The Narrow Land

A pair of nerves joined across the top of Ern's brain; he became conscious, aware of darkness and constriction. The sensation was uncomfortable. He tensed his members, thrust at the shell, meeting resistance in all directions except one. He kicked, butted and presently created a rupture. The constriction eased somewhat Ern squirmed around, clawed at the membrane, tore it back and was met by a sudden unpleasant exudation: the juices of a being not himself. It wrenched around, reached forth. Ern recoiled, struck back the probing members, which seemed ominously strong and massive.

There was a period of passivity. Each found the other hateful: they were of the same sort, yet different. Presently the two small creatures fought, with little near-inaudible squeaks and chitters.

Ern eventually strangled his opponent When he tried to detach himself, he found that an adhesion of tissue had occurred, that the two were now one. Ern expanded himself, rounded and fused with the defeated individual.

For a further period Ern rested, exploring his consciousness. The constriction once again became oppressive. Ern thrust and kicked, creating a new rupture, and the shell split wide.

Ern struggled forth into soft slime, then up into a glare of light, an acrid dry void. From above came a harsh cry. An enormous shape hurtled down. Ern dodged, evaded a pair of clicking black prongs. He napped, paddled, slid down into cool water, where he submerged himself.

Others inhabited the water; Ern saw their dim shapes to all sides. Some were like himself: pale pop-eyed sprats, narrow-skulled with wisps of film for crests. Others were larger, with the legs and arms definitely articulated, the crests stiffer, the skin tough and silver-gray. Ern bestirred himself, tested his arms and legs. He swam, carefully at first, then with competence. Hunger came; he ate: larvae, nodules on the roots of reeds, trifles of this and that

So Ern entered his childhood, and gradually became wise in the ways of the waterworld. Duration could not be measured; there was no basis for time: no alteration of light and darkness, no change except for Ern's own growth. The only notable events of the sea-shallows were tragedies. A water-baby frolicking too far, recklessly, offshore might be caught in a current and swept out under the storm-curtain. The armored birds from time to time carried away a very young baby basking at the surface. Most dreadful of all was the ogre who lived in one of the sea-sloughs: a brutish creature with long arms, a flat face and four bony ridges over the top of its skull. On one occasion Ern almost became its victim. Skulking under the roots of the swamp-reeds, the ogre lunged forth; Ern felt the swirl of water and darted away, the ogre's grasp so near that the claws scraped his leg. The ogre pursued, making idiotic sounds, then, jerking aside, seized one of Ern's playfellows, and settled to the bottom to munch upon its captive.

After Ern grew large enough to defy the predator birds, he spent much time on the surface, tasting the air and marveling at the largeness of the vistas, though he understood nothing of what he saw. The sky was a dull gray fog, somewhat brighter out over the sea, never changing except for an occasional wind-whipped cloud or a trail of rain. Close at hand was the swamp: sloughs, low-lying islands overgrown with pallid reeds, complicated black shrubs of the utmost fragility, a few spindly dendrons. Beyond hung a wall of black murk. On the seaward side the horizon was obscured by a lightning-shattered wall of cloud and rain. The wall of murk and the wall of storm ran parallel, delineating the borders of the region between.

The larger of the water-children tended to congregate at the surface. There were two sorts. The typical individual was slender and lithe, with a narrow bony skull, a single crest, protuberant eyes. His temperament was mercurial; he tended to undignified wrangling and sudden brisk fights which were over almost as soon as they started. The sex differences were definite: some were male, half as many were female.

In contrast, and much in the minority, were the twin-crested water-children. These were more massive, with broader skulls, less prominent eyes and a more sedate disposition. Their sexual differentiation was not obvious, and they regarded the antics of the single-crested children with disapproval.

Ern identified himself with this latter group though his crest development was not yet definite, and, if anything, he was even broader and more stocky than the others. Sexually he was slow in developing, but he seemed definitely masculine.

The oldest of the children, single- and double-crested alike, knew a few elements of speech, passed down the classes from a time and source unknown. In due course Ern learned the language, and thereafter idled away long periods discussing the events of the sea-shallows. The wall of storm with its incessant dazzle of lightning was continually fascinating, but the children gave most of their attention to the swamp and rising ground beyond, where, by virtue of tradition transmitted along with the language, they knew their destiny lay, among the "men."

Occasionally "men" would be seen probing the shore mud for flatfish, or moving among the reeds on mysterious errands. At such times the water-children, impelled by some unknown emotion, would instantly submerge themselves, all except the most daring of the single-crested who would float with only their eyes above water, to watch the men at their fascinating activities.

Each appearance of the men stimulated discussion among the water-children. The single-crested maintained that all would become men and walk the dry land, which they declared to be a condition of bliss. The double-crested, more skeptical, agreed that the children might go ashore-after all, this was the tradition-but what next? Tradition offered no information on this score, and the discussions remained speculative.

At long last Ern saw men close at hand. Searching the bottom for crustaceans, he heard a strong rhythmic splashing and, looking up, saw three large long figures: magnificent creatures! They swam with power and grace; even the ogre might avoid such as these! Ern followed at a discreet distance wondering if he dared approach and make himself known. It would be pleasant, he thought, to talk with these men, to learn about life on the shore ... The men paused to inspect a school of playing children, pointing here and there, while the children halted their play to stare up in wonder. Now occurred a shocking incident. The largest of the double-crested water-children was Zim the Name-giver, a creature, by Ern's reckoning, old and wise. It was Zim's prerogative to ordain names for his fellows: Ern had received his name from Zim. It now chanced that Zim, unaware of the men, wandered into view. The men pointed, uttered sharp guttural cries and plunged below the surface. Zim, startled into immobility, hesitated an instant, then darted away. The men pursued, harrying him this way and that, apparently intent on his capture. Zim, wild with fear, swam far offshore, out over the gulf, where the current took him and carried him away, out toward the curtain of storm.

The men, exclaiming in anger, plunged landward in foaming strokes of arms and legs.

In fascinated curiosity Ern followed: up a large slough, finally to a beach of packed mud. The men waded ashore, strode off among the reeds. Ern drifted slowly forward, beset by a quivering conflict of impulses. How, he wondered, could beings so magnificent hound Zim the Name-giver to his doom? The land was close; the footprints of the men were plain on the mud of the beach; where did they lead? What wonderful new vistas lay beyond the line of reeds? Ern eased forward to the beach. He lowered his feet and tried to walk. His legs felt limp and flexible; only by dint of great concentration was he able to set one foot before the other. Deprived of the support of the water his body felt gross and clumsy. From the reeds came a screech of amazement. Ern's legs, suddenly capable, carried him in wobbling leaps down the beach. He plunged into the water, swam frantically back along the slough. Behind him came men, churning the water. Ern ducked aside, hid behind a clump of rotting reeds. The men continued down the slough, out over the shallows where they spent a fruitless period ranging back and forth.

Ern remained in his cover. The men returned, passing no more than the length of their bodies from Ern's hiding place, so close that he could see their glittering eyes and the dark yellow interior of their oral cavities when they gasped for air. With their spare frames, prow-shaped skulls and single crests they resembled neither Ern nor Zim, but rather the single-crested water-children. These were not his sort! He was not a man! Perplexed, seething with excitement and dissatisfaction, Ern returned to the shallows.

But nothing was as before. The innocence of the easy old life had departed; there was now a portent in the air which soured the pleasant old routines. Ern found it hard to wrench his attention away from the shore and he considered the single-crested children, his erstwhile playmates, with new wariness: they suddenly seemed strange, different from himself, and they in turn watched the double-crested children with distrust, swimming away in startled shoals when Ern or one of the others came by.

Ern became morose and dour. The old satisfactions were gone; there were no compensations. Twice again the men swam out across the shallows, but all the double-crested children, Ern among them, hid under reeds. The men thereupon appeared to lose interest, and for a period life went on more or less as before. But change was in the wind. The shoreline became a preoccupation: what lay behind the reed islands, between the reed islands and the wall of murk? Where did the men live, in what wonderful surroundings? With the most extreme vigilance against the ogre Ern swam up the largest of the sloughs. To either side were islands overgrown with pale reeds, with an occasional black skeleton-tree or a globe of tangle bush: stuff so fragile as to collapse at a touch. The slough branched, opening into still coves reflecting the gray gloom of the sky, and at last narrowed, dwindling to a channel of black slime.

Ern dared proceed no farther. If someone or something had followed him, he was trapped. And at this moment a strange yellow creature halted overhead to hover on a thousand tinkling scales. Spying Ern it set up a wild ululation. Off in the distance Ern thought to hear a call of harsh voices: men. He swung around and swam back the way he had come, with the tinkle-bird careening above. Ern ducked under the surface, swam down the slough at-full speed. Presently he went to the side, cautiously surfaced. The yellow bird swung in erratic circles over the point where he had submerged, its quavering howl now diminished to a mournful hooting sound.

Ern gratefully returned to the shallows. It was now clear to him that if ever he wished to go ashore he must learn to walk. To the perplexity of his fellows, even those of the double-crests, he began to clamber up through the mud of the near island, exercising his legs among the reeds. All went passably well, and Ern presently found himself walking without effort though as yet he dared not try the land behind the islands. Instead he swam along the coast, the storm-wall on his right hand, the shore on his left. On and on he went, farther than he had ever ventured before.

The storm-wall was changeless: a roll of rain and a thick vapor lanced with lightning. The wall of murk was the same: dense black at the horizon, lightening by imperceptible gradations to become the normal gloom of the sky overhead. The narrow land extended endlessly onward. Ern saw new swamps, reed islands; shelves of muddy foreshore, a spit of sharp rocks. At length the shore curved away, retreated toward the wall of murk, to form a funnel-shaped bay, into which poured a freezingly cold river. Ern swam to the shore, crawled up on the shingle, stood swaying on his still uncertain legs. Far across the bay new swamps and islands continued to the verge of vision and beyond. There was no living creature in sight. Ern stood alone on the gravel bar, a small gray figure, swaying on still limber legs, peering earnestly this way and that. The river curved away and out of sight into the darkness. The water of the estuary was bitterly cold, the current ran swift; Ern decided to go no farther. He slipped into the sea and returned the way he had come.

Back in the familiar shallows he took up his old routine searching the bottom for crustaceans, taunting the ogre, floating on the surface with a wary eye for men, testing his legs on the island. During one of the visits ashore he came upon a most unusual sight: a woman depositing eggs in the mud. From behind a curtain of reeds Ern watched in fascination. The woman was not quite so large as the men and lacked the harsh male facial structure, though her cranial ridge was no less prominent. She wore a shawl of a dark red woven stuff: the first garment Ern had ever seen, and he marveled at the urbanity of the men's way of life.

The woman was busy for some time. When she departed, Ern went to examine the eggs. They had been carefully protected from armored birds by a layer of mud and a neat little tent of plaited reeds. The nest contained three clutches, each a row of three eggs, each egg carefully separated from the next by a wad of mud.

So here, thought Ern, was the origin of the water-babies. He recalled the circumstances of his own birth; evidently he had emerged from just such an egg. Rearranging mud and tent, Ern left the eggs as he had found them and returned to the water.

