Seed of the Gods

you've been in sub-space, as you call it, for thirty centuries, and if all those achievements you speak of were accomplished so very, very long ago, what are the advances of the past few hundred years?» She smiled. «I'd have guessed that you would have developed goodies like matter transmission or telepathy or eternal life.» «Blinking is somewhat like matter transmission,» he said. «But I see your point. Considering the fantastic progress you people have made in the past two thousand years, we seem rather static, don't we?» «Maybe you've gone as far as man needs to go,» she said. «There are many things we don't know,» Toby said, an entirely new avenue of thinking opened to him. «Our theories of the age and creation of the universe are amazingly like those developed by your scientists and not much more advanced. You know almost as much about the structure of the atom as we, but you've made a tragic detour into the destructive aspects of the science. In some fields you're even more advanced.» «Score one for our side,» Sooly teased. «Tell me so I can feel superior.» «I'm not sure it's an achievement,» Toby said, «but your scientists have done work in the field of what they call molecular biology which has never been duplicated on Ankan or any of the Ankani worlds.» He grinned. «Of course, I must admit that the reason is an ancient and severe taboo against such work, a taboo which is one of the foundation stones of Ankani morality. I was shocked, at first, when I learned of the experiments being conducted, but I admit that you have reason. Do you know that your lifespan is shortened drastically because of the harmful rays of your sun?» «No,» Sooly said, thinking of all the sun baths she'd taken. «If I were faced with such an early death,» Toby said, forgetting for the moment that he was, being an exile on Orton, «I suppose I would try everything to remedy the situation, down to and including messing around with the very foundations of life, sacred as they are.» He mused for a moment. «Then there's the theory, first proposed by my ancestor, Mari Wellti, that your sun's rays also contribute to what, apparently, is unique to Orton, evolution of species.» «If evolution is unique to us, how did your race get started?» He laughed. «In the old records there is a fable much like your Adam and Eve. That's another of the things we don't know. We Akanis can be stubborn people. We've been looking for the mystery of the Wasted Worlds for centuries, for example, but when we run into a problem which has no answer, even our stubbornness wears thin. I think people gave up speculating on the origin of the race thirty millennia ago. It's like you trying to answer the question who created God?» An amusing thought came to him. «And speaking of God, do you know who lit the burning bush in your Bible?» «Don't tell me,» Sooly said, slightly shocked. «And the pillar of smoke by day and the pillar of fire by night?» «Bastard,» Sooly said, only half-joking. «Abraham came out of Ur,» Toby said. «When his people ended up enslaved by the Egyptians a few of the old tankermen didn't like it. After all, they were our people, in a way. They did something about it.» «The Egyptians were a native people?» Sooly asked. «I suppose there was some bleed-through from Sumer,» Toby said. «We haven't documented it. I'd say that the Egyptian civilization was largely Ortonian.» «Now who's so damned superior?» Sooly said. «You see, we'd have made it on our own.» «You might have, at that,» Toby admitted. «And that pleases me.» Sooly had drifted away from him, trying to find memories in that unexplored mystery. She wanted to see the pyramids under construction, to see the legends of Mentuhotep II rebuilding the lost grandeur of the old kingdom, to see if Nefertiti were as beautiful in life as in her statues. Once, as Jay and Toby slept, she brushed past the young man later called Abraham, but she could not follow him. She seemed bound to the area between the rivers and there was ample cause for staying there for the land was good and life, or lives, were filled with joy and sadness and she, half dozing, let her memories live in her. She was there. She lived in the walled cities and watched men fight and die and love and was a part of it, sometimes exalted, sometimes a woman of the villages. In a thousand years she could not hope to relive all of it and there seemed to be a barrier beyond which she could not go, the fall of Ur, the last, sad days, the slavery which followed. After that was blankness and before it was a dark tunnel which led back into time past the girl, Nipari, who ate half-raw meat with her hands and saw the first Ankani ore-gathering ship settle to the earth. The dark tunnel narrowed into frightening impressions of savagery and violence and cold and hunger and dimly-seen vistas of animal-studded plains and icy hills. It was more pleasant, for the moment, to see proud Ur rising, extending its influence over the land between the rivers. She lived as a servant girl and died, after thirteen summers, in childbirth. She wept in sadness and, exhausted, slept. Chapter Fifteen Cele Mantel's face went white when she saw the bruise on Babra's chin. Her fury, upon hearing the details, resounded throughout the entire ship and sent timid ratings scurrying to the safety of hiding places to avoid her wrath. Never before in the history of the Ankani Fleet had an officer been struck by a male. There wasn't even a punishment for the offense, it was so unthinkable. That left the punishment up to the Garge and she entertained gory scenes of lungs rupturing in the emptiness of space or a slow broil on a spiraling orbit down into a sun. To ease her anger, she sent half a dozen ratings on punishment tours in steamy suits outside the ship on the angles and projections of the hull, demoted a Koptol who was one minute late for a change of watch and threw a cup and saucer smashing against a painted bulkhead. This last helped more than any of the others and she calmed long enough to discuss the situation with the Manto, who was still shaken by her unbelievable experience. Ankani women had faced the dangers of space and the pain of childbirth and other such inconveniences, but no Ankani woman had ever been called upon to endure being struck by a man. The Ortonian blink of the U.A.T. Entil would make history, but not the sort of history Cele had had in mind. She'd been determined to revolutionize tanker design and her statistics regarding incidence of smiles, completion quotient in optings and general morale had almost assured her success, and now those misbegotten men had spoiled it all. Since the Garge is ultimately responsible for all the actions of her crew, she was the bearer of the guilt, as much so as the Koptol with the bulging eyes and the handsome young Bakron. The offenses involved were as terrible as possible. Opting with an Ortonian female in spite of stern directives to the contrary, and, she thought with complete revulsion, forbidden experiments involving the life forces. Add to that desertion and the unheard of crime of striking an officer and her promotion became a remote possibility. But Cele Mantel, above all, was an officer of the Fleet. As such, personal considerations took second place to duty and her sense of responsibility. Her first impulse, to begin to sterilize the planet immediately, doing in the two rebels along with a few billion Ortonians, soon on lost its appeal. Her blink message to Fleet was still out going, making the tortuous, zig-zag journey along the 7,000-year-old route, pausing at the anchor stations waiting for the small power capsules to build for the next stage of the journey. The message would make the trip in less than half the time it would take the Entil, since the Entil's bulk made longer waits necessary while the engines built power. She was not concerned with the possibility of escape for the two culprits. The small scout ship was not equipped with exploratory gear. Its blinking ability was, therefore, limited to anchor station routes, and the only anchor station route from Orton led directly to Ankan, a place where the two ratings would not dare go. On the other hand, it would be next to impossible to capture the criminals, since, by using the planetary bulk as an anchor, a known point, they could blink endlessly around the area of space within half a light-year of Orton. They would be there when the directive came from Ankan. Cele almost hoped that the order would read, «Proceed with sterilization.» Above all, the two ratings were not to be allowed to go relatively unpunished for their crime. In a society as old as the Ankani, new ideas were rare and the pure novelty of a male striking a female was so revolutionary that it would, possibly, appeal to that personality fault in men which had proved so troublesome in the distant past, the longing for what the males thought of as adventure. Women were the stabilizing influence in Akani life. If it were left up to the males, change for the sake of change would be the order of the day. Of course, being left to die an early death under Orton's killer sun would be a certain kind of punishment, but there was, still, a sort, of romantic feeling among certain types about the old tanker crewmen who had learned to like Orton and its women so well that they chose to stay. Some would not consider a footloose life with a nubile Orton woman a punishment. And there was, too, the demonstrated fact that Koptol Gagi had allowed his advancing age to distort his reason. His notes on his experiments with animals and genetic manipulation were downright frightening. Even on Orton he would have a few more years in which to do damage. Meanwhile, a back-up crew had been sent to the base, for Cele was determined to return to Ankan with a full cargo hold. The transport rating had come up with a mild emanation which was being used as a guide point for blinking down. The mother of the Ortonian woman with whom the young Bakron had become involved was wakeful and concerned. Calmed slightly, Cele considered all possibilities and decided on one futile gesture. She swept into the communications room with her head regally high, her huge, soft eyes striking sparks. When she spoke on the emergency channel, a signal activated a receiver in the scout ship hidden in a waddi in the wastes of Iraq and Jay snorted in terror, while Toby and Sooly jerked awake, wide-eyed. «Bakron Toby Wellti. Koptol Jay Gagi. You will be given one opportunity to surrender. For five minutes, the Entil will broadcast a periodic blink beacon. If you approach with power off, you will be allowed to board. The Ortonian woman will be treated with kindness and her memories eradicated. As for you, Koptol, and you, Bakron, your crimes are serious, as you well know. I can promise only that your rights will be respected and that you will be accorded a hearing before a Fleet Board.» Toby looked at Jay. The older man was frightened. He