who was doing things to Temberly. Her fingers were crooked like claws as she came tearing at him. Lord, man, you should have seen his face when she’d finished — well, it just wasn’t a face, that’s all.

“Of course, it couldn’t last. Somebody put a rifle stock in the way of Mackay’s machete and knocked it out of his hand. Even then it nearly decapitated another Wot as it flung free. Mackay still smiled. He doubled up his fists and started busting their jaws, but they piled on him and then got Freeman from the back. Some of them managed to grab Lucy, and then they’d got the lot of us — except Smith. Nobody had noticed him in the general dust-up. We thought he must still be in the Nazia, but one of the Wots gave a yell and pointed. There was Smith, he’d got through somehow and was legging it for the forest – he was mighty close to it, too. About six or seven Wots fired at once. That was the end of Smith, poor devil.

“We began to wonder what was the next ingenious little beastliness in the Wots’ minds. It wasn’t long before we found out.”

Rescue

Arrul the Gorlak led Knight and Hal forward unerringly. At times the growths became so thick that even the dimness overhead was blotted out, and they were forced to hold one another to keep together in the darkness.

“Can the Gorlaks see at night?” Hal asked.

“Very little better than we can, if at all, but they seem to have some warning sense of obstructions — I’ve seen blind men avoid things in the same way. The doctors say that it is due to sounds being reflected by the objects.”

They trudged monotonously on in silence. Hal was unable to see his watch, but it seemed certain that several hours had passed before they at last worked clear of the trees and stood on the edge of a large open space. “That was very well done, Arrul,” Knight said. Turning to Hal he nodded: “From here, we can ’phone Chicago to be ready.”

“From where?”

Knight pointed ahead. Hal gradually was able to make out the bulk of a huge building, so little darker than the sky which backed it, as to be almost invisible. While they were hurrying forward, Knight drew a small whistle from his pocket and produced that same wailing note to which Arrul had earlier given answer. Some seconds later, doors in the building opened to emit a beam of light which momentarily dazzled the three. They ran forward, Knight calling to the men silhouetted in the opening. To Hal, the diminutive appearance of these guards gave a new idea of the scale of the building. Soon they passed in through a tall archway and the gates clashed behind them.

“Wait here a minute,” Knight said.

Hal watched him disappear through a small doorway, and then turned to study the surroundings with growing astonishment. It was evident, at once, that this was no single structure, but a whole town. The lighting was dim, for, as he guessed, the inhabitants were most of them asleep. But it showed enough for him to see that the buildings were arranged in concentric circles, and that he was standing between the two outer rings.

Straight ahead a large archway pierced the facade and through it he could see the road continuing for some distance, alternately dark and light, as it passed under more blocks or across more open spaces. Lights were showing here and there from scattered windows both in the ring before him, and in that through which they had entered. He was puzzled that no lights had been visible as they approached and asked Arrul the reason.

“Snipers,” said the Gorlak with his customary economy of speech.

The guardians of the gate had been regarding Hal with a deep interest. It was obvious that they knew him for a member of the rocket ship. One of them overheard his question, and volunteered information: “Originally, we were never safe from the Wots. Our only method of preserving ourselves from their marauding bands was to wall our cities solidly and leave no opening for bullets. The Wots were far bolder in the old days than they are now. A century ago this city had to stand sieges, but even now the walls are necessary, as the Gorlak said, to save us from being picked off by snipers. One could fight an army, but against sharpshooters…” He completed the sentence with an expression of disgust.

Knight came hurrying back. “I’ve got through to Chicago. They’re getting things ready. We ought to be able to get there before they start, if we hurry.” The guards had wheeled out a long, low, black machine. As the two slipped into their seats, Knight turned to Arrul. “Collect your people and wait for us,” he said.

Arrul nodded solemnly, and the car slid off towards the center of the city. “Straight road all the way to Chicago from the opposite gate,” Knight explained to the mystified Hal. “We rarely go out of the cities at night, but we’ve got to risk Wot bullets this time.”

Their approach had evidently been signaled, so that the far gates stood open and ready for them to shoot out on to a broad highway. Knight crouched lower over the wheel and put his foot down. The machine was remarkably silent and seemed to go like the wind. Hal remembered that the other had spoken of storage batteries as almost the only method of powering on Venus. As they sped through the night, he asked: “Why don’t you use radio? A portable transmitter would have saved us hours — in any case, I should have thought it was a necessity on this planet.”

“Won’t work,” Knight replied, his eyes fixed on the road. “Somebody’s always got new ideas to make it possible, but they never work out. You see, we’ve not only got two or three reflecting layers, but reflecting curtains, as well. It would be easy if they were constant, but their always shifting with temperature and climate. Apparently quite haphazardly — at least, no one yet has been able to predict their movements. Radio’s worse than useless if it is ninety-nine per cent certain to let you down.”

Hal remembered his own transmitter’s failure to raise the Nazia and nodded comprehendingly. Knight, concentrating on driving, was quiet for a while, and Hal lay back in his seat to ease his weariness. He was almost dozing when the glare of lamps down the road, startled him. Knight sheered the black machine to one side, giving room to a row of heavy, squat shapes. “Tanks,” he said gleefully, “they’ve not lost much time.” A few moments later he pointed ahead: “Chicago.”

This time, it was no lightless city that they approached instead, the whole massive outer wall was bathed in a flood of whiteness. Closer, Knight ran the car off the road, and sprang out. Hal followed, bewildered at the sight before him. The Dington forces were assembling for action.

The foreground was a scene of rushing activity, while behind, the wall of this new Chicago swept up in the floodlights like an enormous black cloth. Hal was struck with a sense of incongruity. In front of what might have been the ramparts of some medieval city, he could see tanks swiftly crawling from the huge main gateway on to the road. And, every now and again, a shadow as of a monstrous bat passed across the wall as one of the strange Venusian flying machines sank flapping, to take up its position in line. Everywhere there seemed to be a bustle and confusion, and a shouting of commands.

Knight hurried over to a group of officers and spoke for a few minutes, then he returned to Hal. “That’s fixed,” he said. “They’re letting us have a three-seater machine, and we start in ten minutes.”

The take-off of the ornithopter was a curious sensation for a rocket pilot Knight first depressed a lever on the dashboard and there was a rapid fluttering of wings outside. The whole craft vibrated uncomfortably as it lifted and began to rise straight up. Looking, left and right, Hal could see a long line of the machines churning the air in similar fashion. Down below, yet another detachment of tanks was streaming along the road. “Looks as though your whole military force must be in this,” he said.

The other grinned. “Most of it is, and feeling pretty sore, too. After all, we’ve waited for you for eight hundred years and we feel you’ve had a pretty poor reception.”

As he spoke, he leaned forward and made an adjustment. The shuddering of the machine stopped abruptly, for a moment it seemed to hang, then the wings slowly began to move again, this time with great, surging beats. Hal could see that at the bottom of their strokes, the tips reached well below the level of the landing gear, and he understood why the rapid, short movement had been necessary in rising. At first, the occupants were forced back in their seats as each heavy sweep forced the plane forward, but once the desired speed was attained they seemed to swim smoothly on in a silence broken only by a swishing which barely penetrated to the cabin.

“If we are going straight there, what about the tanks? They’ll be far behind, won’t they?” Hal asked.

“They aren’t too slow on the road, though the forest will hold them back a bit. The Chicago tanks are really a reinforcement; those from the other cities ought to arrive much the same time as we do,” Knight explained. “You know,” he added, “your arrival has precipitated a proper war. Most of us have been waiting of having a slam at the Wots on a big scale for a long time; now we’ve got a cause which overrides all the peace party’s protests.”

The sky was beginning to grow lighter. In the thick air of Venus, the dawn was a spectacle of rioting color to make Earthly dawns a dull memory. Knight began to look worried. They were still some distance from the Nazia, and he was afraid of the things which might take place before they could arrive.

The day was nearly an hour old when they passed over the end of the road, and the city at which they had called in the darkness. They could see that the spaces between the concentric rings of buildings were filled with Dingtons who looked up, waving to the fliers as they passed. Faintly the sound of cheering rose to them and then dropped behind as they sped out over the forest. Knight pointed down to the lanes of crushed debris streaking the country below.

“The tanks are on ahead,” he said.

It seemed to Hal that they flew dangerously near the ground, but he found that all the other ornithopters were on the same level, and realized that, as the day grew warmer, visibility was shortening in a way which made spotting from altitude quite impossible. Already the two far wings of the aerial fleet could only be dimly seen.

Half an hour later they caught up the tanks. Hal had only received a distant impression of these during the night – now an exclamation escaped him as he gazed down. The machines were traveling on both wheels and tractor treads at a rate which was almost half that of the fliers. At the front of each projected two supports, holding what at first appeared to be a disk of bright metal. A nearer view showed it in reality to be a wheel of knife blades, revolving in the horizontal plane at high speed. By these devastating instruments, the soft growths were being swept away like melting butter, and the remains crushed to a dirty white pulp beneath the grinding tanks. Hal shuddered at the thought of the carnage should any of the Wots attempt to obstruct the monsters’ paths.

A blasting roar from somewhere not far ahead, jerked him back to the matter in hand. “Rockets,” he exclaimed. “The Nazia’s rockets, what the devil are they doing?”

A moment later they reached the clearing and could see the glimmer of the ship’s hull. As they swept towards the clustering Wots, Knight pressed his machine gun button. He purposely fired high for fear of hitting the prisoners, but the effect was instantaneous. Scared faces turned up for one glance at the descending fleet of ornithopters, and their owners scattered in every direction.

Scarcely a shot was fired in reply as the hundreds of Wots bounded for the safety of the forest. Several planes sank fluttering beside the Nazia where three bound figures stood. The rest hunted the fleeing Wots to the trees. From one side of the clearing rose shrieks of terror as the wretches found themselves trapped between the pursuing machine guns of the ornithopters and the deadly tanks breaking cover ahead. As the machine landed, Hal sprang out and ran towards his roped friends. He noticed that the Nazia’s port stood wide open, and a horrible fear gripped him.

“Where are the rest?” he demanded as he cut Temberly’s bonds. “Where’s Vida?”

“Those devils have got her; carried off all three of the women,” said Crawshaw.

“And the men?”

“Dead, like we’d have been in another ten minutes,” Heerdahl replied.

“Which way did they take the women?” Knight asked.

“Over there,” Crawshaw pointed. “A plane like one of these came along. They bundled them all three into it and flew off that way.”

“Damn them,” said Knight. “I’ve always said that they’d got hold of some of those machines which were reported wrecked.” He turned to an officer. “Find accommodation in planes for these two men,” he directed, pointing to Crawshaw and Temberly. We’ll take the other with us. Put some tanks on guard here. We’ve got to be quick. You two get aboard,” he added to Hal and Heerdahl.

Hal demurred momentarily. “What about taking the Nazia?” he suggested.

Knight took his arm and urged him towards the ornithopter. “No good for this job. Too big, and besides, you can’t use your guns. Come along, time’s precious.”

The great wings threshed furiously, and again the machine shuddered into the air.

Finale

The clearing slipped behind and they were able to catch glimpses through the trees of feverish activities proceeding below. There was the sound of intermittent rifle fire. Knight pointed down. “Arrul and his people are on the job,” he said. “There’s many a Wot down there who wishes he had never developed a taste for roast Gorlak.”

“Good luck to Arrul — I’m with him altogether,” growled Heerdahl.

“Judging by the sight around the ship, you didn’t do so badly yourselves,” Knight commented. “I didn’t count the Wot bodies, but there were plenty of them.”

“Not my doing, worse luck,” said Heerdahl. He went on to tell of the heroic fight of Mackay and Freeman, and the death of Smith.

“The next thing,” he continued, “was the arrival of the flier and the kidnaping of the women — and there were we, each with a dozen Wots hanging on to us, and all tied up, too. It was hell. We couldn’t do a thing but kick out, though we did that hard enough. After the plane had gone, they thought it was time to take it out of us and started giving nasty looks at Freeman. He’d paid out a number of Wots in the scrap, and they weren’t pleased about it — they weren’t fond of Mackay either, but he had been disarmed a bit sooner than Freeman.

“Well, they held a bit of a talk and began to look so pleased with themselves that we knew something pretty beastly was in the wind. With nasty grins, they hauled Freeman away from the rest of us. First they ripped off his clothes, and then they tied a rope to each of his ankles and wrists — that wasn’t too easy: Freeman’s were tough fists, but they did it, and started dragging him towards the stern of the Nazia. It was only then that we saw their idea, and we had to stand by and watch them tie poor Freeman across the rocket exhaust tubes. One of the Wots went into the ship.

“I guess Mackay just went mad then. God knows how he broke loose, but he did, and before we knew what was happening, he was on that crowd with a machete in each hand — carving at them with strokes which ripped them to bits. I’ve seen a few rough houses in my time, but Mackay’s show made them all seem like petting parties. The Wots just melted away in front of him — those who didn’t get sliced. I don’t blame them, either. I know I’d have moved fast if I’d been faced with those two machetes and Mackay’s grin behind them. He ploughed through the gang right up to where Freeman was spreadeagled over the tubes. He’d only time to slash one of the ropes through before the Wots were back at him and he had to turn on them.

“It was just then that the Wot executioner found the rocket keys. He couldn’t see from the control desk what was happening back at the stern, so he just pressed. “There was a gush of flame, with a roar which nearly split our ears, and the whole ship slid a couple of yards forward.”

Heerdahl paused a moment, then he added: “When the smoke cleared, there was no sign of Mackay nor Freeman — they had been flashed out, and two dozen Wots with them. It was a mercifully quick end. A couple of minutes later, you turned up.”

For a time, nobody spoke. Knight’s look was grim as he pushed the ornithopter at top speed. Hal seemed to be staring blankly ahead, all expression wiped from his face. It was Heerdahl who felt that he must break the silence his own story had created. “Where, exactly, are we heading?” he asked in a tone which strove to be normal.

“To the Wots’ one town of any size,” Knight replied, catching the other’s mood. “It’s called Ararat.”

“More traces of Watson — he was a Biblical old fellow, wasn’t he? But I’d gathered that the Wots were more or less nomadic?”

“They are, mostly, but this is a sort of shrine in memory of Watson — their great religious meeting place. Besides, they had to have some central manufacturing place for weapons and tools. Luckily they’ve never made more than small arms – it would need more organization and control than they like, to go in for big guns.”

Hal broke in. There was a hard edge to his voice. “Can’t you get this damned thing to go any faster?”

“Flat out,” replied Knight shortly.

The field of vision was so limited that they found themselves passing over the outskirts of the Wots’ city before they had realized that they were near the end of the journey. Roughly made, single-story huts appeared among the trees, growing more numerous and more closely packed as they advanced. Soon they were looking down on twisting, narrow streets. The city of Ararat had more of the higgledy-piggledy impermanence of a gold-rush town than the solidity of a nation’s metropolis. Moreover not a solitary figure was to be seen in any of the roads. “Where — ?” Hal began. Then a look of horror spread over his face.

They had reached an oval arena, packed with thousands of the semi-nude Wots. All were facing the far end, their heads bent down as though in prayer. On a great block, at the far end of the arena, was mounted the gigantic stone figure of a man. He was dressed in the clothes of a fashion long past and was in the act of raising both hands to heaven, as though invoking.

“So they’ve made an idol of Watson,” Heerdahl murmured.

Hal did not hear. He was gazing at a form standing before a block, dwarfed into insignificance by the huge statue towering above. From a metal collar about her neck, a chain led to a staple set in the stone. She saw the plane as it came and lifted her arms in an imploring gesture. Simultaneously, the Wots seemed to break the spell which had held them. They flung back their arms, and a volley of stone flew through the air towards the lonely figure.

Knight slowed and banked steeply to bring his machine gun to bear. He could see a second plane, flying low over the crowd. He heard a great cry of “Freda,” and saw a man drop from it.

By all rights, Crawshaw should have killed himself in that rash leap, but he did not. He landed sprawling in the space which lay between the crowd and its victim. In a split second he was up and running towards Freda. She sank under the hail of stones as he reached her. Crawshaw was flagging, something inside him had not stood the strain of that jump, but he reached the fallen girl and flung his own body across her as a shield.

Somewhere a rifle cracked. A spray of machine gun bullets answered and, as the other planes came up, each added its stream of lead. The Wots surged first one way and then the other, faltered, and then broke, trampling one another under foot in a wild dash for the safety of the narrow streets. Still the machine guns mercilessly followed them. The Dingtons were out for blood this time.

Knight landed his ornithopter near the towering statue of Watson. Hal walked slowly from it to the two who lay before the stone block. The others saw him shake his head and then gently lay his coat over the clasped figures. He stood for a moment looking down upon them before he turned to walk unsteadily back. “They are both dead and they are both smiling,” he said quietly. “I think I should like to die like that.”

“Hal,” a voice cried. Vida’s voice.

Hal opened his mouth, but at first no sound came. “Where are you, Vida?” he managed at last. His tone was curiously unsteady.

“In a cell under the statue.”

It was the work of a few minutes to free Vida and, with her, Lucy. Vida flung herself into her husband’s arms and wept uncontrollably with relief. Temberly bounded from a machine whose wings had scarcely ceased to flap and ran towards Lucy. Her eyes, too, were glistening wetly as they met.

“My dear — your head,” she cried.

But Temberly had forgotten the angry red weal across his brow. His heart had been aching more than his head. They forgot too the merciless slaughter of the Wots and their city of fanaticism as the machine guns and the rifles of the Gorlak hordes pressed on to the killing. “Did you know that stoning was their punishment for blasphemy?” Heerdahl asked.

The other admitted it.

“I was afraid so. The Wots seem to be travelling a reverse path; very soon, they would have been true savages, perhaps below the level of the Gorlaks. We must kill them off now, all of them; else we will never feel safe.”

Heerdahl pondered in silence for a while, then: “It’s odd,” he said reflectively. “Here are we, reaching out to the stars, while they sink back to the slime. Where does it all lead?”

“We must go to older worlds to discover that.”

Of the rest you know. Newspapers and films have shown you pictures of the Venusian life. Temberly’s book, The Flora and Fauna of Known Venus is a best seller. Most of poor Freda’s salvaged pictures and notes have been published. Hal and Vida Newton have described both in print, and on the radio, the royal way in which the Dingtons treated their visitors when the Nazia was landed near that new and strange Chicago — all this is common knowledge.

My task has been, not to describe Venus, but to tell the story of her discoverers. And though five of those who set out have joined that glorious company of adventurers which has paid with its lives for the conquest of space; yet their memory is no less to be honored than that of the four who returned and the one who remains. On? Yes, Heerdahl is still on Venus, helping Knight to build a second Nazia. Any day may see them come, roaring like a man-made meteor, towards the Earth.

Exiles on Asperus

1933

Foreword

Whatever our private opinions — and they may differ a great deal — of the administration of Earth’s colonies in the Solar System, we are, nevertheless, proud of their existence. Not only do we admire the men who founded them, but we are even prouder of the endurance of danger, hardship and discomfort by those who developed them. Few of us would care to spend even a week at a trading station upon Venus, yet many a man has worked for years in that eternal blanket of steamy mist, helping to increase Earth’s comfort and wealth.

Not many of us would endure without protest a term of scorching by day and freezing by night upon the desert plains of Mars — that greatest of our colonies, so woefully mismanaged until the revolt of 2077, as to be like a stinging slap in the face of Justice. And still greater would be our trials if we should be forced to fight against the gravitation of the major planets.

Earth has cause, indeed, to be proud of all her colonies — all, that is, save one. The name of this one colony will be found in no directory; it is officially unrecognized. It is severed and will remain severed, probably forever, from its parent world. Its men hold no communication with us, and it is long since we have heard how they fared. A conspiracy of silence has closed down on its unfortunate existence, and one of our earliest — though involuntary — settlements is unknown to most Earthmen even by name. Its story is unique.

Misadventure

A violent shock threw the navigator of the Argenta forward in his chair so that he sprawled across his control desk. His two companions in the navigating dome staggered and slid across the deck plates. The clangor of a dozen or more alarm bells jangled throughout the ship. Angus McDowell, the chief engineer, made his way back to the desk, ruefully rubbing that part of his head which had met the wall.

“What the hell—?” he began in a mildly surprised tone. The third man, Joe Seely, scrambling from the floor, cut him short.

“Holed, sure as we’re living,” he exclaimed. “These ruddy asteroids! — where’s the damage, David?”

The navigator turned to look up at the rows of indicators mounted to the left of his desk. In the middle of the top row a red light was winking briskly. “Guard room,” he reported.

“Hell!” Joe, who was officer of the watch, tore out of the navigating dome and they could hear his voice bellowing orders down the corridor as he ran. Angus strolled closer to the desk. His was a lanky, angular figure possessed of long arms and big joints. He showed no smoothly rounded muscular development, but those who had once tried conclusions with his tough, sinewy frame seldom wished for more. A long-faced Scotchman, this, who had never known Scotland. The product of ancestors bred in the shipyards of the Clyde, inheriting their engineering tradition with their blood. His manner towards the navigator was slightly paternal.

“Serious, Sonny?” he asked.

David shrugged his shoulders. A few years in the service had already given him a degree of that fatalism characteristic of so many space sailors. “Final for those who happened to be in the guard room. That indicator means that they hadn’t a chance to plug the leak. All their air was gone in two seconds. For the ship as a whole, not very serious.”

Angus nodded relievedly. “Surprising it wasn’t my engines. We do have a bit of luck — sometimes.” He paused before he added: “Think I’ll cut along and have a look at the mess.”

Angus clattered across the room, bending his head as he passed through the low exit. David returned to his calculations and corrections. No one was to blame for the accident. Approaching the asteroid belt, above the plane of the ecliptic, one could do no more than plot a course avoiding the larger, known fragments of rock, and trust to luck for the rest. Luck, on this occasion, had been less unkind than she frequently was.

Angus, making his way forward, toward the guard room, found a knot of men crowded around the entrance. Above the door, now automatically sealed by air pressure, a red danger light glowed steadily. Joe Seely was, with some difficulty, climbing into a spacesuit and attempting to bawl his orders above the continued clamor of the alarms. As the bells abruptly ceased Angus heard him say: “Six men to bring the portable airlock. Snap to it.”

The six raced off down the passageway while he still struggled with the intractable garment. When, at last, the stiff folds had been tugged up and the fasteners securely fixed, he picked up the air tanks and examined the dials. He dropped them disgustedly. “Half pressure — criminal carelessness. Somebody’s in for it over this. You!” he roared, startling a near member of the crew, “new oxygen pack. Jump to it!”

He lifted the space helmet and, turning it over between his hands, examined it with caution. “Hm. Appears to be satisfactory,” he admitted grudgingly.

Angus with a grin placed his big hand on the other’s shoulder. “Now, don’t you get rattled, laddie,” he advised. “Gettin’ rattled never did a man any good. He forgets details if he gets all het up — and you only forget details once in space.”

For a moment Joe seemed inclined to resent the warning. Then he smiled back and nodded. Angus was an old timer and privileged. Besides, he had spoken the truth: Joe had been getting windy.

The party returned bearing the portable airlock. It was in the form of a hollow box built of steelium sheets, but it lacked one of the longer sides. Around the six feet by four of this missing part, it was heavily faced with rubber. In the side opposite the space was set a door. The men fitted the contrivance over the guard room door so that side flanges slid over bolts provided for the purpose. While they worked hard with spanners to secure it, another of the crew attached the pipe which would later exhaust the air. Joe watched fidgeting impatiently until the spanners were laid aside.

“Finished?”

“All correct, sir,” the leader assured him.

“Good. Give me a hand with this helmet.”

Half a minute later he was inside the lock. He made sure that all was in order and the door safely bolted behind him and gave the starting signal of three taps on the metal wall. The pointer before him began to back swiftly as the pump did its work. In a short time the pressure became low enough for him to open the guard room door and, with a rush, the remaining air dissipated into the vacuum.

Joe moved clumsily over the threshold and surveyed the room. It was not a pleasant sight. It was, in fact, far worse than he had expected. For one thing there had evidently been far more men in the room than was usual at any one time. Their lifeless bodies seemed everywhere. Sagging in their chairs, fallen forward across the tables or sprawled on the floor wherever the sudden going of the air had left them. Their faces were a grey-blue and their mouths lolled open to show grey tongues.

Their fingers were tight clenched as though in a last, despairing clutch at receding life, and their eyes, fantastically protruding, seemed still to stare at death. The eyes of some had left their sockets. From the noses and ears of many, little streams of blood had spurted to be frozen by the cold of space. Joe felt sick. It was not the first time he had seen men dead from exposure to the vacuum, but it was the first time he had seen them in such numbers.

He counted more than thirty — almost the entire corps of guards snuffed out in a single moment. For what purpose they had all been assembled at once, he could not guess. He pulled himself together and brought his mind back to the practical aspect of the situation. “It’ll be tough work looking after the prisoners now,” he muttered.

He looked along the room and saw on the port side the three-foot hole which had caused the tragedy. Beyond, he could look out into space — a velvet blackness, pricked by distant stars. He turned to starboard in search of the corresponding hole and saw with a shock that there was none. He had never heard of a meteorite failing to pass clean through any ship it had struck. It became plain that here was a chance in several million. The object must have been moving at a speed but little different from their own. Its force at the angle of impact had only, therefore, been sufficient to carry it through one side of the Argenta. A short search for the cause of the mischief revealed it lying beside one of the corpses at the foot of a stanchion. The stanchion, massive member though it was, had been badly bent by the encounter. Joe whistled softly in surprise as he looked down. Instead of the irregular lump of cosmic rubbish he expected, he found himself gazing at a dented, steelium cylinder.

“A message rocket,” he muttered. “Now what the — ?”

Bending down, he rolled it over and felt for the catch which would slide the message compartment cover aside. He found it and gave the necessary combined pressure and twist. The lid snapped back to reveal only a single sheet of paper which he snatched up hurriedly and stuffed into a pocket of his spacesuit.

After a few more minutes of cursory examination of the room, he crossed to the wall and lifted down one of the emergency plates which must be carried in all rooms and cabins. Leaving this handy, he returned to the doorway and gave the signal taps for the admission of air. Then he hurried back to the plate and held it over the hole waiting for the air pressure to lock it into position with a weight of fifteen pounds to the square inch. It could not keep out the cold of space for the vacuum in that section of the double hull had been destroyed, but it would keep in the air and artificial warmth could be supplied for the time taken in repairs.

Some little time passed without result. Evidently there had been a hitch somewhere and again Joe began to grumble over the inefficiency of the Argenta s crew as he waited for the valve to open. At last, however, the needle of the wall dial flickered and began slowly to turn. Soon it became unnecessary for him to hold the emergency plate. He turned off his air supply and removed his helmet as the pointer neared the fifteen mark. Then he strode over to the door of the lock. He began to speak angrily as he opened it, but the words died as he stared at a pistol ominously facing him.

“Both hands up, please,” said a voice quietly.

His helmet fell with a crash as his hands rose.

Revolt

Joe emerged from the lock and looked wonderingly around the semi-circle of facing men. They were short, large-chested men with brown faces and hands. The meaning of the situation struck him with an unpleasant jolt. “The Martians — the prisoners,” he exclaimed. Thus did the widespread Martian revolt of 2077 affect even the Argenta, far out in space.

The man who held the pistol answered Joe. “The Martians, yes, but it is you Earthmen who are the prisoners now.” His speech was both good and fluent though, like that of most of his race, he retained the characteristic lilt.

Joe could see Angus at the rear of the group, towering over his lesser captors. The Scotchman was manifesting no little irritation: “ — lot of lousy sons of misbegotten desert rats. You’ll see what you’ll get for this, you — ugh.” The speech ended in a grunt as a pistol jabbed uncomfortably in his ribs.

Joe turned back to his captor. “This is piracy. You know the penalty?”

The Martian smiled. “This is more than mere piracy — it is revolution. Everywhere the Martians are turning upon their oppressors. You thought that we were crushed. You thought that you had stamped out the last spark of our spirit when at length you caught Sen-Su and condemned him and us to exile. That was a foolish thing to do. Our plans were already made. By the arrest of Sen-Su you gained us more support and lit the fuse of the revolution. Every loyal Martian knew the date and the time.”

As he finished, another group approached down the corridor. Joe could see that it comprised most of the ship’s officers including David Robbins, the navigator. One, however, he missed. “Where is Captain Briscoe?”

“Unfortunately, he is dead,” admitted the Martian.

“If you killed him, you swine — ” began Angus.

The other shook his head. “We did not. He succeeded in killing two of us, but when he saw that we had really got the situation in hand, he shot himself. It was a great pity. There would have been no dishonor for him in surrender.”

Joe believed him. He knew the old captain for a man of dogged pride; incapable of surrender while the means of death remained. “And what’s to be done with us?” he asked, hoping his uneasiness was not audible in his voice.

“For the present you will be confined in the officers’ mess. Your crew is now occupying our cells.”

By this time the two groups had joined and were moving on together. At the door of the mess room they halted. Each of the seven officers was first searched for concealed weapons and then passed in. Finally the door was closed and bolted upon a very dejected group of men. Only Angus retained the spirit to express his opinion of the situation: it appeared to amount to a withering blast of non-repetitive profanity.

“All right, all right,” counselled Joe after a while. At another time he might have admired Angus’ linguistic attainments, but at present they seemed unhelpful. “Just forget the Martians’ ancestors for a bit — they’re dead, anyway. The trouble now is, what are we going to do? We can’t sit down under this.”

“Do? What the hell can we do? I don’t mind telling you it’s the last time I ship on a ruddy convict carrier. What sort of filthy mess are they making of my engines, I wonder? A lot of stinking, bladder-chested — ”

“Oh, cut it out. Have we got any weapons?”

David jerked open a drawer which he remembered to have contained a pair of pistols. It was empty. A search of the room soon revealed that the Martians had been over it in anticipation of their hopes. “Hm, they’re no fools.” Joe noticed the door at the other end of the room. “Try that door, David.”

David walked across and rattled the handle vainly. He shook his head. “They seem to have caught us properly,” he admitted. “What puzzles me is how they worked it. They can’t have known that we were going to be holed.”

“No. That must have been just luck,” Joe agreed. “Judging from what the man with the gun said, it was all pre-arranged. The guards being wiped out meant that they caught us sitting instead of having to fight. But I’d like to know just how they got out.”

As he spoke, he had been unfastening the spacesuit which still encumbered him. He struggled awkwardly out of it and threw it into a corner. Torrance, the first officer, had made no comment since the calamity. Now he began to speak. Since the death of the captain, he became senior officer and, therefore, in command. None of those present had seemed to appreciate this, and his tone showed his resentment. He was unfortunate in that a peremptory knocking at the door cut him short halfway through the first sentence. All the men turned surprisedly. This seemed an unusual courtesy to prisoners. “Unbolt this door at once,” demanded a Martian voice while its owner rattled the handle.

David was about to call out that it was already unbolted, but, at a sign from Angus, he stopped. The Scotchman rose swiftly from his chair and lifted it above his head. He crossed the room and posted himself behind the door. “It’s not bolted,” he called.

He braced himself, ready to crash the chair upon the head of the first comer. The rest prepared to spring for the fallen man’s weapon and charge the door. Disconcertingly, a voice addressed them from behind. “Ah,” it said, “a little reception committee. I thought there might be, so I took the precaution of entering by the other door.”

They all whipped round to face a Martian who was accompanied by armed guards. Angus shamefacedly lowered his chair. The newcomer was short, even for his race, but his proportions were excellent, and in his carriage was a dignity utterly different from the frequent pomposity of small men. A slight smile crossed his clean-cut face at the sight of their surprise. “A little ruse of mine,” he explained.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” Torrance demanded curtly.

“My name, probably familiar to you, is Sen-Su. Till lately I was one of your prisoners.”

“The Martian nationalist?”

“Yes, and no doubt you have all heard many unpleasant things about me — probably are wondering what particular form of torment I have in store for you. They have made quite a bogeyman of me on Earth; I assure you they exaggerate. It has been a Governmental policy to malign me — Governments have to create thorough-going villains. In private life we should call them liars, but in public life they are propagandists.”

“Well?” Torrance attempted to make it clear from his tone that he was prepared to waste very little breath and time with a man of an inferior race.

“I have come primarily to express my regret at the death of Captain Briscoe. I assure you I regard it as a serious stain on an otherwise successful coup.”

There was no immediate reply from the Earthmen. They had not been taught to believe that Martians held to such a standard of behavior. In fact, it was frequently stated that no Martian knew the meaning of the word “honor.” David studied the little brown man and saw sincerity in his eyes. There was no mistaking the real thing. Moreover, many times in the past he had doubted that the Martians were such scum as Earth, in general, credited them with being. He looked around at his silent comrades and took it upon himself to reply. “We thank you for that,” he said.

Angus, after a puzzled stare leaned over towards him. “I believe you’re right, Sonny,” he confided in a hoarse whisper. “He means it.”

Torrance cut in with a sharp demand to know Sen-Su’s intentions. The other raised his eyebrows at the tone, but his voice remained even as he answered: “That is simple. Our parts are reversed. For you, the fate which was to be ours. For us, the occupations which were yours.”

“You intend to maroon us on the planetoid, Asperus?”

As Sen-Su nodded Torrance broke out wrathfully: “You won’t get away with that. All the ships in the Solar system will be at your heels. Far better surrender quietly now.”

Sen-Su smiled again, tolerantly. “I see you do not yet understand. This is no isolated reversal for Earth. It is a fight for liberty. Everywhere, except on Earth itself, Martians have by this time risen in thousands, determined as only a persecuted people can be, to end Earth’s oppression. You came to Mars and found an old race — old, before yours began. We were prepared to be friendly, but you let loose your adolescent cruelty upon us. You could not understand that a people may outgrow the futilities of war and strife. You called us decadent and weak.

“This impression, colored with fictitious stories of our vices, was suggested again and again to all Earthmen, and, such is the immense power of suggestion scientifically sustained we became to your minds, monsters of depravity. The truth — that we were an old race, resting as a man rests when his work is done — was not allowed to percolate into your thoughts. You have disturbed our content, stirred us from our peace, and your oppression has meant our rejuvenation. Old Mars has had to arise in all her ancient might against alien barbarians.”

The first officer stepped forward with fists clenched. “Barbarians? You call us barbarians?”

Pistols waved him back. Sen-Su shrugged his shoulders. “If a demonstration of barbarity were needed, you have given it. You react like an animal.”

“But you cannot hope to subdue Earth and all her millions,” Joe objected. “For one thing, there are not enough of you.”

“True. And that is not our intention. For one thing, it would be as barbarous as your treatment of us. We merely refuse to let ourselves and our planet be further exploited for one-sided gain. Now, I will leave you — I have important matters to attend to. I trust that I have made the situation clearer.”

The Martian party retired leaving an astounded group of prisoners behind them. The situation had indeed been made unpleasantly clear. Sen-Su’s manner and restraint in itself had been a shock to men who had been taught to consider all Martians as mere semi-civilized degenerates who should be thankful to Earthmen for introducing the strong hand of control. His moderation was a contradiction of all their schooling. Torrance expressed his ill-controlled anger in threats. Angus, for once, was silent. He looked thoughtful. “You know. Sonny,” he remarked after a while to David, “I’ve got a feeling that there’s a deal in what the man said.”

David nodded his agreement. “I know. I’ve got that feeling, too. Of course, we always have been told what swine the Martians are, but how much of that is just politics? Has any of us here ever really known the Martians?”

Torrance looked across and became conscious again of his position as first officer. His anger, moreover, had not abated. “So that’s the way of the wind? Not only is our ship seized by pirates and our captain killed, but we have traitors among our own officers.” His voice was truculent. “Well, we know how to deal with traitors, don’t we, boys?”

He looked around as he finished the question, but the response was curiously half-hearted. Most of the men turned their gaze aside rather than meet his. Angus stared at him with a pair of cold, hard eyes. “You’re a fool — but for that, I’d knock your rotten teeth and your insults down your throat together. I’m every bit as much against the Martians as you are, but that’s no reason for fooling myself with a deck of lies.”

“You’re calling me a liar?” Torrance rose.

“It seems to me we’ve all been hearing or telling lies about Mars, but that doesn’t say I’m backing the Martians. If somebody in the Solar System has to get a bad deal, I’m still going to do my best to see it’s not Earth.”

“You were talking sedition,” Torrance retorted doggedly. “You and Robbins, there. As senior officer it is my duty — ”

Angus had crossed and stood over the other, his long arms swinging ready. “Your duty is what? You miserable little half-baked, wooden-headed — ”

Joe Seely hurried to intervene. He swiftly retrieved the paper he had stowed in the spacesuit pocket and waved it at the rest. “Say, here’s a bit of news for you,” he called loudly. “That thing that broke into the guard room wasn’t a meteorite — it was a message rocket.”

They all turned incredulously. Message rockets, as they all very well knew, had been banned by government decree for over twenty years. “You mean to say the thing lodged aboard us?” David asked.

“I do, and here’s the message.” Joe unfolded the paper carefully and laid it on the mess table. The others, forgetful of the brewing fight, came clustering round him.

“The fellow who invented those things ought to have been sent off in one himself,” said Angus. “It’s a safe bet they’ve wrecked more ships than they’ve ever saved.” He leaned over Joe’s shoulder and peered down at the sheet.

The date at the head was August 14, 2052 — twenty-five years ago. For that quarter of a century the message rocket, having missed its objective, had been floating aimlessly in space, to end by causing the death of thirty and more good men. It was no wonder the devices had been banned. The message was brief, but plain: “Rocket ship. Red Glory (C.O. 1009), passenger liner bound from Earth to the Moons of Jupiter. Disabled in the asteroid belt and wrecked by forced landing upon planetoid believed to be Asperus. 300 survivors. Radio out of commission. Send help.”

The signature at the foot read: “James Stuart, (Captain).”

Angus bent down to look more closely and assure himself that there was no mistake. “Old Jamie, by the Lord. It’s a small system. Does anyone remember a rescue from Asperus?”

No one did.

“Then it’s odds on he’s there still — if he’s alive.”

“If they navigate properly, we should make Asperus in a couple of days,” remarked David. “And, by the look of things at present, we’ll have plenty of time to make a search.”

On Asperus

The imprisoned officers crowded to the windows as the Argenta slowed for her landing by circling about Asperus. The planetoid, although larger than Eros, had been discovered later, possibly because its orbit is almost circular while Eros, traveling his very oval path comes close to the Earth at times. Another difference between them is that Asperus is a spherical body while Eros, strangely enough, is not.

The name, “Asperus,” denotes, as it should, a world craggy and broken to the last degree of roughness, but it carries also a suggestion of barren severity which is entirely misplaced. On the contrary, vegetation is profuse.

As they watched the tumbled landscape far beneath, David gave such scraps of information as he could dig out of his memory. The diameter, he told them, was just under five hundred miles, thought the density of the core was many times greater than that of Earth. The period of rotation was almost exactly twelve hours, and its year, 1,600 Earth-days in length. Geographically he could tell only that it possessed two large seas, much broken with islands. But the men paid him little attention, they were far too interested in examining for themselves the world which must support them for an indefinite length of time.

Profuse is an inadequate word to describe the vegetation which clothes this pocket planet. They could see all the land wrapped in a green blanket from which, here and there, only the craggiest of spires pierced upwards in their rocky nakedness. Foliage sprang from every pocket of soil, bushes waved atop the most unlikely peaks and festoons of swaying creepers hung down from the ledges like green waterfalls pouring into the still denser growths below. Occasional gleams of water showed where steep-sided clefts had succeeded in trapping miniature lakes, and, infrequently, there occurred larger, shadowed valleys which could show level ground dotted with not inconsiderable trees. As the Argenta swept nearer still, a half-checked exclamation burst from Angus. He pressed closer to the window.

“What is it?” asked Joe, beside him.

But Angus made no reply. For the present he was keeping to himself the knowledge of a bright, metallic glint which had flashed from one valley. He marked the spot mentally by the queerly twisted crag which dominated it. The ship, now traveling slowly, searched for a landing. A few moments later she was sinking gently to a green spread berth.

Joe voiced the general sentiment as they touched. “Well, we might be in a worse hole. There’s certainly no desert here like there is on most of Eros. Even the mountains don’t seem so high when you get the right proportions — nothing like Earth’s mountains although they’re so broken.”

Doctor Cleary, the medical officer, surveyed the scene less kindly. It would probably, he thought, mean a lot of work for him; this transferring of species to an alien world was not always the simple matter it appeared. But he made no comment – optimistic men are healthier than pessimists.

An audible bustling began to take place about the ship. There came a clang as the exit ramp was lowered. They watched the twenty-eight members of the crew march out under an escort of armed Martians and turned sharply as the door of the mess room was flung open. “This way!” ordered a sing-song voice.

They were conducted first to their cabins where it was permitted, under supervision, to collect such personal belongings as they might wish to take, and thence to the open. Sen-Su, personally supervising the expulsion, regarded them negligently as they passed him, but as they stepped off the ramp, he gazed more intently and a line appeared between his brows.

“Fu-Tan,” he called, “how many officers are present?”

“Six, sir.”

“There should be seven.”

The man addressed as Fu-Tan looked puzzled for a moment, then: “The tall man, the engineer, is missing,” he said.

“Find him at once.”

It was a mystery how Angus had managed to slip away. Neither the Martians nor his companions had noticed his going. Fu-Tan raised his lilting voice in orders. The business of unloading supplies for the exiles was suspended while all but a handful of guards joined in the hunt. It proved brief, for the Argenta was deficient in good hiding places. An approaching hubbub in the corridors soon suggested that the escaper had been caught. Muffled broadsides of blistering blasphemy tended to confirm the suggestion. Angus, still muttering and cursing, appeared at the head of the ramp and was hustled down. Sen-Su smiled at his angry face.

“No stowaways on my ship,” he said. Angus’ reply was unprintable but had the other looked a little more closely he might have discerned an unaccountable gleam in the engineer’s eyes.

The unloading of food and medical supplies was resumed. Reports on Asperus stated that edible fruits grew abundantly so that the preserved food was more of a luxury than a necessity. When all the cases had been stacked, each man was given a broad-bladed, razor-edged knife some eighteen inches long. The guards filed back into the ship. The ramp was withdrawn and its covering port made firm. A preliminary roar came from the rocket tubes. The Argenta lifted a trifle by the bows, then, with a blast of power, she was gone, climbing on a steep slant into the heavens. Gloomily the stranded Earthmen watched her shrink.

“Well, it can’t be for long,” said David, at length. “Once they find that Sen-Su’s in circulation again, they’ll realize what’s happened and send for us.”

“And a pretty pack of fools we’ll look,” returned Joe. “The marooners marooned. What the devil’s the matter with you?” Angus, to whom the last part of the remark was addressed, was emitting a series of explosive grunts, suspiciously like laughter.

“Well, for a strange sense of humor, commend me to a Scot. What’s so damned funny about this, I’d like to know?”

Angus got a hold on himself. “Sen-Su thinks he’s marooned us.”

“Not a bad think, either.”

“Yes, but he can’t get away. I wasn’t trying to stowaway. I got along and opened the draining valves. He’s not got enough fuel left to get clear. Our job was to dump him and his bunch, and we’ve done it in spite of them.”

“I’ll be…So that was your little game. Angus, you’re a genius.” Joe slapped him on the back.

The spirits of the whole company rose. Even though they had lost their ship and been stranded, Angus had saved them from falling down on the main job. After a hurried discussion, it was decided to put some distance between themselves and the valley. When the Martians should notice their supply dials, it was considered likely that they would head back there, and no one was anxious to try conclusions with a shipload of angry Martians. The next question arose over the direction to be taken.

“I suppose one way’s as good as another?” asked Joe.

“No,” Angus advised. “Down to the south of this I saw something as we came over, and I’m willing to bet it was the wreck of the Red Glory or some other ship.”

“Taking a lot on yourselves, aren’t you?” suggested Torrance. “I’d just like to remind you again that I am in command here.” He looked round to see how this information was received. The men’s expressions told him little. No one wished to mutiny, but if it came to a choice of leadership between a man promoted through influence, and one who had roughed the ether for many a year, they knew which to prefer. Joe Seely set himself to manage a tactful interposition with the result that the party moved to the south under the nominal leadership of the first officer, and the practical guidance of Angus.

Travel across Asperus was a curious sensation for Earth-bred men. Those with experience of planetary exploration managed to adapt themselves in short time to the low gravitation, hut the novices continued to overshoot their aims again and again before they learned to gauge truly the amount of effort required. It was exasperating for these tyros to be carried sailing past their objectives by ill-judged bounds, hut there was little danger of harm since descent seemed a matter of floating down rather than of falling. For half an hour Angus set a stiff pace, launching in a series of powerful leaps over such country as would have baffled all but the most skillful climbers had they had to contend with earthly gravitation.

He noticed as he went that the mountains were pitted with frequent caves, some obscured by screens of bushes and creepers, hut others showing as stark, black holes in naked rock faces. The thought struck him that they might prove useful hiding places in case of pursuit. There was some grumbling from the rear about the unnecessary speed, hut Angus knew what he was about. He was convinced that the Argenta would make for the valley where she had set them down, and his ears were wide open.

At the first mutter of distant rockets he gave the order to take cover and they crouched in the bushes, watching the ship as she swung like a silver shuttle above them. She sank slowly down behind crags they had already crossed. Angus gave the “all-clear,” and moved on in fantastic, flying leaps towards the south.

Night fell with surprising suddenness. Angus had hoped to reach the wreck while daylight lasted, but Asperus’ swift revolution whisked the shrunken, distant sun out of sight while the rugged landmark was still several miles ahead. They were left without light save for the sheen of accompanying asteroids and the glimmer of far-off constellations, almost unaltered. Travel over such country became well-nigh impossible.

Torrance suggested that the short night should be spent in one of the many caves, and Angus offered no objection. They had secured a good lead over the Martians and, even were their trail to be discovered, little or nothing could be done until dawn. One of the men reported a large cavern a few yards back. Torrance found it and led them into the gloom, his sword-like knife ready to his hand.

Angus struck a match, carefully shielding its rays from the entrance. By the flicker they could see a floor some twelve feet across and so dry as to be dusty, stretching hack into the body of the mountain until it became lost in the blackness. The sides curved up into an arched roof five feet above their heads.

“Excellent!” pronounced Torrance briskly. “It is dry, the entrance is not likely to be discovered and it is easily defensible.”

Angus started to speak and then restrained himself. The first officer was touchy and would certainly take any objection as a new attempt to belittle his dignity. Nevertheless, the engineer was uneasy though he would have been hard put to adduce any reason for his misgiving. Perhaps he had inherited a lingering fear of those hobgoblins and gnomes who had, according to legend, so sorely harassed his Celtic ancestors. Whatever the reason, it caused him to lie close to the entrance. Soon the sense of disquiet passed and he, like the rest, save for the sentry at the cave mouth, was asleep.

He awoke with a start. His hand already gripping the knife by his side. From somewhere came the whispering swish of a faint, ghostly movement. He looked towards the entrance and half started up. The sentry was no longer standing silhouetted on the ledge. A faint shuffling on the other side brought him round, trying vainly to pierce the wall of darkness. Stealthily he drew his feet up and settled the long knife more firmly in his hand. A scrape and the clatter of a loose stone jerked his head back to the entrance, and he drew a sudden breath. Black figures were stirring, indistinct outlines against the dark sky. Moving shadows: not the short Martians he had half expected, but grotesque, shrouded figures, six feet and more in height.

A Sudden Discovery

It was no time for inquiry – the vanished sentry told enough. Already a pair of the creatures were within the entrance. He could see them bending ominously above his sleeping friends. With whirling knife he leapt silently upon them. He felt the keen edge bite home and, simultaneously, there came a cry. A scream, but a scream no human throat could give. It was a mournful ululation with a harsh stridency which shredded the silence.

Confusion broke loose. The men sprang up, startled, yet bemused with sleep, and groping for their knives. The black prowlers retreated before Angus’ circling blade, making headlong for the open. Twice more he felt the steel cleave deep before he gained the cave mouth. The air sang in his ears with the shrill screams of alarmed and injured creatures.

He saw a half-dozen launch themselves into space as he came out upon the rocky ledge. Black forms which fell for a moment and then spread monstrous wings to check the fall. He watched them move in slow, powerful beats as the creatures rose and banked. Not for an instant did they check their desolate cries. Harshly the sound echoed in the shadow-hidden valley beneath and from further and yet further crags sprang answering cries like the wailing of funereal despair. A crescendo of screeching lament tortured the still night to pandemonium.

Mixed with the shrilling came the hoarser cries of striving men. Behind Angus a crowd of milling figures struggled and slashed in the dark, combating invisible opponents. With a stentorian command he dispersed the panic of their rough awakening and shook them into reality. They lowered their weapons and stood alert, breathing hard. From the dark, mysterious tunnel behind came the sounds of hurried feet mingled with those of occasional cries eerily echoing against the walls; sounds which grew fainter as their makers fled into the rocky heart of the mountain.

“What — what were they?” Torrance’s dignity had fallen away and his voice was shaky.

Angus made no reply. Instead, he struck a light and counted the white, startled faces about him. “Twenty-seven.”

Nobody commented, but a number of heads turned to let their owners gaze fearfully into the blackness where two officers and six men had passed to an unknown fate. “And Davie, and the rest are at the mercy of these blasted things — whatever they are,” growled Angus.

With the dawn they were able to examine the bodies of two of the assailants Angus had felled. They were bipeds, and that, together with the disposition of organs common to most mammals, gave the impression that they were at least semi-human. Other characteristics did their best to counteract the impression. The creatures were a dull, metallic grey in color, tall, thin and fragilely made. Attenuated arms, so long as to reach almost to the feet, were linked to the legs by enormous spans of membranous wings. Their only weapons appeared as cruelly curved claws at both the fore and hind tips of the wings. The size and shape of their half-human heads seemed to suggest an intelligence of some order. High enough, at least, to embarrass seriously a small party armed only with knives.

Nevertheless, Angus wished to lead a rescue party. He was dissuaded only with difficulty. The others managed, at last, to convince him that it would be more than foolhardy under the circumstances to attempt the exploration of the unlit caverns containing unknown numbers of the winged creatures. David Robbins, Doctor Cleary and the six men with them must be abandoned for the present, at least. When — and if — they should discover the Red Glory, they would have a stronghold, and — they hoped — weapons.

“The best thing we can do now,” said Joe, in conclusion, “is to get right along, before those Martians get busy. They’re sure to be on our tracks after that hullabaloo last night. We’ve got to settle with them before we can get a line on these flying screechers — the betting is that our men are safe for a while, if they’re not dead already.”

For an hour Angus led on, leaping prodigiously, climbing and scrambling through valleys choked with foliage and up precipices whose faces were hidden behind thick tresses of creeper. If he had any doubt of the direction, any uncertainty; no suspicion of it was allowed to appear. They paused only once. Beside a stream in one of the lesser valleys, a man caught his foot in something which rattled drily. He jumped back with a cry which caused the rest to stop short.

“What is it?” Joe called.

“A skeleton, sir,” the man reported.

Joe came back. He saw at a glance that the bleached bones were human. Tangled among the ribs, he caught a glint of metal and drew out a slender chain on which swung an identity disc. “Will Fording, Chicago, Radio Operator, Red Glory, (C.O. 1009),” he read.

He picked up the rifle which lay beside the remains. It was utterly useless and caked in the rust of many years accumulation. “Poor devil — wonder what got him?” he murmured. He dropped the gun and slipped the identity disc in his pocket. The party went on its way slightly chastened. So far they had encountered no sign of native animal life beyond the grey creatures and a few insects. The radio operator might have died of sickness or accident — it was impossible to guess with the little they knew of this strange planetoid.

An hour later, they crested the final rocky ridge to gaze down on a sight which brought excited exclamations from them all. Close to the far side of a valley somewhat larger than any they had yet encountered lay a spaceship of antiquated design. Her untarnished plates still glittered in the sunlight, but half surrounding her were deep growths of a sturdiness which told that it was many years since she had sunk to this, her final, berth.

Angus’ sharp eyes picked out the name Red Glory inscribed in faded letters upon her prow. Beneath, half obscured by branches, he could make out a part of her Chicago registration number. But it was not the sight of the ship which had caused the party’s surprise. They had expected no less. Their exclamations were due to the fact that the undergrowth before the entrance port had been cleared away. A broad path led from the ship to several acres of cultivated plots beside the stream which wandered down the centre of the valley.

Joe, for one, felt a rush of relief. Since the previous night’s encounter he had been aware of growing doubts that any of the Red Glory’s complement could have survived.

“Red Glory, ahoy,” yelled Angus.

No voice replied though he thought he saw a flicker of movement at one of the cabin windows. There was no wave of a welcoming arm such as he had expected. They hastened down the steep wall and across the valley floor. Midway up the cleared track to the open port, a voice called them to halt. Before and behind them figures oddly clad in rough materials stepped from the concealing bushes. All were men, and all held rifles trained upon them. A young man — Angus estimated his age at twenty-three or four — stepped forward and approached with wary suspicion. “Who are you, and where do you come from?” he asked.

Torrance replied, and the young man watched him intently as he spoke. He seemed slightly at a loss. As he began to reply a figure made its appearance in the entrance of the Red Glory. An old man who stooped, and whose white hair hung down upon the shoulders of his coarse woven coat, but who still gazed with keen eyes from a weather-beaten face.

“Jamie!” cried Angus. “Jamie, don’t you know me?”

The old man’s face cracked into a smile. “Aye, Angus, lad, it’s you all right. Come along in and bring your friends with you.”

With one hand he waved away the riflemen who appeared bewildered but retreated obediently. “Well I’ll be damned,” muttered Joe, “does he think we’ve just dropped in for supper?”

Angus grinned. “You could never surprise old Jamie — no one ever has.”

Accompanied by the riflemen who had not entirely lost their suspicion, the party filed aboard the ship. They entered the main living room to see a group of girls arranging baskets of strange Asperian fruits on the tables. “Ye’ll be wantin’ some food, I doubt,” said Jamie. “And ye' can talk while ye eat. We heard your rockets yesterday,” he continued. “The first rockets I’ve heard in twenty-five years — man, it was grand – like music.”

As the tale of the Argenta was told, more and more men and women and a number of children came crowding into the room. With some surprise Joe noticed the predominance of youth. There might have been perhaps thirty persons of middle age, and a few besides Jamie of advanced years, but the rest fell, almost without exception, below the twenty-four level. A number of them were introduced including the suspicious young man who had waylaid them. He, it transpired, was Andrew Stuart, son of old Jamie. Greta, one of the most attractive of the girls, was his wife.

Jamie heard their story through with little comment, but at the end he called Andrew to him and directed that a scouting party should be sent out. He looked a little worried as he turned back. “We’ve got to keep these Martians away,” he said. “’Tis a pretty situation — they’ve got a good ship and no fuel, while we’ve got a useless ship, but there’s plenty of fuel in her tanks yet.”

“Have you got rifles for us?” asked Angus.

“Aye, and pistols — more than we can use.”

Angus looked surprised, but a look in the old man’s eye checked his question. He decided that Jamie had been doing a little gun-running as a sideline and would not relish inquiries. Instead, he asked: “What about your story? And what about these flying things? We’re all sort of mazed.”

Jamie began his history from the disablement of the Red Glory. They had run into a meteor shower and had been lucky in not being carved to bits. Happily most of their score of leaks had been small, but the radio had been demolished and the relief operator who was in the room at the time, killed. One mixing chamber for gases had been wrecked, putting a number of tubes out of action.

They had set about limping for the nearest approaching body which they had believed to be Asperus. And, thanks to the low pull of the planetoid, managed a successful, if ungraceful landing. Thereafter a number of message rockets had been dispatched without result. The exact number of survivors, including passengers and crew, had been three hundred and seven.

In those first days Asperus had seemed a not unkindly place. It produced the necessities of life in abundance, and there was a feeling that fate might have been far more severe. Then, a week after the landing, fifty of them, many of them women, disappeared. A search party was sent out and never seen again. Up to this time they had seen nothing of the grey, winged creatures which they later came to call by the name of “Batrachs.” A second search party met a similar fate and still more of the survivors disappeared until, at last, Jamie had taken a firm stand.

Every sunset the door of the Red Glory was closed and locked and remained thus until dawn; nobody, under any circumstances, being permitted to go out by night. The numbers had now been reduced to sixty-five, omitting children. The Batrachs made bolder by their captures had besieged the ship for several nights, hut, finding it impregnable, at last abandoned the practice. For several years now no member of the Red Glory colony had set eyes on a Batrach. The creatures were strictly nocturnal in their surface operations, and the men became no less strictly diurnal. From that time the little colony had begun to prosper. Jamie from his position as captain had slid to the status of patriarchal ruler.

“But these Batrachs?” inquired Angus. “You had guns to fight them with?”

“Yes, we had guns,” Jamie nodded, “but so had the expeditions and they never came back. After all, laddie, a gun, even if it fires rocket shells, is at a disadvantage in the dark, and the Batrachs don’t come in ones or twos, but in thousands. You were lucky last night. The only reason you are here now is that they didn’t expect you. If they had been prepared — ” He spread expressive hands and shook his head.

To the Rescue

Sometimes, Jamie admitted, he had thought of leading out yet another search party, but it was his duty to stay with his ship and protect the survivors to the best of his ability. There had been marriages. Jamie, as captain, had performed them, even his own. He had now become, he said proudly, not only the father of two boys and two girls, but a grandfather as well. The Batrachs, in his opinion were the only unhealthy things about Asperus. All the children of the colony had flourished though he considered them slightly underdeveloped muscularly by reason of the lesser gravitation.

Angus, seeing that the story was tending to become a family history, pulled him back to the subject of Batrachs. Couldn’t Jamie give more details about them? What did they do with their prisoners? What was their level of intelligence? Did they ever use weapons? He extracted little. Jamie considered them almost equal to men in intelligence — except they never used weapons. Of their treatment of prisoners he could say nothing, since no one had ever returned to tell. His tone showed plainly that he thought no one would, but Angus had different ideas on that subject.

Talk was cut short by the return of a scout who reported that the Martians were encamping in the next valley. Thoughts of rescue were temporarily put aside. Sen-Su and his little lot must be settled first. First officer Torrance again emerged from that oblivion to which events seemed to condemn him. He proposed a sniping party. The suggestion met with a cold reception which genuinely astonished him. Angus was particularly incensed.

“This is not a murder gang. Our orders did not extend beyond marooning a bunch of political prisoners. They didn’t ill treat us when we were at their mercy — ”

“They’re nothing more than a lot of damned pirates, and the penalty for piracy is death.”

Angus kept his temper with difficulty. “That’s as may be. If they had been real pirates, we’d now be so many corpses floating out there in space. I, for one, refuse to shoot them down in cold blood. They treated us well.”

“They murdered Captain Briscoe.”

“That’s a lie!”

“This is mutiny.” Torrance’s eyes were gleaming. He turned as though to appeal to old Jamie, but Angus cut him short.

“I don’t care if it’s sacrilege — I’m not going to do it. Get that?”

Joe joined Angus. He, too, preferred mutiny to murder. Torrance glared helplessly. The odds were against him and he was wise enough to know that the men would back Angus in any dispute. He could do no more than give in with bad grace. The party would stay in the Red Glory and let the enemy fire the first shot, if shots there must be.

“It’s checkmate,” said Angus. “Sen-Su will realize that mighty soon. Jamie tells me there are plenty of supplies aboard and they couldn’t get us out for months. My only worry it that if they keep us cooped up here we won’t be able to find out what’s happened to Davie and the others.”

All the men of the colony were called in for safety’s sake. There was little over an hour of the short Asperian day remaining, and there was the risk of their being cut off by a party of Martians. Once or twice glimpses were caught of the little brown men on the escarpment of the further side, apparently bent on reconnaissance.

“Cooping up” seemed to be the program, because when Torrance went to the entrance port with a rifle in his hands, the warning smack of a bullet on the steel side above him caused his hasty retreat. Angus grinned when he heard of it. “Teaching the sniper a few tricks, are they?” he said.

Night closed in without any further signs of activity. The port of the Red Glory was swung to and locked by old Jamie in the manner of one performing a ceremony. All sound of the outer world was shut away. The Martians could do what they liked – no portable weapon would be capable of making so much as a dent in the spaceship’s armor.

Angus awoke with a hand shaking his shoulder. He looked up to find Joe bending over him. “Blast you, what’s the matter?” he mumbled sleepily.

“Looks like a deputation. Get your clothes on and come along.”

Dawn had just broken and from the windows of the living room they could observe three Martians who stood looking towards the ship. They had reached the beginning of the cleared pathway and were plainly ill at ease. The central figure upheld a stick to which was attached a piece of dirty, white rag. It was obviously intended for a sign of surrender. But why, Angus asked himself, should the Martians wish to surrender? All three men had evidently suffered rough handling since their clothing was little more than a covering of tatters stained with blood. After a short consultation the two flanking men lifted their empty hands above their heads and all three advanced. Old Jamie hesitated a moment and then unlocked the port, beckoning to them to enter. The questioning he left to Angus who began with the monosyllable, “Well?”

The middle man, looking askance at several pistols trained upon him, lowered his flag of truce and answered with the characteristic lilt: “We have come to surrender.”

Angus frowned. This was not his idea of Sen-Su’s methods. “And the rest of you?” he asked.

“There are no more.” The Martian spoke slowly and with a depth of dejection.

“Talk sense. There were ninety-seven of you. Where are the rest?”

“All gone. We were attacked. Great winged monsters which screamed fell on us out of the night. We shot at them and then we fought them hand to hand, but it was dark. There must have been thousands of them. We three got separated and they overlooked us or thought we were dead.”

“All the rest are dead?”

The Martian shook a sorrowful head as though he considered the indignity greater than death. “Only a few. The rest they took away. In the fight they seemed flimsy, but their wings are strong. They lifted our men, two to a man, and flew off with them. — I don’t think they took them far. We came to you because” — he hesitated uncertainly, uncomfortably — “because you are our kind,” he finished abruptly.

Angus studied him hard, seemed satisfied, and nodded. “We’ll go and see your camp. Maybe we’ll learn something there.”

Torrance demurred. “It’s a trap. They knew they couldn’t touch us in here, so they’re getting us into the open.”

Angus ignored him. The first officer’s prestige had fallen to zero with the defeat of his sniping proposition. A dozen men, including old Jamie, set out to investigate.

The Martians had made a clearing for their camp, and when the Earthmen reached it they stopped to gasp aloud. The brown men had excelled themselves. It was the scene of an epic battle. Slaty, grey winged bodies strewed the place — literally hundreds had fallen in that fight. Not only was the ground a bloody shambles of hacked and twisted forms, but in the surrounding trees and bushes hung the corpses of those shot in midair. Lanky shapes, somehow unclean, their listless great wings stirring in the gentle breeze like patches of dirty sailcloth, while the steady drip-dripping of their crimson blood incarnadined the leaves below.

For some moments no one spoke. In Joe’s mind arose the dim memory of old engravings depicting hell. Then Angus broke the silence. “What a carnage. I’ve seen slaughter in my time, but this...”

The three Martians went forward and examined the dozen or more bodies of their men lying among those of the grey attackers. The wing talons had made them unpleasant sights. “Sen-Su?” asked Angus as they returned.

They shook their heads. The leader was not with his dead.

Angus threw back his head and looked speculatively up at the caves in the valley sides. Below one a glimmer of something bright caught his eyes. He pointed it out to Jamie, and the old man brought a pair of binoculars to bear. “The buckle of a belt,” he said, “a broad, Martian belt.”

Angus gave the order to return to the ship.

“You’re not going after them?” inquired Torrance.

“That’s just what we damn well are.”

“But they’re enemies and it’s our duty — ”

Angus stepped close to him. “See here, you know too doggone much about duty. The Martians are human beings — they’re our own kind. What’s more, there are our own men to be found too. If you think I’m going to stand by without reason while men of Earth, or Mars, are in the power of these repulsive spawn of miscegenation, you’d better think again. Get that?”

Torrance wisely withdrew. Old Jamie proved reluctant to let them go, and sternly forbade any of his colonists to take part. He did his best to dissuade Angus though his manner showed that he had little hope of succeeding. Perhaps he spoke from a sense of duty, for when he found that the other was determined, he became lavish in his offers of weapons.

Rifles were discarded as unsuitable, but he insisted that each man should take several pistols since, in the unlikely event of success, the rescued must be armed. He pinned most faith to the long knives which would be invaluable for in-fighting. In addition, he insisted that all the available lamps be collected and affixed to the chests of the rescuers.

The Red Glory colonists collected to bid them farewell. There was a suspicion of envy in the eyes of some of the younger men, but Jamie’s word remained law. “Good luck, laddie, and God be with you,” said the old man to Angus.

He watched the twenty-seven from the Argenta and their three Martian companions with wistfulness as they scaled the valley wall. That was the spirit which had taken the Earthmen all over the system. Confidence that they could not lose the game. The last figure turned and waved a hand as it disappeared over the skyline. Old Jamie sighed. He wished he were young again, he’d show them — but he wasn’t young. He was an old man and getting sentimental.

He sighed again and turned back into the Red Glory.

The Captives

David awakened to a species of bedlam. He could hear Angus’ shouting voice making a bass accompaniment to an unearthly screeching. He heard the other men jump up from sleep and leap into action. He started up with them, fumbling for the knife in its scabbard by his side. His hand was upon the hilt when long arms wrapped around him, pinning his own arms. He cried out. Dimly he could see furious activity taking place in the cave mouth; dark shapes which jerked and fought. He struggled against the retaining arms aware only that this was an attack, by whom or what, he could not tell, though his mind jumped to the conclusion that the Martians were somewhere back of it.

He opened his mouth to call again, but before the cry came something was wrapped around his head. A dark sheet of unfamiliar substance which, by its feel, sent a surge of panic through his nerves. He lashed out as far as he could reach with his feet, but a moment later they were snatched from under him and secured by arms which seemed to wrap themselves more firmly about his legs than any human arms could hold. He wriggled, trying vainly to jerk off the grip. Through the shroud about his head he could still hear the sounds of turmoil, but they were swiftly growing fainter, and he could tell from the motions of his captors that he was being carried away.

At length, the sounds dropped behind altogether, and               the silence of their progress was broken only by soft footfalls and occasional, high pitched cadences from his bearers. He succeeded in twisting his head in the folds which covered it and began to breathe more easily. With a faint hope, growing ever fainter, he strained his ears in hope of pursuit. At last, hope died altogether. Perhaps all his companions had also been captured. Perhaps they were dead – he did not know. He was only aware that all hope of rescue had gone.

For seeming hours the steady progress continued. At last his bearers seemed to find their method of transport inconvenient. They halted and set him on his feet. The arms about him remained inexorable, but the stifling cover was removed from his head. Thankfully he drew great breaths of fresh air, but he could see no more than before. The darkness was solid, unrelieved by the faintest glimmer. There came sounds of much movement near at hand. A few shrill notes such as he had heard before, and a grunt which might have come from a human throat. His heart bounded, and he decided to risk the return of the stifling cover.

“Hullo? Who’s there?” he asked quietly.

An exclamation of surprise came out of the darkness. “Cleary here. That’s Robbins, isn’t it?”

“Anyone else?”

There was no answer.

“I’m sure there were some others,” said the doctor’s voice. “But they’re not here now,” he added a little unnecessarily.

“What are these things, and where are we?” said David.

“Lord knows what they are, but we’re certainly somewhere inside Asperus.”

The captors continued to ignore their prisoners’ talk. After a few minutes rest they picked them up once more and continued their way through the darkness. This time progress was less uncomfortable, since there was no smothering cover. “Do you know how many there are?” David inquired.

The doctor did not.

“If we could only see what they’re like, I’d feel less uneasy,” he said.

They carried on a conversation in desultory phrases for some time. David had long ceased to struggle and, as a result, his captor’s hold had insensibly loosened. With the utmost caution he pressed his arms a little outward. His hand was already near his knife; with a little more play he might be able to snatch it out.

The ruse began to work. The arms did not tighten with suspicion but eased a little to rid themselves of the strain. David was beginning to extend his elbows further when the party came to a sudden stop.

From the darkness ahead came the click of something hard against metal, followed by a grating sound. Gates opening, David guessed. A moment later they stopped again and a similar series of sounds denoted another gate. Within a few minutes David began to see the first dim signs of reflected light on the wall where the tunnel turned, many yards ahead. He waited with a quickening excitement until he could see his captors. Two were carrying him, and, by turning his head, he could see two more dealing with the doctor. He took a deep breath and snatched for his knife.

The movement was a complete surprise. The first his bearers knew of it was that the blade was in his hand — it was almost the last they knew, because he cut at them savagely. Their screaming cries were deafening in the enclosed space. The hinder pair rashly dropped the doctor and hastened to their assistance. A second later he, too, was after them, knife in hand. David slashed wildly, dodging their raking claws and their attempts to entangle him in their wings. With the doctor’s arrival in a rear attack, the fight was soon over. The two men, panting, faced one another over the four grey bodies.

“We must hide them quickly,” said David. “Some more are bound to come along after all that row.”

Hastily they dragged the corpses into a small side passage and stood tensely listening. After a little while they relaxed. The grey creatures’ cries, whether of alarm, or for help, appeared to have passed unnoticed. The problem now before them was one of direction. The way behind was out of the question, for it was barred by gates, and they faced the alternative of creeping along dark, narrow side passages or risking the lighted area ahead. In the end they elected for the latter – both had had enough of the darkness, and their enemies seemed unhindered by lack of light. The doctor adjusted his glasses which he had miraculously retained intact. He was a small man, inclined to stoutness and showing, in normal conditions, a cheery, rubicund face. “Yes, towards the light, by all means,” he said. He was aware of some slight professional regret that they could not spare time to examine the bodies of their late enemies, but he appreciated the necessity of getting clear.

They cautiously turned the corner ahead and found themselves facing a long vista of deserted tunnel lit at intervals by small, glowing lamps in the ceiling. There appeared to be no reason for this transition from darkness to light. David was aware of misgivings. This was the way their captors had been taking them, and it was obviously, for that reason, the way they should not go. However, if they should be attacked, they would have at least the advantage of seeing their attackers.

They walked on, every sense alert and their knives tightly clutched. To keep to the center of the way seemed safest; one could not tell what might lurk in the small, unlighted side passages. Two hundred yards further they rounded a corner and abruptly debouched upon a still larger tunnel. Should they turn left or right? This new way, as dimly lit as the other, gave no clue. They were able to see perhaps fifty yards in each direction before turns cut off the view. David was about to speak when the doctor checked him. A faint sound had reached him from the left. Both peered in that direction, but its origin remained hidden by the corner. They drew back into the lesser tunnel to wait.

The approaching sound resolved into a steady trudge – the swish-swish of soft slippered feet upon the rock floor. David breathed more easily, for the monotonous walk could not be made by anyone seeking to investigate an alarm. The steps slowly continued to near the end of their passage. A figure which looked neither to left nor right, passed by. Both the watchers stared. They had expected one of the winged creatures, but —

“An Earthman,” gasped David.

The man caught his voice and turned towards them. He was elderly, and his head was sparsely covered with grey hair. His face was pale and deeply graven with lines, but, for all its sorrow, it was kindly. Strapped upon his back he bore an enormous basket filled with broken ore. His expression changed to amazement as he saw them. He took an involuntary step in their direction and then stopped with doubt in his eyes. His attention seemed fastened more on their clothes than their faces.

“Who — who are you?” he asked in an unsteady voice.

David told him.

“You have Come from ‘Outside’?” Something in his pronunciation of the last word seemed to imply inverted commas.

“We have,” admitted David, watching him closely, “and we want to know how to get back?”

The old man slowly shook his head. A strange, musing look seemed to come over his face. “There really is an ‘Outside’? Sometimes I think it was just all a dream.” He paused, looking at them with unseeing eyes. “But no,” he added, “it was no dream. A man could not dream a sight so lovely as a tree with the wind in its leaves, or the glory of the sun, any more than he could dream the curve of a wave.”

David and the doctor glanced at one another. The old man had forgotten their presence. He went on: “Twenty-five years, oh God. Twenty-five years since I have seen those things.” The last word was a sob, and the tears ran unashamed down his cheeks. David took hold of his arm. He spoke gently.

“You don’t understand. We want you to show us how to get out.”

The old man shook his head again. “My boy, it is you who do not understand. — There is no getting out. Nobody has ever got out.”

“But—”

“Nobody, in twenty-five years.”

At the sight of their puzzled faces, he pulled himself together. The dreamy look vanished from his eyes and he spoke in a different voice. “Come along with me. I’ll explain.”

David relieved him of the basket and fixed it to his own, more able, shoulders. He was surprised to find it much lighter than it appeared, until he remembered the small size of Asperus. The three walked together along the tunnel, crossed a hall which showed signs of being a natural cavern enlarged, and entered another tunnel. His name, said the old man, was John Fordham, and he began to relate the disastrous history of the Red Glory. He had, it appeared, been among the first to be taken prisoner. He was still talking when they reached another rock hall. In it a number of men and women were seated at long tables. All conversation ceased as they entered, and Fordham introduced them to the company:

“Two men from ‘Outside.’”

The same look of suspicion that they had seen in Fordham’s eyes appeared now upon every face, but, like his, it began to fade at the sight of the newcomers’ clothing, as though their uniforms were assurances of identity. Both men and women present were clad in inadequate garments patched together from many pieces of coarse cloth. David estimated those present at one hundred and fifty, and subsequently that he was only seventeen short of the actual figure. Most of them were of middle, or later, middle age, with a sprinkling of the really elderly, and a very few younger members of approximately thirty or thirty-one. He noticed at a glance that women predominated.