Time passed. The men came no more. Ern wondered that they should abandon an occupation in which they had showed so vigorous an interest; but then the whole matter exceeded the limits of his understanding.

He became prey to restlessness once again. In this regard he seemed unique: none of his fellows had ever wandered beyond the shallows. Ern set off along the shore, this time swimming with the stormwall to his left. He crossed the slough in which lived the ogre, who glared up as Ern passed and made a threatening gesture. Ern swam hastily on, though now he was of a size larger than that which the ogre preferred to attack.

The shore on this side of the shallows was more interesting and varied than that to the other. He came upon three high islands crowned with a varied vegetation-black skeleton trees; stalks with bundles of pink and white foliage clenched in black fingers; glossy lamellar pillars, the topmost scales billowing out into gray leaves-then the islands were no more, and the mainland rose directly from the sea. Ern swam close to the beach to avoid the currents, and presently came to a spit of shingle pushing out into the sea. He climbed ashore and surveyed the landscape. The ground slanted up under a cover of umbrella trees, then rose sharply to become a rocky bluff crested with black and gray vegetation: the most notable sight of Ern's experience.

Ern slid back into the sea, swam on. The landscape slackened, became flat and swampy. He swam past a bank of black slime overgrown with squirming yellow-green fibrils, which he took care to avoid. Some time later he heard a thrashing hissing sound and looking to sea observed an enormous white worm sliding through the water. Ern floated quietly and the worm slid on past and away. Ern continued. On and on he swam until, as before, the shore was broken by an estuary leading away into the murk. Wading up the beach, Ern looked far and wide across a dismal landscape supporting only tatters of brown lichen. The river which flooded the estuary seemed even larger and swifter than the one he had seen previously, and carried an occasional chunk of ice. A bitter wind blew toward the stormwall, creating a field of retreating white-caps. The opposite shore, barely visible, showed no relief or contrast. There was no apparent termination to the narrow land; it appeared to reach forever between the walls of storm and gloom.

Ern returned to the shallows, not wholly satisfied with what he had learned. He had seen marvels unknown to his fellows, but what had they taught him? Nothing. His questions remained unanswered.

Changes were taking place; they could not be ignored. The whole of Ern's class lived at the surface, breathing air. Infected by some pale dilution of Ern's curiosity, they stared uneasily landward. Sexual differentiation was evident; there were tendencies toward sexual play, from which the double-crested children, with undeveloped organs, stood contemptuously aloof. Social as well as physical distinctions developed; there began to be an interchange of taunts and derogation, occasionally a brief skirmish. Ern ranged himself with the double-crested children, although on exploring his own scalp, he found only indecisive hummocks and hollows, which to some extent embarrassed him.

In spite of the general sense of imminence, the coming of the men took the children by surprise.

In the number of two hundred the men came down the sloughs and swam out to surround the shallows. Ern and a few others instantly clambered up among the reeds of the island and concealed themselves. The other children milled and swam in excited circles. The men shouted, slapped the water with their arms; diving and veering, they herded the water-childien up the slough, all the way to the beach of dried mud. Here they chose and sorted, sending the largest up the beach, allowing the fingerlings and sprats to return to the shallows, taking the double-crested children with sharp cries of exultation.

The selection was complete. The captive children were marshaled into groups and sent staggering up the trail; those with legs still soft were carried.

Ern, fascinated by the process, watched from a discreet distance. When men and children had disappeared, he emerged from the water, clambered up the beach to look after his departed friends. What to do now? Return to the shallows? The old life seemed drab and insipid. He dared not present himself to the men. They were single-crested; they were harsh and abrupt. What remained? He looked back and forth, between water and land, and at last gave his youth a melancholy farewell: henceforth he would live ashore.

He walked a few steps up the path, stopped to listen.

Silence.

He proceeded warily, prepared to duck into the undergrowth at a sound. The soil underfoot became less sodden; the reeds disappeared and aromatic black cycads lined the path. Above rose slender supple withes, with gas-filled leaves half-floating, half-supported. Ern moved ever more cautiously, pausing to listen ever more frequently. What if he met the men? Would they kill him? Ern hesitated and even looked back along the path ... The decision had been made. He continued forward.

A sound, from somewhere not too far ahead. Ern dodged off the path, flattened himself behind a hummock.

No one appeared. Ern moved forward through the cycads and, presently, through the black fronds, he saw the village of the men: a marvel of ingenuity and complication! Nearby stood tall bins containing food-stuffs, then, at a little distance, a row of thatched stalls stacked with poles, coils of rope, pots of pigment and grease. Yellow tinkle-birds, perched on the gables, made a constant chuckling clamor. The bins and stalls faced an open space surrounding a large platform, where a ceremony of obvious import was in progress. On the platform stood four men, draped in bands of woven leaves and four women wearing dark red shawls and tall hats decorated with tinkle-bird scales. Beside the platform, in a miserable gray clot, huddled the single-crested children, the individuals distinguishable only by an occasional gleam of eye or twitch of pointed crest.

One by one the children were lifted up to the four men, who gave each a careful examination. Most of the male children were dismissed and sent down into the crowd. The rejects, about one in every ten, were killed by the blow of a stone mallet and propped up to face the wall of storm. The girl-children were sent to the other end of the platform, where the four women waited. Each of the trembling girl-children was considered in turn. About half were discharged from the platform into the custody of a woman and taken to a booth; about one in every five was daubed along the skull with white paint and sent to a nearby pen where the double-crested children were also confined. The rest suffered a blow of the mallet. The corpses were propped to face the wall of murk...

Above Ern's head sounded the mindless howl of a tinkle-bird. Ern darted back into the brush. The bird drifted overhead on clashing scales. Men ran to either side, chased Ern back and forth, and finally captured him. He was dragged to the village, thrust triumphantly up on the platform, amid calls of surprise and excitement. The four priests, or whatever their function, surrounded Ern to make their examination. There was a new set of startled outcries. The priests stood back in perplexity, then after a mumble of discussion signaled to the priest-women. The mallet was brought forward-but was never raised. A man from the crowd jumped up on the platform, to argue with the priests. They made a second careful study of Ern's head, muttering to each other. Then one brought a knife, another clamped Ern's head. The knife was drawn the length of his cranium, first to the left of the central ridge, then to the right, to produce a pair of near-parallel cuts. Orange blood trickled down Ern's face; pain made him tense and stiff. A woman brought forward a handful of some vile substance which she rubbed into the wounds. Then all stood away, murmuring and speculating. Ern glared back, half-mad with fear and pain.

He was led to a booth, thrust within. Bars were dropped across the aperture and laced with thongs.

Ern watched the remainder of the ceremony. The corpses were dismembered, boiled and eaten. The white-daubed girl-children were marshaled into a group with all those double-crested children with whom Ern had previously identified himself. Why, he wondered, had he not been included in this group? Why had he first been threatened with the mallet, then wounded with a knife? The situation was incomprehensible.

The girls and the two-crested children were marched away through the brush. The other girls with no more ado became members of the community. The male children underwent a much more formal instruction. Each man took one of the boys under his sponsorship, and subjected him to a rigorous discipline. There were lessons in deportment, knot-tying, weaponry, language, dancing, the various outcries.

Ern received minimal attention. He was fed irregularly, as occasion seemed to warrant The period of his confinement could not be defined, the changeless gray sky providing no chronometric reference; and indeed, the concept of time as a succession of definite interims was foreign to Ern's mind. He escaped apathy only by attending the instruction in adjoining booths, where single-crested boys were taught language and deportment Ern learned the language long before those under instruction; he and his double-crested fellows had used the rudiments of this language in the long-gone halcyon past.

The twin wounds along Ern's skull eventually healed, leaving parallel weals of scar-tissue. The black feathery combs of maturity were likewise sprouting, covering his entire scalp with down.

None of his erstwhile comrades paid him any heed. They had become indoctrinated in the habits of the village; the old life of the shallows had receded in their memories. Watching them stride past his prison, Ern found them increasingly apart from himself. They were lithe, slender, agile, like tall keen-featured lizards. He was heavier, with blunter features, a broader head; his skin was tougher and thicker, a darker gray. He was now almost as large as the men, though by no means so sinewy and quick: when need arose, they moved with mercurial rapidity.

Once or twice Ern, in a fury, attempted to break the bars of his booth, only to be prodded with a pole for his trouble, and he therefore desisted from this unprofitable exercise. He became fretful and bored. The booths to either side were now used only for copulation, an activity which Ern observed with dispassionate interest

The booth at last was opened. Ern rushed forth, hoping to surprise his captors and win free, but one man seized him, another looped a rope around his body. Without ceremony he was led from the village.

The men offered no hint of their intentions. Jogging along at a half-trot, they took Ern through the black brush in that direction known as "sea-left:" which was to say, with the sea on the left hand. The trail veered inland, rising over bare hummocks, dropping into dank swales, brimming with rank black dendrons.

Ahead loomed a great copse of umbrella trees, impressively tall, each stalk as thick as the body of a man, each billowing leaf large enough to envelope a half-dozen booths like that in which Ern had been imprisoned.

Someone had been at work. A number of the trees had been cut, the poles trimmed and neatly stacked, the leaves cut into rectangular sheets and draped over ropes. The racks supporting the poles had been built with meticulous accuracy, and Ern wondered who had done such precise work: certainly not the men of the village, whose construction even Ern found haphazard.

A path led away through the forest: a path straight as a string, of constant width, delineated by parallel lines of white stones: a technical achievement far beyond the capacity of the men, thought Ern.

The men now became furtive and uneasy. Ern tried to hang back, certain that whatever the men had in mind was not to his advantage, but willy-nilly he was jerked forward.

The path made an abrupt turn, marched up a swale between copses of black-brown cycads, turned out upon a field of soft white moss, at the center of which stood a large and splendid village. The men, pausing in the shadows, made contemptuous sounds, performed insulting acts-provoked, so Ern suspected, by envy, for the village across the meadow surpassed that of his captors as much as that village excelled the environment of the shallows. There were eight precisely spaced rows of huts, built of sawed planks, decorated or given symbolic import by elaborate designs of blue, maroon and black. At the sea-right and sea-left ends of the central avenue stood larger constructions with high-peaked roofs, shingled, like all the others, with slabs of biotite. Notably absent were disorder and refuse; this village, unlike the village of the single-crested men, was fastidiously neat. Behind the village rose the great bluff Ern had noticed on his exploration of the coast.

At the edge of the meadow stood a row of six stakes, and to the first of these the men tied Ern.

"This is the village of the 'Twos'," declared one of the men. "Folk such as yourself. Do not mention that we cut your scalp or affairs will go badly."

They moved back, taking cover under a bank of worm plants. Ern strained at his bonds, convinced that no matter what the eventuality, it could not be to his benefit

The villagers had taken note of Ern. Ten persons set forth across the meadow. In front came four splendid 'Twos," stepping carefully, with an exaggerated strutting gait, followed by six young One-girls, astoundingly urbane in gowns of wadded umbrella leaf. The girls had been disciplined; they no longer used their ordinary sinuous motion but walked in a studied simulation of the Two attitudes. Ern stared in fascination. The "Twos" appeared to be of his own sort, sturdier and heavier than the cleaver-headed "Ones."