opened, his pill case and popped a troleen. His face was a study in desperation as he looked at the nearly empty case. He fumbled hurriedly into the emergency kit of the scout vehicle and found a supply of a half dozen troleen tablets. «We'll have to go back,» he said, his voice almost inaudible. «You know what they'll do to you,» Toby said. «What's the difference?» Jay asked, holding out his meager supply of life-preserving troleen «I won't go,» Sooly said. «Let him go alone, Toby. Let him put us down somewhere in the United States.» «In five minutes?» Toby asked. «Then we'll stay here,» Sooly said. «Yes,» Toby said, with sudden decision. «It would be only fitting.» He put his hand on Jay's arm. «Are you sure? It's certain death.» «On an Ankani sun,» Jay said. «Not here on this miserable world.» They watched the scout blink away. It was early morning. The chill made Sooly huddle close, a mixture of fear and a warm glow of being at home causing her emotions to well up into her eyes. At a distance across the flat plain she could see the mound of a ruined city. «We'll have some explaining to do,» Toby said. «We can say we're survivors of an aircraft crash,» Sooly said. «Without passports or identification?» «Lost in the crash,» Sooly said. «It might work,» Toby said doubtfully. But it was not necessary to try. As the red sun lifted a swollen rim over the horizon, the scout vehicle lowered on visual control and settled into the waddi. Jay's face was red, his eyes wild. «They tried to kill me,» he gasped, «without warning. I blinked out within sight of the Entil and they fired two blasters.» «And missed?» Toby asked, although that was evident. He was stunned. «Thanks to the winds of Ankan, our Garge isn't one to believe in weapons practice,» Jay said. «So she'd decided on summary execution,» Toby mused. «That course was last followed forty millennia ago.» «What now?» Jay asked, on the verge of collapse. «What can we do now?» Toby frowned in worry. «Stay here during the day. We shouldn't be moving about when people can see.» «I don't care about these Ortonians,» Jay said. He slumped. «But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now.» The scout was not constructed for comfort. And, with power off, the sun soon made them feel as if they were, indeed, being spiraled down into a star doing a slow broil. Toby and Sooly went outside, in spite of Toby's distaste for Orton's sun, and lay on the ground in the shadow formed by the vehicle. For the first time, Sooly had time to consider all the implications of the events of the past few hours. She thought of her parents, who would, most certainly, be frantic by now. She hadn't even told them where she was going, walking out of the house while her mother was helping her father write his weekly report. She wondered if they'd have the fuzz looking for her by now. They'd find her Volkswagen at the bridge. Would they drag the Waterway for her body? Here she was on the other side of the world, an incredible distance when one considered the usual forms of communications. Where, in this wasted land, would she find a mailbox? A telephone? She loved her parents and it pained her to think that they were worrying about her and would have to continue to worry until she found a means to contact them. And poor old Bem, lovingly named because of her most prominent feature, her eyes, Bug-Eyed Monster. It was that way on the registration papers, Sue Lee's Bug-Eyed Monster. Bem had refused to eat for days when she went away to school and had had to be taken to the vet for treatment when Sooly left once more, after being home only days, to spend her abortive short weeks in New York. Poor Bem. But wasn't it silly to be worried about the fat old dog when Toby faced permanent exile and poor Jay faced an early death without his life-giving medicine? «Toby,» she said, «if this is growing up, to hell with it.» «Hummm?» Toby asked sleepily. «Cool it,» Sooly said, not wanting to burden him with her petty problems. However, there was one good thing about the whole mess. Her love for Toby. At least they'd be together. It sounded inane to say that she'd make it up to him, but, God, wouldn't she try? But what if he came to resent her? What fantastic ego she had to think that her love, her body, would make up for everything, his losing his whole life to live for a terribly short time, among what to him must seem to be primitive people. It was all very confusing and she hadn't been able, as yet, to absorb all of it. Her entire concept of herself and of the world had been changed in a few short hours. All the old questions remained, but the answers were different as could be and just as inaccessible. However, looking at the big picture took her mind off her parents and poor Bem and even, although it stayed in the back of her mind, the larger problems. The nature of God and the universe was still too much for her, but she knew a bit about the history of mankind, thanks to the freaky thing which had happened in her brain under Jay's infernal machine. It was a bit belittling to think that her people had been savages living from hand to mouth when the first Ankani ship came to the land between the rivers. And yet, thinking of the girl, Nipari, she could feel a fierce pride, for alone in a land of terrible elements and great beasts, the people had survived and conquered the beasts. And even if they had been given a hand up by Ankani knowledge and an infusion of Ankani blood, she could not quite accept the premise that all of man's achievements were to be attributed to Ankani influence. No. There was that feeling of, something, humanness, earthliness, something. Curious, wanting to know more, she let her mind go as blank as possible and searched for the memories. She was bemused, at first, by the young Nipari and was tempted to reexperience the first coming of the «gods,» to know the fear and awe and the joy of knowing that the gods had noticed and were coming to earth to aid the people. But she wanted to know more and pushed herself back, back, dying at the hands of a raiding band of hunters, being clawed by a huge cat, living, loving in different bodies but always a woman, never able to penetrate the minds of the males around her. She went back through pain and lust and hunger and the joys of gluttony when the hunt was good, through winds and sand and ice and splashing in clean, clear water, with the memories becoming dim and misty and only areas of high emotional content coming through. Back into the slow, plodding, changing minds of heavy-limbed females, with her spirit sinking and her entire body being drained by the fierce emotions of the beds of natural lust, the killings, the birthings. Only the peaks now, never the quiet moments or the everyday life, and the land changing as the eons rolled back, back. Tortuous treks following changing climate, centuries compressed into moments, and the sun redder, more fierce, winds wet and torrential falls of rain and fierce beasts and it was all becoming so dim, so dim. Rudimentary language. Grunts of pain and anger and lust. Hulking, hairy males with huge, ugly heads and jutting jaws and the crunch of bone as a flint ax crushed her skull and she was so distant, so far that she despaired of ever coming back. Brutal, savage, bloody, dim-witted. Man. Roaring his challenge, taking his women with the strength of his hairy, massive arms. Knowing only the elemental flow of storm and sun and food and lust. Animals. Oh, God. Had she come from this? And yet so far, so far, such a vast sea of change and time and wonder from those upright apes and the joyful youth of the young Nipari. Nothing. A misty sea of nothing. Aware of being, but in a dull cloud with only hints of pain and hunger and, always, that force, that lust, that urge to perpetuate the race. And just before exhaustion made it necessary to stop the sad, humiliating probe, just before, tears flowing in sympathy for those first men, those animals who stood on their feet, a blinding, brilliant revelation of such force that it was engraved on the memory of the race, a point of light in the darkness. Shaken, experiencing the wonder through the eyes of a squat, powerful, hairy female, she could, at the same time, relate. It continued for days, weeks. Around her the people gaped, grunted, rolled their eyes in fear. And she could stand it no longer as it continued. Another answer but an incomplete one. Back once again to the basic question, who created God? Lying there, weak, full of questions, the hot sun baking the dry land around them, Toby dozing. It was utterly freaky. But she knew that they had been alone. Then came— She looked quickly at Toby to see if he had spoken. He was asleep. Jay was huddled miserably in the scout, ports open, his eyes closed. Again. Children «Toby! Toby!» She was shaking him, frantic. He sat up rubbing his eyes. «You weren't the first, Toby.» «Huh?» «They put it there. We, I, saw them. It was small and gleaming and they used machines and put it there—» «Are you all right?» Toby asked. «The sun—» «You weren't the first. They came long before you. So very long. And I saw them and—» Children «Toby, we've got to go there.» «Where?» Toby asked, thinking she must, surely, be suffering from the sun. «There,» she said, pointing. «Now.» «We can't move in daylight.» «Yes we can. We must. Now.» She was up, pulling on him. «Because I know, Toby. I know a lot now and I can hear them and I've got to go, because they left it there until we could hear it and—» It was difficult, almost impossible, for Toby to resist the will of a woman. Obeying was ingrained. And it would, at least, get them out of the infernal heat. What did it matter if the movement of the ship led to a few more flying saucer reports? A family of wandering Bedouins saw the ship rise and disappear and murmured in fear before the wise patriarch dismissed the sights as another mirage of the flat land. Flying high, avoiding the air space of the warring Middle Eastern powers, Toby followed Sooly's pointing hand across the Persian Gulf, over the brown hills of Africa, questioning her. «They came in huge ships from the sky,» Sooly explained, as the small voice repeated itself in her head, guiding her, leading her. «Thousands of them, herded out onto the floor of the valley and forced to disperse by a mere handful of tall beings in space suits. We watched from the shelter of the ridges and we saw them use the machinery to put it there and I think