With the lessening of suspicion they came crowding around, fingering the men’s clothing as if it were something rare and precious, and asking innumerable questions. David slipped the basket of ore from his shoulders and dropped it on the floor. At his request for something to eat, bowls of fruit were immediately produced. The two attempted to answer the incessant questions as best they could. They described their own capture, but of conditions aboard the Red Glory they knew nothing. They could only say that Angus had sighted a wreck which might, or might not, be the Red Glory. At last the spate of questioning eased, and they had a chance to put their own perplexities forward. What were these creatures they called Batrachs? What was happening in this subterranean world? Was there really no possible means of escape?

Dr. Cleary was particularly exercised in the matter of the Batrachs. He had seen enough of them to form the opinion that they were mammals, but he was certain that no such forms had been found elsewhere in the system. He had a theory that similar systems produce similar forms, with, of course, adaptations to heat and gravitation, and he was fond of his theory. The presence of the Batrachs shook it severely.

Nobody was able to enlighten him. It was, it appeared, a subject never discussed with the Batrachs. “You talk to them?” asked David incredulously.

“But of course — or, rather, they talk to us since we can imitate only a very few of their sounds. To get anything out of us, some of them had to learn our speech.”

“They’re not savages then?”

“Depends on what you mean by a ‘savage.’ The Batrachs are highly intelligent in their own way, if that’s what you want to know.”

“And your position is — ?”

"We're Slaves — Nothing More, Nor Less"

David frowned in a puzzled fashion. He had just been told that the Batrachs numbered hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Surely it was not worth their while to enslave so few Earthmen. Several thousand slaves would have been understandable, but to maintain this handful of men and women couldn’t even be economic. Ever since capture they had been confined beyond the double gates and all their food must be brought down from the surface. Their work could scarcely pay for the labor of feeding them. He put the point to Fordham who attempted to explain.

“As we told you, the Batrachs are intelligent, but their intelligence is difficult for them to apply. Perhaps you will find it easier to understand if I compare them with ourselves. Now, the first steppingstone of man’s climb from savagery is really his opposed thumb. Don’t misunderstand me, I know that there were lesser factors, and I don’t forget that apes also have opposed thumbs, but the fact remains that without that useful tool, it is more than doubtful whether man could ever have risen as he has.

“Early man picked things up and played with them.               He found in time, for instance, that if one stone were placed upon another, he could by standing on it, reach a fruit otherwise out of reach. He did not think the action out first. He did it by accident, and then took advantage of it. Once it had been done, his intelligence was stirred, and he could do it again. You see, this is the important point, his hands taught his mind in the beginning. The reasoning mind did not take real control until far later. If you doubt this, just consider how lazy people still try to make their hands teach their minds; they do it whenever they apply what we call a ‘hit and miss’ method. So much for contrast.

“The Batrachs’ intelligence, however, is fundamentally different. Their minds have not grown from actions. Somehow their mental evolution has progressed without the promptings of physical organs. The result is that they have reached a sticking point and they realize it. They can think, but they cannot do. They have no opposed thumb to help them. Control of their limbs is coarse compared with precision bequeathed to us by thousands of generations. Their talons have no more capability of fine accuracy than the claws of a tiger. They were — and are — in fact, in a very similar position to a paralyzed man. Their only method of getting things done is to cause others to do them. And we,” he ended bitterly, “have been those others.”

Cleary sat for some time in thought before he asked: “But this vast system of caves? They’re artificial. If your theory is right, they couldn’t have dug them.”

“They might. It requires no great accuracy, and if you look you will see that all the work is rough and unmathematical in finish. But I suspect that there have been other captives before us. There are the gates. They are very old. Then, too, they have a few metal instruments — crude, of course, but certainly not made by the Batrachs themselves.”

The doctor went on to ask more questions. The suggestion of the Batrachs’ curious development interested him considerably. David’s attention lapsed by degrees. He found his gaze wandering first over the rocky walls and bare utilities of this cave which, he understood, was the main living room of these lost Earthlings. From this he fell to examining the faces of those about him, tried to imagine what twenty-five years in such surroundings would mean and failed. A sudden thought struck him. All these men and women had lived together for a quarter of a century...

“Are there no children?” he asked.

Even as the words left his lips, he realized that they were an indiscretion. A cold silence greeted the question. No one attempted an answer, and the eyes of all refused to meet his own. He had committed a dire solecism — touched a subject under strict taboo. It was strange — the condition of at least three of the women…He turned a bewildered face to the doctor. The little man shrugged his shoulders ever so tightly. Tactfully, he asked another question of John Fordham, and the awkward moment passed, though not without leaving a vestige of constraint.

Conversation was terminated by the sudden ringing of a bell. All present turned to face one of the tunnel mouths expectantly. After a wait of a few seconds, a figure strode out of it into the hall. Both men from the Argenta stared in surprise. They had expected the grey form of a Batrach, but the newcomer was a tall, well-built, young Earth man. His face, though clean cut, was pale and there was a sense of familiarity about it which David was at a loss to understand.

The men and women respectfully drew back, leaving a clear space down which he marched without a sideways glance until he reached a small, desk-like table at the head of the cavern. At it he seated himself to face the gathering, and in a hard, emotionless voice began to recite the names of those present. They had leisure to examine him more closely.

His age was around twenty-three, and he had the air of a man who performed a distasteful duty conscientiously. His clothing consisted of a knee-length tunic below which appeared trousers. Both garments were embroidered with patterns of geometrical design, as were the soft sandals on his feet. The roll-call completed, he paused a moment, then: “John Fordham,” he said curtly.

The old man stepped forward. In a flash David saw the reason for the elusive familiarity of the young man’s face. It was a youthful edition of the older man’s. His son, perhaps? But there was no filial feeling in the curt voice.

“John Fordham, you have been reported to me as being one basket of iron ore short today. Why is this?”

The basket still lay where David had dropped it. As he made a movement to pick it up, the young man noticed him for the first time. “Who are you?” There was the slightest flicker of surprise in his eyes as he scrutinized the pair. David hesitated and then explained, carefully omitting reference to the deaths of their captors. “From ‘Outside’?”

Curious, David thought, this manner of treating the simple word ‘outside’. The present emphasis on it was very different from the old man’s. “Yes,” he said.

“There has been a mistake. You should not have been brought here. You will follow me.”

They hesitated, but David’s neighbor whispered: “Go with him. He will take you through the gates and you will have a chance then. You’ve still got your knives.”

The young man took good care that his body should screen the combinations of the double gates as he worked them. The two with him noticed that they were leaving by a different route, for the tunnel was lighted and sloped steeply upwards.

In the walk of half a mile which followed, Cleary tried their guide with a number of questions which did not raise the success of even a monosyllabic reply. It was noticeable, also, that when they approached closely to him, the young man drew away with some ostentation. At length they began to meet or overtake others – men and women who had occasion to use one or other of the many side turnings. These, too, drew close to the walls as they passed, and more than once they saw noses wrinkled in distaste. The tunnel brought them at length to a hall.

The place was comparable in size with the cave in which the Red Glory survivors dwelt, but it was better lighted, and better furnished. It even showed attempts at decoration by strictly geometric forms. But the greatest difference was that it was filled with the cheerful sounds of laughter and young voices. David felt a lightening of the load of depression which had crept over him. The doctor continued to wear a frown on his round face.

To complete the contrast with that other cave was the fact that every man or woman in sight was young, and many small children ran or crawled upon the floor, romping as freely and happily as any child born on Earth. A pale cherub of four was playing near the entrance. David smiled at him and extended a friendly hand. The child looked up at the sound of his voice. One glance was enough. He gave a frightened howl and ran to bury his face in the tunic of a young woman nearby. The look David received from her dark eyes was murderous and loathing. She hastened away, comforting the frightened child.

David turned to the doctor in amazement. He felt slightly resentful. Children, as a rule, liked him. “What is it? What’s wrong here?”

Cleary, still frowning, refused to commit himself. “I don’t know yet, but I’ve got an idea — just the glimmer of an idea.”

Their guide led out across the hall. As they approached the people shrank back to either side, the children ran whimpering to the women. Not a face in the place expressed anything except disgust. Twice they had to pause before groups which had not noticed their coming. Each time the young man called: “Outside,” and the way cleared as though by magic. A curious notion floated into David’s mind — were not lepers in the East compelled to call “Unclean” with much the same result?

They left the hall behind and still continued upward through the labyrinth. Now and then they had occasional sights of the grey forms of Batrachs going about their unknown business. Mostly they were on foot, but in the larger tunnels it was possible for them to fly, passing over the Earthmen with great swishes of their dry wings. The lighting grew dimmer as they proceeded and soon it became necessary for the guide to produce a lamp.

David began to toy with the idea of snatching the lamp and making a break for freedom. Surely, after all this climbing, they could not be far from the surface. He nudged Cleary and pointed suggestively to his knife. For some reason of his own the other shook his head. David let the matter drop and a few moments later, when the rays of the lamp fell upon another gate, was glad he had. It was opened like the others by a combination lock. The young man stood back for them to pass. The click of its fastening followed— but the man with the lamp was on the other side. Too late David realized what had happened. This was not another gate along the way, it was the door of a prison — and they, like fools, had walked straight into it. He drew his knife and sprang back, but the young man was safely out of reach. He turned away, paying no attention to David’s threats, and soon his lamp became no more than a receding glow in the distance.

Darkness, intense and almost palpable, closed in. David shook the barred gate in futile fury, but he stopped abruptly at the sound of a movement in the blackness behind him. “Who’s there?” Mentally he cursed his voice for its unsteadiness – this dark was bad for a man’s nerves.

A voice replied with a familiar, lilting tone.

“Good God, the Martians!” he cried.

Angus Invades

Angus paused to muster his party at the cave mouth. “No talking!” he ordered, “and step as lightly as possible. The brutes are nocturnal, and it’s odds on we’ll catch them sleeping now. Come on!”

He switched on the lamp upon his chest and led the way into the mountain. The entrance cave was much like the one in which they had been attacked. The dry, dusty floor sloped down towards the beginning of a narrower tunnel in which they could not walk more than two abreast.

They wound for fully half a mile of its evenly descending length before they came to the first forking of the way. Joe guessed that already they were below the level of the valley outside. Angus stopped and turned an investigating beam up each of the facing tunnels. Both were similar in size and in the degree of use they showed. One of the men picked out a slight obstruction on the smooth floor of the right-hand path. He jumped forward and returned, displaying his find.

“A Martian boot,” said Angus, handling the soft leather. “Somebody in that gang knows his stuff. Let’s hope he’s managed some more clues.”

The hope was fulfilled. They were subsequently assured that they were on the right track first by the discovery of the fellow boot, and later by the sight of a discarded cap. As yet they had had no sight of the Batrachs, and still the passages led down. Twice Joe, bringing up the rear, thought he heard a dry rustle behind him, but each time he swung his lamp, it revealed only the empty tunnel. They had now penetrated a long way into Asperus, and his suspicions were aroused.

“This is too easy to last,” he told himself uneasily.

A few minutes later, his fears were borne out. An unmistakable, murmurous swishing came from behind him. And, this time, the lamp showed a solid phalanx of grey, winged forms sweeping down in a rear attack. Almost without thought he drew his pistol and sent half a dozen shots crashing among them. Not a bullet could miss. They hesitated as several of their number fell and swayed indecisively for a second. They rallied and came on, but their advance now was slow and deliberate; They appeared to have abandoned the notion of coming to grips.

Angus continued to lead his men steadily forward. Retreat was, for the present, cut off, but that had been almost inevitable in such catacombs. There was more pressing business to be attended to before they had to worry about the way back. Joe reloaded his pistol and held it ready.

A turn of the passage brought them without warning into a large cave. The many black tunnel entrances dotting the walls on all sides suggested that it was a meeting place, a kind of public square of this subterranean world. By far its most disturbing feature was that in almost every entrance lurked grey, menacing figures. Angus grasped the danger at once. The Batrachs would have full room to use their wings and could attack from all sides simultaneously. Already more than a few were taking to the air. The way behind was blocked. A swift glance showed that the tunnel directly opposite held no guard and, at his command, the Earth men made for it, crossing the wide floor in a series of leaps. To their surprise they reached it unattacked. The sense of uneasiness grew. The Batrachs followed at a distance.

“Don’t like this,” muttered Angus. “From what we’ve seen of them, they’re fighters. I’ll bet anything the blasted creatures have got something up their sleeves.”

Nevertheless, they continued unmolested for several hundred yards. Then, at a corner, Angus stopped dead. The way ahead was choked with Batrachs who stood blinking in the glare of the lights. “Oho! So that’s it. Sandwiching us, are they?” He settled a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other. “Now for it!” But still the Batrachs did not attack. There was a puzzled pause. Angus opened his mouth to speak, but before a word came, the floor gave way beneath him.

The next seconds were confusion. A writhing mass of men fell struggling sideways, swearing as they tried to disentangle themselves. Angus’ pistol was knocked from his hand by the fall, but he staggered to his feet, still clutching the knife. The light on his chest remained unbroken, but it was obscured by the struggling bodies. The man next to him suddenly grabbed his arm. Angus tottered and lost his balance. He tripped over a prostrate form, and slid, headfirst, down a polished stone slope at prodigious speed. After a few breathtaking moments he sped from a kind of chute into a room crammed with the grey Batrachs.

The trap had been well planned. Half a dozen of them flung themselves upon him before he could rise. His knife arm was pinned to his side and despite all the extra power which the low gravitation gave him, he could not break their tenacious holds. Struggling and shrouded beneath the great wings, he could see little, but he was aware that others of his band were suffering a similar fate as they shot into the room. He could hear their muffled curses and grunts as they fought.

With a colossal heave he achieved a sitting position and struggled thence to his feet. The Batrachs still clung about him, pinioning his arms. By jerky, intermittent beams he could see all over the floor a series of struggling heaps with wings threshing furiously above as the men were secured and weighted down by numbers. He tried with all the force of desperation to wrench his right arm free and bellowed futilely at his assailants: “You lot of lousy sons of Satan. Just you wait till I get this knife free — I’ll show you who’s boss here. I’ll carve your miserable, stringy carcasses into mincemeat, you — ”

But the thin arms twined around him like ropes. Not an inch did they give before all his violence. In the far corner he glimpsed Joe Seely rise for a moment, only to be dragged desperately down. The outlook was becoming ugly.

An interruption occurred. A grey curtain on the opposite wall — made, he suspected from wing membrane— was twitched aside. In the doorway behind stood the short figure of Sen-Su. The Martian’s clothes had been torn away, and the blood streamed down his brown skin from a dozen ragged cuts. In one hand he held a jagged ended metal bar. His expression was one of dismay until he saw Angus, upright, though helpless. His bullet head went down. He crouched, whirling the bar before him like a lethal flail, and launched forward in a mighty leap at the group which held the engineer. His crude weapon tore through the great wings as though they had been rotten cloth.

The Batrachs’ thin bones snapped like sticks as his blows went home. The onslaught was more than they could stand. The hold on Angus loosened. They and others with them flung themselves upon the threshing demon, smothering him in their wings, twisting their long arms about him to bring him, still fighting to the ground.

But Angus broke free. His long knife darted with a shimmer like lightning, slashing, thrusting, tearing about him. Those whom the blade touched sank to the floor. Those whom it did not, backed from his neighborhood. Chaos broke loose. The Batrachs holding other prisoners were trodden under the feet of their own kind in flight before Angus. Their grips slipped and the prone men snatched for their knives. Within a few seconds there were five at Angus’ side, driving the grey ranks headlong with a line of slicing steel. The din of piercing cries increased as more and more men rose until all were on their feet. The surviving Batrachs fought each other to escape through the narrow doorway. A bellow of rage came from Angus. One of the escaping horde had hooked his sharp wing talon into the flesh of Sen-Su’s shoulder and was dragging him away. Angus leapt in and slashed – slashed once and the wing was severed, slashed again and the head rolled away. He picked up Sen-Su and carried him aside. The Martian smiled faintly at his rescuer, then, swiftly, his expression changed. He pointed through the doorway.

“The others,” he cried. “Quickly, before they get them away.”

Leaving a half dozen men to guard the few Batrach prisoners, Angus and the rest sped down the corridor. From somewhere ahead came the shrill sounds of Batrachs mingled with the confused babble of human voices. The next turn revealed winged figures fumbling frantically at the locks of barred gates set in sidewalls. They twisted around and emitted high cries as they saw the running men. One glance was enough to assure them that safety lay in flight. With mournful shrieks they disappeared into the blackness ahead.

A pistol made short work of the locks on the cell gates. As the imprisoned Martians filed out, Angus caught sight of two familiar, lighter faces. “David, Cleary,” he called. He greeted them excitedly and at once dragged the doctor off to have a look at Sen-Su’s wounds.

“He’s game,” he said. “If he hadn’t managed to break out of his cell and take a bit of the bars with him, we’d all be in cells by now.”

“Where are the rest?” he asked David as Cleary made his examination. David looked puzzled.

“I mean the six men who were taken when you were.”

It was the first David had heard of them, and he said as much. Angus frowned. “Then we’ll have to go on — we can’t leave the poor devils here.”

“There are more than those six,” said David. He told briefly of the Red Glory survivors and the others they had seen on the lower levels. Angus’ frown grew still deeper as he listened. It was not a pleasant thought that Earth men and women were existing here as slaves. He was at something of a loss to know how to proceed. Not only would it be difficult to find the way into these further tunnels, but there was no telling what further tricks the Batrachs might have in store.

“See if you can get anything out of the prisoners,” David suggested at length. “They might be — er — persuaded to talk.”

Angus stared. “You mean that they can talk? Those things?”

“I was told that some of them can — it’s worth trying.”

One of the prisoners readily admitted to a knowledge of English. Was, in fact fluent from long association with the slaves. His extremely high-pitched voice had a fraying effect on the nerves and he met with difficulties in the forms of labials, nevertheless, he was intelligible. His information caused Angus to make a complete reassortment of ideas. Hitherto, he had considered the Batrachs as he would a species of wild animal — intelligent animals up to a point, but undisciplined – governed by no other instinct than that of the herd. But the view he was now given of them as a race under central authority, pulling together towards an ideal, killed all his preconceptions stone dead. He began to see, for instance, that the piles of dead on the sight of the Martian camp represented not stupid ferocity, but determination and sacrifice. The Batrachs did not go into battle from sheer fighting instinct, but with a clear knowledge that many of their kind must fall for the eventual good of the race.

As one of his theories after another was tumbled down, it became clearer that he must take an entirely different course. He began to think of them as Bat-men, no longer as animals, a mental attitude which was the harder to adopt since hitherto no forms of life in the whole system had even competed intelligently with man. But there was one idea which underwent no readjustment — the Batrachs, whatever their status, must not be allowed to keep Earth men and women as slaves.

Angus considered deeply.

With the rescued Martians and David and the doctor they numbered now one hundred and eight. Not a trivial party, but certainly not formidable. In addition there was some shortage of arms and several men had been badly mauled. In continued skirmishes with groups of Batrachs their resistance would soon be worn down. Clearly a policy of guerilla warfare was unsuitable. He turned back to the prisoner.

“You talked about government. What form of government is this?”

Apparently there was an official council. The Batrach began to explain with some pride how it was formed. Angus cut him short. “Take us to this council,” he ordered.

The Batrach agreed with an alacrity which caused him secret misgivings. He did his best to shake them off. After all, as he pointed out to David, whatever happened, it could scarcely make their position any worse.

Before the Council

The Council Chamber, to which their guide led them, proved to be a cave of medium size, but sufficiently large to contain all the party. Word of their coming evidently preceded them, for they found a row of the creatures waiting; fifteen grey Batrachs who watched their arrival with calm, interested eyes. They sat upon a kind of stone shelf, seven to each side of one who was raised a little higher. It worried Angus a little that they showed no trace of fear, nor even anxiety, but, without delay, he plunged into the heart of the matter, addressing the central figure. “We understand that you are holding a number of men and women of Earth prisoners here?”

The other studied Angus unhurriedly. When he answered, it was in a voice of lower pitch than their prisoner’s, but still unpleasantly shrill. “We are,” he said briefly.

“And we demand that you free them at once.”

“You ‘demand?’” The Batrach showed a tinge of surprise at the choice of words. David and Joe exchanged glances. Both would have favored a less outspoken policy. The party was scarcely in a position to “demand” anything. But Angus merely nodded. The Batrach forbore to point out that they were virtually prisoners themselves. He asked: “And why do you think we would surrender prisoners to you who are useful to us?”

“Because you would stand a very poor chance of success against a warship from Earth.”

The Batrach considered. “But if we imprison you, Earth may never know.”

There was an uneasy stir among most of the Martians and Earthmen present, but Angus smiled. “That,” he said triumphantly, “is where you are mistaken. You have held the passengers from the Red Glory only because we did not know what had become of them. We thought that the ship had been destroyed. Had we even suspected the true state of affairs, you would have had a visit from a warship long ago.

“Now, however, the case is altered. The Argenta is undamaged. If we fail to return, someone will take her back to Earth and report. Should you manage to prevent this, the delay will only be slight for our destination was known to officials at home and they will shortly send out a searching party.”

His words evidently went home to the council. They started to speak in their shrill, wailing tones. The central Batrach quieted them. “It would mean the end for many of us,” he admitted, “but I doubt even your people’s power to conquer and hold all our passages and caves. It would, in fact, be better for them not to try. We could trap party after party so that they would starve. We know your weapons and we know their limitations.”

Angus shook his head. “You know only a few of our weapons.” He went on to describe in some detail the effects of some poison gases, and to tell how the heavier types could be poured into the tunnel mouths to percolate throughout the Batrach warrens and kill any who got so much as a sniff of them.

Dissension followed. A few of the Batrachs took his statement for a fairy tale, others who had heard of gases from the slaves, knew better. “But the prisoners — your own people — they would die too,” one objected.

Angus drew himself up. “It is better,” he bluffed, “for an Earth man to be dead than to be a slave. Our men would not wish to kill their own kind, but they would do it sooner than know that they lingered in servitude.”

He watched anxiously to see how this piece of heroics would be received. If it failed, he must change his tactics entirely. During the discussion which followed he kept his gaze level and steadfast. At length the spokesman addressed him again. “We will agree to your demands. The survivors from the Red Glory shall go free.”

Angus allowed himself to relax slightly, but before he could reply, David was whispering in his ear. “The others,” he was saying “the younger ones. Don’t forget them.”

At the suggestion that these also were included in his demand, a great screeching of objections arose from the council. Again the spokesman quieted the rest with a wave of his winged arm. “They are the children and the grandchildren of the others,” he said. “We call them the New Generations. They have never been on the surface. They know only these caves which are their homes — it would not be kind to them to take them with you.”

Angus and his party stared. “Would not be kind?” The effrontery of it. Would not be kind to take them into the sunlight — out of this gloomy labyrinth. He grew angry and his demands became eloquent. The Batrach listened patiently with a look in his eyes almost as though he were secretly amused. Once he began to break in with an objection. Angus swept on, brushing it aside unheard. At last he stopped. The spokesman, still with the disconcerting light in his eyes, hesitated and then gave in.

“We will agree not to stand in the way of their going,” he allowed.

Angus had won, but he was not easy. In the middle of his victory he was aware of a twinge of that same misgiving he had experienced earlier in the passages. Again it seemed too simple, and there was a something in the Batrach’s tone...

The mixed party of Earthmen and Martians was conducted to a large cave to await the coming of the slaves. A few were jubilant and confident. Man, in their estimation had triumphed again, as man always would. But the majority was alert. Like Angus they felt that all was not so cut and dried as it appeared. There was a sense if not of treachery, at least of something very like it, in the air.

A group comprising Angus, David, Joe, Torrance, the doctor and Sen-Su — the latter bandaged, but not seriously hurt — stood apart from the rest, discussing the possibilities of the situation in undertones. Torrance was emphatically of the opinion that the Batrachs were not fetching the prisoners, but mustering for a mass attack with the intention of wiping out all in the cave.

Angus did not agree. For one thing he trusted the chief Batrach’s word, and, for another, his threats of invasion from Earth had made a deep impression. All speculation was cut short by the arrival of a party of persons at the near end of the cave. One look showed David the people with whom he had recently talked.

“The Red Glory survivors,” he said.

The pitiful procession came slowly toward them. John Fordham walked a little ahead of the rest. There was no joy in his bearing – his feelings seemed too deep for that. He approached them, shuffling and tired, his shoulders bent as though they still supported his basket of ore. He looked at them with eyes which seemed to doubt what they saw. His voice quivered and broke as he asked: “Is it true, what they told us? Are we really going ‘Outside’?”

“Yes,” Angus told him gently. “It’s quite true. We’re taking you home.”

“Home.” The old man stood quite still. His arms hung slackly by his sides. His head went back as though he gazed beyond the rock about him, beyond the millions of miles of space, towards a swinging planet which was home. His breath caught in his throat. He buried his face in his hands and wept.

A woman came to David and plucked at his sleeve. “And the children?” she asked in a low tone. “The New Generation?”

“They’re coming too,” he assured her.

She received the answer in silence. Drew a breath as though to speak. Shrugged her shoulders hopelessly and turned from him to join the others. There was no joy in her manner as she imparted the news. David almost followed her to ask questions but remembered in time how his last question of the kind had been treated. He decided to wait for this puzzle to solve itself.

Up the far end of the cave another disturbance was occurring and he turned in company with the rest to discover that the New Generations were entering. Exclamations of surprise broke from both Earthmen and Martians as the stream of young men and women and children filed in. Nobody had thought to consider the probable number of the children and children’s children.

Angus had guessed at a possible hundred or so. Suddenly confronted with more than five hundred, he stared with widening eyes. Even David and the doctor though somewhat prepared were taken aback. Cleary indulged in some hurried mental arithmetic.

The newcomers, accompanied by several Batrachs, remained crowded together at the end of the cave. Most kept their gazes averted, though a few examined Angus and his party with a kind of furtive interest. Their communal attitude was one of puzzled indecision. A short discussion resulted in one man detaching himself. As he approached, David recognized the firm step and fine carriage of their late guide. At a distance of two yards from the group he stopped short, scanning them with a look of distaste. He spoke in the tone of one accustomed to lead.

“You are from ‘Outside’?”

Again that curious treatment of the final word.

“We are,” Angus replied.

“What do you want here?”

Angus’ eyebrows rose. This was scarcely the expected attitude of rescued towards rescuers. “We have come to set you free.”

“Free?” The young man was puzzled. “I don’t understand you. We are free.”

There was a puzzled silence. Angus supplemented: “We have a ship on which to take you, and your parents, back to your native planet — Earth.”

The young man continued to look mystified for a while. Then a thought appeared to strike him. With a look of growing, indignant horror in his eyes he asked: “You want us to go ‘Outside’?”

“Of course,” said Angus curtly. He did not care for the young man’s expression.

There was a muttering among the listening crowd of the New Generation. Partly nervous, but in greater part indignant. They shrank back towards the tunnel, through which they had entered.

“Look,” whispered the doctor to David, pointing towards the group of original survivors. Most of the women were staring towards the New Generations with a complex expression. David analyzed it as mingled yearning and hopelessness. He became aware that the groups of emotions in all parts of that cave fitted with none of his expectations.

“What is it?” He whispered back. “I’m all at sea.”

Cleary shook his head. “I think I’m getting it, but I’m not sure yet.”

Meanwhile, on the young man’s face, anger replaced consternation. “How dare you make such a suggestion?” he demanded. “No doubt you think that by those — ” he pointed at Angus’ weapons “ — that you can force us. It may surprise you to know that you underrate us — we are not cowards. Get back to your filth. Get back to your ‘Outside’. I am ashamed that our women have been allowed here to hear such an infamous, indecent suggestion. Had I known that they were to be exposed to such ignominy as this I would — ”

Angus stepped forward, eyes narrowed. The young man recoiled – not from fear, but as though he avoided contamination. He turned around and addressing the crowd of the New Generation, already moving to the tunnel. “Go!” he shouted. “Go before the evil from outside can touch you.”

He wheeled back to face Angus. His face was a study in abhorrence, hut he stood his ground, warding off the other from his people. Angus advanced slowly, bewildered. He put out his hand to press the other aside. The young man gave a cry of disgust, tore off the garment Angus had touched as though it were unclean, and hurled it from him. A loathsome reptile might have inspired the look which now dwelt in his eyes. A quick glance showed him that the last of his people were leaving. Without another word he turned and strode after them.

The silence of consternation held the cave. One voice rose at last to break it: John Fordham’s. “My son,” he cried. “My son.”

But the retreating figure marched into the tunnel with never a backward glance.

The Power of the Batrachs

Angus broke his trance of astonishment. Several of the Red Glory women had begun to sob desolately, hopelessly. He called Sen-Su to his side. Looking into his eyes he said: “Sen-Su, can we work together?”

The Martian smiled slightly. “Because I asked that question, they condemned me to exile. My whole faith has been that men should work together instead of exploiting one another.”

“And so they shall, by the Lord. We Earthmen have been a pack of fools — you’ve convinced me of that, Sen-Su. Henceforth, I’m with you Martians. When we get back to Earth — ”

“But now we are still on Asperus,” Sen-Su pointed out. “What do you wish me to do?”

“I want you to tell some of your men to take these Red Glory people to the surface, and to the ship. I’ll send some of mine along too, to explain to old Jamie that it’s on the level. Will they do that?”

Sen-Su nodded and turned to address his men in lilting Martian. A number of them crossed over and posted themselves beside the rescued. “And the rest of us?” he inquired, turning back.

“The rest of us are going to get the New Generations out of this warren, whether they like it or not,” snapped Angus.

“You’ll never do it,” Cleary prophesied quietly.

Angus glared. “Who says?”

“I do. You don’t know what you’re up against.”

“I know that these damned Batrachs are holding them somehow.”

“I doubt it. I don’t believe that the Batrachs could persuade them to go. They’ve been clever. They’ve hit mankind in his weakest spot. Damned clever.”

Angus shrugged his shoulders and went about directing the departure of the rest. The survivors at length trailed away, a weary, dejected lot. Some seemed half afraid to leave their prison. Twenty-five years is a long time, and their children had refused to go…

As the last of them disappeared a company of grey forms flew out of a large tunnel and up the cave. Angus’ hand flew to his knife and then dropped as he recognized the Batrachs of the Council. The creatures alighted a few yards away and closed their wings. The leader advanced. “They would not go?” he asked Angus.

“You knew damn well they wouldn’t go. What I want to know is, why wouldn’t they go? How did you stop them?”

“We did not stop them. They could have gone had they wished.”

“You did not hypnotize them? They were free?”

This time the Batrach really smiled. “Freedom. How often have I heard the slaves speak of it? — It is the obsession of your race. What is freedom?”

It occurred to Angus that this was not the simple question it sounded. He wrestled with it awkwardly: “The power to do as you want.”

“Then the New Generations are indeed free.”

Angus gave it up. “I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly.

“Nevertheless, it is true. If you took the New Generations away by force — as perhaps you might — you would take them from happiness to misery.”

“I don’t believe that, either. How can they be happy down here in these burrows?”

“You don’t appreciate your own point. ‘Freedom is the power to do as you want.’ — Has it not occurred to you that the ‘want’ might be suggested?”

Angus frowned. Someone else had lately spoken of suggestion. Yes, Sen-Su had referred to it as one of the great forces. He looked at the Martian and saw comprehension dawning in his eyes.

“Come,” said the Batrach. “Words won’t convince you. I must show you why the New Generations will stay.”

He turned and led the way up an ascending passage. As he went he talked, giving them what was in effect an amplification of Fordham’s explanation to David. The Batrachs, he reiterated, were making a great bid for the future of their race. They had knowledge, but they could not make even so simple a thing as a book to store that knowledge for the benefit of future generations. The Batrach held up his clumsy wing claw. What, he asked them, could be accomplished with so crude an instrument as that? They had tried always to educate the claw, but it was little use compared with even an uneducated hand with the advantage of the power to grip. They had been forced to turn to other methods.

“Just so, I am told,” he said, “did your ancestors turn to the horse and to other animals to overcome some of their own limitations. Did you ever think of your horses as slaves?”

Doctor Cleary diverted the subject with a question. “How did you Batrachs get here — there are no others that we know of in the system?”

“I can’t tell you that,” the other admitted. “There are legends, but they are vague. They tell of the Mother of all Batrachs, so great, so magnificent in her wings, that she could fly not merely as we fly, but out to the furthest stars in the sky. Now and again, however, even she tired and needed to rest, and on each world where she rested, she brought forth ten small Batrachs such as we. You can make what you like of that. It may be that the Mother was in reality, a spaceship such as yours. I do not know. One thing is certain, and that is that we are admirably adapted to Asperus. We should be unable to fly on even the smallest of the major planets.”

“There is usually a basis of truth in such legends,” agreed the doctor. He was determined to protect as long as possible his theory of systematic species. He went on to question the other on his physical structure.

The rest of the men followed in silence as the two conversed. David and Joe felt little more than a curious interest in what the Batrach would reveal. Angus wore a puzzled frown. Torrance, as usual, was out of temper. He had abandoned the making of suggestions, but he knew what a man’s attitude should be towards an inferior race. This meeting on an equal footing was, to him, not only improper, but weak. Sen-Su was paying close attention to the leading Batrach’s talk, while the rest of the Council seemed to be content to- bring up the rear.

At last came the glimmer of daylight far ahead. The Batrach led on without a pause. The Doctor, watching him closely, saw that his eyes filmed over with a protective membrane as the light grew more intense. The passage rapidly broadened out until it became a wide cave with an extensive view over valleys and crags. On the rocky floor twenty or more children were playing with simple toys. In careful attendance lurked the figures of tall, grey, female Batrachs. Evidently this was the nursery of the grandchildren of the Red Glory survivors. David, mindful of his earlier experience, hung back, but Angus continued. A child noticed his coming and fled with a yelp of terror in the direction of the nearest Batrach. There was an indignant murmur from Torrance that the children were being taught to hate their own kind. He was surprised when the leader calmly nodded: “But only those from ‘Outside’,” the latter added.

“I don’t see — ” Angus began.

The Batrach checked him. “Watch,” he said.

He indicated a small boy who was near the cave mouth. Outside, the sunlight was pouring down on a broad, smooth ledge. The contrasting world beyond seemed to intrigue the youngster. He was slowly edging towards the fascinating line of light. Once he looked back cautiously toward the other children and their attendants, but they gave no sign of noticing his maneuvers. He crawled on to within six inches of the line of shadow and hesitated again. Finally he made up his mind and boldly stepped over. There was a sudden, ear-splitting crash from a metal gong. A breath of nauseating stench seemed to invade the cave. A child jumped back howling with terror. One of the female Batrachs swept forward and picked him up in a fold of her wing. He hid his face with its streaming tears in the comforting darkness it afforded.

“Behaviorism,” cried the Doctor. “A pure Behaviorist method.”

Angus’ eyes were blazing with anger. He advanced upon the Batrach as though he would strike him. “It’s cruelty,” he shouted. “Pure, wanton torture of these children. I see it all now. You’ve brought up the New Generations to be so scared of you that they daren’t do a thing you might resent. You had only to tell them that you wished them to say, and they cringingly obeyed.”

Cleary intervened. “Don’t be a fool man. Did the leader, old Fordham’s son, cringe? Of course he didn’t. He walked like a ruler. Besides, these children don’t hate the Batrachs. Look there.”

The female Batrach, in a motherly way had dispelled all the child’s terror. He was clinging to her and almost laughing again. Angus and the others stared in bewilderment. There was no cruelty in the soft eyes with which she looked at the child — only concern that it should be happy once more. Torrance, in the background, muttered vengeful threats.

“I’m damned if I get this,” Angus said. “First she allows the child to be terrified out of its wits — then she’s really worried when it is. What’s it all for?”

“It’s on the Behaviorist basis,” said the doctor, enthusiastically. “A matter of conditioned reflexes.”

“That’s all Greek to me.”

“You know what a reflex action is?”

“One that is instinctive.”

“Not quite that. One that takes place without conscious thought — not quite the same thing. An instinctive reaction is innate, but a reflex action is caused by subconscious memory.”

“That seems pretty much the same.”

“No, it’s not. Take our avoidance of fire. Very young children are attracted by the brightness of fire. They want to play with it — have no instinct to fear it. But you and I do not try to handle fire, in fact, we avoid coming into contact with it. But we don’t say to ourselves each time, ‘This is fire — I must avoid it.’ The warning is subconscious — we ‘automatically’ avoid it. In other words, sometime in the past we burned ourselves and stored up the subconscious memory that fire was painful.

“A conditioned reflex arose — it caused us to avoid anything in a condition of fire. It was the same with foods – some we ‘automatically’ leave alone because we know they will make us ill. The same with all kinds of things. As a result we dislike even the smell or taste of them. Once you cut yourself on a sharp knife — now you ‘automatically’ pick a knife up by the handle.”

“Then this?” asked Angus, indicating the children.

“All the children here will grow up hating the world outside, and that hatred, properly fostered will become an inhibition. They will not be able to leave these caves. The memory of that gong and the nauseating smell won’t remain conscious for long, but, if the treatment is continued (as, no doubt it is) the idea that ‘Outside’ must be avoided will persist. From the behavior of the adults it would appear most successful.”

“Do you mean to tell me that if I, as a child, had been treated in this way, I should hate the ‘Outside’?” demanded Angus.

“Certainly — why should you be different?”

“But — but I’m free. I can think for myself.”

“You think you can — but can you really? Every thought of yours is based on somebody’s teaching, or a scrap of information picked up from somebody else. One might even say that there is no ‘you’ — you are no more than a conglomeration of bits of other people. It’s true,” he added as Angus shook his head, “think it over a bit. You are as much a product of conditions as these children will be.

“Given a completely uninstructed child, a blank canvas, so to speak, there is scarcely any code of belief, morals or behavior which cannot be induced by careful training. You’ve only got to look at the violently differing codes upon Earth to see that.

“That’s what the Batrach meant when he asked you what was freedom. We are always prompted or guided by others whether we like it, or not. Sen-Su said that suggestion was all powerful. He was right. This is its most subtle application.”

The Altar

There was a pause while all the men regarded the children in silence. The idea was slowly sinking into Angus’ reluctant mind. Was it possible, he was wondering, to warp minds so that they saw nothing but horror in the fresh greenness of trees, so that the sun ceased to be the life giver, but became something indecent and fearful, never to be looked upon? It seemed impossible, and yet...

David, too, was thinking. He remembered the decorations in the caves of the New Generations — not a natural form had been allowed to intrude. Every suggestion of the world “Outside” had been rigidly excluded. He remembered, too, the expressions he had faced — hate, fear and disgust.

Torrance was not thinking. This foolery was taxing both his patience and his control. It was no mean task to keep his tongue still.

Again a child was approaching the line of sunlight. They watched in silence an exact repetition of the earlier episode. “But why the gong?” asked Joe. “Why not stop them each time?”

“That is simple,” the Batrach explained. “Were we to stop them, they would resent it and end by disliking us — as it is, we comfort them after their fright and they love us for it.”

Joe’s mouth opened wide. He had never considered the possibility of anyone loving a Batrach.

“Come,” the tall, grey figure added. “I will show you one more piece of the life of the New Generations. I think it will convince you.”

He led the way back into the tunnel. The doctor hurried forward and walked abreast with him. “Then you do not mind the Red Glory survivors leaving?” he asked.

“No. We could only get the coarsest of compulsory labor from them. It was their children we wanted. We had, at first,” he added, “some difficulty in persuading them to bear.”

He went on to explain. The survivors’ children had been taken from their parents as soon as possible and started on an elaborate course of conditioning to environment. Success had been immediate and the New Generation had been brought up thinking, feeling, acting and reacting in the ways the Batrachs wished — yet unaware of any compulsion. When the second generation began to appear it could be safely left with its parents save for regular periods of training in a nursery such as they had seen. The change was really very slight, he pointed out, none of the basic instincts was touched and character remained unaltered — only certain taboos became desirables, and certain desirables, taboo.

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. “And so,” he said. “Our strongest point is our weakest.”

The Batrach was puzzled.

“I mean, our adaptability. It is that power which takes us into dry climates and wet, tropics and polar regions, cold planets and hot planets, open spaces and confined quarters — has, in fact, taken us all over the system. You have succeeded in turning that same adaptability to your own advantage. The others do not understand how the New Generations can be really happy in here, but I do. There never was (in this system, at least) a race so adaptable as we.”

The Batrach checked at last at a small doorway. Making a sign for silence, he led the way within. They emerged upon a shelf partway up the wall of a large cavern. In the arrangement of the place there was more than a suggestion of the interior of a church. Row upon row the New Generations sat below them all gazing intently towards the far end at a feature which caused the Earthmen to stiffen with surprise. A long table stretched right across the cave and was covered by a cloth decorated with metal thread. The ornaments which rested upon it gave it the appearance of a kind of altar. Behind, outspread so that they covered most of the end wall, was a pair of wings patterned after those of the Batrachs. They had been skilfully fashioned from grey, lustrous metal which gleamed under an ingenious arrangement of the dim lights. Below them a man dressed in a grey tunic was in the act of mounting a few steps which led to a kind of rostrum.

He reached the platform and stood for a moment with his back to the audience gazing up at the great wings above him. Then he turned and began to speak in a calm, clear voice. His pale face was serious and there was no doubting the sincerity and strength of the belief which backed his words. But what words they were. The men’s eyes grew wide as they listened.

“ — Our ancestors sinned. They doubted, and doubt is sin. For that sin they were punished. They were cast into the nethermost ‘Outside’ — a place of evil and terrors without names. They forfeited all. They had betrayed their faith and, as a punishment, their wings” — he dropped his voice as though grieving — “were withered upon them. Shorter and shorter grew their arms, and less, generation by generation, the spread of their wings until, at last, the membrane was gone and they were left as we are with but stunted growths.”

In a gesture he held out a pair of magnificent arms and stared at them. “These,” he stretched them out towards the audience, “these are the symbols of our fall, the badge of our shame.

“But,” — his voice rose triumphantly — “through faith we shall win back. Beyond hope — damned through all eternity — are those ‘Outside’. But our feet are already upon the road back. The Batrachs have taken us in and purified us. Here in the caverns of the chosen they have taken compassion upon us. We shall climb again to that high estate from which our ancestors fell.

“Slowly and surely we shall rise, scaling the firm rungs of faith. It will not come in our time, nor even in our children’s time, for the return to grace is hard, but far, far in the future, men who have regained their lost wings — such wings as the Batrachs have — will look back upon us and praise us for our faith which paved the way. Therefore, I tell you, keep faith. Firm, steady and unfaltering faith so that a million yet to be born may one day look back and honor you. Imagine a man in the full glory of his restored wings who will whisper the name of one of you, saying: ‘She was my mother, and faith, my cradle.’ ”

As the last words died away he turned to face again the huge, symbolic wings upon the wall. He raised his arms imploringly and stood motionless. There was not a sound to be heard in the cave.

On the ledge the men stood speechless, astounded by the travesty. There had been no bluffing. They caught the spirit of the men and women below. Intense, faithful, trusting, and, above all, convinced. That the Batrachs had taught this religion and the worship of the Wing, there could be no doubt — but that it had become a part of the worshippers’ lives, there was equally little doubt. So simple.

A slightly new twist to the old Earth legend of angels, and there was the ideal, with the Batrachs already in the position of demi-gods. David remembered John Fordham’s words — “The Batrachs can think, but they cannot do.” He had been right. They had thought a new race of mankind into being, and this race, regarding them as saviors, would work for them willingly and joyfully, secure in their faith. David’s last hope died – the New Generations could never be rescued against such odds.

Torrance broke the silence with a shout. He swung himself over the edge of the rock shelf and dropped to the floor below. Before any could stop him he was on his feet and racing toward the far end. He leapt upon the rostrum and felled the speaker with a blow. “Fools!” he shouted, swinging round on the startled audience. “Fools! He lied to you. Nothing but lies. It’s a plot of the Batrachs. Men never had wings — they never will have wings. They — ”

“Blasphemer,” roared a voice. An echoing pandemonium broke loose, drowning Torrance’s voice with its babel. The audience rose to its feet. With murder in its eyes, it charged madly towards the rostrum.

Angus knew an infuriated mob when he saw one. “My God, they’ll lynch him,” he cried.

The Batrach beside him swooped down from the ledge and spread his wings. Another followed his lead. Together they sped towards the lone figure of Torrance, at bay beneath the monstrous metal wings. Their talons snatched him up and lifted his struggling figure clear of the crowd just in time. A moment later they brought him back, pale and not a little scared, to the ledge. The Batrach, after a glance at the outraged worshippers on the floor below, led the way into the corridor. There, he turned and looked at them with eyes which held the faintest tinge of mockery. “You are convinced?”

Angus nodded unhappily. “You’re devils, but you’re clever devils.”

“And you will leave us in peace?”

“What else can we do?” Angus shrugged.

“You might gas us,” observed the Batrach with an inflection which called the bluff.

“All right. You win,” admitted Angus miserably.

“Goodbye,” said the Batrach.

As they took an uphill tunnel, Angus turned to the doctor. “And you really think they’re happy here?” he asked.

“Less unhappy than they’d be anywhere else,” was the reply, “and what more can you wish any man?”

Sen-Su’s lilting Martian voice joined in: “And now?”

“And now,” responded Angus, “we go back to Earth to preach the brotherhood of man and the damnation of Batrachs.”

And so, though it is colonized, you will fail to find the word “Asperus” on Earth’s proud colonial lists.

Wanderers of Time

1933

The pompous little man who strutting his way through a wood near the Saber property, blinked rapidly and dropped his lower jaw. For perhaps five seconds he stared before him with an expression of fish-like astonishment, then a fear of the inexplicable, inherited from far-off ancestors, sent him scuttling for cover. Once in the safe obscurity of the bushes, he turned again to goggle amazedly at the center of the glade. His surprise was excusable and his panic understandable.

A moment before, he had faced a small clearing holding in itself nothing more substantial than golden sunlight. Then, even as he looked—he was certain he had neither blinked nor turned his head—a glittering cylinder had appeared. And it stayed there, in the exact middle of the open space, looking like an immense projectile of polished steel. An apparition sudden and alarming enough to make the little man feel entirely justified in running. Now, from his vantage point, he examined it with less panic and a rising indignation.

The cylinder’s length he estimated at somewhere about eighteen feet, and its diameter at three feet. The metal covering appeared at this range to be seamless and it scintillated in the afternoon sunshine with a harsh brightness. “Not quite like steel,” he corrected himself. “Colder, more like chromium plate. But what the devil is it?”

The discretion of remaining among the bushes appealed to him far more than the valor of a closer inspection. A large object like this, which could appear abruptly and in complete silence before one’s very nose, was to be treated with circumspection. Less than half a minute later, he snatched a sudden breath. A rectangular patch of darkness had become visible in the upper surface of the machine—if machine it was.

Fascinatedly, he watched the slit broaden as a panel was slid back. A man’s head was thrust cautiously through the opening, turning to left and right as he reconnoitered. Presently, seemingly satisfied that he was unobserved, he slid the panel back to its limit and levered himself out of the opening.

A glance at the man’s full face brought a short gasp from the watcher and he moved involuntarily, snapping a branch beneath his foot. For a moment he held his breath, but he became easier when the other showed no sign of having heard the sharp crack. He had turned back to his machine, and with one arm plunged into the dark interior, was fumbling for something. When he straightened again, the other stiffened, because the right hand held a ponderous revolver which pointed in his direction. Any hope that this might be accidental, was quickly dispersed.

“Come on,” commanded the man in the glade. “Out of that, quick.” He flourished his weapon impatiently at the watcher’s momentary hesitation. “Put ’em up, and come out,” he said.

The man in the bushes waited no longer. Hands well above his head, he marched into the open. “Who are you?” asked the other.

“Henry Q. Jones,” the watcher answered. He was finding himself less afraid of the man before him than he had been of the impersonal cylinder. He even added: “Who are you, if it comes to that?”

“My name is no business of yours,” replied the other, watching him closely, “but it happens to be Roy Saber.”

Henry Q. Jones’ mouth started to open and then shut quickly.

“You don’t believe me?”

Henry Q. grunted noncommittally.

“Why not?”

“Well, if you must know, for one thing Roy Saber is younger than you are—though you’re mighty like him— and, another thing, I happened to see Roy Saber board the Chicago train a couple of hours ago.”

“Awkward,” commented the other. “Nevertheless, I am Roy Saber.” He contemplated his captive for a moment.

Henry Q. Jones returned the scrutiny with curiosity. The other’s clothes differed greatly from his captive’s propriety of dress. His suit was of an unusually bright blue and though the pants were full in cut, the jacket fitted closely. Also, though it gave a double-breasted effect, the front flap was in reality carried right across to the left side and secured by a zip fastener. The broad lapel was of a slightly lighter shade of blue and stretched like a triangular slash from the right shoulder to its apex on the left of the waist. The neck opening showed a soft collar with surprisingly long points and a tie striped with the two blues of the suit.

“Well, Henry Q.,” he said at length. “I’ve nothing against you personally except that you are a damned nuisance, but I’ll have to tie you up or you might ditch the whole plan.”

Roy Saber was inexpert at trussing. He used more rope than necessary and his knots were the jumbles of the amateur, nevertheless he contrived to reduce the other to a state of log-like immobility. Then he produced a handkerchief and carefully began to roll it diagonally. “I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to have you bawling for help.—Open!”

Henry Q.’s mouth remained obstinately shut. He received a painful jab in the ribs.

“Open!”

He opened.

Roy turned back to the cylinder and carefully shut the entrance panel. Then he thrust the big revolver into a pocket and picked up the bound man. At the edge of the clearing, he laid him down among the concealing bushes. “I’ll only be about a couple of hours,” he remarked considerately.

Henry Q. twisted his head and glared balefully after him as he disappeared between the tree trunks. Roy Saber was back in something under the two hours, and he did not return alone. By his side walked a girl whose fair hair shimmered in the shafts of sunlight which penetrated the foliage. Her face was fresh colored and her chin was rounded, but firm. With her blue eyes and her impertinent nose, none could deny her prettiness, but somehow, her mouth, though not too small, failed to suggest an equable disposition. She looked up at Roy with a slightly puzzled frown.

“But Roy,” she said, “you seem to look much older. Your hair’s not all black—I’m sure I can see grey streaks here and there. And you’re wearing such funny clothes. What’s happened?”

“I am older, Betty, but there’s no time to explain just now. You must wait a bit.”

He looked admiringly at her, so neat and lithe in her close-fitting red frock—a deep red, to contrast with her fairness. They paused beside the clump of bushes where he had hidden Henry Q. As he parted the leaves, Betty heard him mutter under his breath. “What is it?”

Roy did not answer for a moment. He stared thoughtfully at a few tangled cords which were the only evidence of Henry Q.’s late presence. Then he glanced out at the clearing where the cylinder still lay. “Wait a minute,” he directed, and ran off to one side. He was back in less than the minute.

“It’s all right,” he said, leading her into the open. “I thought someone might be laying for me behind the machine.” He thought for a moment. “I’d meant to talk to you a bit before we risked anything, but this changes it. We’ll have to hurry.”

“I don’t understand—what are you talking about?”

“I’ll explain it all later,” he said as he hastened her towards the cylinder. He drew the revolver from his pocket and she looked at it askance.

“What –?”

“Later,” he said, busily sliding back two panels in the curved surface. He pointed to the end space. “In you get, Betty.”

She peered doubtfully at the dark opening. It was possible to see that the whole of the interior was thickly padded and supplied with loose cushions. “But –”

“Quick, quick,” he insisted, lifting her and helping her through the space. He slid the cover over her. Even as it clicked into place he heard a crackle of running feet among the trees and a voice came bellowing across the clearing:

“Stop where you are. Put ’em up.”

Henry Q. Jones had evidently returned with reinforcements. With eel-like agility Roy slid into the cylinder. As he did so, two men in uniform burst from the trees and came pelting over the ground, pistols in hand. “He’s got a gun,” called Henry Q.’s voice from somewhere behind them.

Roy had a glimpse of one of the policemen taking aim. Like lightning he ducked and slammed the panel over his head. There came a crash as the bullet struck the cylinder somewhere forward of him. He blanched at the thought of the blob of lead in his delicate machinery but thanked the Lord it had hit the forward compartment and not the rear where Betty lay. In frenzied haste he twisted the dials on his small control panel and snapped in the minor switches. The police had reached the cylinder now. They were battering on it with their pistol butts and he could hear their voices raised in a muffled shouting. With a desperate hope that the shot had injured no vital part, Roy wrenched over the main switch.

Outside, two bewildered policemen stared open-mouthed at one another. Even while they hammered on its walls, the cylinder had vanished without trace. “Well I’ll be…,” one muttered.

The other said nothing. He looked badly scared. Henry Q. Jones emerged from the safety of the trees. “And you call yourselves cops,” he sneered unpleasantly.

Effect of a Bullet

Roy’s biggest surprise when he had made his first journey in the cylindrical machine had been the entire absence of sensation. He had closed the sliding lid and shut out the view of his workroom. Then he had pulled the switch and waited tensely for something to happen. Apparently nothing did, and he had started to reopen the panel with the conviction that the experiment Rad miscarried and that further adjustment would be necessary.

He had gasped to find that after all the contrivance had worked perfectly—had, in fact, moved him back ten years in time, without changing his position on earth. It was the more surprising in the face of the witnesses’ prophecies of utter failure. Sam Hanson, his attorney had protested: “It’s ridiculous, Roy—impossible! If you did go back ten years, you would have to be in two places at one time—you might even meet yourself. It would mean entire confusion. Just think of the disorganization that success would imply. There’d be neither past nor future anymore.”

Roy shook his head. “I won’t meet my younger self—I should remember it now if that meeting had ever occurred. And as for being in two places at one time, well, why not? Has anyone ever proved it impossible? It is just a ridiculous assertion made by persons completely ignorant of the nature of time. Anyway, I’m going to try.”

And he had succeeded.

Succeeded not only in traveling, but also in his main purpose which was the finding of Betty. Now he was carrying her home in triumph. He had meant to put the plan before her first, but the intrusion of Henry Q. Jones had upset that. It would be good to see the amazed faces in his workroom when they both climbed out of the machine.

For a second after he had pulled the switch, nothing happened. Then there came a jolt. The cylinder swayed as though poised uncertainly. Further and further over it leaned until it tilted violently over to the right, rolling him up the padded side of his compartment. As it twisted, he wondered what could have happened. After that, he became too busy to speculate. The cylinder was bumping unevenly and turning with increasing speed. Grimly he drove his elbows and knees into the padding in an effort to wedge his body instead of having it bounced around like a ball. The forward end brought up against some obstruction with a crash. The machine slewed violently and the bump with which Roy’s head met the end of the compartment was but little softened by the padding.

He thought with anguish of the havoc that crash must have caused amid the mechanism. He stretched one hand up towards the sliding panel. The movement, small as it was, served to upset the precarious balance. Again the cylinder canted over and recommenced its jolting progress, spinning and bouncing like a runaway barrel as it went. After long drawn minutes, it slowed and rolled jerkily to a stop. Roy moved cautiously to assure himself that, this time, it was stable. It was, but he made a disconcerting discovery. “Betty,” he shouted.

“Yes,” her voice came faintly through the partition between their compartments.

“Are you all right?”

The reply was unintelligible.

“We’re upside down,” he continued, “and I can’t open the panel. When I call three, throw yourself against the right side and we may be able to roll on half a turn.” He paused, then: “One—two—three.”

The cylinder lurched a little, hovered, and then settled back.

“Try again.”

The second attempt met with no more success than the first. Roy wiped his brow. It was getting very warm in the cramped quarters.

“Something in the way,” he called. “Better try swinging her from side to side and see if we can roll over it.”

They struggled for over a minute, but very little movement was possible. There appeared to be obstructions on both sides, and Roy began to fear that his time traveler would prove a double coffin. “Once more,” he yelled.

Still the cylinder refused to surmount the obstacles. Roy lay back, sweating and exhausted, puzzling to find a way out of the situation. Once he thought he heard a movement outside but decided that it must be the girl stirring.

“Betty,” he shouted again.

As though in answer, there came three deliberate taps on the outer wall.

“Betty, there’s somebody outside. Let’s try again. One —two—three.”

He threw every ounce of his weight against the side. Hesitantly the cylinder rolled, this time, until the ports came uppermost. For a second it hung poised, and then came a clank against the side, just in time to stop it from settling back.

Swiftly Roy reached up and slid back his panel to admit a welcome gust of fresh air. Sitting up, he thrust out his head and looked back to see that Betty’s panel also was open. Her dishevelled head appeared, but she gazed beyond, rather than at him. He spun round and stared in astonishment at the figure which stood by the battered fore-part of the cylinder. His surprise was reciprocated, and for some seconds, the two faced one another in silence.

Roy felt a shock at the sight of the man before him. He stood barely four feet in height, and his body, hands and feet were in good proportion to that size. But his totally bald head was of normal dimensions—perhaps a trifle larger—and gave an odd effect of being insecurely balanced on his small frame. His visible clothing consisted of a single silvery garment designed on the lines of a smock but caught around his waist by a broad leather belt to which a number of dangling objects were hooked.

He approached them as they climbed out of the cylinder. Betty shrank back, an expression of disgust on her face. Roy pulled himself together. “You speak English?” he inquired.

“English is my language,” the other replied, his accent differing but little from Roy’s own. He continued to regard the two with a puzzled air.

“Then we have you to thank for our rescue—I am Roy Saber, and this lady is Miss Betty Mordan.”

“And I,” returned the little man, “am Del Two-Forty-A.”

In the ensuing pause Roy became aware of the unexpected aspect of the countryside. A large red sun was pouring down from the cloudless sky to show, not the fertile land he had left, but a tumbled scene of sand and rock. Nowhere was it relieved by a single soothing patch of green, and over all hung the deathly silence of desolation. They stood in a steep sided valley whose floor was dotted with fallen masses of rock and banked in many parts with drifts of sand. An unhurried river ran twisting past them, disappearing where the curve of the valley cut off their view, a mile away. There was inexpressible dreariness in the barren vista. Roy glanced up at the hillside behind them.

“It’s a miracle we weren’t smashed in rolling down there,” he murmured.

“It certainly is,” replied Betty’s voice harshly. “And no credit to you, either. Now suppose you get us back— and quick. I’d like to know just what sort of a game you think you’re playing with me?”

Roy stared at her and then recovered himself. After all, there was some excuse for her tone. “Something went wrong,” he began, “that cop –”

“Oh, yes. ‘Something went wrong’ did it? Well, it’s your job to see that it darned well goes right again.—Say, do you realize that this is abduction?”

Roy spread his hands helplessly, looking ruefully at his ruined time-traveler. “I can’t make that work again. When the cop fired into the machinery, he jammed something. And now that roll down here’s smashed the thing right up.”

The dwarf had been peering interestedly into the wreckage of the fore-part, prying among the tangled wiring and examining the remains of shattered vacuum tubes. Still looking perplexed, he turned to Roy again. “What is your date?” he asked.

Roy suffered another surprise. He had not expected the immediate recognition of his time traveler for what it was. “I’m from 1951,” he replied.

“1941,” Betty corrected. “What’s wrong with your memory?”

“No, 1951. I’ll explain later.”

“So early? That is remarkable,” said the little man, indicating the cylinder. “My own date is 10,402.”

“Say, what is all this about?” Betty demanded.

“It seems to mean that the cop’s shot has landed us in the year 10,402.”

Betty’s regard was scornful and scathing. “Suppose,” she suggested, “you quit the kidding. I’m in no mood for it—what’s more, the sooner you get us back home, the better it’s going to be for you. Get me?”

Roy stared at her. Her menacing tone of voice shocked him. He felt bewildered, as though the girl he knew had suddenly turned into a stranger. In his surprise he had forgotten Del who broke in as he turned: “You are mistaken. I meant to say only that I started from the year 10,402. What this year is, I do not know— except that it is many millennia later.”

“That’s right,” said Betty. “You must keep the joke up. But I’m not laughing—I can’t see that you’re both so damned funny as you think you are.”

A plaintive expression passed over Del’s face. “What does she mean?” he inquired.

Roy changed the subject. Turning to the dwarf: “Why did you come to this year?” he asked.

Del shook his head. “Something was wrong with my machine—just as something was wrong with yours. It is over there.” He pointed to a large boulder some twenty yards away. The end of a bright metal bar protruded from behind it.

“Is it smashed too?”

“Only a little injured.”

“Let’s go and look at it.”

Before they left the cylinder, Roy groped in the control compartment and produced his revolver. He stuffed a handful of cartridges into each side pocket and they moved off. Betty followed sulkily.

Del’s machine bore no resemblance to his own. The impression it gave was of a cubical cage with six-foot sides and built of an intricate criss-cross strutting of two metals, one silvery, and the other, black. A padded bucket seat was set in the middle with a small control board before it. The driving mechanism was evidently contained in three black boxes clamped to the base framework and inter-connected by heavy cables. Roy’s heart sank as he saw it. An idea that parts of his own cylinder might be used to render Del’s machine workable, was roughly quashed. The two contrivances had nothing constructional in common.

Del mutely pointed to one base corner where the framework was wrenched and sadly twisted. It was also noticeable that the cover of one of the black boxes was split open. Roy leaned over to examine the damage more closely. “You see,” Del began, “unlike your machine, this works by the capillary absorption of light. The rays striking—”

“Look, look!” cried Betty, behind them. They wheeled to find her pointing up at the skyline of the opposite hill. A row of strange objects was progressing in single file. There was nothing to give them scale, and Roy was able to estimate their height only very roughly in the neighborhood of twenty feet. Each consisted of an egg-shaped main bulk balanced upon two trellised supports, tapering towards the ground. These “legs” were jointed in the middle, and, like the “body” above, were colored a bright red. Around the main upper bulk, complexities of levers were folded.

For some seconds, the three stood motionless and staring. “What…?” Roy began, but Del shook his head before the question was formed. There had been nothing like these in his century.

From the leader of the five red contrivances a jointed arm suddenly swept to the ground and caught up a rock. Without pausing in its stride, it sent the mass, fully half a ton in weight, sailing across the valley. Somewhere on the hill behind them it landed with a crash and a clatter of metal. Roy abruptly dragged his companions into the shadow of the nearest bolder, fearful that discovery might bring a rock hurtling in their direction.

The red machines strode on their way with unhurried, stilted gait, a faint metallic clanking accompanying their movements. Apparently the rock had accomplished its purpose—whatever that might be—at any rate, no more followed, and the metal arm was refolded against the egg-shaped body-piece. The three watched in silence as the five red figures carried themselves away in long, stiff strides. Even Betty’s indignation had momentarily given way to nervousness.

“What were they?” she demanded.

Roy shrugged his shoulders. Speculation was worse than useless. He stood up to assure himself that the machines were truly out of sight. As he rose, there came a clatter of metal against stone, a sound rapidly approaching up the valley. His hand snatched at his revolver.

The Machines

A group of machines came abruptly around the masking turn of the valley. Contrary to Roy’s expectations, they bore little similarity to the rock-hurling monsters of the hilltop. Only the shape of the body pieces was similar. They stood some seven feet to the highest point of the rounded back, and their egg-shaped hulls progressed with a scurrying motion upon six jointed legs. Four waving metal tentacles protruded from the extreme front and, above them, two lenses were set flush in the smooth casework.

They stopped at the sight of Roy, with the suddenness of complete surprise, and stood motionless save for their waving tentacles. He called in a low tone to the others to remain hidden and stepped forward, revolver in hand. An indecisive movement ran through the ranks of the machines. They seemed on the point of retreat, but at that moment, Betty, ignoring Roy’s advice, chose to emerge from behind the rock.

The machines moved as one and came scuttering forward with a great waving of tentacles. Three shots from Roy’s revolver crashed among them with no visible result. He turned to become aware that Del was now out of concealment, fumbling with a tube which looked like a flashlight.

“Run,” Roy snapped. “Get to the river.”

He had some faint hope that the machines might not be watertight. Betty was already fleeing and Del turned to follow her. Roy stayed long enough to send another three shots, and then started to run with the machines almost upon him. He made no more than a dozen yards before something fouled his ankle and flung him heavily to Earth. As the machines overtook him, he saw Del turn and raise his tube. Two tentacles of the nearest pursuer fell to the ground as though they had been chopped off. Dell switched the tube at another, but now there were a half dozen of the machines bearing down on him.

One more tentacle fell, then, like a silver whiplash, another struck the tube from his hand and wrapped itself around him. The tube sailed high through the air and fell with a splash into the river. A fountain of steam, like the jetting plume of a geyser, roared into the sky, while the water all around broke, seething and bubbling. Betty, almost at the brink, recoiled. The feeler of a pursuing machine snatched at her, tearing away her red frock. It tossed the garment away, wrapped like a shining belt about her waist, and carried her back towards Roy and Del.

With relief Roy saw that no injury seemed intended towards any of the party. Each of them was carefully picked up in a wrapping of tentacles, and the machines set off down the valley in the direction from which they had appeared. For five miles they followed the tortuous river course, then the hills were left behind and they came out upon a level plain where patches of coarse grass, half choked by drifting sand, struggled hardily to grow. The machines changed their formation as they reached the open country and Roy found that Del’s captor was traveling alongside his own, while Betty’s was some yards in advance. He spoke across to Del and received assurance that he was uninjured. “The most unfortunate thing is that my tube is lost,” the dwarf added.

“What was it? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“A heat ray. You did not have such things in the twentieth century?”

Roy shook his head and went on to talk about their captors. On this subject, both were equally at a loss. “Robots? Distant control mechanisms? They might be either,” Del suggested.

“Or, perhaps, vehicles,” added Roy. “The bodies of the race may have atrophied into complete uselessness and made these machines necessary for carrying the brains.”

Del considered the theory an unlikely one. “But they certainly have a high level of intelligence. No doubt you noticed that they are bringing along our wrecked machines?”

Roy, glancing back past the curving metal flank of his captor, could see his battered cylinder supported by the tentacles of two following machines. Betty had caught the sound of their voices. She called back querulously to know why Roy did not do something. The indignity of capture had done nothing to soothe her temper and, now that no immediate danger threatened, her tone had resumed its nagging quality. After a devastating flow of abuse, Del inquired curiously: “Is she hurt?”

“Yes, she’s hurt, but not in the way you mean. She’s been pinked in her pride. She was riled to begin with. Now she’s lost her dress and is being carried over a desert in her underclothes—she’s hurt, all right.”

Del looked surprised at Roy’s tone. He was silent for some moments before he suggested: “I wonder whether that red dress had anything to do with the attack? It was at her appearance that the machines went into action, and when the dress was torn away, they became much calmer. Also, the first machines we saw were colored red.” No reply came from Roy. He seemed uninterested in the suggestion. Del relapsed into a contemplative silence.

During their advance the country was losing severity. The hard, wiry grass gradually became supplanted by a softer type, growing more luxuriantly and almost hiding the sandy soil. A dotting of infrequent, stunted shrubs managed to find sustenance. In the distance a line of darker green suggested the presence of trees.

“Thank God for that,” Roy said. “I had begun to fear that the world might be all desert.”

“I think we’re headed for that,” said Del. He nodded ahead towards a vast spike which stabbed up into the heavens.

Roy looked at it. The base was hidden among the trees many miles away, but even at this distance he could tell that its height must be measured in thousands of feet. Observation at such a distance gave no clue to its nature save that it was too isolated and too abrupt to be a natural formation. Yet it was roughly shaped, lacking the symmetry and lines of a normal artificial structure. Its vastness induced a sense of importance and a feeling of fatalism, and he watched it with rising disquiet until the great red sun died in a livid blaze.

The machines did not hesitate. They held on their way through a mysterious dark world in which the only sound was the scuttering of their own progress.

Throughout the night they pursued a winding way among the trees, still bearing in the direction of the mighty spire. The darkness appeared to have little or no hampering effect upon the machines, and dawn found them with but few miles left to cover. It was with a very weary thankfulness that the captives were carried clear of the forest into the open space surrounding the base of the artificial mountain. They were not only fatigued, but hungry and thirsty, and oppressed by the impossibility of making their wants known.

The mass of the building at short range was stupendous and overwhelming, Tearing before them like an ill smoothed cliff and dwarfing them into a feeling of helplessness. One high, arched entrance pierced it at ground level, and through this they were borne into ever increasing gloom.

For five minutes they traveled through pitch black corridors filled with the scuttering sounds of many mobile machines. Then their captors came to a stop for the first time since they had left the rocky valley. There came a click, followed by a rattle as a door of sheet metal slid up into the roof. Beyond it was revealed a dimly lit, cave-like hall. The binding tentacles loosened to set the three on their feet. Gentle thrusts sent them staggering stiffly forward. The metal door clattered down behind them.

For a moment they stood silently gazing about them. The meager light emanated from a group of translucent balls placed in the middle of the floor and served to show imperfectly the rear end of the hall. Of the other end, beyond the lights, nothing could be seen but a velvety darkness. Roy took a step forward and then stopped abruptly at the sound of something moving in the shadows. He drew his revolver and pointed it menacingly as he continued his advance. Two figures came dimly into view, rounding the clustered light balls.

“Stop,” Roy ordered.

He turned to speak to Del, but the little man brushed him aside and rushed excitedly forward, calling to the two figures. Roy, with Betty beside him, was left to look on wonderingly as the three greeted one another. He could see now that the strangers were similar to Del both in stature and clothing. A few moments later they were led up and introduced. They regarded Roy and Betty with the same curiosity as Del had shown at the first meeting and evinced the same incredulous surprise at hearing of their twentieth century origin. Del explained: “These are my friends Kal Two Eleven A and Ril Three Thirty-Two A. They were both my assistants,” he added.

Roy’s wonderment grew. “Then you are also from 10,402?” he asked.

The dwarfed Kal shook his large head. “No, we are from 10,424. It took us over twenty years to duplicate the time traveling machine.”

“But you know what date we have reached now?”

Again Kal shook his head. “We have no more means of discovering than you have.”

The clatter of the metal door cut short his speculation. The group spun round to see three more human beings urged gently into the hall. There was a fleeting look of alarm on the face of the tallest of the newcomers. As the sheet rattled down behind them, he produced a black tube and advanced, holding it trained upon them. “Who are you?” he demanded in a firm tone. “And by what right have you made us prisoners?”

Roy looked the man over. He stood perhaps six feet and was built with slender strength, in excellent proportions. His hair, though fine and sparse, was jet black as were the eyebrows which ran in a single frowning bar across his forehead. His jaw was square, his mouth, thin-lipped and firm and his eyes, keen. The strength of character which he showed seemed out of accord with the soft silk (or synthetic silk) garments which clung in lustrous folds to his knees. One of his companions was similarly clad. The third newcomer hung back, little more than a shadow in the dim light.

“Who are you, I say?” repeated the speaker.

It was Del who answered. He gave particulars of his own group and countered with a like request. The new arrival put away his tube. “I am Hale Lorrence, and this is my companion,” he indicated the other silk robed man. “We have come from the year 3920.”

“And the third member of your party?”

The man who called himself Hale, shrugged his shoulders. “She has told me that her name is Jessica Tree. She claims to have started from 2200.”

The vaguely seen figure stepped forward. She revealed herself as a girl of perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five. A russet tunic, heavily worked with metallic thread, covered her to her knees. Her legs were a sunburnt brown and her feet were encased in shoes to match her tunic. Black hair, cut short, clustered about her softly oval face, and she surveyed the company from a pair of lustrously dark eyes. Her tone as she spoke betrayed her dislike of Hale’s manner. “It is more than a mere claim,” she said coldly. “It is a fact that I come from 2200. What year is this?”

Del shrugged his shoulders. “That is what we all want to know.”

“I don’t,” cried Betty’s voice, viciously. “I don’t care a damn what year it is. The one thing I’m certain about is that I have been kidnapped. And if somebody doesn’t do something to get me back where I belong—and do it darned quick, there’s going to be trouble around here. See?”

Hale Lorrence regarded her speculatively for a moment and then turned to Del. “We are hungry and thirsty. Is there any food here?”

Kal had ascertained that there were dishes of water up the other end of the cavern, but no food.

Adrift In Time

After they had drunk, Roy started on an exploratory tour of their prison. He could discover no opening other than that closed by the metal door. The walls would have easily revealed any crack for they were smooth and unornamented. The finish to them puzzled him not a little. Although they were hard and smooth, the effect was not that obtained by any mechanical finishing process. It was, he felt, the kind of result one would expect if a giant hand had attempted to shape the material in its plastic state without the use of tools.

The end of the circuit found him no wiser than the beginning. He returned to find the rest of the party endeavoring to clear away some of their mystification. Del was saying: “...therefore, this must be a kind of dead spot in time. It is as though our machines had been thrown into the flow of time and swept along until, for some unguessable reason, they met an obstruction at this point. Every one of us has arrived here because his machine was faulty in some way or other. To take an illustration—a bad one, I admit, but enough for our purpose—one may consider time as a river. You may turn boats adrift on it at many points, and they will all collect together at the same serious obstacle whether they have traveled a hundred miles or two miles. We are now at some period where the straight flow of time has been checked—perhaps it is even turning back upon itself. We know no details at present, but it is certain that the same curious phenomenon has thrown us all together.”

“But,” Hale objected, “time, like space, surely is curved?”

“It may be—in fact, it must be, but I see no reason why there should not be interruptions in time—after all, are not the stars interruptions in space?”