The pair in the van apparently shared equal authority. They comported themselves with canonical dignity, and their garments-fringed shawls of black, brown and purple, boots of gray membrane with metal clips, metal filigree greaves- were formalized and elaborate. He on the stormward side wore a crest of glittering metal barbs; he on the darkward side a double row of tall black plumes. The Twos at their back seemed of somewhat lesser prestige. They wore caps of complicated folds and tucks and carried halberds three times their own length. At the rear walked the One-girls, carrying parcels. Ern saw them to be members of his own class, part of the group which had been led away after the selection ritual. Their skin had been stained dark red and yellow; they wore dull yellow caps, yellow shawls, yellow sandals, and walked with the mincing delicate rigidity in which they had been schooled.

The foremost Twos, halting at either side of Ern, examined him with portentous gravity. The halberdiers fixed him with a minatory stare. The girls posed in self-conscious attitudes. The Twos squinted in puzzlement at the double ridges of scar tissue along his scalp. They arrived at a dubious consensus: "He appears sound, if somewhat gross of body and oddly ridged."

One of the halberdiers, propping his weapon against a stake, unbound Ern, who stood tentatively half of a mind to take to his heels. The Two wearing the crest of metal barbs inquired,

"Do you speak?"

"Yes."

"You must say "Yes, Preceptor of the Storm Dazzle'; such is the form."

Ern found the admonition puzzling, but no more so than the other attributes of the Twos. His best interests, so he decided lay in cautious cooperation. The Twos, while arbitrary and capricious, apparently did not intend him harm. The girls arranged the parcels beside the stake: payment, so it seemed, to the One-men.

"Come then," commanded he of the black plumes. "Watch your feet, walk correctly! Do not swing your arms; you are a Two, an important individual; you must act appropriately, according to the Way."

"Yes, Preceptor of the Storm Dazzle."

"You will address me as 'Preceptor of the Dark Chill'!"

Confused and apprehensive, Ern was marched across the meadow of pale moss. The trail, demarcated now by lines of black stones, bestrewn with black gravel, and glistening in the damp, exactly bisected the meadow, which was lined to either side by tall black-brown fan-trees. First walked the preceptors, then Ern, then the halberdiers and finally the six One-girls.

The trail connected with the central avenue of the village, which opened at the center into a square plaza paved with squares of wood. To the darkward side of the plaza stood a tall black tower supporting a set of peculiar black objects; on the stormward side an identical white tower presented lightning symbols. Across and set back in a widening of the avenue was a long two-story hall, to which Ern was conducted and lodged in a cubicle.

A third pair of Twos, of rank higher than the halberdiers but lower than the Preceptors-the 'Pedagogue of the Storm Dazzle' and the 'Pedagogue of the Dark Chill'-took Ern in charge. He was washed, anointed with oil, and again the weals along his scalp received a puzzled inspection. Ern began to suspect that the Ones had used duplicity; that, in order to sell him to the Twos, they had simulated double ridges across his scalp; and that, after all, he was merely a peculiar variety of One. It was indeed a fact that his sexual parts resembled those of the One-men rather than the epicene, or perhaps atrophied, organs of the Twos. The suspicion made him more uneasy than ever, and he was relieved when the pedagogues brought him a cap, half of silver scales, half of glossy black bird-fiber, which covered his scalp, and a shawl hanging across his chest and belted at the waist, which concealed his sex organs.

As with every other aspect and activity of the Two-village there were niceties of usage in regard to the cap. "The Way requires that in low-ceremonial activity, you must stand with black toward Night and silver toward Chaos. If a ritual or other urgency impedes, reverse your cap."

This was the simplest and least complicated of the decorums to be observed.

The Pedagogues found much to criticize in Ern's deportment.

"You are somewhat more crude and gross than the usual cadet," remarked the Pedagogue of Storm Dazzle. "The injury to your head has affected your condition."

"You will be carefully schooled," the Pedagogue of Dark Chill told him. "As of this moment, consider yourself a mental void."

A dozen other young Twos, including four from Ern's class, were undergoing tutelage. As instruction was on an individual basis, Ern saw little of them. He studied diligently and assimilated knowledge with a facility which won him grudging compliments. When he seemed proficient in primary methods, he was introduced to cosmology and religion. "We inhabit the Narrow Land," declared the Pedagogue of Storm Dazzle. "It extends forever! How can we assert this with such confidence? Because we know that the opposing principles of Storm and Dark Chill, being divine, are infinite. Therefore, the Narrow Land, the region of confrontation, likewise is infinite."

Ern ventured a question. "What exists behind the wall of storm?"

"There is no 'behind.' STORM-CHAOS is, and dazzles the dark with his lightnings. This is the masculine principle. DARK-CHILL, the female principle, is. She accepts the rage and fire and quells it. We Twos partake of each, we are at equilibrium, and hence excellent."

Ern broached a perplexing topic: "The Two-women do not produce eggs?"

"There are neither Two-women nor Two-men! We are brought into being by dual-divine intervention, when a pair of eggs in a One-woman's clutch are put down in juxtaposition. Through alternation, these are always male and female and so yield a double individual, neutral and dispassionate, symbolized by the paired cranial ridges. One-men and One-women are incomplete, forever driven by the urge to couple; only fusion yields the true Two."

It was evident to Ern that questioning disturbed the Pedagogues, so he desisted from further interrogation, not wishing to call attention to his unusual attributes. During instruction he had sensibly increased in size. The combs of maturity were growing up over his scalp; his sexual organs had developed noticeably. Both, luckily, were concealed, by cap and shawl. In some fashion he was different from other Twos, and the Pedagogues, should they discover this fact, would feel dismay and confusion, at the very least

Other matters troubled Ern: namely the impulses aroused within himself by the slave One-girls. Such tendencies were defined to be ignoble! This was no way for a Two to act! The Pedagogues would be horrified to learn of his leanings. But if he were not a Two-what was he?

Ern tried to quell his hot blood by extreme diligence. He began to study the Two technology, which like every other aspect of Two society was rationalized in terms of formal dogma. He learned the methods of collecting bog iron, of smelting, casting, forging, hardening and tempering. Occasionally he wondered how the skills had first been evolved, inasmuch as empiricism, as a mode of thought, was antithetical to the Dual Way.

Ern thoughtlessly touched upon the subject during a recitation. Both Pedagogues were present. The Pedagogue of Storm-Dazzle replied, somewhat tartly, that all knowledge was a dispensation of the two Basic Principles.

"In any event," stated the Pedagogue of Dark-Chill, "the matter is irrelevant What is, is, and by this token is optimum."

"Indeed," remarked the Pedagogue of Storm-Dazzle, "the very fact that you have formed this inquiry betrays a disorganized mind, more typical of a 'Freak' than a Two."

"What is a 'Freak'?" asked Ern.

The Pedagogue of Dark-Chill made a stern gesture. "Once again your mentality tends to random association and discontent with authority!"

"Respectfully, Pedagogue of Dark-Chill, I wish only to learn the nature of 'wrong,' so that I may know its distinction from right'"

"It suffices that you imbue yourself with 'right,' with no reference whatever to 'wrong'!"

With this viewpoint Ern was forced to be content The Pedagogues, leaving the chamber, glanced back at him. Ern heard a fragment of their muttered conversation. "-surprising perversity-" "-but for the evidence of the cranial ridges-"

In perturbation Ern walked back and forth across his cubicle. He was different from the other cadets: so much was clear. At the refectory, where the cadets were brought nutriment by One-girls, Ern covertly scrutinized his fellows. While only little less massive than himself, they seemed differently proportioned, almost cylindrical, with features and protrusions less prominent If he were different, what kind of person was he? A "Freak'? What was a 'Freak'? A masculine Two? Ern was inclined to credit this theory, for it explained his interest in the One-girls, and he turned to watch them gliding back and forth with trays. In spite of their One-ness, they were undeniably appealing...

Thoughtfully Ern returned to his cubicle. In due course a One-girl came past Ern summoned her into the cubicle and made his wishes known. She showed surprise and uneasiness, though no great disinclination. "You are supposed to be neutral; what will everyone think?"

"Nothing whatever, if they are unaware of the situation."

"True. But is the matter feasible? I am One and you are a Two-"

"The matter may or may not be feasible; how will the

truth be known unless it is attempted, orthodoxy notwithstanding?"

"Well, then, as you will..."

A monitor looked into the cubicle, to stare dumbfounded. "What goes on here?" He looked more closely, then tumbled backward into the compound to shout: "A Freak, a Freak Here among us, a Freak! To arms, kill the Freak!"

Ern thrust the girl outside. "Mingle with the others, deny everything. I now feel that I must leave." He ran out upon the central avenue, looked up and down. The halberdiers, informed of emergency, were arraying themselves in formally appropriate gear. Ern took advantage of the delay to run from the village. In pursuit came the Twos, calling threats and ritual abuse. The sea-right path toward the pole forest and the swamp was closed to him; Ern fled sea-left, toward the great bluff. Dodging among fan trees and banks of wormweed, finally hiding under a bank of fungus, he gained a respite while the halberdiers raced past

Emerging from his covert, Ern stood uncertainly, wondering which way to go. Freak or not the Twos had exhibited what seemed an irrational antagonism. Why had they attacked him? He had performed no damage, perpetrated no wilful deception. The fault lay with the Ones. In order to deceive the Twos they had scarred Ern's head-a situation for which Ern could hardly be held accountable. Bewildered and depressed, Ern started toward the shore, where at least he could find food. Crossing a peat bog he was sighted by the halberdiers, who instantly set up the outcry: "Freakl Freak! Freakl" And again Ern was forced to run for his life, up through a forest of mingled cycads and pole-trees, toward the great bluff which now loomed ahead.

A massive stone wall barred his way: a construction obviously of great age, overgrown with black and brown lichen. Ern ran staggering and wobbling along the wall, with the halberdiers close upon him, still screaming: "Freak! Freak! Freak!"

A gap appeared in the wall. Ern jumped through to the opposite side, ducked behind a clump of feather-bush. The halberdiers stopped short in front of the gap, their cries stilled, and now they seemed to be engaged in controversy.

Ern waited despondently for discovery and death, since the bush offered scant concealment. One of the halberdiers at last ventured gingerly through the wall, only to give a startled grunt and jump back.

There were receding footsteps, then silence. Ern crawled cautiously from his hiding place, and went to peer through the gap. The Twos had departed. Peculiar, thought Ern. They must have known he was close at hand ... He turned. Ten paces distant the largest man he had yet seen leaned on a sword, inspecting him with a brooding gaze. The man was almost twice the size of the largest Two. He wore a dull brown smock of soft leather, a pair of shining metal wristbands. His skin was a heavy rugose gray, tough as horn; at the joints of his arms and legs were bony juts, ridges and buttresses, which gave him the semblance of enormous power. His skull was broad, heavy, harshly indented and ridged; his eyes were blazing crystals in deep shrouded sockets. Along his scalp ran three serrated ridges. In addition to his sword, he carried, slung over his shoulder, a peculiar metal device with a long nozzle. He advanced a slow step. Ern swayed back, but for some reason beyond his own knowing was dissuaded from taking to his heels.