that's what I'm hearing. It's saying, children, that's all. Just children. But I can feel it drawing me.» Jay was skeptical, but morose enough not to care. Toby was, himself, a bit doubtful, but he'd seen the first racial memories back there while monitoring Jay's machine and he knew that there was something very different about this Ortonian girl. An anthropological expedition was camped in tents in the midst of a vast wasteland through which ran deep ruts of erosion, exposing the age-old remains of primitive man. «It doesn't matter,» Sooly said forcefully, hearing the voice very loudly now. «They'll know soon.» Dusty, sweating workers and tired, aging scientists, concerned at that moment with digging at the bones of the earth, itself, stopped their work, staring at the scout as it lowered, settled to raise puffs of dust. «We're here,» Sooly said to the voice. She waited. There was nothing. Around them the bare rocks were exposed and a white man in khaki was moving hesitantly toward them, several hundred yards off. «We're here, damn it,» Sooly said desperately. «We're here.» It was not in words. It flowed into her brain in a quick burst and she knew. «Did you hear it?» she asked. Toby shook his head. She listened. The message was repeated. There was no more. It was cryptic and she was furious with disappointment. Was that all? The message was repeated. «We can go now, Toby,» she said sadly. The scout blinked up, fading before the startled eyes of the scientists and the black workers. «They put them here because they were going away,» Sooly said. «And they left the thing there under the earth and I don't think they ever, really, expected anyone to hear it.» «I think it's time you explained,» Toby said. «Toby, on the Wasted Worlds is there a huge city?» «The Planet of Cities,» Toby said, wondering where it was all going to lead. «They want us to go there,» Sooly said. «To a high tower on a mountain top, a tower built in the shape of a five pointed star.» «There's nothing there,» Jay said. «It's deserted, all clues to the identity of those who built it erased.» «Tell me the whole message,» Toby said. «It wasn't in words,» she admitted. «It was a feeling. They called us children and there was a hint of sadness and then this picture of the tower in the shape of a star and I knew that they wouldn't be there, because I saw it empty and deserted, but they want us to go there. I had a feeling that it was part of some kind of test.» «The Ortonian girl has lost her reason,» Jay said. «Toby, can this ship get us there?» «Oh, yes.» He nodded. «We have synthetic rations for six months. We draw power from the stars. We can go anywhere in the Galaxy where expo ships have put out beacons.» «Let's go, then,» Sooly begged. «What have we got to lose?» «Our lives if we get on a beacon with an Ankani ship,» Jay said. «This feeling you had,» Toby asked. «Did you have the impression that those who left the message also built the Planet of Cities?» «Yes.» Toby looked at Jay. «If we could crack that nut, we'd be home free.» Home. Sooly felt as if something had torn loose inside her. Her parents would be frantic by now. It was purely incredible to think that she was about to embark on a trip into the stars, at distances which were unthinkable to her. It was even more incredible to think that she, Sooly, was to be the instrument in a vast change in the miserable history of mankind. For there was an implied promise in that feeling, that unspoken message sent into her brain from a shining, small object buried far under the earth by someone, someone who had helped people the earth, bringing a sea of humanoid beings to the old plains and valleys at a time when the people were not much more than animals. There was a promise and it was

not meant for her alone but for all, for all of them. But in spite of it, of all the vast importance which she knew to be attached to that command, that invitation, she could not bring herself to go bugging off into the stars without telling her parents. Mom and Dad. I'm going off to a distant solar system with Toby. Don't worry. Jeeeeeeesus. Flip? They'd die. They'd be sure she'd fallen into the hands of pimps and dope addicts and was strung out on some wild drug scene. It was a time for crazy, almost comical happenings. Like an alien space ship slowly easing down into the cleared space in the lot next to the darkened Kurt house. Hey, Mom and Dad, there's a space ship on the lot next door. How about that? Toby, who didn't share Sooly's complete confidence that a blink to the Planet of Cities would solve all problems, was not hard to convince that Sooly should leave some kind of message for her parents. He was more than willing to postpone the nerve-racking trip to the heart of the Galaxy, because all the odds were against them. So he put her down on the vacant lot in a small clearing among big oak trees and she stepped out. Bem was sleeping outside. She always did when Sooly was out, waiting up for her on the coolness of the cement stoop to greet her with wagging rump and snorting breaths. Bem was a silent type. A bark from her was an event and was not inspired by ordinary events such as the passage of a cat, a coon or a fox through the yard. The last time she had barked was when the bobcat got on the roof after a field mouse and so it was out of complete surprise that she gave one strained yap as she saw the ship come down. She was undecided, at first, but she caught Sooly's scent and came lumbering out to meet her, her whole backside wagging with happiness. «Hi, old fatty,» Sooly said, bending to pat the dog. «Old black dog.» The house was quiet. It was late. She imagined her mother inside, wakeful, perhaps. At best sleeping fitfully. How wonderful it would be to use her key, go in, wake them. But she couldn't. There would be hours of explaining and her father would yell. He was the type of father who had to be told everything and she'd never objected to that. It gave her a feeling of being valued and having to give information about where she was going and when she'd be in was a small price to pay for the place she had in that household. She left the note pinned to the inside of the rear screen with a bobby pin. Luvs Please don't worry. I'm fine and in no danger and I love you both very much. I'll be back soon and when you hear about it you'll forgive me for causing you this concern. Sooly Bem followed her back to the scout, snorting her disapproval of Sooly's behavior. «You can't go, baby,» Sooly said. «You have to stay.» The dog trembled and snorted. Sooly was crying. It was bad enough to worry her parents, but this poor, dumb old dog would never understand why she'd been deserted once more. «She won't eat when I'm away,» she sniffed to Toby. «Bring her if you like,» Toby said. «If you think she can eat concentrated rations.» «She'll eat anything when I'm around,» Sooly said, with a burst of silly happiness. Bem curled up in the seat beside her and went to sleep, snoring loudly. It was going to be a long, fantastic trip, but Sooly had something, at least. With Bem along, she would not feel that she was leaving everything behind on the world which grew small and disappeared as the scout blinked. Chapter Sixteen Seldom in the fine history of the Ankani Fleet had a blink been made in more discomfort. The scout, built for short-missions, had no sleeping facilities, only four seats and a space just wide enough to accommodate a body between the banks of engines. As always on a blink, it was the long periods of waiting at the blink beacons which were the most deadly. To the pure tedium was added the tensions of uncertainty. As the stars grew more dense and the blinks became shorter, the Ortonian route merged with other starways. If an Ankani ship had blinked out while the power banks were gathering energy, the explanations would have been, to say the least, sticky. Curious officers would have wanted to know why a scout was at such a distance from the mother ship, and both Jay and Toby knew the impossibility of hiding the truth long from an officer. The long blink was difficult for Toby in another way. He could see and touch the most fascinating woman he'd ever known, a woman for whom he'd given up so much, and yet common decency prevented him from opting with her. This tension added to all the other considerations made him, at times, moody. The redeeming feature was that the long periods of waiting could be used for talk, for speculation about the nature of things, for personal confidences. By the time three-quarters of the distance between Orton and Ankan had been covered, Toby knew everything there was to know about his woman. His woman! The very words made him grin with a fierce joy. He was the first Ankani man in thousands of years to have his own woman and that wondrous fact made it all worthwhile. As for Sooly, she asked thousands of questions and expressed loud and indignant surprise at each new revelation of the Ankani way of life, a life which had been controlled by women for fifty millennia. During a discussion of opting customs, she realized with a feeling of sadness that Toby had known many beautiful Ankani women, but she did not ask him specific details. He, sensing her hurt, kissed her, ignoring the scornful snort from Jay. «All that is past,» he said. «I have made my final opting.» And that satisfied her. The message from Fleet Board was intercepted one short blink from the nearest Ankani world, with the communications gear monitoring all frequencies and both Jay and Toby on the alert for Ankani ships. It came in a one-minute burst and was extended by the repeater. «Sterilize?» Sooly asked, upon hearing the message. «What do they mean, sterilize?» But she was deathly afraid that she knew. She'd been told of the Ankani taboo against genetic meddling and her stand was that such a taboo was fine for Ankanis if that was the way they felt, but that they had no right to impose their taboo on the people of the Earth. «It means wipe off all traces of animate life,» Toby said sadly. «We have to go back,» she shouted. «We have to stop them.» «How?» Toby asked. «I don't know. We can go to Ankan. We can talk to this Fleet Board of yours.» «They wouldn't listen,» Toby said. «Our only chance is to go on to the Planet of Cities. If we can provide the Board with the secret of the Wasted Worlds, perhaps they'll listen.» He sighed. «We're two blinks away. It will take the message approximately four of your weeks to reach the Entil, about another week for the ship to prepare the sterilizer. We have time to get to the Planet of Cities and back to a point where our message might just get there before they carry out the orders.» «But if we don't learn anything?» Sooly asked. «We can only try,» Toby said. He was thinking of the small birds and animals around the base, back there on Orton. They would feel nothing. But for a long time the stink of carrion would pollute the atmosphere of the planet while a few surviving micro-organisms toiled away to decay unthinkable mountains of flesh. For the first time in his life he was not proud of being Ankani. In spite of Sooly's desperation, there was no way to hurry the two remaining blinks. But then, with the sense of urgency that had an almost tangible force in the cabin of the scout, the Planet of Cities was below, magnificent in ruins, lit by a mild sun whose benevolent rays glowed golden on the enduring age-old buildings. Jay, who had made two trips to the planet as a youthful