“You mean that space may interrupt time in the same way that time distorts space?”

“Roughly, yes,—if you can consider the two apart, which I find impossible. I merely repeat that we have struck some barrier and been thrown up like so much jetsam.”

“Then there may be others, besides ourselves?”

“As many others as made faulty time travelers.”

Julian Tyne joined in the conversation. He spoke with a lazy drawl which irritated his listeners. “But what is all this?” He waved a languid arm. “This place, these odd machines—both the tall red things and the smaller white ones which caught us—what are they all doing? It doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

Del glanced at him. “Suppose an alien form was plunged into your world of 3920,” he said. “How much do you suppose he would understand? I doubt whether it would ‘make sense’ to him. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that you would have very little understanding of the organization of my world of 10,402, had your machine taken you there instead of here.”

Roy broke in, dragging the conversation back to the main issue: “But what do you think these machines are? Slaves of greater intelligences—robots? Or have the machines indeed beaten men as Samuel Butler, at the end of the nineteenth century, feared that they might?”

“I don’t yet pretend to be able to offer any explanation,” Del replied, shaking his head, “but of one thing I am certain, and that is that they are not robots. You notice, for instance, the irregular finish of this building, both inside and outside. Indisputably, if it had been built by machines, the construction would be mathematically exact. I am convinced that somewhere back of all this we shall find a biologically developed intelligence.”

“And it is up to us,” remarked Hale, “to see that whoever, or whatever, it is, doesn’t get things all his own way. What weapons have we?”

He and Julian Tyne produced black tubes which Del and his companions examined with some amusement. Julian appeared nettled: “What have you?” he asked.

Kal and Ril showed tubes similar to that which Del had lost in the river. They had come prepared with two each. “Ten times as powerful as yours,” Del explained, “and for all practical purposes, inexhaustible.”

Roy’s revolver was inspected with much the same mirthful contempt as a catapult would have received. Del made an inventory: “Four high-power heat tubes, two low-power tubes, one solid bullet projector. Not too bad an armory, though I am sorry that my own heat ray was lost.”

The clang of the metal door roused the whole party from sleep—though how long they had slept, they could not tell. Roy sprang suddenly to a sitting position. He could see by the dim glow that a number of white metal machines were scuttering towards them. Hale was fumbling for his ray tube.

“No,” said Del’s voice. “Your tube has not enough power to hurt them—besides, we are trapped. They may intend no harm.”

The machines advanced with tentacles extended. Roy felt one wrap firmly around his waist and lift him again into the air. It was in his mind to show fight, but Del had advised against it, and he was coming to have a respect for the dwarf’s judgment. The rest of the party quietly submitted to like treatment and were carried towards the still open door.

For a time they passed through corridors in utter blackness. Again they were aware of movement all around them. The clicking and scraping of invisible machines, orderly and unhurried, as they passed to and fro. At last an arch of daylight showed wanly and minutely ahead. Roy breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of leaving the oppressive gloom of their strange prison. He was to be disappointed. Forty yards from the passage mouth, the machines stopped, and it was light enough for him to see one of them plunge a feeler into a hole in the wall. There came a familiar clatter as a metal door slid up.

The hall which they now entered was far larger than their former prison and was lit by the soft, white rays of more than a dozen of the luminous globes. The machines evidently had sufficient knowledge of their prisoners to realize that light was necessary. A surprised exclamation broke from Del. The others, following the line of his pointing finger, observed a row of mechanisms arranged down one wall. “Our time travelers,” Hale exclaimed.

Roy identified the remains of his cylinder and Del’s damaged cage but was puzzled to see that there were more than a dozen other strangely shaped constructions in company with them. Without a pause they were carried on towards a large machine which occupied the center of the room. Like their bearers, its body case was ovoid in shape, but, unlike them, it possessed no legs and stood half as high again. Except for a pair of lenses and a bunch of metallic tentacles, it lay like a monstrous egg with a gleaming shell. The prisoners were drawn into a line before it, and the bearers scuttled away, closing the door behind them.

“Well,” said Roy, “what do you suppose is the next move?”

Dell was staring at the machine. Its tentacles were flourishing back and forth, weaving intricate patterns in the air. A hand suddenly grasped Roy’s arm. He looked at Jessica Tree standing beside him. “What is it?” he began.

She only pointed. Three shambling figures had emerged from behind the central machine. Roy looked at them amazedly as they came forward to join the party. All three stood well over six feet, superbly muscled and completely naked. Their heads were small and seemed even smaller above their magnificent chests and the broad spread of their shoulders. A look of bewilderment in their eyes gave way, as they caught sight of Kal and Ril, to relief, mingled with a piteous gladness.

All three bowed before the two dwarfs in a trustfully submissive manner, and the latter, after momentary confusion, acknowledged the salute by raising their arms in some ancient greeting. The three newcomers slouched back a few steps and stood waiting while Kal and Ril hurriedly conferred.

“Tak Four A?” Kal suggested cryptically.

“Undoubtedly, but this must have taken many centuries,” answered Ril.

“What are they?” Roy was still regarding the unclassifiable men. Kal offered explanation.

“I imagine they are the result of Tak Four A’s artificial selection. He held that we were becoming too atrophied physically—you see we are dwarfs, compared with you —and he decided that a more muscular race, which he proposed to call ‘Numen’ must be created. It looks as if he had been extremely successful.”

“Then these are the masters of the world now?”

“I don’t think so. They seem more confused and surprised than we are.”

He turned and spoke clearly and carefully to one of the tall creatures. For a moment the other looked puzzled, then a light of intelligence came into his eyes. He spoke excitedly and jabbed with a finger in the direction of the derelict time travelers by the wall.

“So they are in the same jam with us,” mused Roy.

“But surely they could not have built…?”

“Certainly they could not,” Kal agreed. “At a rough guess I should say that they were taught to work the thing and sent on an experimental trip by an inventor who valued his own life.”

Jessica, her first fright abated, looked at them with understanding. “Poor things,” she murmured. “For all their size they’re scared to death—frightened like lost children.”

Del’s voice suddenly brought their attention back to the central machine. “The thing is trying to communicate with us, but we’ll never be able to make anything of all that waving of feelers.”

The whole party stared blankly at the writhing tentacles, flashing in meaningless gestures. Abruptly, as though realizing that this form of signalling was making no progress, all the feelers, save one, withdrew and coiled up. The one still extended dropped to the floor and began to scratch a series of queer characters on the earthen surface.

It stopped. The feeler pointed first to them and then to the marks it had made. Del stepped forward and inspected the scratching more closely. He shook his head. The machine grasped the meaning of the gesture. It smoothed the ground and began again. The characters it produced on the second attempt were undeniably different forms from the first but were no more intelligible.

Patience was evidently the machine’s long suit. Four times it had repeated the smoothing and scratching before they craned over to stare at its moving tentacle in excited silence. “M,” it wrote. “M—E—N?”

Del dropped to his knees. Swiftly he traced a large “YES,” in the dirt.

“HOW?” it asked after an interval.

Del pointed to the time traveling machines and ran across the room to indicate the broken part of his own. The machine understood his meaning and its feeler fell to scratching what proved to be the beginning of a tedious written conversation.

“For the Lord’s sake,” said Roy, sometime later, “tell it to give us some food—we’re all in pretty bad need of it.”

The door opened a few minutes later in response to some unknown method of communication, and a machine scuttled in bearing circular objects a foot in diameter and three inches thick. Roy picked one up, examined it, and then knocked it experimentally with his knuckles. It gave an unmistakable sound.

“Wood,” he said disgustedly, “what the dickens does it think we are? Try it again, Del. Say ‘fruit’ or something like that.”

Some hours later, feeling very much better for the fruit which had been produced in generous quantities, Roy sat beside Jessica and watched the three dwarfs hard at work on one of the time travelers. The damage to Del’s machine had been less serious than he had feared. Such parts as had been ruined could be supplied from the duplicate contrivance in which Kal and Ril had traveled. A couple of hours’ toil saw the replacements almost completed.

“Not that it’s going to help us any,” said Betty, complainingly. “You couldn’t get more than four into that cage affair, even at a pinch.”

Del had agreed. “But this”—he pointed to the tentacled machine—“is intelligent. Maybe it can duplicate it for us from a pattern.”

“That’s good,” Betty sneered. “I suppose you’re trying to kid me that you’re not going to slip off in that traveler and leave us here?”

“We have no intention of doing such a thing.”

Betty shrugged her shoulders and moved away. She favored Roy with a contemptuous glance as she passed him and made her way to the side of the moody Hale Lorrence. It was noticeable that a few minutes later much of his moodiness had evaporated and the two were deeply engaged in a whispered conversation.

Jessica was puzzled by the relationship between Roy and Betty. “But I don’t understand why you brought her,” she said. “You’re not in love with her.”

Roy agreed with a slow nod. “No, I’m not in love with her—not now. But in 1941, I was. She disappeared that year, and for ten years afterwards I devoted myself to building a time traveler so that I might find her again. I can see now that for all that time I was idealizing her. By 1951 I was no longer in love with Betty, but with an ideal girl of my own imagining—a Betty, I had built it up in my own mind. You understand?”

“I understand. So when you went back to the real Betty…”

“It was to fetch her from 1941 to 1951. On the return trip the machine let me down. And,” he added in a voice so low that she could scarcely hear it, “I’m glad it did.” He paused a moment before he added: “Tell me, how did you get here—and alone?”

“There’s very little to tell. It happened entirely by accident. I had been helping my father to build the machine—perhaps helping is rather a grand word for the little part I took, but he had no other assistant. My part of the work was far more practical than theoretical.

“I was very hazy as to the principles of the machine, but I was frequently called upon to make tests of the wiring and the connections. Yesterday—thousands of years ago it is now—I was testing some switches in the traveler. My father must have made the main battery connections and forgotten to warn me. The next thing I knew was that the laboratory had disappeared and there was a sandy plain all around me.

“I realized almost at once what had happened and I worked the levers desperately. Nothing responded. I got out of the machine with an idea of going to find help. Then a red thing came marching over the plain. I was frightened so I hid as best I could. The thing came up without noticing me. It lifted up the traveler and threw it down on one side, breaking it badly. Then it went on and I think I lost my head for a time, because I knew I could never mend the machine. I never remember crying in my life before, but I felt so terribly desolate and alone. A little later the white machines came along and found me.”

“Well, you’ve got company now, at any rate,” said Roy. “And I don’t think there is any need to be sad. Del will get us back somehow. I’ve a great faith in that little chap —strange as he looks.”

Hale Lorrence and Betty rose to their feet and began to saunter in the direction of Del and his fellow workers. After some moments’ close examination of the cage. Hale said: “Your machine is on a slightly different plan from mine. Will you explain it?”

Del indicated the controls and settings while his assistants put finishing touches to the repairs. Betty climbed into the traveler and began fingering the switches. Roy stopped talking to Jessica and watched. There was a furtiveness about the pair that he did not like. Hale seemed to be edging round as though he wanted to gain a coveted position. Kal looked up and proclaimed that the work was finished. Immediately a gleam came into Hale’s eyes.

“Look out,” Roy shouted. But he was too late.

Like a flash Hale snatched a high-power heat ray from Kal’s belt. “Back,” he roared, pointing it at them. “Back, all of you.”

There was no disobeying the command. Kal and Ril drew ray tubes, but both hesitated to use them—the precious time traveler stood right behind Hale. As they backed away, the egg-shaped metal creature in the middle of the room stirred its limbs as though realizing what was afoot. One metal tentacle came snaking across the floor towards Hale. Without hesitation, he pressed the catch of his tube and lopped the shining limb away. Another came shooting in his direction, and it too fell to the ground. He turned and sent a savage jet of heat searing full at the metal body. He swung back glaring at the group of men. It seemed for a moment that he was minded to end their existences with a final sweep of the heat beam.

Roy’s revolver came into action with a crash. The heavy bullet took Hale in the arm. The tube dropped from his hand and he bolted into the machine. Roy, as he took aim again, saw the other unwounded hand reach for the switch. Once more his revolver spurted, but the bullet flattened itself against the wall.

The time traveler, Hale and Betty with it, had vanished.

The Masters of the Machines

An inarticulate cry, something between a moan and a scream, brought them facing to the center of the room. One of the “Numen” was clawing wildly at his body and emitting animal-like howls. Behind him lay the remains of the machine, split by Hale’s ray stroke into two parts. From it a glistening, black tide of life was flowing in their direction. The unfortunate “Numen” had stood nearest, and already the black flow covered him thickly. Even as they watched in unmoving amazement, he fell writhing to the ground and his body became a mere mound in the blackness.

“Ants,” cried Roy as the black horde advanced. “Millions of ants.”

The affrighted group backed up the hall, the two surviving “Numen” gibbering the while with fear. Del caught up the tube which Hale had dropped.

“Low power,” he ordered. “Ray them all.”

There was little need for the command. Kal and Ril were already playing their tubes back and forth across the advancing line, withering the insects by thousands. Julian Tyne, shaken into activity, first by the desertion of his friend and then by the threatening menace, joined in, sweeping his own ray with telling effect.

At every pass they made, thousands of ants shrivelled and became no more than light ash, but still they pushed relentlessly on, marching blindly to certain death. Their centralization had disappeared with the wrecking of their machine and now they were left only with the old instinct to attack. There was little real danger, even Julian’s lesser ray could have wiped them all out in five minutes— but there came an interruption. The familiar clatter of the metal door. Del turned to see a trio of machines scuttering in through the opening. He pushed up his ray to full power and cut away the fast-moving legs with one sweep. The metal bodies dropped and impeded those behind.

Del switched a withering blast of heat on the lintel of the doorway. More by luck than knowledge he succeeded in melting away the supporting catches and the metal sheet crashed down, bisecting two entering machines as it fell. Kal sprang to Del’s side and trained a ray on one of the stranded machines, turning it incandescent; but already from the broken halves in the doorway more black streams of insects were flooding to the attack. Switching his ray to low power lest he should melt the door behind, Del swept a myriad of infuriated ants into eternity. Julian and Ril, behind him, continued the destruction of the first swarm.

Kal dealt rapidly with all three of the powerless machines. Each was rendered red hot, and its crew incinerated before it could escape. Then he joined Del in repelling the second attack. There came a pandemonium of battering against the door as the machines outside attempted to crash their way in, but the metal sheet was massive enough to defy their most strenuous efforts.

The slaughter of the ants was quickly completed. The four tube holders rayed, on low power, every corner of the great hall to make certain that none had escaped. Only when they were satisfied that the last ant was wiped out did they have opportunity to pause and consider.

“We’ll have to get out of this—and get out quick!” exclaimed Roy.

“But how? There’s no way but the door.”

“Burn our way out,” replied Del. “We’re not far from the open here. You remember we were near the entrance when they turned in here. Which direction was it?”

“The left wall,” said Roy, definitely. “But we can’t burn through that—all the molten stuff will run back on us in here.”

Del shook his head. “We can get rid of that.”

A heat ray was rigged up, pointing directly down at the floor, and then switched on to full power. For ten or twelve seconds the circle of earth below it boiled and seethed furiously while waves of heat rolled through the cavern. Then, abruptly, it vanished leaving only a dark hole. Roy stared.

“What happened?” he inquired.

Del, switching off the tube, smiled at his astonishment. “There’s no magic about it,” he assured him. “You see, this place we are in is nothing more nor less than a mammoth anthill. But anthills have workings extending below ground as well as above. We simply melted through the roof of the level below us and the residue has flowed through the passages down there.”

Approaching as closely as possible, Del began to cut a trench from the foot of the wall to the lip of the newly drilled hole. His back was towards the door, and it was only a warning scream from Jessica which saved him from the fate of the “Numan.” All looked where she pointed. A black carpet of ants was spreading towards them—streaming between the base of the door and the ill-fitting threshold in their hundreds of thousands.

Del turned like a flash and his tube, still at full power, swept them to instant annihilation. Simultaneously a corner of the door became a ragged hole in the metal, its edges dripping molten blobs to the floor. Del set Julian to guard the vulnerable spot and turned with renewed energy to the drilling of the escape tunnel.

Muffled as much as possible against the heat, he stood back on the far side and trained his ray forward. The solid wall began to liquefy. It oozed and dripped down into the trench he had prepared, flowing along until it poured to unknown depths through the hole in the floor. The operation took no more than a few minutes, but the belching waves of heat reduced them in even so short a time to the limit of their endurance. The hot air of the cavern became all but unbreathable. The radiation seemed to scorch them even through their clothing when, to Del’s surprise, daylight broke through at ten to a dozen yards distance.

“We’ve been fortunate,” he remarked, shutting off his tube. “We were nearer the outside than I suspected. I’ve drilled the shaft on a slant so that it will drain. But it will be some hours before it is passable. Now we must get to work—when we’ve made that doorway safe.”

Narrowing his beam, he cut an overhanging piece of the roof so that it fell squarely in front of the hole in the door. Satisfied that the entrance was now completely blocked, he turned his attention to the row of derelict time travelers. “These,” he said, with a wave of his hand, “are the only means we have of regaining our own time. We cannot take them bodily with us. But we must select the more intricate and essential parts and carry them off. We may be able to discover material for framework, but such things as vacuum tubes, Lestrange batteries, light-impulse cells and the like, would be a great labor to construct— even if we could do so, which is doubtful.”

Very little of Roy’s machine was worthy of salvage. When he had extracted his two undamaged Lestrange batteries, he walked over to the two “Numen” who were standing helplessly by their crumpled vehicle and directed them to unbolt such impulse cells as remained intact. Then he became interested in the other machines. Among those unclaimed by anyone present stood two dented metal cubes. Del came over to join him as he pulled on the door of one. It came grudgingly ajar, hanging askew on the twisted frame. A breath of corruption sent the two men staggering back a pace. Holding his breath, Roy reapproached and peered inside. The shrivelled body of a man, in a far state of decomposition, lay huddled into one of the further corners.

“Poor devil,” he muttered, “at least we’ve been luckier than he was.”

Del, with his tube at low power, cremated the decaying body and after waiting a moment for the air to clear they both entered. One wall was lined with rows of tubes and resistances, while on another were control panels attended with tortuous convolutions of wiring. Roy peered hopefully among the serried switches and dials for some clue to the machine’s date of origin, but without success. Del pondered silently over the mechanism for a while. An expression of wonder came over his face. “What is it?”

Del answered half to himself. “I considered it impossible.”

“What do you mean ? ’

“This vehicle is radically different from ours. It does not plunge instantaneously through the time flow. Instead, it has the property of slowing down its contents so that the world outside slips by at high speed by comparison. A slow, inefficient machine—but it worked.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean that both our machines—yours and mine— work similarly to the extent that they insulate us entirely from time—that is to say ages pass by us in a flash and we are not affected. But this is not a complete insulating machine – it works with a kind of drag action. For instance, if the operator turns this main dial to indicate a speed halfway between the normal time flow, and complete insulation, events inside his chamber will take exactly twice as long to happen as they would in the outer world. During the period which seems an hour to him, the events of two hours will take place outside. If he turns the dial further, the events of a week, or a year, flash past in what appears to be an hour. See, he even has a window through which he can watch the happenings of the world fly past.”

Roy noticed a square of glass set in one wall. “I think I understand. But what happened?”

“He must have made a mistake somewhere, just as we did, but, unlike us, he was traveling so slowly, even at his top speed, that before he reached this date, he starved and died on the way—another martyr to experiment. It’s a pretty safe guess that we shall find that the same fate overtook the man in the other cube.”

Kal came over to summon Del with the information that the salvaged parts had been laid out, awaiting his decision as to which should be taken and which left. Under his direction the selected fragments were divided among the party for portage. A further inspection of the passage revealed that it was still too hot for use. They must wait at least another hour. Del looked worried and examined the joints of floors and walls carefully for any traces of the ants breaking through.

“Ants,” said Roy musingly as they waited. “Insects working those machines—ruling the world, perhaps—it’s incredible.”

“It’s logical,” Del contradicted.

“I don’t get that.”

“It was inevitable sooner or later. They’ve always had a far better organization than man, even in my century— no wasted effort, no need to struggle continually with subversive factors. The only thing which stopped them being masters of the world, from the beginning, was their size. Now they have found a way of overcoming that disability. There’s a natural limit to the size of insects.”

“Why not?” “

Oxygen. They do not breath as we do but absorb the oxygen through the surface. If they became large, there would not be enough absorption area in proportion to the bulk inside. They would just die of suffocation.”

“Yes. I see that. But to find them working machines —and such machines—just staggers me.”

“But why? It’s just their natural way out of the difficulty. After all, we did the same. Where would mail have been without his machines? If you want a parallel, just think of one of the warships of your own time— twelve hundred or more men, working a great, floating monster, just as these insects in their thousands work their scuttering metal machines. It puzzles me that I didn’t think of it the moment we saw the style of their machines. These things always seem so obvious afterwards.”

Roy nodded. “But still, I would never have believed if I hadn’t seen,” he added.

A rattle of falling dirt startled the group. They looked apprehensively upward. A shining metal tentacle protruded through a small hole in the roof. An increasing rain of debris pattered all about them as it moved from side to side, enlarging the aperture.

"Into the Tunnels!"

Kal’s tube sent a shaft of heat shooting up. Either from haste or misjudgment he had it notched at full power. The tentacle was melted off and fell, but the heat beam had seared on into the roof. There came an ominous cracking and the men, with a startled glance, took to their heels in the direction of the escape tunnel. Almost as they drew clear, the weakened spot gave way and the machine, with an avalanche of dirt, crashed to the floor.

Even as it broke open, rivers of ants came swarming out of the gaping seams. With a second crash another machine fell through the hole, and after it, another. It seemed that the insects cared little how many machines were wrecked to secure the victory.

“Into the tunnel,” shouted Del. “We must risk it now.”

The rest scampered to obey, holding their precious burdens in their arms. Kal charged ahead with his weapon held ready and his short legs moving with twinkling rapidity. The rest followed him closely. Roy heard a howl of agony break from the two “Numen” as their bare feet encountered the hot surface, but their fear of the ants was greater than their discomfort and they held on their way.

The heat of the passage was intense – it beat at them like a furnace glare. Jessica staggered just ahead of Roy. He caught her around the waist with his free arm and dragged her on. The two of them pitched together over the outer edge into the daylight—he had forgotten that the slant of the tunnel meant a six-foot drop at the other end. Del had remained till the last. He rayed furiously at the increasing horde until he was sure that his companions were clear, then he too, turned and ran for safety. He fell from the tunnel mouth, narrowly missing the prostrate Roy.

“Only a dozen yards of that inferno,” said the latter, sitting up. “It seemed like a hundred. Anyhow, it’s a sight too hot for the ants to get across it We’re clear of them for a bit.”

Del agreed, but he wished to make sure. “Lift me up on your shoulders,” he directed. Roy did so, and the dwarf played a narrow ray on the sloping passage roof till it fell, completely closing the entrance.

“Any casualties?” Roy inquired as he lowered the other.

“No, except these two,” Jessica pointed to the two “Numen” who were sitting down ruefully examining their scorched soles. “And they’re more surprised than hurt. I should think,” she added, “that the vacuum tubes have suffered.”

A hurried inspection revealed that only one had been smashed.

“And now, where do we go from here?” Roy asked Del who, by general consent, had become director of the party.

“We get away very quickly before they realize what has happened and start a search for us,” Del replied.

It took but a short time to cross the open ground and gain the cover of the forest. Roy, looking back for a final view of the rearing cliffs which was the side of the stupendous anthill, was relieved to discern no signs of pursuit.

Several hours of heavy going found them a weary party. The three dwarfs had very soon given out – their small bodies were of little use for this kind of rough going. One of the “Numen,” noticing their distress, handed his bundle over to his fellow and, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, raised Kal and Ril to his broad shoulders. The other placed both bundles upon one shoulder and seated Del on the other.

“That proves it,” declared Kal as he recovered from his surprise. “These are the descendants of Tak Four A’s ‘Numen.’ Brawn, developed to assist brains.”

For some miles they had proceeded along the bed of a stream with the dual purpose of losing the scent and of making slightly easier progress than was possible among the trees. On a comer the leading “Numan” stopped short. Roy craned round him to ascertain the cause. He found himself staring at one of the six-legged machines. It stood motionless on the grass verge of the left bank, glistening in the sunlight.

Del pulled out his tube, but as he levelled it the machine became aware of them and scurried swiftly sideways. For a moment it paused, waving its tentacles slightly as though uncertain whether to attack or no, then it flashed away into the trees and out of sight.

“Damn it,” said Roy, as he watched the last glitter of the receding shell. “It will give the alarm.” Rather bitterly he added. “Why didn’t you melt the thing?”

“Because I had no desire to set the whole forest on fire,” Del replied calmly.

Tired as they were, they pressed on with greater speed. They must, Del pointed out, reach some defensible spot. While they remained among the trees they were liable to concealed attack from any side. Another two hours brought them to a district where open spaces were more frequent, but still Del was unsatisfied. At the edge of a sizeable clearing, Roy struck. “Jessica’s pretty dead beat, Julian’s very little better, and I’ve had enough, too. We’ll find nothing to beat this. If we camp in the middle, we can defend all round.”

Julian upheld the suggestion in a tired, dispirited voice. Del opened his mouth, but before he could speak there came an interruption: “Get into the trees, you fools,” roared a voice.

For a second nobody moved.

“I mean it,” called the voice, somewhere above their heads. “They’re coming after you. Get moving.”

The tone was so insistent that this time they obeyed without question. As Roy, who was the last to climb, swung himself up the branches, he heard the approach of a multitudinous scuttering. Looking down he could see the flashing surfaces of a dozen or more passing ant machines.

“Close call,” said a voice above him.

“Certainly was—it’d have been a damn sight closer if you hadn’t been about,” Roy answered softly.

“It’s all right. You needn’t whisper. Those tin things can’t hear. I’ve tried ’em. What’s more, they’re too dumb to look for anything up above ’em. You’re safe here.”

Roy leaned back and looked up at the speaker on his higher branch. He was a man of knotty, compact build clad in a torn shirt and ill-used khakis. The greater part of his face was hidden beneath an unruly growth of black beard and whiskers, but his mouth smiled, and there was a zestful twinkle in his eyes. Roy climbed higher and stretched out his hand. It was taken in a hardened, calloused grip.

“You can’t guess how glad I am to see you folks—whoever you are. I’d just about decided that I’d got the world to myself—save for them crawlin’ tin cans down there. I’m Jim Hollis. About four days ago I was somewhere near Indianapolis—the Lord knows where I am now.”

Roy introduced himself. He added: “Do you know of any safe place for us? We’re mostly about played out.”

Jim Hollis scratched his chin reflectively through his matted beard. He cast a glance towards the sun, now well in the west. “Can you make two miles—maybe, two and a half?” he inquired.

“If it’s worth while, I guess we could manage that.”

“It’s worth while, all right. There’s some caves I found in a cliff over there”—he jerked his head in an easterly direction—“I’d be there now, myself, but I couldn’t make the entrance on my own. Way up above my head.”

“It can be defended?” asked Del from a branch near by.

The man looked curiously at the dwarf. “Sure,” he agreed, “but it don’t need it. If I couldn’t make the grade, I’m damned if one of them tin things could do it. If we’re goin’, we’d better move right now. It’ll be sunset in a couple of hours.”

He swung himself down the branches and dropped to the ground. The rest of them followed his lead. The dwarfs’ true proportions were revealed as they descended to the ground. At the sight of them and the accompanying “Numen,” the man’s eyes widened with amazement.

“Say, what the –?” he began.

Roy tactfully interposed. “Lead on,” he said, “I’ll tell you as we go.”

“You’ll have to. I’m all dazed up. It’s all happened so sudden-like. I was just hiking along hoping to jump a truck ride to Indianapolis, when a guy comes out from a shack by the roadside and says he’ll give me five bucks if I’ll lend him a hand. I’d mostly forgotten what five bucks look like, so I said I would. He’d got a piece of machinery he couldn’t move by himself and he wanted it brought out of the shack into the yard.

“Rummy lookin’ sort of cage with a sling seat in it. We got it out easy enough between us and then he went back to find the five bucks, so I sat down in the sling seat. There was a lot of little switches and thingummies in front of it, so I pressed one, just interested like—next thing I knew, me and the machine was crashin’ down through a lot of branches like these.”

He looked disparagingly at the growths about him. “And they ain’t even ordinary trees. Nothin’s ordinary around these parts—what’s more, I ain’t got my five bucks.”

Roy attempted to explain the situation and to tell how the rest of them had similarly come to grief. The man, Jim, grunted doubtfully: “Sounds crazy to me,” he observed, “but then, it’s no crazier than having them tin things runnin’ about the place. Ants inside of ’em, you say?”

“Yes, ants.”

Jim sniffed. He was still a trifle uncertain whether this might not be some deep scheme to pull his leg. “And what about the big red things that walk on two legs? What’s in them? Black beetles?” he inquired.

Roy had forgotten the red machines. He smiled at Jim’s suggestion and admitted that none of the party had yet had an opportunity of investigating these inhabitants of this strangely transformed world.

Jim’s estimate of two miles was modest by half, but they came at length, and without molestation, to the edge of the forest. Across a hundred yards of turf rose a cliff-face, pitted in many places with dark holes. “How’s that?” asked Jim, triumphantly pointing to the largest. It measured some ten feet in diameter at the entrance.

“But how do we get there?” Julian objected, looking at the twenty-five feet of sheer cliff which must be scaled.

“Easy enough to reach it by standing on one another’s shoulders.”

“I have a better idea than that,” Del remarked. He produced a ray tube and with a series of heat jets, drilled a zig-zag line of holes up the rock face.

“Gee, that’s a dandy flashlight you’ve got,” Jim murmured admiringly.

Roy ascended the holds after a short interval for cooling. As a precaution he took with him a heat ray set ready at low power. The first glance showed him that the cave was both empty and dry. It broadened out to about fifteen feet a yard or two inside the entrance and ran back nearly thirty feet into the cliff. Luck had favored them with an ideally safe refuge. He stood up at the mouth and looked out towards the setting sun.

“It’s ok,” he called to the group of upturned faces. “Come on, all of you. Back to the Stone Age.”

In Search of Metal

“The problems of food and water have been easily settled,” said Del, addressing the group on the following day. “It is indeed lucky for us that fruit grows in such profusion. But though this will keep us alive, it will not assist us to solve the problem of our return. For that, one thing is essential—we must have metal.”

Roy looked up from his occupation of plaiting creeper strands into a rope. “I was wondering what you intended to do about that,” he remarked.

“What’s the metal for?” asked Jim.

“We must have a framework for the machine which I propose to build—and it must be a metal framework. You want to get back, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. That guy still owes me five bucks.”

“What kind of metal?” Roy inquired.

Del shrugged his shoulders. “A steel containing chromium and tungsten in small quantities would be best—failing that, some other hard metal could be made to serve. I also want some copper, or other good conductor. Very luckily, most of our salvaged parts have withstood the journey.” Turning to Jim, he added: “Is your machine still in the branches where it fell?”

“No—the tin things found it and carried it off. I watched them from a tree.”

Reflectively, Del looked out of the cave towards the giant anthill towering over the trees in the distance. Jim’s arrival accounted for one of the extra time travelers they had seen there, he wondered about the others. Jim’s voice broke in on the unprofitable speculation. “Maybe, if we scouted round a bit more, we might find a town or something. Anyway there ought to be a road leading to a town—where there’s a town, there’s sure to be metal.”

Del shook his head gently. “You don’t realize. There are no towns.”

“No towns?”

"Neither towns, nor men.”

“You’re foolin’ me. They can’t all be dead.”

“They must be, or the insects would not be ruling.”

“But—but do you mean the ants have killed all the

“It seems unlikely. Probably men just stopped.”

“I don’t get you?”

“Men did not kill off the great reptiles who ruled the world before them—the reptiles just stopped. It seems to me that man, too, has ‘had his little day and ceased to be.’ ”

“But what’s the good of his ever having lived if it all finishes this way?”

“What is the use of life? Perhaps man came to a glorious finish. Fulfilled his destiny and vanished from the earth—he had to leave the earth sooner or later. At least he has not been compelled to linger on a globe drifting into senile decay.”

“It doesn’t look decaying to me.” Jim gazed out at the gently swaying trees.

“But we found ourselves in a desert when we stopped. Miles of it, overlaying what once was fruitful country— how far did that desert stretch? For all we know, this may be an oasis of forest in a world of deserts. And have you noticed the sun—how much larger and more fiery red it is than our accustomed sun?—Signs of the coming end, both of them.”

He was silent for a moment before he added: “Then there was the ant machine which questioned us. Its knowledge of the past must have been profound, yet it tried us with a series of symbols utterly unknown to any of us. One wonders what strange creatures used those symbols, sometime between the end of man and the rise of the insect. Yes, we are far past the age of homo sapiens.”

No one spoke for a while. It was Roy who broke the spell. “This is morbid,” he declared. “Our present concern is to regain the age of homo sapiens —and our immediate need is metal.”

Jessica, sitting beside him, drew a breath as though to speak, and then changed her mind.

“Yes?” he encouraged.

“I hardly like to suggest it—I mean, it’s dangerous.”

“What is it?”

“Well, the ants’ white machines-”

“Yes?”

“Well, they must be made of a very hard metal.”

Roy brought his hand down on his knee with a slap of approval. “Good girl, you’ve hit it. We’ve got to grab one of those machines somehow or other.”

The expeditionary force eventually comprised only three men, Roy, Jim Hollis and Julian. The two “Numen” would have been useful, but, since it was considered un¬ wise to trust them with heat rays, they would have been defenceless in case of an attack. They would, therefore, be summoned later to help with the portage, if necessary. Moreover, it was important that some weapons should be left with the rest of the party in case of trouble. Both Roy and Jim, before they left, were handed high power rays and instructed in the use of them. Julian retained his own, low power weapon.

“What puzzles me, is how we are going to attract the things,” Roy said.

“Forget it. There’s no attracting needed. All we’ve got to do is get up a tree near a clearing and wait. They’ll come along soon enough. It’s dollars to doughnuts we spot some within a couple of hours. Them tin things are for ever snoopin’ around—the Lord knows what for.”

They progressed cautiously with Jim in the lead, scanning the surrounding growths for tire slightest sign of a metallic flash, and ready to jump for the branches. The chosen clearing, a mile or so distant, was reached without alarms. There, they climbed one of the loftiest trees and settled themselves among the boughs to wait.

After an hour of patience, Roy caught the sound of activity on the far side of the open space. As it approached, it resolved itself into a crackling of branches accompanied by a faint clanking. He moved into an attitude of readiness and slipped the ray tube out of his pocket. Jim put out a restraining hand.

“It’s not the tin things. It’s the big, red brutes. I know the sound of ’em.”

The next minute proved him right. Five of the twenty-foot machines left the trees and stalked stiffly on their trellised legs across the other end of the clearing.

“Five again,” Roy murmured.

“Always five together—never more, never less. And if I know anything about it, it means that some of the ant machines are around these parts,” Jim replied.

Less than ten minutes after the red stalkers had disappeared, there came a flash of reflected sunlight among the trees. A moment later, no less than ten of the six-legged machines emerged. They paused in a bunch and there was a great waving of silver tentacles. Roy wondered why it was that the machines were not rendered less conspicuous with a coating of neutral shaded paint— it was merely one of many puzzling points about them.

As a result of the conference, the party broke up. Eight scurried away in the wake of the red monsters, another doubled back the way they had come while the remaining one retreated to the shadow of the trees and stood motionless. Jim nudged Roy.

“There’s our meat,” he said.

With stealth and care they wriggled back along the branches and slid to the ground. Keeping twenty or so yards back from the edge of the clearing, they began to work round into position. The fact that their progress was accompanied by a considerable crackling of twigs underfoot, did not worry them, but it was essential that no waving of bushes, carelessly brushed aside, should attract the attention of the sharp lenses. Moreover, a look out must be kept for other roving machines. At fifty yards range, Jim suggested that they take to the trees again.

Roy, through a leafy gap, trained his ray on the motionless sentry, and pressed the catch. His aim was good. A quick switch of the wrist from left to right, and the narrow blade of heat scythed the legs from beneath it. It fell with a thud. The tentacles writhed for a few seconds and then dropped to lie listlessly on the ground. As they sank, the ant army came surging from its fallen craft. Roy swiftly adjusted his tube to lower power and wide aperture and joined Jim and Julian who were already fanning their beams at the black flood. In a few moments the insects had withered from sight, and the damaged machine was theirs.

Roy swung down from the tree and advanced with his tube cautiously levelled against the possibility of another rush of ants. He tapped experimentally on the metal casing, but none emerged. Again he set his ray to a small aperture, preparatory to slicing the metal into portable sections. Barely had he raised the tube when there came a cry from Jim who pointed wildly across the clearing.

Roy spun round to see two more white machines headed in a scuttering dash towards him. He swung his ray without hesitation and brought down the leader. Its own momentum sent it sliding a dozen yards on its shining belly. As it fell, he turned his attention to the other. But the second attacker was not destined to fall such as easy victim.

He was raising his hand when a metal tentacle from behind him snapped around his body, knocking his weapon spinning towards the trees. He realized as the arm gripped him that he had been fooled. Some of the ants remained in the first machine and had successfully played ’possum until this moment. He cursed himself for not having the foresight to put its lenses out of action.

The trees behind him literally exploded into flame as the tube fell among them. Jim and Julian leaped from their perches with lightning agility and came pounding to Roy’s defence with ready weapons. The last, unharmed machine, dashing on with tentacles extended, was almost upon him. Their line of fire was masked by Roy’s body.

He tugged frenziedly at his metal bond, but it had frozen into inflexibility, holding him as prey for the other. Jim decided to take a desperate chance. He steadied and aimed. The searing heat beam passed within inches of the helpless Roy and the hot air scorched his face, but the blast passed on to shear the legs from one side of the rushing monster. The unsupported side fell with a crash and the machine swiveled wildly to one side. It rolled over and over till it came to a final rest within a yard of Roy’s feet.

But the danger was far from over. Jim bounded towards him, fused the restraining tentacle at its base and dragged him free just as the swarming ants broke from their wrecked craft. Only then did the three men become aware of the great flames licking out from the blazing trees towards them.

“We’ve got to get out of this, and quick. We’ve sure started something this trip,” said Jim, as Roy unwrapped the severed tentacle. “The Lord knows what that tube will do now it’s on the loose. Anyway, all the animated tin cans in this crazy world are likely to happen along, just to see who’s been jokin’ around here.”

“But the metal –”

“Damn the metal. There’s plenty more—we can’t move fast and carry the stuff. Till this blows over, we go home and lie quiet for a bit.”

The three crossed the clearing at top speed. In the shelter of the opposite trees they paused to look back. A vast funnel of flame was belching into the heavens and, above it, thick gouts of smoke broadened, mushroom-like. Jim shook a rueful head.

“Ain’t that just our darned luck?” he growled.

The Wrong Machine

There followed several weeks, uneventful to the castaways. Roy and Jim had returned to the scene of their fight on the following day and made encouraging discoveries. The first was that the fire started by Roy’s lost tube had spread only a very little distance beyond its raging center. With no wind to fan them, the flames had dwindled away and finally snuffed out. The tube itself was irretrievably lost somewhere in a crater of its own making. It had melted the ground and the rocks beneath it and sunk out of sight into the molten pool. Whether it had destroyed itself, or whether it was still digging deeper and deeper into the earth, neither of the men knew—nor cared to any great extent They were far too elated at finding that the machines they had vanquished still lay where they had fallen.

“Wonder why they haven’t taken them away?” Roy had said.

Jim snorted. “You’re always wondering about the things. What’s the use of tryin’ to get inside an insect’s mind, anyway? You couldn’t do it in a lifetime. Probably they never repair—only build new machines. The thing that counts now is that here is the metal just waiting for us to carry it off.”

With the help of most of the party, the transport had been successfully accomplished. Though more than once on the journey it was necessary to drop their burdens and take to the trees to avoid wandering machines. A growing acquaintance with the dangers of the world about them and with the limited capabilities of their enemies began to have a tonic effect on the party. Jim Hollis had never shown anything more than contempt for what he called “animated tinware,” and the rest were fast adopting his point of view.

Del, with Kal for an assistant, had gone to work right away on the construction of a new time traveler once he had assured himself that the metals were suitable. Ril, whose offers of assistance had been refused on the ground that more than one helper would lead to confusion, busied himself in experimenting with the least damaged of the captured machines, a pursuit in which he was joined by Julian. Jim Hollis was appointed head of the foraging staff and, with the help of the two “Numen,” saw that a plentiful supply of fruit and water was maintained.

Jessica and Roy found themselves much together. Since the ant machines were seldom to be seen in the immediate vicinity of the cliffs, they had formed the habit of taking their strolls in the neighbourhood. Roy, after a month or more of this existence, had come to accept their way of life as a commonplace rather than an adventure. He discovered with a sense of surprise that Jessica did not share this view.

“How long,” she asked him one morning, “how long will it be before Del completes his machine?”

Roy looked at her doubtfully. There was something in her tone that he could not place. It was not exactly an eagerness for release from this strange world, and yet “Not more than a day or two, now, I believe, but he is not sure that some further adjustments won’t be necessary. You’re feeling homesick?”

Jessica failed to reply for a moment. She held her gaze fixed straight ahead and there was a slight petulance in the line of her mouth. At length she answered in a dull voice: “I suppose I am. After all, one could hardly wish to "stay here forever. Sometimes, at nights, it comes over me in a perfect wave of longing. I look out and see nothing but die dimness of the stars and hear nothing but the stirring of the trees, then I long for our bustling twenty-third century. I want to see the sky split by the green fire at the tail of an Asia-bound rocket, or the red gush from the Europe express.

“Sometimes, on clear nights, we could see from our house the pure white flames streaming from the Mars spaceship as it spurted from its cradle. And then, too, there was never this terrible quiet. Even when one was shut away, there was always a sense of movement, of a world where men and their machines all worked to some purpose—a rustling sense of life even in the quietest places. I feel a horrible sense of futility that it has all come only to this—to the insects.”

“I’m sure you are wrong there. If we had found men still existing at this date, I should feel that it did seem futile. It would mean that man must die when the world dies. But, since there is no sign of him, I am convinced that he achieved his true end—whatever that may have been—and gone on his way, leaving the world to other forms of life so that they may achieve their ends.”

“I think you are an optimist, Roy, but I hope you are right. I confess I don’t feel very cheerful about anything just now.”

“While I seem to feel happier them I ever remember— I could almost hope that Del’s machine should turn out a failure. I wish…” He stopped a trifle abruptly. A light crept into Jessica’s eyes. The corners of her mouth lifted ever so slightly.

“Yes?” she prompted gently. But Roy was not looking, he did not see the change that had come over her.

“I don’t know. It seems so unnecessary that we should go back to our own centuries—and yet, we must.”

“Must?”

“Well, imagine what a misfit I should be in Del’s century.”

Jessica sighed to herself over the obtuseness of men. “I can’t imagine you in Del’s century,” she said.

But Roy missed the emphasis which was laid upon the word “Del,” and took the statement at its face value. Jessica let the subject drop. She had learned what she wanted to know, the rest was a matter of careful handling —she might even have to propose herself in the end.

Half an hour later, as they were returning to the cave, Roy announced that there was a surprise awaiting her. Ril and Julian in their experiments with the captured ant machine, had succeeded in making it workable. The machinery cased in the lower part of the ovoid body and partitioned off, had been found to be intact. It had not been a great labor with the help of the heat rays to braise on salvaged legs in place of those shorn away.

Then, more to give themselves employment than for any other reason, the two men had set about adapting the controls for human use. They had given themselves to the solution of a number of ingenious problems which turned out, in most cases, less difficult than they had expected. Much of the work consisted merely of clearing away many of the stages necessary for insect manipulation.

“What I mean is,” said Roy, explaining, “a man might need a block and tackle to lift a heavy log which an elephant would lift direct. This time, Ril and Julian were in the position of the elephant—they could dispense with much of the intermediate mechanical aid. They’re as pleased with the thing as a child with a new toy. It’s going to be ready to show off its tricks when we get back.”

“But what’s the good of it?”

“None, I think. They merely felt an interest in the thing, and it gave them something to do. They solved it as one might solve any other puzzle. You’ll see it soon.”

His words were borne out a few hundred yards from home. They saw the glittering machine approach, slowly scrabbling over the ground towards them. It stopped as they came into view and stood still, its tentacles waving in the usual manner of the ant-operated craft. Roy gave a chuckling laugh.

“A pretty good imitation. If I hadn’t been expecting it, I’d have rayed the thing right off—and that would have been remarkably uncomfortable for Ril and Julian.”

As if at the thought, his hand went to his belt. It encountered the butt of his revolver, but the ray tube was missing. He cursed his carelessness in not bringing it. Such an omission might well have had tragic results. He and Jessica advanced together. “Now, Ril, put it through its paces,” he called.

But the machine merely continued to stand, swaying its tentacles. A sudden misgiving shot through Roy’s mind. To reassure himself he called: “What are you trying to do? Scare us?”

Jessica drew closer to his side. She was aware of an uncomfortable sense that all was not well. “Suppose it isn’t –?” she began. She got no further, because at that moment the machine snapped into action. It came scuttering full at them, tentacles outstretched.

“Run,” cried Roy, but instead, she shrank towards him.

He jerked out his revolver and spat a burst of ineffective shots. The machine charged down on them. A feeler wrapped about Jessica’s waist and snatched her from his side, another looped about his wrist, dragging him along. With a violent twist of his arm he broke its grip and fell to the ground. Jessica screamed as the metal legs thudded past within inches of his head. The machine did not wait to recapture him; holding the girl clear of the ground, it made straight for the trees. Roy grabbed for his fallen revolver, jumped to his feet and raced vainly after it. The danger of hitting Jessica was too great for him to risk a shot, and the machine, looking like some great, shining beetle, was traveling twice his speed. The girl gave one final, despairing cry, then captor and captive disappeared among the branches.

For a few dazed seconds Roy continued to run, before his senses reasserted themselves and sent him shouting in the direction of the cave. Consternation reigned in the group as he panted out his news. “Give me a ray tube,” he demanded. “I’ll wreck that machine and bring Jessica back, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Del caught his arm. “You could never catch it before it reached the anthill, and it’s no good trying single-handed to –”

Ril broke in. He had exchanged a hurried whisper with Julian which sent the other running towards the cave. “We’ll take the machine,” he said, “Julian and I have finished it and tested it.”

Roy, without hesitation, dashed to the spot where the renovated craft lay and started hurling aside the branches which masked it. Ril clambered up a rough ladder set against the side and slid into the interior through a hole in the top.

“Tubes—we must have them,” Roy called.

Del handed over two high power tubes and one low one. The only remaining tube he retained in case of attack.

“Get the girl back and we will go,” he said. “The time traveler will be ready when you return.”

Julian came running back with an armful of additional apparatus which he lugged aboard. Roy slid in last and slapped the covering panel shut. Ril and Julian were already at the controls. The machine stirred with a slight lurch, then, with metal legs flashing in the sunlight, it scuttered at full speed for the trees and the spire of the giant anthill beyond them.

Pursuers

For the first hour silence was scarcely broken. Ril could spare no attention from the delicate occupation of steering the unfamiliar machine, and Julian was engaged in arranging some of the apparatus he had so hurriedly gathered. Noticeable among it was the lamp which they had used to light the cave. Roy moved restlessly about the confined space, peering through one or another of the observation holes which had been pierced in the metal shell. Continually he turned to urge Ril to greater speed. The dwarf shook his head. Already they were at the speed limit of safe travel, and time and again he avoided a crash with some tree only by the swiftest dexterity. The greatest concern which beset him was lest they should reach some unfordable stream and be forced to a long detour, but the fear was unfounded.

The first water they encountered was a clear brook flowing rapidly over a shallow bed of stones and, without hesitation, they took it in a shower of sparkling drops. As they were mounting the further bank, the first untoward incident occurred; there came a mighty crash to one side and a tree toppled slowly. It missed them as it fell by only a few feet. Another crash close at hand caused Ril to steer the machine hastily to the right. Roy was flung to the floor by the sudden change of direction. “What was that?” he demanded, as he scrambled up.

“Rocks,” said Ril, briefly. “They nearly got us, too.”

Roy remembered the scene they had, witnessed on the day of their arrival. “It’s the red things. They’ve spotted us. Here, give me a ray.”

He thrust his head and shoulders out of the top panel and looked about him. No enemy was visible, but away ahead he could hear the crackling of branches as something drew nearer. “Coming this way. Move off a bit.”

Ril obeyed speedily and a moment later a rock landed on the spot where they had paused. Roy guessed that they must have been seen as they made the crossing and that the rocks were being thrown by guesswork. A red machine stalked into view and halted uncertainly. The silver ant craft was now effectively screened from its view by a clump of bushes.

A second presently joined it. Roy hesitated only for a second — with Jessica still at stake, they could afford to waste no time. He lifted the ray tube. One sweep sliced off a trellised leg and the machine, as it tottered, fell against its companion. The two swayed for a space, and then went down together with a resounding crash and a furious flailing of their jointed arms.

“Right away—flat out,” Roy called, and Ril threw in the lever which sent them scurrying on their course.

The red machines were about the countryside in unusual numbers, they discovered as they continued, but further direct encounters were successfully avoided. Moreover, as they drew nearer to the anthill, they began to meet with an increasing number of machines similar to their own. These, at first, they gave a wide berth, but it soon became obvious that they had no need to fear molestation, since the ants gave no sign of suspecting their presence.

They were still two miles from the hill when Roy, at a forward peephole, gave an excited cry. Disappearing into the trees on the far side of a clearing he had caught a glimpse of Jessica’s captor with her form still closely wrapped in its tentacles. Ril urged them at full speed across the open ground and plunged into the forest hard on the track. But, despite his utmost efforts, it was not until they emerged into the space ringing the base of the anthill that they caught another glimpse of the marauder.

Their gain had been appreciable and Roy decided to risk a ray flash. They could not hope to overtake the other before it reached the dark entrance to the hill. His ray, at low power, flashed on the twinkling legs with no result. He pushed the power up a notch and tried again. This time he succeeded in fusing one of the rear leg joints so that the metal limb became rigid. Unfortunately, it projected clear, and hampered progress not at all. The tube was just levelled for a third shot when a hand grasped his wrist and he turned to face Julian. The latter spoke angrily. “Put that away, you fool,” he snapped. “Can’t you see that if you did bring the thing down, it would most likely kill Jessica in the fall—even if it didn’t, she’d be covered with ants in a few seconds.”

The possibility shook Roy badly. He cursed his own foolhardiness as he returned the tube to his belt. Julian turned his back and began to adjust the lamp, now erected at one of the larger spy holes. A minute later the leading machine, still clutching Jessica, disappeared into the dark mouth of the entrance. After it, all six legs threshing furiously, pounded the avenger.

Julian pressed a switch and a beam of dazzling brilliance bored down the tunnel before them. The vast central roadway stretched out like a dirigible hangar of infinite length. Here and there the upsweeping curves of the walls were pierced with side turnings, mysterious, gaping mouths whose immenseness was dwarfed only by the proportions of the main artery. Of traffic, there was little at the present, but such machines as were visible scuttled along with a methodical orderliness, keeping to the right of the track and paying no attention either to pursuer or pursued.

“Why don’t they attack us?” Roy wondered.

“Too specialized,” replied Ril. “Their whole organization is worked on a basis of calculation. Precision and instinct. They know, for instance, that there is danger from the red stalking machines outside; that danger is calculated and allowed for. But when they face us, they are up against the incalculable and their instincts are not an y help to them. For centuries, perhaps, they have not been called upon to cope with the unexpected.”

“But they attacked and captured us in the first place.”

“True, but then they were in the open, where dangers might be expected and their instinct was to overcome a challenge. It requires more than instinct and simple calculation to grasp the idea of one of their own machines being turned against them. You notice that even the one we are following has shown no sign of perturbation. It has just kept steadily on its way and paid no attention to anything else.”

“Then we are safe from interference? All we have to do is to recapture Jessica when we reach the other machine and march out with her.”

Ril looked doubtful. It seemed unlikely that it would be as simple as that. “We are all right, I think, until we are discovered by the central intelligence. We can’t tell what will happen then.”

“But how do you know there is a central intelligence?”

Ril lifted one hand from the controls of the racing vehicle and waved it in an expressive sweep. “Something must control all this. Besides, you remember the machine which wrote on the floor—it was obviously designed for brain work of some kind. It had no legs to move about on. It was a calculating machine —a kind of composite thinking mechanism. Somewhere in this ant mountain there must be a super-calculator capable not only of working from known factors, but of reasoning from probabilities. A kind of central brain of which our questioner was a mere subsidiary.”

“It sounds too improbable.”

“I don’t think so. Since the insects had even more natural obstacles to overcome than man had, they must, of necessity, use more involved apparatus.”

While Ril spoke, they gradually gained on the machine ahead. Now a bare twenty yards separated the two. Julian already had his hands on the control levers of the tentacles and was ready to send them coiling out the moment the range permitted. The leader turned with a sudden swerve down a passage to the left. Only by skillful manipulation did Ril avoid overshooting the corner, but he succeeded, and they gained yet another couple of yards. The three men grew tenser as the distance lessened. Julian’s knuckles were white on the levers, and his face strained. Roy again thrust his head and shoulders through the top panel and held his tube ready for action. Then, with disconcerting suddenness, the passage walls fell away and they sped out into a large, circular hall.

Roy had a glimpse of serried ranks of the white metal machines gleaming and glittering in the rays of their lamp, then his eyes rose to the structure which dominated the whole vast room. It stood, raised on a dais in the exact center—a huge, metallic sphere sprouting with a multitude of shining feelers. At that moment, Julian went into action. Judging his distance to a nicety, he sent a tentacle whipping round one of the rear legs of Jessica’s captor.

Simultaneously, Ril slowed their machine and there               came a jerk which almost dislodged Roy from his perch. The legs of the leader crumpled beneath it and the shining belly met the ground with a thud. Julian, with the full power of the attached tentacle, began to draw it back towards them. From his vantage point, Roy sliced with a pencil-thick ray at the roots of the feelers which bound Jessica. The whole affair had taken place so quickly that they had been unmolested, but, as the last strand parted, there came an ominous stirring in the ranks of the surrounding machines.

Ril’s voice rose insistently. “Quick. Get that central globe.”

Roy perceived that the many feelers around it had sprung into furiously writhing signals. With sweeps of his ray at full power, he carved it into sections. As the parts fell, he saw the outflow of myriads of ants running like glistening streams of molasses across the floor.

“Too late,” cried Ril. “It’s given the order.”

Roy swung his beam around the closing circle of machines while the tentacles under Julian’s control, sought and grasped the prostrate form of Jessica. They snatched her from the ground a split second before the insects hordes swept to the spot.

“We’ve got to run for it,” Ril called up as he maneuvered their craft to the right about. “Clear a way to the passage.”

The few machines in their path were swiftly dealt with, but, while Roy’s attention was taken aside, the rest of the circle was closing in. “Full speed,” he roared down to the dwarf.

They tore forward with a jerk; the light and Roy’s heat ray blazing ahead of them. Once in the comparative safety of the corridor, he turned around and devoted his attention to hindering the pursuit. Dozens fell to his ray, but he saw that in spite of his destruction, the mass was gaining. At a sudden idea, he thrust the power of his tube down a couple of notches and gave an exclamation of satisfaction at the result. The machines, instead of being blotted out, were now being fused into immobility and presenting considerable difficulties to the advance of those in the rear. A second inspiration struck him and he called to Ril to slow down.

He swung his ray across the passage and rendered useless the first rank of the pursuers. As those behind came climbing over them, he swung the ray back along the line so that they were fused above their fellows. Still more came scrambling over and again the ray swept across. A grim smile of success twitched his mouth as he steadily continued his tactics. At great speed he was building a solid wall of fused metal between himself and the pursuers. It was but a short time before it blocked the passage from the floor to the curved roof. The moment it was complete, he jumped to the ground and ran. forward to where Jessica’s inert form rested in the grip of the feelers. He was thankful that she had been unconscious throughout the rescue. It was the work of a few seconds to strip off the clinging remnants of her captor’s tentacles and lift her up to Julian who had taken his place at the panel opening. Swinging himself hurriedly aboard, he called to Ril for full speed. There was no telling how long the fused wall would hold.

The remaining length of passage was covered without incident, or even sight of other machines, but they emerged into the main traffic artery to find a different state of affairs. They had last seen it almost empty – now it was crowded. A number of mechanisms rushed at them with antagonistic intent and were promptly rayed before they reached a dangerous distance. Following them were others, but by no means all the machines in sight were concerned in the attack. The majority continued peacefully to go about their appointed tasks.

Either the alarm had not been intended for all, or else it had been cut short before it became general. Whatever the cause, the result was a great jostling and tangling of machines at cross purposes. The attackers were obstructed and hindered at every turn by the instinctive way in which the others pursued their routine work.

Ril, quick to perceive their advantage in the turmoil of the two inflexible orders, steered to one side and jostled into the stream of outgoing vehicles. The whole procession moved at a steady, uniform speed and they were swept along with it. The attackers, unable to alter the instinctive march, were left with no course but to follow in their wake at such points as they could contrive to wedge themselves into the moving queue. Roy looked round over the moving ranks and realized that they were safe, barring accidents, until the open should be reached.

Within the metal shell Julian was doing his best to restore Jessica to consciousness and looking with anger at the great welts imprinted on her arms and legs. When her abductor was caught, it had evidently closed its grip the more firmly in a determination not to lose its prey, and she had fainted from the constriction. At last her eyes opened and she looked up at him. “What’s happened?” she asked, attempting to move her stiffened limbs. He explained.

“And Roy?”

At the sound of her voice, Roy withdrew from his observation post and walked forward in the crouched attitude that the cramped quarters demanded. He took one of her hands in both of his and gazed down into her smiling face.

“Thank God you’re safe, Jessica. Until that thing snatched you away, I didn’t realize –”

Jessica’s eyes were starry. “You didn’t realize what, Roy?”

“I didn’t realize how much I –”

“Heat rays ready,” interrupted Ril. “We’re nearly out.”

“Oh, damn!” muttered Roy as he sprang back to his station.

In the open, Ril gave the machine full power and sent it tearing away from the main body. Presently the pursuers also drew clear and came scudding in swift chase. Roy picked off the leaders with sharp blasts of heat, but every second more and more of the machines pouring out of the mountain entrance were joining the hunting pack.

It became no longer a straggling pursuit, but a solid block of shining mechanisms bearing down. Had the way ahead been clear, possibly they could have held their own in the matter of speed, but, once in the forest, the superior control and the familiarity of the insects with their own machines, began to tell. Roy, with a ray tube in each hand, thanked Providence that no ballistic weapons were known to the ants. He had his work cut out to pick off the advancing units.

“Ahead,” cried Ril.

Back Home

Roy whipped round to see a line of machines drawn across their path. A quick switch of the ray served to clear the way, but it also sent a patch of trees bursting into flame. Ril held on and plunged them through the gauntlet of fire. Something fell across Roy’s shoulders and half wrenched him from his perch. He turned to find an insect machine racing alongside. It had pursued a parallel course, behind masking trees, and seized his momentary diversion of attention, to cut alongside.

He crooked one arm beneath the metal casing edge in an effort to resist the pull, but slowly he felt his muscles giving in beneath the relentless tugging. Desperately he wriggled the other arm in an attempt to bring the ray. to bear. He was thankful that it had not occurred to the insects to snatch at the fast-moving legs of the stolen machine.

The pull of the tentacle grew stronger, and he called loudly to the others. He felt a pair of arms clutch his legs. He ached painfully as the machine tightened its grip. Fingers grasped the ray tube from the arm he had crooked below, and Jessica thrust herself up beside him with the tube in her hand. Quick as thought the whole bunch of tentacles were shorn from their roots. Then, turning it downward, she fused the front legs. The fore end dropped suddenly and the attacker pitched back over front in a final, shattering somersault.

Roy disentangled himself from the wrapping feeler and, side by side with Jessica, went to work at clearing away the nearest of the pursuers. The rays flashed in a furious semi-circle, but the numbers of the enemies were constantly supplemented. It seemed that they must shortly be overcome by sheer, clogging weight of numbers. “Hold tight, there! We’ve got to risk this,” called Ril from below.

Roy glanced ahead and saw that they had again reached the river. Unfortunately, not at the same shallow spot as they had crossed before. This time, a steep bank must be descended and deeper water negotiated. It would be chancing too much to turn along the bank, for they had no means of telling how far their pursuers were spread out to either side.

The machine slithered down the bank and waded out. The water rose above the leg sockets, but it did not flow through the universal joints. It rose further—to within inches of the observation holes, then, thankfully, they felt the floor tilt up as the stream bed rose. On the farther bank, Roy called Ril to halt. The machines had not followed them. They had collected in a line, hesitant and unwilling to risk a wetting. It seemed that the fugitives were safe. Then, just as Roy drew a breath of relief, one, more intrepid than the rest, came sliding down. Instantly he rayed it and a burst of steam arose from the water around. But the necessary lead had been given. A second later, half a dozen or more were slithering into the water. With no compunction, he played his ray upon them. He hoped by example to stop diem from making a mass attack for it would be impossible to check all the hundreds which now lined the bank. But as he vaporized the last of the waders, an interruption occurred. Something came swinging above their heads and landed with a crash on the opposite bank.

‘The red stalkers!” cried Jessica, “they’re attacking them. Quickly, Ril, get into the trees. They haven’t seen us yet.”

They scuttered from the danger zone. Under cover of the branches, they stopped and looked back. Indescribable confusion was raging among the machines and at first it was difficult to see the reason. But, as they watched, a net of glittering red metal came sailing through the air and fell upon the white machines. Evidently the red stalkers used rocks only against isolated enemies; when They really went into action, they had other weapons. One net followed another, and with every move they made, the white machines became more hopelessly entangled. From being a collection of perfectly controlled units they soon changed into no more than a. writhing mass of a myriad glittering parts, surging frantically this way and that, enmeshing themselves the more as they struggled to escape.

Roy caught a glimpse of the first red biped striding forward, metal nets swinging from its jointed arms. ‘Time for us to go,” he said.

Ril threw in the switch and they scurried away into the green obscurity of the forest.

An unexpected sight greeted them at the cliffs. Del’s time traveler, constructed for safety within the cave, had been brought out and lowered to the ground. The other five members of the party were clustered around it, apparently in conference over some knotty point. One of the “Numen” let out a cry as they broke from the trees. Jim Hollis swung around with ready weapon. Roy hailed him loudly and the other’s face broke into a grin. A moment later the machine came to a halt in the middle of a congratulatory group. The greetings over, Roy asked: “Why have you brought the traveler down here? Either an ant machine or a red stalker may come along any minute. One stone landing on that would ruin all your work.”

Del explained. It was necessary that the traveler be somehow conveyed to the cliff top. A break, less than a mile away, offered ample possibility for men to climb, but the problem of raising the machine appeared hard to solve.

“But why lift it at all?—Why not work it here?”

“Look at the cliffs,” said Del.

“What about them?”

‘They’ve been caused by some earth fault and are very recent. If we were to work the machine here, we would probably finish in the part of the cliff now fallen away— the result of that I leave to your imagination.”

Roy looked thoughtful. “I hadn’t thought of that danger,” he admitted.

“Nor did many others—or else they risked it as we did. Many travelers must have been built in the past I wonder how many of their unfortunate occupants reached this year at the bottom of new seas, entombed in mountains, or even high above ground level. It is nothing less than miraculous that we few survived.”

Roy gazed dubiously at the cage work in which all their hopes were centered. His expression cleared. Turning to Ril, he asked: “Couldn’t the machine carry it?”

Ril was doubtful. Since the traveler had to contain the whole party, it was far heavier and larger than its forerunners. “We can try,” he said with little conviction.

Edging their captured ant machine close, he wound the four tentacles firmly around the traveler and carefully drew back the lifting lever. The burden lurched slightly, but it did not rise; instead, the white machine tilted forward, its back legs in the air. ‘Too heavy in the bows,” Jim Hollis remarked. “Let’s see if we can bring her stern down.”

The combined weights of himself, Roy and the two “Numen,” perched at the extreme rear served effectively to change the balance. The traveler was lifted clear of the ground. Very cautiously and slowly, Ril set the legs in motion, and the machine with its load moved unsteadily forward.

Progress to the break in the line of cliffs was slow, but               slower still was the tedious climb to the top. Again and again it was necessary to assist the slipping legs of the machine, and to give purchase to scrambling metal claws. Nevertheless their admiration for the adaptability of the machine rose as it overcame successive obstacles, forging patiently and relentlessly up the rough way. All nine of the castaways became increasingly jubilant as the top was neared, even the two “Numen” being caught up in the prevailing high spirits and wearing grins of pleasure.

As they scrambled at last over the skyline, Roy looked back in triumph at the way they had come. But the sight which met him sent the joy from his face. He called out and pointed below. Ant machines were scuttling from the trees in a silver stream, racing for the gap. A few yards more and they were upon level ground where the traveler could he set down. Assured of its safety, he and Jim leaped down and ran back to the brink to meet the attack. Already the leaders were halfway up the rough scramble before a fanning of rays sent them tumbling back on their fellows. Unencumbered as they were, they could climb with astonishing agility. And, as ever, they seemed careless of their casualties.

Once the first rush was checked, it became an easy matter for the two men to hold them back. Jim Hollis made a grimace of distaste. “How long do we keep this up?” he asked. “It’s nothing but a slaughter—even if they are only insects.”

Roy glanced back over his shoulder. He could see that Del was already in the traveler, intently setting his controls. “Not long now. Just until Del gets it all fixed,” he returned.

An alarmed cry broke from Jessica. She was standing, pointing along the cliff edge where five red stalkers were advancing with deliberate strides. Roy gasped, for he could see that their jointed arms held nets, ready for use. He heard Ril call to him and saw that the dwarf was maneuvering the captured ant craft to face the new danger.

“Your ray tube,” Ril cried as Roy joined him. “Hold it up in front!”

Wonderingly he obeyed. Ril wrapped a tentacle about the tube and set the appendage swaying slowly from left to right. A red metal net came flying towards them. It fell only a few yards short. Swiftly Ril flicked over a lever which would set the machine marching towards the red stalkers. Then he jumped clear. Roy caught him as he fell, and, together they ran for the time traveler.

The entrance snapped to, and through the trellised sides of the cage Roy took his last sight of the fantastic world. In front, a swarm of silver machines had reached the cliff top and was pouring over the edge. Away to the right marched their capture, mechanically raying at the red giants. One had already fallen, to go hurtling below, but even as the leg was shorn from another, a metal net settled about the lone attacker. A glimpse he had of another red net, sailing through the air towards themselves. Then Del pushed over the switch.

Roy and Jessica stood in the darkness. Beside them was the traveler. Of the original nine, it now contained only two. Ril and Kal had been returned to the year 10,424, and with them had stayed the two “Numen.” Julian had regained his world of 3920, and now they rested at 2200.

“You’re determined not to stay?” Roy asked Jim Hollis.

“I am. Twentieth century is where I belong—even if it is a bit over-civilized for me. Say,” he added, “I wonder what they’re goin’ to say back there when I spin ’em this yarn.”

“They won’t believe you.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll try it.”

The final farewells were exchanged. The entrance closed, and Del set off to deliver his last passenger before he returned to his own future age. Before the eyes of the two, the cage blurred and then, suddenly, was not.

A green streak cut the sky. ‘That means we’re home,” said Jessica. “It was the Asia-bound rocket.”

“Home,” Roy echoed.

“And we’ll never leave it again?”

“Never again.” Roy meant the words as he said them. But somewhere at the back of his mind was a hankering, and that hankering would grow.

What civilization, for instance, had preceded the ants? What manner of creatures drove the red stalkers? And, above all, what had happened to mankind?

The Third Vibrator

1 933

Diana French followed a uniformed attendant across a well-kept lawn. Her manner was a blend of eagerness and reluctance, the former but little stronger than the temptation to retreat. The attendant stopped beside a clump of bushes. He pointed ahead. “Mr. Hixton is over there, madam.”

Diana braced herself and walked with slow deliberation towards a grey-suited figure sagging in a garden chair. She could see that he was lost in reverie, his hands hanging listlessly, his eyes fixed sightlessly on the trees before him.

What twisted thoughts, she wondered, were playing in his brain? A spasm of panic made her falter. Suppose he were dangerous? Overwork, they had told her — overwork was not the kind of madness which made people dangerous. She pulled herself together again. There could be no danger or they would not let her see him alone. She walked on with a firmer step. Three feet behind his chair she stopped and spoke.

“David.”

It was little more than a whisper, but the man stiffened and turned. “Diana!” he cried. He rose and took a step towards her, stretching out both hands. She advanced and took them in hers while she searched his face. She had not known what to expect except he would seem different. Except for lines of worry, he did not. Her eyes looked deep into his, searching the mind behind them, looking for evidence of what they had told her about him. But there was nothing alien, nothing to show a disordered mind. Her unconscious stiffness relaxed. She came closer and put her arms about his neck.

She tried to speak and failed. The tears she had restrained flooded out. “They told me,” she said later. “They told me that you — that you — ”

“That I was mad?”

She nodded. “That’s what they meant me to think. They said that you had collapsed— had a breakdown through overwork. One of your assistants had found you smashing up your workshop with a sledgehammer, and they’d had to — send you here.”

“Yes, that’s true — but, unfortunately, I had hardly begun to smash things.”

“You—?”

“Yes, but it wasn’t madness, my dear. It was a blinding flash of sanity. Another minute and I’d have finished it.”

“Finished what?”

“Smashing that vibrator. Crushing it into little bits beyond all hope of reconstruction. Alan was too quick. I don’t blame him for stopping me. He didn’t know — it must have looked like madness.”

“But, David, why? Why, after all the years of work, should you want to smash it?

“Because I suddenly knew that if I didn’t smash it, it would smash us.”

“Explain, David. I don’t understand. I know the vibrator was a weapon, but — ”

“Weapon, my dear? Would you call a volcano, an earthquake or a hurricane, a weapon? The vibrator is more than all of these. Its power is unthinkable. It may mean the end of everything, and I — I have let it loose upon the Earth for the third time.”

A worried, doubtful look crept into Diana’s eyes. She rested a hand on his sleeve and gazed closely at him. “Darling, you must explain — I think you owe it to me. Why did you suddenly want to break up the work of years — an invention which put you at the head of your profession? And what do you mean by ‘the third time’?”

He looked at her for some moments without speaking At last he came to a decision. “I’ll tell you. I haven’t told anyone else yet — they’d take it as a part of my ‘madness’.”

It was a week ago today, he began. Old Fossdyke was making a speech of thanks on behalf of the War Department. It was not an official affair. There were only seven of us around the table, but still it was not entirely informal.

Fossdyke was rolling out phrases in that admirable way of his when the feeling suddenly came over me that I had heard it all before. You know that sensation of unplaceable familiarity, everybody knows it. You come suddenly upon a situation or even a view which you seem to have seen somewhere, somehow, in the past. The psychologists have an explanation, of course — they always have. But this time the sensation I felt was stronger than ever before.

“This is more than a mere weapon,” Fossdyke was saying. “It is no adaptation, no improvement of existing methods. It is a breakaway. It is the dream of the scientists come true — it is the death ray.” He paused.

“And yet,” he added, “even as the airplane when it came was unlike the early dreams of flying machines, so Mr. Hixton’s vibrator is unlike what we expected. In our more fanciful moments we pictured, if we gave it any thought at all, something akin to an enormous searchlight sweeping like a vast scythe in a destructive arc. Mr. Hixton’s invention is, it is true, a directable force, but it is an invisible stream of vibrations which disrupts the ordered vibrations of matter and produces complete disorganization. Without doubt the potentialities of the discovery are greater than we can now conceive. But I tell you now that Mr. Hixton has achieved what no man in the history of the world has accomplished before. He has ended war.

“With a weapon such as this, war. will be impossible. Its colossal power will make a mockery of all our present arms. From this day no nation will dare to make use of force...”

I heard Fossdyke’s voice booming on, but it seemed to be coming from further away. My eyelids became unaccountably heavy. Not with normal sleepiness, but rather as though a weight were pressing them down. I struggled against the sensation as one does against an anaesthetic — and to as little purpose. Fossdyke’s booming receded further and further as my lids dropped lower. By the time they were shut, I seemed to be alone. All external sounds had ceased. I felt that there was nothing about me but a dark, silent void through which I was falling, falling.

How long that sensation continued, I cannot say. There was no means of measuring. I only know that it ended as inexplicably as it had begun. I was aware again of a voice: “ — And thus the supremacy of our country was made absolute. While we have this weapon no race on Earth can face us.”

I opened my eyes in bewilderment. The voice was not Fossdyke’s. The language it spoke was not English, yet I understood it. I saw a large hall. I was seated on the foremost of a series of semi-circular benches all of which were crowded with men and women dressed in gleaming material not unlike silk. Before us, on a throne-like, high-backed chair sat the speaker. I was bemused for no more than a few seconds. The memory of Fossdyke began to fade away. I was no longer David Hixton of the twentieth century. I was Kis-Tan, citizen of the mighty empire of Lemuria. The tall, serious faced speaker whom I knew now for Alhui, chief councillor of the empire, continued: “But it is a two-edged weapon as it exists at present. Therefore I must lay before you a two-fold proposal. First, that all vibrators at present in existence shall be destroyed forthwith. And, second, that Kis-Tan shall be granted funds to begin experiments with a view to finding a new type of vibrator, far less drastic in its operation. If, and when, this is accomplished, the new machines shall be retained within Lemuria where they shall be used only in the event of a dire crisis, and then with the utmost circumspection.”