The man spoke, in a hoarse voice: "Why do they hunt you?"

Ern took courage from the fact that the man had not killed him out of hand. "They called me 'Freak' and drove me forth."

" 'Freak" The Three considered Ern's scalp. "You are a Two."

"The Ones cut my head to make scars, then sold me to the Twos." Ern felt the weals. On either side and at the center, almost as prominent as the scars, were the crests of an adult, three in number. They were growing apace; even had he not compromised himself, the Twos must have found him out on the first occasion he removed his cap. He said humbly: "It appears that I am a 'Freak' like yourself."

The Three made a brusque sound. "Come with me."

They walked back through the grove, to a path which slanted up the bluff, then swung to the side and entered a valley. Beside a pond rose a great stone hall flanked by two towers with steep conical roofs-in spite of age and dilapidation a structure to stagger Ern's imagination.

By a timber portal they entered a courtyard which seemed to Ern a place of unparalleled charm. At the far end boulders and a great overhanging slab created the effect of a grotto. Within were trickling water, growths of feathery black moss, pale cycads, a settle padded with woven reed and sphagnum. The open area was a swamp-garden, exhaling the odors of reed, water-soaked vegetation, resinous wood. Remarkable, thought Ern, as well as enchanting: neither the Ones nor the Twos contrived except for an immediate purpose.

The Three took Ern across the court into a stone chamber, also half-open to the refreshing drizzle, carpeted with packed sphagnum. Under the shelter of the ceiling were the appurtenances of the Three's existence: crocks and bins, a table, a cabinet, tools and implements. The Three pointed to a bench, "Sit." Ern gingerly obeyed. "You are hungry?"

"No."

"How was your imposture discovered?" Ern related the circumstances which led to his exposure. The Three showed no disapproval, which gave Ern encouragement. "I had long suspected that I was something other than a Two'."

"You are obviously a Three," said his host. "Unlike the neuter Twos, Threes are notably masculine, which explains your inclinations for the One-woman. Unluckily there are no Three females." He looked at Ern. "They did not tell how you were born?" "I am the fusion of One-eggs."

True. The One-woman lays eggs of alternate sex,in clutches of three. The pattern is male-female-male; such is the nature of her organism. A sheath forms on the interior of her ovipositor; as the eggs emerge, a sphincter closes, to encapsulate the eggs. If she is careless, she will fail to separate the eggs and will put down a clutch with two eggs in contact The male breaks into the female shell; there is fusion; a Two is hatched. At the rarest of intervals three eggs are so joined. One male fuses with the female, then, so augmented, he breaks into the final egg and assimilates the other male. The result is a male Three."

Ern recalled his first memory. "I was alone. I broke into the male-female shell. We fought at length."

The Three reflected for a lengthy period. Ern wondered if he had committed an annoyance. Finally the Three said, "I am named Mazar the Final. Now that you are here I can be known as 'the Final' no longer. I am accustomed to solitude; I have become old and severe; you may find me poor company. If such is the case, you are free to pursue existence elsewhere. If you choose to stay, I will teach you what I know, which is perhaps pointless activity, since the Twos will presently come in a great army to kill us both."

"I will stay," said Ern. "As of now I know only the ceremonies of the Twos, which I may never put to use. Are there no other Threes?"

"The Twos have killed all-all but Mazar the Final."

"And Ern."

"And now Ern."

"What of sea-left and sea-right, beyond the rivers, along other shores? Are there no more men?"

"Who knows? The Wall of Storm confronts the Wall of Dark; the Narrow Land extends-how far? Who knows? If to infinity then all possibilities must be realized; then there are other Ones, Twos and Threes. If the Narrow Land terminates at Chaos, then we may be alone."

"I have traveled sea-right and sea-left until wide rivers stopped me," said Ern. "The Narrow Land continued without any sign of coming to an end. I believe that it must extend to infinity; in fact it is hard to conceive of a different situation."

"Perhaps, perhaps," said Mazar gruffly. "Come." He conducted Ern about the hall, through workshops and repositories, chambers crowded with mementoes, trophies and nameless paraphernalia.

"Who used these marvelous objects? Were there many Threes?"

"At one tune there were many," intoned Mazar, in a voice as hoarse and dreary as the sound of wind. "It was so long ago that I cannot put words to the thought. I am the last"

"Why were there so many then and so few now?"

"It is a melancholy tale. A One-tribe lived along the shore, with customs different from the Ones of the swamp. They were a gentle people, and they were ruled by a Three who had been born by accident. He was Mena the Origin, and he caused the women to produce clutches with the eggs purposely joined, so that a large number of Threes came into being. It was a great era. We were dissatisfied with the harsh life of the Ones, the rigid life of the Twos; we created a new existence. We learned the use of iron and steel, we built this hall and many more; the Ones and Twos both learned from us and profited."

"Why did they war upon you?"

"By our freedom we incurred their fear. We set out to explore the Narrow Land. We traveled many leagues sea-left and sea-right. An expedition penetrated the Dark-Chill to a wilderness of ice, so dark that the explorers walked with torches. We built a raft and sent it to drift under the Wall of Storm. There were three Ones aboard. The raft was tethered with a long cable; when we pulled it back the Ones had been riven by dazzle and were dead. By these acts we infuriated the Two preceptors. They declared us impious and marshaled the Ones of the swamp. They massacred the Ones of the shore, then they made war on the Threes. Ambush, poison, pitfall: they showed no mercy. We killed Twos; there were always more Twos, but never more Threes.

"I could tell long tales of the war, how each of my comrades met death. Of them all, I am the last. I never go beyond the wall and the Twos are not anxious to attack me, for they fear my fire gun. But enough for now. Go where you will, except beyond the wall, where the Twos are dangerous. There is food in the bins; you may rest in the moss. Reflect upon what you see; and when you have questions, I will answer."

Mazar went his way. Ern refreshed himself in the falling water of the grotto, ate from the bins, then walked upon the gray meadow to consider what he had learned. Here Mazar, becoming curious, discovered him. "Well then," asked Mazar, "and what do you think now?"

"I understand many things which have puzzled me," said Ern. "Also I regret leaving the One-girl, who showed a cooperative disposition."

"This varies according to the individual," said Mazar. "In the olden times we employed many such as domestics, though their mental capacity is not great"

"If there were Three-women, would they not produce eggs and eventually Three-children?"

Mazar made a brusque gesture. "There are no Three-women; there have never been three women. The process allows none to form."

"What if the process were controlled?"

"Bah. The ovulation of One-women is not susceptible to our control."

"Long ago," said Ern, "I watched a One-woman preparing her nest. She laid in clutches of three. If sufficient eggs were collected, rearranged and joined, in some cases the female principle would dominate."

"This is an unorthodox proposal," said Mazar, "and to my knowledge has never been tried. It cannot be feasible ...

Such women might not be fertile. Or they might be freaks indeed."

"We are a product of the process," Ern argued. "Because there are two male eggs to the clutch, we are masculine. If there were two female and one male, or three female, why should not the result be female? As for fertility, we have no knowledge until the matter is put to test"

"The process is unthinkable!" roared Mazar, drawing himself erect, crests extended. "I will hear no more!"

Dazed by the fury of the old Three's response, Ern stood limp. Slowly he turned and started to walk sea-right, toward the wall.

"Where are you going?" Mazar called after him.

"To the swamps."

"And what will you do there?"

"I will find eggs and try to help a Three-woman into being."

Mazar glared and Ern prepared to flee for his life. Then Mazar said, "If your scheme is sound, all my comrades are dead in vain. Existence becomes a mockery."

"Perhaps nothing will come of the notion," said Ern. "If so, nothing is different."

"The venture is dangerous," grumbled Mazar. "The Twos will be alert."

"I will go down to the shore and swim to the swamp; they will never notice me. In any case, I have no better use to which to put my life."

"Go then," said Mazar in his hoarsest voice. "I am old and without enterprise. Perhaps our race may yet be regenerated. Go then, take care and return safely. You and I are the only Threes alive."

Mazar patrolled the wall. At times he ventured out into the pole-forest, listening, peering down toward the Two village. Ern had been gone a long time, or so it seemed. At last: far-off alarms, the cry of "Freak! Freak! Freak!"

Recklessly, three crests furiously erect, Mazar plunged toward the sound. Ern appeared through the trees, haggard, streaked with mud, carrying a rush-basket. In frantic pursuit came Two halberdiers and somewhat to the side a band of painted One-men. "This way!" roared Mazar. "To the walll" He brought forth his fire-gun. The halberdiers, in a frenzy, ignored the threat. Ern tottered past him; Mazar pointed the projector, pulled the trigger: flame enveloped four of the halberdiers who ran thrashing and flailing through the forest The others halted. Mazar and Ern retreated to the wall, passed through the gap. The halberdiers, excited to rashness, leapt after them. Mazar swung his sword; one of the Twos lost his head. The others retreated in panic, keening in horror at so much death.

Ern slumped upon the ground, cradling the eggs upon his body.

"How many?" demanded Mazar.

"I found two nests. I took three clutches from each."

"Each nest is separate and each clutch as well? Eggs from different nests may not fuse."

"Each is separate."

Mazar carried the corpse to the gap in the wall, flung it forth, then threw the head at the skulking One-men. None came to challenge him.

Once more in the hall Mazar arranged the eggs on a stone settle. He made a sound of satisfaction. "In each clutch are two round eggs and one oval: male and female; and we need not guess at the combinations." He reflected a moment. "Two males and a female produce the masculine Three; two females and a male should exert an equal influence in the opposite direction ... There will necessarily be an excess of male eggs. They will yield two masculine Threes; possibly more, if three male eggs are able to fuse." He made a thoughtful sound. "It is a temptation to attempt the fusion of four eggs."

"In this case I would urge caution," suggested Ern.

Mazar drew back in surprise and displeasure. "Is your wisdom so much more profound than mine?"

Ern made a polite gesture of self-effacement, one of the graces learned at the Two school. "I was born on the shallows, among the water-babies. Our great enemy was the ogre who lived in a slough. While I searched for eggs, I saw him again. He is larger than you and I together; his limbs are-gross; his head is malformed and hung over with red wattles. Upon his head stand four crests."

Mazar was silent. He said at last: "We are Threes. Best that we produce other Threes. Well then, to work."

The eggs lay in the cool mud, three paces from the water of the pond.

"Now to wait," said Mazar. 'To wait and wonder."

I will help them survive," said Ern. "I will bring them food and keep them safe. And if they are female .."

There will be two females," declared Mazar. "Of this am certain. I am old-but, well, we shall see."

The Masquerade on Dicantropus

Two puzzles dominated the life of Jim Root. The first, the pyramid out in the desert, tickled and prodded his curiosity, while the second, the problem of getting along with his wife, kept him keyed to a high pitch of anxiety and apprehension. At the moment the problem had crowded the mystery of the pyramid into a lost alley of his brain.

Eyeing his wife uneasily, Root decided that she was in for another of her fits. The symptoms were familiar-a jerking over of the pages of an old magazine, her tense back and bolt-upright posture, her pointed silence, the compression at the corners of her mouth.