crewman on scientific ships, found the star tower by trial and error, with only a few wasted hours. There was a gentle breeze. It made its way through the deep canyons between buildings to caress them, to belie the grim message of death which was flashing and resting, flashing and resting, through the stars behind them. The entranceway penetrated to the center of the square and led them into a tremendous, domed hall. The walls were niched, but all the recesses were empty, save for a fine, ancient dust. Sooly paused in the center of the hall, looked around, listening. Not even the sigh of the wind could be heard inside the huge building. Her feet left tracks in the fine layer of dust on the floor. She had never felt so lonely. She'd seen the extent of the empty cities and the vastness of the planet. On that entire world four entities breathed. A woman, two men and a fat, black dog. Dust got in Bem's nose and made her sneeze. «Anything?» Toby asked. «No,» she said, her brow furrowed in concern. She walked slowly around the great hall. Doorways led off at angles into the points of the star. The wall niches were irregularly shaped. She completed the circuit of the hall and stood with Toby, feeling despair. «This is the place,» she said. «I know it is.» «It's estimated that this planet was deserted as long as five hundred thousand years ago,» Toby said. «But they told me to come here,» she said. «This has to be it.» «There are other deserted cities on other planets,» Jay said. «The planet I saw was this one,» Sooly said. «I saw it in my mind. It was one vast city from horizon to horizon. No oceans. No mountains. Are there others like that?» «We know of none,» Toby said. «But—» «Oh, goddamn,» Sooly said. She raised her head. «Speak to me, you bastards. We've come all this way. Now you speak to me.» The only sound was Bem's troubled breathing. «We can search the other rooms. The other floors.» Toby's voice contained little optimism. «We have to hurry,» Sooly said, remembering that deadly message winging its way to the Ankani ship in orbit around her home. «Let's separate.» Toby frowned. «If this damned place is as deserted as you say, there's no danger.» «Some of the buildings are in an advanced state of decay,» Toby said. «And we'll have to get power belts to reach the upper stories. The elevators don't work, of course, and there are no stairways.» «We have to do something,» Sooly said desperately. «I'll start on the ground floor while you two get your belts or whatever and begin on the upper floors.» It took two days to search the building. After Toby and Jay went to the scout for power belts, Toby suggested that a separate search would be useless, since Sooly had been the only one able to hear the message back on Orton. None of them knew exactly what they were looking for, but judging from the way the message was received by Sooly on her own planet, there would not be, perhaps, any external sign of the hidden communications device. So having to guide Sooly through every room of the huge building took time and energy. Bem was left outside, snorting and worrying when Sooly was lifted by the power belt to the upper stories, but she soon grew calm when she realized that Sooly wasn't going far away and would come back at intervals. Level after level yielded nothing, only empty rooms, odd-shaped rooms, surprisingly conventional rooms, long tunnels, unexplained shafts. Toby, able to find good in most everything, applied his brain to a detailed and complete study of the architecture of one Wasted Worlds building, but it was an exercise in futility with no reward in view, for he was resigned now to being an exile. He was angry about, but also broodingly resigned to, the destruction of Orton. He was powerless to stop it. Late in the evening of the second day, dusty, tired, despairing, they reached the topmost level. The tips of the star were much the same as on

other floors, but at the center of the star, circled by a wide hall, was a solid core of the enduring plastic used for much of the building on the Planet of Cities. The enclosed space was large, but there were no entrances. «It could have contained a sealed power unit of some sort,» Toby guessed. «Such a large space would not have been wasted,» Jay agreed. «If we had a weapon, we could blast out a section,» Toby said. Jay produced a small hand blaster. Toby had forgotten that his former superior rating had carried an illegal weapon back on Orton. Jay stepped back as far as possible, put the weapon on narrow beam, and aimed it. The force was absorbed by the material of the circular wall of the inner core. Jay frowned, increased power. The energy would have cut through five feet of stainless steel. The wall, however, did not change in the slightest. Jay walked a few paces, tried another spot. The result was the same. «We must be onto something,» Toby said. «There is no material known which can withstand a sustained blaster force.» As if to confirm that statement, Jay pointed the blaster at the outer wall and a section of material smoked and disintegrated. «It would seem to me,» Toby said, «that the entire thing is a sort of test. That object which you say was buried on Orton had been there for a long time and no one heard it before you. To get to this planet, we had to have certain advanced knowledge. Perhaps we don't, as yet, possess the knowledge required to break through this wall.» «We have to,» Sooly said. They started walking around the circular core of the building again, examining the wall carefully. It was solid and continuous. Not one crack or blemish marred its white expanse. At intervals Jay tried the blaster with negative results. Sooly was becoming increasingly desperate and irrationally angry. They'd been led this far and she was not going to be put off by trickery. After circling the unbroken wall twice, Toby was stumped. «Look,» he said. «Let's go back to the ship, have some food, think it over.» «No,» Sooly said emotionally. «This is it. I know it is. We can't give up.» She faced the wall and hated it with a fury which sent color into her face, increased her heart-beat, set her glands working furiously. «You, in there,» she said, her voice low, intense. «You've got to help us. You can't just lead us on and then stop us cold.» Directly in front of them the wall changed color. The unbroken white turned dim blue and deepened in the shape of an arched doorway. They waited. The color change was complete and still the wall was intact. Toby pushed against the blue outline of the doorway and it was firm, solid. He stepped back. Jay used the blaster. The blue doorway melted, leaving an opening into a large, circular room. It, like the other rooms of the building, was empty, but in the center was a round column which extended from floor to ceiling and, upon approaching it, they saw two niches in the shape of the human form, one obviously female, the other male. With a wild excitement, Sooly approached the column. She touched it, waiting. Nothing. «I think we're supposed to stand inside, in the niches,» Toby said. Sooly moved quickly into the niche which was cut into the shape of a female. She fit snugly. Toby stood in the other. She heard, felt, sensed it immediately. But it was merely a meaningless series of numbers. She opened her mind and waited. The series of numbers was repeated. Disappointment was a vile taste in her mouth. After hearing the series of numbers three times, she stepped out. Toby was standing in his niche, frowning. «Did you hear anything?» he asked. «Didn't you?» «No,» he said. «It was just numbers,» she said. She repeated the first few as best she could remember. Toby looked at Jay. «Blink coordinates?» Toby asked. Jay nodded, interest on his face for the first time in weeks. «Go in again,» Toby said. «Write them down carefully. Be sure you don't miss a single digit.» She listened four times through to be sure. Satisfied, she handed Toby the paper upon which she'd written the series of numbers which were meaningless to her. «Let's get down to the ship and check the charts,» Toby said. «The first one is the coordinate for this planet. But I think the second and third must be wrong.» Back in the scout, hunger forgotten in the excitement, Toby checked and rechecked. «Meaningless,» he said sadly. He showed his calculations to Jay. Jay's face fell. Toby tried to think how he could tell Sooly that the blink coordinates she'd heard in the room there atop the ancient building were meaningless. «Right out into inter-Galactic space,» Jay said. «Right into limbo.» «What does he mean, Toby?» Sooly asked worriedly. «Blinking is tied to the known mass of a particular star,» Toby explained. «When a ship blinks, it ceases to exist, for all practical purposes. It goes out of the fabric of time and space and is in—» he thought of something she'd understand, «—whatever it is, but you might call it another dimension, but it's a dimension with no dimension. It just doesn't exist. It happens so fast that you don't know it. It seems almost instantaneous. But when a ship blinks, it and everything in it literally ceases to exist and the only way it comes back into existence is to use the mass of a large star to pull it back from this nowhere. To blink, you have to know in advance the exact location and the exact mass of the anchor star. We've been traveling a route which was mapped out laboriously, going from star to star to set up known beacons and coordinates. But this first blink in your series of numbers would put us completely outside the Galaxy, out in space where there would be no anchor. We'd have nothing to pull us back. We'd just cease to exist.» «No,» Sooly said, remembering the sadness, the kindness she felt when she first heard the call of the small object beneath the African plain. «They wouldn't do that. They must have known.» «Perhaps the mechanical object which delivered the message has lost some of its effectiveness,» Jay said. «It could have given her the wrong coordinates.» «Yes,» Toby said. «Check again,» Sooly told him. «It's right. I know it's right.» Toby checked again. This time he checked the entire blink through. From the plane of the Galaxy, the first blink went out toward the vast emptiness on a line perpendicular to the flattened spiral. The second extended outward, coming back toward the plane of the spiral at an angle, to end near a giant, outlying star. That one made sense. It ended near an anchor. The third blink disappeared into the thin stars of the periphery opposite the planet of Orton, all the way across the huge, central bulge of stars from Ankan. «Could they have calculated the mass of the entire Galaxy?» Toby asked, with sudden inspiration. «I know it sounds impossible, but could they have done it?» Jay was interested. «The first blink is far enough out,» he said. «It's a fantastic idea. It would open us to inter-Galactic exploration.» «They built this planet,» Toby said. «They put people on Orton, according to Sooly's memories.» He