A murmur of dissent rose from the two hundred or so persons on the benches. Lemuria, already powerful had been made invincible by the vibrator. To attempt its suppression was, to most minds, like flying in the face of the Sun. The gift of Ra to his chosen people could not thus be spurned. A number of heads was turned in my direction to see how I would take this proposal against my invention. I did my best to make my expression unreadable. Alhui gazed on us calmly, measuring the temper of the council. At length his eyes came to rest upon me. “I call first upon Kis-Tan to give evidence,” he said.

I rose and bowed to the golden image of the Sun which blazed on the wall behind him. “In the sight of Ra, I speak truth,” I said.

“Tell us,” commanded Alhui, “of the trial of your vibrator.”

I turned to face the council and addressed them. “When the first vibrator was constructed, I was working to a great extent in the dark. I knew that it was immensely powerful, but I was unable to measure that power. The council, as you will remember, stipulated that the trial of my machine must take place outside the confines of the Lemurian Empire.

“My assistants and I understood and approved of this caution. We travelled a great distance to the southwest until we came upon a sparsely populated country, several thousands of miles from here. The location appeared to be ideal for our purpose. The few men we saw were a very backward type, and the animals also were primitive, for the most part marsupials. We decided that any damage we might do would matter little in such a country. Accordingly we set up the vibrator in an immense plain.

“After we had put on our protective clothing, I myself, threw over the switch. The result surpassed even my expectations. There was no visible emanation, no ray, nor was there any sound: nothing to show that there was now in action a vibration which could throw out of phase that other vibration which we call ‘life’. The grass, the leaves, even the trees themselves seemed to wither while we watched. Every animal died where it stood. Every insect dropped. We were all overawed — perhaps a little afraid.

“Soon, however, our enthusiasm reasserted itself. We conducted a number of tests to prove range, ability to direct, etc., and then moved on to fresh ground for further tests.”

As I paused Alhui asked: “You have seen those experimental grounds since then?”

“I have.”

“Tell the council of their condition.”

“They were barren. There was nothing but lifeless desert sand.”

I sat down and there arose a murmur which Alhui quickly quelled. “I call upon Aphrus, missionary of Ra, in the land of Aegypt.”

A tall, shaven-headed man, wearing a robe much worked with gold thread arose, saluted the sign of Ra, and began to speak in a powerful, resonant voice. “In Aegypt, where the people are being weaned from dark superstition and shown the glory of Ra, the Lord of Life, we, priests and converts, worked amid great dangers. When we heard of the vibrator we petitioned that one should be sent us for our protection. We were doing all in our power to ensure peace, but we must be prepared for war.

“The inevitable day came when the heathen essayed to contest the mightiness of Ra. From the south and the west, black men and brown, they marched upon us. We sent messengers to warn them that we were invincible. They killed our messengers. In their hundreds and thousands they advanced — we had no choice but to use the vibrator. As the switch was pulled over they dropped in their legions. In men and horses alike that vibration which we call life, given of Ra, was quenched. The trees and flowers drooped and died. The heathen covered the ground with their innumerable bodies.

“Ra blazed down in great anger on their corpses, and they were corrupted. But Ra was displeased also with his servants. From the field a stench arose and floated over all Aegypt, and with it came plague.

“Out of every four men, three died. When it became safe, we went out to see the battlefield. It had been a fruitful, pleasant land. Now we found it scorched and sandy beneath the pitiless eye of Ra — an arid desert.” He finished and walked back to his seat. Calmly Alhui called the next witness.

“Yoshin, of the Temple of Knowledge.”

Yoshin stood up. He was a bent, bearded man of great age and spoke in a voice scarcely audible. “In our mountain fastnesses we have for centuries pur- sued pure knowledge. We have been but little molested for we have not the things which most men value. But more lately we have been disturbed. The men to the southwest caused us no anxiety since they are content to stay behind the mountain barriers, but the men to the east and north-east became dangerous. Lemuria provided us with vibrators. Many of our members reverted temporarily to a state of less enlightenment. They grew vengeful and pursued our attackers far to the northeast. As a monument to their folly and their madness there is now a great desert beyond our northern mountains.”

The next witness was called. He wore a military uniform, and his speech was brief and concise. “To protect the communications on the west between ourselves and the new colony of Atlantis, I was given a vibrator. In repulsing continual attacks by men from the north, several deserts have been created.”

He retired and Alhui called another witness, and then another. Endlessly it seemed to go on, this tale of deserts large and small created by my machine. And as the recital continued, the temper of the council changed. At last Alhui disposed of the final witness and called upon me again. “You agree with the council’s proposal, Kis-tan?”

“I do.”

“And you will do all in your power to construct a modified form of the vibrator?”

“It may not be possible, but I will do my best.”

There was a break here in my vision, projected memory, or whatever mental process I was undergoing. Some months (I cannot say how many), had passed, and I was in my laboratory with my assistants. We had worked hard, and now fancied we had met with success. A fair trial of the new machine we had produced would have been too dangerous, but for a preliminary test to ensure that the working parts functioned properly, we had constructed a special chamber of stone slabs, lined with insulating material. Into this we moved the machine with infinite care, and together with it we enclosed growing plants and a few small animals.

I pulled over the switch.

We intended to give the equivalent of one minute’s exposure to the vibrations. Half the time had passed when the catastrophe came without warning.

The stone chamber collapsed. Its walls did not merely fall, they seemed to dissolve abruptly into a fine dust. I had a brief glimpse of the machine still standing. Then some titanic force gripped and seemed to wrench me apart.

Back to Atlantis

Again that sensation of falling timelessly through a silent, swirling blackness until suddenly I was aware that I stood upon a solid floor. Before me was a tall window and I looked down through it on a scene of bustling activity. Immediately below ran broad, busy streets and beyond them lay the quaysides of a harbor. Ships were being unloaded there by swarms of hurrying men. Still further off ships with sails of red, purple or russet, looking like huge butterflies, were sliding over a blue sea. Homeward bound with a small, joyous white wave curling from the bows. My gaze followed one as it rounded the headland and passed the harbor pylons. I saw the tumult on deck and the lowering of the vivid scarlet sails, embroidered with the golden emblem of Ra. The wealth of the world was pouring into Zapetl, the greatest port in Atlantis.

I knew that I was Xtan, a person of rank, as was shown by the feathered headdress which I now held in the crook of my left arm. A glittering, embroidered tunic clad me to the knees, while from my shoulders hung a cloak of gorgeous feather work.

Behind me in the silent room stood two guards flanking a pair of doors which led to inner apartments. They were rigid as statues of wood and gold – not a movement, not a creaking of their military harness revealed them for human beings. Even when, with a sudden click, the doors flew wide open, their eyelids did not so much as flicker. Without hesitation I crossed the room, and as I crossed the threshold the doors slid together once more and refastened themselves.

The room I now entered seemed austere to my Atlantean taste. There was comfort in its chairs and couches, but unnecessary decorations had been discarded. There were none of the prized feather work pictures essential to any house of social standing, nor were the usual intricate screens visible, while the lighting arrangements instead of providing an excuse for an orgy of gold-work were carefully concealed.

I approached the far corner and saluted a figure which sat sunken in a chair. “You commanded me, Zacta, and I have come,” I said.

Zacta raised his white-haired head and searched my face with a troubled look. He was a very old man – so old that none knew his true age. Even the oldest could remember but little change in him, and in the popular mind he was all but immortal. The wisdom which the phenomenal man had amassed his longevity had guided Atlantis through many a crisis until he had come to be regarded as a mixture of oracle and demigod. There was even a growing superstition that when Zacta should die, Atlantis would fall.

“Yes, Xtan, I sent for you,” he said, still studying my face. He put up a hand and stroked his beard, pausing so long that I became uneasy. At last he said: “I have been told that you are experimenting with vibrations — with a view to finding a new weapon. Is this true?”

I nodded. “It is perfectly true — and I have been more successful than I had hoped.”

Zacta shook his head slowly. “I have always feared this — that vibration should have remained unknown.”

“But you have taught — ”

“I have taught you to seek truth, and science is a form of truth. My quarrel is not with your discovery, but with your publication of it. There are some forms of knowledge which it is unwise to spread; men are not yet ready to handle them. They cannot control themselves. How then should they be able to control mighty weapons? This knowledge of yours must be suppressed — it is a danger, not a blessing.”

“But—”

Zacta lifted his hand. “It must be forgotten. I have given the matter my deep consideration and I know that it may be perilous for Atlantis — for the world.”

I grew angry. My research had taken considerable time and money. My invention acclaimed by the military authorities. But if this old dotard were against me, all my work would go for nothing. I knew only too well his power and influence. Scarcely a soul in all Atlantis would dare to disagree with Zacta. It was plain that the old man was losing his grip. Could he not see that my invention meant the dream of ages come true? The mastery of the world.

He saw my rising temper with increasing displeasure. “You are not even a pioneer,” he said coldly. “There was a weapon such as yours in Lemuria.”

“I am not interested in mythology,” I answered contemptuously.

“Lemuria is no myth. It existed as a great empire, greater than Atlantis is today. It discovered a form of vibrator and though it was wise enough to see the danger, it was not wise enough to suppress the invention entirely. The scientists experimented with a new type. Something went wrong. Matter was disintegrated. The crust of the Earth was weakened so that the volcanic fires burst through. The Earth cracked open. The whole world shook in great paroxysms, and when all was quiet again Lemuria no longer existed.”

“A legend,” I said. “An exaggerated version of some little local eruption. As for this tale of the great Lemuria — well, it may amuse children as much as any other fantasy.”

Zacta shrugged his shoulders. “Truth is not altered by belief or disbelief. Lemuria, I say, destroyed herself: it shall never be said that Atlantis destroyed herself.” We looked deep into one another’s eyes, exchanging a challenge. “You must suppress that knowledge,” he repeated. “Vibrators must not be built.”

I laughed. “Your information is out of date. Six vibrators have already been built and mounted.”

The old man sagged further in his chair. He looked even older. His eyes were tragic as he stared, at last he asked: “Where are they mounted?”

‘They are strung along the east coast from Azco,” I told him. “It is a chain of defense against attack from beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The barbarians in Aegypt and the countries round its sea have become restive. They are jealous of our prosperity, and sooner or later they will attack us. The vibrators will strike their crews and their rowers dead, and not a drop of Atlantean blood will be spilt. Think of that, Zacta, think of that mastery and then you will see what the vibrators really mean to us.”

Zacta answered slowly: “Truly you have limited vision. How long will your machines remain mere defensive weapons? How long will it be before they are carried out into the world to conquer; to spread death, destruction and deserts? No, I say, the vibrators shall be destroyed.”

“And I say they shall not.”

We faced one another tensely. Zacta’s eyes grew hard and menacing. A youthful strength and purpose seemed to shine in them. I knew that he saw Atlantis, perhaps all culture, hanging upon our decision. So did I, but from the opposite angle. His blue veined, fragile hand began to move towards his side.

I was younger and quicker on the draw. There was a faint “phut” from my hand tube. Zacta’s tube clattered on the floor. He fell forward with a little feathered dart in his heart.

The Inventor Berserk

I stood for a moment scarcely conscious of what I had
done. And then as I gazed at his slumped form the true enormity of the thing came home to me. I had killed the greatest man in all Atlantis. Yet I was only the instrument of his destruction. The true contest had been between Zacta and my vibrator — and the vibrator had claimed the wisest of men as its first victim. Somehow I began to think of my machine as a sentient creature; I was fighting to protect the thing to which my brain had given birth.

I glanced swiftly round the room. There had not been noise enough to alarm the guards, but they were posted outside the only door. Could I march out trusting to bluff? The risk would be great for I did not know Zacta’s usual method of dismissing his visitors. The window offered more hope, providing that I was not noticed from the street. I decided that it was safer than an attempt to pass the guards. Impatiently I kicked off my sandals and fastened them to my belt, and then, thankful that Zacta’s austere taste had not caused him to remove the decoration from his house front, I grasped the scrolled stonework beside the window and began to climb.

Luckily there was only one floor between me and the roof for though the carving offered easy holds I was in bad form for such exercise, moreover, I was afraid of becoming giddy. It was with intense thankfulness that I at last pulled myself across the coping. There was little time to waste. I had no idea when someone would enter Zacta’s room and find the body.

As swiftly as I could I refixed my sandals and looked for the roof door. It was not difficult to find, and luck was with me for it was unlocked. At the top of the stairs I pulled myself together and began to descend with an appearance of unhurried dignity.

In the forecourt my car waited, balancing on its gyroscopes. I approached it unmolested and slid thankfully into the driving seat. The hand which I put out for the steering stick was trembling violently. The gates opened before me and I jerked the machine forward.

So far, so good. But where was I to go? When Zacta’s body should be found every man and woman in Atlantis would be against me. Every man? No, perhaps some of my assistants would understand. The vibrator meant everything to them. They would realize that obedience would have caused all our work of years to go for nothing. Tlantec, my head assistant was near Azco where he had been superintending the erection of the vibrators. A glance at the indicators showed me that the batteries were almost full. There would be more than enough power to take me to Azco. I made to the east side of Zapetl and opened flat out. The little gyro car gave everything she had.

Some hours later I slid to a stop outside the control house on the cliffs above Azco. Over the house towered Number One Pylon, supporting the greatest of the vibrators. Far to the north I could see a similar though smaller pylon, the second of the chain we had erected. Before I could climb out of the car, the door of the house opened. Tlantec, with a dart tube in his hand, stood facing me. I knew that the news had reached him. “Zacta is dead,” he said. “They say you killed him.”

I began to explain and Tlantec’s eyes grew wide as he listened. When I spoke of Zacta’s ban on the vibrators he stared incredulously. “But why — why?”

I repeated the old man’s words and he frowned. “He must have been mad — the greatest power in all the ages to be thrown away for an old wives’ tale.”

“ — And so,” I finished, “It came to that. Nothing would alter Zacta’s mind once it was made up. Either he or the vibrator had to be destroyed.”

There was a considerable pause. I waited anxiously for Tlantec’s decision for my immediate fate was in his hands. If he should choose to shoot me where I stood, he would be acclaimed a national hero...

He lowered the tube slowly, gazed at it in a half absence of mind and then turned his eyes back to me. “You were right, Xtan,” he said, “but I wish there had been some other way.”

I nodded. “So do I — but you know Zacta’s power. There was no other way.”

We walked together into the house. “And now?” he asked.

“We must communicate at once with the other pylons. If necessary the vibrators must fight against their own destruction. As soon as it is known that I am here we shall be attacked.”

Tlantec looked white. “You mean that we must turn the machines to landward — train them on our own people?”

“How else can we protect them?”

He went away to call up the other pylons while I searched for some badly needed food. He was gone perhaps half an hour. When he came back it was with a serious expression.

“Pylons 2, 3 and 5 are agreed to stand with us,” he reported, “but numbers 4 and 6 are opposed. They say that if Zacta condemned vibrators, then vibrators must be destroyed, and they will obey him.”

I thought rapidly. If pylons 4 and 6 were to turn their machines on us it would be the end. “Quick,” I said, “get the protection suits.”

While I was still struggling into mine Tlantec had fastened his and gone to the window. He called me to him and pointed down to the town. Even at this distance of three miles it was plain that something unusual was taking place. From the city gates a crowd of men and women was hurrying along the road towards us. Either Pylon 4 or Pylon 6 must have informed the town where I was to be found and the crowd was out to avenge Zacta. I hurried to the message machine and made connection with the military barracks in Azco.

“Xtan speaking,” I called. “Head back your people or I will not be responsible for the consequences.”

I crossed to the big control wheel in the middle of the room and spun it. The big vibrator far above swung slowly to face the town. Tlantec was looking very pale.

“But this is only a mob — unarmed,” he protested.

“A mob is capable of destroying the vibrator. They must be stopped. Switch on minimum power.”

He obeyed with reluctance. The crowd was as yet out of range and we watched intently.

A mile and a half away from us they came to a stop. Those in front were behaving strangely. Staggering and moving with odd, twitching, wooden actions. The vibrations at that distance were too weak to kill them, but strong enough to disorganize their movements. Those behind did not understand what was happening and relentlessly pushed forward. Several of the leaders dropped and lay still. Those to the rear suddenly realized what they faced. They surged to and fro in panic, then broke and retreated pell-mell.

The message machine rang stridently. “Pylon Number 2 speaking. Have you gone mad, Xtan?”

“The vibrators must be saved — at any cost.”

The reply was bitter. “You have killed a score of unarmed men already, Xtan. We won’t stand for massacring our own countrymen. Get that?”

“But if they get close they’ll wreck us,” I said desperately.

The voice answered with a sneer. “Are you sure it’s not your own skin you’re worrying about? You murdered Zacta. Pylon Number 2 is quitting, and I guess the rest will, too.”

The machine went dead. Tlantec spoke from the window.

“They’re running back into the town.”

Following his words came a whine overhead, followed by a dull, distant boom. We looked at one another. The guns behind Azco had opened up. There was only one way for us to silence them.

“Full power on the vibrator,” I ordered.

Tlantec did not move. He stared at me with a curious intentness. “We should destroy all Azco.”

“Those guns must be stopped.”

“Every man in the town and for miles around would die. You must be mad. Think of the consequences, man. You’d ruin the country.”

The Last Destruction

I shrugged my shoulders and walked across to the switchboard. What were a few lives? To me at that moment no price seemed too big to pay for the preservation of the vibrator. But before I could pull over the handle Tlantec was upon me. The force of his attack hurled me to the floor, but he could get no hold upon the cumbersome garments I wore. I wrenched free and rolled to one side, but before I could rise he was on me again, hammering with futile fists against the heavy clothing.

I groped desperately for my dart tube only to remember that it was inside by suit, out of reach. With a heave and a twist I managed to roll uppermost again. Both of us were breathing hard for the suits were weighty. I sought with clumsy gloves for his throat, but when I found it, it was impossible to get v a grip. Swiftly I changed my tactics and began to fumble for the fastenings of his suit. The vibrator was still at minimum power and directed towards the town, but here, right below it, there might be sufficient radiation to do the job.

He felt my change of plan and knew what I was after. His struggles grew still more desperate, swinging from side to side in an effort to throw me off, and causing my groping hands to slip again and again from the fastener. At last I managed to get a finger through the ring, and at that moment Tlantec put forth his mightiest effort. The heave he gave sent me flying to one side, but my finger remained crooked in the ring, and as I went his suit was ripped wide open. I felt him quiver as the vibrator did its work. He never moved again.

I struggled up, dizzy and panting. Another rumbling boom reached me. How many shots had been fired while we struggled, I could not tell. It was surprising that the pylon had not been hit already. With an effort I lurched across the room and pulled the full power switch.

I let it stay for a minute before I pushed it back into place and crossed to the windows. The sight I encountered shocked even me. As far as I could see the country was devastated. The vibration had withered grass, leaves, bushes and flowers alike. They drooped and sagged where a few minutes ago they had proudly waved. I turned my gaze towards Azco. The city was lifeless – men lay where they had fallen in the streets. The only moving thing was the smoke which still rose from untended fires. On the road in the foreground was a tangle of men and women. A minute ago they had been a crowd in full flight, but none of them would ever run again. In the harbor vessels, still with the wind in their sails sped unguided to ram one another or to crash upon the stone quays. But — and most important to me — the guns had been silenced. The vibrator was safe.

I crossed back to the board and switched it off entirely. There was no longer need even of minimum power. Within miles of me was nothing living.

I went outside and looked up at the great vibrator. My right hand come up in a salute. “You and I will rule the world,” I told it. Suddenly it all seemed irresistibly funny. I began to laugh and laugh.

I stopped laughing as abruptly as I had begun. Why had I been laughing? I did not know and I began to feel soberly frightened. “You must be mad,” Tlantec had said. Had he been right? Was I going mad? Why, why had I begun to laugh so wildly, senselessly? I went back into the building strangely afraid. I seemed to be two people, one of whom I could not trust, and who might take control at any moment.

My memory of time is hazy, but I know that it was two or three days later that I saw something moving in the distance. I fetched field glasses and managed to make out a marching column of men advancing from the interior. They wore uniforms, but of no regiment which I knew, moreover they were accompanied by unfamiliar machines. Evidently the attack was beginning. I had expected it. I would let them get a little closer, and then blast them out of existence.

I waited impatiently. I was filled not with the desire to kill, but with the determination to assert the supremacy of my vibrator — the greatest power in the world, the triumph of man’s genius. “At ten miles,” I said aloud, “you shall conquer them.”

But the marchers were still twelve miles away when my patience gave out. They seemed to be in no hurry to attack. Once more I laid my hand on the power switch. “Now show them who is master,” I cried as I pulled it over.

I took only one glance before the field glasses dropped to the floor. The advance had not stopped. The men were plodding on as deliberately as before. A hurried glance at the dials assured me that the machine was working perfectly. What, then, could have happened?

Suddenly I had it. Those unfamiliar uniforms were insulating suits. One of the other pylon commanders had given away the secret. The vibrator was straight upon them. How long, I wondered, would the suits withstand its full force? I, myself, was only assailed by reflected vibrations, and safe enough. All I could do was to keep the machine full on and trust to time.

Half an hour later they were still advancing. I began to lose hope. For all appearances the vibrator might as well have been inactive. I smiled rather bitterly when I recalled that the longest time we had dared to run even a small vibrator in our tests had been two minutes. We had not known what we had feared, but we had feared something.

Suddenly, that something began to happen.

Five miles away the ground split from a center in radiating crevasses. A large circle crumbled away to dust before my eyes, leaving a vast, shallow bowl. But the bowl did not remain shallow. Its bottom continued to crumble and to sink. I saw the men far beyond it halt in dismay and turn back, hurrying as best they could in their heavy clothing.

A violent shaking of the ground sent me to the floor. The pylon above rocked and groaned, but it did not fall. I crawled across the room and threw out the vibrator’s switch, but as I did it, I knew it was too late. Zacta had been right. My vibrator was bigger than I knew. It could not only take life, but by prolonged exposure it could disintegrate matter. The shallow bowl had now become a stupendous shaft. The internal pressures were shifting. Another shock set the whole room shivering. I staggered back to the window. The ground had heaved and was cracked in all directions. What had I done? What had I started ? A cataclysm which would shake the world, which might destroy all Atlantis.

A still greater shock made me clutch the window frame. The mighty cliffs to the north had split asunder; up the cleft the sea was roaring in one stupendous wave. From inland came a spurt of livid flame, searing the heavens. The internal fires were loosed.

David Hixton paused and then he added: “The next thing I heard was old Fossdyke’s voice. It was still booming away about “this weapon which will give us the mastery of the world.” I could not stand it. I got up and ran from the room.

“I did not stop running until I had reached my workroom, because there was only one thought in my mind. I must smash the vibrator.

“Kis-Tan had let it loose on Lemuria. Where is Lemuria? Xtan had let it loose on Atlantis. Where is Atlantis? No one should say that Hixton had loosed it again. I went at it with a sledgehammer, but Alan heard me and came in too soon. And now they’ve got it. In ten years or less every man will be reviling my name — every man, that is, who is still left alive.”

Diana put a hand over his. “My dear, they have not got it all. Only part of it. You smashed some important piece — I don’t know what piece, not do they. They can’t make it work.”

David looked up at her, half-comprehending. “They can’t—?”

“No, dear, it’s useless. None of your assistants knows enough to help them.”

David’s eyes brightened, his face twisted. He began to laugh and the tears trickled down his cheeks. Diana stared while the laughter grew wilder and louder. Aghast, she tried to silence him, but the laughter and the sobbing both increased. Two attendants came hurrying across the lawn. One of them attempted to sooth David from his paroxysm. The other took her away. “You’ve let him excite himself too much,” he said, accusingly.

“But he isn’t mad,” said Diana. “Not really mad.”

The attendant listened for a moment to the hysterical laughter behind him. He shook his head. “Well, that all depends on what you call madness,” he said.

Spheres of Hell

1933

The Prince Khordah of Ghangistan was in a bitter mood. His council, seated cross-legged upon a semi-circle of cushions before him, had come to know too well that look of dissatisfaction. Of late it had seemed to dwell perpetually upon his dark features. The members of the council were aware of his words before he spoke, so often had they heard them.

“To all great nations,” he observed, “might is right.               Today we hear much talk of the rights of small nations — and to what does it amount? Nothing but so much dust in the wind to fill the eyes of those who would see.

He glowered upon his councillors. Each appeared occupied in interested study of the mosaic floor. The beauty of its patterns was more soothing than the expression on the Prince’s face. More than one grimy forefinger scratched in its owner’s beard in order to give a misleading suggestion of thought. The council was formed entirely of old men. Not that old men are always wise, but they do have the advantage of less fiery ambition. And, whether one is a Prince in Ghangistan, or a Big Shot in Chicago, too much ambition at court will prove embarrassing. The ambitions of most of the council rose little higher than a bountiful supply of food and drink and an occasional change of wives. The Prince continued to address unresponsive figures:

“What can we do? These English, and other foreigners, trifle with us. They do not so much as stir to consider our demands. We are treated like children — we, of Ghangistan, whose temples and palaces were weathered when these English hid in caves, whose ancestors reach back unbroken to the creation. We offer them war and they laugh as one laughs at the ferocity of a cornered mouse. Here we must sit, impotent, while they pour over our country the froth and ferment of their way of life in mockery of the wisdom of our sacred ancestors.”

Again the Prince paused and looked questioningly about him. At the lack of response he shrugged his shoulders. Some of the spirit seemed to go out of him and he threw out his hands in token of helplessness. “ — And we can do nothing. We have no big guns, no airplanes. We must sit by and watch our ancient race seduced from its Gods and hear the voice of wisdom drowned by the sounding emptiness of materialism.” He finished dejectedly. His anger had subsided beneath fatalism and he brooded amid the respectful, if slightly bored, silence of the council. One ancient looked up and studied the Prince. He allowed a decent interval to elapse before he inquired: “Is it permitted to speak?”

The Prince regarded him with only a slight lifting of his despondency. “It is permitted to you, Haramin,” he agreed.

The old man stroked his beard for some moments in placid reflection. “It has seemed to me,” he began with slow deliberateness, “that, already, we are more affected by the Westerners than we acknowledge. Even our methods of thought have become curiously colored by their mental processes. We begin now to distort our pure wisdom to fit their strange conventions.”

A murmur of protest ran round the council, but none dare give full voice to his indignation because the old man was privileged. “Explain the full meaning,” commanded the Prince.

“It is well shown by an example. My Prince. See how these Westerners wage war. First they send a declaration to warn their enemies — is this not absurd? Then they use against that enemy a series of weapons similar to his own — which is plainly ridiculous. They have, in fact, rules for war — a conceit worthy only of children or imbeciles.

“We, in our wisdom, know better. We know that wars should be won or lost, not childishly prolonged until both sides give up for very weakness and weariness. And yet” — he paused and looked around him — “and yet we sit here lamenting our lack of weapons — lamenting that we cannot meet our oppressors on their own ground. It is a foolishness to consider the standards of the West in war.”

The Prince Khordah frowned. The tone of the other’s speech displeased him, but he was aware that some deeper thought had prompted it. He asked coldly: “Is it necessary, here, Haramin, to lurk like an old fox in a thicket of words?”

“I have a nephew, Prince, a man of great learning in the ways of the West yet retaining the wisdom of his ancestors — he has a plan which should interest Your Highness.”

The Prince leaned forward. At last they seemed to be getting somewhere. “Where is this nephew, Haramin?”

“I have brought him to await Your Highness’ summons.”

The Prince struck a silver gong beside him. To the entering servant he said: “The nephew of Haramin waits. Let him be brought before us.”

Ralph Waite’s father beamed genially across the dinner table. “It’s good to have you home again, my boy,” he said. “How long do you think you can manage?”

Ralph, a lusty, fair-haired young man, turned towards him. “Only the weekend, I’m afraid, dad.”

Mrs. Waite looked up with a little wrinkle of concern and disappointment. “Is that all, dear ? Don’t you think if you wrote nicely to them they might let you stay a little longer?”

Ralph checked a rising smile. “I don’t think it would be much good writing nicely to Amalgamated Chemicals, mother,” he said gravely.

“I suppose you know best, dear, but — ”

Mr. Waite broke in with some little excitement. “I’ve got something to show you after dinner, Ralph. Quite the most remarkable thing in all my gardening experience.”

His eyes were on his plate so that he missed the look with which his wife favored him. “But, dear,” she began, “Ralph will want to — ”

Ralph checked her with a glance. Of course he wanted to go and see Dorothy. His real desire was to rush off at this very moment, but he knew his father’s enthusiasm for his hobby. The old man would be sadly disappointed if he could not impress his son with his latest horticultural triumph. After all, Ralph reflected, the old boy got little enough pleasure. Fancy being pushed away in a little Cornish town like this for the rest of one’s life.

“What is it?” he asked.

Mr. Waite chuckled. “You’ll see, my boy. All in good time — all in good time.”

The town of St. Brian lies not far from the south coast of Cornwall. A swift river, the Bod, flows through it on its way to join the English Channel at a point where it is almost the Atlantic Ocean. To the north one can see those strange, dazzling white cones which are the refuse of the clay pits, and from the higher points it is possible to trace the course of the Bod right down to the sea in the south. The houses are mostly built of grey stone, their roofs clamped down tightly upon them lest they should be whirled off by the gales which in winter sweep in from the Atlantic. In sheltered spots where they are able to take advantage of kindly climate, flowers and plants thrive, as was excellently testified by Mr. Waite’s garden.

Dinner concluded, he led the way importantly across a stretch of smooth lawn to the thick hedge masking the far corner of his ground. As they reached a gap, he paused, and with something the manner of a showman, waved his son forward. “There, my boy,” he said proudly. “Just take a look at that.”

Ralph, as he stepped forward to the hedge was fully prepared to be impressed, but at the sight which met him, the nicely turned phrases he had thought up for the other’s gratification fled away. He stared speechlessly for a moment, then: “What on earth’s that?” he demanded.

“Ah, I thought it’d surprise you. Fine growth, what?”

“But — but what is the thing,” persisted Ralph, gazing in horrified fascination.

“Well,” Mr. Waite admitted doubtfully, “I don’t think it’s been named yet — sort of experiment they got me to try out. A new form of marrow or something of the sort, I gather. Wait a minute and I’ll get the letter...”

He bustled back across the lawn while his son turned to regard the “fine growth” with renewed interest. Experiment or not, he decided that it was quite one of the most unwholesome looking plants he had ever seen. Almost spherical, it reminded him mostly of a pumpkin with a diameter every bit of two feet. But it was not so much the size which was responsible for his surprise as the color. It lay before him, clammily glistening in the evening sunlight, a ball of blotchy, virulent yellow. The ground all around it was bare, and it lay on one side attacked to the earth only by a poor, twisted wisp of a stalk, as foolishly disproportionate as a pig’s tail. “Must be a good weight — a thing that size,” he muttered to himself.

With some distaste he inserted his hand beneath it, and then stared at the thing in blank surprise. It weighed possibly a pound. He was still staring at it when Mr. Waite returned with a paper fluttering in his hand. “Here you are. That and the instructions for growing are all I know about it.”

Ralph took the typewritten letter. It was headed “Slowitt & Co.,” and underneath, in smaller type was added: “agents for Experimental Growers Company.”

“Dear Sir,” he read. “In the course of our experimental work we have succeeded in evolving a new form of vegetable. We have the greatest hopes that this extremely prolific plant will successfully adapt itself to a great range of climatic conditions. In so far as we have been able to reproduce the various conditions in our laboratories, the results leave nothing to be desired, and we now feel that the time has come to put the plant to test in the actual climates it will have to face.

“Our agents, in pursuance of our instructions to find persons likely to be interested in this development, forwarded us your name as that of a consistently successful exhibitor at a number of fruit and vegetable shows, and as one who takes an interest in the scientific side of horticulture. We have, therefore, great pleasure in asking you if you would consider assisting us in the introduction of this new form…”

Ralph read far enough to enable him to grasp essentials. “This is all very well, dad,” he remarked. “But what on Earth’s the good of the thing? It must be hollow — have you felt its weight?”

“Oh, that’s all right. It says in the growing instructions which they sent with the seeds, that one must not be surprised at the extraordinary lightness — I gather that when it is full grown it begins to solidify or harden. Though it is a bizarre looking thing, I’ll admit, and so were the seeds.”

He fished in his pocket and found an object which he handed over. “I kept this one out of curiosity. You see, they’ve enclosed it — or, rather, several of them — in a kind of capsule. The instructions were emphatic that the capsule must not be opened in any circumstances.”

“Then how — ?”

“You just bury the whole thing and water it very plentifully — I suppose that dissolves the capsule and let’s the thing begin to grow. It certainly shows a fine turn of speed. You’d never guess how long it is since I planted this chap.” He stirred the yellow ball with his toe.

Ralph did not attempt the guess. “How long?” he inquired.

“Three days,” said his father with pride. “Only three days to reach that size. Of course. I’m not sure how long it will be before it’s any use, but it’s started very well, and — ”

But Mr. Waite’s intended lecture was frustrated. His wife’s voice tactfully summoned him to the house. “Don’t tell anyone about this yet, my boy. I promised to keep it quiet till the thing should be full grown,” he said as he hurried across the lawn.

Ralph thankfully departed on his intended visit. Later, he was unable to remember whether it was curiosity or absence of mind which caused the one remaining seed capsule to find its way into his pocket.

Dorothy Forbes had expected Ralph earlier. She had even employed sundry of her waiting moments in inventing such reproaches as might be becoming in a lady slightly neglected. It was a pleasant mental exercise, but little more; Ralph’s method of greeting did not allow of the interview being placed on a dignified basis. Instead of venting displeasure, she smoothed her frock, shook back her fair hair, wondered for a moment why one should blush quite so warmly, and suggested that there was a swing seat in the garden.

The swing seat was such a success that it was quite half an hour before an object on the other side of the garden caught Ralph’s eye and caused him to sit up, staring. Just visible over the top of a cucumber frame was a curved section of a familiar yellow surface. “Good Lord,” he said.

“What ?” asked Dorothy. Following his line of sight, she added: “Oh, that’s one of Daddy’s secrets — you’re not supposed to see it.”

“Well, now I have seen it, what about a closer view?”

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter, but don’t tell him you've seen it.”

A few seconds sufficed to settle any lingering doubt. The plant behind the frame was identical with that in his father’s garden, though possibly a few inches smaller. “That’s odd,” Ralph murmured.

Dorothy nodded, though she misapplied the remark. “I think it’s horrid. I told Daddy I’m sure it’s unhealthy, but he only laughed at me. Somehow I hate the thing. There’s such a nasty, poisonous look about that yellow.”

“He’s keeping it secret?”

“Yes — he’s very jealous about it. He says it will make him famous one day.”

Ralph nodded. This made it stranger still. He considered for a moment. Two people, each thinking himself unique, were growing this most unprepossessing vegetable. “What about a little walk?” he suggested.

Dorothy, with a slight surprise at the sudden change of subject, assented. It was a wandering stroll, apparently aimless. Nevertheless, it took them close to a number of back gardens. Altogether they counted over twenty of the yellow balls. When Ralph returned home to London it was obvious that in a very short time there would be no more concealment of the strange growths. They were swelling to prodigious sizes with a swiftness which was rendering secrecy impossible. Already two peppery gentlemen who had considered themselves favored experimenters had discovered one another’s rivalry and were indulging in wordy unpleasantness.

It could not be long before all twenty, and other, undiscovered growers would hear about it and join in the indignation. Dorothy’s next letter, therefore, did not astonish him when it announced that the cats were out of the bag and the gardeners of the town of St. Brian were in full cry for one another’s blood. “When our fathers discovered that they were rivals,” she wrote, “it was bad enough. But now there are more than a score of them tearing their hair and threatening legal proceedings. It isn’t only in St. Brian, either. We’ve heard reports that hundreds of gardeners both in Cornwall and West Devon are growing the things.

“Ours is so big, too. It’s over four feet in diameter now and looks more evil than ever. I’m beginning to feel a bit afraid of it — I know that sounds silly, but it’s the truth. I told Daddy the other day that there was something wicked about it and that I was sure that it was never meant to grow in England, but he only laughed and said neither were potatoes. All the same, I think the balls are beastly things. I hear that some boys cut the stalk of one near Newquay and rolled it down the cliffs so that it burst — I’d like to do the same with ours, only I hate the idea of touching the thing — ugh.”

The earlier part of the letter caused Ralph some quiet smiles. He knew very well the temperament of the amateur gardener with all its jealousies and enthusiasms, and the prospect of the warfare which must now be disturbing the community could give the unprejudiced onlooker no little amusement. But he grew more serious as he recalled the sickening appearance of those growths when they were only two feet in diameter — already they had swelled to four.

Unreasoning as Dorothy’s dislike of them might be, he found himself able to understand it and to sympathize with it. He was worried by the feeling, for he preferred reason to prejudice. Nevertheless the matter was gradually slipping into the back of his mind until it was recalled a few days later by a paragraph tucked away at the foot of a newspaper column.

"Several cases are reported from Newquay, the well-known, Cornish holiday resort, of an outbreak of rash which is puzzling the local doctors. It is thought that the condition may be consequent upon prolonged or injudicious exposure of the skin while sunbathing.”

For a moment he was puzzled to know when he had lately thought of Newquay, then he remembered that it was near there that the yellow ball had been pushed over the cliffs.

Dorothy’s next letter informed him that a state of excitement was prevailing all over the West Country. The inhabitants, it appeared, had split into two schools of thought on the subject of the yellow balls. The growers and their friends were noisily upholding their rights to grow what they liked on their own land, while the opposition, without apparent grounds for the statement, proclaimed that the things were unhealthy.

They shared, Dorothy surmised, her revulsion against them. Some days before a minor riot of protest had taken place in Bodmin. In the course of it, three balls had been slashed open. After he had finished the letter, Ralph turned to his newspaper and found information which brought wrinkles of speculation to his forehead.

The cases of rash at Newquay had become serious. One of the victims had died and the others were in a precarious condition — it was, according to the correspondent, impossible to state definitely that the rash was the cause of death, but he evidently had more than suspicions. And then followed the information that the same, mysterious rash had made its appearance at Bodmin, coupled with an assurance that it could not, in the later cases, be in any way attributed to sunbathing.

Thoughtfully, Ralph withdrew his father’s seed capsule from his pocket and regarded it. “I may be a fool. It’s probably just coincidence, but it’s worth investigating,” he told himself.

Before he sought his own office, he called in at the laboratory of a friend who worked in the biochemical department of Amalgamated Chemicals, Ltd.

Two days passed before he heard any result of the examination of the capsule. Then Arnold Jordan, the biochemist, entered his office just as he was finishing off for the day. "You’ve tackled it?” asked Ralph.

Arnold nodded. “Yes, I’ve tackled it. And I’m not sure whether I owe you a dinner for putting me on to it, or whether you owe me a dinner for putting in the devil of a lot of work. On the whole I approve of the latter.”

“Oh, all right. You look as if some good food wouldn’t do you any harm. Come on.”

It was not until the end of the dinner, over the coffee and cigarettes, that Arnold consented to discuss his conclusions. Then he began with an expostulation. “I do think, old man, you might have given me a bit more warning about that beastly stuff you brought along.”

“Well, I told you I had an idea it was pretty noxious,” Ralph pointed out. “But, after all, the reason I brought it at all was that I didn’t know much about it.”

"Where did you get it?” asked Arnold curiously. His manner shed its slight banter and a look of seriousness crept into his eyes as Ralph explained. “Good God. You don’t mean to say these things are being grown. What for?”

“Food — what else does one grow vegetables for?”

“This is a fungus.”

“I thought it looked that way, but quite a lot of fungi are edible when they’re cooked.”

Arnold failed to reply for some seconds – he seemed not to have heard and was staring fixedly into space. When he turned back Ralph was startled by the expression on his face. “Do you know anything about fungi?”

“No,” replied Ralph promptly.

“Well, I’ll be short about it, but I’ll try to show you what this business means. First of all, there are two types of fungi. Either a fungus is a saprophyte and lives upon decaying matter, or else it is a parasite, in which case it exists upon living matter. As far as the saprophytes are concerned, well, you’ve eaten a good many in your time as mushrooms or cheese, or a hundred other ways, but the parasites are not so numerous — the kind which most frequently afflicts human beings is ringworm.

“Now this particular bit of evil which you kindly handed to me is neither one nor other of these forms — it is both. That is to say that it flourishes equally well on decay, or on living flesh. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

Ralph began to see.

“This thing,” Arnold continued, “is not only a parasite, but a more vicious parasite than any known. All these growths you have told me of must be scotched — utterly wiped out and obliterated before they can become ripe. Once allowed to burst and scatter their spores — ” He spread his hands expressively.

Ralph regarded him nervously. “You’re sure of this ?”

Arnold nodded. “Of the danger, I am certain. About the plant itself I’m very puzzled. Obviously the spores were enclosed in a soluble capsule so that they might be planted and brought to fruit in safety. If your information is correct, the whole thing seems to be deliberate, and on a large scale. It is not merely a case of scattering a few spores to grow haphazard, but immense trouble has been taken to induce people to cultivate the fungi so that millions of spores will be spread.” He paused and added: “It’s up to us to try to stop this thing, old man. Somebody must, or God help thousands of miserable people.” Ralph was silent. He remembered the mysterious rash at Newquay, and the similar outbreak at Bodmin. He recalled, too, the sight of that slimy, yellow ball in his father’s garden and his face was pale as he looked at the other.

“We’re too late,” he said. “It’s begun.”

“Stuff,” said Major Forbes, with some violence. "Stuff and nonsense. You ought to have known better, young man, than to come to me with an old wife’s tale like that.” Ralph gave up his attempt to convince the old man. After Arnold’s warning of the previous evening, he had caught the earliest possible train for the West Country and travelled all night. There had not been any time to lose. So far as he knew, the enormous puff-balls might burst of their own accord at any hour — quite apart from the danger of one of them receiving an accidental puncture and spreading its spores about the neighborhood.

He had arrived tired and anxious to be greeted by both his own, and Dorothy’s father, with complete disbelief. In vain he put the cases of rash forward as evidence and quoted Arnold’s warning. It was useless. Each, at the back of his mind, seemed determined that this was some deep ruse by rival growers to get him out of the way — and, even if the thing was a fungus, what man worth his salt was going to be scared by a mere puff-ball, however big?

“No,” Major Forbes repeated firmly. “You say that your mother and my daughter are willing to leave — of course they are. Women are always wanting to run up to London for some fal-lal or other. Take ’em along with you, the change’ll do ’em good, but don’t come bothering me.”

And there was a similar interview with his own father. Mrs. Waite attempted to smooth over her husband’s irritation. “Now, don’t worry your father anymore, dear. You must see that he doesn’t want to come. I should like to go to London for a week or so, but don’t bother him — I should have to go soon, in any case, to do a little shopping.”

“But you don’t understand, mother. This is really serious — it’s dangerous. These things he is growing are rank poison.”

Mrs. Waite looked a little distressed. “Do you really think so, dear? I mean, it seems so unlikely — and the people who sent them don’t seem to think so. They definitely said they were vegetables.”

“Never mind what they said. Take it from me — or, rather, from Arnold who is an expert — that these things are deadly and must be destroyed.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Mr. Waite chimed in. “Destroyed? I’d like to see anyone attempt to destroy my specimen. I’d show him what’s what. There’s still a law in the land.”

“You’ll promise me, won’t you, John, not to eat any of it while I am away?” Mrs. Waite spoke as though her presence should nullify the plant’s poisonous quality. Her husband ungraciously conceded the point.

“All right,” he said gruffly. “I’ll promise you that much — though I repeat that I think the whole thing is a scare.”

“Well, if you won’t come, I can’t make you,” said Ralph, “but I do beg of you — ”

Again he went over the details of Arnold’s warning only to succeed in thinning his father’s temper and his own. At last he turned back to Mrs. Waite. “This is a waste of time. You’d better pack your things and get ready, mother.”

“You mean now, dear?”

“Yes. At once.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t possibly be ready before tomorrow. There are such a lot of things which just have to be finished off.”

Ralph went around again to see Dorothy. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” he told her. “I can’t make them believe there’s any danger in delay.”

“Well, one day won’t make much difference,” she suggested.

“It might — I want to get you both out of here as soon as possible. Any moment it may be too late.”

“We’ll be right away this time tomorrow. Now let’s talk about something else.”

“I can’t think of anything else. I’ve heard Arnold on the subject, and you haven’t. Let’s go out and have a look at the brutes.”

“Hullo,” said Arnold, entering Ralph’s office. “Where the devil have you been for the last two days?”

“Down in Cornwall; trying to make my people clear out.”

“Did you?”

“Got Dorothy and my mother up here. Neither of the fathers would shift — stubborn old fools. What have you been up to?”

Arnold disregarded the question. “You’ve done all you could?”

“Of course I have — short of kidnaping the old blighters.”

Arnold looked grave. “I’m afraid the news is rather serious,” he began. “The morning after our chat I went round to see a fellow I know at the Ministry of Health and they welcomed me there with open arms. This thing is a good many times bigger than we thought it was. The newspapers have been minimizing — didn’t want to ruin the holiday traffic, or some rot like that. They told me there that there have been hundreds of cases of the rash and several dozen deaths. Not only that, but soon after the dead have been buried those yellow puff-balls start growing from the graves.

“Their experts were as sure as I was that this form of fungus has never been heard of before, and most of us are pretty certain that somebody has been up to some rather ugly cross-breeding, with malice aforethought. They issued orders yesterday that no more of the things were to be planted, but that was useless – already round the centers where the things have burst the place is littered with the balls.”

“Growing already?”

“Thousands of them around Newquay and Bodmin and several other places. And nobody dare touch them.”

“But aren’t they doing anything — destroying them?”

“How?”

“Can’t they — can’t they spray them with acids, or something? Do you realise that the first lot hasn’t reached its natural bursting point yet? All this second crop is the result of accidental breakage. God knows what will happen if they are allowed to burst.”

“Nobody seems to know how to tackle the situation. But they’re not lying down ; they see the danger all right and they’re going after it day and night. You can see yourself that the problem is how to destroy the balls without liberating the spores.”

“There must be some way — ”

“Oh, they’ll find a way, but it’s got to be drastic and well organized. The thing they’re most anxious about at present is that there shall be no panic. You know what people are like when they lose their heads. If they go wild and start smashing the things wholesale, there’ll be hell to pay. You can take it from me that the departments concerned are already making things hum behind the scenes.”

"Meanwhile, the first crop of balls must be pretty nearly ripe...”

Ralph searched the lounge of the hotel where his mother and Dorothy were staying. He eventually found Mrs. Waite occupying a comfortable armchair in a secluded corner. He greeted her and seated himself beside her. "Where’s Dorothy,” he asked a few minutes later.

“Getting ready?”

"Ready?” repeated Mrs. Waite inquiringly.

"We arranged to go out and dance this evening.”

"Oh, dear me, of course. Then you didn’t hear from her — she said she would telephone.”

"She didn’t. What was it about?”

"Well, she won’t be able to go out tonight. You see, she’s gone down to Cornwall.”

‘She’s what ?” shouted Ralph in a voice which echoed across the lounge.

“Yes, dear, she said she felt she must go to Cornwall,” Mrs. Waite repeated placidly.

"But, why didn’t you stop her? Surely you realize the danger — good God, she may have caught the rash — she may die of it.”

Mrs. Waite looked a little shocked. “Well dear, I did tell her that I didn’t think you would like it. But she seemed so anxious about her father — such a nice trait in a young girl, I always think — that I didn’t feel that it was right to interfere too strongly.”

Ralph made no reply. His mother glancing at him saw that his face was drawn into tight creases. There was an expression in his eyes which hurt her. For the first time she began to appreciate that there was real fear behind his actions and talk of the last few days. Futilely she started to talk when she should have kept silent. “Of course this may not be so very dangerous after all — I expect it’s just another of these scares. Things will be all right in the end and we shall all have a good laugh at our fears. Don’t you worry, dear, I expect — Good gracious.”

Ralph was roused out of his thoughts to see what had caused her exclamation of surprise. He looked up to find himself facing his father and Major Forbes. An hour ago he would have been pleased to see them and cheered by the thought that the whole party was now reunited but now, his greeting was cold.

Major Forbes looked around him. “And where is Dorothy?” he asked.

Ralph answered him bitterly. “She’s gone to save you,” he said.

“Yes, my boy,” said Mr. Waite, “we certainly owe our escape to you. You seemed so positive about the danger that I did a bit of investigating – poked about a bit among the local officials. It was old Inspector Roberts who gave me the tip — he’s always considered himself in my debt over that matter of his boy. ‘Mr. Waite,’ he said, ‘I ought not to tell you, in fact I’m breaking orders by doing so, but if you take my advice you’ll get out of the district just as soon as you can.’ ”

“Yes, it was a straight tip, by God,” agreed the Major. “I managed to hear a few things about the country around — pretty bad. Some fool started a panic in Launceston. Half the town was out with sticks and stones and knives, smashing all the yellow balls they could find. A man told me the ground was white with spores as if there had been a snowstorm. Some of the growers tried to interfere and there was something like a battle. Pretty much the same thing seems to have happened in Tavistock and other places in West Devon.”

Ralph looked up. “Spores or riots,” he said, “I’m going down by the midnight train to get Dorothy out of that — what’s the time now?”

The Major snorted. “Don’t be a fool, young man. The girl’s all right. She’ll be back any moment now, I’ll warrant. They’re not allowing anyone to enter the area now, so she’ll have to come back. Your father and I came out on one of the last trains allowed through.”

“What’s the time?” Ralph demanded again.

“Twenty to ten,” said the Major, “and I repeat that you are wasting your time if you go down there.”

“The news,” Mr. Waite said suddenly. “There’s sure to be something about all this.” He called a waiter and asked for the radio to be switched on. A few moments later they were listening to the calm, familiar voice of the London announcer.

The general weather report was unencouraging and the voice went on to add: "Gale warning. The Meteorological Office issued the following warning to shipping at twenty hours, Greenwich Mean Time. Strong, westerly winds rising to gale force may be expected on all the Irish coast, English coast west of a line from Southampton to Newcastle, and English Channel.”

Ralph glanced at his father who caught his eye but sent a warning glance in the direction of his mother. Both of them grasped the implication. Thousands of light, yellow balls attached merely by skimpy stalks — and a gale rising.

The announcer began on the news: “We are asked by the Ministry of Transport to broadcast the following. Suspension of service. All train services between Exeter and points west thereof, have been temporarily suspended. Further details will be announced tomorrow.”

The Major looked at Ralph triumphantly. “I told you so. They’re isolating the whole district. There’s no point in your going down. We shall have Dorothy back here in no time.”

But Ralph was unconvinced. Dorothy had set out to get to her home and he had a horrid fear that she would do so if it were humanly possible. The Major did not seem to know his own daughter’s tenacity of purpose. He stood up with determination. “I’m going down there now. There are still cars, even if they have stopped the trains.”

Thump…thump…thump…went Ralph’s mallet. It was three days since he had left London, and now he was engaged in driving stakes into the hard soil of Dartmoor. A message earlier in the day had informed him that no news had been received of Dorothy. There could be no doubt that she had been trapped in the isolated area and was now — if she had succeeded in reaching St. Brian — still forty or fifty miles to the west of him. He reflected angrily on the events which had landed him at his present occupation.

He had rushed from the hotel in search of Arnold. Before midnight he had borrowed the other’s car and was travelling down Piccadilly in company with the taxis of homeward bound theatregoers. The traffic grew faster and sparser as he passed through sprawling suburbs. He looked forward to showing a good turn of speed on the great west road. But when he reached it the volume of traffic had undeniably increased once more. Long lines of trucks, not too punctilious about keeping to the side of the road, stretched before him.

A constant flow of private cars against him, unprecedented for the time of night, made it a difficult business to overtake the trucks. Ralph cursed the obstruction of the lumbering line and noticed for the first time that they were not commercial vans, but were painted khaki or grey, with army markings on their sides. He swore again. A piece of foul luck to get mixed up in army manoeuvres, but perhaps they would drop off at Aldershot. They did not. They held on the road to the west and, to his exasperation, were augmented by hundreds more.

“Anybody would think,” he muttered to himself, “that there was a war on. The whole blooming army seems to be going my way.”

To add to his troubles, the wind was rising, bringing with it sharp flurries of rain. Instead of making a dash through the night as he had intended, his speed was reduced to a crawl. Only infrequently did the traffic against him allow him to cut past a few of the lumbering shapes ahead. It was full daylight long before he reached Exeter, and he passed through the narrow streets of the old city still escorted by the army wagons.

Two miles beyond, the road was blocked by a barricade. Sentries with fixed bayonets were assisting the police to turn back all private cars. The representatives of both forces were equally unmoved by his offers of money or his loss of temper. “It’s no good makin’ a fuss, young feller,” advised a police sergeant. “If I’d been taking money today, I could have made my fortune — and retired on it. You get back ’ome now.”

There had been nothing for it but to turn his car round and drive sullenly back to Exeter. There he munched a necessary, though unappreciated meal while he decided on the next move.

“No private cars along ’ere,” the policeman had said. But the trucks were going through — those same damned trucks which had hindered him all night. Hundreds of them. They were passed without question, and moreover, without a search. It ought to be possible to jump one and stow away.

After a number of uncomfortable miles the truck stopped. The tailboard was lowered. “ ’Ere, you, come along out of it,” demanded a voice. A hand fastened firmly on to Ralph’s collar and dragged him painfully from his hiding place amid stakes and rolls of barbed wire. He landed amongst a group of men under the command of a sergeant. The latter came close to him, his pointed mustaches adding ferocity to his expression as he shouted: “What the — blazes do you think you were doing in that — lorry? You come along ’ere with me.”

The officer to whom he was taken had heard him out and then regarded him seriously. “I like your spirit,” he said, “but just listen to me a minute. You seem to know something of the situation, but you’re tackling it the wrong way. It’s no good your going over there.” He waved his hand to the west. “You couldn’t do a damned thing if you got through, except make yourself another victim. Your girl doesn’t want you to die. You know, if you give it a moment’s thought, that she’d be far prouder of you for helping to fight this stuff and beat it, for helping to blot the damned growths out and make thousands of people safe.”

“But she’s—”

“And don’t you realize that from the body of every man who dies out there, more of the yellow balls grow? If you go out there, you’ll not only be helpless, but you’ll be giving your body to feed them. No, my lad, your job is to help us to fight against the menace. This is a state of emergency and we need all the help we can get. What about it?”

Ralph at length consented with not too good a grace. He knew the officer was right. It was his job to fight, not to throw away his life, but... He did not quite trust himself. Sometime the urge to find Dorothy might prove too strong for him.

His working partner’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “What d’yer say to a cigarette, mate ?”

Ralph delivered a final blow to the stake they were fixing and agreed. To right and left of them across the moorland hills stretched the long line of posts. Here and there parties of men who had completed their sections were already beginning to weave an impenetrable net of barbed wire around the stakes. Behind, on the roadway, was a never-ending line of trucks loaded with more wire and yet more stakes, while closer, between themselves and the road, a sweating army of men labored to dig a broad trench.

Ralph was amazed at the organization which in two or three days had enabled the authorities to be well on the way to barricading off a whole corner of the country. At the same time he was puzzled. The purpose of the wire was obvious, but he failed to understand the reason for the broad, shallow trench. Nor was his partner Bill ’Awkins, as he called himself, able to explain its use. But he was ready to concede that the authorities knew what they were about, and were not wasting any time.

“Yus,” he remarked, “they’re quick on the job, they are. Why, a few nights ago there was a gale warning — p’raps you ’eard it?”

Ralph nodded.

“Well, the minute they knew that, they changed their plans like a flash. This 'ere line was to ’ave been miles further forward — they’d even begun to get the supplies up there when the order for retreat came. You see, the wind in these parts is pretty near always from the west. That’s what’s got ’em scared — the idea of this stuff being swept right across the country. If it’s true what they say about some feller a-startin’ it on purpose, then 'e picked a likely place.

"’Owever, the wind didn’t come to much, after all. Most of them yeller balls just rolled a bit and then got stuck in the valleys and ’ollows and such like — blamed lucky it was, too.”

“Then all this,” said Ralph, indicating the defenses, “is in case a real storm comes along?”

“That’ll be about the idea,” Bill agreed.

They smoked for a while in silence. From time to time a great plane would roar across the moor carrying food supplies to be dropped to the isolated, and, once, a large caterpillar tractor came swaying and plunging past them, bound for the west. Bill grinned as he caught sight of the men aboard it and the instruments they held.

“What are they?” asked Ralph. “Looks like a squad of divers going on duty.”

“Asbestos suits and masks,” the other explained. "And they’re carrying flamethrowers. Those’ll give the blinkin’ things a bit of a toasting.”

Some six nights later Ralph sat with a group in the stable which was their billet. One man was holding forth pessimistically. “I suppose they’re doing a bit of good with all this flame throwing and whatnot, but it ain’t getting ’em far. It’s the plant underneath that they want to get at, not just the yellow balls. They’re only the fruit — you don’t kill an apple tree by knocking off the apples. Fungi have a sort of web of stuff spreading all through the ground around them; that’s the life of the things, that’s what they — ”

There came a thunderous knocking on the door and a stentorian call to turn out. “Wind’s rising,” said the sergeant. “You all know your jobs. Get to ’em and look slippy.”

The wind swept in from the Atlantic at gale force. The first few puffs stirred the yellow balls and rolled them a little at the ends of their skimpy stalks. Later followed a gust which twisted them so that the stalks snapped and they were free to roll where the wind urged. As the pressure grew to a steady blast, it swept up a mass of the light balls and carried them bounding across the countryside, an army of vegetable invaders launching their attack to capture the land and destroy human beings. The wind of a week before had moved only the balls in the most exposed positions, but this time, none but the youngest and least developed had the strength in their stalks to resist the air which tore at them. Every now and then a splashing flurry of white would spring from the hurtling, bouncing horde as the tough, yellow skin of one was ripped by some sharp spike or the corner of a roof. Then the great spores themselves were caught up by the wind and carried on faster as an advance guard of the yellow army.

The gale seemed to display a diabolical zest for this new game. It increased its force to drive the balls yet more furiously. Hedges, ditches and trees failed to check the headlong charge. Even rivers proved no obstacle. With the wind behind, the balls sailed across in their thousands, bobbing and jerking on the rough surface. They were thrust relentlessly down the narrow streets of the little towns, jostling and jamming against the corners of the buildings until the houses were hid- den in a cloud of swirling spores and the surviving balls tore loose to follow bowling in the wake of their fellows.

This time, the wind did not desert them. Many lodged in sheltered hollows, but they served merely to fill them up and make a path over which the rest could travel. The wave of invaders climbed slopes and swept up and out on to the moor, a windswept bleakness where, unobstructed, they gathered speed to charge yet more swiftly upon the defenders. There was a line of fire across the country. Ralph had soon learned the purpose of the broad trench. Filled now with blazing oil and wood, it formed a rampart of flame.

“Here they come,” cried the lookout, clinging to a swaying perch high above. Soon all could see the few whirling balls which seemed to lead the way, and the turgid mass of yellow pressing close behind the outrunners.

They held their breath.

The first ball hurled themselves to destruction upon a cheval-de-frise, a hedge of bristling spikes which slit and tore their skins and set free the spores to go scudding on into the flames. But they came too thick and fast. In many places they piled up solid against the sharp fence forming ramps for those behind to come racing over the top and fall among the meshes of barbed wire. Every now and then a ball seemed to leap as though it possessed a motive power within itself. Missing the wire, it would bowl across a no-man’s land to a final explosion in the flaming ditch, its burning spores shooting aloft like the discharge of a monstrous firework.

“My God,” muttered the man next to Ralph, “if this wind doesn’t drop soon, we’ll be done. Look at that.”

“That” was one of several balls which, miraculously escaping all traps prepared for it, had leaped past them into the darkness behind.

“They’ll catch it in the nets back there and burn it when the wind drops,” Ralph replied with a confidence which he scarcely felt. “The thing that worries me is that the fires may die down — we can’t get near to fuel them from the lee side here.”

But, as luck had it, the fires outlasted the wind.

“Men,” began the officer in charge, the next morning, “it was a pretty near thing last night, and we have to thank Providence that we successfully withstood it. But we can’t afford to waste time. We’ve got to get to work at once. There may be another wind any time, and that mass of stuff choking the spikes must be cleared before it comes. I want every man who has experience of flamethrowers to step forward.”

Ralph, in company with many others, stepped out. He had no knowledge of flamethrowers, but it was the only way he could acquire an asbestos suit and get out into the danger area. For more than a week he had stifled his anxiety to know Dorothy’s fate, and now he could bear it no longer.

As he struggled into the heavy covering which would not only insulate him from fire, but also withstand the deadly spores, he turned over his plan. Perhaps such a simple getaway was unworthy of the name of a plan. Roughly, it consisted in placing himself among the foremost of those who would be clearing the ground with their fire sprays and working gradually ahead until the thickly scattered balls should give him concealment from the rest of the party. All he had to do then was to walk off to the west.

The only risk, once he was away, was that one of the food carrying planes might spot him. But the chance was remote, and it was unlikely that a lone straggler would be considered worthy of investigation.

The scheme worked as he had expected. No hue and cry was raised after him as he wormed away. In a very little while he stood alone at the threshold of the stricken district. As far as he could see in three directions the land was dotted with the yellow balls, poised ominously where the wind had left them, and seeming to wait for the next gale to pick them up and send them swirling onward to more victims. Surrounded by the evilly glittering skins, he shuddered for a moment before his determination reasserted itself. He drew a deep breath through his mask, threw back his head and strode on — a lone, grey figure, the only moving object in a scene of desolation.

In the first village he found a motorcycle with its tank half full, and for six miles it shattered the silence of the moor as he drove it, zigzagging to avoid the growths which littered the road. Then came a sharp valley so choked with balls that he must leave the motorcycle, throw away the heavy flamethrower, and climb across the balls themselves.

On several occasions one burst beneath his weight and he dropped some feet in a flurry of spores which threatened to choke his breathing mask until he could wipe them away. Then, laboriously, he must pick himself up and struggle on while streams of sweat soaked his clothing beneath the clumsy suit. Once he almost turned back to pick up the flamethrower with the idea of burning his way through the mass, but he remembered that its cylinder was already half discharged. Desperately he battled until at last his feet found the bracken and heather of the further hillside.

Afterwards, he could recall little of that journey. He became uncertain even of the number of days which passed as he tramped on and scrambled through one choked valley after another. Only odd incidents startled him now and then out of a stupid weariness: the little town on the moor where men and women lay dead in the streets while the fungus preyed on them, and the windows of the houses were full of yellow balls which mercifully hid the rooms — the voice of a madman chanting hymns in a barricaded hut – hymns which turned to cursing blasphemies as he heard Ralph’s step outside — the things which had been men, and which he was forced to move when thirst tortured him to find a drink in a dead inn. But somehow, with dulled senses, he strove on through the nightmare while with every mile he covered, the fear of what he might find at his goal, increased.

He felt that he was almost home when he crossed the river Tamar which separates Devon from Cornwall. The bridge was choked with the fungus. Upstream was wedged a solid mass of yellow but below it, the river raced, bearing an occasional, serenely floating ball which would later meet its fate before the fire boats in Plymouth Sound.

At last, St. Brian. The balls were fewer here. The wind had carried most of them away. His own home. Further on, Dorothy’s home — blank, locked. Deserted? He broke a window to enter and wander around the empty rooms. No trace of fungus inside the house. No trace, either, of Dorothy. Perhaps she was upstairs. He was weak and hungry. Every step of the climb was an effort. At the door of her room he hesitated — would she be there? — the yellow balls growing from her, feeding upon her still body?

He opened the door; anything was better now than uncertainty. No one on the bed — no one in the room. He began to laugh hysterically. Dorothy had fooled the balls. They hadn’t got her. She was alive, he was sure now — alive in spite of those damned balls. He fell on the bed, half-laughing, half-crying.

Suddenly he stopped. A sound outside. Voices? Painfully he crawled across to look out of the window. A group of people was coming up the road. People he knew. They were wearing ordinary clothes and among them was Dorothy — Dorothy. He tore off his mask and tried to shout to them. Funny, his voice wouldn’t work, somehow. Never mind. Dorothy had fooled the yellow balls. That was damned funny. He was laughing again as he sank to the floor...

“Yes dear. I’m real,” said Dorothy, at the bedside.

“But— but how—?”

“When I got here I found that Daddy had gone. The only thing was for me to go, too. Several of us went down the river in a boat and rowed along nearly to Land’s End. Right in the toe of Cornwall we were beyond the balls, and to windward of them. Then, when it was safe — ”

“Safe?”

“Yes, dear. It’s safe now. The balls are just like an ordinary fungus now — they don’t attack living things anymore. Then we came home and found you here.”

“But—”

“Not now. You mustn’t talk anymore dear. You’ve been very ill, you know.”

Ralph acquiesced. He went to sleep peacefully, her hand in his and a smile on his face.

The Prince Khordah of Ghangistan regarded the nephew of Haramin, bent low before him. “Your plan has failed,” he said.

The nephew of Haramin nodded dumbly.

“But,” continued the Prince, “it has cost that accursed country more than did ever our wars — and we have lost nothing. Tell me, why did it fail?”

“Your Highness, the stock did not breed true. After two or so generations it was no longer a parasite, but had reverted to a common, saprophytic fungus.”

“Which, however, it will take them many years to suppress?”

“Many years,” the other repeated hopefully.

The Prince Khordah spent a few moments in contemplation. “We are not displeased,” he said, at length. “Doubtless the first arrow did not kill a lion. There are other means, nephew of Haramin?”

The bent figure heaved a sigh of relief.

‘There are other means,” he agreed.

Invisible Monsters

1933

Toby Horning was doing culinary things with a frying pan, a saucepan, and an open fire which flickered and sent up a shower of sparks in direct challenge to the laws of the district. David Fordyce sprawled comfortably, pipe in mouth, and watched him. Toby was vain about his cooking. When he camped, he liked to do the thing properly — none of the civilized oil-stove business for him. The third member of the party, Dirk Robbins, sat a little apart repairing a leak in an ancient kettle. David turned lazily and stared out towards the rolling country which lay beneath their hilltop camp. It was dim and a little misty, with only the stars and a dim crescent to light it. Here and there he could distinguish bright points of light many miles away. Some of them he knew for the lighted windows in farm-houses. Others, crawling like sluggish fireflies through the blue night, were the headlights of automobiles. From a point well beyond even his extended horizon, the shaft of an aerial beacon aspired heavenwards in a slim post of light. Away on the left, he became idly aware of a bright spot hitherto unnoticed. As he gazed, trying to place it in the familiar landscape, it seemed to grow in intensity.

“That bus must be moving some,” he said, removing his pipe and pointing with the stem.

Dirk looked up from his kettle and studied the growing spot of brilliance for a moment. “Coming pretty near us from the looks of it. She must be big, too, to be carrying a light like that. Wonder what she’s doing around here? The main air line is miles to the south, beyond the beacon.”

Toby looked up, grunted, and returned to his cooking. “Can’t get peace anywhere nowadays,” he growled. “The whole ruddy world is nothing but a hustling pandemonium. Where’s the sense in all this rushing about, I’d like to know?”

The others did not reply. They knew Toby’s pet grumbles of old. Instead, they watched the searchlight growing as it rushed towards them.

“Right off her course, and Lord, isn’t she travelling?” David repeated.

The nearing ship, seen from the front, appeared as a black circle silhouetted against a nebulous halo of her own exhaust gases. David grew a little alarmed with the sense that something was wrong on board. They could hear no sound of her rockets as yet, but it was obvious that she was travelling low, cutting the dense atmosphere at stratosphere speed – a dangerous game to play, to say nothing of its illegality. Something very serious indeed must be amiss to let her captain take such a risk.

“Damn’ foolery,” muttered Toby. “She’s less than a thousand feet up — mind your ears.”

Still there was no sound, because she was travelling at a greater speed than her own noise. She hurtled on, passing a bare hundred yards to their right. The three crouching men with fingers tightly jammed in their ears, saw her lines of lighted portholes only as bright streaks. The plume from her rockets stretched out like the tail of a minor comet behind her. Only as she was almost level, did the thunder of her tubes strike them. First, great waves of sound buffeted them like physical blows which would have hurled them to the ground had they been standing. It was followed by a wind which scattered Toby’s fire, brought a groaning and crackling of branches from the trees close by, and strove to tear the clothes off their backs. Finally came the surges of hot, sulphurous fumes which caught their throats and set them coughing. Their heads turned to follow the modern dragon as she sped by. Toby’s lips were moving. His words were inaudible, but his expression told all that was necessary. A moment later, the rocket haze was dimmed by a mighty spurt of pure white flame. The sound came rolling back to the three watchers — a mighty detonation capping the roar of the rockets. Then silence — and darkness.

The men removed their hands from their ears and stared stupidly at one another. “Lord,” said David, shouting above his own temporary deafness, “what a hell of a smash.”

“He was riding for it and he got it,” said Toby.

Dirk turned to gaze again in the direction of the final flash.

“Do you think we ought — ?” he began.

David shook his head. “No good. We’d never find her in the dark, and not a man could have lived through that, anyway. We’d better wait until morning.” Toby grunted but said nothing. In an embittered manner, he began to collect materials for a fresh fire.

In spite of an early start, it was eight o’clock before they reached the wreck. Tracks were both scarce and faint, so that it was impossible to take the car nearer than a mile and a half from the scene. For the rest of the journey, it was necessary to march through the pine woods.

The ship had come to a final rest in a clearing. Behind her lay a furrow of shattered and scorched trees ploughed away by the onslaught. To all appearance, she had made an effort to clear the top of the hill and failed by two or three hundred feet. Her stern portion was tilted, so that the gaping rocket tubes pointed up to the skies. Her bows were an unrecognizable and tangled mass, while her middle was split into several sections. It was evident to David that, even in her crumpled condition, she was one of the biggest rocket ships he had ever seen. Locking at her with the memory of her speed fresh in his mind, he was surprised to find that she had retained even the semblance of her former shape. They stepped from the edge of the tree belt and crossed the open ground together. It was Dirk who asked the question which had begun to trouble them all.

“What is she? She’s obviously Earth built, not Martian, but she’s like nothing else I’ve ever seen.”

Too narrow in the beam for a liner, bearing none of the characteristics of a warship, she was, nevertheless, far too large for a private craft and had shown a turn of speed which would be hopelessly uneconomic in a freighter. The nearer they drew, the more she puzzled them. David led the way to the bows; he was certain that he had seen a ship of these unusual proportions once before, but he could not recall the circumstances to mind. They stopped and surveyed the wreckage. The massive plates of steelium were crumpled and crushed as though they had been paper. Jagged ends of twisted framework protruded here and there, gleaming like picked bones. The identification number on the bow was buried somewhere beneath the pile of interlocked rubbish. David was about to turn back to the stern when Toby gave an exclamation. At his feet lay a severed section of steelium, and faintly, the outlines of. three letters could be traced upon it.

“K-A-N,” he read out. “What on Earth does that mean?”

David frowned. He was trying to grasp something dimly remembered. It almost eluded him, then he had it with a rush. “The Hurakan," he cried. “I remember now. I saw a photograph of her before she sailed. This is she, all right.”

His two companions looked blank – the name conveyed nothing to them. “What was she ?” Toby asked at length.

“Explorer. She set off — must be seven years ago. Was to have been the first ship to leave the solar system.”

Dirk shook his head and professed to remember nothing of the affair.

“You wouldn’t. They did all they could to keep it quiet. There’d been such a lot of crashes about that time. I had it from a pal in the Rocket Service. He showed me the picture of her. A beautiful ship if ever there was one, and all the brains of the nation went into her building.”

Toby gazed at the shattered remnants. “All the brains of the nation,” he repeated, “and the lives of good men — all for this. What fools we are! Where did she go?”

“I don’t know anything beyond the fact that it was intended to take her out of the system. Perhaps she never accomplished it, but I fancy she did.”

“Why the odd name?” Dirk asked curiously.

“Hurakan? Oh, he was an old god who managed the thunder and the winds.”

“Well, she certainly thundered last night.”

As Dirk spoke, they came opposite a gaping crack in the hull. Toby paused, suggesting that it made a convenient entrance for exploration. The other two, after a momentary hesitation, agreed and followed him within. They found themselves in a well-built sleeping cabin which had been unoccupied at the time of the crash. David was thankful for that. He was not hankering for unpleasant sights. Toby strode across to the door in the opposite wall and tugged at the handle. As he expected, it was jammed and considerable leverage was necessary to free it. When at last, beneath their united efforts, it did give way, the three found themselves precipitated into a main corridor. Toby had had the forethought to come equipped with an electric torch. He drew it now and flashed the beam around. To the left, leading forward, a tangle of twisted metal choked the way, but to the right, the floor stretched away bare and empty, jerked from the straight, where the sections of the ship had strained apart. They had taken only a few steps, when a splintering crash somewhere towards the stem made them stop short. David jumped at its unexpectedness. “What was that?” he asked uneasily.

“Cooling off, probably,” Dirk guessed. “She would be in a fine state of heat by the time she hit. Some bits of the wreckage must still be contracting.”