With no preliminary motion she threw the magazine across the room, jumped to her feet. She walked to the doorway, stood looking out across the plain, fingers tapping on the sill. Root heard her voice, low, as if not meant for him to hear.

"Another day of this and I'll lose what little's left of my mind."

Root approached warily. If he could be compared to a Labrador retriever, then his wife was a black panther-a woman tall and well covered with sumptuous flesh. She had black flowing hair and black flashing eyes. She lacquered her fingernails and wore black lounge pajamas even on desiccated, deserted, inhospitable Dicantropus.

"Now, dear," said Root, "take it easy. Certainly it's not as bad as all that."

She whirled and Root was surprised by the intensity in her eyes. "It's not bad, you say? Very well for you to talk-you don't care for anything human to begin with. I'm sick of it Do you hear? I want to go back to Earth! I never want to see another planet in my whole life. I never want to hear the word archaeology, I never want to see a rock or a bone or a microscope-"

She flung a wild gesture around the room that included a number of rocks, bones, microscopes, as well as books, specimens in bottles, photographic equipment, a number of native artifacts.

Root tried to soothe her with logic. "Very few people are privileged to live on an outside planet, dear." t

"They're in their right minds. If I'd known what it was like, I'd never have come out here." Her voice dropped once more. "Same old dirt every day, same stinking natives, same vile canned food, nobody to talk to-" 1

Root uncertainly picked up and laid down his pipe. "Lie down, dear," he said with unconvincing confidence. "Take a nap! Things will look different when you wake up."

Stabbing him with a look, she turned and strode out into the blue-white glare of the sun. Root followed more slowly, bringing Barbara's sun-helmet and adjusting his own. Automatically he cocked an eye up the antenna, the reason for the station and his own presence, Dicantropus being a relay point for ULR messages between Clave II and Polaris. The antenna stood as usual, polished metal tubing four hundred feet high.

Barbara halted by the shore of the lake, a brackish pond in the neck of an old volcano, one of the few natural bodies of water on the planet. Root silently joined her, handed her her sun-helmet. She jammed it on her head, walked away.

Root shrugged, watched her as she circled the pond to a clump of feather-fronded cycads. She flung herself down, relaxed into a sulky lassitude, her back to a big gray-green trunk, and seemed intent on the antics of the natives-owlish leather-gray little creatures popping back and forth into holes in their mound.

This was a hillock a quarter-mile long, covered with spine-scrub and a rusty black creeper. With one exception it was the only eminence as far as the eye could reach, horizon to horizon, across the baked helpless expanse of the desert

The exception was the stepped pyramid, the mystery of which irked Root. It was built of massive granite blocks, set without mortar but cut so carefully that hardly a crack could be seen. Early on his arrival Root had climbed all over the pyramid, unsuccessfully seeking entrance.

When finally he brought out his atomite torch to melt a hole in the granite a sudden swarm of natives pushed him back and in the pidgin of Dicantropus gave him to understand that entrance was forbidden. Root desisted with reluctance, and had been consumed by curiosity ever since ...

Who had built the pyramid? In style it resembled the ziggurats of ancient Assyria. The granite had been set with a skill unknown, so far as Root could see, to the natives. But if not the natives-who? A thousand times Root had chased the question through his brain. Were the natives debased relics of a once-civilized race? If so, why were there no other ruins? And what was the purpose of the pyramid? A temple? A mausoleum? A treasure-house? Perhaps it was entered from below by a tunnel.

As Root stood on the shore of the lake, looking across the desert, the questions flicked automatically through his mind though without their usual pungency. At the moment the problem of soothing his wife lay heavy on his mind. He debated a few moments whether or not to join her; perhaps she had cooled off and might like some company. He circled the pond and stood looking down at her glossy black hair.

"I came over here to be alone," she said without accent and the indifference chilled him more than an insult.

"I thought-that maybe you might like to talk," said Root. "I'm very sorry, Barbara, that you're unhappy."

Still she said nothing, sitting with her head pressed back against the tree trunk.

"We'll go home on the next supply ship," Root said. "Let's see, there should be one-"

"Three months and three days," said Barbara flatly.

Root shifted his weight, watched her from the corner of his eye. This was a new manifestation. Tears, recriminations, anger-there had been plenty of these before.

"We'll try to keep amused till then," he said desperately. "Let's think up some games to play. Maybe badminton-or we could do more swimming."

Barbara snorted in sharp sarcastic laughter. "With things like that popping up around you?" She gestured to one of the Dicantrops who had lazily paddled close. She narrowed her eyes, leaned forward. "What's that he's got around his neck?"

Root peered. "Looks like a diamond necklace more than anything else."

"My Lord!" whispered Barbara.

Root walked down to the water's edge. "Hey, boy!" The Dicantrop turned his great velvety eyes in their sockets. "Come here!"

Barbara joined him as the native paddled close.

"Let's see what you've got there," said Root, leaning to the necklace.

"Why, those are beautiful breathed his wife.

Root chewed his lip thoughtfully. "They certainly look like diamonds. The setting might be platinum or indium. Hey, boy, where did you get these?"

The Dicantrop paddled backward. "We find."

"Where?"

The Dicantrop blew froth from his breath-holes but it seemed to Root as if his eyes had glanced momentarily toward the pyramid.

"You find in big pile of rock?"

"No," said the native and sank below the surface.

Barbara returned to her seat by the tree, frowned at the water. Root joined her. For a moment there was silence. Then Barbara said, "That pyramid must be full of things like that!"

Root made a deprecatory noise in his throat. "Oh-I suppose it's possible."

"Why don't you go out and see?"

"I'd like to-but you know it would make trouble."

"You could go out at night."

"No," said Root uncomfortably. "It's really not right. If they want to keep the thing closed up and secret it's their business. After all it belongs to them."

"How do you know it does?" his wife insisted, with a hard and sharp directness. "They didn't build it and probably never put those diamonds there." Scorn crept into her voice. "Are you afraid?"

"Yes," said Root I'm afraid. There's an awful lot of them and only two of us. That's one objection. But the other, most important-"

Barbara let herself slump back against the trunk. "I don't want to hear it"

Root, now angry himself, said nothing for a minute. Then, thinking of the three months and three days till the arrival of the supply ship, he said, "It's no use our being disagreeable. It just makes it harder on both of us, I made a mistake bringing you out here and I'm sorry. I thought you'd enjoy the experience, just the two of us alone on a strange planet-"

Barbara was not listening to him. Her mind was elsewhere.

"Barbara!"

"Shh!" she snapped. "Be still! Listen!" He jerked his head up. The air vibrated with a far thrum-m-m-m. Root sprang out into the sunlight, scanned the sky. The sound grew louder. There was no question about it, a ship was dropping down from space.

Root ran into the station, flipped open the communicator-but there were no signals coming in. He returned to the door and watched as the ship sank down to a bumpy rough landing two hundred yards from the station.

It was a small ship, the type rich men sometimes used as private yachts, but old and battered. It sat in a quiver of hot air, its tubes creaking and hissing as they cooled. Root approached.

The dogs on the port began to turn, the port swung open. A man stood in the opening. For a moment he teetered on loose legs, then fell headlong.

Root, springing forward, caught him before he struck ground. "Barbara!" Root called. His wife approached. "Take his feet we'll carry him inside. He's sick." They laid him on the couch and his eyes opened halfway. "What's the trouble?" asked Root "Where do you feel sick?"

"My legs are like ice," husked the man. "My shoulders ache. I can't breathe."

"Wait till I look in the book," muttered Root. He pulled out the Official Spaceman's Self-help Guide, traced down the symptoms. He looked across to the sick man. "You been anywhere near Alphard?" "Just came from there," panted the man. "Looks like you got a dose of Lyma's Virus. A shot of mycosetin should fix you up, according to the book."

He inserted an ampoule into the hypo-spray, pressed the tip to his patient's arm, pushed the plunger home. "That should do it-according to the Guide."

"Thanks," said his patient. "I feel better already." He closed his eyes. Root stood up, glanced at Barbara. She was scrutinizing the man with a peculiar calculation. Root looked down again, seeing the man for the first time. He was young, perhaps thirty, thin but strong with a tight, nervous muscularity. His face was lean, almost gaunt, his skin very bronzed. He had short black hair, heavy black eyebrows, a long jaw, a thin high nose.

Root turned away. Glancing at his wife he foresaw the future with a sick certainty.

He washed out the hypospray, returned the Guide to the rack, all with a sudden self-conscious awkwardness. When he turned around, Barbara was staring at him with wide thoughtful eyes. Root slowly left the room.

A day later Marville Landry was on his feet and when he had shaved and changed his clothes there was no sign of the illness. He was by profession a mining engineer, so he revealed to Root, en route to a contract on Thuban XIV.

The virus had struck swiftly and only by luck had he noticed the proximity of Dicantropus on his charts. Rapidly weakening, he had been forced to decelerate so swiftly and land so uncertainly that he feared his fuel was low. And indeed, when they went out to check, they found only enough fuel to throw the ship a hundred feet into the air.

Landry shook his head ruefully. "And there's a ten-million-munit contract waiting for me on Thuban Fourteen."

Said Root dismally, "The supply packets' due in three months."

Landry winced. "Three months-in this hell-hole? That's murder." They returned to the station. "How do you stand it here?

Barbara heard him. "We don't. I've been on the verge of hysterics every minute the last six months. Jim"-she made a wry grimace toward her husband-"he's got his bones and rocks and the antenna. He's not too much company." "Maybe I can help out," Landry offered airily. "Maybe," she said with a cool blank glance at Root. Presently she left the room, walking more gracefully now, with an air of mysterious gaiety.

Dinner that evening was a gala event. As soon as the sun took its blue glare past the horizon Barbara and Landry carried a table down to the lake and there they set it with all the splendor the station could afford. With no word to Root she pulled the cork on the gallon of brandy he had been nursing for a year and served generous highballs with canned lime-juice, Maraschino cherries and ice.

For a space, with the candles glowing and evoking lambent ghosts in the highballs, even Root was gay. The air was wonderfully cool and the sands of the desert spread white and clean as damask out into the dimness. So they feasted on canned fowl and mushrooms and frozen fruit and drank deep of Root's brandy, and across the pond the natives watched from the dark.

And presently, while Root grew sleepy and dull, Landry became gay, and Barbara sparkled-the complete hostess, charming, witty and the Dicantropus night tinkled and throbbed with her laughter. She and Landry toasted each other and exchanged laughing comments at Root's expense- who now sat slumping, stupid, half-asleep. Finally he lurched to his feet and stumbled off to the station.

On the table by the lake the candles burnt low. Barbara poured more brandy. Their voices became murmurs and at last the candles guttered.

In spite of any human will to hold time in blessed darkness, morning came and brought a day of silence and averted eyes. Then other days and nights succeeded each other and time proceeded as usual. And there was now little pretense at the station.

Barbara frankly avoided Root and when she had occasion to speak her voice was one of covert amusement. Landry, secure, confident, aquiline, had a trick of sitting back and looking from one to the other as if inwardly chuckling over the whole episode. Root preserved a studied calm and spoke in a subdued tone which conveyed no meaning other than the sense of his words.