made his decision. «I'm willing to try.» «What the hell?» Jay shrugged, using an Ortonian phrase. Chapter Seventeen The Galaxy was spread before them like an illustration in an astronomy book. The flattened central disc was a brightness which seemed to draw the eye from the whorls of the spiral arms. Huge globular clusters appeared as single stars. Other, more distant galaxies were pinpoints in the blackness. There was time to admire and for a long time none spoke and when they did it was in awed whispers. Meanwhile, the power banks were drawing on that vast panorama of stars, using the entire Galaxy instead of a single star and the process was accelerated, the second blink programmed and executed before they had time to enjoy, to drink in the incredible beauty of a spiral galaxy seen from a distance just great enough to allow an appreciation of the symmetry of the system. Jerked out of nothingness by a huge fellow on the Sagittarius periphery, they were still awed by the last vista which had sent light patterns into their eyes before blinking. The nearness of scattered stars was a letdown. But now only one short blink was ahead. They came out near a kind of dim star without a family of planets. Alone, it wandered an emptiness on the fringe of the Galaxy, their destination—and an evident disappointment until Toby activated the sensors and found, at a respectable distance from the sun, a tiny mass too small to be called planet, too large to be called asteroid. They moved close enough to measure its mass, blinked in close. And they knew that they had reached the end of the search, for the planetoid was artificial, a circular mass of white material with the same readings as the unbreachable wall back in the Tower of the Star. Expecting another test, Toby lowered the scout to the surface and was preparing to set down when a force seized them, moved them across the surface, lowered them, power banks dead, through an opening which appeared at the last second. Blank white walls surrounded them with an unbroken expanse. A quick test proved the atmosphere to be breathable. With a growing eagerness and some fear, Sooly followed Toby outside the scout. A section of wall opened. An unseen force urged them forward into a chamber which was so luxuriously furnished, that it took Sooly's breath. The carpet underfoot had the feel of thick, closely-mowed grass. Furnishings were strangely shaped, but blended into the overall contrast of color and texture in an alien but delightful way. And the walls, while giving the impression of being at a distance, were not walls but shouting, heart-stopping works of art which seemed to change and alter while speaking directly to the mind, giving an impression of beauty which made Sooly's heart forget, for the moment, the urgency of the situation. Children, you have come so far The voice was unheard, inside them. It was feminine. «Please,» Sooly said. «Please talk with us.» So far we are pleased «Are you the people of the Wasted Worlds?» Toby asked. You call them that you will be seated while we———— you There was no understanding of the concept. However, they sat on soft, yielding cushions which, while yielding, supported them in comfort. Pleased, excited laughter. But you have combined forces marvelous. Puzzlement? The native life form? Unforeseen —a male voice-—pleasure, surprise. The large-eyed ones and the hairy animals of——————III. Delightful. Children you may go «Go?» Sooly asked. «We can't. Not yet. You must help us. They're going to kill everyone—» Regret. Indifference. A trace of resentment and boredom and impatience and then a leak-through of pleasure so keen that the infinitesimal amount which filtered through Stop you'll burn them out Random punchings. Wait can't you see No matter Yes put them back Long, long journeys into ecstasy with three frail children lying, stunned, on the grass-like floor Put them back Feminine weakness if you want them back you put them back I went out it is the rule a small part of you Simpler to eject them No put them back we all agreed to see them A glow over the fallen bodies touching, entering, erasing, an unseen force lifting, moving. A small, black animal giving one startled bark before she, too, was limp. A glow hovering and time which wasn't time passing as the scout blinked and lowered to a dead Planet of Cities and then movement in the recesses of the ship's instruments as time turned backward to leave no record of the Late in the evening of the second day, dusty, tired, despairing, they reached the topmost level. The tips of the star were much the same as on

other floors, but at the center of the star, circled by a wide hall, was a solid core of the enduring plastic used for much of the building on the Planet of Cities. The enclosed space was large, but there were no entrances. «It could have contained a sealed power unit of some sort,» Toby guessed. «Such a large space would not have been wasted,» Jay agreed. «If we had a weapon, we could blast out a section,» Toby said. Jay produced a small hand blaster. Toby had forgotten that Jay had carried an illegal weapon on Orton. Jay stepped back, put the weapon on narrow beam and cut a hole in the wall. Toby led the way into the large, circular room. He'd seen photographs of others like it. Although all of the equipment which had once filled it had been removed in those dim, dark days of the distant past when the worlds were divested of any clue as to the form or achievements of their inhabitants, such rooms did give Ankani scientists reason to suspect that they were once repositories for advanced machinery probably used to develop some type of energy. It was empty. The floor was devoid of the layer of fine dust which was present in other, unsealed, rooms, but it was totally empty. Nothing marred the smoothness of floor, walls and ceiling. And, although she tried and vented all her anger on the unfeeling things which had led them so far on a fruitless mission, Sooly heard nothing. Nor did a repeated search of the star-shaped tower yield anything. «We have time to get to Ankan,» Toby said. «For what? Our executions?» Jay asked in a surly voice. He was hoarding his last troleen, and his heart was reminding him of his age with irregular sharp pains. «It may be too late already,» Toby said, «but maybe they'll believe that Sooly heard something on Orton. Maybe they'll send a message canceling the sterilization order. If the Entil hasn't started—» «We have to try,» Sooly said. God, she felt old. She was nineteen years old and she'd found the man she loved and she lived so long, so very long, all those thousands of years back to Nipari and beyond and now it was all going to end and they'd kill Toby and Jay and it was so damned unfair. But then what had ever been fair about being human? She knew the pain of death and the horror of seeing a city overrun by the barbarians of the hills and the crunch of teeth on bone and the momentary burst of brilliant sun when the skull is crushed and through it all man had lived and died as hopelessly as even the most depraved maniac could ever have imagined and what did it all mean? Nothing, goddamn, nothing. The little scout lifted, blinked. Four short blinks away was Ankan. Chapter Eighteen Once every four-thousand pairings she was allowed by mutual consent to play a certain combination of six keys of a certain sequence against just over seven thousand of his keys in a complicated action which brought a surprisingly simple pleasure, happy nostalgia. She never became bored with it, although he preferred more sophisticated pairings made by random, experimental punches. However, with eternity ahead and eons behind and the punching combinations infinite, he indulged her and wallowed in her teary nostalgia, rather enjoying it, as a matter of fact. Actually, no combination was unenjoyable, some were just more lasting and exciting. Around them the gleaming white asteroid pulsed silently with mechanical activity as undying, self-renewing servos drew needed atoms from the distant sun and remolded them into the necessary elements. Immediately after the departure of the children, the force fields had crackled into place, distorting light to make the asteroid disappear and enclosing it in a cocoon which would have defied almost any force, up to the energies released by a supernova. After a brief, only mildly amusing interlude, pleasure flowed without interruption once again. The interruption was only the second in five hundred thousand years, the first being necessitated by a normal change in a particular star which required a move to the kind, pale sun at a respectable distance from the planetoid. They were so cute She had not, he decided, recovered from the novelty of communication other than through pleasure. Since it did not interfere, being carried on with only a small, insignificant portion of the entity, he did not object. And the small black animal Nine-eight-five-two-oh-six-two paired four-four-one. She had a thing about low numbers and in his random punches he humored her. The massive jolt of pure pleasure existed for an eternity and dimmed not and communication was not worth the effort for it was a happy combination reinforced by the nature of the combined entities massed into two and submerged in the sea of something above sex, above life, above the pleasures of food and drink. But she remembered and, on her combination, she allowed a small part of her to visit the knowledge banks and seek out an unremembered figure. On———, she told him evolution produced two hundred million species of plants and animals and it is estimated that the planet of the dark ones, being younger, has still produced one hundred million species It disturbs you The word has no meaning A new combination. He was fantastically lucky with his random punches. It shattered her with new sensation. Remember the Techcals Of course We could call up their shades To what purpose She chose a known combination, less adventurous than he, reveled in its familiarity. We had never expected them to follow the trail, she told him, and were it not for the vitality of the native species they would not have been able to hear would it not be interesting to watch to see if they can achieve more for we are responsible Meaningless For creating them, the big eyes and the dark ones and the others, in our stumbling way moving toward This, a combination which blasted with pleasure. Once we were like them Laughter. A long time ago When I ———— them I saw the beautiful, large-eyed women. They have managed to continue their numerical superiority. Laughter, feminine, delightful, teasing. An achievement. And the young female was moving into a primitive stage of awareness