Nevertheless, there was a discouraging eeriness about these sounds aboard a dead ship, which none of them relished. Perhaps, David thought, they had been mistaken, and someone had managed to survive the impact. He raised his voice in a hail. The echoes sped depressingly about the metal walls, but there was no reply.

Toby led on. Thirty feet along the corridor, a door to the left stood slightly ajar. They pushed it back and found themselves in a small living room. The furnishing was simple, consisting of a desk, a table, three or four chairs, and a bookshelf with bars to hold the books in place. But the discovery which most interested David, was that the walls were lined with charts. The constellations and groupings, he noted, were shown in black, but among them wandered a red line. His knowledge of three-dimensional navigation was crude schoolroom stuff, as was Dirk’s, but the two of them became interested, and began to examine the red line which they took to indicate the voyage of the Hurakan. The diagrams held little interest for Toby, and with a word to the other two, he left them to continue his explorations.

The inference, which David drew at length, was that the Hurakan had been exploring the system about Procyon. The discovery found him the more puzzled. The ship had set off seven years before, but he remembered Procyon to be 3.2 parsecs distant. To get there and back would require almost twenty-one years travelling at the speed of light. He pointed out the discrepancy to Dirk. The latter shrugged his shoulders. “I never understood why the speed of light was the theoretical limit. If these lines are right, it means that somehow or other, they passed that limit. Just look at the dates.”

David bent closer to inspect the minute figures scratched alongside the track. They indicated a speed which made him gasp. He began to speak, but a sudden sound stopped him in mid-sentence. The same cracking, crushing noise which had startled them before, became audible again. This time it was far louder and seemed closer. Hard upon it came Toby’s voice, calling them. They stared at each other. The cry was repeated with a note of alarm, and with one accord, they made for the door.

A few yards away, the ship’s broken back had caused the floor to tilt upwards, and as they scrambled up the slippery metal, they called back encouragingly. The quality of the second cry was hard to associate with Toby. It gave a sense of rising panic. A rattle of pistol shots ahead spurred them on. What was there to fire at ? David wondered. Perhaps others had found the wreck before they had. “Where are you?” he called.

Toby’s voice answered from the right, and simultaneously there came another wrenching creak of metal. David thrust back a door and the two of them stood gazing within. They faced a square storeroom. The walls were lined with deep shelves and rows of lockers, except for a space in the middle of the right-hand wall, where both shelves and the partition behind them had fallen away to reveal a dark aperture. The light from the two small portholes was uncertain, but it seemed to David that the edges of the dark gap bulged and bent even as he looked at them. Away in the left-hand corner crouched Toby, his eyes fastened on the dark hole.

“What — ?” David began, stepping into the room.

“Stop!” Toby switched his gun on him. “Don’t come a step nearer — there’s something nasty loose about here.”

The pair noticed that their arrival had taken the note of panic from his voice, but, for all that, his manner was tense. “But—”

“For God’s sake, do what I tell you! Now stand back and hold that door open — and clear right out of the way. I’ve got to jump.”

David obeyed wonderingly. There seemed no sane reason why Toby should want to jump. Puzzled, he watched the other kick off his shoes and throw down his jacket. He tossed his pistol across and crouched tensely. Both of his friends knew him to be the possessor of no mean muscles, but the power of his standing jump amazed even them. Toby launched himself in a magnificent leap which would have done credit to an acrobat. It was superb but It was not enough. In midair he was suddenly checked. The others gave an astonished cry. Toby had struck something — an invisible something which stood between them. For a second, he seemed to hang in the emptiness, scrambling madly with legs and arms, then he began to slip, first slowly, and then more rapidly, for all the world as if he slid down a curved surface to the floor. David and Dirk stared in stupefaction as the other struggled and fought with wildly threshing limbs against something unseen. David broke the spell and took a step forward, but Toby noticed the move.

“No, no, go away,” he shouted. “I’m done, I — ” His voice broke into a scream of agony and his body slumped inertly.

Halfway up one thigh a deep line appeared, then, as though severed by an axe, the leg came away with a jerk. But it did not fall. Instead, it started to drift slowly across the room. With incredulous horror, they saw that the limb was unsupported. It travelled some nine inches above the ground, creeping with a steady, unswerving motion towards the break in the wall. Foot first, it edged inch by inch out of the room into the blackness beyond. David's senses were reeling. He felt Dirk’s grip on his arm and tried to speak, but his mouth was queerly dry. He forced his eyes back to the fallen Toby and caught a sudden breath. An arm, like the leg was being detached: the same sharp indentation, but still no visible agent. As the arm jerked free, he saw that the denuded shoulder was scored by deep grooves.

He sprang back, pulling Dirk with him. Both knew that Toby was far past all help, and in a wordless panic, they clattered and slid down the sloping corridor to seek safety in the open.

A five-mile dash in the car brought them to the townlet of Clidoe. In the police station, they poured out a confused statement to a stolid and unsympathetic sergeant. There was reproving suspicion in the glance with which he favored them. An excited entrance coupled with rambling incoherence was, in his experience, frequently to be associated with excess of alcohol. Accordingly, he hid his likable, though not very brilliant self, behind a stern and chastening stare. "Just who are you and what are you doing?” he demanded.

David gave their names and explained that they had been on a camping tour. The sergeant approached and scrutinized them more closely. They were excited, but he had to admit that they showed none of the signs of intoxication. Furthermore, the time was barely eleven o’clock.

“Well,” he said, returning to his desk and picking up a pen, “suppose you tell it to me all over again, but slowly this time.” Evidently, the alcoholic theory was merely shelved, since his tone was not encouraging. David pulled himself together, and with occasional promptings from Dirk, recounted the affair in orderly detail. The sergeant listened throughout with an air of defensive reserve more than tinged with disbelief. At the end of the recital, he said: “I’ve had a report that a ship went by at an excessive speed last night. What did you call her?

“The Hurakan.” David spelt out the name. “You’ll find out about her if you ring up Interplanetary Explorations.”

The sergeant grunted. “Now just what was this — er — assailant like?”

“That’s just what I’ve been telling you. It wasn’t like anything. You couldn’t see it.”

“It was too dark in the ship?”

“No, I tell you, it was invisible.”

“Invisible, eh? And yet it killed a man?” His voice was a trifle weary. “What’s this you’re trying — a hoax?” he demanded with a sudden change of tone.

He watched them keenly while they both protested vehemently. He had no longer any doubt that the men had received a shock, but this yarn was pretty much like spook stuff .... He pulled one ear reflectively and frowned. The matter would have to be cleared up. “Rankin,” he called over to a constable, “you’ve heard these men’s story. Get along now and check up on it.”

“Yes, sir.” The constable saluted and turned to go.

“I’ll show you the way,” David suggested.

“No, can’t allow that,” the sergeant said firmly. There was something odd behind this. At any rate, one man was dead and he was taking no chances. “I’ll have to ask you to stay here until Constable Rankin makes his report.”

“But you don’t realize! This thing, whatever it is, is dangerous, damned dangerous. We could show — ”

“No. If it’s serious, I’m going to hold you — if it’s a joke, you’re going to pay.”

The two gazed helplessly at each other. Dirk shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, all right.” David subsided on a hard bench and gazed moodily at a framed card of police regulations. “But don’t blame me for anything that may happen,” he added. “I’ve warned you.”

Constable Rankin strode unemotionally out of the station, and they heard him start up a motorcycle. The sergeant began to make laborious notes with a scratchy pen. Three hours later, at almost two o’clock, the sergeant began to look worried. There had been ample time for a ten-mile ride and a cursory examination. He began to feel misgiving sharpening into definite apprehension. He plied the two men with a fresh batch of questions, and the answers did little to relieve his mind. Neither David nor Dirk had any doubt as to the reason for Constable Rankin’s prolonged absence, and they said as much. The thought of the man calmly walking to such a death stirred a queasiness in their stomachs.

“We’ll give him another half-hour. If he’s not back by then, we’ll go and have a look,’’ the sergeant said uneasily.

It was after three when they arrived, reinforced by two constables, at the spot where they must leave the car. David led the silent party through the trees. The two reserve policemen strode forward with puzzled stolidity, while the sergeant wore a look of worry which showed that his disbelief had weakened. As they came within sight of the fallen ship, he drew a whistling breath. “Lord, what a ship — and what a crash!’’ he murmured. His attitude to the others underwent a subtle change as he asked, “Now, at which break did you enter?’’

David pointed to the gap near the bows. "Through there,’’ he said, “and we began working back to the stern. The storeroom must have been about amidships.’’ He felt a little sick at his memory of that room.

The sergeant nodded, “You lead the way and show us exactly what happened,’’ he suggested.

David and Dirk both shook their heads emphatically, “I’ll be damned if I do,’’ said the former. “I’ve told you how dangerous it is — and then you tell me to go ahead. That’s not good enough.”

The sergeant gave a contemptuous snort and motioned his men on. They were halfway across the clearing when there came the sound of splintering, yielding metal. The two friends looked at each other and hesitated. “What’s that?” asked the sergeant sharply. “Somebody looting her. I’ll be bound. We’ll catch ’em in the act.”

A few yards from the break, he halted and began to give instructions in an undertone. After one sentence, he was interrupted by a further creaking and wrenching of metal plates. Then they all swung about and gazed sternward. Incredulously, they saw that the side of the ship was bulging. One of the plates of solid steelium was bending outward. Fascinated and speechless, they watched this toughest of metals bulge still farther. The sergeant gasped audibly, since he knew the well-nigh fabulous strength of the material. The rivet heads stripped off with a rattle like a monster machine gun in action, and the plate fell outside with a crash. The five men continued to stare nervously, but nothing emerged. Whatever had provided the tremendous force behind the plate remained unseen. The sergeant pulled himself together with an effort. “We’ll start there,” he said. “Keep close to the hull as we work up, and we’ll take them by surprise.”

David and Dirk hung back and did their best to dissuade him, but he was not to be turned off. His manner held a curtness which covered no little misgiving. The party edged along beneath the overhanging side of the ship. Eight feet from the recent hole, their fears were justified. The foremost policeman gave a sudden bellow and leaped back.

“What the — ?” the sergeant began, but his words dried up and his eyes widened in astonishment. Pain was ousted momentarily by surprise even in the injured man. He stood with blood streaming from his severed wrist, gaping inanely at his lost hand as it floated slowly away in midair. David snatched a handkerchief from his pocket and sprang forward to make a tourniquet. The sergeant recovered rapidly from his first shock, hesitated and seemed about to advance.

“Don’t be a fool," said Dirk, gripping his arm. “It’ll get you, too.”

The other retreated a pace, his eyes still fixed on the moving hand. Without audible comment, he watched it drift into the dark opening. As he turned to the others, his face was pale. “I’ve got to apologize to you gentlemen. I didn’t realize what you’d seen. And to think I sent poor Rankin — ’’ He broke off at the sound of creaking metal. The plates to either side of the original hole were bending and sagging ominously. The party beat a hasty retreat, carrying the injured man now in a dead faint. In silence, they watched the contiguous steelium being torn slowly and relentlessly from its rivets until there was a hole in the Hurakan’s side four times as large as before.

David, at a safe distance, circled around to catch a glimpse of the interior. He was looking, he knew, at approximately the spot where Toby had met his end, but the walls of the storeroom were now reduced to so much warped and mangled metal on the floor. Of the broad wooden shelves and lockers which had lined it, there was no sign. Vaguely, he wondered what had become of them – they ought to have been lying crushed with the metal. The sergeant came up to him with all dignity cast aside. It was evident that he now felt well out of his depth.

“I’ll have to get help. Will you take a message for me to the police station? And there’s Dawkins, too,’’ he nodded towards the injured policeman. “He needs treatment as soon as he can get it. If you and your friend would take him in the car while we keep watch here — ?”

David agreed. He waited while the sergeant scribbled a note, then he and Dirk, bearing the unconscious man between them, moved off towards the car. At five o’clock, after they had dropped the unfortunate Dawkins at the hospital and had reinforced themselves with a good meal, they returned to find that the force of police at the Hurakan had been considerably augmented. The sergeant greeted them with undisguised gloom. He pointed out that the hole was much enlarged and that further plates had been wrenched off in other parts.

“Hanged if I know what to do,” he admitted. “The inspector ought to be along any time now, thank the Lord. Though I don’t know what he’ll be able to do about it either. Just look at this.”

He picked up a stout branch some three inches in section, and holding it extended before him, advanced cautiously towards the gaping hole. A six-inch length was cleft away with a crunch. He retreated hurriedly and came back pointing to deep, gouged grooves in the wood. “Teeth,” he said, “not a doubt.”

David nodded. It reminded him unpleasantly of Toby’s shoulder. He looked quickly back at the ship and remarked on the number of fresh breaches in her sides. “And that’s not all.” The sergeant indicated a small bush which grew four or five yards away from the ship. “Watch that,” he said.

The bush was cracking and bending towards them beneath invisible pressure. It gave way as they looked and was crushed into a mass. Then it lifted slightly above the ground and began to drift in the wake of the piece of branch on a slow journey to the ship. “It’s big and it’s advancing,” added the policeman. He picked up a stone and tossed it high into the air. Its curving flight towards the hull was uncannily interrupted. It hung for a moment before rolling a yard down and sideways. Then it rested, to all appearances unsupported and stationary save for a slight, pulsating rise and fall. All the watching men felt a touch of that trepidation which is bred by the incomprehensible.

A startling shriek from the other side of the ship stung them into action. They rounded the stern to collide with a group of men and women travelling at a surprising speed. “What’s wrong here?” the sergeant demanded.

One of the men pointed behind him and shouted something unintelligible as he ran on. “Damned sightseers,” puffed the sergeant. “Just as well they’re scared. Can’t they run, though?”

With a full view of the other side, they stopped. The reason for the runners’ panic became plain. One sightseer would cry no more. His body, in dismembered sections, was drifting towards the ship.

David looked at Dirk and then turned to the other. He was feeling sick with the sights of the day and suggested that they might be allowed to leave. The sergeant nodded. “Yes. It wouldn’t do me much good to keep you here now, but I’d like you to be handy tomorrow — the inspector may want to have a word with you both.” He produced a large handkerchief and mopped his face. “That is,” he added, “if the inspector ever turns up.”

The two succeeded in finding a passable hotel in Clidoe, and returned the next morning to find that the inspector had at last arrived and taken command. Little had been possible during the night beyond the posting of guards to warn off the curious, but with daylight, a phase of activity had set in. A judicious tossing of stones had determined roughly the extent of the danger area, and it had become apparent that it now extended all about the ship in an approximate oval. The actual verge, however, was by no means regular, since here and there invisible extensions projected three or four feet in advance of the main substance. Rows of sticks planted at regular intervals had enabled the average speed of advance to be estimated at something over a yard an hour. The sergeant, again on the scene, greeted them and expressed his doubts of the value of this calculation.

“It may be,” he pointed out, “that this is not an advance at all, as they mean it, but merely the normal rate of growth.”

“God forbid,” said David fervently.

“What scientists have they got on the job?” asked Dirk.

“None. They reckoned they could tackle the thing all right without them — it’d mean extra expense to bring them along.”

Dirk grunted. “Probably save you expense in the end,” he grunted.

They looked out across the clearing. Except for the increased number of holes in her sides, the Hurakan looked just as they had first seen her the previous day. The sunlight bathed her, glittering in sparkling flashes from her polished plates. To all appearances, there was nothing amiss between her and them; nothing to stop one from walking right up to her and entering. Staring intently, one could imagine the slightest haze about her, something more tenuous than rising heat, but enough to make the edges not quite sharp. Nevertheless, David realized, that unwarned, he would have walked right into the invisible trap without a suspicion. With the handing of his duties to the inspector, the sergeant’s spirits had become more normal. The other had taken over without enthusiasm and was now a troubled man. He nodded in a depressed way to David and Dirk as they were brought up and asked a few questions in a tone which showed that he expected little help from them. A few minutes later, a man in military uniform strolled across from the protecting cordon and introduced himself. He was, it seemed, a Captain Forbes and not unpleased with the fact. He gazed across at the Hurakan in a bored style, and his manner was a blend of faint amusement and superiority. He spoke of his commander who had sent him but had given no reason.

“Well, Inspector,” he said, “you’ve certainly managed to stir up our people — they’ve sent me along to reinforce you with a party of men and a machine gun. What’s it all about?”

The sergeant explained the situation again, and the inspector, though he had heard it before, listened to his subordinate with an expression of increasing anxiety. At the end of the report and David’s description of Toby’s end, he nodded slowly and gazed doubtfully towards the ship. “As we have no more evidence to go on, we must conclude that the crash killed all aboard and unfortunately set free some specimen they were bringing home with them. It’s the only way to account for this thing. You concluded from the charts you saw that the ship had been outside the solar system.”

“They seemed to prove that it had been to the Procyon system. Besides, I happen to know that the ship was built with the intention of exploring free space,” David replied.

The sergeant broke in: “That’s right, sir. A message to that effect came through this morning.”

The inspector’s eyes narrowed. There were strange enough things within the solar system — heaven alone knew what monstrosities might exist beyond it. Captain Forbes, with a scepticism born of little imagination, broke in: “But all this sounds absurd. What do you reckon the thing is?”

David disclaimed all pretense of knowledge but suggested that it was some kind of animal — it might equally well be a plant, he admitted, but he thought not.

Captain Forbes smiled with a kindly tolerance, lit a cigarette, and began to saunter towards the ship. Dirk caught him by the arm. “Don’t be a fool. I don’t blame you for not believing us but take a look at this.”

He caught up the branch which the sergeant had dropped on the previous day and exhibited the teeth marks. The captain examined them with close attention. He lost his ambition to advance at the moment. The inspector turned to David. “You’ve thought of no way of tackling this thing?”

David shook his head. Dirk chimed in: “I’ve thought of one thing which may or may not be important.”

“And that is?”

“To prevent it from reaching the trees, if possible. You notice that it has consumed all the wood it has found. That may be merely a method of removing obstruction, but I doubt it. It didn’t deal with the metal that way. I shouldn’t be surprised to find that it feeds on wood.”

With his eye, the inspector measured the distance between the wreck and the trees — a quarter was already covered in the majority of places. Captain Forbes fidgeted impatiently. “Look here. Inspector, I know this is your show, but what about letting me try my machine gun on the thing — that’ll tear it to bits.”

The other hesitated and then agreed. He had little faith in the power of a machine gun against the creature, but no harm seemed likely to result. As the captain strolled off, a thought struck him, and he scribbled a few words on a piece of paper which he handed to a nearby constable with instructions to hurry.

A puzzled-looking party of machine gunners arrived and was steered into position a few yards from the danger line. When it was explained that they were to set up their weapon at this spot, they appeared at first resentful and then amused. They planted the gun with the air of men who humored the half-witted.

“Bit o’ target practice — only there ain’t no target,” muttered one of them.

The gunner settled himself. “What do we aim for, sir?”

“Just aim straight ahead.”

The man shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly and drummed a short burst. The crew gasped audibly. Each bullet had uncannily mushroomed out and now hung, a splotch of lead, in midair. “Say, I don’t get this,” one of them muttered nervously. “What the hell is it, anyway?”

The gun choked out another rattling burst with identical results. David shot a sidelong glance at the captain, whose expression was highly gratifying. The gunner turned an astonished face. “Any more, sir?” he inquired.

“Look out,” shouted David. The blobs of lead had risen and surged forward. The gun crew, now thoroughly rattled, jumped back. One man tripped over the tripod and fell. There came a crunching sound followed by a cry of agony — the man’s boot, with his foot still inside, began to move slowly away. His companions turned and dragged him back.

Captain Forbes’s face turned a peculiar color as he stared foolishly at the severed boot. For the first time, it seemed to dawn on him that the affair was not a hoax, after all. “Well, your machine gun hasn’t cut much ice,’’ commented the inspector unkindly, “When they bring the stuff I’ve sent for, we’ll try another trick.’’

They were forced to wait for half an hour before a small party appeared carrying a bulky object which a closer view revealed to be a bale of cotton waste. Behind them followed two more men carrying gasoline cans.

“Soak the stuff,’’ directed the inspector as they lowered it. "Pour the lot over it — and get some long poles.’’

The lighted bale flared furiously. Four men approached and began to lever it forward with the poles while the rest stood intently awaiting the outcome. “If it’s a success, we’ll get some flamethrowers,’’ the inspector was saying. The bale came to an abrupt stop as it met the unseen barrier. It rested there, flaming smokily.

“Push again!’’

The obstruction had withdrawn and the bale was able to advance a full turn before the next check. The sergeant showed what for him was unusual excitement. “Bit hot for it,” he gloated. “We’ve got it moving now.”

But he was too optimistic. Just as the poles came forward for a further thrust, there came a thud which shook the ground. The flames were snuffed out and nothing but a charred smear remained of the flattened bale. The pole-holders speedily retreated. “Damned if it hasn’t jumped on it,” snorted the sergeant indignantly.

The inspector pushed back his cap and scratched his head. His expression, as he gazed towards the Hurakan, was one of utter loss. Captain Forbes was no less taken aback, but after a few minutes’ thought, he broke into a smile. He stepped closer to the inspector and made a suggestion. The other looked doubtful. “I’ll have to get permission,” he demurred. “After all, someone owns the ship.”

“They won’t mind when they understand the danger. Much better destroy the ship than let this thing grow.”

“How long will you take?”

Captain Forbes considered. “Till tomorrow morning.”

The inspector nodded. The plan seemed sound. Nevertheless, he glanced uneasily at the line of measuring sticks. The danger area would be close to the trees by the next morning. The captain saw his look and interpreted it rightly. “I know you’d like to tackle the thing now, but what can we do?”

Dirk, who had watched the last two attacks on the creature without comment, walked over to them. The inspector’s attempts to come to grips with the danger seemed to him childish and highly unscientific. He was reminded of some boys he had once seen poking a sleepy lion with sticks — but there was a difference, for the boys had been able to rely upon the protection of the bars. Now Captain Forbes had succeeded in producing something which was probably another hair-brained scheme.

“Why not get some biologists on the job?” he suggested.

The captain did not receive the remark kindly. There was no reason that he could see why a terrestrial biologist should be an authority on a form of life imported from the Procyon system — if, indeed, it had come from there. Moreover, he pointed out that you did not call in a biologist when you wanted to destroy even an earthly wild animal. Dirk was curt. “That’s just what you should do. After all, it was the biologists who destroyed the pests in Panama and similar unhealthy spots. For all you know, you may be fooling around right now with a barrel of high explosives. Just suppose the creature had been inflammable — as it might easily have been — you’d have started a fire which would have spread for miles.”

“You are not a biologist yourself?” asked the captain coldly.

“I am not.”

“Then I’ll thank you not to interfere. Further, I will remind you that you have no standing here.”

The inspector, less sure of himself, made to interrupt, but changed his mind. He did not feel a great deal of confidence in the captain, but he sympathized with his resentment. Dirk’s face went red with anger. “While you’re playing around, this thing is growing. If it gets right out of hand. Lord knows what may happen — and the responsibility for it will be yours.”

“That being so, will you please refrain from further comment? Since you seem to have no constructive help to offer, I see no reason for you to remain here.”

Dirk checked the retort which occurred to him. He turned on his heel and strode angrily away into the trees.

“Damned meddler,” muttered the captain as he watched him go. Turning back to the inspector, he added: “If we are to be ready by tomorrow morning, I’ll need to get busy immediately.”

Dirk did not return to the hotel, nor did he leave any message. David was scarcely surprised, for Dirk was not one of those to take rebuke easily — the less so when it was scarcely merited. In consequence, he made a solitary breakfast the next morning. There was no mention of the Hurakan affair in any of the newspapers. He had expected headlines in elephantine type, but repeated search failed to reveal even a paragraph on the subject. It was the more perplexing since the ship had now lain on the hillside three nights and two days. On his way to the scene, he stopped at the police station and picked up the sergeant.

“What’s happened to the journalists?” he asked as they started. “This ought to be a Godsend to them.”

“It was, but we shut down on them.”

“That’s a notable achievement — but why?”

“They were going to spread themselves over pages, and there’d have been day trips running by this time and — well, you remember that sensation seeker the other day. He got his, all right.” After a pause, he continued: “There are going to be some fireworks today and we want the place clear.”

They approached the wreck to find that the danger area had shown greater increase than had been expected. Only a narrow margin of safety of a few yards’ breadth now lay between it and the trees. The inspector and Captain Forbes looked up to greet them and then returned to the study of an enlarged photograph. David gave an exclamation of surprise and the captain grinned. “Good, isn’t it? Just been delivered.”

“But how on Earth — ?”

“Bit of brainy work up at the Flying Field. They sent a plane over yesterday and fired off a few feet of film — naturally, there wasn’t a sign of the thing when they developed. Then some bright lad had the idea of rigging up an infrared camera and sent it over. Here’s the result.”

The print showed the site of the Hurakan and the immediate neighborhood. Of the ship herself, little except the upper surface was visible, the rest being submerged in a dark area which extended all about her. At the first glance, this shadow appeared to be a smooth oval, but a closer view revealed that the edge was serrated into a series of blunt projections. David found it disappointing and said so. “Can’t tell much from that,” he murmured. “I mean, it still doesn’t show us whether we are dealing with a single creature or a mass of the brutes.”

“Anyway, I’m certain that it is animal and not vegetable,” rejoined the inspector. “ — And that’s not really so strange when you come to think of it. After all, it’s not a very great step from the transparent living things we have on Earth, to a creature of complete invisibility. Did you notice that everything that it has snapped up travelled right into the ship? I have an idea that we shall find it to be one individual with multiple throats and a central stomach somewhere in the Hurakan. In fact, Captain Forbes’ plan is really built upon that idea."

“What is the plan?’’

The inspector explained. It had been calculated that any object snatched by the invisible creature would require — at its present size — just over two minutes to travel into the ship. A number of bombs had been constructed and equipped with timing devices to give a further half minute’s grace. They had then been placed in wooden cases to make them palatable to the creature, and he had every hope that the simultaneous explosion of this indigestible meal would settle the matter. It entailed, of course, the annihilation of the ill-fated Hurakan, but she could now be of little value.

“Why not detonate the bombs by short               waves and make certain that they coincide?’’ David asked.

The captain shook his head. “That was the first idea, but there’s the masking effect of the metal hull to be considered and it’s quite likely that the body of the creature may act in some degree as a shield. The timing method seems more certain.’’

David stood back and watched the preparations. Forty or fifty men had been assembled, and the captain was instructing them in their duties. The sergeant came to his side and chatted. He seemed to have no great faith in the plan and concluded with the opinion that they had better look for cover if they did not wish to be blown to pieces themselves. David recalled seeing a disused hut which would be ideal for the purpose, since it stood back in the woods a hundred yards from the main clearing. He led the way around the narrow free space which still remained.

At a convenient spot, they paused to look at the deployment of the captain’s troops. At regular intervals, all around the edge of the clearing, men were taking positions facing the ship. At a glance, it seemed impossible that there could be any danger lurking in that sunlit space — it still appeared that one might walk right up to the Hurakan’s glittering sides and encounter no more obstacle than the empty air. Each of the encircling men held a pole in his right hand, on the end of which was mounted the wood-cased bomb. In his left hand was a string attached to the pin. One or two of them were noticeably nervous, and others seemed to regard the whole affair in the light of a joke. The majority waited phlegmatically for the signal.

At the sound of three sharp whistle blasts, each pole bearer snapped into sudden action. The weapons were tilted horizontally, the left hands tugging smartly at the strings, and the pins fell free. The cordon closed with levelled staves in the manner of old-time pikemen.

They took three paces, and then a sharp crackling ran around the line. The bulbous wooden heads were snapped away to begin their slow journey to the wreck. The men of the cordon sprinted for cover, dropping their shortened poles as they went. For a full half minute, David and the sergeant continued to watch the uncanny progress of the flock of destructive balls, slowly and silently converging. Then, they, too, thought of shelter and made for the hull.

The meager light from two grimy windows enabled David to inspect the place. Such furnishings as had occupied it had long since been removed. Only a few sagging shelves were left. A broken axe haft and remnants of other tools lay about with a few dribbled paint cans and other rubbish not worth the labor of removal. He sat himself down on a pile of leaves in one corner. The sergeant came and joined him. Their heads bent together over a large, business-like watch of the latter’s. “Still a minute to go.’’

As if in prompt contradiction, came a muffled double thud, quickly followed by a third. The sergeant shook a disapproving head. Bad workmanship — luckily it didn’t matter a great deal in the present circumstances. Increasingly tense, they watched the second hand crawling towards the main burst. It came fifteen seconds before it was due. First a crash, and then, right on top of it, a stunning roar as though the premature explosion of one bomb had fired the rest.

Instinctively, they clapped their hands over their ears while great waves of sound sent the windows tumbling into fragments. They were battered and swirled around as the aerial breakers surged over them. A patter of scattered debris rained overhead. A violent thud caused the entire structure to tremble. Dislodged dirt rattled down, and closely following it, came the slither of something falling from the sloping roof. It landed with a soggy thump outside the door.

David grinned. “I’ll bet that was a part of the brute,” he said with satisfaction. “If it gets over that little meal, it’ll — ”

He stopped suddenly. Somewhere near at hand had risen a scream of fear – a scream mounting in agony till it stopped with a suggestive suddenness. The two looked at each other in consternation. That scream could only mean one thing — something had gone wrong and the danger was not past. The sergeant opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by another tearing scream, closer than the first. For some minutes after that, the air rang with anguished cries. David clapped his hands back over his ears to shut out the sounds of torment. He darted a glance at the sergeant and could see that his face was pale and grimly strained. He was rising in the manner of one who feels that he should act but does not know what course to take. He stepped towards the door, but David was swifter. He rushed past him and stood barring the way.

“No,” he cried. “Give me that stick first.”

Wonderingly, the other picked it up and handed it to him. David pulled the door an inch or two ajar and thrust the stick downward through the slit. There was a swift crunch and he withdrew it, appreciably shorter. “You see?” He pointed to the unmistakable marks of teeth at the end.

The sergeant took it from him, and then he, too, thrust it at the crack — higher up than before. He struck smartly downwards. Two feet from the ground, it hit an obstruction and broke off short in his hand. He looked at David. “We could easily jump over it,” he suggested.

“And land on another one, perhaps.” David shook his head and paused for a moment before adding: “Now we’re in a hell of a mess. That bomb idea was a complete flop — the danger’s been scattered all over the place.”

Another cry of pain came from the surrounding trees. A rattle of rapid fire began in the distance. A moment later a section of the door’s bottom edge snapped off and began to float away. Hastily, they slammed it shut and slid the bolt. “We’ll have to get out of here pretty soon,” muttered the sergeant.

They gazed speculatively out of the shattered windows. The sunlight filtered down through branches to fall on ground which looked bare, but .... David turned his attention to the cobwebby space overhead. Safety, for a while at least, seemed to lie up there. With the other’s help, he grasped a roof truss and swung himself up. The boarding proved to be in very bad condition, so that he was able, by standing on the beam, to kick a hole through the rotting roof. Shortly afterwards, the two men sat side by side on the coping, staring through the deserted wood. There was not a man in sight. Far away to the right they could still hear spasmodic shooting and an occasional cry. David gave a hail, but it brought no answer — there had been too many cries. The firing was slackening now, and he wondered whether the fact indicated escape or defeat.

“I guess we’ll have to stay here till somebody turns up,” he said at length.

The other did not answer. He was staring in fascination at a patch of open ground. Its whole surface appeared to be in motion. Drifting streams of sticks and chips of wood were oozing to several centers. David looked about hastily, and observed the same seeping movement in a number of places. “There must be dozens of them.”

The sergeant nodded. “And we’re in the middle,” he added. “It all comes of this gallivanting about. I never did think much of it. Stick to your own planet, is what I say – it’s large enough. But will they? Not so you would notice it. They go flinging themselves about the sky, and then what happens?” He paused aggrievedly, “First they crash on the moon, and then when they improve their machines, they go falling into the sun. Nobody minded them doing that so much, ’cept that it was expensive. But they’re not content with that No, they have to go and bring back that Venus weed that exuded bad gases, and no sooner have we stamped that out than we’ve got to face the blue plague from Mars. Lord knows how many millions went down with that — and now they go out of the system altogether and bring back this blasted thing from Procyon — wherever that it. Damn silly, ain’t it?”

In their present predicament, David felt inclined to overlook the wealth and amenities which had accrued from interplanetary commerce and agree with the sergeant. “If we could only see the thing, we might be able to do something,” grumbled the latter.

An idea struck David, and he swung himself back through the hole in the roof. As he searched through the accumulated rubbish, he noticed that a quarter of the door had already gone. An exclamation of satisfaction told the sergeant that he had made a find. “What is it?”

There was no answer for a while. Finally he said: “Can you see the door from there?”

The sergeant found that by craning over to the limit, this was just possible. David’s head and shoulders appeared through the empty window frame alongside the door. His hand held a battered can of red paint which he proceeded to pour out. Instead of reaching the ground, it threw the shape which lay there into visibility. It was a mere miniature, but, even so, it was a far more alarming object than the aerial photograph had suggested.

The main mass of the creature was hemispherical with the flat side resting on the ground. The domed top was bare and smooth to more than halfway down its side, but for the rest of the way it bristled with blunt projections. At the end of each of these was a wide mouth snapping continuously and full of sharp teeth. David concentrated on one of these “heads” and daubed it thoroughly. He noticed that, if necessary, the wide jaws were capable of opening far back like those of a serpent. It made him shudder to think of the size of the original invader of the Hurakan – even this little specimen was a long way from being harmless. He was able now to see the way in which the mouths wrenched lumps of wood from the door, bolting them whole in the same way that Toby’s leg had been bolted. Repulsive as the creature was, it became less perturbingly uncanny than had been the sight of the objects drifting down its unseen throat. David even felt slightly heartened — one could at least fight a visible enemy. He slopped his paint this way and that to detect the presence of any other. Only one was within his range, and the section which was revealed showed it to be even smaller than the first, but, despite its mere nine-inch diameter, the many mouths snapped no less ferociously. As he leaned yet farther out, a cascade of dirt rattled past his head.

“Hi,” called the sergeant’s voice in some agitation, “there’s one of the darned things up here.”

David scrambled back to the roof, the paint can, which was his only weapon, still in his hand. The sergeant was staring and pointing towards a spot near the center of the coping. Already, the supports had been laid bare, and a piece of wood was rising into the air. His pot was almost empty, but he flung the last few drops at the place. They were enough to reveal two or three pairs of snapping jaws. The creature was not only on the roof with them, but it was gnawing away at the supports. He threw the useless can away and looked around.

Branches thrust themselves against the end wall of the hut. It would be a fair jump to the tree trunk. He looked at the other doubtfully. The policeman grinned as he saw that look. “Used to do a bit of jumping in the old days, and I’m still good for that distance,” he said.

He led the way to the end, scrambling astride the gable. There was need of hurry, because the whole roof would collapse the moment the creature began seriously on the main tie-beam. He stood there poised on the extreme gable end, steadying himself with a hand on David’s shoulder. He launched with a powerful leap well into the branches. “Good. Now climb up a bit and I’ll come over.”

He felt his right foot slip as he took off and heard the sergeant’s startled cry. Desperately, he grappled at the branches, only to feel them snap beneath his weight. Something sluggishly yielding broke his fall. Like a flash he hurled himself to one side and rolled. Even as he went, he heard the tearing sound of fragments of his coat ripping away. The sergeant’s voice called after him hoarsely.

David sat up, and in that momentary rush of elation which follows a narrow escape, grinned up at him. “I fell on one of ’em,” he announced, “What do you know about that?”

“Fell on it?”

“I did, and it’s a lucky thing for me that it hasn’t got teeth on top. It was right under the tree, and — ”

He stopped suddenly as he noticed that the creature was eating into the tree trunk. It was not big, he judged, since the floating chunks of wood were no larger than lumps of sugar, nevertheless, the tree was slowly but surely being undercut. The other had started to descend, but he called to him to stop. With a stick dropped by one of the retreating bombers, he thrashed furiously at the invisible feeder. There was no apparent effect. The wood chips continued to flow neither slower nor faster than before. David calmed himself. At the present rate it would be some time before the tree fell — that was, if the food did not cause the animal to grow. With a swift inspiration, he thrust a broken branch into the undercut so that it must be gnawed through before the trunk could be continued. Behind him, the roof of the hut collapsed with a startling crash.

“Not much too soon,” he muttered as he watched the rising cloud of dust.

“Look here,” objected the sergeant, “I can’t stay up here forever.”

“Why not? It’s the safest place.”

Another smashing thud caused him to jump around. Less than forty feet away, a tall tree had toppled and fallen. It became uncomfortably clear to both of them that, this was not a safe place after all. The sergeant’s perch was overtopped by trees on all sides, many of them already showing deep cuts. Any one of them falling in his direction would certainly sweep him down. He began to descend hastily. “Wait a minute. You can’t come down the trunk.”

Cautiously testing the way before him with his stick, David made for a spot beneath the lowest spreading bough. He thrust all around and ascertained that the ground was indeed as empty as it looked. “All clear here, you can drop.” The sergeant obediently landed beside him. "Now we’ve got to get clear of this place at once. The best way will be — Good God, what’s that?”

There was no need to ask. A crackle of snapping sticks was followed by a thud almost beside them. One of the creatures, caught in the higher branches, had succeeded in eating away its own supports.

They backed away in haste. The sergeant pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his damp brow. “Like a doggone nightmare,” he mumbled, looking nervously around and above. “That was a near thing. I don’t get this at all. The inspector said there was only one of the brutes.”

“Did he? Well, he was wrong. So was Captain Forbes. Dirk was the only one of us who had any sense — he cleared off. And that’s just what we are going to do now, if we can.”

They began a slow journey. Every foot of the ground had to be tested with sticks which they waved before them like the feelers of some giant insect. Frequently, they cast anxious glances upwards for fear of another falling creature, or of the trees themselves. An hour and a half of such progress found them nervier and jumpier than ever. Each had discarded several sticks worn down by constant snapping and so far, they had encountered no sign of any other survivors. The sergeant paused and wiped his forehead again.

“We must get clear of ’em soon,” he said, without a great deal of conviction.

“I think there are less of them now,” said David, “but they’re bigger. They’ve been growing hard all the time we’ve been getting here. Come on.”

Five minutes later there came a snap which removed a ten-inch length of David’s stick. He recoiled. So large a bite proclaimed it as a monster which should be given a wide berth. They started beating around to one side without any success, and then tried the other. The way ahead proved to be completely blocked by a semi-circle of the snapping invisibles. The only thing left to do was to retrace their steps and detour around the spot. They turned back by common consent and began to trace the path with waving sticks. The sergeant was in the lead, and he knew that they had an almost straight track for some yards. He was the more surprised, therefore, when he encountered an obstacle straight ahead. He grunted and tried either side in vain. The two looked at each other. “We found a way in, so there must be a way out,” David said desperately. If there was, they both failed to find it. The circle about them seemed complete.

“Listen!” said the sergeant.

For half an hour they had been penned in the diminishing circle, and lusty hails from both had failed to produce any result. Except for the invisible monsters, they might have been alone in the world. Faintly, out of the silence came an unmistakable “Hullo?” Both replied with full lung power.

“Coming,” the voice sang back. “Stay where you are.”

Any other course being impossible, David replied with instructions to hurry. But it took another fifteen minutes before they saw the owner of the voice cautiously approaching. He was a small young man with large glasses and he whistled cheerfully. One hand waved a long, metal rod before him. Beneath the other arm he clutched a bundle of thin sticks, each tipped with a white knob.

“Hullo. What’s wrong with you two?” he asked.

“Surrounded,” answered David curtly. The casual air of the newcomer irritated him considerably.

“Uncomfortable,” commented the young man. “Never mind. We’ll soon have you out of that.”

He thrust with his rod until he encountered the snapping barrier. Snatching a stick from his bundle, he held out the knobbed end. Immediately it had been broken off, he held out other little sticks to left and right to suffer the same fate.

“Who are you ?” he asked. The sergeant told him. “They thought you were done for,” he said, pointing back over his shoulder. “Most of your lot were.”

Curiosity got the better of David’s disapproval of the nonchalant young man. “What are you doing? Poisoning them?”

“No, we haven’t found a suitable poison for them yet. Watch.”

He pointed to the recently swallowed white knob and they saw that it had turned to a bright blue.

“Methylene blue wrapped in soluble paper,” he explained. “Away goes the paper and, presto, visibility. My boss, Cadnam, the biologist, had some hundreds of these pills made up. A man called Dirk Robbins came to him in a fearful state yesterday. Cadnam saw that we’d have to make the brute visible before anything else could be done.”

“Good old Dirk,” said David.

The other nodded. “He had a bit more sense than the rest of you,” he said ungracefully. “Unfortunately, by the time we got here, some fool had been playing Fourth of July inside the brute.”

The blue stain, growing less intense as it dissolved, rapidly spread throughout the creature. They could see now not only the domed outline which they had expected, but could look right into it as though it were a stained specimen on a slide. It became easy to trace the many throats to their common stomach and also to observe a kind of vascular system. At the root of each of the many “heads,” a kind of valve could be seen rhythmically contracting and expanding. The young man pointed to one of these organs and shook his head. “That’s what caused most of the trouble,” he explained. Neither David nor the sergeant felt in the mood for a lecture. More than four feet of the creature blocked their way to freedom, and visibility had not interfered in the least with its appetite. They said as much.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the young man cheerfully. He drew a rapier-like instrument from among his bundle of sticks and set himself to piercing the contractile organs with care and accuracy. As he worked, he continued to explain: “A very interesting arrangement, not unlike a heart — but the thing only needs one heart really, and it’s got scores. It’s a kind of composite animal, and when it was blown to bits, every part with a pulse like that became a separate individual. It quickly reformed and began to live on its own. When two of them press closely together, they merge again — I expect that that’s how you got surrounded. A very primitive form, really. So far as we know at present, the only way of killing them seems to be to put every pulse out of action — as long as there’s one left going, it can rebuild itself.”

When he had finished off all the heads he could reach from his side, he tossed the spike over to David. After a few minutes work, the erstwhile danger became no more than an inert lump of bluish jelly over which they could climb.

“Thank God for that,” said David as they reached the far side in safety. The sergeant grunted and mopped his brow again.

The young man led them back over the way he had come. “What about the original creature? Was that entirely shattered?” David asked.

“Most of it was, but it’s building up again. However, we’ll be able to deal with it, now that we can see it. Even I felt it was a bit creepy, at first. Transparency is one thing — invisibility, quite another.”

They came at length to irregular rows of the creatures, already stained. They were still gnawing the trees but seemed almost harmless when deprived of their armor of invisibility. In the distance was a group of men diligently disposing of the monsters with sharp probes. The young man bade them goodbye. “Keep straight ahead,” he directed, “It’s clear there. And it would please me if you would tell Captain Forbes what I think of him, when you see him.”

“He’s safe?”

“Sure to be. That kind always comes out of it all right.”

He was correct. When they reached a group which seemed to be at the center of operations, the captain was amongst it. He seemed to be explaining that the failure of his attack was due to the premature explosion of two of the bombs. Dirk detached himself from the others and greeted them heartily.

“Let’s clear out,” he said a few minutes later, “The gallant captain now has a theory that it would be quicker to gas the brutes. We’ll be safer a few miles away.”

And so ended the menace of the Invisible Monsters.

The Moon Devils

1934

The secretary of the Lunar Archeological Society approached his employer with a nervous diffidence. His method of stating his business was, to put it mildly, indirect. The president was a man who hated circumlocution. He became testy. “Come on, man. What’s the trouble? Out with it.”

Still the secretary hesitated, then, with a sudden decision, thrust a packet of papers clumsily towards his chief. "These came this morning, sir. I thought you ought to know. They’re a bit — er — peculiar.”

"All right. I’ll look at ’em.”

The secretary departed with some relief and the president turned back to his interrupted work. Half an hour later, he remembered the pile of papers and took up the covering letter which lay on top. A name standing out amid the type caught his eye. He stiffened, stared at it, and began to read more carefully. The heading was a Liverpool address, and the date a fortnight old.

"Dear Sir,” it began. "On the sixteenth of June last,' the S. S. Turkoman, to which I was medical officer, rescued a man at a point not far from the Solomon Islands. He was found drifting in a native canoe and, judging from his condition, had been in it for some days. The results of such exposure were aggravated by the serious ill-treatment he had received in the form of severe cuts and wounds. At first it appeared to be impossible to save him, but his body eventually responded to treatment though his mind still wandered. He was a man of considerable education and gave his name as Stephen Dawcott. Upon arrival here I placed him in a mental home. During the next four months I was absent, and when I returned, it was to find that he had made good his escape. The authorities were mystified and handed to me the enclosed manuscript which he had left behind. They saw it as the raving of a madman, but to me it seems a matter requiring a less facile explanation. I await your reply with interest.”

The signature was “John Haddon,” and to it were appended the letters, "M. D.”

The president frowned as he set aside the letter and took up the manuscript. There had been a Stephen Dawcott, an anthropologist of some note, aboard the Scintilla. But the Scintilla was lost. From the day she had left the flying field on her maiden trip to the moon, nearly a year ago, not a word had been heard from her. She had roared from Earth into mysterious non-existence. But Stephen Dawcott had been aboard her — he was sure of that. He and others of the Lunar Archeological Society had seen Dawcott’s among the faces at the windows before the Scintilla took off. And now the man was reported as picked up in Melanesia, of all unlikely places. The president’s frown deepened as he began to read the manuscript:

...The Scintilla behaved in an exemplary manner on her outward journey. She justified the high hopes of her designers by the smooth swiftness with which she leapt out from Earth. Captain Toft was delighted with her performance and swore that there could be no sweeter ship to handle in all the ether. Those of us who had taken part in earlier spaceflights agreed unreservedly. The new Danielson acceleration compensators had proven their worth and ridded space-flying forevermore of the starting strain and its unpleasant effects. In design, furnishing, and facilities for carrying such fragile relics as we might find, the Scintilla was a credit to the Lunar Archeological Society who had built and so lavishly equipped her. The perfect start, followed by the peaceful smoothness of our voyage could have raised no apprehensions in the most psychic soul. Indeed, what possible cause could there be for apprehension? The silver globe before us warworn out, arid and still with the supreme stillness of death. No ship cruising above that gutted shell of a world had seen sign of as much life as lies in a blade of grass. Even the crater of Linne, which had been suspected of harboring the last vestiges of life, had been found as barren as the rest.

“Dead,” I murmured as we gazed out of the living-cabin windows at the withered satellite. “All the ‘fitful fevers’ done and gone – a whole world mummified and at rest.”

But I did not know Luna then. I did not know to the full that desperation with which life strives and clings.

We made first for the Northeast Quadrant and sank to a gentle landing on the glittering, metallic dust which makes the crater of Aristarchus the brightest spot on the face of the moon. This was to be a preliminary trip. Our object was to survey the ground for future operations rather than make them ourselves. A number of sites were to be examined and reported upon with a view' to deciding which would be the most profitable to excavate. Aristarchus held little of interest for us save the almost obliterated remains of a small settlement upon the northern side. The details of our trip are of little interest here, so I merely record that we moved next, unprofitably, to the Mare Crisium and thence across the equator to Tycho. Next, Clavius, greatest of all the craters, provided quantities of material and showed indisputably that a great civilization had once flourished in what is now only a vast bowl of sand and rock, a hundred and forty miles in diameter. Thus we came at last to the Mare Serenitatis, the Sea of Serenity.

Who named this immense oval plain? I cannot remember, but I do know that he saw it only through a telescope, two hundred and thirty-nine thousand miles away. He did not see it as we did — a huge sterile stretch, grey-floored and gloomy. Had he been able to stand upon one of the tortured mountains at its brink and look out across that somber desolation of sand, he would have called it not the Sea of Serenity, but the Sea of Foreboding.

We sailed slowly across to the Northwest. Every member of the expedition was at the windows scanning the featureless floor for any sign the ancient Lunarians might have left. Until now we had felt no uneasiness. All the moon is bare, but the harshness of its vistas had not played upon our nerves. It was only what we had expected and could scarcely affect us, but now the monotony of this great dry seabed seemed to impress us all in greater or lesser degree. Unromantic scientists though we were, we felt a mis- giving which none of us was willing to put into words.

And then, less than twenty miles from the far side of the sea, the steady throbbing of our rockets was interrupted. The firing tubes began to stutter uncertainly. I was with Captain Toft when the chief engineer rang through and reported that it would be necessary to descend for repairs. The hasty glance which Toft gave through the control dome windows told me that he had conceived the same distaste for the locality as had the rest of us. He decided swiftly to make for the cliffs now looming ahead at the sea’s edge. There could be no better landing surface than the level, grey sand beneath us, but he preferred to stop near its confines. With some anxiety, he inquired the extent of the failure, but was told that this could not be ascertained while in flight. The Scintilla continued to forge lamely ahead, gradually sinking. She took the sand at length some two hundred yards from those high perpendicular cliffs which once had stood like the ramparts of giants against a beating sea.

The Captain left the dome to interview the engineer, and I made my way to the central saloon. A deal of chatter greeted me as I opened the door. My colleagues were peering excitedly at the cliffs. All signs of their depression had vanished. Robson, the leader of the scientific side of the expedition, drew me forward and thrust a pair of field glasses into my hands. “Look at those cliffs, man. Just look at them.”

I focused eagerly. The sand in the immediate foreground was dotted with rocks of all sizes which had fallen from the heights, and beyond them was a line of darkness which hid the cliff-face in deep shadow. The meager, reflected light was just enough to show regular markings of some kind. I fancied that I could make out the carved figure of a man.

“Wait a minute,” cried Robson as he turned and dashed from the room.

A moment later, a searchlight was playing a flood of brilliance onto a scene which caused us to gasp incredulously. The surface of the granite-like rock to the height of some seventy or eighty feet was covered with carvings in high relief — an involved, ingenious ordering of the figures of men, animals, and conventional forms. The first astonished silence was succeeded by a babel of excited talk. Everyone spoke at once, and no one listened. And no wonder – compared to this revelation, our earlier discoveries dwindled to mere nothings. It seemed that we might have found the lunar Book of the Dead carved upon this mighty stone page.

Robson came back and started to tow me in the direction of the spacesuit lockers. He continued to babble excitedly as he lifted the clumsy garments from their hooks. The suits were essential – though contrary to expectation, it had been found that some air still existed upon the moon, and in the deepest craters was almost breathable during the lunar day. Yet the rarity of such as lingered in the beds of the vanished seas compelled artificial aid.

As we left the ship and drew near the cliffs, I think that there was no doubt in any of our minds that the design was a picture-writing of some kind. The irregular repetition of certain glyphs practically established the fact. None of us, of course, could yet attempt any translation, but the photographers were already arranging their cameras to provide a record for more leisured study. I watched them work with an untraceable sense of uneasiness creeping over me. I have said before, and I repeat, that although I am a hard-headed scientist, I was nevertheless aware of a distinctly unscientific misgiving.

The rest were too enthusiastic, too occupied with pointing out details and symbols which might, or might not, be analogous with similar symbols on earth, to share my anxiety. And I did not mention it — it was too irrational, illogical.

It was Robson who made the great find. He had gone close up to the diff and was examining a floridly incised square of the surface. Presently his cry sounded in all our receivers: “A door,” he said. “There’s a door in the cliff.”

We crowded up to him and found that the square was bordered all around by a narrow crack. Millennia ago, when there had been a wind upon the moon, the grey sand had drifted up at the foot, but it took only a few moments’ scratching to lay bare the threshold of the stone panel. Already, at the ruins in Clavius, we had established that the lunar practice had been to swing a door upon a central pivot so that it turned sidewise through ninety degrees, leaving a passage to either side. Accordingly, Robson flung himself upon one side and pushed. Finding it immovable, he transferred his strength to the other. It moved back an inch or so and then stuck. Spurred on, he brought every ounce of his strength to bear, and slowly the great rock door which would have defied the efforts of three men on Earth, swung around. Without hesitation, he switched on the light at his belt and walked in. We followed him for ten yards, then he stopped.

“Another door,” he complained irritably. “They certainly meant to preserve whatever’s inside. Let’s have some more light on this.”

The second door was plainer than the outer and the only sign on it was a deep-graven circle. As I looked at that circle, my premonitions intensified. The circle — the worldwide sign of infinity, eternity — could it be possible that here, on Luna? I almost called upon the others to stop but realized in time how weakly my warning would fall before their exploring zest.

“It’s sealed,” some one discovered. He pointed to a dozen or more blobs of black, shiny composition fixed across the jambs. On each of these, too, was impressed the sign of the circle.

To the non-anthropologist, it may seem strange that I should have attached an Earthly importance to the sign of the circle here on the moon. But it is, with the possible exception of the cross, the earliest and most widely used of symbols. It was significant of man’s will to immortality in all parts of the globe from far back in prehistory, and it remains significant still. It had dominated the lives of many races, and now here it was again — on the moon!

I stood unhappily aside and watched the rest break the seals. But the door still refused to yield, even to the efforts of five men. They drew their knives and fell to scraping out a tight-plugged paste around the edges. They tried again, but still the stone square stood adamant. Robson suggested a small charge of explosive. “The door has no value,” he pointed out. “There’s no carving on it except the circle.”

The rest agreed after a momentary hesitation. Ten minutes later, the face of the door was cracked across and a crowbar was levering the fragments apart. The barrier soon succumbed and we scrambled over the ruins to arrive in a large hewn room. Here and there, black openings in the walls suggested corridors to further rooms, but we gave them little attention at present, for our interest was centered in a scatter of long boxes lying on the floor. They were made of some grey metal which reflected the rays of our lamps only dully. One, close by the door, had suffered from the explosion. The lid was loosened and lay awry. Through the space it had opened, there hung a human hand.

Robson laid hold of the battered edge and wrenched the lid clean away. As his eyes fell on the contents, he started back in surprise. We hurried to his side and stared down in astonishment — men of Earth looking for the first time upon a man of the moon!

He was perfectly preserved and we, poor fools, wondered at the artistry which had been able so to conserve an unshrouded corpse that after thousands — perhaps millions — of years, it could have appeared to have lived but yesterday. Not one of us guessed the truth about that body. We were sufficiently conceited to believe that no race could have surpassed us in any branch of knowledge. We looked down upon that moon-man, noting his almost unbelievable chest development, observing that he was a little shorter than the shortest of us and telling one another that he was brachycephalic, classifying him. If anyone of us happened to notice that the lips were drawn back in a smile, he did not mention it — of what interest to a scientist is a dead man’s smile?

When we returned to the Scintilla for rest and replenishment of our oxygen supplies, Captain Toft greeted us with the information that the wear in our firing tubes was more extensive than had been suspected. It would take, he thought, nearly twenty-four hours to effect the replacements. The delay irritated him, for he had meant to follow daylight around the moon to the invisible side. The present situation would cause night to overtake us, for the flaring sun was already not far from the horizon and the dark line of the two weeks long Lunar night was crawling towards us, a bare twelve hours away. But we did not share his anxiety to be off. Indeed, we welcomed the delay, for it gave us some time for investigation. Night or day would not matter to us in the rock vault.

A dozen specimen coffins were loaded aboard the Scintilla after we had opened them to assure ourselves that they contained the bodies of six men and six women. With these safely stowed away, we felt at liberty to examine the vault more thoroughly.

There was little to repay detailed investigation of the place itself. No carving or decoration graced the interior, but we found that it and the subsidiary chambers contained a surprising quantity of coffins — altogether, more than four hundred of them. Each one, when opened, revealed a puzzling device whose purpose we could not guess. As the lid was raised on its hinges, two secondary occurrences took place. At the first loosening of the catches, something inside dropped with a musical tinkle. Investigation revealed the fragments of a small glass globe, smashed to pieces. Then the actual pushing up of the lid thrust, by means of an ingenious arrangement of levers, a slender hollow glass spike deep into the corpse’s flank. This was automatically withdrawn as the lid passed the perpendicular. Robson and I examined the device curiously but could make nothing of it.

"I guess it’s something to do with preservation,” he suggested vaguely, and turned his attention to the other contents.

Many of the coffins enclosed not only trinkets and trappings upon the still forms, but also sheets of withered writing material covered with a quasi-pictorial script. This obviously must be collected, but since prolonged work in spacesuits is inadvisable, we came to an arrangement of shifts. My turn came some six hours before sunset, and my companions were Jay Royden and Walter Greg, good men both.

We were not unduly depressed when we left the Scintilla’s lock. My own earlier misgivings had all but disappeared under the cheering influence of the others, and if I thought at all, as we made for the vault entrance, it was of the good luck which had caused the Scintilla to have her misadventure here. But for that, we might never have seen the rock carvings.

The three of us were soon scrambling once more into the hewn tomb. For an hour or more we worked quietly. Necklaces, bangles, daggers, and rings which would soon be proudly shown in the museums of Earth were methodically stripped from their owners’ still forms. The Lunarians, it seemed, did not know clothes as we do. What little they wore was not for covering, but for ornament in the way of worked belts, intricate breastplates and the like. Very soon our miscellaneous collection began to form a sizable pile, and I decided that it would be more convenient to remove it from the chamber where we were working to a spot nearer the main entrance. Two journeys were necessary, and as I made the second, I came upon a sight which brought me up with a jerk.

One of the coffins by my way lay open and the inmate’s hand rested on the edge. I stared in shocked horror. It had not lain so during my previous journey. I hurried past with a thumping, painful heart. I dropped my burden with the other plunder and turned to scan the vault with the awful intensity of growing panic. My ears strained to listen, though I was cut off from all external sounds. Something seemed to flicker just beyond the rays of my lamp. I jerked stiffly towards it, but the light showed nothing amiss. I turned on, scouring the place with my lamp. Nothing... Nothing... Then I looked back to the first corner. My arms fell weakly, my heart hammered in panic.

A corpse sat upright in its coffin.

I must have cried out, because I heard Walter’s voice in my receiver. “What is it?” he was calling anxiously.

“Come here, quick,” was all I could manage.

The urgency in my voice started them without further question. I stood with my back to the main entrance and turned my light on the passage-mouth from which they must emerge. Something moved again outside the circle of light, but I dared not throw the rays upon it. The two grotesque, spacesuit-clad figures came hurrying into sight. As they saw me, Walter demanded again: “What is it?”

I did not answer him. Instead I shouted: “Look out !” A dimly seen shape was moving in the shadow behind them.

Walter snatched at his knife and made to turn, but swift as he was. he was too late. A naked arm came snaking over his shoulder. Its elbow crooked under the front of his helmet and dragged his head back. Another hand shot groping for his knife. And even as Jay turned to help, another pair of arms came twining about him and I had a glimpse of a face leering beyond. The hand which sought Walter’s knife tore it from his grasp. I could hear him grunt as he struggled to keep it. Then clearly through the microphone came a tearing as the knife ripped the spacesuit and the following whistle of exhaling air. Walter gave one choking cry.

The whole affair had been too sudden for me to give any help. Before I could take more than a step, came a second tearing sound and I knew that Jay, too, was past help. I stopped suddenly — no use to go on. Then I saw that the corpse which had caused my fright was no longer sitting — he was climbing out of his coffin, his face leering towards me. I turned and sprang for the open, racing for my life across the sea bottom.

They didn’t believe it. Already I had shown signs of strange behavior, and now I was babbling fantastic nonsense. Dead men coming to life, dead men fighting the living. Obviously my brain was turned. The doctor attempted to soothe me. Robson vainly attempted to reach Walter and Jay on the radio. There was an odd expression on his face when he turned back to look at me.

“Can’t raise them,” he said. “Something’s certainly wrong. Do you think — ?” He broke off and nodded suggestively towards me.

The rest looked serious. They did not put their thoughts into words, but they were plain enough on their faces. Three men alone — and one of them a madman!

Two volunteered to go out and search. The rest began to help them into their spacesuits. I begged and besought them not to go, but they only cursed me for getting in their way. Others dragged me back and held me penned in a corner. “Good God, you fools,” I raged at them, “wouldn’t they have called you if I'd run amok like you think? Can’t you see that I’m telling you the truth? If you go over there, they’ll get you, you fools, you bloody fools ! They’ll get you!”

Nobody gave me a scrap of attention. The men were clad and their helmets affixed. As they left the airlock, Robson switched on the radio to keep in communication. My anger passed as I helplessly watched them trudge towards the search-lit cliff face. Nothing I could do would save them now. We saw them pause by the open stone door and heard their voices in the speaker as they settled who should take the lead. Then they disappeared. For a few seconds there was nothing but the sound of breathing. Suddenly a voice with a tinge of nervousness spoke.

“What was that? Something moved.”

"Nothing,” answered the other. For our benefit he added: “We are just climbing over the remains of the second door — now we’re in the vault. There’s — God, what’s that?” His voice was suddenly shrill — and then it broke. “Quick, out of this, quick man — back, for heaven’s sake!”

After that it was a jumble — hard breathing mingled with odd phrases. " — dozens of ’em.” “ — got him.” "Keep together.” Then: "Look out, he’s got a knife!” Horror-stricken, we heard the sound of stout cloth ripped asunder — gasping cries. After that, all was silent.

My companions turned shamefaced, wondering eyes upon me. Their eyes were full of uneasy fears. Robson murmured something which might have been an apology. He begged for the whole story. I told him as calmly as I could all that I knew. He found it meager. "Have you any theories?” he demanded.

I had been thinking, but I hesitated. "It’s rather a fantastic theory,” I admitted.

"Of course it is. The whole thing’s fantastic. Let’s have it.”

“You remember what happened when we opened the coffins? A globe of something dropped and smashed. Then, too, there were those glass needles. There must have been a purpose behind them.”

Robson looked hard at me. “You mean that the needles might have been some kind of hypodermic?”

"Something of the sort,” I nodded.

“And that they revived what we thought were corpses?”

“There were the glass globes, too,” I reminded him.

"But it’s ridiculous, preposterous. After thousands of years...There might be a possibility of suspended animation for a short time, but this...”

“Why should it be impossible for an indefinite length of time ? The fact that we don’t know how to do it doesn’t prove its impossibility. Those coffins were airtight. They may have been full of preserving gas, for all we know. We couldn’t notice that while we were wearing spacesuits.”

"But—”

"Oh, all right,” I said. “I’m only offering a theory. Can you think of a better one?”

Robson turned to contemplate the cliff. "But why?” he murmured. “Why?”

“Why do men put up memorials?” I asked. “It’s a habit, an instinct to perpetuate. I should say these people had just the same instinct. Their world was dying – the race was dying. Perhaps they thought that it was only a phase and that the moon would become fertile once more. Anyway, on the face of it, it looks as though they decided to take a chance and try to save some of their race for whatever future there might be.”

“But how can they live?” asked someone. “There’s hardly any air.”

“But remember the enormous lung capacity,” suggested Robson.

With the suggestion of a rational explanation, the fears of the party grew less intense. Some of the more adventurous even volunteered to undertake a further investigation. They could go prepared and well armed. Robson vetoed the idea at once. He pointed out that there were over four hundred of the Lunarians ready to overrun them faster than they could fire.

“But we don’t mean them any harm.”

“Nor did the others, but they got theirs. It doesn't seem to have occurred to you that they must have food. There was nothing to eat in the vault.”

We looked at one another. This implication of the immediate capture of our men had not struck us before. It did so now, unpleasantly. Robson summoned Captain Toft. This was a danger which concerned the whole ship, not merely our scientific group.

The Captain’s incredulity was easily beaten down by our massed conviction. He was all for action and rescue until he realized that the spacesuits had been slit and that the men were past all help. Robson pressed for the immediate removal of the Scintilla from the Mare Serenitatis to a less dangerous resting place in some crater, but Toft shook his head.

“The engines are down for repairs. Even by forcing work to the limit, it’ll take another ten hours.” Our faces looked anxious enough to make him add: “I'll do my best, gentlemen, you may depend on that, but I can’t promise a minute less than ten hours.”

Robson thought for a while. At last he spoke. “We must keep them penned up as long as we can. I want two men to go outside and take rifles. Every man or woman who tries to get out of that vault must be shot.”

Two volunteers were immediately forthcoming. They hurried into spacesuits and were on their way to the lock when a shout from a watcher at the window stopped them. “Too late,” he called. “They’re out.”

A knot of a dozen or more moon-men had just emerged. They halted a few paces from the cliff and stood on the grey sand, shielding their eyes with their hands from the glare of our searchlight, and looking about them. Now that they were erect, their differences from Earthmen appeared more pronounced. The large ears developed for catching sounds in the thin air seemed to dwarf their heads, and the huge bulging chests were so disproportionate as to render all the limbs skinny and spindly by contrast. They looked bewildered by the barrenness of the world they now faced. Not only did it fail to fulfil their expectations, but it was obviously different from their last view of it.

One man raised his arm and pointed to a distinctively distorted crag as though it were a recognizable landmark. The rest nodded and let their eyes wander, searching for other familiar sights. More of their kind came out of the vault and joined them. After a short conference, they seemed to reach a decision and the whole group turned towards the Scintilla.

The doctor, standing next to me, was watching them with close attention. “They’re not doing too well,” he murmured. “Even those great lungs are laboring a bit. The atmosphere must have been a great deal denser when they went in. I wonder just how long ago — ”

Robson’s voice cut him short. He was addressing the two in spacesuits. “They mean mischief. You two get up into the control dome and take your rifles. We’ll evacuate the dome and then you can open the windows and pick them off, if necessary.”

The two men left the room and we heard them clattering up the metal ladders. Robson was right. The moon-men and women did mean mischief. It was in their gleaming eyes and bared teeth as they approached. They had resumed the trappings that we had pilfered. Each wore the broad worked belt of Luna, and about their necks and ankles glittered metal bangles. Black hair, held back from their faces by ornate circlets, depended in a lank mane upon their shoulders and down their backs. One man, slightly taller than the rest, appeared to be the leader. As they drew close, he turned to incite the rest. A moment later, a volley of rocks and stones clattered futilely against the Scintilla’s metal sides.

We took heart. The primitive simplicity of such an attack encouraged us. Half a minute later, two moon-men dropped inert. Our men in the dome had gone into action. The attackers, by now a hundred strong, were thrown into momentary confusion. But the wavering was brief, and in a few seconds, they were running towards us. They had seen in a flash that once beneath the ship’s overhanging sides, they would be safe from the marksmen above.

A well-placed rock put the searchlight out of action and plunged the cliff face into intense shadow. It became impossible for the riflemen to pick off the reinforcements which would pour from the tomb. They would be all but invisible until the line of sunlight was reached — and that line was crawling slowly closer to us with the sinking of the sun. Another searchlight was switched on, but it, too, was swiftly obscured. The main body of the attackers was now out of view from our windows, though a large number of stragglers continued to dart from the shadow towards the ship. Of these, a number fell to the guns, but a larger number won through unharmed.

From down the corridor came the sudden clanging of an attack upon our outer door. We looked at one another and smiled. There was precious little to be feared from that direction. Nor were the moon-men long in realizing that the steel would defy their utmost efforts. In a very short time, they came clustering around the window, hungrily gloating and excitedly jostling one another as they peered in.

The leader picked up a prodigious rock which could not have been stirred by one man on Earth. He flung it with a mighty heave against the fused pane. The pane was unharmed, but Robson looked serious. “I don’t know how much of that sort of thing it will stand,” he said doubtfully. “If they try two or three of those rocks simultaneously — ?”

The same idea had occurred to the moon-men. We saw them collecting the largest rocks they could handle. There was a leering look of triumph on the face of the leader as he regarded us. Robson rushed back and opened the door.

“Quick, out of this,” he shouted.

We left in a headlong rush, and as the last of us came through, we heard the crash of the shattered window. The door snapped to behind us automatically as the air pressure fell.

Within a couple of minutes, a furious battering began towards the stern. Half a dozen of us raced down the ship. As we clattered through the engine room, the chief engineer looked up, spanner in hand. He was working all he knew. The grime on his face was trickled with sweat and his hair lay damp and flat. “Clamp on the emergency plates,” he called as we passed.

There had been no time in the main cabin to fix the heavy steel plates across the windows, but now we seized them from their racks and set to with a will. No sooner was a plate fixed over one porthole than the moon-men turned their attack to another, and we had to rush that also to cover with an emergency plate.

In the middle of our activity came word that the men in the control dome were abandoning their position. The place was becoming untenable on account of the bombardment of rocks, for while the rocks could be thrown on a trajectory which kept the throwers concealed, the riflemen must have direct vision before their shots could be effective.

For what seemed several hours, we lived in a nightmare of rushes from point to point. As fast as we made one spot safe, another was attacked. Then, at last, when we were weary to the point of exhaustion, we became aware that the frenzy was lessening. The battering grew fewer and feebler until at length they stopped altogether. We waited, puzzled. It was almost an hour before we cautiously removed an emergency plate and peered out. Only then did we understand the abrupt cessation of hostilities.

The sun had set and the seabed shimmered coldly in the pale green-blue Earthlight. Of the moon-men, only a few still, crumpled forms were to be seen. “They’ve gone,” I said. “But why?”

Robson pointed towards the cliff, and I saw that the stone door was now closed. “The cold,” he explained. “Right now it’s colder out there than anything you’ve ever known. In a little while, it will be so cold that what little air there is left will freeze solid.”

“And the moon-men ?“

“It means the end of them. Even in their vaults, the air will freeze — though they’ll freeze first.”

"Poor devils,” I said. "To wait all those thousands of years just for this — to freeze to death.”

I had an unhappy vision of the last luckless moon-men and women huddled together in their lightless tomb, waiting without hope for the creeping coldness of death. Robson’s voice broke my mood. "All hands on the job,” he said briskly. "We’ve got to get shipshape again. Captain Toft, what are your orders, sir ?”'

It was decided that we would make for Earth. The morale of the Scintilla's company was too shaken to undertake the exploration of Luna’s hidden side on our present trip. Since little or no calculation was necessary, Toft waited only until the •engines were repaired before he headed straight for the great pale disc of Terra. The ground fell away and we looked for the last time on that misnamed Sea of Serenity. A few scattered brown figures were visible in the Earthlight — they seemed like a sad symbol of the littleness of that passing phase of worlds which we call life.

With that final glimpse, those of us not on duty turned away and sought our cabins for overdue rest.

I slept long. It was all of twelve hours before I reopened my cabin door. My way down the passage led me past the chief engineer’s room and I hesitated outside his door, wondering whether to take him along for breakfast or whether to let him have his sleep out. My hand was on the knob when the door opened abruptly and in the doorway stood a woman — a moon-woman. I stood frozen with the shock, staring at her. She returned the stare, white teeth and dark eyes glinting. She crouched slightly, becoming  more grotesque and horrifying. Her right hand slid forward and I saw that it held a knife which was red with blood. I lunged to grip her wrist, but she was too swift. With a twist and a cry, she had passed me and was away up the corridor. I hesitated and then turned into the engineer’s cabin.

One look at him was enough — that moon-devil must have slashed and slashed...

For a moment I stood irresolute. The engineer’s fate might well have been mine — and I was not safe now. I ran into the corrido. The rest must be warned.

At the threshold of the living cabin I checked m horror. Five still forms lay on the floor, each of them horribly mutilated. I recoiled and fled to the control dome, hoping desperately. My fears were not vain. Just in the entrance, I stumbled over the bodies of two officers. Beside a third figure crouched a moon-woman. At my entrance, she arose and whirled towards me. I could see that the man at her feet was Toft, alive, but bound and helpless. She faced me like some terrifying Medusa, stepping catlike, a knife in either hand. I backed and grasped a chair intending to use it as a weapon — I had forgotten that all furniture on the ship must be fixed. She gave a cry, semi-human and chilling. A door on the far side of the dome opened suddenly to reveal a group of the grotesque moon-men and women. It was more than I could stand. I fled, bolting the door behind me.

For the next twelve hours, I remained locked in my cabin. There was plenty of time to review our folly. How could we, even in our excitement, have overlooked the possibility of menace from those twelve coffins that we had taken aboard? And not only had we taken them aboard, but we had even opened them to assure ourselves of their contents. Surely, some of us should have foreseen the danger! Either Robson or myself ought to have fastened down the lids, or, better still, have jettisoned them upon the moon. And in the middle of my self-blame, it came to me that this was not the end. They must have taken the ship completely by surprise and murdered every man they had found except Toft — they would make him show them how to work the ship, or else force him to guide the Scintilla back to Earth himself. The moon-people had planned thousands of years ago their bid for survival, and it had not yet failed. A dozen of the Lunarians might yet be let loose upon Earth.

I was unarmed – all the weapons were kept in a cupboard off the main living cabin. I would have to get there before I could avenge my comrades and wipe out the moon-folk. I crept to the door and listened. One hasty glance up and down the corridor assured me that it was empty, and I made stealthily in the direction of the bows. I reached the main cabin undetected and slipped inside. Averting my eyes from the shambles on the floor, I sought the armory cupboard.

Its steel door was locked...

Footsteps rang on the floor beyond the opposite door. In a flash, I was across the room and back by the way I had entered — weaponless, and perhaps the only survivor unless they had permitted Toft still to live. What could I do? I could think of nothing but that I must live and carry my warning. And to live, I must have food.

By devious ways I gained the storeroom and piled the necessities of life into an empty case. I had lugged it halfway back to my cabin when misfortune overtook me. Rounding a corner, I came face to face with a moon-man. His surprise was greater than mine — I got a good drive to the chin while he still stared. He went down with a cry which was half shout and half groan. It was not loud, but it served to alarm his fellows. There came a din of feet pounding down the corridor behind me. Leaving my case of food, I jumped over the prostrate man and fled.