There were a few minor clashes. Entering the bathroom one morning Root found Landry shaving with his razor. Without heat Root took the shaver out of Landry's hand.

For an instant Landry stared blankly, then wrenched his mouth into the beginnings of a snarl.

Root smiled almost sadly. "Don't get me wrong, Landry. There's a difference between a razor and a woman. The razor is mine. A human being can't be owned. Leave my personal property alone." Landry's eyebrows rose. "Man, you're crazy." He turned away. "Heat's got you."

The days went past and now they were unchanging as before but unchanging with a new leaden tension. Words became even fewer and dislike hung like tattered tinsel. Every motion, every line of the body, became a detestable sight, an evil which the other flaunted deliberately.

Root burrowed almost desperately into his rocks and bones, peered through his microscope, made a thousand measurements, a thousand notes. Landry and Barbara fell into the habit of taking long walks in the evening, usually out to the pyramid, then slowly back across the quiet cool sand.

The mystery of the pyramid suddenly fascinated Landry and he even questioned Root

"I've no idea," said Root. "Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that the natives don't want anyone trying to get into it.

"Mph," said Landry, gazing across the desert. "No telling what's inside. Barbara said one of the natives was wearing a diamond necklace worth thousands."

"I suppose anything's possible," said Root. He had noticed the acquisitive twitch to Landry's mouth, the hook of the fingers. "You'd better not get any ideas. I don't want any trouble with the natives. Remember that, Landry."

Landry asked with seeming mildness, "Do you have any authority over that pyramid?"

"No," said Root shortly. "None whatever."

"It's not-yours?" Landry sardonically accented the word and Root remembered the incident of the shaver.

"No."

Then," said Landry, rising, "mind your own business."

He left the room.

During the day Root noticed Landry and Barbara deep in conversation and he saw Landry rummaging through his ship. At dinner no single word was spoken.

As usual, when the afterglow had died to a cool blue glimmer, Barbara and Landry strolled off into the desert. But tonight Root watched after them and he noticed a pack on Landry's shoulders and Barbara seemed to be carrying a handbag.

He paced back and forth, puffing furiously at his pipe. Landry was right-it was none of his business. If there were profit, he wanted none of it. And if there were danger, it would strike only those who provoked it. Or would it? Would he, Root, be automatically involved because of his association with Landry and Barbara? To the Dicantrops, a man was a man, and if one man needed punishment, all men did likewise.

Would there be killing? Root puffed at his pipe, chewed the stem, blew smoke out in gusts between his teeth. In a way he was responsible for Barbara's safety. He had taken her from a sheltered life on Earth. He shook his head, put down his pipe, went to the drawer where he kept his gun. It was gone.

Root looked vacantly across the room. Landry had it. No telling how long since he'd taken it. Root went to the kitchen, found a meat-axe, tucked it inside his jumper, set out across the desert.

He made a wide circle in order to approach the pyramid from behind. The air was quiet and dark and cool as water in an old well. The crisp sand sounded faintly under his feet. Above him spread the sky and the sprinkle of the thousand stars. Somewhere up there was the Sun and old Earth.

The pyramid loomed suddenly large and now he saw a glow, heard the muffled clinking of tools. He approached quietly, halted several hundred feet out in the darkness, stood watching, alert to all sounds.

Landry's atomite torch ate at the granite. As he cut, Barbara hooked the detached chunks out into the sand. From time to time Landry stood back, sweating and gasping from radiated heat.

A foot he cut into the granite, two feet, three feet, and Root heard the excited murmur of voices. They were through, into empty space. Careless of watching behind them they sidled through the hole they had cut. Root, more wary, listened, strove to pierce the darkness... Nothing.

He sprang forward, hastened to the hole, peered within. The yellow gleam of Landry's torch swept past his eyes. He crept into the hole, pushed his head out into emptiness. The air was cold, smelled of dust and damp rock.

Landry and Barbara stood fifty feet away. In the desultory flash of the lamp Root saw stone walls and a stone floor. The pyramid appeared to be an empty shell. Why then were the natives so particular? He heard Landry's voice, edged with bitterness.

"Not a damn thing, not even a mummy for your husband to gloat over."

Root could sense Barbara shuddering. "Let's go. It gives me the shivers. It's like a dungeon."

"Just a minute, we might as well make sure ... Hm." He was playing the light on the walls. "That's peculiar."

"What's peculiar?"

"It looks like the stone was sliced with a torch. Notice how it's fused here on the inside..."

Root squinted, trying to see. "Strange," he heard Land mutter. "Outside it's chipped, inside it's cut by a torch, doesn't look so very old here inside, either."

"The air would preserve it," suggested Barbara dubiously.

"I suppose so-still, old places look old. There's dust and a kind of dullness. This looks raw."

"I don't understand how that could be."

"I don't either. There's something funny somewhere."

Root stiffened. Sound from without? Shuffle of splay feet in the sand-he started to back out. Something pushed him, he sprawled forward, fell. The bright eye of Landry's torch stared in his direction. "What's that?" came a hard voice. "Who's there?"

Root looked over his shoulder. The light passed over him, struck a dozen gray bony forms. They stood quietly just inside the hole, their eyes like balls of black plush.

Root gained his feet "Hah" cried Landry. "So you're here too."

"Not because I want to be," returned Root grimly.

Landry edged slowly forward, keeping his light on the Dicantrops. He asked Root sharply, "Are these lads dangerous?"

Root appraised the natives. "I don't know."

"Stay still," said one of these in the front rank. "Stay still." His voice was a deep croak.

"Stay still, hell exclaimed Landry. "We're leaving. There's nothing here I want. Get out of the way." He stepped forward.

"Stay still... We kill..."

Landry paused.

"What's the trouble now?" interposed Root anxiously. "Surely there's no harm in looking. There's nothing here."

"That is why we kill. Nothing here, now you know. Now you look other place. When you think this place important, then you not look other place. We kill, new man come, he think this place important"

Landry muttered. "Do you get what he's driving at?"

Root said slowly, "I don't know for sure." He addressed the Dicantrop. "We don't care about your secrets. You've no reason to hide things from us."

The native jerked his head. "Then why do you come here? You look for secrets."

Barbara's voice came from behind. "What is your secret? Diamonds?"

The native jerked his head again. Amusement? Anger? His emotions, unearthly, could be matched by no earthly words. "Diamonds are nothing-rocks."

"I'd like a carload," Landry muttered under his breath.

"Now look here," said Root persuasively. "You let us out and we won't pry into any of your secrets. It was wrong of us to break in and I'm sorry it happened. We'll repair the damage-"

The Dicantrop made a faint sputtering sound. "You do not understand. You tell other men-pyramid is nothing. Then other men look all around for other thing. They bother, look, look, look. All this no good. You die, everything go like before."

"There's too much talk," said Landry viciously, "and I don't like the sound of it Let's get out of here." He pulled out Root's gun. "Come on," he snapped at Root, "let's move."

To the natives, "Get out of the way or I'll do some killing myself!"

A rustle of movement from the natives, a thin excited whimper.

"We've got to rush them," shouted Landry. "If they get outside they can knock us over as we leave. Let's go!"

He sprang forward and Root was close behind. Landry used the gun as a club and Root used his fists and the Dicantrops rattled like cornstalks against the walls. Landry erupted through the hole. Root pushed Barbara through and, kicking back at the natives behind him, struggled out into the air.

Landry's momentum had carried him away from the pyramid, out into a seething mob of Dicantrops. Root, following more slowly, pressed his back to the granite. He sensed the convulsive movement in the wide darkness. "The whole colony must be down here," he shouted into Barbara's ear. For a minute he was occupied with the swarming natives, keeping Barbara behind him as much as possible. The first ledge of granite was about shoulder height

"Step on my hands," he panted. "I'll shove you up."

"But-Landry!" came Barbara's choked wail.

"Look at that crowd!" bit Root furiously. "We can't do anything." A sudden rush of small bony forms almost overwhelmed him. "Hurry up!"

Whimpering she stepped into his clasped hands. He thrust her up on the first ledge. Shaking off the clawing natives who had leapt on him, he jumped, scrambled up beside her. "Now run!" he shouted in her ear and she fled down the ledge.

From the darkness came a violent cry. "Root! Root! For God's sake-they've got me down-" Another hoarse yell, rising to a scream of agony. Then silence.

"Hurry!" said Root. They came to the far corner of the pyramid. "Jump down," panted Root. "Down to the ground."

"Landry!" moaned Barbara, teetering at the edge.

"Get down snarled Root. He thrust her down to the white sand and, seizing her hand, ran across the desert, back toward the station. A minute or so later, with pursuit left behind, he slowed to a trot.

"We should go back," cried Barbara. "Are you going to leave him to those devils?"

Root was silent a moment. Then, choosing his words, he said, "I told him to stay away from the place. Anything that happens to him is his own fault. And whatever it is, it's already happened. There's nothing we can do now."

A dark hulk shouldered against the sky-Landry's ship.

"Let's get in here," said Root. "We'll be safer than in the station."

He helped her into the ship, clamped tight the port "Phew, He shook his head. "Never thought it would come to this."

He climbed into the pilot's seat, looked out across the desert. Barbara huddled somewhere behind him, sobbing softly.

An hour passed, during which they said no word. Then, without warning, a fiery orange ball rose from the hill across the pond, drifted toward the station. Root blinked, jerked upright in his seat. He scrambled for the ship's machine-gun, yanked at the trigger-without result

When at last he found and threw off the safety the orange ball hung over the station and Root held his fire. The ball brushed against the antenna-a tremendous explosion spattered to every corner of vision. It seared Root's eyes, threw him to the deck, rocked the ship, left him dazed and half-conscious.

Barbara lay moaning. Root hauled himself to his feet. A seared pit, a tangle of metal, showed where the station had stood. Root dazedly slumped into the seat, started the fuel pump, plunged home the catalyzers. The boat quivered, bumped a few feet along the ground. The tubes sputtered, wheezed.

Root looked at the fuel gauge, looked again. The needle pointed to zero, a fact which Root had known but forgotten. He cursed his own stupidity. Their presence in the ship might have gone ignored if he had not called attention to it

Up from the hill floated another orange ball. Root jumped for the machine gun, sent out a burst of explosive pellets. Again the roar and the blast and the whole top of the hill was blown off, revealing what appeared to be a smooth strata of black rock.

Root looked over his shoulder to Barbara. "This is it"

"Wha-what do you mean?"

"We can't get away. Sooner or later-" His voice trailed off. He reached up, twisted a dial labelled EMERGENCY. The ship's ULR unit hummed. Root said into the mesh, "Di-cantropus station-we're being attacked by natives. Send help at once."

Root sank back into the seat. A tape would repeat his message endlessly until cut off.

Barbara staggered to the seat beside Root "What were those orange balls?"

"That's what I've been wondering-some sort of bomb."

But there were no more of them. And presently the horizon began to glare, the hill became a silhouette on the electric sky. And over their heads the transmitter pulsed an endless message into space.

"How long before we get help?" whispered Barbara.

"Too long," said Root, staring off toward the hill. "They must be afraid of the machine gun-I can't understand what else they're waiting for. Maybe good light."