————III which they called Earth or Orton contains the age-lasting concept of animal force and violence But we, too, went through that stage I know long ago and just two thousand of their years from barbarism to a shallow-space culture Because of the influence of the large-eyed ones, which were more successful The girl's development was mostly evolutionary. Don't you see—the experiments were not so unsuccessful Even the large-eyed ones are hopelessly primitive. Are they not going to exterminate an entire planet Remember the Techcals, how we————ed their colonization fleet of two thousand ships and then ————ed a few hundred stars on the rim of their Galaxy as a further warning. We had remnants of barbarism Self-protection. We could not co-exist with the Techcals. We were mutually destructive The large-eyed children see themselves threatened by the primitive attempts of the scientists of————III. And did we not implant the repugnance in the large eyes It was decided long ago that we should allow them to develop naturally And there were those among us even then who said that we were responsible Females They were our children not of our flesh but of our eggs. We had our arrogance. Creating them engineering them for special purposes. The large eyes for the dim planets and the dark ones for the fiery suns You were sad when we left them, I know. But we felt we were right not only in altering them to spread life through a sterile Galaxy Not sterile there was————III, a planet much like the home world with the same sun the same slow process of change. And you were not content to leave it to develop but peopled it with our children the special purpose ones A wrong guess. We should have allowed more time for testing You admit you were wrong Do you realize this is the first time you've exercised the old feminine technique of I-told-you-so in forty millennia In all the Galaxy two, just two, and because our sun was older and was developing life while the sun of———— III was still being formed we are going to allow the large-eyed ones to destroy all life. They are ending the experiment and that ends our last influence on that mixture of native life, our children from the fiery suns and the blood of the large-eyed men. We made them and we were fumbling in fields which we did not fully understand. Not even our great knowledge of life could make them perfect outside the mother's womb with the building blocks of life manipulated to make them suitable for the marginal planets. And now we are given a second chance through the happy accidents which have produced that young girl. What will be left if we do not act once more. The large-eyed children will live and continue to make their minute advances but they will never reach He saw and laughed. Fickle woman, are you so bored with me that you want another to play your console And you radiant one with random punches and your lust for the novel, would you not view with pleasure the opportunity to share pleasure with an entirely new entity I would have to go out once more This time I will go. The eggs which produced them were taken from me. It will take but a moment A multi-digit punch and a lucky one left her momentarily weak with joy and then she was gone. To amuse himself he broke into his billions of component minds and reviewed the history of the race for he would not punch his own console That small, detached part of her found them preparing to leave. She

————through the solid walls of the scout's cabin, a vibrant glow which caused the small, dark animal to bristle and bark warningly. For a moment she looked directly into the child's eyes and she found them to be beautiful, almost as beautiful as the orbs of the large-eyed ones. She sent a momentary message of reassurance and then entered, causing their bodies to go limp and sink back into the seats. It took but a moment. Then the ship's clock went wild, speeding backward, other instruments adjusting. As she waited, she tried forms. This caused some minor discussion among the individual parts of her entity, but it was decided, in plenty of time, that she would take the form of a primitive. It was novel. Of course, the flesh and blood form could not appreciate the pleasures of breathing the old air of the home world, but in the absence of true pleasure it passed the time. She traced their passage through lower levels. They were, of course, empty. Chapter Nineteen Level after level yielded nothing, only empty rooms. On the evening of the second day, dusty, tired, despairing, they reached the topmost level. There were only empty rooms in the arms of the star, but at the center, encircled by a wide hall, was a solid core of the enduring plastic used for much of the buildings on the Planet of Cities. The enclosed space was large, but there were no entrances. «It could have contained a sealed power unit of some sort,» Toby guessed. «Such a large space would not have been wasted,» Jay agreed. «If we had a weapon, we could blast out a section,» Toby said; Jay produced a small hand blaster, the same illegal weapon he'd used against the rats on Orton. He stepped back. The wall absorbed the energy of the blaster. Puzzled, since no known material could resist the energy of a blaster, Jay advanced the power and tried again. The wall didn't even heat. They walked the circular hall, Jay trying the blaster at intervals without success. There was no crack, no blemish, in the whiteness of the wall. Sooly's world was ending. With a mixture of anger and despair, she faced the wall. «You in there,» she said, her voice low, emotional, her glands working, her face flushed, her tears forming. «You must help us. You can't lead us all this way and leave us with nothing.» A section of the wall in the shape of an arched doorway changed to a pleasing blue shade. Toby pushed against it. It was unyielding. But when Jay trained his blaster it melted away, giving them access. The room was huge, windowless, empty. But it was lit by a source which Toby could not discover. Sooly ran forward, paused. «Empty,» she said desolately. She listened. There was nothing. Toby took her hand, trying to console her. The woman materialized in the exact center of the circular room. The first impression was one of a blazing beauty which made one want to close one's eyes. Her hair was the blackness of space and her eyes were the blue of a summer sea and her hair was arranged in a style which none of them had ever seen. She wore a shimmering gown cut below firm, outthrust breasts but the effect was one of naturalness because of her regal bearing. She stood motionless, smiling out at them. «Yes, Lady,» Jay said, moving as he spoke, running out of the room with an agility which belied his years and the precarious state of his health. He returned with a wide angle tricorder and in the interim, Toby and Sooly tried not to stare, but their staring seemed not to bother the woman. She was as still as a statue, her expression not changing, the pleased smile frozen on her face. «Children,» she said. «Having come this far, you have shown certain traits of development for which we have been waiting.» Her words were natural, soft, without pomposity. None of them noticed, so closely was their attention riveted to her beauty, that her words were being engraved deeply into the impervious material of the walls, but the tricorder was filming the formation of the words as it recorded the sound of her voice, the engraved words being additional, eternal proof of the miracle. «Our own development dictated our actions. To achieve our destiny, we left you, for you could not accompany us. Yet, we prayed that you would follow us in achievement and would, someday, join us in—» They felt a feeling of eternal peace and joy. «Now you have made the first, tentative steps and although you do not need to know all, you may know our nature, as we were.» And they saw the Planet of Cities living. It was an administrative and scientific center and the people were tall and fair and happy. «This state of Galaxy-wide peace and plenty is within your reach. What follows is largely dependent on your own ambitions and abilities.» She paused. Sooly was deathly afraid of what was going to happen then, expecting her to disappear and leave the problems unresolved. She moved forward, and in moving saw the wall clearly through the form of the beautiful woman. In the period of silence, she gathered her courage and walked to the woman. Her hand went through the image without disturbing the smile on the beautiful face. «We erred,» the woman said, the smile fading for the first time, «in making you.» Jay and Toby gasped as fifty millennia of Ankani pride was blasted. «To prevent a repetition of such error, we implanted in you the abhorrence of genetic meddling which limited you.» «You didn't make me!» Sooly said, before she could stop herself. «No, child.» The woman looked directly at Sooly with a particular fondness. «And you are the hope. Nature—» she smiled sadly. «You see, in spite of our great advances, we do not have all the answers, either. So let us call that force nature and say that she, as the millennia crawled past, worked to rectify our mistakes. She took what we gave her, you, the large-eyed ones, the others which were placed on your Earth, child, and combined them to put life back on the track, to lead upward once again. Together, you can achieve.» Once again they felt that unearthly joy and wonder, bliss, pleasure, fulfillment. «The men of Ankan, outnumbering women five to one, find the daughters of the Earth to be fair and the women of Earth outnumber men. You must take up the surpluses by intermingling, for the seeds of both are necessary. The vitality of Earth. The knowledge of Ankan. Continue your abhorrence of altering the building blocks of life which nature has provided you, but moderate your position, men of Ankan, to work with the scientists of Earth to understand the mind. You have far to go, because it is the nature of man to be rigid. Your women of Ankan will protest and the men of Earth will resent the strangers who take their women, but,» her face grew serious, «you are not alone and there is the danger.» Images of alien life, strange, menacing, utterly different, came to them. The tricorder took the emotions and implanted them. They saw the ancient war, the aliens coming from inter-Galactic space in their strange ships. Confrontation. Mutual destruction. «They are crowded.» In their distant Galaxy they saw the aliens, teeming, expanding. «People first the outlying worlds, for the Techcals have seen the ability of the people of this Galaxy and your mere presence on the outlying worlds, which they would have to colonize first, will be your first defense.» She faded. «Wait,» Sooly cried. «Please wait.» But she was gone. And the order to sterilize her Earth was speeding across the wastes, leaping from star anchor to star anchor faster than any ship could travel, at the same speed, with an impossible head start, that a following message would travel. Jay, having discovered the engraved copy of the beautiful woman's words, was recording it head-on, so that it would be distinct and readable. Sooly sat on the floor and wept. They had come so near and the only hope was that they