Running and sliding on the metal floors. I made for the only safe place I knew – my cabin. The clatter of pursuing feet grew louder, spurring me on. Turning at last into the final alley, I found my way blocked. But I was desperate, and there was only one thing to do. I put my head down and charged like a bull at the four figures before me.

There was a brief whirling nightmare of kicking and hammering, and then somehow I broke out of that melee and gained my cabin. With a final effort, I slammed the door in my pursuers’ faces. My chest and face were bloody and lacerated. I remember pulling free a moon-man’s dagger which lodged in my left shoulder and after that — nothing...

The jolt of a rough landing finally roused me from my sleep or coma. With an excruciating effort, I raised my stiff body to look through the small porthole. Outside was a stretch of white sand and beyond it a line of frothing breakers glistening in the sunlight. Somehow, the moon-men had brought the Scintilla back to Earth. I was a sick man and it took me a long time to move. When at length I managed to stagger down the passage, it was to find the entrance wide open and the ship deserted. Somewhere in the green forest which fringed the beach, the moon-folk were providing and hunting.

I made my difficult way to the fuel store, and close to the tanks I lit a slow fuse — at least, there would be no Scintilla as a safe base for the moon-devils’ operations. Then as fast as I could, I made my way along the shore. A few days later, I found a long-neglected canoe. I repaired it the best I could and paddled it out to sea.

The President of the Lunar Archeological Society frowned. He pulled his ear reflectively and shook his head slowly. He turned the bunch of papers over and, still frowning, began to read them again.

Preposterous, of course, but — well, there had been a Stephen Dawcott, and he had sailed on the Scintilla...

The Man from Beyond

1934

One of the greatest sights in Takon[1] these days was the exhibition of discoveries made in the Valley of Dur. In the building erected especially to house them, Takonians and visitors from other cities crowded through the corridors, peering into the barred or glass-fronted cages, observing the contents with awe, interest, or amusement according to their natures. The crowd was formed for the most part of those persons who will flock to any unusual sight, providing it is free or cheap. Their eyes dwelt upon the exhibits, their minds were ready to marvel and be superficially impressed, but they had come to be amused and they faintly resented the efforts of the guides to stir them into intelligent interest. One or two, perhaps, studied the cases with real appreciation.

But if the adults were superficial, the same could not truthfully be said of the children. Every day saw teachers bringing their classes for a practical demonstration of the plant’s prehistoric condition. Even now, Magon, a biology teacher in one of Takon’s leading schools, was having difficulty in restraining his twenty pupils for the arrival of a guide. He had marshaled them beside the entrance, and to keep them from straying, was talking of the Valley of Dur.

“The condition of the Valley was purely fortuitous and it is unique here upon Venus,” he said. “Nothing remotely resembling it has been found, and it is the opinion of the experts that nothing like it exists anywhere else. This exhibition you are going to see is neither a museum nor a zoo, yet it is both.”

His pupils only half attended. They were fidgeting to and fro, casting expectant glances down the row of cage fronts, craning to see over one another’s backs, the more excitable among them occasionally rising on their hind legs for a better view. The passing Takonian citizens regarded their youthful enthusiasm with a mild amusement. Magon smoothed back the silver fur on his head with one hand and continued to talk.

“The creatures you will see belong to all ages of our world. Some are so old that they roamed Venus long before our race appeared. Others are later, contemporaries of those ancestors of ours who in a terrible world were forever scuttling to cover as fast as their six legs could carry them.”

"Six legs, sir?” asked a surprised voice.

Some of the youths in the group snickered, but Magon explained considerately. “Yes, Sadul, six legs. Did you not know that our remote ancestors used all six of their limbs to get them along? It took them many thousands of years to turn themselves into quadrupeds, but until they did that, no progress was possible. The fore limbs could not develop such sensitive hands as ours until they were carried clear of the ground."

“Our ancestors were animals, sir?”

“Well, er — something very much like that.” Magon lowered his voice in order that the ears of passing citizens might not be offended. “But once they got their forelegs off the ground, released from the necessity of carrying their weight, the great change had begun. We were on the upward climb — and we’ve never stopped climbing.”

He looked around at the circle of eager-eyed, silver-furred faces about him. His eyes dwelt a moment on the slender tentacles which had developed from stubby toes on the fore-feet. There was something magical in evolution, something glorious in the fact that he and his race were the crown of progress. It was a very wonderful thing to have done, to have changed from a shaggy, six-footed beast to a creature who stood proudly upon four, the whole front part of its body raised to the perpendicular to support a head which looked out proudly and unashamed at the world. Admittedly, several of his class appeared to have neglected their coats in a way which was scarcely a credit to the race — the silver fur was muddied and rumpled, but then, boys will be boys. No doubt they would trim better and brush better as they grew older.

“The Valley of Dur — ” he began again, but at that moment the guide arrived.

“The party from the school, sir?”

“Yes.”

“This way, please. Do they understand about the Valley, sir?” he added.

“Most of them,” Magon admitted. “But it might be as well — ”

“Certainly.”

The guide broke into a high-speed recitation which he had evidently made many times before. “The Valley of Dur may be called a unique phenomenon. At some remote date in the planet’s history, certain internal gases combined in a way yet imperfectly understood and issued forth through cracks in the crust at this place, and at this place only.

“The mixture had two properties. It not only anaesthetized, but it also preserved indefinitely. The result was to produce a form of suspended animation. Everything that was in the Valley of Dur has remained as it was when the gas first broke out. Everything which has entered the Valley since has remained there imperishably. There is no apparent limit to the length of time that this preservation may continue.

“Among the ancients, the place was regarded with superstitious fear, and though in more recent times many attempts have been made to explore it, none were successful until a year ago when a mask which would withstand the gas was at last devised. It was then discovered that the animals and plants in the Valley were not petrified as had hitherto been believed, but could, by means of certain treatment, be revived. Such are the specimens you are about to see: the flora and fauna of a million years ago — yet alive today.”

He paused opposite the first case. "Here we have a glimpse of the carboniferous era — the tree ferns and giant mosses thriving in a specially prepared atmosphere, continuing the lives which were suspended when Venus was very young. We hope to be able to grow more specimens from the spores of these. And here,” he passed to the next case, “we see the beginning of one of Nature’s most graceful experiments — the earliest form of flower.”

His audience stared in dutiful attention at the large, white blossoms which confronted them. They were not very interesting – fauna has a far greater appeal to the adolescent mind than does flora. A mighty roar caused the building to tremble. Eyes were switched from the magnolia-like blossoms to glance up the passage in anticipatory excitement. Attention to the guide became even more perfunctory. Only Magon, to the exasperation of his pupils, thought it fit to ask a few questions. At last, however, the preliminary botanical cases were left. behind, and they came to the first of the cages.

Behind the bars, a reptilian creature, which might have been described as a biped, had its tail not played so great a part in supporting it, was hurrying tirelessly and without purpose to and fro, glaring at as much of the world as it could from intense, small eyes. Every now and then it would throw back its head and utter a kind of strangled shriek. It was an unattractive creature covered with a grey-green hide, very smooth; its contours were almost streamlined, but managed to appear clumsy. In it, as in so many of the earlier forms, one seemed to feel that Nature was getting her hand in for the real job. She had already learned to model after a crude fashion when she made this running dinosaur, but her sense of proportion was not good and she lacked the deftness necessary to produce the finer bits of modeling which she later achieved. She could not, one felt, even had she wanted, have then produced fur or feathers to clothe the creature’s nakedness.

“This,” said the guide, waving a proprietorial hand, “is what we call Struthiomimus, one of the running dinosaurs capable of traveling at high speed, which it does for purposes of defense, not attack, being a vegetarian.”

There was a slight pause while his listeners sorted out the involved sentence. “You mean that it runs away?” asked a voice.

“Yes.”

They all looked a little disappointed, a trifle contemptuous of the unfortunate, unhappy Struthiomimus. They wanted stronger meat. They longed to see (behind bars) those ancient monsters which had been lords of the world, whose rumbling bellows had sent Struthiomimus and the rest scuttling for cover. The guide continued in his own good time.

“The next is a fine specimen of Hesperornis, the toothed bird. This creature, filling a place between the Archeopteryx and the modern bird is particularly interesting — ”

But the class did not agree. As they filed slowly on past cage after cage, it was noticeable that their own opinions and that of the guide seldom coincided. The more majestic and terrifying reptiles he dismissed with a curt: “These are of little interest, being sterile branches of the main stem of evolution: Nature’s failures."

They came at length to a small cage occupied by a solitary curious creature which stood erect upon two legs though it appeared to be designed to use four. “This,” said the guide, “is one of our most puzzling finds. We have not yet been able to classify it into any known category. There has been such a rush that the specialists have not as yet had time to accord it the attention it deserves. Obviously, it comes from an advanced date, because it bears some fur, though this is localized in patches, notably on the head and face. It is particularly adept upon two feet, which points to a long line of development. And yet, for all we know of it, the creature might have occurred fully developed and without any evolution — though of course you will realize that such a thing could not possibly happen. Among the other odd facts which our preliminary observation has revealed, is that although its teeth are indisputably those of a herbivore, it has carnivorous tastes — altogether a most puzzling creature. We hope to find others before the examination of the Valley is ended.”

The creature raised its head and looked at them from sullen eyes. Its mouth opened, but instead of the expected bellow, there came from it a stream of clattering gibberish which it accompanied with curious motions of its fore-limbs.

The interest of some of the class was at last aroused. Here was a real mystery about which the experts could as yet claim to know little more than themselves. The young Sadul, for instance, was far more intrigued by it than he had been by those monsters with the polysyllabic names. He drew closer to the bars, observing it intently. The creature’s eyes met his own and held them. More bizarre jabber issued from its mouth. It advanced to the front of the cage, coming quite near to him. Sadul held his ground; it did not look dangerous. With one foot it smoothed the soil of the floor, and then squatted down to scrabble in the dirt.

“What’s it doing?” asked someone.

“Probably scratching for something to eat,” suggested another.

Sadul continued to watch with interest. When the guide moved the party on, he contrived to remain behind unnoticed. He was untroubled by the presence of other spectators since most of them had gravitated to watch the larger reptiles feed. After a while, the creature rose to its feet again and extended one paw towards the ground. It had scrawled a series of odd lines in the dust. They made neither pattern nor picture. They did not seem to mean anything, yet there was something regular about them.

Sadul looked blankly at them and then back to the face of the creature. It made a quick movement towards the scrawls. Sadul continued to stare blankly. It advanced, smoothed out the ground once more with its foot, and began to scrabble again. Sadul wondered whether or not he should move on. He ought, he knew, to have kept with the rest – Magon might be nasty about it. Well, he’d stay just long enough to see what the creature was doing this time...

It stood back and pointed again. Sadul was amazed. In the dirt was a drawing of a Takonian such as himself. The creature was pointing first to himself and then back to the drawing...

Sadul grew excited. He had made a discovery? What was this creature which could draw ? He had never heard of such a thing. His first impulse was to run after the rest and tell them, but he hesitated, and curiosity got the better of him. Rather doubtfully, he opened the bag at his side and drew out his writing tablet and stylus. The creature excitedly thrust both paws through the bars for them and sat down scratching experimentally with the wrong end of the stylus. Sadul corrected it, and then leaned close to the bars, watching over its shoulder.

First the creature made a round mark in the middle of the tablet, then it pointed up. Sadul looked at the ceiling, but quite failed to see anything remarkable there. The creature shook its head impatiently. About the mark it drew a circle with a small spot on the circumference. Outside that another circle with a similar spot, and then a third. Still Sadul could see no meaning.

Beside the spot on the second circle the creature drew a small sketch of a Takonian. Beside the spot on the third, a creature like itself. Sadul followed intently. It was trying very hard to convey something, but for the life of him, he could not see what it was. Again a paw pointed up at the light globe, then the fore-limbs were held wide apart. The light... an enormous light...

Suddenly Sadul got it — the sun! The sun — and the planets! He nearly choked with excitement. Reaching between the bars, he grabbed his tablet and ran off up the corridor in search of his party. The man in the cage watched him go, and as his shouts diminished in the distance, he smiled his first smile for a very long time.

Goin, the lecturer in phonetics, wandered into the study of his friend Dagul, the anthropologist in the University of Takon. Dagul, who was getting on in years as the grizzling of his silver fur testified, looked up with a frown of irritation at the interruption. It faded at the sight of Goin, and he welcomed him. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I think I’m a bit overworked. This Dur business gives such masses of material that I can’t leave it alone.”

“If you’re too busy — ?”

“No, no. Come along in. Glad to throw it off for a time.”

They crossed to a low divan where they squatted, folding their four legs beneath them. Dagul offered refreshment. “Well, did you get this Earth creature’s story?” he asked.

Goin produced a packet of thin tablets from a satchel. “Yes, we got it — in the end. I’ve had all my assistants and brightest students working on it, but it’s not been easy, even so. They seem to have been further advanced in physical science than we are. That made parts of it only roughly translatable, but I think you’ll be able to follow it. A pretty sort of villain this Gratz makes himself out to be — and he’s not much ashamed of it.”

“You can’t be a good villain if you are ashamed.”

“I suppose not, but it’s made me think. Earth seems to have been a rotten planet.”

“Worse than Venus ?” asked Dagul bitterly.

Goin hesitated. “Yes, I think so, according to his account — but probably that’s only because it was further developed. We’re going the same way: graft, vested interests, private traders without morals, politicians without consciences. I thought they only existed here but they had them on Earth — the whole stinking circus. Maybe they had them on Mars, too, if we only knew.”

“I wonder?” Dagul sat for some moments in contemplation. “You mean that on Earth there was just an exaggerated form of the mess we’re in?”

"Exactly. Makes you wonder if life isn’t a disease after all — a kind of corruption which attacks dying planets, growing more and more vicious in the higher forms. And as for intelligence…”

“Intelligence,” said Dagul, "is a complete snare and delusion — I came to that conclusion long ago. Without it, you are wiped out. With it, you wipe out one another, and eventually yourself.”

Goin grinned. Dagul’s hobby-horses were much ridden steeds. “The instinct of self-protection — ” he began.

“ — is another delusion, as far as the race is concerned,” Dagul finished for him. “Individuals may protect themselves, but it is characteristic of an intelligent race to try continually by bigger and better methods to wipe itself out. Speaking dispassionately, I should say that it’s a very good thing, too. Of all the wasteful, destructive, pointless...”

Goin let him have his say. Experience told him that it was useless to attempt to stem the flood. At length, there came a pause and he thrust forward his packet of tablets. “Here’s the story. I’m afraid it’ll encourage your pessimism. The man, Gratz, is a self-confessed murderer, for one thing.”

“Why should he confess?”

“It’s all there. Says he wants to warn us against Earth.”

Dagul smiled slightly. “Then you’ve not told him?”

“No, not yet.”

Dagul reached for the topmost tablet, and began to read:

I, Morgan Gratz of the planet Earth, am writing this as a warning to the inhabitants of Venus. Have nothing to do with Earth if you can help it — but if you must, be careful. Above all, I warn you to have no dealings with the two greatest companies of Earth. If you do, you will come to hate Earth and her people as I do — you will come to think of her, as I do, as the plague spot of the universe. Sooner or later, emissaries will come. Representatives of either Metallic Industries or International Chemicals will attempt to open negotiations. Do not listen to them. However honeyed their words or smooth their phrases, distrust them, for they will be liars and the servants of liars. If you do trust them, you will live to regret it, and your children will regret it and curse you. Read this and see how they treated me, Morgan Gratz.

My story is best started from the moment when I was shown into the Directors’ Room in the huge building which houses the executive of Metallic Indus- tries. The secretary closed the tall double doors behind me and announced my name:

“Gratz, sir.”

Nine men seated about a glass-topped table turned their eyes upon me simultaneously, but I kept my gaze on the chairman who topped the long table. “Good morning, Mr. Drakin,” I said.

“Morning, Gratz. You have not met our other directors, I think?”

I looked along the row of faces. Several I recognized from photographs in the illustrated papers, others I was able to identify, as I had heard them described and knew that they would be present. There is no mystery about the directors of Metallic Industries Incorporated. Among them are several of the world’s richest men, and to be mounted upon such pinnacles of wealth means continual exposure to the floodlights of publicity. Not only was I familiar with their appearances, but in common with most, I was fairly conversant with their histories. I made no comment, so the chairman continued.

“I have received your reports, Gratz, and I am pleased to say that they are model documents — clear and concise — a little too clear, I must own, for my peace of mind. In fact, I confess to apprehend and, in my opinion, the time has come for decisive measures. However, before I suggest the steps to be taken, I would like you to repeat the gist of your reports for the benefit of my fellow directors.”

I had come prepared for this request and was able to reply without hesitation. “When it first became known to Mr. Drakin that International Chemicals proposed to build a ship for the navigation of space, he approached me and put forward certain propositions. I, as an employee of International Chemicals, and being concerned in the work in question, was to keep him posted and to hand on as much information, technical and otherwise, as I could collect without arousing suspicion. Moreover, I was to find out the purpose for which International Chemicals intended to use her. I have carried out the first part of my orders to the chairman’s satisfaction, but it is only in the last week that I have been able to discover her destination.”

I paused. There was a stir among the listeners. Several leaned forward with increased interest. “Well,” demanded a thin, predatory-faced man on the chairman’s right, “what is it?”

“The intention of the company,” I said, “is to send their ship, which they call the Nuntia, to Venus.”

They stared at me. Except for Drakin to whom this was not news, they appeared dumbfounded. The cadaverous-looking man was the first to find his voice. “Nonsense!” he cried. “Preposterous! Never heard of such a thing. What proof have you of this ridiculous statement?”

I looked at him coldly. “I have no proof. A spy rarely has. You must take my word for it.”

“Absurd. Fantastic nonsense. You stand there and seriously expect us to believe on your own, unsupported statement that I. C. intends to send this machine to Venus? The moon would be unlikely enough. Either they have been fooling you or you must be raving mad. I never heard of such rubbish. Venus, indeed!”

I regarded the man. I liked neither his face nor his manners. “Mr. Ball sees fit to challenge my report,” I said. “This, gentlemen, will scarcely surprise you, for you must know as well as I that Mr. Ball has been completely impervious to all new ideas for the past forty years.”

The emaciated Mr. Ball goggled while several of the others hid smiles. It was rarely that his millions did not extract sycophancy, but I was in a strong position. “Insolence,” he spluttered at last. “Damned insolence. Mr. Chairman, I demand that this man — ”

“Mr. Ball,” interrupted the other coldly. “You will please control yourself. The fact that Gratz is here at all is a sign not only that I believe him, but that I consider his news to seriously concern us all.”

“Nonsense. If you are going to believe every fairy tale that a paid spy — ”

“Mr. Ball, I must ask you to leave the conduct of this matter to me. You knew, as we all did, that I. C. were building this ship, and you knew that it was intended for space travel. Why should you disbelieve the report of its destination? I must insist that you control yourself.”

Mr. Ball subsided, muttering indefinite threats. The chairman turned back to me. “And the purpose of this expedition?” I was only able to suggest that it was to establish claims over territories as sources of supplies. He nodded and turned to address the rest.

“You see, gentlemen, what this will mean? It is scarcely necessary to remind you that I. C. are our greatest rivals, our only considerable rivals. The overlapping of our interests is inevitable. Metals and chemicals obviously cannot be expected to keep apart. They are interdependent. It cannot be anything but a fight for survival between the two companies. At present, we are evenly balanced in the matter of raw materials — and probably shall be for years to come. But — and this is the important point — if their ship makes this trip successfully, what will be the results?

“First, of course, they will annex the richest territories on the planet with their raw materials, and later import these materials to Earth. Mind you, this will not take place at once, but make no mistake, it will come as inevitably as tomorrow. Once the trip has been successfully made, the inventors will not rest until they have found a way of carrying freight between the two worlds at economic rates. It may take them ten years to do it, or it may take them a century, but, sooner or later, do it they will.

“And that, gentlemen, will mean the end of Metallic Industries.”

There was a pause during which no one spoke. Drakin looked around to see the effect of his words. “Gratz has told me,” he continued, “that I. C. is convinced that their ship is capable of the journey. Is that not so?”

“It is,” I confirmed. “They have complete faith in her and so have I.”

Old John Ball’s voice rose again. “If this is not nonsense, why have we let it go on ? Why has I. C. been allowed to build this vessel without interference? What is the good of having a man there who does nothing to hinder the work?” He glared at me.

“You mean?” inquired Drakin.

“I mean that this man has been excellently placed to work sabotage. Why has there been none? It should be simple enough to cause an ‘accidental’ explosion.”

“Very simple,” agreed Drakin. “So simple that I. C. would jump to it at once. Even if there were a genuine accident, they would suspect that we had a hand in it. Then we should have our hands full with an expensive vendetta. Furthermore, I. C. would recommence building with additional precautions, and it is possible that we might not have a man on the inside. I take it that we are all agreed that the Nuntia must fail — but it must not be a suspicious failure. The Nuntia must sail. It is up to us to see that she does not return.

“Gratz has been offered a position aboard her but has not as yet returned a definite answer. My suggestion is that he should accept the offer with the object of seeing that the Nuntia is lost. The details I can leave to him.”

Drakin went on to elaborate his plan. Directly the Nuntia had left, Metallic Industries would begin work on a space-flyer of their own. As soon as possible, she would follow to Venus. Meanwhile I, having settled the Nuntia, would await her arrival. In the unlikely event of the planet being found inhabited, I would get on good terms with the natives and endeavor to influence them against I.C. When the second ship arrived, I was to be taken off and brought back to Earth while a party of M. I. men remained to survey and annex territories. On my return, I would be sufficiently rewarded to make me rich for life.

“You will be doing a great work for us,” he concluded, “and we do not forget our servants.” He looked me straight in the eyes as he said it. “Will you do it?”

I hesitated. “I would like a day or so to think it over.”

“Of course. That is only natural, but as there is not a great deal of time to spare, will you let me have your answer by this time tomorrow? It will give us a chance to make other arrangements in case you refuse.”

“Yes, sir. That will do."

On that I left them. As to their further deliberations, I can only guess. And my guesses are bitter. Beyond an idea that it would appear better not to be too eager, I had no reason for putting off my answer. Already I had determined to go — and to wreck the Nuntia. I had waited many years to get in a blow at I. C., and now was my chance. Ever since the death of my parents, I had set my mind on injuring them. Not only had they killed my father by their negligence in a matter of unshielded rays, but they had stolen his inventions and robbed him by prolonged litigation. Enough, you say, to make a man swear revenge. But it was not all. I had to see my mother die in poverty when a few hundred dollars would have saved her life — and all our dollars had gone in fighting I. C.

After that I changed my name, got a job with I. C. and worked — hard. Mine was not going to be a paltry revenge. I was going to work up until I was in a responsible position, one from which my hits could really hurt them. I had allied myself with Metallic Industries because this was their greatest rival, and now I was given a chance to wreck the ship to which they had pinned such faith. I could have done that alone, but it would have meant exile for the rest of my life. Now M. I. had smoothed the way by offering me a passage home.

Yes, I was going to do it. The Nuntia should make one trip and no more . But I’d like to know just what it was they decided in the Board Room after I had gone ....

The Nuntia was two weeks into space, but nobody was very happy about it. In those two weeks, the party of nine on board had been reduced to seven, and the reduction had not had a good effect upon our morale. As far as I could tell, there was no tangible suspicion, just a feeling that all was not well. Among the hands it was rumored that Hammer and Drafte had gone crazy before they killed themselves. But why had they gone crazy ? That was what worried the rest. Was it something to do with the conditions in space – some subtle, unsuspected emanations? Would we all go crazy?

When you are cut off from your kind, you get strange thoughts. Imagination gets overheated and you become too credulous. That is what used to happen to sailors on their long voyages in the old windjammers, and it began to happen to our crew out in space. They started to attribute the deaths to uncanny, malign influences in a way which would never have occurred to them on Earth. It gave me some amusement at the time.

First there had been Dale Hammer, the second navigator. Young, a bit wild at home, perhaps, but brilliant at his job, he was proud and overjoyed that he had been chosen for this voyage. He had gone off duty in a cheerful frame of mind. A few hours later he had been found dead in his bunk with a bottle of tablets by his side — one had to take something to insure sleep out here. Everyone agreed that it was understandable, though tragic, that he might take an overdose by mistake.

It was after Ross Drafte’s disappearance that the superstitions had begun to cluster. He was an odd man with an expression which was frequently taciturn and eyes in which burned feverish enthusiasms. A failure might have driven him desperate, but under the circumstances, he had everything to live for. He was the designer of the Nuntia and she, the dream of his life, was endorsing his every expectation. When we should return to make public the story of our voyage, his would be the name to be glorified through millions of radios, and his was the face which would stare from hundreds of newspapers — the conqueror of gravitation. And he had disappeared...

The air pressure graph showed a slight dip at one point and Drafte was no more. I saw no trace of personal suspicion. No one had even looked askance at me or, so far as I knew, at anyone else. No one had the least inkling that one man aboard the ship could tell them exactly how those two men had died. There was just the conviction that something odd was happening.

And now it was time for another.

Ward Govern, the chief engineer, was in the chartroom talking with Captain Tanner. The rest were busy elsewhere. I slipped into Govern’s cabin unobserved. His pistol I found in the drawer where he always kept it, and I slipped it into my pocket. Then I crossed to the other wall and opened the ventilator which communicated with the passage. Finally, after carefully assuring myself that no one was in sight, I left, closing the door behind me.

I had not long to wait. In less than a quarter of an hour I heard the increasing clatter of a pair of magnetic shoes on the steel floor, and the engineer passed cheerfully by on his way to turn in. The general air of misgiving had had less effect upon him than upon anyone else. I heard the door slam behind him. I allowed him a few moments before I moved as quietly to the ventilator as my magnetic soles would allow.

I could see him quite easily. He had removed his shoes and was sitting at a small wall desk, entering up the day’s events in his diary. I thrust the muzzle of the pistol just within the slot of the ventilator, and with the other hand began to make slight scratching noises. It was essential that he should come close to me. There must be a burn or at least powder marks.

The persistent scratching began to worry him. He glanced up in a puzzled fashion and held his head on one side, listening. I went on scratching. He decided to investigate and released the clips which held his weightless body to the chair. Without bothering to put on the magnetic shoes, he pushed himself away from the wall and came floating towards the ventilator. I let him get quite close before I fired.

There was a clatter of running feet mingling with cries of alarm. I dropped the pistol inside my shirt and jumped around the corner, reaching the cabin door just ahead of a pair who came from the other direction. We flung it open and I dashed in. Govern’s body under the impetus of the shot had floated back into the middle of the room. It looked uncanny, lying asprawl in midair.

“Quick,” I yelled, “fetch the Captain!”

One of them pelted out of the door. I managed to keep my body between the other and the corpse while I closed the dead fingers around the pistol. A few seconds later everybody had collected about the doorway and the Captain had to push them aside to get in. He examined the body. It was not a pleasant sight. The blood had not yet ceased to flow from the wound in the head, but it did not drip as it would on Earth. Instead, it had spurted forth to form into several red spheres which floated freely close beside the corpse. There was no doubt that the shot had been fired at close range. The Captain looked at the outflung hand which gripped the automatic.

"What happened?”

No one seemed to know.

“Who found him?”

“I was here first, sir,” I said. “Just before the others.”

“Anyone with you when you heard the shot ?”

“No, sir. I was just walking along the passage — ”

“That’s right, sir. We met Gratz running ’round the corner,” somebody supported.

“You didn’t see anyone else about?’’

“No, sir.”

“And was it possible, do you think, for anybody to have gotten out of the room unseen between the time of the shot and your arrival?”

“Quite impossible, sir. He would have been bound to walk straight into me or the others — even if there had been time for him to get out of the room.”

“Very well. Please help me with this.” He turned to the other four who were still lingering in a group near the door. “You men get back to work, now.”

Two began to move off, but the other pair, Willis and Trail, both mechanics, held their ground. “Didn’t you hear me ? Get along there.” Still the two hesitated, then Willis stepped forward and the Captain’s unbelieving ears heard his demand that the Nuntia be turned back. “You don’t know what you’re saying, man!”

“I do, sir, and so does Trail. There’s something strange about it all. It’s not natural for men to kill themselves like this. Perhaps we’ll be the next. When we signed on, we knew we’d have dangers we could see, but we didn’t reckon with something that makes you go mad and kill yourself. We don’t like it — and we ain’t going on. Turn the ship back.”

“Don’t be a pair of fools. You ought to know that we can’t turn back. What do you think this is — a rowboat? What’s the matter with you?”

The two faces in front of him were set in lines of stolid determination. Willis spoke again. “We’ve had enough, and that’s flat. It was bad enough when two had gone, but now it’s three. Who’s going to be the next? That’s what I want to know.”

“That’s what we all want to know,” the Captain said, meaningly. “Why are you so anxious to have the ship turned back?”

“Because it’s wrong, unlucky. We don’t want to go crazy even if you do. If you don’t turn her back, we damned well will.”

“So that’s the way it blows, is it? Who’s paying you for this?”

Willis and Trail remained uncomprehending.

“You heard me,” he roared. “Who’s behind you? Who’s out to wreck this trip?”

Willis shook his head. “Nobody’s behind us. We just want to get out of this before we go crazy, too,” he repeated.

“Went crazy, eh?” said the Captain with a sneer. “Well, maybe they did, and then again, maybe they didn’t — and if they didn’t, I’ve got a pretty good idea what happened to them.” He paused. “So you think you’ll scare me into turning back, do you? Well, by God you won’t, you lousy rats. Now get back to your work. I’ll deal with you later.”

But neither Willis nor Trail had any intention of getting back. They came on. Trail was swinging a threatening spanner. I snatched the pistol from the corpse’s hand and got him in the forehead. It was a lucky shot. Willis checked and tried to stop. I got him, too.

The Captain turned and saw me handling the pistol. The suddenness of the thing had taken him by surprise. I could see that he didn’t know whether to thank me or to blame me for so summary an execution of justice. There was no doubt that the pair had mutinied and that Trail, at least, had meant murder. Strong and Danver, the two men in the doorway, stared speechlessly. Nine men had sailed in the Nuntia, four now remained...

For a time, the Captain said nothing. We waited, looking at the two bodies still swaying eerily, anchored to the floor by their magnetic shoes. At last, the Captain broke the silence. “It’s going to be hard work for four men,” he said. “But if each of us pulls his weight, we may win through yet. To the two of you, all the engine room work will fall. Gratz, do you know anything of three-dimensional navigation?”

“Very little, sir.”

“Well, you’ll have to learn — and quickly.”

After the business of disposing the bodies through the airlock was finished, he led me to the navigation room. Half to himself, I heard him murmur: “I wonder which it was? Trail, I should guess. He’s the type.”

“Beg your pardon, sir?”

“I was wondering which of those two was the murderer.”

“Murderer, sir?” I said.

“Murderer, Gratz. I said it, and I mean it. Surely you didn’t think those deaths were natural.”

“They seemed natural.”

“They were well enough managed, but there was too much coincidence. Somebody was out to wreck this trip and kill us all.”

“I don’t see—”

“Think, man, think,” he interrupted. “Suppose the secret of the Nuntia got out in spite of all our care? There are plenty of people who would want her to fail.”

I flatter myself that I managed my surprise rather well. “Metallic Industries, you mean ?”

“Yes, and others. No one knows what may be the outcome of this voyage. There are a lot of people who find the world very comfortable as it is and would like to keep it so. Suppose they had planted one of those men aboard?”

I shook my head doubtfully. “It wouldn’t do. It’d be suicide. One man couldn’t get this ship back to Earth.”

"Nevertheless, I’m convinced that either Willis or Trail was planted here to stop us from succeeding.”

The idea that both the men were genuinely scared and wanted only to get back to Earth had never struck him. I saw no reason to let it.

“Anyway,” he added, “we’ve settled with the murdering swine now — at the cost of three good, honest men.” He took some charts from a drawer. “Now, come along, Gratz. We must get to work on this navigation. Who knows but that all our lives may soon depend on you.”

“Who, indeed, sir,” I agreed.

Another fortnight passed before the Nuntia at last dipped her nose into the clouds which had always made the nature of Venus’ surface a matter for surmise. By circling the planet several times, Captain Tanner had contrived to reduce our headlong hurtling to a manageable speed. After I had taken a sample of the atmosphere (which proved almost identical with that of Earth), I took my place close beside him, gaining a knowledge of how the ship must be handled in the air. When the clouds closed in on our windows to obscure the universe, we were traveling at a little more than two hundred miles an hour. Despite our extended wings, we required the additional support of vertical rockets.

The Captain dropped cautiously upon a long slant. This, he had told me, would be the most nerve-racking part of the entire trip. There was no telling how far the undersides of the clouds were from the planet’s surface. He could depend on nothing but luck to keep the ship clear of mountains which might lurk unseen in our path. He sat tensely at the control board, peering into the baffling mist, ready at a moment’s notice to change his course, although we both knew that the sight of an obstacle would mean that it was too late. The few minutes we spent in the clouds seemed interminable. My senses drew so taut that it seemed they must snap. And then, when I felt that I could not stand it a moment longer, the vapors thinned, dropped behind and we swept down at last upon a Venusian landscape.

Only it was not a landscape, for in every direction stretched the sea — a grey, miserable waste. Even our relief could, not make the scene anything but dreary, heavy rain drove across the view in thick rods, slashing at the windows and pitting the troubled water. Lead-grey clouds, heavy with unshed moisture seemed to press down like great, gorged sponges which would wipe everything clean. Nowhere was there a darkling line to suggest land; the featureless horizon which we saw dimly through the rain was a watery circle.

The Captain leveled out and continued straight ahead at a height of a few hundred feet above the surface. There was nothing for it but to go on and hope that we should strike land of some kind. For hours we did, and for all the difference it made to the scene, we might have been stationary. It was just a matter of luck. Unknowingly, we must have taken a line on which the open sea lay straight before us for thousands of miles. The rain, the vastness of the ocean and reaction after our journey combined to drive us into depression. Was Venus, we began to ask ourselves, nothing but a sphere of water and clouds ? At last I caught a glimpse of a dark speck away to starboard. With visibility so low, I could not be certain what it was. We had all but passed it before I drew the Captain’s attention. Without hesitating, he swerved towards it, and we both fixed our eyes on it and anxiously watched it grow.

As we drew closer, it proved to be a hill of no great size, rising from an island of some five or six square miles. It was not such a spot as one would have chosen for a first landing, but he decided to make it. We were all thoroughly tired of our cramped quarters – a few days of rest and exercise in the open air would put new heart into us.

It would be absurd for an Earthman to describe Venus to Venusians, but there are differences between your district of Takon and that island where we landed which I find very puzzling. Moreover the conditions which I found elsewhere also differ from those which abide here. I know nothing about the latitude of these places, but it seems that they must be very far removed from here to be so unlike. For instance, our island was permanently blanketed beneath thick clouds. One never saw the sun at all, but for all that, the heat was intense and the rain, which seldom ceased, was warm. Here in Takon, on the other hand, you have a climate not unlike that of our temperate regions — occasional clouds, occasional rain, warmth that is not too oppressive. When I look around and observe your planets and trees, I find it hard to believe that they can exist on the same planet with the odd jumble of growths we found on the island. I know nothing of botany, so I can only tell you that I was struck by the quantities of ferns and palms, and the almost entire absence of hardwood trees.

Two days were occupied in minor repairs and necessary adjustments, varied by occasional explorations. These were not pleasure trips, for the rain fell without ceasing, but they served to give us some much-needed exercise and to improve our spirits. On the third day, the Captain proposed an expedition to the top of the central hill, and we agreed to accompany him. We were all to go armed – though the only animals we had seen were small, timid creatures which scuttled from our approach, there was no telling what we might not encounter in the deeper forest which lay between the hill and the beach where the Nuntia rested.

We assembled shortly after dawn, almost in a state of nudity. Since the heat rendered heavy waterproofs intolerable, we had decided that the less we wore, the better. It would be hard enough work carrying heavy rifles and rucksacks of supplies in such a climate. The Captain shepherded us out into the steady rain, pushed the outer door to behind us and we began our tramp up the beach. We had all but crossed the foreshore scrub which bordered the forest proper when I stopped abruptly. “Damnation,” I said with some irritation.

“What is it, do you think?” asked the Captain.

“Ammunition,” I told him. “I put it aside ready to pack, and forgot to put it in.”

“Are you sure?"

I hauled the rucksack off my back and looked through the contents. There was no sign of the packet of cartridges he had given me. In order to travel light, we had only a few rounds each. I could not expect the others to share theirs with me in the circumstances. There was only one thing to be done. “I’ll go back for them. It’ll only take a few seconds,” I said.

The Captain grudgingly consented. He disliked inefficiency but could not afford to weaken his party by taking a member of it unarmed into possible dangers. I hurried back to the ship, stumbling along through the sand and shingle. As I pulled open the airlock door, I glanced back. The three, I could dimly see, had reached the edge of the forest and were standing under such shelter as they could find, watching me.

I jumped inside and threw down my rifle and rucksack with a clatter. First I rushed for the engines and turned on the fuel taps, then I made forward to the navigation room. Hurriedly I set the controls as I had been shown and pulled over the ignition switch. With my fingers above the first bunch of firing keys, I looked once more out of the windows. The Captain was pounding across the beach, followed at a little distance by the others. How he had guessed that there was anything wrong I cannot say. Perhaps his glasses had enabled him to see that I was in the control room. Anyway, he meant business...

He passed out of my line of sight, and a moment later I pressed the firing keys. The Nuntia trembled, lurched and began to slither forward across the sand. I saw the other two wave despairing arms. It was impossible to tell whether the Captain had managed to scramble aboard or not. I turned the rising ship towards the sea. Again I looked back, just in time to see the others running towards a form which lay huddled on the sand. Close beside it they stopped and looked up. They shook wild, impotent fists in the direction of my retreating Nuntia.

After a few hours, I began to grow seriously worried. There must be other land on this planet, but I had seen none as yet. I began to have a nasty feeling that it would all end with the Nuntia dropping into the sea, condemning me to eventual death by starvation should I survive the fall. She was not intended to be run single-handed. In order to economize weight, many operations which could easily have been made automatic had been left to manual control with the assumption that there would always be one or more men on engine room duty. The fuel pressure gauge was dangerously low now, but the controls required constant attention, preventing me from getting aft to start the pressure pumps. I toyed with the idea of fixing the controls while I made a dash to the engine room and back, but since it was impossible to find a satisfactory method of holding them, the project had to be abandoned. The only thing I could do was to hold on and hope land would show up before it was too late.

In the nick of time, it did — a rockbound, inhospitable-looking coast, but one which for all its ruggedness was fringed to the very edges of the harsh cliffs with a close-pressed growth of jungle. There was no shore such as we had used for a landing ground on the island. The water swirled and frothed about the cliff-foot as the great breakers dashed themselves with a kind of ponderous futility against the mighty retaining wall. No landing there. Above, the jungle stretched back to the horizon, an undulating, unbroken plain of treetops. Somewhere there I would have to land, but where?

A few miles in from the coast, the Nuntia settled it for me. The engines stopped with a splutter. I did not attempt to land her. I jumped for one of the spring acceleration hammocks and trusted that it would stand the shock.

I came out of that rather well. When I examined the wrecked Nuntia, her wings torn off, her nose crumpled like tinfoil, her smooth body now gaping in many places from the force of the impact, I marveled that anyone could sustain only a few bruises (acquired when the hammock mountings had weakened to breaking point) as I did. There was one thing certain in a very problematical future — the Nuntia’s flying days were done. I had carried out Metallic Industries’ instructions to the full, and the telescopes of I. C. would nightly be searching the skies for a ship which would never return.

Despite my predicament (or perhaps because I had not fully appreciated it as yet) I was full of a savage joy. I had struck the first of my revengeful blows at the men who had caused my family such misery. The only shadow across my satisfaction was that they could not know that it was I, and not Fate, who was against them.

It would be tedious to tell in detail of my activities during the next few weeks. There is nothing surprising about them. My efforts to make the Nuntia habitable, my defenses against the larger animals, my cautious hunting expeditions, my search for edible greenstuffs, were such as any other man would have made. They were makeshift and temporary. I did only enough to assure myself of moderate comfort until the Metallic Industries ship should arrive to take me off. So for six months — by the Nuntia’s chronometers — I idled and loafed, and though it may sometimes have crossed my mind that Venus was not altogether a desirable piece of real estate, yet it was in a detached, impersonal way that I regarded my surroundings. It would make a wonderful topic of conversation when I got home. That “when I got home” colored all my thoughts. It was the constant barrier which stood between me and the life about me. This planet might surround me, but it could not touch me as long as the barrier remained in place.

At the end of six months, I began to feel that my time of exile was nearly up. The M. I. ship would be finished by now, and ready to follow the Nuntia’s lead. I waited almost a month longer, seeing her in my mind’s eye falling through space towards me. Then it was time for my signal. I had arranged the main searchlight so that it would point vertically upwards to stab its beam into the low clouds, and now I began to switch it on every night as soon as the darkness came, leaving it glaring until near dawn. For the first few nights, I scarcely slept, so certain was I that the ship must be cruising close by in search of me. I used to lie awake watching the dismal sky for the flash of her rockets and straining my ears for their thunder. But this stage did not last long. I consoled myself very reasonably that it might take much searching to find me. But all day, too, I was alert, with smoke rockets ready to be fired the moment I should hear her.

After four months more, my batteries gave out. It is surprising that they lasted so long. As the voltage dropped, so did my hopes. The jungle seemed to creep closer, making ominous bulges in my barrier of detachment. For a number of nights after the filaments had glowed their last, I sat up through the hours of darkness, firing occasional distress rockets in forlorn faith. It was when they were finished that I saw what had occurred. Why I did not think of it before, I cannot tell. But the truth came to me in a flash: Metallic Industries had duped me just as International Chemicals had duped my father.

They had not built — had never intended to build — a spaceship. Why should they, once I. C. had lost theirs? That, I grew convinced, was the decision which had been taken in the Board Room after my withdrawal. They had never intended that I should return. I could see now that they would have found it not only expensive, but dangerous. There would be not only my reward to be paid, but I might blackmail them. In every way it would be more convenient that I should do my work and disappear. And what better method of disappearance could there be than loss upon another planet? The swine.

Those are the methods of Earth — that is the honor of great companies, as you will know to your cost should you have dealings with them. They’ll use you, and then break you.

I must have been nearly crazy for some days after that realization. My fury with my betrayers, my disgust with my own gullibility, the appalling sense of loneliness, and, above all, the eternal drumming of that almost ceaseless rain combined to drive me into a frenzy which stopped only on the brink of suicide.

But in the end, the adaptability of my race began to assert itself. I began to hunt and live off the land about me. I struggled through two bouts of fever and successfully sustained a period of semi-starvation when my food was finished and game was short. For company I had only a pair of six-legged, silver-furred creatures which I had trained. I had found them one day, deserted in a kind of large nest and crying weakly with hunger. Taking them back with me to the Nuntia, I fed them and found them friendly little things. As they grew larger, they began to display remarkable intelligence. Later I christened them Mickey and Minnie (after certain classic film stars at home) and they soon got to know their names.

And now I come to the last and most curious episode which I confess I do not yet understand. It occurred several years after the Nuntia’s landing. A foraging expedition upon which Mickey and Minnie accompanied me, as usual, had taken us into country completely unknown to me. A scarcity of game and a determination not to return empty-handed had caused me to push on farther than usual. At last, at the entrance to a valley, Mickey and Minnie stopped. Nothing I could do would induce them to go on. Moreover, they tried to hold me back, clutching at my legs with their fore-paws. The valley looked a likely place for game and I shook them off impatiently. They watched me as I went, making little whining noises of protest, but they did not attempt to follow.

For the first quarter of a mile, I saw nothing unusual. Then I had a nasty shock. Some way farther on, an enormous head, reared above the trees, was looking directly at me. It was not like anything I had ever seen before, but thoughts of the giant reptiles jumped to my mind. Tyrannosaur must have had a head not unlike that. I was puzzled as well as scared. Venus could not be still in the age of the giant reptiles. I could not have lived here all this time without seeing something of them before this.

The head did not move – there was no sound. As my first flood of panic abated, it was clear that the animal had not seen me. I took cover and started to move cautiously closer. The valley seemed utterly silent, for I had grown so used to the sounds of rain that my ears scarcely registered them. At two hundred yards, I came within sight of the great head again and decided to risk a shot. I aimed at the right eye and fired.

Nothing happened — the echoes thundered from side to side. Nothing else moved. It was uncanny, unnerving. I snatched my glasses. Yes, I had scored a bull, right in the creature’s eye, but...odd. I decided that I didn’t like the valley a bit, but I made myself go on. There was a curious odor in the air, not unpleasant, yet a little sickly. Quite close to the monster I stopped. He had not budged an inch. Suddenly, behind him, I caught a glimpse of another reptile — smaller, more lizard like, but with teeth and claws that made me sweat. I dropped on one knee and raised the rifle. I had begun to feel an odd swimming sensation inside my head. The world seemed to be tilting about me. My rifle barrel wavered. I could not see clearly. I felt myself begin to fall — I seemed to be falling a long, long way...

When I awoke, it was to see the bars of a cage —

Dagul stopped reading. He knew the rest.

“How long ago, do you think?” he asked.
Goin shrugged his shoulders. “Heaven knows. A very long time, that’s all we can be sure of. The continual clouds... And did you notice that he claims to have tamed two of our primitive ancestors ? — Millions of years."

“And he warns us against Earth.” Dagul smiled. “It will be a shock for the poor devil. The last of his race — though not, to judge by his own account, a very worthy race. When are you going to tell him?"

“He’s bound to find out soon, so I thought I’d do it this evening. I’ve got permission to take him up to the observatory.”

“Would you mind if I came too?"

“Of course not.”

Gratz was stumbling among unfamiliar syllables as the three climbed the hill to the Observatory of Takon, doing his best to drive home his warnings of the perfidy of Earth and the ways of great companies. He was relieved when both the Takonians assured him that no negotiations were likely to take place.

“Why have we come here?" he asked when they were in the building, and an assistant in obedience to Goin’s orders was adjusting the large telescope.

“We want to show you your planet,” said Dagul.

There was some preliminary difficulty due to differences between the Takonian and the human eye, but before long he was studying a huge, shining disc. A moment later he turned back to the others with a slight smile. “There’s some mistake. This is our moon.”

“No. It is the Earth,” Goin assured him.

Gratz looked back at the scarred, pitted surface of the planet. For a long time he gazed in silence. It was like the moon, and yet... Despite the craters, despite the desolation, there was a familiar quality. A suggestion of the linked Americas stretching from pole to pole, a bulge which might have been the West African coast... Gratz gazed in silence for a great while. At last he turned away. “How long?” he asked.

“Some millions of years.”

“I don’t understand. It was only the other day — ”

Goin started to explain, but Gratz heard none of it. Like a man dreaming, he walked out of the building. He was seeing again the Earth as she had been, a place of beauty, beautiful in spite of all that man had made her suffer — and now she was dead, a celestial cinder.

Close by the edge of the cliff which held the observatory high above Takon, he paused. He looked out across an alien city in an alien world towards a white point which glittered in the heavens. The Earth which had borne him was dead. Long and silently he gazed. Then, deliberately, with a step which did not falter, he walked over the cliff’s edge ....

Phoney Meteor

1941[2]

“Your, Sally. Double score I wanted for the honor of the Post,” said Graham.

Sally took the darts, and concentrated. The first went high, the second low. She poised the last carefully. Everyone regarded the board with breathless attention. The other side was too good to be given any unnecessary chances. Prestige hung in the balance for the Warsbury A.R.P. Post — also a case of beer, and the Post was justly proud of the fact that it had not had to pay for a case of beer for some weeks past.

Sally Fontain drew back her arm, started to throw At that exact moment the floor shook under her feet. Somewhere outside there was a thunderous crash. The glass in the sandbagged windows jiggled and rattled. Sally’s dart flew wide, glanced off a tin hat and imbedded itself in the toe of a gum-boot.

For a moment no one moved or spoke, then one of the visiting team reached for his cigarette case. “Do you suppose,” he inquired, carefully as he opened it, “Do you suppose that’s God or Hitler?”

Nobody answered. All the other seven stood waiting, tensely expectant of a second crash. It failed to come. An unusually deep silence seemed to have settled over everything.

Sally moved first. She negotiated the screen of blankets, opened the door and put her head into the outer darkness. There was no sound but a soft swish of the wind in the bare branches. “If it was thunder, it ought to come again,” the visiting spokesman was maintaining as she came back, “but if it was Hitler it makes it a natural hazard and our turn.”

“I can’t see or hear anything,” she said. “Do you think we ought to have a look around?”

Graham Toffts scratched his head. “We ought to have had the warning,” he pointed out aggrievedly. “If it’s a raid you’re supposed to stay here till we get the all clear. If it isn’t, it’s none of our business and –”

The sudden buzz of the telephone cut him short. He leaped to the desk and picked up the receiver. “This is Church-Warsbury 69,” he said.

He listened. “The message is white,” he dutifully repeated.

Putting the telephone down he reached for the log book of the Post and began to enter the time of the call. Then with his pencil on the paper he suddenly looked up. “Did I say the message was white?” he inquired, surprisedly.

“You did,” they assured him as one man.

“That’s funny. The last entry here is for Tuesday.” He considered the telephone thoughtfully for a moment. Then he picked it up again and gave a number. “Did you say,” he asked, “that the message was white?”

“I did,” a voice assured him.

“And that means ‘cancel all previous messages’?”

“Sure.”

“Well, what was the previous message?”

“I don’t know, old boy. We never had one.”

“Then what the devil?”

“Just obeying instructions, old man. Now do you mind getting off the –”

“Wait a minute,” said Graham. “There’s been a big noise here, do you…?”

“I thought he was in London.”

“No, I mean something went bang.”

“Probably termites undermining your Post. Now get off the line there’s a good chap. I’ve got to ring the other Posts.” The instrument died.

“Idiot,” murmured Graham, as he hung up.

“Pretty well establishes that it wasn’t Hitler,” remarked the visitor, “so Sally had better throw that one again.”

An hour later their turn of duty ended. The relieving wardens were greeted by the information that the Post was another case of beer to the good and by inquiries as to what had been responsible for its near loss. The newcomers, however, had little to tell. Only that the village had been roused by the crash but finding that no air-raid warning was sounded, had gradually settled down and returned to bed.

The visiting dart players had taken themselves off half an hour before, and now their two co-wardens slipped away. Graham waited while Sally tucked her trousers into her boots and watched her pull the light blue lined hood over her fair hair. She smiled at him through the mirror. They wished a quiet night to their successors and went out into the darkness.

The air was chilly. Sally took deep breaths of it, refreshing herself and driving the warm mugginess and smoke of the Post out of her lungs. The new moon had set, but the sky was clear with enough light to bring first branches, then hedges, then the road itself slowly into visibility. She looked up into the star stippled heavens and drew another satisfying breath. Her fur gloved hand slipped under Graham’s arm. “I love it,” she said. “I want it.”

“Darling, how comprehensive. Crying for the sky.”

“It’s more than sky now,” she said. “Before all this beastliness started it was just the sky. But now it’s — I don’t know, it’s a piece of reality, I think. I’d like to spread my arms and float into it, swim in it, away from all this. It’s still real, but we are in a nightmare.”

There came the faint, increasing drone of an airplane. Searchlight beams shot out sweeping this way and that, fantastic because they looked like solid wands yet they neither broke nor bent as they whipped across the sky. One of them and then another found the machine, a tiny bit of silver paper high, high up, then they lost it. They flicked about a little, seemed to lose interest, and shut themselves off one by one. The plane buzzed on its way. “That’s not real, you know,” said Sally. “It’s a lunatic’s dream.”

“Shakespeare more or less forestalled you: ‘Life is a tale told by an idiot’,” said Graham.

She nodded. “Of course. I sometimes wonder that literature survived Shakespeare, considering that he forestalled pretty well everybody in all they want to say.

“Do you think that out there,” she went on, waving a furry hand to include the whole sidling galaxy, “there are tales told by sane men? It’d be a relief to know it, somehow, even if one could never get there.”

“May be, but they’ll have their own problems. Their ancestors will have made their beds, and now they and their children must lie on them.”

“You’re very quotational tonight, aren’t you?”

They reached a fork in the road. Sally paused. “Well, goodnight, Graham.”

He pressed her arm firmly under his own. “Not at all. I’m going to see you safely home.”

“It’s late. I can tackle the perils of Warsbury myself.”

“I know. Tough girl and all that. It was merely my way of indicating that I would like to continue the pleasure of your society. Come along.”

“I don’t think,” she said, “I’m quite as tough as I hoped. I jumped like hell at that bang tonight — and nearly lost the beer as a result.”

“Hang it. We all jumped like hell. Who wouldn’t? I wonder what it was? If there’d been anything near here to blow up, I’d say it had, but there isn’t. Not that I know of. Have you heard of a dump of any kind?”

She shook her head. “Nothing nearer than the anti-aircraft people at Haxett — and that bang can’t have been six miles away. A boiler, perhaps?”

“No domestic boiler could make a row like that. I don’t… Hullo, what do you suppose is going on over there?”

He pointed to a bright light flashing erratically on the further side of a clump of trees. “Two thicknesses of tissue paper over the bulb,” he observed. “Not that anyone much seems to pay any attention to the rule, but there are limits.”

They passed the trees and had a clearer view. Someone was playing a powerful beam of undimmed brilliance back and forth across the grass. “That’s one of our fields,” said Sally. “What on Earth…?”

“I’ll go over. You stay here.”

“Rubbish,” she retorted.

They climbed the fence together.

The holder of the lamp was too intent on his mysterious occupation to notice their approach until Graham spoke. At the sound of his voice the lamp jogged suddenly and switched in their direction, dazzling them. “Damn it. You made me jump,” said an aggrieved voice.

“Daddy,” said the girl, “what on Earth do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m looking for something.”

“At this time of night. And you, a warden’s father, breaking the lighting regulations. I’m ashamed of you. What have you lost?”

The lamp was lowered so that it played on the ground as they approached. “Well, I’ve not exactly lost anything,” its holder admitted. “But something fell. You may have heard it — quite a loud noise about an hour and a half ago.”

“Certainly we heard it. We thought it was an explosion.”

“Oh no. Something definitely fell. I’d just taken the dog out. There was a flash — a dim sort of flash in this direction, and then the noise.”

“A plane crashing?”

“No, I don’t think so. It was a single bang. An airplane wouldn’t have made nearly so much noise unless it was carrying bombs — and if it had been bombs I should have seen them explode. No, it was something else, I’m sure, but I haven’t been able to find anything. I was just thinking of giving up when you came.”

“I should. It’s pretty late,” Graham advised.

“Besides,” added Sally, “you may attract some warden who isn’t related to you. And you’ve no coat! Come along in and have a warm drink at once.”

Mr. Fontain switched off his lantern and stepped toward them resignedly. “All right,” he agreed meekly. He turned to Graham. “Are you thinking of marrying this young woman?” he inquired.

“I — er— well — um — that is to say — ” began Graham, with some embarrassment.

“Don’t,” advised her father. “Too bossy, you know. Much too bossy.”

“Good morning,” said a voice, thin, distorted but still unmistakably Sally’s over the telephone. “Your line’s been occupied a long time.”

“That, my dear, was the Chief Warden. I may as well tell you right off that he wants to know not only who let off the bang last night and scared half the countryside, but also who was fooling about with what appeared to be a private searchlight. I knew nothing of either. Truth in the first case, sentimental weakness in the second.”

“Oh, Graham. You lied to save my family name?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Well, listen, I can make you some return. We’ve found the thing that made the bang — at least, that is we've found where it banged.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, in a little spinney just beyond where Daddy was searching.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, we’ve not got it yet. It broke a lot trees and buried itself in a hole. Daddy’s getting some men to dig. He thinks it was probably a meteorite.”

“I’d better tell the Chief Warden or the Police or something, and get them to send someone along.”

“Why?”

“Well, I mean, suppose it’s not a meteorite. Might be Hitler’s secret weapon.”

“Hitler’s secret, my aunt,” said Sally, briefly.

“Anyway, I’ll pass it on and then come round. See you in half-an-hour,” Graham told her and hung up.

Extract from the Journal of Onns

As an introduction to the notes which I intend to keep I can scarcely do better than to give the gist of the talk given to us on the day before we left Forta[3] by Excellency Cottafts. In contrast to our public farewell, this meeting was deliberately made as informal as a meeting of several thousands can be with the object of making it clear that, though there were leaders for convenience, there was no least amongst us.

Excellency Cottafts made that clear almost in his opening words.

“There is not one of you men and women[4] who is not a volunteer,” he said. And as he spoke he looked slowly round his huge audience. His voice was amplified, but its tone remained natura. His manner was that of one talking to us, not one of a speechmaker. “You have volunteered,” he repeated. “In every one of you, since you are individuals, the proportions of emotions which led you to do so are different in detail, but, however personal or altruistic your impulses may be, there is a common denominator in all of us: it is the determination that — the race shall go on.

“Tomorrow the Globes go out. Tomorrow the consciousness of Forta puts its supreme strain on Nature. Civilization from its beginning is the ability to coordinate and direct natural forces — and once that direction has been started it must be maintained unless the end is to be terrible indeed. There have been other dominant species on Forta. They did not direct nature. They lived, increased, dwindled and died as conditions changed. We have met conditions as they changed — in a world vastly different from that our remote ancestors knew. We not only survive, we flourish.

“We flourish, moreover, in such numbers as undirected Nature could never have maintained. In the past we have surmounted problem after problem. Now we find ourselves faced with one which seems to us greater than all the rest. Our world is senile – we are not. Ours are young spirits in a failing body.

“Or let me put it another way. This is our house, our home. We were born here. For centuries we have adapted it, kept it going, substituted, patched it until now there is little more with which to patch it. It is beginning, more than beginning, to deteriorate. Now, while we are healthy and strong, now is the time for us to find a new house.

“You understand that we must delay no longer or you would not be here. There will be our great grandchildren and their great grandchildren on Forta, but life will be harder, more time will be spent in the effort of keeping alive. That is why we must go now while we have strength and wealth to spare.” He paused, looking slowly around the hall again.

“And after the Globes have gone, what then?

“For us on Forta a slow decline? I trust so. Terrible things have been predicted, I know. Anguished bloody struggles for survival, relapse into savagery. That may be, but I think not. I prefer to believe that we can teach our race to grow old gracefully, naturally and to die at last gently as an old, old man dies.

“But for you, what? That is a thing that no man can tell, and at which guesses are merely vain. You go in the Globes to the four corners of the heavens. All our arts and skill will set you on your courses. We can do no more after that than pray that you, our seed, will find the fruitful soil.”

Again he paused. This time so long that he seemed to have forgotten us. At last he went on. “Your charge you know or you would not have offered yourselves. Nevertheless, it is one which you will not be able to learn too well, nor teach too often. In the hands of each and every one of you lies a civilization. Every man and woman is both the receptacle and the potential fountain of all that Forta has ever been. You hold the history, the culture, the civilization of a planet. Use it. Use it well. Give it where it will help. Learn more and improve it if you can. Do not try to preserve it intact — to be real a culture must live and grow. In you we see the future of the race, but do not cling to the past or there will be no future.

“But do not forget the past, heed its warnings. There have been triumphs and failures, experiments that succeeded, ideals that turned out to be false. There have been good intentions with bitter, bloody aftermaths, mistakes which seemed about to wreck us. But we have won through, and it seems to me as it must seem to you that we hold a trust, not only for our race, but for all conscious life wherever it may be.

“Go forth, then, go forth in wisdom, kindliness, peace and truth.

“Our prayers go out into the mysteries of space with you — our children.”

I have looked again at our new home through the telescope. We are, I think, lucky. It is a planet which is neither too young nor too old. Conditions were good with little cloud. It shone like a blue pearl, and I was able to see more of it than ever before. Much of it was covered with water — more than two-thirds of it, they tell me, is under water. It will be good to be in a place where irrigation and water supply cannot be one of the main problems of life. Nevertheless, one hopes that we are fortunate enough to make our landing on dry ground, if we have the ill luck to land in one of the oceans it will make our task much more complicated in the beginning.

I looked, too, at the places to which some of the other globes are bound, some small, some large, some new and clouded so that their surfaces remain a mystery, at least one old, in little better case, it would appear, than our own poor Forta — though the astronomers tell me that it really has the ability to support life for several million years. All the same I am glad we are going to our blue, shining world. It seems to beckon, and I am filled with a hope which does much to diminish my fears of the journey.

Not that my fears trouble me so much now as they did at first. I have managed in this last year to teach myself some fatalism about that. I shall go into the Globe, I tell myself, the anaesthetic gas will lull me to sleep even while I am unaware of it. When I wake it will be on our shimmering new world. If I do not wake, something will have gone wrong, but I shall never know it.

That’s how it is — so simple. It is only in the night that my fears come back, and I wake up shivering at something I cannot remember. Would it be, perhaps, the fear of fear?

I went down this evening to look at the Globes, to see them objectively for the last time. Tomorrow all will be bustle and preparation. There will be no time for reflection — that will be as well. What a staggering, amazing, one would almost say impossible, work they are. The making of them has entailed labor beyond my comprehension. Over 700[5] feet in diameter they look more likely to crush the ground and to sink into Forta than to fly off into space. What mighty masses of metal. We must pass tomorrow through a corridor in solid metal 144 feet long before we reach the interior space. Twenty of these metal mountains we have built with toil, sacrifice and hope. Twenty of them.

And some will be lost.

Oh, God, let those of us who survive never forget. Let us be worthy of this supreme effort. It may be that these are the last words that I shall ever write, but if I live, it will be in a new world and under a strange sky that I continue. For me Forta ends tomorrow.

“You shouldn’t have touched it,” said the Chief Air Raid Warden severely. “It should have been left where it was until the proper authorities had inspected it.”

There was a touch of the resuscitated war-horse about the Chief Warden. For a long time his words had had no more weight, save in his own home, than the next man’s. Now he was able to give orders again and though obedience was scarcely up to Army standards people did have at least to listen. He was feeling better and busier and more himself these last few months than he’d felt for years.

“And who,” inquired Mr. Fontain, patiently, “are the proper authorities for the inspection of meteorites?”

“That is beside the point. In war time any unusual happening should be reported to the police at once. How could you be sure it was a meteorite?”

“Because it looked like one. Anyway, how could the police be sure?”

“It’s their job to make sure first that it isn’t any new kind of enemy device, or — er — secret weapon.”

“They, of course, knowing all about secret weapons? Do you represent the police?”

“No, I...”

“Then may I ask –”

Sally considered it time to break in hurriedly. “Well, we shall know what to do next time we have a meteorite, shan’t we? But suppose we all go and have a look at the thing. It’s in the shed now, and looking quite harmless.”

She led the party of four around to the yard, still talking to stave off a row b tween the Chief Warden and her father. “It didn’t go very deep and the men soon had it out. We expected it to be quite hot still, but it was barely warm so that they could handle it quite easily.”

“You wouldn’t say ‘quite easily,’ if you’d heard the language they used about the weight of it,” her father put in.

“Here it is,” Sally said, pushing open the door of a single story shed.

The others followed her in. The meteorite was not impressive to look at. It stood on the bare boards in the middle of the floor, a rugged, pitted, scarred, metallic-looking ball some thirty inches in diameter.

“Not much to make such a fuss about, is it?” said Mr. Fontain.

The Chief Warden did not care for the use of the word “fuss.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” he reproved. “Must do things in proper order in wartime. The Inspector and the Military Expert will be here to examine it shortly. Until they have done so it shouldn’t be touched again.”

Graham did not take this literally. He laid his hand on the surface and found that the outside at any rate was almost cold now. “What’s it made of?” he asked, curiously.

Mr. Fontain shrugged his shoulders. “It’s just a chunk of meteoric iron, I imagine. Nothing very special about it as far as one can see. If it is a secret weapon, it strikes me as a remarkably poor one,” he added, pointedly.

“Never can tell what they’ll be up to, what with magnetic mines and so on,” said the Warden.

He looked over the object with a not very convincing air of one observing subtleties in it which had escaped lesser intelligences but found himself without further comment to offer. “If I were you I should lock the door until the authorities arrive,” he said, as the group moved off.

On the threshold he paused. “What’s that sizzling?” he inquired.

“Sizzling?” said Sally.

“Kind of hissing noise. Listen.”

They stood still, the Warden with his head slightly on one side. There was undeniably a faint, high note just within the range of audibility. It was elusive, uncertain and difficult to place. By a common impulse their heads turned, and four pairs of eyes regarded the metal ball uneasily. Graham hesitated and then stepped forward. He leaned over it, his right ear turned toward it.

“Yes,” he said, “it is.”

His eyes closed and he swayed. Sally ran forward and caught him as he sagged. The others helped her to carry him outside. In the fresh air he revived at once. “That’s funny,” he said. “What happened?”

“It’s what’s going to happen that’s important,” said the Chief Warden, with an ill-concealed air of triumph. “It came from that thing, did it?”

“Yes. It came from there all right.”

The Chief Warden turned to Mr. Fontain. “If you have an air raid shelter, sir, I should suggest that we adjourn there and take our gas masks. I don’t trust mysterious ‘meteorites’ that sizzle.”

“HEY!” bawled a powerful voice. “Is there anyone about here?”

The Chief Warden set down his whisky glass and made his way into the open. The others followed. The police Inspector and three officers were standing on the drive in front of the house.

“What’s going on here?” the Inspector wanted to know.

“Sorry, Inspector. I’ve sent the servants away, and we didn’t hear you come,” Mr. Fontain told him.

The Inspector performed introductions. “These three gentlemen are the official experts,” he explained. “Now if you’d be so good as to tell us where this object is…?”

“It’s in the shed — sizzling,” said the Chief Warden.

“Er — sizzling?” repeated the Inspector.

“Definitely sizzling.”

“Oh,” said the Inspector. “Oh, I see.” He gracefully left the matter in the hands of the experts.

“We’ll manage this if you show us where it is,” said the senior officer. “You people had better get back to the shelter. And you, too. Inspector.”

The policeman brightened. “Yes, sir.”

Graham remained to show the way and to give what information he could. The men listened and nodded. “Some new kind of gas container,” one suggested. “You didn’t smell anything?” Graham assured him that there had been no smell other than the mustiness of the shed, and that if it had been gas it had left no aftereffects whatever.

In the yard the men put on their service respirators. The senior officer opened the door and walked in while another watched through the window. Through the open door, Graham watched the man take two steps into the shed and then sink down in a huddle. The watcher at the window stepped back took a deep breath, dashed inside and dragged his superior out. In the open air the man revived even before the others had got the respirator off his face.

“Strange,” he murmured, “very strange. No smell, no taste, nothing — and yet it goes right through the respirator before you know what’s happened.”

He considered.

“Afraid you people will have to clear out for a bit,” he said to Graham. “Have to put a cordon round the place while we tackle it. Tell the others, will you?”

“Damn,” said Sally when she heard the news. “They’re not going to blow it up, are they?”

Graham was of the opinion that they would be more anxious to understand it than to destroy it if it could be helped.

“Oh, well that’s not so bad,” she said, relieved. “I thought they might damage the house.”

“It might blow up of itself,” suggested the Chief Warden, with a cheerless hopefulness.

Extract from the Journal of Onns.

It is bewildering. Has it happened? Or have we failed? It is hard to believe either. Was it an hour, a day, a year, or a century ago that we entered the Globe? How can one tell? But, no, it was not an hour ago; I know that because my limbs are tired and my body aches.

They told us about that.

“You will feel nothing,” they said, “nothing until after it is over. Then you will feel sore and physically weary because your bodies will have been subjected to great strains and there will be a sensation of weakness. That should pass quite soon, but we shall give you some capsules of concentrated food and stimulants to overcome the effects more quickly.” I have taken one capsule and I can feel the benefit of it pouring through me already. But it is still hard to believe.

We climbed the long passage into the Globe so short a time ago it seems. Inside we dispersed as we had been instructed. Each of us sought his or her elastic compartment. We crawled inside. Carefully one inflated the space between the inner and outer walls of the compartment. Gradually the lining distended. One was lifted on a mattress of air, the top bulged down, the sides closed in, pressing gently, until he was insulated from shocks in all directions. Then one waited.

Waited for what? I still cannot say. One moment, it seems, I lay there fresh and strong: the next, tired and aching.

It is over, or, rather, it is just beginning. The anaesthetic has seeped out, the air intake has been at work. That must mean that we have arrived. We are on that beautiful shining blue planet, and Forta will be only a speck in our heavens.

I feel different for the knowledge. All my life hitherto has been spent among a forlorn people on a world under the imminent sentence of death, where the greatest enemy was a lethal discouragement which must be checked lest it spread like a plague. Here there will be work, hope and life – a world to build and a future to build it for. Great tasks await us. And what else? As I lie here I can hear the drills at work cutting a way out for us into a new life. What, I wonder, shall we find? A savage world where life may be hard at first among perils and with the struggle for survival. We must watch ourselves. It will perhaps be easier for us to keep faith among hardships than among plenty. But whatever this world is like faith must be kept.

In us there is a million years of history, a million years of knowledge — that must be preserved. If it is let go even for a generation or two we shall have half-failed, for our children will have to fight their way up again through pain, blood and anguish. Generation upon generation of half-blind will be straining in agony to distinguish the right road from the wrong. That shall not be allowed to happen.

And yet we must adapt ourselves. Who can tell what forms of life there may be here? One could scarcely expect to find intelligent consciousness on a planet so young, and yet there may be the first stirrings of intelligence. We must watch for them, seek them out, cultivate them. They may be quite different from us, but we must help where we can. We must remember that it is their world. Born of their own planet, their rights are greater, perhaps, than ours — I do not know, it is debatable, but we have no right to frustrate them. We must teach and learn and co-operate until, perhaps, between us we may achieve a civilization greater than Forta’s own.

“What,” said the officer in charge, “do you think you’re doing with that?”

His junior lifted up the limp, furry body by the tail and held it dangling. “It’s a cat, sir.”

“I can see that for myself.”

“I thought you might want to inspect it, sir.”

“Why should I want to inspect a dead cat?”

The other explained. He had a squad of men busy filling sandbags and piling them around the outer walls of the building for the purpose of localizing the effect of any explosion and directing its main force upward. He himself had risked going into the shed again. He had tied a rope around his waist so that he could be dragged out again if overcome and had kept low, crawling into the place on all fours. These precautions, however, had proved unnecessary. It seemed that the gas had dispersed and the sizzling or hissing had ceased. He was able to approach the ball closely without any ill effects. A short distance from it he became aware of a faint buzzing.

“Buzzing?” interrupted his superior. “What kind of buzzing?”

The other considered. “Well, sir, the nearest thing I can suggest is a buzzsaw working slowly, a long way off.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever heard one, but I think I see what you mean. Well?”

Since it was clear that the thing, whatever it was, was still active, sandbagging operations had been continued. He had forbidden any of the men to go into the shed, but he himself had looked in from time to time during the next hour and a half and found no further traces of gas.

It was at the end of this time that the cat had prowled into the yard. He had induced it to go into the shed as an experiment. There had been no result and he forgot it in directing operations. Half an hour later he had remembered it, and, looking in, saw it lying stretched full length near the mysterious ball. On fetching it out he had found it dead.

“Another kind of gas?” suggested the senior officers.

“No, sir. It’s rather odd.”

He laid the cat’s body on the table and turned the head to show the under side of the jaw. A circle of the black fur was burned away and in the center of the burn was a small hole. “H’m,” said the other. He touched the wound, and then smelled his fingers. “Burned hair all right, but no explosive fumes,” he said.

“That’s not all, sir.”

The younger man turned the head over to reveal an exactly similar blemish on the crown. He took a thin straight wire from his pocket and probed it gently through the hole beneath the jaw. The wire emerged from the hole at the top of the head. “Can you make anything of that?” he asked.

The other frowned. A weapon of minute bore at point-blank range might have made one of the wounds, but they appeared to be entrance and exit holes of the same missile. But a bullet did not come out leaving a neat hole like that, nor, certainly did it singe the hair about its exit. To all appearance two of these small bullets must have been fired in exactly the same line from above and below the head. And that made no kind of sense.

“No,” he admitted candidly. “Have you any theories?”

“No, sir. It beats me.”

“What’s happened to the thing now?” the other went on. “Is it still buzzing?”

“No, sir. That stopped some time ago. There wasn’t a sound from it when I went in to fetch the cat. Quite inert it seems now.”

The other older man tugged thoughtfully at his mustache. “We’ll give it an hour or so, just in case,” he decided, “and then if nothing’s happened I think we’d better move it somewhere where it can be properly examined.”

Extract from the Journal of Onns.

God, what frightful place is this! Into what fantastic hell are we condemned? Where is our beautiful blue planet that shone so brave with hope? We do not understand, we are utterly bewildered, our minds reel with the horror of this place. We, the lords of creation cower before the monstrosities that face us. How can we hope to tame a world like this?

We hide now in a dark cavern while Iss, our leader, consults and decides what is best to do. None of us envies him his responsibility. What provision can man make against not only the unknown, but against the incredible? Nine hundred and sixty-four of us depend on him. There were a thousand: this was the way of it.

I heard the drill stop boring and then a clanking as it was dismantled and withdrawn from its long shaft. Soon after that came the call for assembly. We crawled out of our compartments, collected our personal belongings and met in the central space. Iss himself called the roll. Everyone answered except four. They, poor fellows, had not stood the strain of the journey.

Iss made a brief speech.