"They can-" Her voice stopped. She stared. Root stared, held by unbelief-amazement. The hill across the pond was breaking open, crumbling,..

Root sat drinking brandy with the captain of the supply ship Method, which had come to then* assistance, and the captain was shaking his head.

'I've seen lots of strange things around this cluster but this masquerade beats everything."

Root said, "It's strange in one way, in another it's as cold and straightforward as ABC. They played it as well as they could and it was pretty darned good. If it hadn't been for that scoundrel Landry they'd have fooled us forever."

The captain banged his glass on the desk, stared at Root "But why?"

Root said slowly, "They liked Dicantropus. It's a hell-hole, a desert to us, but it was heaven to them. They liked the heat, the dryness. But they didn't want a lot of off-world creatures prying into their business-as we surely would have if we'd seen through the masquerade. It must have been an awful shock when the first Earth ship set down here."

"And that pyramid ..."

"Now that's a strange thing. They were good psychologists, these Dicantrops, as good as you could expect an off-world race to be. If you'll read a report of the first landing, you'll find no mention of the pyramid. Why? Because it wasn't here. Landry thought it looked new. He was right. It was new. It was a fraud, a decoy-just strange enough to distract our attention.

"As long as that pyramid sat out there, with me focusing all my mental energy on it, they were safe-and how they must have laughed.. As soon as Landry broke in and discovered the fraud, then it was all over...

"That might have been their miscalculation," mused Root "Assume that they knew nothing of crime, of anti-social action. If everybody did what he was told to do their privacy was safe forever." Root laughed. "Maybe they didn't know human beings so well after all."

The captain refilled the glasses and they drank in silence, "Wonder where they came from," he said at last.

Root shrugged. "I suppose we'll never know. Some other hot dry planet, that's sure. Maybe they were refugees or some peculiar religious sect or maybe they were a colony."

"Hard to say," agreed the captain sagely. "Different race, different psychology. That's what we run into all the time."

"Thank God they weren't vindictive," said Root, half to himself. "No doubt they could have killed us any one of a dozen ways after I'd sent out that emergency call and they had to leave."

"It all ties in," admitted the captain. Root sipped the brandy, nodded. "Once that ULR signal went out, their isolation was done for. No matter whether we were dead or not, there'd be Earthmen swarming around the station, pushing into their tunnels-and right there went their secret."

And he and the captain silently inspected the hole across the pond where the tremendous space-ship had lain buried under the spine-scrub and rusty black creeper.

"And once that space-ship was laid bare," Root continued, "there'd be a hullabaloo from here to Fomalhaut A tremendous mass like that? We'd have to know everything-their space-drive, their history, everything about them. If what they wanted was privacy that would be a thing of the past. If they were a colony from another star they had to protect their secrets the same way we protect ours."

Barbara was standing by the ruins of the station, poking at the tangle with a stick. She turned and Root saw that she held his pipe. It was charred and battered but still recognizable.

She slowly handed it to him.

"Well?" said Root

She answered in a quiet withdrawn voice: "Now that I'm leaving I think I'll miss Dicantropus." She turned to him, "Jim..."

"What?"

"I'd stay on another year if you'd like."

"No," said Root. "I don't like it here myself."

She said, still in the low tone: "Then-you don't forgive me for being foolish ..."

Root raised his eyebrows. "Certainly I do. I never blamed you in the first place. You're human. Indisputably human."

"Then-why are you acting-like Moses?"

Root shrugged.

"Whether you believe me or not," she said with an averted gaze, "I never-"

He interrupted with a gesture. "What does it matter? Suppose you did-you had plenty of reason to. I wouldn't hold it against you."

"You would-in your heart"

Root said nothing.

"I wanted to hurt you. I was slowly going crazy-and yon didn't seem to care one way or another. Told-him I wasn't-your property."

Root smiled his sad smile. I'm human too."

He made a casual gesture toward the hole where the Di-cantrop spaceship had lain. "If you still want diamonds go down that hole with a bucket. There're diamonds big as grapefruit. It's an old volcanic neck, it's the grand-daddy of all diamond mines. I've got a claim staked out around it; we'll be using diamonds for billiard balls as soon as we get some machinery out here."

They turned slowly back to the Method.

"Three's quite a crowd on Dicantropus," said Root thoughtfully. "On Earth, where there're three billion, we can have a little privacy."

Where Hesperut Falls

My servants will not allow me to kill myself. I have sought self-extinction by every method, from throat-cutting to the intricate routines of Yoga, but so far they have thwarted my most ingenious efforts.

I grow ever more annoyed. What is more personal, more truly one's own, than a man's own life? It is his basic possession, to retain or relinquish as he sees fit. If they continue to frustrate me, someone other than myself will suffer. I guarantee this.

My name is Henry Revere. My appearance is not remarkable, my intelligence is hardly noteworthy, and my emotions run evenly. I live in a house of synthetic shell, decorated with wood and jade, and surrounded by a pleasant garden. The view to one side is the ocean, to the other, a valley sprinkled with houses similar to my own. I am by no means a prisoner, although my servants supervise me with the most minute care. Their first concern is to prevent my suicide, just as mine is to achieve it.

It is a game in which they have all the advantages-a detailed knowledge of my psychology, corridors behind the walls from which they can observe me, and a host of technical devices. They are men of my own race, in fact of my own blood. But they are immeasurably more subtle than I.

My latest attempt was clever enough-although I had tried it before without success. I bit deeply into my tongue and thought to infect the cut with a pinch of garden loam. The servants either noticed me placing the soil in my mouth or observed the tension of my jaw.

They acted without warning. I stood on the terrace, hoping the soreness in my mouth might go undetected. Then, without conscious hiatus, I found myself reclining on a pallet, the dirt removed, the wound healed. They had used a thought-damping ray to anaesthetize me, and their sure medical techniques, aided by my almost invulnerable constitution, defeated the scheme.

As usual, I concealed my annoyance and went to my study. This is a room I have designed to my own taste, as far as possible from the complex curvilinear style which expresses the spirit of the age.

Almost immediately the person in charge of the household entered the room. I call him Dr. Jones because I cannot pronounce his name. He is taller than I, slender and fine-boned. His features are small, beautifully shaped, except for his chin which to my mind is too sharp and long, although I understand that such a chin is a contemporary criterion of beauty. His eyes are very large, slightly protuberant; his skin is clean of hair, by reason both of the racial tendency toward hairlessness, and the depilation which every baby undergoes upon birth.

Dr. Jones' clothes are vastly fanciful. He wears a body mantle of green film and a dozen vari-colored disks which spin slowly around his body like an axis. The symbolism of these disks, with their various colors, patterns, and directions of spin, are discussed in a chapter of my History of Man-so I will not be discursive here. The disks serve also as gravity deflectors, and are used commonly in personal flight

Dr. Jones made me a polite salute, and seated himself upon an invisible cushion of anti-gravity. He spoke in the contemporary speech, which I could understand well enough, but whose nasal trills, gutturals, sibilants and indescribable friccatives, I could never articulate.

"Well, Henry Revere, how goes it?" he asked.

In my pidgin-speech I made a noncommittal reply.

"I understand," said Dr. Jones, "that once again you undertook to deprive us of your company."

I nodded. "As usual I failed," I said.

Dr. Jones smiled slightly. The race had evolved away from laughter, which, as I understand, originated in the cave-man's bellow of relief at the successful clubbing of an adversary.

"You are self-centered," Dr. Jones told me. "You consider only your own pleasure."

"My life is my own. If I want to end it, you do great wrong in stopping me."

Dr. Jones shook his head. "But you are not your own property. You are the ward of the race. How much better if you accepted this fact!"

"I can't agree," I told him.

"It is necessary that you so adjust yourself." He studied me ruminatively. "You are something over ninety-six thousand years old. In my tenure at this house you have attempted suicide no less than a hundred times. No method has been either too crude or too painstaking."

He paused to watch me but I said nothing. He spoke no more than the truth, and for this reason I was allowed no object sharp enough to cut, long enough to strangle, noxious enough to poison, heavy enough to crush-even if I could have escaped surveillance long enough to use any deadly weapon.

I was ninety-six thousand, two hundred and thirty-two years old, and life long ago had lost that freshness and anticipation which makes it enjoyable. I found existence not so much unpleasant, as a bore. Events repeated themselves with a deadening familiarity. It was like watching a rather dull drama for the thousandth time: the boredom becomes almost tangible and nothing seems more desirable than oblivion.

Ninety-six thousand, two hundred and two years ago, as a student of bio-chemistry, I had offered myself as a guinea pig for certain tests involving glands and connective tissue. An incalculable error had distorted the experiment, with my immortality as the perverse result. To this day I appear not an hour older than my age at the time of the experiment, when I was so terribly young.

Needless to say, I suffered tragedy as my parents, my friends, my wife, and finally my children grew old and died, while I remained a young man. So it has been. I have seen untold generations come and go; faces flit before me like snowflakes as I sit here. Nations have risen and fallen, empires extended, collapsed, forgotten. Heroes have lived and died; seas drained, deserts irrigated, glaciers melted, mountains leveled. Almost a hundred thousand years I have persisted, for the most part effacing myself, studying humanity. My great work has been the History of Man.

Although I have lived unchanging, across the years the race evolved. Men and women grew taller, and more slender. Every century saw features more refined, brains larger, more flexible. As a result, I, Henry Revere, homo sapiens of the twentieth century, today am a freakish survival, somewhat more advanced than the Neanderthal, but essentially a precursor to the true Man of today.

I am a living fossil, a curio among curios, a public ward, a creature denied the option oc-life or death. This was what Dr. Jones had come to explain to me, as if I were a retarded child. He was kindly, but unusually emphatic. Presently he departed and I was left to myself, in whatever privacy the scrutiny of half a dozen pairs of eyes allows.

It is harder to kill one's self than one might imagine. I have considered the matter carefully, examining every object within my control for lethal potentialities. But my servants are preternaturally careful. Nothing in this house could so much as bruise me. And when I leave the house, as I am privileged to do, gravity deflectors allow me no profit from high places, and in this exquisitely organized civilization there are no dangerous vehicles or heavy machinery in which I could mangle myself.

In the final analysis I am flung upon my own resources. I have an idea. Tonight I shall take a firm grasp on my head and try to break my neck...

Dr. Jones came as always, and inspected me with his usual reproach. "Henry Revere, you trouble us all with your discontent. Why can't you reconcile yourself to life as you have always known it?"

"Because I am bored! I have experienced everything. There is no more possibility of novelty or surprise! I feel so sure of events that I could predict the future!"

He was rather more serious than usual. "You are our guest. You must realize that our only concern is to ensure your safety."

"But I don't want safety! Quite the reverse!" Dr. Jones ignored me. "You must make up your mind to cooperate. Otherwise-" he paused significantly "-we will be forced into a course of action that will detract from the dignity of us all."

"Nothing could detract any further from my dignity," I replied bitterly. "I am hardly better than an animal in a zoo."

"That is neither your fault nor ours. We all must fulfill our existences to the optimum. Today your function is to serve as vinculum with the past."