could get to Ankan, show the proof to the powers there and dispatch an order canceling the sterilization message and hope that the ship had delayed long enough in executing the order. It was, as Toby had explained, a remote possibility. Garge Cele Mantel was an efficient woman. It would take her only a matter of days to prepare the ship for the sterilization. Sooly tried to get hold of herself, rose. «Toby,» she said, «let's go.» The scout blinked out from the Planet of Cities and held at the first anchor point, building power. The wait seemed endless. Time ticked past and the death of a planet came ever closer. Jay, who had taken his last troleen in the aftermath of the appearance of the beautiful woman, felt fine and bemused himself by playing back the tricording of the event. Toby was gnawing his lips in concern and Sooly felt as if she were going to have Jay's heart attack, so great was her fear and horror. «If there were only a way to blink directly to Orton,» Toby said, knowing that he was repeating himself, for he'd made that futile wish many times. But they were in the dense star fields, near the central bulge of the Galaxy. Between them and Orton, on any straight line, were hundreds of stars, and blinking was a straight line process. The immense fields of the stars distorted, had to be bypassed. He studied his charts, hoping desperately to discover a route overlooked by the expo ships, but he knew that he could not possibly hope to discern, with one human mind, what banks of computers and hundreds of years of expo work had failed to find. He felt anger toward the beautiful woman. She had known, even if she were merely some sort of image. She'd known of the developments which brought them to the Planet of the Cities, so she should have known about the crisis on Orton. She could have helped. If she had the abilities she had to possess in order to achieve the things she'd intimated, she could have helped them. «Stars of Ankan,» Jay exploded, the portable triviewer still in place before his eyes. «Copy this.» He read a series of numbers. Toby recognized them immediately as blink coordinates. He checked his charts. «At the very end of the written message,» Jay said. «She didn't speak them, but they were there.» «From the Planet of Cities into space outside the Galaxy,» Toby said excitedly. «They computed the mass of the Galaxy and used it as an anchor point!» Power was nearly total. The blink back to the Planet of Cities was a short one. Once there, there was time to check and recheck. The blink coordinates led, indeed, to Orton, and in three short blinks. The first went vertically out of the plane of the Galaxy and the second anchored to a star near Orton and the third would put them in sight of Orton's sun. Power built, they blinked and stared out in awe at the ponderous wheel of the Galaxy, used the power of the entire Galaxy to build the banks and blinked in an amazingly short time. The rest was elementary. Chapter Twenty Cele Mantel nodded grimly when the message was received. She approved. It was a terrible thing to contemplate erasing all animal life on the planet, but there was no other choice. Five hundred thousand years of civilization was in the balance and there were no other choices. The evil scientists of Orton had chosen their own destiny. Her only regret was that the deserters would not be on the planet when she unloosed the killing rays. Ship's instruments had recorded the departure of the scout, blinking out toward Ankan weeks past. But they would not escape. Their travel would be limited to known starways and sooner or later they'd blink into a beacon station with an Ankani ship. At best, if they had incredible luck, they would find sanctuary on some empty planet and go into a permanent exile until some Ankani ship revisited, because the scout was incapable of traveling to uncharted planets. It might be a slow process, but they'd be caught. The alert had been given and soon all Ankani ships would be on the lookout for the scout. The conversion to sterilization power occupied the crew for days, while Cele fretted with impatience and Babra Larkton examined her face in the mirror to see if the bruise on her face had really faded, at last. There was an atmosphere of gloom aboard the Entil, for, although she'd told the entire ship the vital reasoning behind sterilization, it was a serious, unprecedented action. She sympathized with the younger officers who repeatedly asked if there weren't some way to do it differently, just punish the offenders and leave, at least, the amazing variety of lower animal and bird life. Cele tried to console them by saying that the rays would not penetrate into the depths of the oceans and that, therefore, the seeds of life might survive to crawl out of the ocean again, if, indeed, the theories of evolution on Orton were correct. It was small comfort. When, at last, the engineering section reported that the weapons had been altered and were ready, Cele set the hour. It would begin on the western continents, radiating in hundreds-of-miles-wide bands sweeping from pole to pole and overlapping to prevent any survivors. At the appointed hour, she positioned herself at control. She would not merely give a cold command. She would push the button herself, for it would be, at best, a traumatizing experience and she was not a Garge who would ask her subordinates to do something she would not do herself. «We are prepared, Lady,» said a glum-faced rating standing before the power switch. «Five minutes and counting,» Cele said, going through the countdown procedure to emphasize the seriousness of the operation. «Four and counting.» Time crawled. Chronometers crawled, oozing out the last minutes of a world. «One minute and counting,» Cele said, «Fifty-nine, fifty-eight—» Her heart was pounding surprisingly. For a panic-filled moment she took her eyes off the clock and looked at the viewer to see the blue planet swimming in space below them. She felt tearful regret, but her determination was as hard as steel. She was going to insure the continued survival and supremacy of her race. «Thirty seconds and counting,» she said, her voice choked with emotion. «Lady—» A rating on the censors. «Twenty seconds,» Cele said. «A vehicle,» said the rating. «Approaching under power.» «Ten, nine, eight,» Cele counted, her finger on the button. «He's coming on a collision course,» the rating yelled. «He's going to ram us.» «Hold!» Cele cried, leaping from her command chair to see the small scout brake, ran its nose into the orifice of the main battery with a jar which was felt even through the vast bulk of the partially loaded Entil. «Use the grapples and get them inside.» This part she was going to enjoy. For she knew her own scout when she saw it and providence had delivered the rebels to her. They'd come in a vain attempt to stop the sterilization. She should have known they'd try. They'd gone native, adopted the ways of Orton. Naturally they'd make some dramatic, manlike gesture to stop the destruction of life on their chosen world. Toby felt the grapples engage. «They'll wait now,» he said. «She'll want us down there before she begins.» The scout was drawn into the Entil. A reception committee of officers and ratings were waiting outside. «Follow me out,» Toby said, Jay's blaster in his hand. He popped the port and leaped out to confront the startled officers. Unaccustomed to the ways of mutineers, they were not expecting an armed and determined man, but a cringing, begging, rating seeking mercy. Manto Babra Larkton reached uncertainly for her weapon and looked, for the first time in her life, into the orifice of a blaster. «I'll fire,» Toby told her and she believed him. She'd never seen such a look of determination on the face of a rating. «I want to see the Garge, quickly.» Unthinkable! A mere rating giving orders to females. «Now,» Toby said, as Jay and Sooly arranged themselves behind him and Bem, in strange surroundings, gave one short, hoarse bark from the open port. «You can't hope to stand against an entire ship,» Babra said with a cold fury. «Move,» Toby said, surprised at himself. He added, «Move, please, Lady,» to calm the sense of guilt. The passage to the bridge was uneventful, although surprised, white-faced ratings watched as the little group moved swiftly through the corridors, winding around the central cargo hold to the Orton-oriented command room where Cele Mantel waited with impatience. «What?» she gasped, when Babra entered first, Toby holding his blaster at her back. «He's mad, Cele,» Babra cried tearfully. «Blast him. Don't concern yourself with me.» «Lady,» Toby said. «There is no need for blasting. If you will only listen.» «Take him,» Cele said, her voice shrill with shock. «Seize them.» «Lady,» Toby said. «I've never killed a man, but then no one has ever

tried to kill a planet, either. I believe that I could kill anyone, even you, to prevent such a disaster. Please don't make me decide before you listen.» «Hold,» Cele said, to the ratings who were edging nervously toward Toby as he stood with his blaster in Babra's back. «And if we listen, then what?» «I can't answer that,» Toby said. «I ask only that you see and hear a tricording made on the Planet of Cities.» «Impossible,» Cele said, quickly calculating the time which had elapsed since the scout blinked out of the Orton system. «Are you telling me you've been to the Planet of Cities?» «We have,» Toby said. «And we have here a tricording which will change the course of history,» He lowered his blaster. «Will you see it, Lady?» «Your trickery will avail you nothing,» Cele said. «However, I am a reasonable woman. I will see your tricording if you first yield your weapon.» «Don't do it,» Jay said. «Remember that she promised a fair hearing and yet she trained the ship's blasters on me when I approached.» Toby felt a cold sweat of indecisiveness break out on his forehead. Babra turned, held out her hand grimly. «Give it to her, Toby,» Sooly said. «I don't think your Lady will forget your honor twice.» The decision made for him, Toby handed the weapon to the Manto. «We will view your nonsense,» Cele said. Jay, his troleen losing its effectiveness, weakly handed the tricording to a rating, who inserted it in the projector. «As I thought,» Cele said, when the image of the beautiful woman appeared on the ship's screens, «look at the small eyes. An Orton woman.» «Wait,» Toby begged. «Children,» said the image, and, as she viewed it through, Cele Mantel's pride began to shatter. It was a different woman who called the Ship's Board of Officers into session, with Jay, Toby and Sooly present, to show the tricording again. Babra Larkton was furious with hate. She could not contain it, breaking out before the second showing was finished. «Trickery,» she shouted, «a cheap trick, filmed on the planet below, to save their own necks and postpone the inevitable justice which the demons on Orton deserve.» «Can you be sure?» Cele asked