It was done, he reminded us, and it was irrevocable. No one knew what awaited us outside the Globe. If it should somehow happen that our party was divided each group should elect a leader and go forward.

“It is long courage, not brief bravery, that is needed,” he said. “This is the time for wisdom, not heroics. Remember always that one life lost now means thousands unborn. We must think of ourselves continually as the seed of the future. A handful of precious seed setting ourselves to grow a new civilization — and not one grain can we afford to lose.”

He was impressive in his earnestness as he hammered home the responsibility of every one of us. “We do not know, and we can never know,” he went on, “how the other Globes may have fared. And, not knowing, we must act as though we alone had survived and as if all that Forta has stood for lay only in our hands.

“Now we pass into our new lives.”

It was he who led the way down the passage so newly bored and he who first set foot in the new land. I followed with the rest, filled with such conflicting feelings as I had never known.

And the world into which we emerged. How shall I describe it in all its alien quality?

To begin with, it was gloomy and shadowed, yet it was not night. Such light as there was came from a vast grey panel which hung in the dusky sky. From where we stood it appeared trapezial, but I suspect that was a trick of perspective and that it was, in fact, a square bisected into four smaller squares by two vast dark bars.

In the murk above it was possible dimly to make out faint lines intersecting at strange angles. I could not guess at their significance.

The ground we stood on was like nothing I had known. It was vast, ridged plain and covered with small, loose boulders. The strata had somehow been twisted to the vertical and its edges lay all one way disappearing into the gloomy distance before and behind. Close beside us was a crevasse as wide as my own height, running either way in a perfectly straight line. Beyond it, 150 feet or so away was another crack running exactly parallel to it and similar distances beyond, a third and an indication of a fourth. The man beside me was nervous. He muttered something about a geometrical world lit by a square sun.

“Rubbish!” I said, shortly.

“Then how do you explain it?” he asked.

“I do not rush into facile explanation,” I told him. “I observe. Then, when I have enough data, I deduce.”

“Well, do a bit of deduction about the noise and the shaking,” he suggested, not too politely.

I had been half aware of these things before. Somewhere far away an irregular thudding was going on which resulted in almost constant tremors of the ground beneath us. As I peered round, seeking the source of the disturbance, an alarming thing occurred. An extra loud thud shook us more than the rest and simultaneously the lower half of the square of light was blotted out. I will not deny it caused me some apprehension. I looked to see the upper half vanish too, but mercifully it did not.

By this time we were all assembled outside the Globe and waiting for Iss to give directions. He was about to speak when we were interrupted by a new sound. A kind of regular soft padding, sometimes with a rasping scratch accompanying it. For a moment we were all frozen with apprehension and before we could move, the most fearsome monster emerged from behind the Globe.

Every historic traveler's tale pales beside the reality of the thing we now saw. Never would I have believed that such a creature could exist had I not seen it myself. First there came a face thrusting round the side of the Globe, hanging in the air 250 feet above us. It was a sight to make the bravest of us recoil.

Black it was, so that against the darkness overhead it was difficult to be sure of its outline, but it broadened at the top and above the head itself one seemed to catch a glimpse of two towering, pointed ears. It looked down on us from two vast glowing eyes which were set aslant and can have measured no less than 12 feet from corner to corner.

For a moment it paused, the great eyes blinked and then it came closer. The legs which then appeared were like massive pillars, yet they moved with a dexterity and control unbelievable in members so vast. Both legs and feet were covered with closely set fibres which looked like strands of shining black metal. It bent its legs, lowering its head to look at us more closely and the fearful stench of its breath blew over us. Its face was still more alarming now. It opened a cavern of a mouth, an enormous pink tongue flicked out and back. Above the mouth pointed spines, some of them 50 feet and more long, stood out sideways, trembling. The eyes were still fixed on us, cold, cruel, non-intelligent.

Until then we had been transfixed, but now panic took some of us. Those nearest fell hurriedly back, and at that one of the feet moved liked lightning. A huge black paw with suddenly outthrust claws smacked down. And when it slowly slid back, 20 of our men and women were no more than smears on the ground.

We were paralyzed, all of us except Iss, who forgetful of his own instructions about personal safety, was running toward the creature. As we waited the great paw rose, hovered and struck at us again. Eleven fell to that second murderous blow.

Then I saw Iss. He was standing between the paws. His fire-rod was in his hands, and he was looking up at the monstrous head above him. As I watched he lifted the weapon and aimed. Such folly against that huge thing, such heroic folly! Yet Iss was wiser than I. Suddenly the head jerked, a tremor shook the limbs, and without a sound the monster dropped where it stood.

And Iss? Well, there died a very brave man.

Sunss took charge.

We must find a place of safety, he decided, as soon as possible in case more of such monsters were lurking about. Once we had that we could start to remove our instruments and equipment from the Globe and consider our next step. Accordingly, he led us forward down the broad way between two of the crevasses.

After traveling about half a mile we reached the foot of a great perpendicular cliff with curious rectangular formations on the face. At the base we found this cavern which seems to run a great distance both ways and though its depth is irregular, its height is strangely constant at some two feet above our heads.

Here we have a refuge from such monsters as that which Iss killed. It is too narrow for those huge paws and even the great claws could only rake a little way inside.

A terrible thing has happened.

We are still in the cavern. Sunss and a party of twenty went off to find if there were another way out other than that on to the plain where our Globe lay.

Lay! Past tense — there is our calamity.

After he had gone the rest of us waited keeping watch. For a long time nothing happened. Evidently and mercifully, the monster was alone. It lay in a great black mound close to our Globe. Then a curious thing took place. More light suddenly poured over the plain. An enormous beam came into view. It descended, hooked itself to the slain monster and dragged it away out of sight. Then there was thunderous noise which shook everything about us and the light dimmed again.

I do not pretend to understand these things, none of us can understand them, our reason reels before what we have seen. I can do no more than keep a faithful record.

Another long period passed without event. We were beginning to worry about what had happened to Sunss and his party for they had been away several hours, when the most disastrous happening of all occurred without warning.

Again the plain became lighter. The ground beneath us set up a reverberating rumble and shook so violently to a series of shocks that we were hard put to keep our feet. Peering out of the cavern I saw a sight that even now I can scarcely credit. Forms beside which our previous monster was insignificant: living, moving creatures reared upon two legs and standing 16 or 17 hundred feet high — I know I shall not be believed when I speak of such a thing as an animal almost a third of a mile in height but, God knows, it is the truth. Little wonder that the whole plain groaned and rumbled and shook under a burden of five such. They bent over our Globe, they put their forelegs to it, and lifted it — yes, actually lifted that ponderous, mighty Globe from the ground. The shaking beneath us became worse as they took its weight and stumbled away on colossal feet.

It was too much for some of us. A hundred men ran out from our cavern, cursing, weeping and brandishing their fire-rods, but it was too late and the range was too great for them to do anything effective — besides, what could hope to be effective against colossi such as these?

Our Globe and all its precious contents has gone. We have nothing now, nothing with which to start building our new world, save our own trifling possessions

Nor was that the only calamity. A few minutes later two of Sunss’s companions came back with a dreadful tale to tell. Behind our cavern they had found a warren of broad tunnels foul with the smell of unknown creatures. They had made their way down them with difficulty. Several times they had been beset by different varieties of six legged creatures of horrible appearance.

Many of these were larger than themselves fearfully armed with spines and claws and filled with a vicious ferocity which caused them to attack on sight. Terrifying though they appeared it soon became clear that they were only really dangerous when they made unexpected attacks. Once they had been seen the fire-rods made short work of them.

After a number of fights Sunss had succeeded in reaching open country beyond the tunnels without loss of a man. It was when they were on the way back to fetch us that catastrophe had overtaken them. They had been attacked by fierce, grey-furred creatures 50 feet long and more which they took to be the builders of the tunnels. It was a terrible fight in which most of the party perished before the huge brutes were overcome. Sunss himself had fallen and of all his men only these two had been in a fit condition to make the rest of the journey.

It is a terrible, ghastly tragedy.

Now we have chosen Muin as our leader. He has decided that we must go forward. The plain behind us is barren, our Globe is gone, if we stay here we starve, so we must go through the tunnels to the open country beyond, trusting that there are no more grey monsters to attack us on the way. And God grant that beyond the tunnels this nightmare world gives place to sanity. Is it so much that we ask — to live, to work, to build in peace?

“I’ve been wanting to ask you all evening,” said Sally, as she and Graham left the Post that night, “only I thought it better not to in front of the rest. What’s happened about Daddy’s ‘meteorite’? What was it really?”

Graham chuckled.

“That’s just what they’d like to know. It’s got them absolutely guessing — only that’s all very sub rosa and confidential. When they got it away and examined it, it appeared to be a solid lump of metal without any joins. In one place there was a hole about half an inch in diameter which appeared to go straight in to about halfway through the thing. Well, they scratched their heads about the best way to tackle it and decided that the only thing to do short of blasting it to bits was to cut it in half. So they rigged up a kind of automatic sawing device, set it going, and bunked in a funk hole — just in case. And now they’re even more puzzled than before.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Nothing. When they went back, there was the ball in neat halves. The metal casing was about six inches thick, then there was a two or three inch layer of soft fine dust in which were bits of metal and other substances of all shapes — there’s some mystery there, incidentally, about which the man who told me was very close — then inside another metal wall was an odd formation of cells for all the world, he said, like a section of honeycomb, only it was made of some rubbery, flexible material instead of wax, and every cell was empty. Finally, there was a hollow space about 5 or 6 inches in diameter in the middle.

“There’s the secret weapon — and if you can make anything of that, you’re cleverer than they are. Even the dust in it wasn’t explosive. So they’re all asking one another what, if anything, it could even remotely be expected to do.”

“Oh, dear,” said Sally, “that’ll annoy Daddy. He was so sure it was a meteorite. I wish it had been. It’s not a nice thought that people are continually devising newer and more mysterious weapons which we may come on unexpectedly at any time. It’s such waste. There’s such a terrible lot of waste in the world.”

She tilted back her head, looking up at the starry sky. “I wish we could be out there.”

“You said that last night,” he reminded her.

“I know. But I still wish I could.” She turned her head and glanced sidelong at him. “You’re thinking it’s escapism or defeatism or something. Well, perhaps it is in a way, but it depends on the angle you see it from. I think lots of the early American colonists must have felt like that: they left Europe not because they were afraid but because they were full of hope. They were going to build a new world — but the old one caught them up.

“But think how grand it would be to               go out, perhaps near that bright star there, to take all the best with us and leave all the worst behind. Think of setting out in a huge ship, all the people who really hate war and dirt and cruelty and oppression, of landing on a new planet. We’d get rid of all those things that tie us and keep us wandering round and round in the same old boggy mess. We’d start fresh and clean and then what a lovely, lovely world we would build.”

Graham put up a hand to push back her hood. He turned her face toward him. It was pale in the faint light, her fair hair was silvery, her eyes lost in dark shadows. “Oh, my sweet, must you always cry for the stars? There are some lovely things here too, you know.”

A beam of notable brilliance swiveled and switched erratically beside the Fontain’s house. Graham and Sally walked a little more quickly. “You’ll excuse me mentioning it, my dear, but your father is rapidly becoming a national menace as well as a local problem. He can’t be looking for another meteorite.”

“He isn’t,” said Sally, “this time it’s the dog. Listen.”

A voice was cajoling. “Litty! Litty! Litty!” and interspersing it with whistles.

“Thoroughly improper behavior,” Graham said, “illuminating the whole countryside — especially to find a dog with a name like Litty.”

“Short for Litvinor. He’s such a tactful dog.”

The calling was suddenly interrupted by a burst of frenzied barking diminishing quickly into whining yelps. By the time they reached the house all was quiet and the light had disappeared round the far side.

“You’ve found him? What’s happened?” called Sally, from the yard entrance.

Mr. Fontain was over by the shed, bending down and playing his light on the ground.

“Yes, my dear. I — I’m afraid something’s happened to him.”

“You don’t mean he’s dead?” She hurried forward.

“I’m afraid I do, dear.”

“Oh, poor Litty,” she said, going down on her knees beside the dog’s body. “I wonder what…” she broke off with a sudden cry and jumped. “Oh, something’s stung me. Oh, it hurts.” She clutched at her leg, with tears of anguish suddenly starting to her eyes.

“What on Earth…?” began her father. He switched his light on to the ground. “What are those things there, ants?”

Graham bent down. “No they’re not ants. I don’t know what they are.”

He picked one of the little things up and set it on the palm of his glove to look at it more closely. “Never seen anything like that before,” he said.

Mr. Fontain came closer and looked, too. It was a strange little creature no more than a quarter of an inch long. Its body seemed to be an almost perfect hemisphere with the flat side below and the round, top surface as shiny as a ladybird’s wing cases, colored pink. It was insect-like save that it stood on only four short legs. There was, moreover, no clearly defined head, just two eyes set in the edge of the shiny dome. As they watched, it reared up on two of its legs showing a pale, flat underside with a mouth set just below the eyes. In its forelegs it seemed to be holding a bit of grass or thin wire.

Graham suddenly felt a searing pain in his hand. “Hell and damnation,” he said, shaking it off, “the little brute certainly can sting. Look, there’s a hole in my glove. Feels as if there’s one in my hand as well. I don’t know what kind of bugs they are, but they’re certainly not things to have around. Got a spray?”

“In the scullery there,” said Mr. Fontain, and turned his attention to his daughter.

“Better?” he inquired.

“Hurts like hell,” she said between her teeth.

“Just hang on a minute till we’ve settled this, then we’ll have a look at it.”

Graham hurried back with the spray in his hand. “Put the light over here,” he said.

The beam revealed several hundred of the little pink objects crawling toward the wall of the shed. Graham pumped clouds of insecticide vapour over them and watched while they slowed, waved feeble legs, and then lay still. He sprayed a little more around the neighborhood for luck.

“That’s about finished them,” he said. “Nasty vicious little brutes, weren’t they?”[6]

Dumb Martian

1952

When Duncan Weaver bought Lellie for — no, there could be trouble putting it that way — when Duncan Weaver paid Lellie’s parents one thousand dollars in compensation for the loss of her services, he had had no intention of paying so much. Everybody in Port Clarke that he had asked about it assured him six or seven hundred would be a fair price. But when he got up-country, it hadn’t turned out quite as simple as the Port Clarkers seemed to think.

The first three Martian families he had tackled hadn’t shown any disposition to part with their daughters at all. The next wanted $1500 and wouldn’t budge. Lellie’s parents had started at $1500, too, but they came down to $1000 after he’d made it plain that he wasn’t going to stand for extortion.

On the way back to Port Clarke with her, when he came to work it out, he found himself not so badly pleased with the deal, after all. Over the five-year term of his appointment, it would cost him only $200 a year at the worst — that is to say, if he were not able to sell her for $400, maybe even $500, when he got back. Looked at that way, it wasn’t really at all unreasonable.

In town once more, he went to explain the situation and get things all set with the Company’s agent.

“Look,” he said, “you know the way I’m fixed with this five-year contract as wayload station superintendent on Jupiter IV/II? Well, the ship that takes me there will be traveling light to pick up cargo. So how about another reservation on her?” He had already taken the precautionary step of finding out that the Company was accustomed to grant an extra passage in such circumstances, though not compelled to.

The Company’s agent was not surprised. After consulting some lists, he said that he saw no objection to an extra passenger. He explained that the Company was also prepared in such cases to supply the extra ration of food for one person at the nominal charge of $200 per annum, payable by deduction from salary. “What? A thousand bucks?” Duncan exclaimed.

“Well worth it,” said the agent. “It is nominal for the rations, because it’s worth the Company’s while to lay out the rest for something that helps to keep an employee from going nuts. That’s pretty easy to do when you’re fixed alone on a wayload station, they tell me — and I believe them. A thousand’s not high if it helps you avoid a crackup.”

Duncan argued a bit, on principle, but the agent had the thing cut and dried. It meant that Lellie’s price went up to $2000 — $400 a year. Still, with his own salary at $5000 a year, tax-free, unspendable during his term on Jupiter IV/II, and piling up nicely, it wouldn’t come to such a big slice. So he agreed.

“Fine,” said the agent. “I’ll fix it, then. All you’ll need is an embarkation permit for her and they’ll grant that automatically on production of your marriage certificate.”

Duncan stared. ‘‘Marriage certificate? Me marry a Mart?”

The agent shook his head reprovingly. “No embarkation permit without it. Anti-slavery regulation. They’d think you meant to sell her — might even think you’d bought her.”

“What, me?” Duncan said indignantly.

“Even you,” said the agent. “A marriage license will only cost you another ten dollars — unless you’ve got a wife back home, in which case it’ll likely cost you a bit more later on.”

Duncan shook his head. “I’ve got no wife.”

“Uh-huh,” said the agent, neither believing nor disbelieving. “Then what’s the difference?”

Duncan came back a couple of days later, with the certificate and the permit. The agent looked them over. “That’s okay,” he agreed. “I’ll confirm the booking. My fee will be one hundred dollars.”

“Your fee?”

“Call it safeguarding your investment,” suggested the agent.

The man who had issued the embarkation permit had required one hundred dollars, too. Duncan did not mention that now, but he said, with bitterness: “One dumb Mart’s costing me plenty.”

"Dumb?” asked the agent, looking at him.

“Speechless plus. These hick Marts don’t know they’re born.”

“H’m,” said the agent. “Never lived here, have you?”

“No, but I've laid over here a few times.”

The agent nodded. “They act dumb, and the way their faces are makes them look dumb. But they were a mighty clever people, once.”

“Once could be a long time ago.”

“Long before we got here, they’d given up bothering to think a lot. Their planet was dying and they were kind of content to die with it.”

"Well, I call that dumb. Aren’t all planets dying, anyway?”

“Ever see an old man just sitting in the Sun, taking it easy? It doesn’t have to mean he’s senile. It may, sure, but very likely he can snap out of it, and put his mind to work again if it really becomes necessary. But mostly he finds it not worth the bother. Less trouble just to let things happen.”

“Well, this one’s only about twenty — say ten and a half of your Martian years — and she certainly lets ’em happen. And I’d say it’s a kind of acid test for dumbness when a girl doesn’t know what goes on at her own wedding ceremony.”

And then on top of that, it turned out to be necessary to lay out yet another hundred dollars on clothing and other things for her, bringing the whole investment up to $2310. It was a sum which might possibly have been justified on a really smart girl, though on Lellie...

But there it was. Once you made the first payment, you either lost on it, or were stuck for the rest. And, anyway, on a lonely way load station, even she would be company — of a sort.

The First Officer called Duncan into the navigating room to take a look at his future home. “There it is,” he said, waving his hand at a little world shown on the watch-screen.

Duncan looked at the jagged-surfaced crescent. There was no scale to it. It could have been the size of Luna or of a basketball. Whatever size the place proved to be, it was still just a lump of rock, turning slowly over. “How big?” he asked.

“Around forty miles mean diameter.”

“What’d that be in gravity?”

“Haven’t worked it out. Call it slight, figure there isn’t any, and you’ll be near enough.”

“Uh-huh,” said Duncan.

On the way back to the messroom, he paused to put his head into the cabin. Lellie was lying on her bunk, with the spring-cover fastened over her to give some illusion of weight. At the sight of him she raised herself on one elbow.

She was small, not much over five foot. Her face and hands were delicate. They had a fragility which was not simply a matter of frail bone structure. To an Earthman, her eyes looked unnaturally round, seeming to give her a permanent expression of innocence surprised. The lobes of her ears hung unusually low out of a mass of brown hair that glinted with red among its waves. The paleness of her skin was emphasized by the color on her cheeks and the vivid red on her lips.

“Hey,” said Duncan, “you can start packing up the stuff now.”

“Packing up?” she repeated doubtfully, in a curiously resonant voice.

“Sure, pack,” Duncan told her. He demonstrated by opening a box, cramming some clothes into it, and waving a hand to include the rest. Her expression did not change, but the idea got across.

“We are come?” she asked.

“We are nearly come, so get busy on this lot.”

“Yith — okay,” she said, and began to unhook the cover.

Duncan shut the door and gave a shove which sent him floating down the passage leading to the general mess and living room.

Inside the cabin, Lellie pushed away the cover. She reached down cautiously for a pair of metal soles and attached them to her slippers by their clips. Still cautiously holding on to the bunk, she swung her feet over the side and lowered them until the magnetic soles clicked into contact with the floor. She stood up more confidently. The brown overall suit she wore revealed proportions that might be admired among Martians, but, by Earth standards, they were not classic. Because of the thinner air of Mars, her chest was big. But only her chest. That, of course, was to accommodate her greater lung capacity. The rest of her was almost childishly slender.

Still ill at ease with weightlessness, she slid her feet to keep magnetic contact with the metal floor as she crossed the room. For some moments she paused in front of a wall mirror, contemplating her reflection. Then she turned away and began packing.

“One hell of a place to take a woman to,” Wishart, the ship’s cook, was saying as Duncan came in.

Duncan did not care a lot for Wishart, chiefly because, when it had occurred to him that Lellie ought to have some lessons in weightless cooking, Wishart had refused to give the tuition for less than fifty dollars, and thus increased the investment cost to $2360. Nevertheless, it was not Duncan’s way to pretend to have misheard.

“One hell of a place to be given a job,” he amended grimly.

No one replied to that. They knew how men came to be offered wayload jobs. It was not necessary, as the Company frequently pointed out, for superannuation at the age of forty to come as a hardship to anyone. Salaries were good, and the Company could cite plenty of cases where men had founded brilliant subsequent careers on the savings of their space-service days. That was all right for the men who had not been obsessively interested in the fact that one four-legged animal can run faster than another. But this was not even an enterprising way to have lost one’s money, so when it came to Duncan’s time to leave crew work, they made him no more than the routine offer.

He had never been to Jupiter IV/II, but he knew just what it would be like — it was the second moon of Callisto, which was the fourth moon, in order of discovery, of Jupiter, and would inevitably be one of the grimmer kinds of cosmic pebble.

The Company had offered no alternative, so he signed up at the usual terms: $5000 a year for five years, and board and lodging, plus five months waiting time on half-pay before he could get there, plus six months afterward, also on half-pay, during “readjustment to gravity.”

It meant the next six years taken care of – five of them entirely without expenses, and a nice little sum at the end. The problem was: could you get through five years of isolation without cracking up? Even when the psychologists had okayed you, you couldn’t be sure. Some could, others went to pieces in a few months and had to be taken off, gibbering. If you got through two years, they said, you’d be okay for five. But the only way to find out was to try.

“What about my putting in the waiting time on Mars? I could live cheaper there,” Duncan had suggested.

They had consulted planetary tables and ship schedules, and discovered that it would be cheaper for them, too. They had declined to split the difference on the saving thus made, but they had booked him a passage for the following week, and arranged for him to draw, on credit, from the Company’s agent there.

The Martian colony in and around Port Clarke was rich in ex-spacemen who found it more comfortable to spend their rearguard years in the lesser gravity, broader morality and greater economy there. They were great advisers. Duncan listened, but discarded most of it. Such methods of occupying oneself as learning the Bible or the works of Shakespeare by heart, or copying out three pages of the Encyclopaedia every day, or building model spaceships in bottles, struck him not only as tedious, but probably would drive him insane more quickly. The only one with sound practical advantages, in his opinion, had led him to picking Lellie to share his exile, and he still thought it was a sound one, in spite of its costing $2360.

He was well enough aware of the general opinion about it to refrain from adding a sharp retort to Wishart. Instead, he conceded: “Maybe nobody ought to take a real woman to a place like that. But a Mart’s different.”

“Even a Mart — ” Wishart began, but he was cut short by finding himself drift across the room as the arrestor tubes began to fire. Conversation ceased as everybody turned to on securing all loose objects.

Jupiter IV/II was by definition a sub-moon, probably a captured asteroid. The surface was not cratered like Luna’s – it was simply a waste of jagged, riven rocks. The satellite as a whole had the form of an irregular ovoid, a bleak, cheerless lump of stone splintered off some vanished planet, with nothing whatever to commend it but its situation.

There had to be wayload stations, for it would be hopelessly uneconomic to build big ships capable of landing on the major planets. A few of the older and smaller ships had actually been built on Earth, and so had to be launched from there, but the very first large, Moon-assembled ship established a new practice. Ships became truly spaceships and were no longer built to stand the strains of high gravitational pull. They began to make their voyages, carrying fuel, stores, freight, and changes of personnel, exclusively between satellites. The newer types did not put in even at Luna, but used the artificial satellite, Pseudos, exclusively as their Earth terminal.

Freight between the wayload stations and their primaries was customarily consigned in powered cylinders known as crates. Passengers were ferried back and forth in small rocket ships. Stations such as Pseudos, or Deimos, the main wayload for Mars, handled enough work to keep a crew busy, but in the outlying, little developed posts one man who was part handler, part watchman was enough. Ships visited them infrequently. On Jupiter IV/II one might, according to Duncan’s information, expect an average of one every eight or nine Earth months.

The ship continued to brake, coming in on a spiral, adjusting her speed to that of the satellite. The gyros started up to give stability. The small, jagged world grew until it overflowed the watch-screens. The ship was maneuvered into a close orbit. Miles of featureless, formidable rocks slid monotonously beneath her.

The station site came onto the screen from the left — a roughly leveled area of a few acres, the first and only sign of order in the stony chaos. At the far end was a pair of hemispherical huts, one much larger than the other. At the near end, a few cylindrical crates were lined up beside a launching ramp hewn from the rock. Down each side of the area stood rows of canvas bins, some stuffed full to a conical shape, others slack, partly or entirely empty. A huge parabolic mirror was perched on a crag behind the station, looking like a monstrous, formalized flower.

In the whole scene, there was only one sign of movement — a small spacesuited figure prancing madly about on a metal apron in front of the larger dome, waving its arms in a wild welcome. Duncan left the screen and went to the cabin. He found Lellie fighting off a large case which, under the influence of deceleration, seemed determined to pin her against the wall. He shoved the case aside and pulled her out.

“We’re there,” he told her. “Put on your spacesuit.”

Her round eyes ceased watching the case and turned toward him. There was no telling from them how she felt, what she thought. She said, simply: “Thpacethuit. Yith — okay.”

Standing in the airlock of the dome, the outgoing superintendent paid more attention to Lellie than to the pressure dial. He knew from experience exactly how long equalizing took and opened his faceplate without even a glance at the pointer. “Wish I’d had the sense to bring one,” he observed. “Could have been mighty useful on the chores, too.”

He opened the inner door, and led through. “Here it is — and welcome to it." he said.

The main living room was oddly shaped by reason of the dome's architecture, but it was spacious. It was also exceedingly, sordidly untidy. “Meant to clean up, never got around to it,” he added. He looked at Lellie. There was no visible sign of what she thought of the place. “Never can tell with Marts,” he said uneasily. “They kind of non-register.”

Duncan agreed: “I figured this one was astonished at being born, and never got over it.”

The other man went on looking at Lellie. His eyes strayed from her to a gallery of pinned-up terrestrial beauties, and back again. “Sort of funny shape Marts have,” he said, musingly.

“This one’s considered a good enough looker where she comes from,” Duncan told him, a trifle shortly.

“Sure. No offense, bud. I guess they’ll all seem a funny shape to me after this spell.” He changed the subject. “I’d better show you the ropes around here.” Duncan signed to Lellie to open her faceplate so she could hear him, and then told her to get out of her suit.

The dome was the usual type: double-floored, double-walled, with an insulated and evacuated space between the two, constructed as a unit and held down by metal bars let into the rock. In the living quarters there were three more sizable rooms, able to cope with increased personnel if trade should expand.

“The rest,” the outgoing man explained, “is the regular station stores, mostly food, air-cylinders, spares of one kind and another, and water. I guess you’ll have to watch her on water; most women seem to think it grows naturally in pipes.”

Duncan shook his head. “Not Marts. Living in deserts gives ’em a natural respect for water.”

The other picked up a clip of store-sheets. “We’ll check and sign these later. It’s a nice soft job here. The only freight now is rare metalliferous earths. Callisto hasn’t been opened up a lot yet. Handling’s easy. They tell you when a crate’s on the way. You switch on the radio beacon to bring it in. On dispatch, you can’t go wrong if you follow the tables.”

He looked around the room. “All home comforts. You like to read? Plenty of books.” He waved a hand at the packed rows which covered half the inner partition wall.

Duncan said he’d never been much of a reader. “Well, it helps,” said the other. “Find pretty well anything that’s known somewhere in that lot. Records there. Fond of music?” Duncan said he liked a good tune. “Better try the other stuff — tunes get to squirreling inside your head. Play chess?” He pointed to a board, with the men pegged into it.

Duncan shook his head.

“Pity. There’s a fellow over on Callisto who plays a pretty hot game. He’ll be disappointed not to finish this one. Still, if I was fixed up the way you are, maybe I wouldn’t have been interested in chess myself.” His eyes strayed to Lellie again. “What do you think she’s going to do here, besides doing the cooking and amusing you?”

It was not a question that had occurred to Duncan. He shrugged. “She’ll be okay, I guess. There’s a natural dumbness about Marts — they’ll sit for hours on end, doing nothing at all. It’s a gift they got.”

“Well, it certainly should come in handy here,” said the other.

The regular ship’s-call work went on. Cases were unloaded, the metalliferous earth hosed from the bins into the holds. A small ferry rocket came up from Callisto carrying a couple of time-expired prospectors and left again with their two replacements. The ship’s engineers checked over the station’s machinery, made renewals, topped up the water tanks, charged the spent air-cylinders, tested, tinkered, and tested again before giving their final okay.

Duncan stood outside on the metal apron where, not long ago, his predecessor had performed his fantastic dance of welcome, to watch the ship take off. She rose straight up, with her under jets pushing her gently. The curve of her hull became an elongated crescent shining against the black sky. The main driving jets started to gush white flame edged with pink. Quickly she picked up speed. Before long she had dwindled to a speck which sank behind the ragged skyline.

Quite suddenly Duncan felt as if he, too, had dwindled. He had become a speck upon a barren mass of rock which was itself a speck in the immensity. The indifferent sky about him had no scale. It was an utterly black void wherein suns flared perpetually, without reason or purpose.

The rocks of the satellite, rising up in their harsh crests and ridges, were without scale, too. He could not tell which were near and which were far away: he could not, in the jumble of hard-lit planes and inky shadows, even make out their true form. There was nothing like them to be seen on Earth or Mars. Their unweathered edges were sharp as blades: they had been just as sharp as that for millions upon millions of years and would be for as long as the satellite existed.

The unchanging eons seemed to stretch out before and behind him. All life was a speck, a briefly transitory accident, utterly unimportant to the universe, a curious little note dancing for a short moment in the light of the eternal suns. Reality was just globes of fire and balls of stone senselessly rolling along through emptiness, through time unimaginable.

Within his heated suit, Duncan shivered a little. Never before had he been so alone, never so much aware of the vast, callous, futile loneliness of space. Looking out into the blackness, with light that had left a star a million years ago shining into his eyes, he wondered: “What the heck’s it all about, anyway?”

The sound of his own unanswerable question broke up the mood. He shook his head to clear it of speculative nonsense. He turned his back on the Universe, reducing it again to its proper status as a background for life in general and human life in particular, and stepped into the airlock.

As his predecessor had told him, the job was soft. Duncan made his radio contacts with Callisto at pre-arranged times. Usually it was little more than a formal check on one another’s continued existence, with perhaps an exchange of comment on the radio news. Only occasionally did they announce a dispatch and tell him when to switch on his beacon. Then, in due course, the cylinder crate would make its appearance and float slowly down. It was quite a simple matter to couple it up to a bin to transfer the load.

The satellite’s day was too short for convenience and its night, lit by Callisto and sometimes by Jupiter as well, was almost as bright. So they disregarded it and lived by the calendar clock which kept Earth time on the Greenwich Meridian setting. At first, much of the time had been occupied in disposing of the freight that the ship had left. Some of it went into the main dome — necessities for themselves, and other items that would store better where there was warmth and air, some into the small, airless, unheated dome. The greater part was stowed and padded carefully into cylinders and launched off to the Callisto base. But once that work had been cleared, the job was certainly soft, too soft...

Duncan drew up a program. At regular intervals he would inspect this and that, he would leap almost weightlessly up to the crag, check on the Sun motor there, and so forth. But keeping to an unnecessary program requires resolution.

Sun motors, for instance, were built to run for a long time without attention. The only action one could take if theirs stopped would be to call Callisto for a ferry rocket to come and take Lellie and himself off until a ship arrived to repair it. A breakdown there, the Company had explained very clearly, was the only thing that would justify him in leaving his station, with the stores of precious earths unmanned (and it was also indicated that to contrive a breakdown for the sake of a change was unlikely to prove worthwhile).

One way and another, the program did not last very long.

There were times when Duncan found himself wondering whether bringing Lellie had been such a good idea, after all. On the purely practical side, he would not have cooked as well as she did, and probably have pigged it quite as badly as his predecessor had, but if she had not been there, the necessity of looking after himself would have given him something to do. And even from the standpoint of company — well, she was that, of a sort, but she was alien, odd, kind of like a half-robot and dumb at that – certainly no fun.

There were times — increasingly frequent times — when the very look of her irritated him intensely. So did the way she moved, and her gestures, and her silly pidgin-talk when she talked, and her self-contained silence when she didn’t, and her remoteness, and all her differentness, and the fact that he would have been $2360 better off without her.

Nor did she make a serious attempt to remedy her shortcomings, even where she had the means. Her face, for instance. You’d think any girl would try to make her best of that — but did she? There was that left eyebrow again – it made her look like a drunken clown, but a lot she cared.

“For heaven’s sake,” he told her once more, “put the cockeyed thing straight. Don’t you know how to fix ’em yet? And you’ve got your color on wrong, too. Look at that picture — now look at yourself in the mirror: a smear of red all in the wrong place. And your hair, too, getting like seaweed again. You’ve got the things to wave it, so stop looking like a damned mermaid. I know you can’t help being a dumb Mart, but you can at least try to look like a real woman.”

Lellie studied the colored picture, and then compared her reflection with it, critically. “Yith — okay,” she said with compliant detachment.

Duncan snorted. “And that’s another thing. It’s not ‘yith,’ it’s ‘yes.’ Y-E-S, yes. Say ‘yes.’ ”

“Yith,” said Lellie, obligingly.

“Oh, for — Can’t you hear the difference? S-s-s, not th-th-th. Ye-sss.”

“Yith,” she said.

“No. Put your tongue further back like this — ”

The lesson went on for some time. Finally he grew angry. “Just making a monkey out of me, huh? You’d better be careful! Now, say ‘yes.’ ”

She hesitated, looking at his wrathful face. “Go on, say it!”

“Y-yeth,” she tried, nervously.

His hand slapped across her face harder than he had intended. The jolt broke her magnetic contact with the floor and sent her sailing across the room in a spin of arms and legs. She struck the opposite wall and rebounded, to float helplessly, out of reach of any hold. He strode after her, turned her right way up and set her on her feet. His left hand clutched her overall in a bunch, just below her throat, his right fist raised. “Again!” he told her.

Her eyes looked helplessly this way and that. He shook her. She tried. At the sixth attempt she managed: “Yeths.”

He accepted that for the time being. “You can do it, you see, when you try! Well, you’re damn well going to try!” He let her go. She tottered across the room, holding her hands to her bruised face.

A number of times, while the weeks stretched so slowly into months, Duncan found himself wondering whether he was going to hold out. He lingered over what work there was as long as he could, but it left still too much time hanging on his hands.

A middle-aged man who had read nothing longer than an occasional magazine article, Duncan did not take to books. He tired very quickly of the popular records, as his predecessor had prophesied, and could make nothing of the others. He taught himself the moves in chess from a book, and instructed Lellie in them, intending after a little practice with her to challenge the man on Callisto. Lellie, however, managed to win so consistently that he suspected he did not have the right kind of mind for the game. Instead, he taught her a kind of double-solitaire, but that didn’t last long, either — the cards always seemed to run for Lellie.

Occasionally, some news and entertainment were to be had from the radio. But with Earth somewhere around the other side of the Sun just then, Mars screened off half the time by Callisto, and the rotation of the satellite itself, reception was either impossible or badly distorted. So mostly he sat and fretted, hating the satellite, angry with himself, and irritated by Lellie.

Just the phlegmatic way she went on with her tasks infuriated him. It seemed unfair that she could take it all better than he could simply because she was a dumb Mart. When his ill-temper became vocal, the look of her as she listened exasperated him still more. “For God’s sake,” he told her one time, “can’t you make that silly face of yours mean something? Can’t you laugh, or cry, or get mad — anything? It’s enough to drive a guy nuts, looking at a face like a doll that just heard its first dirty story. I know you can’t help being dumb but get some expression into it.”

She went on looking at him without a shadow of a change.

“Go on, you heard me! Smile, damn you! Smile!"

Her mouth twitched very slightly.

“Call that a smile? Now, there’s a smile!” He pointed to a pin-up with a smile like a piano keyboard. “Like that! Like this!” He grinned widely.

“No,” she said. “My face cannot wriggle like Earth faces.”

“Wriggle?” he repeated incensed. “Wriggle, you call it?” He freed himself from the chair’s spring cover and came toward her. She backed away until she was pressed against the wall. “I’ll make yours wriggle. Go on, now —smile!” He lifted his fist.

Lellie put her hands up to her face. “No!” she protested. “No — no — no!”

It was on the day Duncan marked off the eighth completed month that Callisto relayed news of a ship on the way. A couple of days later, he was able to make contact with her himself and confirm her arrival in about a week.

He felt as if he had been given several stiff drinks. There were preparations to make, stores to check, deficiencies to note, a string of nil-nil-nil entries to be made in the log to bring it up to date. He bustled around as he got on with the job. He hummed to himself while he worked, and even ceased to be annoyed with Lellie. The effect of the news upon her was imperceptible — but, then, what else could you expect?

Sharp on her estimated time, the ship hung above them, growing slowly larger as her upper jets pressed her down. The moment she was berthed, Duncan went aboard, with the feeling that everyone in sight was an old friend.

The captain received him warmly and brought out the drinks. It was all routine — even Duncan’s babbling and slightly inebriated manner was regular procedure in the circumstances. The only departure from pattern came when the captain introduced a man beside him. “We’ve brought a surprise for you, Superintendent. This is Doctor Whint. He’ll be sharing your exile for a bit.”

Duncan shook hands with the man. “Doctor?” he said, surprised.

“Not medicine — science,” Alan Whint told him. “The Company’s pushed me out here to do a geological survey — never can tell when you’ll strike something important. I’ll be here about a year. Hope you don’t mind.”

Duncan said conventionally that he’d be glad to have some company. Later, he took Whint over to the dome. The geologist was surprised to find Lellie there. Clearly, nobody had told him about her. He interrupted Duncan’s explanations of the surroundings to say: “Won’t you introduce me to your wife?”

Duncan did so, without grace. He resented the reproving tone in Whint’s voice, nor did he care for the way the geologist greeted Lellie just as if she were an Earthwoman. He was also aware that Whint had noticed the bruise on her cheek, which her makeup did not altogether cover.

In his mind, he classified Alan Whint as one of the smooth, snooty type, and hoped that there was not going to be trouble with him. On the other hand, he reflected, trouble was better than boredom.

It was a matter of opinion who made the trouble when it boiled up some three months later. There had already been several occasions when it had lurked uneasily near. Very likely it would have come into the open long before, had Whint’s work not taken him out of the dome so much. The moment of touch-off came when Lellie lifted her eyes from the book she was reading to ask: “What does ‘female emancipation’ mean?”

Alan started to explain. He was only halfway through the first sentence when Duncan broke in: “Listen, pal, who told you to go putting ideas into her head?” Alan shrugged his shoulders slightly. “Why shouldn’t she have ideas? Why shouldn’t anyone?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I never understand you guys who apparently can’t say what you mean. Try again.”

“All right, then. Right from the start, you began shoving your nose into things that aren’t your business. Treating her, for instance, as if she was some classy dame back home.”

“I’m glad you noticed it.”

“And you think I didn’t see why?”

"I’m quite sure you didn’t. You think, in your simple way, that I’m out to get your girl, and you resent that with all the weight of $2360. But you’re wrong – I’m not.”

“My wife,” he corrected. “She may be only a dumb Mart, but she’s legally my wife and what I say goes.”

“Yes, Lellie is a Mart, as you call it. She may even be your wife, for all I know to the contrary. But dumb, she certainly is not. For one example, look at the speed with which she’s learned to read — once someone took the trouble to show her how. I don’t think you’d show up any too bright yourself in a language where you only knew a few words, and which you couldn’t read.”

“It was none of your business to teach her. She didn’t need to read. She was all right the way she was. And why? So you’ll get her thinking you’re a better man than I am.”

“I talk to her the way I’d talk to any woman anywhere— only more simply, since she hasn’t had the chance of an education. If she does think I’m a better man, then I agree with her. I'd be sorry if I couldn’t.”

“I’ll show you who’s the better man — ” Duncan began savagely.

“You don’t need to. I knew when I came here that you’d be a waster or you wouldn’t be on this job — and it didn’t take long for me to find out that you were a lousy bully, too. Do you suppose I haven’t noticed the bruises? Do you think I’ve enjoyed having to listen to you bawling out a girl whom you’ve deliberately kept ignorant and defenseless when she has potentially ten times the sense you have? Having to watch a clod like you lording it over your ‘dumb Mart’? You’re emetic!”

In the heat of the moment, Duncan could not remember what an emetic was. Trying to remember gave him a chance to realize that he was older, less agile, not as fit as the geologist that he’d probably get hurt more than he could hurt. Besides, Lellie was his wife. What was he getting so angry about? Both of them simmered, but nothing happened. Somehow the occasion was patched up and smoothed over.

Alan continued to make his expeditions in the small craft which he had brought with him. He examined and explored other parts of the satellite, returning with specimen pieces of rock which he tested and arranged, carefully labeled, in cases. In his spare time he occupied himself, as before, with teaching Lellie.

That he did it largely for his own occupation, as well as from a feeling that it should be done, Duncan did not altogether deny. But he was equally sure that, in continued close association, one thing leads to another, sooner or later.

So far, there had been nothing between them that he could complain about — but Alan’s term still had some nine months to go, even if he were relieved in time. Lellie was already hero-worshipping. And he was spoiling her more every day by this fool business of treating her as if she were an Earthwoman. One day they’d come alive to it — and then they would see him as an obstacle that would have to be removed. Prevention being better than cure, the sensible course was to see that the situation should never develop. There need not be any fuss about it.

There was not.

One day Alan Whint took off on a routine flight to prospect somewhere on the other side of the satellite. He never came back. That was all.

There was no telling what Lellie thought about it, but something seemed to happen to her. For several days, she spent almost all her time standing by the main window of the living room, looking out into the blackness at the flaring pinpoints of light. It was not that she was waiting or hoping for Alan's return — she knew as well as Duncan himself that, when thirty-six hours had gone by, there was no chance of that. She said nothing. Her expression maintained its unchanged exasperating look of slight surprise. Only in her eyes was there any perceptible difference: they looked as if she had withdrawn herself still further behind them.

Duncan could not tell whether she knew or guessed anything. There seemed to be no way of finding out without planting the idea in her mind — if it were not already there. He was, without admitting it fully to himself, too nervous to turn on her viciously for the time she spent vacantly mooning out of the window. He had an uncomfortable awareness of how many ways there were for even a dimwit to contrive a fatal accident in such a place.

As a precaution, he took to fitting new air bottles to his suit every time he went out and checking to see that they were at full pressure. He also took to placing a piece of rock so that the outer door of the airlock could not close behind him. He made a point of noticing that his food and hers came straight out of the same pot and watched her closely while she worked. He still could not decide whether she knew or suspected. After they were sure that Alan was gone, she never once mentioned his name.

The mood stayed on her for perhaps a week. Then it changed abruptly. She paid no more attention to the bleakness outside. Instead, she began to read, voraciously and indiscriminately. Duncan found it hard to understand her absorption in the books, nor did he like it, but he decided for the moment hot to interfere. It did, at least, have the advantage of keeping her mind off other things.

Gradually he began to feel easier. The crisis was over. Either she had not guessed, or, if she had, she had decided to do nothing about it. Her addiction to books, however, did not abate. In spite of several reminders by Duncan that it was for company that he had laid out the not inconsiderable sum of $2,360, she continued, as if determined to work her way through the station’s library,

By degrees, the situation retreated into the background. When the next ship came, Duncan watched her anxiously in case she had been biding her time to hand on her suspicions to the crew. It turned out to be unnecessary. She showed no tendency to refer to the matter. When the ship pulled out, taking the opportunity with it, he was relievedly able to tell himself that he had really been right all along — she was just a dumb Mart. She had simply forgotten the Alan Whint incident, as a child might.

As the months of his term ticked steadily away, he found that he had, bit by bit, to revise that estimate of dumbness. She was learning from books things that he did not know himself. It even had some advantages, though it put him in a position he did not care for. When she asked, as she sometimes did now, for explanations, he found it unpleasant to be stumped by a Mart.

Having the practical man’s suspicion of book-acquired knowledge, he felt it necessary to explain to her how much of the stuff in them was a lot of nonsense, how they never really came to grips with the problems of life as he had lived it. He cited examples from his experience.

In fact, he found himself teaching her.

She learned quickly, too — the practical as well as the book stuff. Of necessity, he had to change his opinion of Marts even more. It wasn’t that they were altogether dumb, as he had thought, just that they were normally too dumb to start using the brains they had.

Once started, Lellie was a regular vacuum-cleaner for knowledge of all sorts. It didn’t seem long before she knew as much about the wayload station as he did himself. Teaching her was not at all what he had intended, but it did provide more occupation than the boredom of the early days. Besides, it had occurred to him that she was an appreciating asset.

Funny thing, that. He had never before thought of education as anything but a waste of time, but now it seriously began to look as if, when he got her back to Mars, he might recover quite a bit more of that $2,360 than he had expected. Maybe she’d make quite a useful secretary to someone.

He started to instruct her in elementary bookkeeping and finance — as much, at least, as he knew about it, which wasn’t a great deal. The months of service kept on piling up, going faster now. During the later stretch, when one had acquired confidence in his ability to get through without cracking up, there was a comfortable feeling about sitting quietly out there with the knowledge of the dollars gradually piling up at home.

A new find opened up on Callisto, bringing a slight increase in deliveries to the satellite. Other- wise, the routine continued unchanged. The infrequent ships called in, loaded up and went again. And then, surprisingly soon, it was possible for Duncan to say to himself: "The ship after the next and I’ll be through!”

Even more surprisingly, there soon came the day when he stood on the metal apron outside the dome, watching a ship lifting herself off on her under jets and dwindling upward into the black sky, and was able to tell himself: “That’s the last time I’ll see that! When the next ship lifts off this dump. I’ll be aboard her!” He stood watching her, one bright spark among the others, until the turn of the satellite carried her below his horizon. Then he turned back to the airlock — and found the door shut.

Once he had seen that there was going to be no repercussion from the Alan Whint affair, he had dropped his habit of wedging it open with a piece, of rock. Whenever he emerged to do a job, he left it ajar and it stayed that way until he came back. There was no wind or anything else on the satellite to move it.

He laid hold of the latch-lever irritably and pushed. It did not move.

Duncan swore at it for sticking. He walked to the edge of the metal apron, and then around the side of the dome so that he could see in at the window. Lellie was sitting in a chair with the spring cover fixed across it, apparently lost in thought. The inner door of the airlock was standing open, so, of course, the outer could not be moved. Besides the safety locking device, there was all the dome’s air pressure to hold it shut.

Forgetful for the moment, Duncan rapped on the thick glass of the double window to attract her attention. She could not have heard a sound through there, so it must have been the movement that caught her eye and caused her to look up. She turned her head and gazed at him, without moving.

Duncan stared back at her. Her hair was still waved, but the eyebrows, the color — all the other touches that he had insisted upon to make her look as much like an Earthwoman as possible — were gone. Her eyes looked back at him, set as hard as stones in that fixed expression of mild astonishment.

Sudden comprehension struck Duncan like a physical shock. He tried to pretend to both of them that he had not understood. He made gestures to her to close the inner door of the airlock. She went on staring back at him, without moving. Then he noticed the book she was holding in her hand and recognized it. It was not one of the books which the Company had supplied for the station’s library. It was a book of verse, bound in blue.

It had once belonged to Alan Whint.

Panic suddenly jumped out at Duncan as he looked down at the row of small dials across his chest. At least she had not tampered with his air supply – there was enough pressure for thirty hours or so. A touch on the jet sent him floating back to the metal apron, where he could anchor his magnetic boots and think it over.

The dirty Mart! Letting him think all this time that she had forgotten all about it. Nursing it up for him. Letting him work out his time while she planned. Waiting until he was on the very last stretch before she tried her game. Some minutes passed before his mixed anger and panic settled down and allowed him to think.

Thirty hours! Time to do quite a lot. And even if he did not succeed in getting back into the dome in twenty hours or so, there would still be the last, desperate resort of shooting himself off to Callisto in one of the cylinder crates. Even if Lellie were to spill over later about the Whint business, what of it? He was sure enough that she did not know how it had been done. It would only be the word of a Mart against his own. Very likely they’d put her down as space crazed.

All the same, some of the mud might stick. It would be better to settle with her here and now. Besides, the cylinder idea was risky, to be considered only in the last extremity. Duncan jetted himself over to the smaller dome. In there, he threw out the switches on the lines which brought power down from the main batteries charged by the Sun motor, then sat down to wait. The insulated dome would take some time to lose all its heat, but not very long for a drop in the temperature to become perceptible, and visible on the thermometers, once the heat was off. The small-capacity low-voltage batteries that were in the place wouldn’t be much good to her, even if she did think of lining them up.

He waited an hour, while the faraway Sun set and the bright arc of Callisto began to show over the horizon. Then he went back to the dome’s window to observe results. He arrived just in time to see Lellie fastening herself into her spacesuit by the light of a couple of emergency lamps.

He swore. A simple freezing out process wasn’t going to work, then. Not only would the heated suit protect her, but her air supply would last longer than his — and there were plenty of spare bottles in there, even if the free air in the dome froze solid.

He waited until she had put on the helmet and then switched on the radio in his own. He saw her pause at the sound of his voice but she deliberately switched off her receiver. He did not. He kept his open, to be ready for the moment when she would come to her senses.

Duncan returned to the apron and reconsidered. It had been his intention to force his way into the dome without damaging it, if he could. But if she wasn’t to be frozen out, that looked difficult. She had the advantage in air, and though it was true that in her spacesuit she could neither eat nor drink, the same, unfortunately, was true for him. The only way seemed to be to tackle the dome itself.

Reluctantly, he went back to the small dome again and connected up the electrical cutter. Its cable looped behind him as he jetted across to the main dome once more. Beside the curving metal wall, he paused to think out the job — and the consequences.

Once he was through the outer shell there would be a space, then the insulating material — that was all right. It would melt away like butter and without oxygen it could not catch fire. The more awkward part was going to come with the inner metal skin. It would be wisest to start with a few small cuts to let the air pressure down — and stand clear of it. If it were all to come out with a whoosh, he would stand a good chance, in his weightless state, of being blown a considerable distance by it.

And what would she do? She’d very likely try covering up the holes as he made them — a bit awkward if she had the sense to use asbestos packing. It’ll have to be the whoosh then.

Both shells could be welded up again before he re-aerated the place from cylinders. The small loss of insulating material wouldn’t matter. Okay, better get down to it, then.

He made his connections and contrived to anchor himself enough to give some purchase. He brought the cutter up and pressed the trigger switch. He pressed again and then swore, remembering that he had shut off the power. Pulling himself back along the cable, he pushed the switches in again. Light from the dome’s windows suddenly illuminated the rocks. He wondered if the restoration of power would let Lellie know what he was doing. Hell with it. She’d know soon enough.

He settled himself down beside the dome once more. This time the cutter worked. It took only a few minutes to slice out a rough two-foot circle. He pulled the piece out of the way and inspected the opening. Then, as he leveled the cutter again, there came a click in his receiver. “Better not try to break in,” Lellie said. “I’m ready for that.”

He hesitated, checking himself with his finger on the switch, wondering what countermove she could have thought up. The threat in her voice made him uneasy. He decided to go around to the window and see what her game was, if she had one. She was standing by the table, still dressed in her spacesuit, fiddling with some apparatus she had set up there. For a moment or two he did not grasp the purpose of it.

There was a plastic food bag, half-inflated and attached in some way to the tabletop. She was adjusting a metal plate over it to a small clearance. There was a wire taped to the upper side of the bag. Duncan’s eye ran back along the wire to a battery, a coil and on to a detonator attached to a bundle of half a dozen blasting sticks.

He was uncomfortably enlightened. If the air pressure in the room fell, the bag would expand, the wire would make contact with the plate, and up would go the dome…

Lellie finished her adjustment and connected the second wire to the battery. She turned to look at him through the window. Duncan found it was infuriatingly difficult to believe that, behind that silly surprise frozen on her face, she could be aware of what she was doing. He tried to speak to her, but she had switched off and made no attempt to switch on again. She simply stood looking steadily back at him as he blustered and raged. After some minutes, she moved across to a chair, fastened the spring cover across herself, and sat waiting.

“All right, then,” Duncan shouted inside his helmet. “But you’ll go up with it, damn you!” Which was, of course, nonsense, since he had no intention whatever of destroying either the dome or himself.

He had never learned to tell what went on behind that absurd face. She might be coldly determined or she might not. If it had been a matter of a switch that she had to press to destroy the place, he might have risked her nerve failing her. But this way, it would be he who operated the switch, just as soon as he made a hole to let the air out.

Once more he retreated to anchor himself on the apron. There must be some way of getting into the dome without letting the pressure down.

No, there was no way that he could think of. It would have to be the cylinder crate to Callisto.

He looked up at Callisto, hanging huge in the sky now, with Jupiter smaller, but brighter, beyond. It wasn’t so much the flight – it was the landing there. Perhaps if he were to cram it with all the padding he could find. Later on, he could get the Callisto crew to ferry him back and they’d find some way to get into the dome, and Lellie would be a mighty sorry girl — mighty sorry.

Across the clearing there were three cylinders lined up, charged and ready for use. He didn’t mind admitting he was scared of that landing but scared or not, if she wouldn’t even turn on her radio to listen to him, that would be his only chance.

He made up his mind and stepped off the metal apron. A touch on the jets sent him floating across the clearing toward the cylinders. Practice made it easy to maneuver the nearest one onto the ramp. Another glance at Callisto’s inclination helped to reassure him; at least he would reach it all right. If their beacon was not switched on to bring him in, he ought to be able to call them on the communication radio in his suit when he got closer.

He fetched more padding from the other cylinders, and packed the stuff in. While he paused to figure out a way of triggering the thing off with himself inside, he realized he was beginning to feel cold. As he turned the knob up a notch, he glanced down at the meter on his chest. The cold became a chill of horror.

Lellie hadn’t tampered with the flasks of air — she’d known, damn her, that he would check them. Instead, she must have shorted the battery or the heating circuit in the suit. The voltage was down so low that the needle barely kicked. Another few minutes and he might as well be naked in the cold of space because the suit, without its heating unit, would be no protection whatever.

After its first stab, the fear abruptly left him, giving way to fury. She’d tricked him out of his last chance, but, by God, he could make sure she didn’t get away with it! One small hole in the dome and he wouldn’t die alone...

The cold was lapping at him icily through the suit. He pressed the jet control and sent himself scudding back toward the dome. His feet and fingers were going first. Only by an immense effort was he able to operate the jet which stopped him by the dome. He struggled to press the control that would jet him down to it, but his fingers would no longer move. He wept and panted with the attempt to make them work. There was an agonizing, searing pain in his chest. He gasped — and the unheated air rushed into his lungs and froze them.

In the dome’s living room, Lellie stood waiting. She had seen the spacesuited figure come sweeping across the clearing at an abnormal speed. She understood what it meant. Her explosive device was already disconnected. Now she stood alert, with a thick rubber mat in her hand, ready to clap it over any hole that might appear. She waited one minute, two minutes…

When five minutes had passed, she went to the window. By putting her face close to the pane and looking sideways, she was able to see the whole of one armor-clad leg and part of another. They hung there, horizontally, a few feet off the ground. She watched them for several minutes.

She left the window, pushing the mat out of her hand so that it floated away across the room. For a moment or two she stood thinking. Then she went to the bookshelves and pulled out the last volume of the encyclopedia. She read long enough to satisfy herself on the exact status and claims which were connoted by the word “widow.”

She found a pad of paper and a pencil. She hesitated, trying to remember the method she had been taught. Then she started to write down figures and became absorbed in them. At last she lifted her head and contemplated the result: $5,000 a year for five years, at 6% compound interest.

But then she paused again. Very likely, a face that was not set forever in a look of surprised innocence would have frowned, because, naturally, there was a debit of $2,360. Being incapable of both, Lellie neither smiled nor frowned. She gravely ‘entered the $2,360 as a capital investment and the balance as profit.

It was quite a fortune for a dumb Mart.

A Stitch in Time

1961

On the sheltered side of the house the sun was hot. Just inside the open French windows Mrs. Dolderson moved her chair a few inches so that her head would remain in the shade while the warmth could comfort the rest of her. Then she leaned her head back on the cushion, looking out.

The scene was, for her, timeless.

Across the smooth lawn the cedar stood as it had always stood. Its flat spread boughs must, she supposed, reach a little further now than they had when she was a child, but it was hard to tell. The tree had seemed huge then, it seemed huge now. Further on, the boundary hedge was just as trim and neat as it had always been. The gate into the spinney was still flanked by the two unidentifiable topiary birds, Cocky and Oily — wonderful that they should still be there, even though Oily's tail feathers had become a bit twiggy with age.

The flowerbed on the left, in front of the shrubbery, was as full of colour as ever — well, perhaps a little brighter. One had a feeling that flowers had become a trifle more strident than they used to be, but delightful, nevertheless. The spinney beyond the hedge, however, had changed a little – more young trees, some of the larger ones gone. Between the branches one had two glimpses of pink roof where there had been no neighbours in the old days. Except for that one could almost, for a moment, forget a whole lifetime.

The afternoon drowsing while the birds rested, the bees humming, the leaves gently stirring, the bonk-bonk from the tennis court round the corner, with an occasional voice giving the score. It might have been any sunny afternoon out of fifty, or sixty, summers.

Mrs. Dolderson smiled upon it and loved it all. She had loved it when she was a girl, she loved it even more now. In this house she had been born. She had grown up in it, married from it, come back to it after her father died, brought up her own two children in it, grown old in it. Some years after the second war she had come very near to losing it — but not quite, and here she was still.

It was Harold who had made it possible. A clever boy, and a wonderful son. When it had become quite clear that she could no longer afford to keep the house up, that it would have to be sold, it was Harold who had persuaded his firm to buy it. Their interest, he had told her, lay not in the house, but in the site — as would any buyer's. The house itself was almost without value now, but the position was convenient. As a condition of sale, four rooms on the south side had been converted into a flat which was to be hers for life. The rest of the house had become a hostel housing some twenty young people who worked in the laboratories and offices which had been built on the north side, on the site of the stables and part of the paddock.

One day, she knew, the old house would come down, she had seen the plans, but for the present, for her time, both it and the garden to the south and west could remain untouched. Harold had assured her that they would not be required for fifteen or twenty years yet — much longer than she would know the need of them.

Nor, Mrs. Dolderson thought calmly, would she be really sorry to go. One became useless and, now that she must have a wheelchair, a burden to others. There was the feeling, too, that she no longer belonged — that she had become a stranger in another people’s world. It had all altered so much – first changing into a place that was difficult to understand, then growing so much more complex that one gave up trying to understand. No wonder, she thought, that the old become possessive about things, cling to objects which link them with the world that they could understand.

Harold was a dear boy and for his sake she did her best not to appear too stupid — but, often, it was difficult. Today at lunch, for instance, he had been so excited about some experiment that was to take place this afternoon. He had had to talk about it, even though he must know that practically nothing of what he said was comprehensible to her.

Something about dimensions again — she had grasped that much, but she had only nodded, and not attempted to go further. Last time the subject had cropped up, she had observed that in her youth there had been only three and she did not see how even all this progress in the world could have added more. This had set him off on a dissertation about the mathematician’s view of the world through which it was, apparently, possible to perceive the existence of a series of dimensions. Even the moment of existence in relation to time was, it seemed, some kind of dimension. Philosophically, Harold had begun to explain — but there, and at once, she had lost him. He led straight into confusion. She felt sure that when she was young, philosophy, mathematics, and metaphysics had all been quite separate studies — nowadays they seemed to have quite incomprehensibly run together.

So this time she had listened quietly, making small, encouraging sounds from time to time, until at the end he had smiled ruefully, and told her she was a dear to be so patient with him. Then he had come round the table and kissed her cheek gently as he put his hand over hers, and she had wished him the best of luck with the afternoon's mysterious experiment. Then Jenny had come in to clear the table and wheel her closer to the window.

The warmth of the slumbrous afternoon carried her into a half dream, took her back fifty years to just such an afternoon when she had sat here in this very window — though certainly with no thought of a wheelchair in those days — waiting for Arthur…waiting with an ache in her heart for Arthur, and Arthur had never come...

Strange, it was, the way things fell out. If Arthur had come that day she would almost certainly have married him. And then Harold and Cynthia would never have existed. She would have had children, of course, but they would not have been Harold and Cynthia. What a curious, haphazard thing one’s existence was. Just by saying ‘no’ to one man, and ‘yes’ to another a woman might bring into existence a potential archbishop, or a potential murderer. How foolish they all were nowadays — trying to tidy everything up, make life secure, while behind, back in everyone's past, stretched the chance-studded line of women who had said yes’ or ‘no’ as the fancy took them.

Curious that she should remember Arthur now. It must be years since she had thought of him.

She had been quite sure that he would propose that afternoon. It was before she had even heard of Colin Dolderson. And she would have agreed. Oh yes, she would have accepted him. There had never been any explanation. She had never known why he did not come then — or any more. He had never written to her. Ten days, perhaps a fortnight later there had been a somewhat impersonal note from his mother telling her that he had been ill, and the doctor had advised sending him abroad. But after that, nothing at all — until the day she had seen his name in a newspaper, more than two years later.

She had been angry of course — a girl owed that to her pride — and hurt, too, for a time. Yet how could one know that it had not been for the best, in the end? Would his children have been as dear to her, or as kind, and as clever as Harold and Cynthia?

Such an infinity of chances – all those genes and things they talked about nowadays.

The thump of tennis balls had ceased, and the players had gone, returned, presumably, to their recondite work. Bees continued to hum purposefully among the flowers – half-a-dozen butterflies were visiting there too, though in a dilettante, unairworthy-looking way. The further trees shimmered in the rising heat. The afternoon's drowsiness became irresistible. Mrs. Dolderson did not oppose it. She leaned her head back, half aware that somewhere another humming sound, higher in pitch than the bees', had started, but it was not loud enough to be disturbing. She let her eyelids drop...

Suddenly, only a few yards away, but out of sight as she sat, there were feet on the path. The sound of them began quite abruptly, as if someone had just stepped from the grass on to the path — only she would have seen anyone crossing the grass. Simultaneously there was the sound of a baritone voice, singing cheerfully but not loudly to itself. It too began quite suddenly. In the middle of a word in fact: — rybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it. See that rag — ' "

The voice cut off suddenly. The footsteps, too, came to a dead stop.

Mrs. Dolderson's eyes were open now — very wide open. Her thin hands gripped the arms of her chair. She recollected the tune: more than that, she was even certain of the voice — after all these years. ... A silly dream, she told herself. She had been remembering him only a few moment before she closed her eyes…how foolish! And yet it was curiously undreamlike. Everything was so sharp and clear, so familiarly reasonable…the arms of the chair quite solid under her fingers.

Another idea leaped into her mind. She had died. That was why it was not like an ordinary dream. Sitting here in the sun, she must have quietly died. The doctor had said it might happen quite unexpectedly…and now it had! She had a swift moment of relief — not that she had felt any great fear of death, but there had been that sense of ordeal ahead. Now it was over — and with no ordeal. As simple as falling asleep. She felt suddenly happy about it – quite exhilarated. Though it was odd that she still seemed to be tied to her chair.

The gravel crunched under shifting feet. A bewildered voice said: "That's rum! Dashed odd! What the devil's happened?"

Mrs. Dolderson sat motionless in her chair. There was no doubt whatever about the voice.

A pause. The feet shifted, as if uncertain. Then they came on, but slowly now, hesitantly. They brought a young man into her view. Oh, such a very young man, he looked. She felt a little catch at her heart. He was dressed in a striped club blazer and white flannel trousers. There was a silk scarf round his neck, and, tilted back off his forehead, a straw hat with a coloured band. His hands were in his trousers' pockets, and he carried a tennis racquet under his left arm.

She saw him first in profile, and not quite at his best, for his expression was bewildered, and his mouth slightly open, as he stared towards the spinney. "Arthur," Mrs. Dolderson said gently.

He was startled. The racquet slipped and clattered on the path. He attempted to pick it up, take off his hat, and recover his composure, all at the same time, not very successfully. When he straightened his face was pink, and its expression still confused.

He looked at the old lady in the chair, her knees hidden by a rug, her thin, delicate hands gripping the arms. His gaze went beyond her, into the room. His confusion increased, with a touch of alarm added. His eyes went back to the old lady. She. was regarding him intently. He could not recall ever having seen her before, did not know who she could be — yet in her eyes there seemed to be something faintly not unfamiliar.

She dropped her gaze to her right hand. She studied it for a moment as though it puzzled her a little, then she raised her eyes again to his. "You don't know me, Arthur?" she asked quietly.

There was a note of sadness in her voice that he took for disappointment, tinged with reproof. He did his best to pull himself together. "I — I'm afraid not," he confessed. "You see I — er — you — er — " He stuck, and then went on desperately: "You must be Thelma’s — Miss Kilder's — aunt?"

She looked at him steadily for some moments. He did not understand her expression, but then she told him: “No. I am not Thelma’s aunt.”

Again his gaze went into the room behind her. This time he shook his head in bewilderment. “It’s all different — no, sort of half-different,” he said, in distress. “I say, I can’t have come to the wrong — ” He broke off, and turned to look at the garden again. “No, it certainly isn’t that,” he answered himself decisively. “But what — what has happened?”

His amazement was no longer simple – he was looking badly shaken. His bewildered eyes came back to her again. “Please — I don’t understand — how did you know me?” he asked.

His increasing distress troubled her and made her careful. “I recognized you, Arthur. We have met before, you know?”

“Have we? I can’t remember — I’m terribly sorry...”

“You’re looking unwell, Arthur. Draw up that chair and rest a little.”

“Thank you Mrs. — er — Mrs. — ?”

“Dolderson,” she told him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Dolderson,” he said, frowning a little, trying to place the name.

She watched him pull the chair closer. Every movement, every line familiar, even to the lock of his fair hair that always fell forward when he stooped. He sat down and remained silent for some moments, staring under a frown, across the garden. Mrs. Dolderson sat still, too. She was scarcely less bewildered than he, though she did not reveal it. Clearly the thought that she was dead had been quite silly. She was just as usual, still in her chair, still aware of the ache in her back, still able to grip the arms of the chair and feel them. It was not a dream — everything was too textured, too solid, too real in a way that dream things never were. Was it just a simple hallucination, a trick of her mind imposing Arthur’s face on an entirely different young man? She glanced at him. No, that would not do — he had answered to Arthur’s name. Indubitably he was Arthur, and wearing Arthur’s blazer, too. They did not cut them that way nowadays, and it was years and years since she had seen a young man wearing a straw hat.

A kind of ghost? But no, he was quite solid. The chair had creaked as he sat down, his shoes had crunched on the gravel. Besides, whoever heard of a ghost in the form of a thoroughly bewildered young man and one, moreover, who had recently nicked himself in shaving?

He cut her thoughts short by turning his head. “I thought Thelma would be here,” he told her. “She said she’d be here, Please tell me, where is she?”

Like a frightened little boy, she thought She wanted to comfort him, not to frighten him more. But she could think of nothing to say beyond: “Thelma isn’t far away.”

“I must find her. She'll be able to tell me what’s happened.” He made to get up.

She laid a hand on his arm, and pressed down gently. “Wait a minute,” she told him. “What is it that seems to have happened? What is it that worries you so much?”

“This,” he said, waving a hand to include everything about them. “It’s all different — and yet the same — and yet not I feel as if — as if I’d gone a little mad.”

She looked at him steadily and then shook her head. “I don’t think you have. Tell me, what is it that’s wrong?”

“I was coming here to play tennis — well, to see Thelma, really,” he amended. “Everything was all right then, just as usual. I rode up the drive and leaned my bike against the big fir tree where the path begins. I started to come along the path and then, just when I reached the corner of the house, everything went funny.”

“Went funny?” Mrs. Dolderson inquired. “What — went funny?”

“Well, nearly everything. The sun seemed to jerk in the sky. The trees suddenly looked bigger, and not quite the same. The flowers in the bed over there went quite a different colour. The creeper was all over the wall and then was suddenly only halfway up — and it looks like a different kind of creeper. And there are houses over there. I never saw them before — it’s just an open field beyond the spinney. Even the gravel on the path looks more yellow than I thought. And this room ... it is the same room. I know that desk, and the fireplace — and those two pictures. But the paper is quite different. I’ve never seen that before — but it isn’t new, either. Please tell me where Thelma is — I want her to explain it. I must have gone a bit mad...”

She put her hand on his, firmly. “No,” she said decisively. “Whatever it is, I’m quite sure it’s not that.”

“Then what — ” He broke off abruptly and listened, his head a little on one side. The sound grew. “What is it?” he asked, anxiously.

Mrs. Dolderson tightened her hand over his. “It’s all right,” she said, as if to a child. “It’s all right, Arthur.”

She could feel him grow tenser as the sound increased. It passed right overhead at less than a thousand feet, jets shrieking, leaving the buffeted air behind it rumbling back and forth, shuddering gradually back to peace. Arthur saw it. Watched it disappear. His face when he turned it back to her was white and frightened. In a strange voice he asked: “What — what was that?”

Quietly, as if to force calm upon him, she said: “Just an aeroplane, Arthur. Such horrid, noisy things they are.”

He gazed where it had vanished and shook his head. “But I've seen an aeroplane and heard it. It isn’t like that. It makes a noise like a motorbike, only louder. This was terrible! I don’t understand — I don’t understand what’s happened.” His voice was pathetic.

Mrs. Dolderson made as if to reply, and then checked at a thought, a sudden sharp recollection of Harold talking about dimensions, of shifting them into different planes, speaking of time as though it were simply another dimension. With a kind of shock of intuition she understood — no, understood was too firm a word — she perceived. But, perceiving, she found herself at a loss. She looked again at the young man. He was still tense, trembling slightly. He was wondering whether he was going out of his mind. She must stop that. There was no kind way — but how to be least unkind?

“Arthur,” she said, abruptly.

He turned a dazed look on her. Deliberately she made her voice brisk. “You’ll find a bottle of brandy in that cupboard. Please fetch it — and two glasses,” she ordered.

With a kind of sleep-walking movement he obeyed. She filled a third of a tumbler with brandy for him and poured a little for herself. “Drink that,” she told him. He hesitated. “Go on,” she commanded. “You’ve had a shock. It will do you good. I want to talk to you, and I can’t talk to you while you're knocked half-silly.”

He drank and coughed a little and sat down again. “Finish it,” she told him firmly. He finished it. Presently she inquired: “Feeling better now?”

He nodded but said nothing. She made up her mind and drew breath carefully. Dropping the brisk tone altogether, she asked: “Arthur. Tell me, what day is it today?”

“Day?” he said, in Surprise. “Why, it’s Friday. It’s the — er — twenty-seventh of June.”

“But the year, Arthur. What year?”

He turned his face fully towards her. “I’m not really mad, you know. I know who I am, and where I am — I think. It’s things that have gone wrong, not me. I can tell you — ”

“What I want you to tell me, Arthur, is the year.” The peremptory note was back in her voice again.

He kept his eyes steadily on hers as he spoke. “Nineteen-Thirteen, of course, he said.

Mrs. Dolderson’s gaze went back to the lawn and the flowers. She nodded gently. That was the year — and it had been a Friday. Odd that she should remember that. It might well have been the twenty-seventh of June. But certainly it was a Friday in the summer of 1913 that he had not come. All so long, long ago.

His voice recalled her. It was unsteady with anxiety. “Why do you ask me that — about the year, I mean?”

His brow was so creased, his eyes so anxious. He was very young. Her heart ached for him. She put her thin fragile hand on his strong one again. “I — I think I know,” he said shakily. “It’s — I don’t see how, but you wouldn’t have asked that unless…That’s the bizarre thing that’s happened, isn’t it? Somehow it isn’t Nineteen-Thirteen any longer — that’s what you mean? The way the trees grew…that aeroplane…” He stopped, staring at her with wide eyes. “You must tell me. Please, please, what's happened to me? Where am I now? Where is this?”

“My poor boy,” she murmured.

“Oh, please — ”

The Times, with the crossword partly done, was pushed down into the chair beside her. She pulled it out half-reluctantly. Then she folded it over and held it towards him. His hand shook as he took it. “London, Monday, the first of July,” he read. And then, in an incredulous whisper: 1963!”

He lowered the page, looked at her imploringly.

She nodded twice, slowly.

They sat staring at one another without a word. Gradually, his expression changed. His brows came together, as though with pain. He looked round jerkily, his eyes darting here and there as if for an escape. Then they came back to her. He screwed them shut for a moment. Then opened them again, full of hurt — and fear. “Oh, no — no! No! You’re not . . . you can’t be. You — you told me…you’re Mrs. Dolderson, aren’t you? You said you were. You can’t — you can’t be — Thelma?”

Mrs. Dolderson said nothing. They gazed at one another. His face creased up like a small child’s. “Oh, God! Oh— oh!” he cried and hid his face in his hands.

Mrs. Dolderson’s eyes closed for a moment. When they opened she had control of herself again. Sadly she looked on the shaking shoulders. Her thin, blue-veined left hand reached out towards the bowed head, and stroked the fair hair, gently. Her right hand found the bell push on the table beside her. She pressed it and kept her finger upon it.

At the sound of movement her eyes opened. The Venetian blind shaded the room but let in light enough for her to see Harold standing beside her bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you, Mother,” he said.

“You didn’t wake me, Harold. I was dreaming, but I was not asleep. Sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you.”

“You mustn’t tire yourself, Mother. You’ve had a bit of a relapse, you know.”

“I daresay, but I find it more tiring to wonder than to know. I shan’t keep you long.”

“Very well. Mother.” He pulled up a chair close to the bedside and sat down, taking her hand in his. She looked at his face in the dimness.

“It was you who did it, wasn’t it, Harold? It was that experiment of yours that brought poor Arthur here?”

“It was an accident, Mother.”

“Tell me.”

“We were trying it out. Just a preliminary test. We knew it was theoretically possible. We had shown that if we could — oh, it’s so difficult to explain in words— if we could, well, twist a dimension, kind of fold it back on itself, then two points that are normally apart must coincide. I’m afraid that’s not very clear…”

"Never mind, dear. Go on.”

"Well, when we had our field-distortion generator fixed up, we set it to bring together two points that are normally fifty years apart. Think of folding over a long strip of paper that has two marks on it, so that the marks are brought together.”

"Yes?”

"It was quite arbitrary. We might have chosen ten years or a hundred, but we just picked fifty. And we got astonishingly close, too, Mother, quite remarkably close. Only a four-day calendar error in fifty years. It’s staggered us. The thing we’ve got to do now is to find out that source of error, but if you’d asked any of us to bet—”

"Yes, dear, I’m sure it was quite wonderful. But what happened ?”

"Oh, sorry. Well, as I said, it was an accident. We only had the thing switched on for three or four seconds — and he must have walked slap into the field of coincidence right then. A millions-to-one chance. I wish it had not happened, but we couldn’t possibly know.”

She turned her head on the pillow. “No. You couldn't know," she agreed. “And then?"

“Nothing, really. We didn't know until Jenny answered your bell and found you in a faint and this chap, Arthur, all gone to pieces, and sent for me. One of the girls helped to get you to bed. Doctor Sole arrived and took a look at you. Then he pumped some kind of tranquillizer into this Arthur. The poor fellow needed it, too — one hell of a thing to happen when all you were expecting was a game of tennis with your best girl. When he'd quietened down a bit, he told us who he was, and where he’d come from. Well, there was a thing for you! Accidental living proof at the first shot.

“But all he wanted, poor devil, was to get back just as soon as he could. He was very distressed — quite a painful business. Doctor Sole wanted to put him right under to stop him cracking altogether. It looked that way, too — and it didn’t look as if he'd be any better when he came round again, either.

"We didn’t know if we could send him back. Transference 'forward,' to put it crudely, can be regarded as an infinite acceleration of a natural progression, but the idea of transference 'back' is full of the most disconcerting implications once you start thinking about it. There was quite a bit of argument, but Doctor Sole clinched it. If there was a fair chance, he said, the chap had a right to try and we had an obligation to try to undo what we’d done to him. Apart from that, if we did not try we should certainly have to explain to someone how we came to have a raving loony on our hands, and fifty years off course, so to speak.

“We tried to make it clear to this Arthur that we couldn't be sure that it would work in reverse — and that anyway there was this four-day calendar error, so at best it wouldn’t be exact. I don’t think he really grasped that. The poor fellow was in a wretched state. All he wanted was just a chance — any kind of chance— to get out of here. He was simply one-track.

"So we decided to take the risk — after all, if it turned out not to be possible he'd — well, he’d know nothing about it, or nothing would happen at all. The generator was still on the same setting. We put one fellow on to that, took this Arthur back to the path by your room, and got him lined up there.

"'Now walk forward,' we told him. 'Just as you were walking when it happened.' And we gave the switch-on signal. What with the doctor's dope and one thing and another he was pretty groggy, but he did his best to pull himself together. He went forward at a kind of stagger. Literal-minded fellow, he was half-crying, but in a odd sort of voice he was trying to sing: ‘Everybody's doin' it, do —’

“And then he disappeared — just vanished completely.” He paused, and added regretfully: “All the evidence we have now is not very convincing — one tennis racquet, practically new, but vintage and one straw hat, ditto.”

Mrs. Dolderson lay without speaking. He said: “We did our best, Mother. We could only try.”

“Of course you did, dear. And you succeeded. It wasn't your fault that you couldn't undo what you'd done. No, I was just wondering what would have happened if it had been a few minutes earlier, or later, that you had switched your machine on. But I don’t suppose that could have happened, or you wouldn't have been you at all.”

He looked at her a little uneasily. "What do you mean, Mother?” he asked.

"Never mind, dear. You did your best — and I expect it was the best. ...”

“He was much too distressed for us to try to keep him here. He’d have gone all to pieces. What else could we have done?”

“I don’t know — nothing, I think. It was written, I suppose.”

“What makes you think we succeeded in getting him back, Mother?”

“I know you did, dear.” She paused, then, in a quiet flat voice, as if quoting, she said: “‘Arthur Waring Batley. Second Lieutenant, of wounds received in action in France. Third of November, Nineteen-Fifteen.'”

She closed her eyes. A tear escaped and ran slowly down her cheek. Harold pulled out his handkerchief to wipe it away. She pressed his hand but did not speak. High above the house the whine of a jet plane swelled and died away.

Mrs. Dolderson said: “I shan't be sorry to go. It will hurt to leave you, Harold, my dear, but that's all I shall really mind when the time comes. Perhaps I’m a little like poor Arthur. I don't much like your world — nor the things it learns to do.”

Time Stops Today

1953

A person awaking should, in my opinion, glide smoothly back into coordination. Otherwise he feels that there is some part of him that hasn’t got back in time. And if there’s another thing I dislike, it’s the sharp drive of a woman’s elbow—well, come to that, anybody’s elbow—among the ribs, more particularly if that woman happens to be my wife. After all, it’s part of a wife’s job to learn not to do these things.

In the circumstances my response came clear out of the subconscious. “Well, really...!” said Sylvia. “I know I’m only your wife, George, but—well, really...!”

My time-lag caught up. “Sorry,” I said. “But, damn it...! What’s the matter, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvia admitted, “but I’ve got a feeling that there’s something wrong.”

“Oh, Lord!” I said and switched on the light. Naturally, everything looked just as usual. “Intuition?” I suggested.

“You needn’t sneer at me, George. What about that Sunday I knew we were going to have an accident with the car?”

“Which Sunday? There were so many.”

“Why, the Sunday we did have one, of course. I felt just the same way about it as I do now.”

I sat up in bed. The clock had been a wedding present. After a while I calculated that it was tryin to indicate 3:15 am. I listened, couldn’t hear anything, any place. Still, you know what intuition is. “I suppose I’d better have a look. Where did you think it was?” I asked her.

“What was?”

“Whatever you heard.”

“But I didn’t hear anything. I told you—it’s just a feeling that something’s wrong.”

I relaxed and leaned back on the pillow. “Would I do something about that?”

“What can you do? It’s just a feeling.”

“Then why on Earth...?” I began.

At that moment the light went out. “There!” said Sylvia, triumphantly; “I knew!”

“Good. Well, that’s over then,” I pulled up the bedclothes.

“Aren’t you going to look at it?” she inquired.

“A blown fuse can keep till morning—even if you’d not left my torch some place,” I told her.

“But it may not be a fuse.”

“To hell with it,” I muttered, getting comfortable again.

“I should have thought you would want to know,” she suggested.

“I don’t. I just want to sleep.”

When I woke again the morning was nice and bright. The sun was shining in and painting a part of the opposite wall with pale gold. I stretched a bit in warm comfort and reached for a cigarette. As I lit it, I remembered the light, I pushed the switch on and off a few times, without result. That cute electric clock still seemed to be saying 3:15; my watch said 7 o'clock, I lay back, enjoying the first few puffs at the cigarette.

Sylvia slept on. I allowed the temptation to drive my elbow into her ribs for a change to pass. She manages such a decorative and confiding appearance when she sleeps. Just then she said ‘Ugh-h-huh,” and pulled the sheet over her ear. She is not one who greets the dawn with a glad cry.

At about the same moment, it occurred to me that there was something wrong with the day—a sort of background buzz of traffic from the main road—an occasional car in our own road, milk bottle clinking and feel a general sense of stir. This morning all that was missing—even the bird-sounds, a disturbing-air-of — peace lay over the neighborhood. The more I listened, the more unnatural it seemed. At length it drove me to get up and go to the window. Behind me Sylvia said, “Hell!” and pulled the bedclothes more closely around her.

I think I must have stood looking out of the window for several minutes before I turned back, Then I “Sylvia. Something funny’s been happening.”

“Ugh,” she remarked.

Dropping the understatement, I continued, “Come and look. If you don’t see it, too, I must be going crazy.”

The tone of my voice got through to her. She opened her eyes. “What is it?”

“Come and look,” I repeated.

She yawned, pushed back the covers, and maneuvered off the bed. She thrust her feet into a pair of mules decorated, for some incomprehensible feminine reason, with feathers and pulled on a wrap as she staggered across.

“What...?” she began, Then she shut up, and stood, staring.

We live in a suburb. It’s a nice suburb, nice sort of people. The houses are pretty much alike, all with their garages and gardens. Not large houses—not large gardens, either, though quite large enough for the husbands to look after. We stand on a slope, and from the bedroom window we look down upon the backs of a similar row of houses which front upon a road parallel with ours and have gardens running up towards us, The end of our garden is separated from the end of the one opposite by a high wooden fence, which is continuous along all the properties. Across the roofs of the opposite houses, we can see the huddle of more industrial parts beyond. On fine days, we can see a considerable distance further to low hills— where houses similar to our own stand out among trees and gardens, but more often, the two residential areas are hidden from one another by the haze, thickened with smoke, that rises between them. It is not, perhaps, an inspiring view across the tall chimneys, municipal towers and the beetle-backs of several movie houses; but it does give us a sense of space and a big stretch of sky. The trouble with it, this morning, was that it gave us little else.

Just beneath us lay our lawn and flowerbeds, then the hedge which cuts off the vegetable garden. There the rows of beans, peas, and cabbages should have run down past a pear tree on the left, and a plum tree on the right, until they reached the raspberry and currant department. But they didn’t. They began— but about halfway down their proper length they just stopped. Beyond that abrupt edge there was a brown, sandy-looking soil in which a coarse grass grew in large or small patches and lonely tufts. It was dune land, except it lacked any noticeable hillocks. It stretched on and on, undulating gently into the distance, until it met brownish green hills far away.

We stared out at it in silence for some little time. Then Sylvia said in a choked voice: “Is this some kind of joke, George?”

Sylvia has two reactions to any sort of unpleasant surprise. One is that if it utterly fails to amuse her, it must be some form of joke and the other is that, whatever it concerns, I must be responsible for it, somehow. I do not pretend to know what she thought I might have been doing in order to spirit away a whole landscape, but I was able to reply with truth that no one could be more surprised than I.

At which she gave a kind of gulp and ran out of the room.

I stood where I was, still looking out. On the left was the Saggitt’s garden, running down alongside our own, and cut off in the same peculiar way. Beyond that was the Drury’s—at least, part of theirs. Not only was it cut off on a line with ours, but there was no more than a six-foot wide strip of it to be seen. Beyond, was the sandy soil.

Sylvia came back looking frightened. “It’s the same in front,” she said. “The garden’s there, and half the width of the sidewalk—then there’s just that stuff and half the garage has gone.”

I raised the window sash and looked out to the right. From that angle I could look down on the garage roof, It looked usual enough. Then I saw what she meant. “Its half the Gunners’ that’s gone,” I said.

And it had. The roof of their garage climbed to within an inch or two of the ridge, then stopped as if it had been sliced clean off. Where the rest of it should have been—and where the Gunners’ house should have been—tussocks of grass waved in a light wind.

“Thank goodness,” said Sylvia. Not uncharitably, you understand— but, after all, we had only had our new convertible a couple of weeks.

“We must be dreaming,” I said, a little shakily.

“We can’t both be,” she objected.

That, of course, was debatable, but this was scarcely the moment, so I said: “Well...am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?”

I let her have it: I ought to have known better than to ask the question in the first place. I hurried on some clothes and went outside to see what I could make of it. The front was just as Sylvia had said. I walked down the path, opened the gate, and stepped out on to the half-width of sidewalk. The edge, where the sandy soil began, looked just as if it had been trimmed off with a sharp knife. I bent over to look at it more closely—and caught myself a sharp crack on the head. It was so unexpected that I recoiled slightly. Then I put up a hand to see what had done it. My fingers met a smooth surface which was neither hot nor cold and seemed as solid as rock. I raised the other hand and felt across several square feet of it. It scared me a bit because, though . it was unfamiliar, it was only a step on from the quite familiar. One just had to imagine plate glass with a perfectly non-reflecting surface...

I could not touch the sandy soil and the grass beyond. The transparent wall rose from the very line where normal things ended. As I stood there, bewilderedly looking through it, I noticed an odd thing: the grass beyond was waving, yet I could not feel even a stir in the air around me.

After a moment’s thought, I went to the garage. There I chose my heaviest hammer and found an old can half full of sludgy kerosene. Outside again, I threw the contents of the can at the transparent wall. It was strange the way the stuff splattered suddenly in mid air and began to trickle down. Then I took a grip on the hammer and hit hard. The thing rebounded, and the shaft stung my fingers so that I dropped it. There. was no other perceptible result.

When I investigated at the back of the house, I found that the same invisible barrier terminated what remained of the garden—and with increased bizarre effect, for there it appeared to bisect the plum tree so that, seen from as nearly to the side as I could get, the whole trunk and spread was flat-backed like a piece of stage scenery. I wished I could crane around to see what the devil it looked like from the back, but the wall itself prevented that.

In a rough survey, I estimated that the area of normalcy enclosed by these wails would be an approximate square of seventy yards. Beyond this in all directions stretched the featureless dunes—featureless, that is, save for the hills in the distance which occupied just the same position that hills usually occupied in our view.

Not much wiser, I went back to the house.

Sylvia, who feels able to face most things better on a cup of coffee, was cursing the cooker for not heating. “Oh, there you are. Can’t you fix that fuse?”

“Well...” I began doubtfully. Then I went and looked in the box. As I had expected, the fuses were okay. I said so.

“Nonsense,” said Sylvia, “nothing goes on.”

“On the contrary, quite a lot goes on,” I said. “Though just what. Anyway, the point is—where would the power come from?”

“How would I...?” she began. Then she got the idea. She opened her mouth again, failed to find anything to say and stood looking at me.

I shook my head. “I’ll go and see the Saggitts,” I said.

It was not that I expected either of the Saggitts to be much help, but one began to have a feeling that some company would be acceptable, Still, I get along all right with Doug Saggitt, although he’s quite a bit older than I am—forty-seven, forty-eight, maybe. He’s getting thin some places, and gray in others, and though he’s not fossilizing yet, it’s hard to see why Rose married him—she being only twenty-one and quite a whistle rouser.

It seems to me that some girls, maybe when they’re half-awake one morning, get a kind of nudge from the lifeforce. ‘Hey!’ says the lifeforce. “Time you were getting married.’ ‘What, me?’ says the girl. ‘Sure. You—and someone else, of course,’ says the lifeforce. ‘But I mean to have a lot of fun first, says the girl. ‘“Maybe—but then maybe not,’ says the lifeforce ominously. ‘It could be you'll come out in spots tomorrow, or lose a leg in a car accident, or—’

After it’s gone on this way for a bit, it has the girl so paralytic with fright that she flies off wildly and marries a Doug Saggitt. After a bit, she finds that she doesn’t have spots and does have two legs, that she doesn’t have a lot of fun and does have Doug Saggitt and she begins to wonder whether Doug Saggitt was just what the lifeforce had in mind, after all. Mind you, that’s only a theory, but it does save me having to say, ‘I can’t think why she married him,’ the way the rest of the people in the road do every time they see her.

Anyway… I went over to their house and pressed the bell. It looked as if, whatever it was, we and the Saggitts were in it together—and alone, for the transparent barrier on the side beyond them passed through the Drurys’ house, including in our area simply the side-wall and a depth of perhaps six inches beyond. It looked extremely dangerous, though it showed no sign of falling. Looking at it while I waited, I reckoned that it, like the plum tree and the other things the barrier cut across, must be clamped to the invisible surface by a kind of magnetism.

I gave a second long chime on the bell. Presently I heard feet on the stairs. The door opened, and a hand thrust out some coins wrapped in a scrap of writing paper. It moved impatiently when I didn’t accept the offer; the door opened a little more and Rose’s head appeared.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were the milk, What’s the...?” She cut off abruptly; her eyes widened as she saw the view behind me.

‘“Wh-what’s happened?” she stuttered.

“That’s what I want to see Doug about,” I told her.

“He’s still asleep,” she said vaguely, still staring where the other side of the road ought to be.

“Well...” I began. Then Sylvia came hurrying across.

“George,” she said, with a note of accusation. “The gas doesn’t work, either.”

“Is that surprising? Look where the gasworks was,” I said, and pointed away across the dunes.

“But how can I possibly cook breakfast?”

“You can’t,” I admitted.

“But that’s ridiculous. You'll have to do something about it, George.”

“Now, what in the hell do you suppose I can do?”

Sylvia regarded me and then turned to Rose with an expression of sisterly suffering. “Aren’t men helpless?” she asked, in a voice needing no answer.

Rose was still looking round in resentful bewilderment. “If you'll rout Doug out, we can at least hold a conference about this,” I said.

Sylvia and I waited in the lounge. It wasn’t a comfortable wait. Sylvia was doing her hedgehog act—she kind of rolls into a ball of silence, with all the spines sticking out. I used to be the fool terrier in that game, but not now. I don’t know which irritates her most.

Doug made his appearance in a bathrobe, with his chin bristling and his hair on end—what there was of it. Rose followed. For some reason she had chosen to put on a hostess gown. “What the hell’s supposed to be going on?” Doug demanded.

“Listen,” I said, “before we go any further, will everybody quit barking at me as though I’d done it. You can see what’s happened, and you know about as much as I do.”

“There’s no power, and no gas,” muttered Sylvia, aggrievedly.

“And the milkman’s late,” added Rose.

“Late?” I repeated, helplessly and sat down.

“Well, if you men won’t do anything...” said Sylvia, and laid hold of the telephone.

I watched, fascinated. Have you ever seen a woman grossly insulted by a perfectly silent ‘instrument? It’s good. Her mouth clamped and she marched out of the room with a kind of Amazonian determination to fight something. There was a pause while I looked at Doug and he looked at me. At last: “What is going on?” he said bemusedly.. He waved a hand at the window. “What is this, George? Where’s...”

Then he was interrupted by Sylvia’s return. Her eyes were watering slightly and she was holding a handkerchief to her nose. Her anger had given place to bewilderment. She was even a little scared. “There’s a wall there—only you can’t see it,” she said.

“Wall—rubbish,” said Doug.

“How dare you?” snapped Sylvia, recovering quickly.

Doug went outside to look for himself.

“Now,” I said when he came back, “you know just as much as I do. What do we do next?”

There was a pause. “I’m out of bread and I suppose the baker won’t be coming either,” Rose said, miserably.

“I think we’ve got an extra loaf, dear,” Sylvia told her consolingly.

“That’s sweet of you, Sylvia—but are you sure you'll be able to spare...?”

“For heaven’s sake!” I said, loudly. “Here we are with the most amazing, the most monstrous thing happening all around us and all you two can do is to chatter on about gas and bread.”

Sylvia’s eyes narrowed a bit, then she remembered that we weren’t alone. “There’s no need to shout. What do you suggest we do?” she said, chillily.

“That’s. not the point—not yet,” I said. “The first thing is to find out what has happened. Then, maybe we can begin to do something about it. Now has anybody any ideas?”

Apparently nobody had. Doug wandered over to the window and stood there mutely, uninspired by the empty miles of dunes. Sylvia and Rose sat registering womanly forbearance with the male. “I have a theory,” I suggested.

“It'll have to be good,” said Doug, gloomily. “Still, let’s have it.”

“It seems to me that we may be the unwitting subjects of some test or experiment,” I offered.

Doug shook his head. “If ‘unwitting’ means what I think it does, it’s the wrong word. I’m extremely aware of all this.”

“What I mean is—someone tried his experiment, and we just happened to be here when he tried it.”

“Experiment? ...You mean like letting off an atom bomb or something which just happened to finish everybody but us? Because...”

“I do not,” I said, shortly. I went on to make my points. Though all trace of buildings had vanished, the configuration of the ground was roughly the same; we seemed to be in a kind of invisible glass box. Certainly, there were walls all round and probably, since the air was so still, there was a roof as well—we could test for that later. Everything within the enclosed area was unchanged—everything outside, except the general lay of the land, was altered. Or it might be vice versa. Now, the contents of the invisible box were quite alien to the surroundings—it followed that they must have been moved from somewhere to somewhere else. But the evidence was that they were still in the same place though it had an unfamiliar aspect. Therefore, as they had not been moved in space, the only other thing they could have been moved in was time.

This piece of calm and, I felt, logical reasoning was received with a silence which lasted for some moments.. Then Doug. said: “If an atom bomb, or several atom bombs, were let off and we happened to be protected by this glass case or whatever it is...”

“Then there certainly wouldn’t be grass growing out there,” I finished for him. “No. What must have happened is that in some way this enclosed area was twisted through another dimension to another section of time—probably what we would call forward, or to the future. I don’t see that anything else could explain the situation.”

“H’m,” said Doug. “And you think that does explain it, eh?”

There was a pause. Sylvia said conversationally to Rose: “My husband reads the most captivating magazines, my dear. All about girls who go through deep space—whatever that is—just in bras and panties, And about good galaxies fighting perfectly horrid galaxies, and the cutest little things called mutants, or robots, or something, and such lovely men who go out on space-patrol for a few hundred lightyears at a time. So intriguing. Such interesting titles they have, too. There’s Staggering Stories, Stunning Science Stories, Dumbfounding Tales, Flabbergasting Fiction, Bewild—”

“Listen,” I said, coldly. “Maybe you'd like to explain what’s going on around here on the hints you’ve picked up from Woman’s Glamor, Clean Confessions, Gracious Loving, Wolf Tales, or Heartbeat Magazine?”

“At least they have stories in them about things that could happen,” said Sylvia, equally chilly.

“Euclid said all that was necessary about triangles in his first book—and he got some place with them.”

“Well, what place do the stories in your magazines about things that never could happen get to?” Sylvia snapped.

“I wouldn’t know. What I do know is that one of the ‘never coulds’ is all around us right now. Look at it! And when I try to understand it, you just sneer.”

“Sneer!” said Sylvia. “I like that. I was just explaining to Rose. Why, if anybody was sneering...”

“Yes,” agreed Rose, decisively, as if answering a question.

We withdrew to our corners for the moment. Doug broke in: “You really think there must have been some fourth-dimensional twist?”

I nodded, glad to get back to the matter in hand. “Well, some other dimensional twist,” I agreed, “It must have been that.”

“What is a fourth dimension?” asked Rose.

I tried: “It’s—well, it’s a kind of extension in a direction we can’t perceive. Suppose you lived in a two-dimensional world, you'd only be aware of length and breadth. And suppose that in your flat country you found a square.”

“What of?”

“Nothing, just a square.”

“Oh,” said Rose, with some reservation,

“Well, that square might really be the bottom surface of a cube—only you wouldn’t be able to perceive the rest of the cube, of course. Now if somebody outside picked the cube up and put it down somewhere else it would, as far as you were concerned, vanish suddenly, and then reappear in a different place; you’d be quite at a loss to understand it.”

“Well, I certainly am,” agreed Rose.

I wondered irritably why anybody marries them. “Don’t you?” I began patiently. But Sylvia cut in “We don’t. What’s more, I don’t see that it would make any practical difference if we did.”

“Well, not practical, exactly,” I admitted.

“All right then.” She turned to Rose. “Haven’t you a kerosene stove, dear?” she inquired. Rose nodded, and they went out together.

I looked at Doug, and shook my head,

“The trouble about women,” I began.

“Yes, yes,” said Doug hastily. “But this theory of yours—are you serious?”

“Of course. What else can it possibly be? I reckon that this section with us in it has somehow been shifted—maybe to several thousand years in the future. It must be the future because it can never have looked like this hereabouts in the past.”

“Hard to swallow,” said Doug. “I mean it is a bit like one of those magazines Sylvia was talking about, isn’t it?”

“It may be,” I said irritably. “The thing is that some day, somewhere, someone is inevitably going to try to raise a bit of the past. I take it that one of the tryers has succeeded—and we happened to be just in the time and place he hit on.”

He muttered again hash difficulty in swallowing, then he added: “Supposing you are right. What happens next?

“I imagine someone comes to see how the experiment went off. Quite likely we'll not be able to learn much—they’ll be much more advanced. They'll want to know all about-us and our times, of course, but that may not be easy. I expect the language will have changed a lot.”

“We'll have to draw diagrams of the solar system, and all that?”

“Why?” I said, in some surprise.

“Well, because...oh no, of course —that’s when you get to other planets, isn’t it?”

A short time Sylvia and Rose returned, bearing coffee. The warmth and flavor increased amiability all round. Doug, sipping his, said: “George thinks we're likely to have visitors.”

“Where from?” asked Rose, interestedly.

That girl does have the damndest gift for fool questions.

“How...?” I began. Then I stopped. I happened to be sitting facing the window and I caught sight of a movement way down in the shallow valley. I could not distinguish the cause, but it was clear that something was raising a moving cloud of dust. “It could be they’re on their way here now,” I said.

We all crowded to the window to look. The thing, whatever it was, showed no great speed, but it was headed our way. “In George’s books they always have huge heads and no hair,” said Sylvia, reflectively.

“How perfectly horrid,” Rose exclaimed and I thought Doug looked a trifle hurt.

“What sort of things will they want to know, I wonder?” he said. “It’ll be a bit like an exam we’ve not prepared for.”

“I’d better go and put on something more suitable,” Sylvia said.

“My goodness, so must I,” agreed Rose. “And Doug, you must brush your hair...and you’ve not shaved yet.”

“You’ve not shaved, either, George,” Sylvia told me pointedly.

“Look here,” I said. “Here we are on the brink of one of the most amazing encounters in the whole of history, and what do you think of? Oh, all right, then.”

The moving object was still several miles away when I had finished in the bathroom. But I could see it a lot more clearly, now— a long, boxlike contraption with a transparent cover over all catching the light from time to time. It was not moving much above twenty miles an hour, I judged, but it travelled very smoothly over the rough ground, There was too much dust round the lower part for me to see how it was supported.

I joined Sylvia. She had changed into a blue dress of soft wool which became her well. Her expression of satisfaction over that was modified, however, at the sight of me. “Well, really, George! You can’t go around like that.”

“What the hell do you use that blade in your razor for, anyway?” I asked.

“You used my...?”

“What else? No power. So cold water, ordinary soap. Your idea, anyway.”

Sylvia drew breath, but at that moment Doug’s voice floated up from outside: “Hey! They’re just about here, George.”

I went down’ and joined him. We walked the length of what remained of my garden, with Sylvia and Rose following us. Where it ended, we stood close against the invisible wall, watching the vehicle approach. It seemed to be travelling on some kind of millipede arrangement which compensated automatically for inequalities in the ground. It came to a stop about fifteen yards short of us. The whole side opened towards us on hinges at the base, and came down to form a sort of ramp. Four men inside got up from their seats, walked down the ramp, and stood looking at us.

I was aware of indrawn breaths beside me. “Gosh! What d’you know!” murmured Sylvia’s voice.

“Ooh—ooh!” said Rose, as if someone had given her a very large box of candy.

For myself, I didn’t see—well, let’s be fair. The four men were magnificent specimens, I’ll grant. Tall, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, narrow-hipped, and all that—but then, so was Tarzan, and some others, There are other things required of a man beyond a handsome appearance – in fact, some of the best-looking men I have known... Anyway, I didn’t much care for the way they were dressed, either.

They wore deep yellow tunics, patterned around the edges in brown, belted and coming down just to knee-length. Their legs were in narrow trousers or gaiters of a brown material, and their thong-fastened shoes were yellow. They wore no hats, and their fair hair had a slightly bleached effect seen above their sunburned faces. Each stood something over six-foot four. The whole effect struck me as slightly stagy.

It was at once clear from the way they looked at us that they were puzzled, They conferred and then regarded us again. There was some laughter, which I considered ill-mannered in the circumstances. With the wall between us, we could not hear the slightest sound of their voices. Once more they debated, then came to some agreement. One went back into the vehicle and emerged with an instrument which looked something like a theodolite. He set it up on a tripod, sighted it, and then pressed a switch on it. Immediately the air around us began to stir, as if the wind were blowing through a gap in the wall. Then, leaving the instrument where it was, all four men began to walk towards us.

I held up my open hand to show that we had peaceful intentions. They looked puzzled. One said to another: “Funny thing, that. I thought Hitler died in 1945?”

I lowered my hand. “Oh! You speak English!” I said.

“Of course,” said the nearest man, “why not?”

“Well…er…I thought...” I began, and then gave it up. “My name is George Possing,” I told him, introducing myself.

He frowned slightly. “It ought to be Julian Speckleton,” he said.

I looked at him. “Really!” I said, coldly, “well, it’s not—it’s George Possing.”

“I don’t understand this,” he murmured, reflectively.

“Its quite easy. I’m Possing—and I’ve never even heard of anyone called Speckleton.”

“And you're not on the sub-atomic drive?”

I suppose I looked blank.

“The sub-atomic drive that Solarian Rockets are developing,” he said, with a touch of impatience.

“Never heard of it—or them,” I told him.

“H’m,” he remarked. “Something has gone wrong. Paladanoy’s going to be wild about this.”

It occurred to me that I ought to introduce the others but when I looked, I found it was unnecessary. They were all talking together already. The man with me asked who Doug was. I told him. He asked. “What’s the date?”

When he heard, he whistled. “Thirty-five -years out of register. Somebody’s going to get a smack for this. Hey, fellers!”

They didn’t notice him. One had taken Doug to the gap in the invisible wall and was showing him something there. The other two were chatting with Sylvia and Rose. Very animatedly, too. Sylvia’s eyes were shining brightly. They kept on flicking about the face of the man who was blushing a little. I’d never seen her blush like that before—or look quite that way, I didn’t care for it a lot.

“Hey!” said my man, more loudly. The others broke off and came around him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sylvia and Rose turn to one another. They giggled like a couple of schoolgirls, and then started whispering.

“Listen,” said the man beside me. “Something’s gone haywire here; neither of these guys is Speckleton.”

They all regarded us for a moment. “Well, I don’t know that I mind that a lot,” said one, turning to look at Rose, who blushed.

“Nor me,” agreed the other. “Just my climate around here.” And Sylvia blushed even more than Rose had.

“Maybe,” said my man, “But the point is there’s no work for us to do here. No Speckleton – no drawings. These folk come from thirty-five years before.”

“I’m not worrying about that a bit,” one of the others assured him. “Nice folks,” he added. And the girls giggled.

“All the same, it’s a washout. So what do we do?”

“Wait for instructions,” one said, promptly.

“That’s so. Then we'll be right on hand when they correct the error,” added the other.

“Okay; I’ll put a report through.” The man turned and walked back towards the vehicle. The man who had been talking to Doug went with him. Rose, still a little pink, and with a touch of that demureness which isn’t meant to deceive anybody, said in a hostess way: “I’m sure you must be terribly thirsty after all that dust. Won’t you have some coffee?”

They had no hesitation at all about accepting the offer. Doug and I were left to watch them on their way through the hedge which separated our gardens and stroll up, laughing, to his house. We looked at one another. “Well...” I said.

Maybe George’s years had improved his philosophic outlook. He said, calmly: “I’ll have to hand it to you, George, your deductions were dead right.”

“Huh,” I said, watching the others go into the house.

“Yes. There has been a time transposition, some way. And apparently some kind of hitch in it—so you were right, too, about it just being an accident for us that we’re here.”

“Huh,” I said again. “It might help if I could understand what the hell goes on when there isn’t a hitch.”

“It’s not so difficult. That fellow gave me the general idea. You see, in a few years time the offices of the Solarian Rocket Corporation, Inc., will be standing on this site—with a man called Julian Speckleton in charge of the drawing department. Okay? Well, the guys who operate this time-lift dingum just whisk away a part of the block to—er—whatever time it is out there... Just the way we were whisked.”

“But what for?”

“Ah, that’s where these chaps come in. They arrive and photograph drawings and documents of interest.”

“I don’t see what for. They must be centuries ahead of us, anyway.”

“Sure. But the way they work, they’ve got a second time-lift in operation some place. Now that along some guy called Paladanov. They give him the photographic copies, then they reverse the time-lift, and put things back.”

I thought that over. “I don’t see…” I began.

“There’s a subtlety there,” said Doug. “The office block goes back to the split-second it left, so that nothing appears to have been touched. But this Paladanov and his place don’t—not quite. It has to be missing from its proper place for a few minutes—long enough for him to collect the photographs so that they are in the house when it goes back.”

“This is horribly bewildering.”

“Well, if the Paladanov guy went back to the same split-second in which he left, he’d not have the photographs —they weren’t in his house at that second, you see.”

“I suppose not. But it’s so involved. Why don’t they just whisk up Paladanov here and tell him a few things that'll put him years or generations ahead of his competitors, anyway? Surely that’d be easier?”

“It would be. But would these guys get anything out of it? Somewhere in this, there’s a racket – there always is. It could be that Paladanov’s employers put money on deposit and leave it to accumulate, maybe? In that case the more slowly the information is dribbled out, the longer the rack would last. Or it could be equally they work the thing the other way round as well, and both sides plodding along neck and neck on one another’s secrets. That’d be very nice smooth work,”

He paused to contemplate the idea admiringly. “I know one ” he added; “if and when we get back the first thing I do is to buy my house and ground.”

“But, look here,” I said, “It's crazy and unpatriotic.”

“How? I don’t see that an information office in Time – if you can move about in Time— is any crazier than one in space. Properly operated, it could make big money. As for being unpatriotic, that depends on the distance, doesn’t it? The way I see it, to give the Germans radar around 1938 would be bad...but to let the Trojans in on the wooden-horse gag wouldn’t matter a lot.”

“There’s no difference in the morals,” I said, coldly.

“Maybe they don’t have those, anyway,” suggested Doug.

“I’ve been wondering about just that,” I admitted uneasily, looking up towards his house. I listened to the sounds coming from there. It seemed to me there was a pretty unnatural amount of high-pitched giggling going on.

“Don’t you think we’d better...?” I asked, jerking my head in that direction.

Doug listened, too, for a moment. “Maybe we had,” he agreed. We turned and walked up the garden.

At the door he paused. “Er. . . pretty big fellows, aren’t they...strong looking?” he suggested.

I had to agree with that.

I shall have, I am afraid, draw a veil over most of the three following days. I never would have believed that two decently brought-up girls...and respectably married too…

Mind you, I didn’t take it all lying down. I told Sylvia what I thought about it one time when I did manage to get her alone. Her response wasn’t amiable: “Will you please stop interfering in my affairs?” she demanded.

“But it’s your affair that I’m complaining of,” I pointed out, reasonably.

“If you don’t like Alaric being a friend of mine, you’d better go and tell him. so—and see what he does.”

Alaric was, I think, slightly the tallest of the four. “I don’t mind him being a friend of anybody’s,” I said, “what I mean is…”

“Well, what do you mean?” she asked, dangerously. “Are you accusing him of anything? Because maybe he ought to hear it.”

“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you.”

“Well?”

“When a married woman throws herself at another man’s head...” I began.

“I thought you said you weren’t talking about him?”

“Hell, I’m not. I’m just pointing out…”

“Now, look here,” she said. “You're having all the fun of one of your damn silly magazines stories coming true. So what right have you to interfere in mine?”

“It isn’t at all the same sort of thing,” I said, shortly. “Anyway, I didn’t ask for this – it just happened.”

Sylvia softened unexpectedly. “Yes,” she said. “That’s how love is for women—it just happens,” she added, gently.

“That’s all very well in those fool stories...” I began.

Her softness suddenly vanished. “Fool stories’,” she said. “And from you, too!” she gave an exceedingly unnatural laugh.

“At least mine are harmless and clean,” I replied.

“Well, mine always end up most morally. They have to,” she countered.

“Its not so much the ending that I’m concerned about at the moment...”

I was pointing out when she snapped: “What are you going to do about it?” She did not seem to understand somehow that the whole conversation was what I was doing about it.

Doug, I must admit, was more direct in his method of objection—though no more decisive. As I understand it, he had taken Rose over his knee to whang the daylights out of her with a slipper and the whole thing was going pretty successfully when her friend Damon came in, attracted by her howls. He quietly picked Doug up by his collar and the slack of his pants and dropped him out of the window. Then, of course, Rose needed consoling, so the affair really backfired quite a bit.

After that, Doug devoted most of his attention to deciding just how much of the land about us would be (or had been, depending how you look at it) occupied by the Solarian Rocket concern, and considering methods of raising capital.

It was on the afternoon of the third day that the man who had spoken to me first, strode up the garden from their vehicle with a satisfied expression on his face. “They’ve traced the error,” he said. “There was a sticky point in one of the computers which made it run wild now and again, it’ll be all okay now.”

“I’m glad you think so,” I said. It didn’t seem to me that a corrected computer was going to set my domestic life to rights again.”

“Sure, it will,” he nodded. “They'll flip you back to where you came from, and then pull in Speckleton in the Solarian office. I gather Paladanov’s been raising hell. As if it mattered – that poor goop will never get it straight that this is time out for him. However long he has to stay here, he can still be returned to within a few minutes of his lift. You, of course, will be returned to the thousandth of a second—pretty close to tolerance, that.”

“I suppose so,” I said, without zest. “All the same, we’ve been here three days, and during that time my wife...”

“Oh, you’ll just have to count that as time out,” he said, easily.

“You think so,” I remarked. I felt maybe I had better leave that angle. I looked over the near-desert surrounding us. “It’d be kind of nice to know where and when we spent this time out,” I suggested. “How did the place get this way?”

“This?” he repeated. “I can’t say exactly. It sure caught something, didn’t it? That’d likely be during the Second Atomic War, I guess. Well, I gotta tell the boys we’re pulling out. Where are they?”

“I wouldn’t know, but I could make a goodish guess,” I said, bitterly.

Doug and I stood on the narrow terrace path between his house. The scene at the end of my lopped-off garden was not edifying. Beyond the invisible wall the four men were now climbing into their vehicle. This side of the wall, Sylvia and Rose stood clinging together, apparently for mutual support. They had handkerchiefs in their hands. Sometimes they fluttered them at the vehicle, sometimes they dabbed them at their faces. We watched the performance gloomily and in silence. We had already repeated all our comments on the situation to one another a good many times.

“Well, at least they’re going,” said Doug. “I’d begun to wonder if they’d get carried along with us.”

“How much longer have we got?” I asked him.

He looked at his watch, “About five minutes,” he said.

“Ought we to be doing anything special?”

“No, according to them it just happens.”

The vehicle was drawing away now. Sylvia and Rose went on waving, and the men inside waved back. Presently, a couple of hundred yards away the thing stopped. Apparently that was a safe distance. We could see the four heads under the transparent top turned to watch us. The girls were still clinging together, and still waving.

“Listen,” I said to Doug, “I don’t quite get this. If everything goes back to a thousandth of a second from where we were, how are we going to remember that it ever…”

My sentence was cut off and I had my answer in the same moment. I found myself sitting up in bed. The light was on, the clock said three-fifteen. Beside me Sylvia was sobbing into her pillow.

I jumped out and went over to the window. “We're back,” I said. Sylvia took no notice. She went on crying into her pillow as if she had not heard. I decided to remove to the spare room for the rest of the night.

“I shall go and see Groves this afternoon,” I announced at breakfast.

Sylvia looked up. She was not at her best this morning. “I shall be seeing him about divorce proceedings,” I amplified.

She stared at me, rallied, and came back absolutely true to form. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

“Joke! Is that what you call your behaviour?”

“I don’t know what you're talking about,” she said.

I looked hard at her. She didn’t even blink. “Look here,” I said, “you’re not going to pretend to me that you don’t remember your own disgraceful behavior?”

“Are you trying to insult me?” she asked, coldly.

“I’ve got witnesses, remember, The Saggitts will bear me out.”

“How interesting, George. What...and where...and when?”

“Well, of all the barefaced...” I began.

Sylvia shook her head reprovingly. “Perhaps I should be angry, but I forgive you, George.”

“You forgive me?”

“Well, it’s hardly fair to hold a person responsible for what he dreams, is it? I expect it as something to do with all those absurd stories you read just before you go to sleep. Now if you were to try reading stories about things that could really happen, George…

When I set out for the office everything appeared utterly normal. You’d never believe that anything in the least unusual had happened to the place. When I looked carefully at the sidewalk I fancied I could trace the hairline of a crack, but I couldn’t be sure even of that.

Doug came out of his front door just as I was passing. “Hullo, George.” He looked around at the familiar scene. “Its Wednesday,” he remarked. “I checked on the phone...and yesterday was Tuesday. And yet we've had three days in between. Strange, isn’t it?”

“I’m glad to hear you say it,” I told him. “I was just beginning to wonder if I em crazy.”

He cocked an eye at me. “So that’s what she’s been telling you. Funny, so has mine.”

We regarded one another. “It’s—it’s collusion or conspiracy or something,” I said.

“Possibly,” Doug agreed. “But I don’t see what we can do about it. I recommend a good spanking... one wouldn’t be interrupted this time.”

“Er... I don’t think Sylvia...” I began.

“Worth trying. Works wonders,” Doug advised. In a different tone of voice, he went on: “I’m just going to start up some tentative inquiries about this property. Are you in?”

For me, the whole recollection was becoming more and more like the dream Sylvia said it was, but Doug evidently meant business. “Give me a few days,” I suggested.

“Okay, no hurry,” he agreed as our ways parted.

I very nearly dropped out of it. There was such a solidarity of opinion between Sylvia and Rose and the whole occurrence did seem increasingly fantastic in retrospect... When I looked at Sylvia row, I really couldn’t imagine...

But, fortunately, an announcement in the local paper caught my eye a week or so later, it said: To Emmeline, wife of Alfred Speckleton, a son, Julian.

But a Kind of GhosT

1957

Sam Tineways was the first citizen of Yoxburgh to appear on the morning after the storm. He climbed over the seawall at an hour when the day was little more than a large dirty patch in the eastern sky. Down on the beach the high wind was still blowing bundles of yellow spume about the shingle that the tide had uncovered. The strand along the wall and the foot of the cliffs was narrow and spray-swept, but feasible. Sam huddled himself into his coat and set out to plod along it with eyes cast down, intently searching the stones.

Most of the town of Yoxburgh used to stand further east—where, now, the gray waves of the North Sea roll. Immemorially this has been a troubled coast. Its men have had to take on Norsemen, Danes, Saxons, and Dutchmen, Frenchmen, and Germans in turn, but always the most persistent enemy has been the sea—an enemy that has sometimes been slowed, but who never retreats. Dykes and breastworks, houses and churches have, century after century, fallen before it, and still with every storm the waves carve further into the cliffs on the south side. One by one the cottages up there are undercut and fall into the hungry water while the inhabitants continue their lives of intermittent retreat.

People have been living and fighting around Yoxburgh for so long that they have left a great many traces of the past. When the cliffs crumble curious things often come down with them. After a new fall, a diligent searcher in the shingle may find coins of any date, corroded weapons, bronze pieces of mysterious purpose, and, sometimes, ornaments and jewelry. In the newly exposed cliff face, too, there may be unexpected sights— a scrap of metal catching the light, bones protruding. Once there was a bleached skull which kept up its last sightless stare at the sea for several weeks until another storm brought it down and ground it up in the pebbles.

But it is unusual for the prowlers on the shore to lift their eyes for a moment from their search. It was only to reassure himself that a half house balanced on the cliff-edge was not about to fall upon him that Sam looked up, and so happened to notice the chest.

One surprising thing about the chest was that it had not already fallen, for it projected near to two feet out from the perpendicular cliff face and looked to be held none too firmly. Another thing was the depth at which it had originally been buried—all of ten feet below the surface, Sam reckoned. Even so, and although Yoxburgh’s cliffs are modest, that put it out of reach, some fifteen feet above his head.

Sam considered it for a moment. Clearly it must be old, therefore it had possibilities. He looked round quickly to make sure no other searchers were out yet. To leave now would mean abandoning the chance of finding a bit of jewelry that he might give to Mary, or a few loose coins for himself. On the other hand, the box might be full of coins and jewelry...

He decided to take the risk and hurried towards the cliff-ladder further on.

Ten minutes later he was sprawled precariously, head and shoulders over the cliff edge, coaxing a noose of rope round the protruding chest with a long rod. Once he had the noose tight, it needed only a few tugs to work the chest loose. There was a ticklish moment when it came free. A small cascade of dirt rattled on to the pebbles. The chest tilted alarmingly, but it remained fast in the loop. Now that he could see the whole of it, Sam found it larger than he had expected.

He looked along the beach. In the distance two blue-jersey wearing men were climbing over the seawall. They would, he knew, start working towards him. It would be unsafe to lower away. On Yoxburgh foreshore finding is keeping, and there were two of them. The only thing to do was to try to get it up before they were able to see round the bluff or cliff that hid it from them at present. Sam laid hold and began to heave.

He was blowing and sweating by the time he got it safely over the edge, but as he mopped his brow his very success caused him to regard it with mixed feelings. His ability to pull it up at all argued that there could not be anything very valuable inside—if anything whatever. Nevertheless, it was old all right – very old, without a doubt. But at the moment he noticed little more about it than that it was fastened with numerous metal bands. His present anxiety was to get it safely away before someone came to ask questions.

Another glance below showed him the two men quite close now, heads bent down and turning from side to side, immersed in the search. Sam thrust the chest under a convenient bush and set off with an elaborately casual air to borrow a handcart.

Mary, in a cream-grey coat and with a flowered scarf over her tawny hair, came in while the Tineways family was at breakfast. She smiled at his parents and spoke to Sam with a slightly managing air. “Bus goes in five minutes,” she said.

Sam gulped the last mouthful and reached for his cap. Being a young man in love is an uneasy state at best. Moreover, some young men are younger than other young men, and it was Sam’s misfortune to be one of them. And young women are captious. They are apt to have a repertoire of moods they consider suitable in their swains, and times when they require them. There are, for instance, moments when they fancy enterprise, finding constancy and dog-eyed devotion ineffably tedious. Though when someone like Sam succeeds in screwing down his natural awe of young goddesses and goads himself into a nervous semblance of enterprise it is, inexplicably, never one of these moments. After a series of wrongly chosen moments it becomes increasingly hard to display masterfulness at any moment at all, so that he retreats into unvocal devotion—and that’s wrong, too.

“Sam,” Mary explained to the Tineways parents, “is taking me to Becwich Fair.” And she swept him out.

Mary moved irritably at Sam’s side, and raised her voice above the bus noises. “Not woken up yet?” she inquired, coolly.

Sam roused himself from speculations on the treasures that the chest, now safely deposited in his own room and disguised under an old sail, might hold for him. “Just doing a bit of thinking,” he protested.

“Do you have to think when you’re out with me?” she asked.

There seemed to be several possible angles to that. Sam avoided all of them.

“I been on the beach. Thought I might come across a bit of jewelry or something for you,” he told her.

With a faint accent of interest, she inquired: “Find anything?”

Sam hesitated. He would look a fool if there turned out to be nothing in the chest, besides, there were other people in the bus to overhear him. “No,” he said. “But one time I will.”

She gave a small sniff. “I don’t know as I’d care for the sort of stuff they find there, anyway. Old fashioned,” she said.

Sam sighed a little to himself at the tone of her voice. He wondered how he could stop it from becoming a day of indifferent replies without turning it into one of petty quarrels. There was, perhaps a chance at the movie they went to that afternoon. At one point in it Sam became aware of a movement beside him. He took her hand. She pulled it away. “What’s the matter?” he asked, but she shook her head.

Afterwards, in the cafe, she asked: “Why is it you never say things to me like he was saying to her, Sam?”

“Maybe I thinks ’em,” said Sam.

“How do I know you think them if you don’t say them? I don’t believe you love me, Sam.”

Something rose in Sam. It struggled beneath the crust of habit and self-consciousness. But the crust held. “You’re talking soft now,” he told her.

“Do you love me, Sam?” she insisted.

“Would I be here now if I didn’t?” Sam asked.

“You might, easy.”

“Not me,” said Sam.

He spoke stoutly, but that did not seem to be enough for her. Her face was turned away. She was hurt with him, and he was hurt with himself. Often when she wasn’t there he would think of things he would say to her about how she looked and how he felt about her; and then when he was with her they didn’t get said. Somehow—well, if he were to say to her what the fellow on the screen had said to his girl it wouldn’t sound right: most likely she’d think he was trying to be funny at her expense, and things would be worse than ever. Still, he made an effort: “ ’F course I love you, Mary."

“Really and truly?”

Well, here was the moment: the time to pour out all those things he had thought of. “I—” he began, and then stopped. She was looking at him, lips a little apart.

“Yes, Sam—?” she prompted.

His mind was a miserable blank. He could not remember one of those things. “I—I just told you so,” he said, unhappily.

Mary’s face kind of died a bit, but she let him take her hand.

The chest was a sturdy affair, not to be opened without trouble and noise. It was necessary for Sam, returning late that evening, to stretch his patience a little further still. In the morning, after his father had left the house, he collected a hammer and cold chisel and retired to his own small room.

Upon examination the thing proved stouter even than he had thought. It seemed first to have been covered with a sheathing of metal to protect the wood. Into this the long tongues of its hinges and other metal strappings had been recessed. Finally, overlaying the whole, and apparently added later, was a tightly clinched framework of heavier metal bands. These were riveted without regard for the hinges, giving the inescapable impression that it was not intended to open at all.

For the first time since his original discovery of it Sam was encouraged: there must, he felt, be something of real value within so much protection. He rubbed away some dirt to find the line of the lid closure and picked up his chisel.

Cutting through the bands was a longish job. The metal was moderately hard—bronze, it might be, certainly not iron, or they would have rusted away. It was necessary to sever them in six places, and he had barely started on the last when his mother called him down to dinner. She showed no interest in what he had been doing. The hammering and sawing of menfolk were habitual to them in her experience, and if they seldom produced anything worth while, they did at least keep the men out of her way when they weren’t working.

By mid-afternoon Sam had the lid ready to lift. He set the chisel carefully in the crack, gave it a rap or two, and bore down upon it. Nothing happened. He examined the crack more carefully. It appeared to have been caulked and then sealed with a hard, shiny substance. Sam was a patient young man. He spent an hour chipping and scraping it away. The next time he tried the lid creaked and gave. It did not jump up, for the bands passed over the hinges and would have to be bent. His excitement grew. He levered until there was room to get the toe of his boot into the gap. Then he put the fingers of both hands inside the lid and heaved. With a creaking and a cracking and a shower of flaky dirt it came up.

Sam straightened himself. He took one look into the box. Then he stood staring, blank as a waxwork, in petrified consternation. In all his varied speculations nothing had suggested to him that the chest might contain a body—and that it was the body of a young woman somehow made it worse.

It lay in there with lily-white limbs curled like an unopened flower. The toes, knees, hands and face were brushed with a petal pink. Lashes like a filigree of gilt velvet lay on her cheeks. To cover her she had nothing but the capricious serpentines of two thick plaits like golden hawsers.

Sam stood thunderstruck while a variety of sensations tangled inside him in wild competition. In a few seconds he ran through most of the major emotions before panic came uppermost and set him sweating. All sense of the wonderful or marvellous was swept away by the perception that he had encumbered himself with a body. He had a quick-cut vision of innumerable policemen and officials eagerly disbelieving every word he told them about it. Panic did not wait to consider the enormity, the impossibility of what he now saw – it simply issued an order: ‘Sam, get rid of it quick. Let somebody else hold this baby.’ And Sam hesitated no longer.

He thrust down the lid and pulled the canvas round the box to hide it. He could hear his mother safely at work in the scullery as he stole down with the load on his shoulder. It was just luck that his father entered the door as he reached the bottom step. “Hullo, son. What you got there?” inquired Tineways senior, amiably enough.

Panic is a neglecter of details. Sam could not have looked more put out had he been carrying the corpse openly in his arms. “Nothin’,” he said in a way that made two simple syllables ooze with discomfort and guilt. Even he himself felt the reply inadequate. “Just an old box off the foreshore,” he added.

His father’s expression changed. He remembered how Sam had looked when caught in youthful misdemeanours. “Let’s have a look,” he suggested.

“It’s nothing,” said Sam. “Just an old box like I told you.”

His father twitched the canvas aside. “Aye. It’s an old box, all right,” he said. “An’ what’s inside?”

“Nothing,” Sam protested again.

The older Tineways’ suspicions became firm. “Look here, my lad. We’ve always done right by you. Share and share alike it’s always been here.”

“But there ain’t nothing in there, Dad.”

“Well, then there’ll be no harm in us having a look, will there?”

A hopeless feeling came over Sam. He knew his father with his mind made up. He put the box down on the floor. At that moment his mother entered from the scullery. “Bringing that dirty thing in here,” she said. “What’ve you got in it?”

“Nothing. It’s empty, I tell you,” muttered Sam.

His father took hold of the lid. Sam gave up, and averted his eyes, preparing for the thunder and lightning. The lid creaked as it was raised but the lightning failed to strike. Sam looked down. There she lay, lovely as a statue in tinted shell, pearl mounted with gold. "H’m,” said his father.

Sam goggled. It was the most improbable sound he had ever heard. He looked quickly at his mother, expecting to see her transfixed with horror and outrage. She was not. Her expression was match to his father’s grunt. Sam felt his reason sliding. He was not certain of the forms parental reactions might take at the sight of a comely young woman’s corpse stowed in a box with none of her beauty hidden, but this seemed to him to be none of them.

“Well?” he said, desperately.

“H’m,” grunted his father again. He leant forward and reached down. Sam watched his father’s hand hover over the smooth white shoulder, and then descend. It went on descending, disappearing into the milky skin until he heard its knuckles rap on the bottom of the box. Tineways went on to rap the sides. The figure lay in the box unaffected by the arm which by its motions should have dissected her into several parts.

“Funny thing to do a box up like that with nothing inside of it,” Mr. Tineways said, ruminatively. He looked hard at Sam’s expression of moonstruck vacancy. “Very strange,” he added. “Still I’d not be surprised if someone mightn’t give quite a bit for the box anyway, seeing as it’s old, all right. Put it in the shed, lad, and we’ll see about it.”

Sam, in a cloudy-minded way, shouldered the box again, and took it outside. Mr. Tineways gave a quick nod to his wife and slipped upstairs into Sam’s room. In half a minute he was down again. “Nothing up there,” he said. “Funny him acting that odd, though.”

Out in the shed Sam placed the box carefully on a pile of sacks and stood staring at it. He hesitated, and then raised the lid again. One thing was inescapably clear— neither his father nor his mother had seen what he saw. He looked down on her. Tentatively he put forward a hand to touch. He hesitated again, it looked like a brutish paw above smooth alabaster. He stretched one finger out gently towards the shining shoulder. It met nothing. The end of it disappeared into whiteness as though it had been cut off. Sam jumped back as if he had been stung. He slammed down the lid and hurried back into the cottage.

It would have been an immense relief to talk to someone about it. But whom?—And, also, how? You couldn’t expect Mary or anyone else to be understanding about a thing like that. Scepticism was the usual thing towards even highly authenticated ghosts. So what could you expect if you were to say: I’ve got a ghost, a very private sort of ghost that nobody can see but me? Sam knew perfectly well what he himself would think of anyone who came to him with such a yarn.

The evening stroll with Mary was more than usually silent. It was clear to her that there was something heavily on his mind. Unsatisfactory as Sam might be in several ways, absent-mindedness was not customarily one of them. As a rule he was there right enough, even if he was struggling away inside a sort of thicket of diffidence. She would have liked to help him, but he stayed as shy of the hints she cast as if they had concealed hooks. Their attempts at talk petered into silence before the walk ended. Somehow the parting left her with less of the usual desire to jolt him up a bit, and more of a protective feeling towards him.

With his mind full of unpleasant possibilities Sam found sleep elusive, though he wooed it first on one side and then on the other for a couple of hours or more. It was around perhaps the fiftieth turn that he caught a glimpse of something white in the beam of moonlight from the window. He blinked and looked again. Then he lay very still.

She stood there looking at him. She seemed to shine more whitely than ever in the pale light, but she neither hindered it nor cast a shadow. “You needn’t be afraid, Sam,” she said—or seemed to say.

That was all very well, but a fright like Sam’s was not going to be dissolved by one soft sentence. It took time for his tongue to become obedient enough to ask: "Wh—wh—who are you?” And his voice was wobbly.

Any ghost is bad enough, but Sam found the pangs of embarrassment added to those of fright. The only naked woman Sam had ever seen before had been a summer visitor sunbathing, and that through a telescope. Somehow this was not at all the same. She had not looked quite so undressed when she lay curled up in the chest. But it was Sam who had all the disadvantage. She stood quite calmly looking at him. Only the ends of the thick plaits moved, swinging slightly. “My name is Hiltrude,” she said, matter of factly.

Sam pulled himself together. He attempted severity. “You—you didn’t ought to be here,” he told her.

“You needn’t be afraid, Sam,” she repeated.

“You’re out of that box. You’re a ghost,” Sam told her.

“Ghost?” she said. “Ghost—yes, I suppose you could call me that.”

“Well, I don’t believe in ghosts,” proclaimed Sam, stoutly.

“No, Sam?” she said, unmoved.

“What’s more,” Sam continued, “any ghost I ever heard of wore decent clothes, or at least a sheet.”

“How strange,” she mused. “A spiritual sheet. How very odd!”

Sam regained enough courage to sit up in bed. “What are you doing here? What do you want?” he demanded.

“What do I want?” she repeated and lapsed into thought.

With sheer sweet lines, and lucent, like fine porcelain, she stood in reverie while the moonlight glistened on the burnish of her plaits. The gold-fringed eyes of distant blue were looking at him still but seeming now not to see him. She tilted her head upward and made a little suppliant movement with hands that were like pink petalled flowers on ivory stems.

“What is there—for me?” she asked.

Sam’s alarm had declined, even his embarrassment was less acute, and his curiosity had increased. What he wanted was a straight answer to a straight question. “Look here—” he began, forthrightly. She did so, and some of the decisiveness ebbed from his tone. “—I only want to understand what’s going on,” he ended, on a more plaintive note.

"You shall,” she told him. “They said I had an evil star, Sam. They said that it was all because of me that storms arose, that rowers fell sick, that oars cracked, that the boats sprang leaks, that the dragon ships broke their backs on sandbanks, that the water went sour, that fogs came up, that villages were prepared for us. All these things and many more they attributed to my star. I suppose they must have been right, some of them were wise men, but I didn’t make all these things happen, honestly I didn’t, Sam. Indeed, I prayed very hard that they shouldn’t but things like that went on happening until at last they said they wouldn’t take me any further in case they should all be lost. Some of them wanted to send me to Odin with a sword, but others were afraid that my spirit might follow them instead of going to Odin. So they put me into a fine casket, and some of them wept although they were afraid of me and my star. Then they sealed it up so that my spirit should not escape to trouble them. And after they had buried it deep, they sailed away.”

Though Yoxburgh folk are used to history that is a living tradition rather than something pressed dry in the pages of a book, Sam was moved to say, doubtfully: “That must have been a goodish while ago.”

She agreed, reflectively: “Yes, I should think so. The world seems to have changed a great deal— and the people, too.” She studied him with a thoughtful frankness which caused him some discomfort.

“I’ve always heard they talked very different in those days,” he said, with pointed suspicion.

“But I’m not talking to you, Sam —not as you mean. No one but you can hear me unless I want them to.”

Sam reverted to an earlier question: “What do you want here, anyway?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly so that the golden cables slid on her satin shoulders. “I don’t know yet, Sam. It is clear, since you have set me free that my star still shines. Whether or not it is indeed an evil one we shall doubtless find out quite soon. Has any misfortune already overtaken you since you opened the casket?”

“No,” said Sam, “and I don’t want none, neither. I got enough troubles as it is. You go away somewhere and leave me alone. You’ve got no right to be here at all—certainly not indecent like that.”

She looked down at her shapely breasts and rounded arms. “Don’t you think I look nice, Sam? The world can’t have changed that much! It must be you that’s strange.” Before he could think of an adequate response she went on: “I can decide nothing now. There have been so many changes I must try to understand. I shall watch. I will come again soon.”

“Now, look here—” Sam began. But even as he spoke she began in some way to lose definition. She blurred. She contracted into an opalescent pillar trickled with gold. Then she vanished away.

During the days that followed Tineways senior was in no hurry to get rid of the chest. “With old stuff like this it don’t do to jump at the first offer,” he told Sam. “Got to feel your way around till you get hold of a chap as knows the stuff when he sees it.”

Sam would have been a great deal happier for knowing that the chest was out of the shed at any, or no, price, but as the days and nights continued to pass without incident he was able to reach the point where he could tell himself that the whole thing was a dream —though he did not get quite as far as opening the chest again to check on it.

And then, perhaps a week later, he awoke in the night to find Hiltrude standing beyond the foot of his bed. There was no moonlight this time, but he found he could see her just as clearly as before. She had the same easy grace. She seemed textured as softly as a dove’s breast. Her hair shone like gilded silk. But this time her face wore a pensive, rather puzzled expression.

“I have been watching,” she remarked. “This is a very strange, place, Sam. And full of strange people, too. The women look different—though they are still women. But the men! What has happened to them? Have they become children? Are they slaves? And they don’t fight! Why don’t they fight? It is very strange....”

“Well, if you’d come a few years ago—” Sam began, but she paid no attention to him.

“The men I knew were strong and fierce. They fought, they took, they were jealous. They loved— and hated. These I have seen here not like that: not men.”

“Now look here—” Sam began, in protest.

She turned a serious and wondering regard upon him. “You have told me to look here before. I am not much impressed,” she told him, but she continued to look. “You are not much of a man, Sam,” she remarked, at length.

“Look—” began Sam again. But she held up a hand, delicate as a silver leaf, to stop him. “I have watched you,” she said. “I have seen you and the others working—sweating like slaves for a few coins, instead of taking what you want, like men. What is wrong with you all?”

“Well—it’s kind of different now. Things aren’t like that anymore,” Sam said.

“That,” she pointed out, “is what I was telling you. But why?”

“We’re—sort of civilized. We—"

“And men cannot even make love anymore. That is very sad for women. Now, take your Mary, Sam—”

“You leave Mary alone. She’s a nice girl, Mary is—and decent, too,” he added, pointedly.

“‘A nice girl’—oh, my poor Sam. Poor Mary!”

“Now, look—I mean, what’s it to do with you, anyway? You just keep off it.”

“But, Sam, Mary is a woman— a woman who puts a warm heart into your hands for you to make it warmer—and you handle it as if it were a snowball you’re afraid of melting. It’s dying of exposure, Sam.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I tell you it’s no business of yours.”

“But she’s lonely, Sam. Everyone’s lonely. Can’t you see she is?”

“No, I can’t,” Sam growled.

“You must try, Sam—because you’re lonely inside too. Do you love her, Sam?—Yes, I think you do, in your funny way. But only in taking love and giving love, Sam, do we ever get, for a time, the sweet illusion of unloneliness. Can you understand that, Sam?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered.

“Then you shall, Sam,” she said, in a tone which made him eye her uneasily.

Hiltrude looked down at herself reflectively. “I can’t just stay like this all the time. For it is a lonely thing, too, to be no more than a dream in the wind. I want a form that I can use and live in. I must take one over. I did think of taking Mary’s.’'

Sam goggled, alarmed though uncomprehending.

“But then,” she went on, "I changed my mind. You see, although a woman is altogether nicer and a more alive thing to be —yet it is more convenient to be a man, even in this strange world of yours.”

“If you think—” Sam began. But his expostulation was cut off as she turned her face towards him.

“Look at me, Sam,” she told him.

Unwillingly he raised his gaze, past the curve of her chin, across the red blossom of her mouth, beyond the delicacy of her nostrils, until he met the far blue of her eyes. After that he could see nothing else. Huge, they grew. Vasty as a summer sky into which he fell, lost, and still more lost.

As suddenly as if a switch had clicked, it all stopped. He was back in his room. But he saw it differently, for he was no longer in bed. He was looking down at someone else who was in the bed—at least, it wasn’t exactly someone else, it was himself—only he happened to be looking at himself from outside. Very confusing.

The sham Sam, the Sam-usurper, in the bed smiled up at him. The standing Sam lowered his eyes to look down at himself—er—herself? It was—well, it was— He blushed, and averted his eyes, gathering the great golden plaits about him-herself for what modesty they afforded.

It was not warm. It was not cold. It was not anything much. There was little sense of presence, or of time for the most part, though occasionally something would solidify out of the shifting for a while and become perceptible with true shape. There was no need for rest—yet ever the desire for it: no place to rest—yet everywhere. One was more tenuous than the wind, more insubstantial than a sigh. One floated in the ether like an unformed wish.

Yet there were currents, gently magnetic fluxes to sway one’s nothingness hither and thither. One had only to think, and one could be there. Sometimes it was misty and vague, sometimes so real that you could see every detail, hear every word, seeming so solid that you wondered that nobody saw you.

Sometimes the persuasion was from outside. Suddenly one came out of nowhere into somewhere, perhaps called by a thought or, it might be, sped by a wanton list. Sometimes there was reason, at others, none. But all the time it was lonely…lonely…lonely…

Clearest of all, and the most troubling, were the times when he found himself close to the Sam-usurper and to Mary. The first of these was a considerable shock. They were close together on a grass bank by a small spinney. Mary was lying back with her eyes closed, an expression on her face that he had never seen there before. She drowsed in happiness, with the smile of the conquering captive on her lips. The Sam-usurper held the back of her head cupped in his hand. He leant closer to whisper in her ear. One could hear the words he said quite plainly. They were almost familiar, so nearly the things that Sam had rehearsed to himself and never dared to say to her. Her eyes opened slowly, like a lazing cat’s but there was no laziness in their sparkle. They looked up into the Sam-usurper’s. She wound an arm about his neck, and pulled his face down against her own:

“Oh, Sam!” she sighed. “My sweet, sweet Sam. Why did you stay so far away from me?”

The enwraithed Sam was filled with an anguish. Things that he had never known before became suddenly dear to him. He felt lonelier than ever. And he felt deeply jealous. But which was he jealous of, the Sam-usurper, or Mary? The man or the woman? It was hard to tell, he had become so mixed up. Some of him was still Sam, all right—but some of him was suffused with the most unfamiliar sensibilities which, surely, must be Hiltrude’s. And then suddenly he knew he was jealous of them both—not because either of them was a man or a woman, but because they were both of them, for a time, unlonely.

Another time when the Sam-usurper was perfectly clear to him was when he discovered him alone in the shed behind the cottage. The Sam-usurper was at work on the chest there. He had pulled off the heavy outer metal bands and thrown them aside. He seemed quite unaware that he was not alone. With intent care he was using a screwdriver as a lever to prise up one of the ornamental bindings from its recess. When at length he had some ten inches of it free he worked it backwards and forwards until it broke off. He rolled it up as if it had been a ribbon of lead, pressed it still flatter between his palms, and put it in his pocket. Then he went out.

Sam wanted to follow, but before he could he lost entity. Something seemed to disperse him; he became part of everything once more, like water poured into water.

When awareness took him again, it came differently. He did not just happen somewhere. There was a coercive gathering together, an impulsive thrust, and there he stood, facing his dispossessor.

The room was narrow, white, and lit by one small, high window with bars across it. Almost the only furniture was a shelf of boards against the wall. At one end of it lay a blanket, neatly folded. At the other sat the Sam-usurper, eyeing him moodily. “This is a very strange world,” remarked the Sam-usurper.

“You said that before,” Sam told him.

“I don’t care for it.”

“It’s good enough for me,” said Sam.

“Probably,” agreed the Sam-usurper, with a touch of scorn. “Anyhow, your form is no good to me now. It’s in prison. So I shall go.”

“Prison?” echoed Sam, looking around with a new understanding. “What have you—? he began. But he was not able to finish the question. The Sam-usurper's eyes were fixed on his own, and he was falling, falling towards them.

Suddenly he was sitting down, and Hiltrude was standing in front of him. And, with a catch of his breath, he understood her loveliness as if he had never seen it before. She was the sweet things of the Earth, the soft curves of hills, falling water in the sunlight, a flower in Spring. He looked at her a long time.

“Hiltrude,” he said. “I didn’t understand— You are like a—goddess.”

She smiled, but she shook her head slowly. “Oh, Sam,” she said reprovingly. “Have I wasted my time on you? It was nicely meant, but— No woman is like a goddess—she doesn’t want to be. So will you please remember that, Sam?”

“All right,” said Sam, “but all the same—”

“Goodbye, Sam,” she said. Her white limbs hazed. They mingled with the golden glints of her hair. Her rose-red mouth lost form. The blue of her eyes softened and dispersed. For an instant there was a column iridescent as a pearl. Then there was nothing at all.

A long time later a key turned in the lock, a face looked in, a hand beckoned, and a voice said, “ ‘Ere.”

They led him in front of a desk. Sam noticed with relief that the place was not a prison, but the Charge Room of Becwich Police Station. A sergeant behind the desk looked at him severely. “Now, my lad, let’s have it,” he said, not unkindly.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Sam told him simply.

The inspector picked up a familiar-looking strip of metal and laid it on the blotting-pad. Some of the dirt had been rubbed off in places, and where the metal showed it gleamed yellow. “Did you, or did you not, go to old Soames down the street this afternoon and ask him what he’d give you for this?” asked the sergeant, placing a massive forefinger upon it.

“Er—suppose I did?” countered Sam.

“Suppose you did,” agreed the sergeant, “then we’d like to know where you got it. Maybe it’s all right, but Soames just isn’t used to people walking about with loose strips of gold in their pockets nor are we, for the matter of that. Better cough it up, lad.”

“All right,” Sam decided, and told him about the chest.

The sergeant shook his head. "You didn’t ought to of, you know,” he said, in paternal reproof. “There has to be an inquest on things like that to decide who can claim them. You’ve still got it?”

Sam assured him it was still in the shed at home. The sergeant nodded. “Well, they tell me from Yoxburgh you’re a decent lad,” he said. “I’ve a mind to let you cut along now—on condition you take it round to the local station first thing tomorrow morning—just as it is, mind.”

“I—I’d sooner take it round tonight,” Sam said.

The sun was near to setting when Sam, disburdened in both body and mind of the chest, left Yoxburgh police station and hurried to Mary’s home. The light hit her eyes when she saw him at the door was something new—and very precious.

“Come along out,” said Sam.

There were still those things that he had wanted to tell her, now he could. And in a grassy hollow, with the twilight settling about them, he did. Possibly the Sam-usurper had told her some of the same things before, but she didn’t seem to mind.

Quite a long time passed before they started to wander back. On the cliff path they paused, looking out over the darkling sea. Sam heard her murmur something under her breath. He thought he caught the word “ghost” at the end. His arm tightened round her. “What was that?” he asked, with misgiving.

She looked up at him smiling. “Something I once found in an old book, Sam. It used to make me cry sometimes because you— Oh, well, that’s all over. It doesn’t matter any more now.”

"But—something about a ghost—?” he prompted.

She said, shyly: “I don’t mind telling you—now, Sam.” And she quoted softly:

“‘A naked thinking heart that makes no show

‘Is to a woman, but a kind of ghost...’”

Sam held her close and kissed her. “We’re forgetting about that ghost from now on,” he said.

It seemed like a fine idea.

[1] All Venusian terms are rendered in their closest English equivalents.

[2] It should be noted this story was written by Wyndham as he lived in London during the height of the Battle of Britain.

[3] 'Onns gives no clues to Forta’s position. Opinions are still divided as to whether it is a planet, a moon or an asteroid. — Ed.

[4] The terms “men” and “women” are used not biologically, but in the sense of the dominant species referring to its own members. — Ed.

[5]
Measurements are expressed in relative terms. That is to say that taking Onns, an average Fortan, as standing in his own estimation some 6 feet high, his Globe would appear to him to be 720 feet (240 yards) in diameter. — Ed.

[6] Your editors consider this the most significant story we have published, concerning space travel, and visitants from other worlds. Life on other planets is bound to be vastly different from life on our own world, and the chances of either one of the two forms of life recognizing the intelligence of the other is extremely remote indeed. There is much satire also, in this story by an English author. Written during the war in England, the story shows a decidedly pessimistic attitude in the subject matter selected, but in the cheery way in which it is written, would tend to show that the English are far from pessimistic. — Ed.