sadly. «Can we continue with the plan of sterilization as long as there is the slightest doubt?» «No, Lady,» Toby said, feeling sympathy for the Garge. He, too, had known the painful, humiliating agony she was enduring. «I don't think you realize what this means, Cele,» Babra said. «It means that we not only call these Ortonian barbarians equals and allow our men to opt with them, but we actually acknowledge them as our superiors in some ways.» «Not superiors,» Sooly said. «Equals, yes. But not in knowledge. You have knowledge we can't imagine. But she, the woman on the Planet of Cities, wants us to work together. We go into the future together, side by side. We both have something to contribute.» «If it is true,» Cele said, «then we are both imperfect creations and, although I would like to believe that Ankani life sprang into being fully formed and the masters of the Galaxy, we have not been able to solve the riddle of the Wasted Worlds. We have not advanced as rapidly as the Ortonians. On a relative scale, the achievements of the Ortonians in the past two thousand years make us look like backward people.» «No, Cele,» Babra cried. «Babra, didn't you feel it? Didn't you experience the emotions of the woman as she showed what she and her race considered the ultimate in human achievement? Have you ever experienced pleasure in that degree? That alone is enough to convince me that the matter must have further investigation.» She sighed. «And we dare not ignore the threat of the aliens. If it is true, they've had half a million years to arm themselves, to prepare. It is a risk we cannot take.» The Entil, not yet fully loaded, blinked sluggishly through the stars. Even with her beliefs crumbling around her, Cele could not bring herself to believe the story told by the ratings of blinking out into inter-Galactic space. She would not risk her ship and her crew on untried experiments. And there was another advantage to the slow, eye-popping blink home, the multiple layovers while the huge tanker's power banks charged. It gave her time to talk with the Ortonian woman, to analyze her, to see for herself, with the aid of the educator, the memories buried deep in the girl's brain. It was astounding to think that any brain could hold more than the million-billion impressions which were accumulated in an average Ortonian brain during a lifetime, but this brain could and did and when she saw, after a long, awesome session, the ships unloading the hordes of people on the green valley floor of the Ortonian continent called Africa, she was, at last, fully convinced. Alone in her quarters, she looked at herself in the mirror. Those eyes, age-old symbols of the beauty of Ankani women, were artificial things engineered to see on dim planets—an imperfect creation—product of the very techniques which were the most odious concept in Ankani thinking. They were weak, incomplete, unable to follow the parent race into eternal bliss. She wept with her shame. She looked ahead and saw the inevitable changes, for she was certain that investigation of the circular room in the star tower on the Planet of Cities would find the engraved words there on the indestructible walls. Yes, her entire world was changing, even as the Entil shivered and jerked into another blink. It would never be the same and she mourned the passing of ideas which had been perfected, a meaningless word, over fifty millennia. Ankani men, always tainted with that puzzling hunger for newness, would flock to do the bidding of that woman in white with her breasts shamelessly exposed. And the planets of the distant stars would be peopled with their sons and daughters, not with pure Ankani blood. The fair skin of the Ankanis would be darkened by alien suns, browned by the mixture of bloods. «Oh, winds of Ankan,» she whispered aloud. For the first time in her life she allowed her brain to become befuddled with stimulant, tossing down good Ankan brew, equivalent to wine, until she slept. She awoke to the realization that her bloodshot Ankani eyes had to be indicative of the Galaxy's most infernal hangover, but even though thinking was painful, she was more ready to accept. After all, past experience had proven that Ankani genes were dominant in some matters. Ankani-Ortonian girls would have large eyes and if, in exchange, they received the almost frightening vitality of the Ortonians, well, it would be a fair trade. And the outward movement toward the rim of the Galaxy would require huge new ships. Expo ships. By the time the Entil startled port officers by blinking in months ahead of schedule, Cele was fully recovered. She entered the emergency meeting of Fleet Board dressed in the gorgeously understated colors of the Entil and enjoyed the envious glances of the shore-duty officers in their shabby uniforms. Her head high, eyes blazing with excitement, she mounted the hearing platform. «Ladies,» she said, her voice proud, unflappable, «I, Garge Cele Mantel, commanding the U. A. T. Entil, report respectfully that with the aid of my crew I have solved the mystery of the Wasted Worlds.» The gasps which came from the gathered ladies of the Fleet Board made the whole thing worthwhile. Chapter Twenty-One «Toby Wellti,» Sooly said in a teasing voice, as Toby primped before the

mirror, «you look great as it is. If you make yourself any prettier I'll have to fight off all the young Larftons.» «A father should look his best when meeting old shipmates,» Toby grinned. «And about those young Larftons—» «Not a chance, boy,» Sooly said grimly. «What? And offend our guests?» He was grinning happily as he adjusted his sash. «You takes your choice and you sticks by it,» Sooly said, «and you done taken yours, old buddy.» But in spite of her teasing tones, she felt a little pang of something. She approached him, pressed her swollen stomach against him and hugged him. «Oh, Toby, am I so ugly? Would you like to opt with one of the pretty young Larftons?» He turned, held her at arms length. «Little mother, no one could be half as beautiful.» The tender moment was shattered by a wail from the nursery. «The call of the wild,» Sooly sighed, pulling away. Bem, five pounds lighter and frisky on a regular dosage of troleen and a couple of other wonderful drugs from the settlement hospital, panted into the bathroom, gave one sharp yip and waddled back toward the nursery, looking over her shoulder to see if Sooly were following. While Sooly administered to the messy young Mari Kurt Wellti, Beth Kurt entered the front door without knocking, reporting for her babysitting job. Bem wagged her backside in greeting and returned to supervise the changing. «She's inbound,» Beth said. «If you want to see her land you'll have to hurry.» «Gee, Mother, can you finish Mari? I haven't even combed my hair.» Sooly darted for the bath without waiting for an answer and Grandmother Beth finished the pin-up job and then proceeded to thoroughly spoil Mari by lifting her from her crib to bounce her on a shapely but grandmotherly knee. Outside, the sunlight was late evening, or at least it seemed that way. She could never get used to it, she thought, but it had its compensations. None of those killer particles put out by good old Sol, just a gentle warmth and enough light, really. And the trees were close enough to being real trees and so beautiful. The mocking bird carried from Earth in the settlement ship was happily feeding a nest of young in a fruit tree and the almost grass of the lawn was doing nicely, now that the boys down at Agri-center had found the combination. They walked the short distance to the Village Green and she was up there, a growing dot which expanded to be the size of a small mountain and made Sooly use all her will power to keep from running out from under it, for it seemed that the silently descending ship would have to fall and crush all the life out of the entire population of the village. It didn't. The United Planets exploration ship Earthlight nestled as light as a feather on the large, cleared area and the Boy Scout band struck up the Ankani anthem, following it with the Star Spangled Banner as crewmen snapped smartly to attention in their gorgeously understated but colorful uniforms. Mantogarge Cele Mantel stepped out to stand in salute of the tiny population of the world of Sumer—outpost, bastion, planet on the edge of nowhere, home. Cele stepped down when the band finished and approached the official welcoming stand. «Our hearts and our homes are open to you, Lady,» said Governor Toby Wellti of the planet Sumer. «And to your officers and crew.» «I bring greetings from the United Council,» Cele intoned formally. «And the congratulations of both peoples for the success of your settlement.» There was more formality, a tight, impressive little ceremony which warmed the hearts of the villagers. After that there was the official banquet, at which many young crewmen, Ortonians and Ankani alike, found the fruit of Sumer to be to their liking. Toby was pleased, because, for the first time, the planet had provided all the delicacies a laden table can offer. It was late evening and the three moons of Sumer were making night into day when Cele was escorted into Sooly's cozy house. «Christ,» Cele said, taking off her hat, sitting down and kicking off her shoes. «I'm glad that's over.» She smiled at Sooly. «How are the offspring?» «This one's restive,» Sooly said, patting her big stomach. «Mari is full of beans.» John Kurt entered from the kitchen, a drink in his hands, dressed in work clothing. «Hi, Cele,» he said. «Have a snort?» «I'll take one, too,» Tony said, as Sooly started for the kitchen. Cele was still not used to seeing women do the bidding of men, but the Galaxy was changing. «Jay sends his regards,» she said. «We stopped on Ankan II for minor repair. He's fit and the labs are doing marvelous work. You're not the only one,» she said to Sooly, as she entered with a tray, «with that trick memory. Other Ortonians have developed it, and they're working now to narrow it down to specific areas. One day soon we'll have a mind which contains all the knowledge of your world.» «Golly,» Sooly said. «I don't know if I'm ready for that. I have trouble organizing what I know now.» She served drinks. «To be frank, things are moving just a bit too fast for me.» «I think I'll take a look at the offspring,» Cele said, to keep from laughing. She stood over the cradle and looked at the closed, large, baby eyes, which were Ankani and beautiful. Her mind idled. Single pairings aboard the Earthlight, men and women forming alliances. Scattered settlements all along the rim. Ankani and Earth scientists pooling resources to make fantastic discoveries. Things were moving too fast for the girl who had set them in motion? «God,» she sighed, not noticing that she had picked up still another Ortonian word. «You should look at it from these eyes.» Her lids closed slowly, covering the huge, pretty orbs. Soon she rejoined the little party.