He departed. I was left to my thoughts. The threats had been veiled but were all too clear. I was to desist from further attempts upon my life or suffer additional restraint.

I went out on the terrace, and stood looking across the ocean, where the sun was setting into a bed of golden clouds. I was beset by a dejection so vast that I felt stifled. Completely weary of a world to which I had become alien, I was yet denied freedom to take my leave. Everywhere I looked were avenues to death: the deep ocean, the heights of the palisade, the glitter of energy in the city. Death was a privilege, a bounty, a prize, and it was denied to me.

I returned to my study and leafed through some old maps. The house was silent-as if I were alone. I knew differently. Silent feet moved behind the walls, which were transparent to the eyes above these feet, but opaque to mine. Gauzy webs of artificial nerve tissue watched me from various parts of the room. I had only to make a sudden gesture to bring an anaesthetic beam snapping at me.

I sighed, slumped into my chair. I saw with the utmost clarity that never could I kill myself by my own instrumentality. Must I then submit to an intolerable existence? I sat looking bleakly at the nacreous wall behind which eyes noted my every act.

No, I would never submit. I must seek some means outside myself, a force of destruction to strike without warning: a lightning bolt, an avalanche, an earthquake.

Such natural cataclysms, however, were completely beyond my power to ordain or even predict.

I considered radioactivity. If by some pretext I could expose myself to a sufficient number of roentgens ...

I sat back in my chair, suddenly excited. In the early days atomic wastes were sometimes buried, sometimes blended with concrete and dropped into the ocean. If only I were able to-but no. Dr. Jones would hardly allow me to dig in the desert or dive in the ocean, even if the radioactivity were not yet vitiated.

Some other disaster must be found in which I could serve the role of a casualty. If, for instance, I had foreknowledge of some great meteor, and where it would strike...

The idea awoke an almost forgotten association. I sat up in my chair. Then, conscious that knowledgeable minds speculated upon my every expression, I once again slumped forlornly.

Behind the passive mask of my face, my mind was racing, recalling ancient events. The time was too far past, the circumstances obscured. But details could be found in my great History of Man,

I must by all means avoid suspicion. I yawned, feigned acute ennui. Then with an air of surly petulance, I secured the box of numbered rods which was my index. I dropped one of them into the viewer, focused on the molecule-wide items of information.

Someone might be observing me. I rambled here and there, consulting articles and essays totally unrelated to my idea: The Origin and Greatest Development of the Dithyramb; The Kalmuk Tyrants; New Camelot, 18119 A.D.; Oestheotics; The Caves of Phrygia; The Exploration of Mars; The Launching of the Satellites. I undertook no more than a glance at this last; it would not be wise to show any more than a flicker of interest. But what I read corroborated the inkling which had tickled the back of my mind.

The date was during the twentieth century, during what would have been my normal lifetime.

The article read in part:

Today HESPERUS, last of the unmanned satellites was launched into orbit around Earth. This great machine will swing above the equator at a height of a thousand miles, -where atmospheric resistance is so scant as to be negligible. Not quite negligible, of course; it is estimated that in something less than a hundred thousand years HESPERUS will lose enough momentum to return to Earth.

Let us hope that no citizen of that future age suffers injury when HESPERUS falls.

I grunted and muttered. A fatuous sentiment! Let us hope that one person, at the very least, suffers injury. Injury enough to erase him from life!

I continued to glance through the monumental work which had occupied so much of my time. I listened to aquaclave music from the old Poly-Pacific Empire; read a few pages from the Revolt of the Manitobans. Then, yawning and simulating hunger, I called for my evening meal.

Tomorrow I must locate more exact information, and brush up on orbital mathematics.

The Hesperus will drop into the Pacific Ocean at Latitude 0° (X 0.0" ± 0.1", Longitude 141° 12" 63.9" ± 0.2", at 2 hours 22 minutes 18 seconds after standard noon on January 13 of next year. It will strike with a velocity of approximately one thousand miles an hour, and I hope to be on hand to absorb a certain percentage of its inertia.

I have been occupied seven months establishing these figures. Considering the necessary precautions, the dissimulation, the delicacy of the calculations, seven months is a short time to accomplish as much as I have. I see no reason why my calculations should not be accurate. The basic data were recorded to the necessary refinement and there have been no variables or fluctuations to cause error.

I have considered light pressure, hysteresis, meteoric dust; I have reckoned the calendar reforms which have occurred over the years; I have allowed for any possible Einsteinian, Gambade, or Bolbinski perturbation. What is there left to disturb the Hesperus! Its orbit lies in the equatorial plane, south of spaceship channels; to all intents and purposes it has been forgotten.

The last mention of the Hesperus occurs about eleven thousand years after it was launched. I find a note to the effect that its orbital position and velocity were in exact accordance with theoretical values. I believe I can be certain that the Hesperus will fall on schedule.

The most cheerful aspect to the entire affair is that no one is aware of the impending disaster but myself.

The date is January 9. To every side long blue swells are rolling, rippled with cat's-paws. Above are blue skies and dazzling white clouds. The yacht slides quietly southwest in the general direction of the Marquesas Islands.

Dr. Jones had no enthusiasm for this cruise. At first he tried to dissuade me from what he considered a whim but I insisted, reminding him that I was theoretically a free man and he made no further difficulty.

The yacht is graceful, swift, and seems as fragile as a moth. But when we cut through the long swells there is no shudder or vibration-only a gentle elastic heave. If I had hoped to lose myself overboard, I would have suffered disappointment. I am shepherded as carefully as in my own house. But for the first time in many years I am relaxed and happy. Dr. Jones notices and approves.

The weather is beautiful-the water so blue, the sun so bright, the air so fresh that I almost feel a qualm at leaving this life. Still, now is my chance and I must seize it. I regret that Dr. Jones and the crew must die with me. Still-what do they lose? Very little. A few short years. This is the risk they assume when they guard me. If I could allow them survival I would do so-but there is no such possibility.

I have requested and have been granted nominal command of the yacht. That is to say, I plot the course, I set the speed. Dr. Jones looks on with indulgent amusement, pleased that I interest myself in matters outside myself.

January 12. Tomorrow is my last day of life. We passed through a series of rain squalls this morning, but the horizon ahead is clear. I expect good weather tomorrow.

I have throttled down to Dead-Slow, as we are only a few hundred miles from our destination.

January 13. I am tense, active, charged with vitality an awareness. Every part of me tingles. On this day of my death it is good to be alive. And why? Because of anticipation eagerness, hope.

I am trying to mask my euphoria. Dr. Jones is extreme! sensitive; I would not care to start his mind working at this late date.

The time is noon. I keep my appointment with Hesperus in two hours and twenty-two minutes. The yacht is coasting easily over the water. Our position, as recorded by a pin-point of light on the chart, is only a few miles from our final position, At this present rate we will arrive in about two hours and fifteen minutes. Then I will halt the yacht and wait...

The yacht is motionless on the ocean. Our position is exactly at Latitude 0° (X 0.0", Longitude 141° 12" 63.9". The degree of error represents no more than a yard or two. This graceful yacht with the unpronounceable name sits directly on the bull's eye. There is only five minutes to wait

Dr. Jones comes into the cabin. He inspects me curiously. "You seem very keyed up, Henry Revere."

"Yes, I feel keyed up, stimulated. This cruise is affording me much pleasure."

"Excellent!" He walks to the chart, glances at it. "Why are we halted?"

"I took it into my mind to drift quietly. Are you impatient?"

Time passes-minutes, seconds. I watch the chronometer. Dr. Jones follows my glance. He frowns in sudden recollection, goes to the telescreen. "Excuse me; something I would like to watch. You might be interested."

The screen depicts an arid waste. "The Kalahari Desert, Dr. Jones tells me. "Watch."

I glance at the chronometer. Ten seconds-they tick off.

Five-four-three-two-one. A great whistling sound, a

roar, a crash, an explosion! It comes from the telescreen. The yacht rides on a calm sea.

"There went Hesperus," said Dr. Jones. "Right on schedule!"

He looks at me, where I have sagged against a bulkhead.

His eyes narrow, he looks at the chronometer, at the chart, at the telescreen, back to me. "Ah, I understand you now. All of us you would have killed!" "Yes," I mutter, "all of us." "Aha! You savage!"

I pay him no heed. "Where could I have miscalculated? I considered everything. Loss of entropic mass, lunar attractions-I know the orbit of Hesperus as I know my hand. How did it shift, and so far?" i

Dr. Jones eyes shine with a baleful light. "You know the orbit of Hesperus then?" "Yes. I considered every aspect" "And you believe it shifted?"

"It must have. It was launched into an equatorial orbit; it falls into the Kalahari."

"There are two bodies to be considered." "Two?"

"Hesperus and Earth."

"Earth is constant... Unchangeable." I say this last word slowly, as the terrible knowledge comes.

And Dr. Jones, for the first time in my memory, laughs, an unpleasant harsh sound. "Constant-unchangeable. Except for libration of the poles. Hesperus is the constant Earth shifts below." "Yes! What a fool I am!" "An insensate murdering fool! I see you cannot be trusted!" I charge him. I strike him once in the face before the anaesthetic beam hits me.

The World-Thinker

Through the open window came sounds of the city-the swish of passing air traffic, the clank of the pedestrian belt on the ramp below, hoarse undertones from the lower levels. Cardale sat by the window studying a sheet of paper which displayed a photograph and a few lines of type:

FUGITIVE!

Isabel May-Age 21; height 5 feet 5 inches; medium physique.

Hair: black (could be dyed).

Eyes: blue.

Distinguishing characteristics: none.

Cardale shifted his eyes to the photograph and studied the pretty face with incongruously angry eyes. A placard across her chest read: 94E-627. Cardale returned to the printed words.

Sentenced to serve three years at the Nevada Women's Camp, in the first six months of incarceration Isabel May accumulated 22 months additional punitive confinement. Caution is urged in her apprehension.

The face, Cardale reflected, was defiant, reckless, outraged, but neither coarse nor stupid-a face, in fact, illuminated by intelligence and sensitivity. Not the face of a criminal, thought Cardale.

He pressed a button. The telescreen plumbed into sharp life. "Lunar Observatory," said Cardale. The screen twitched to a view across an austere office, with moonscape outside the window. A man in a rose-pink smock looked into the screen. "Hello, Cardale."

"What's the word on May?"

"We've got a line on her. Quite a nuisance, which you won't want to hear about. One matter: please, in the future keep freighters in another sector when you want a fugitive tracked. We had six red herrings to cope with."

"But you picked up May?"

"Definitely."

"Keep her in your sights. I'll send someone out to take over." Cardale clicked off the screen.

He ruminated a moment, then summoned the image of his secretary. "Get me Detering at Central Intelligence."

The polychrome whirl of color rose and fell to reveal Detering's ruddy face.

"Cardale, if it's service you want-"

"I want a mixed squad, men and women, in a fast ship to pick up a fugitive. Her name is Isabel May. She's fractious, unruly, incorrigible-but I don't want her hurt."

"Allow me to continue what I started to say. Cardale, if you want service, you are out of luck. There's literally no one in the office but me."

"Then come yourself.**

"To pick up a reckless woman, and get my hair pulled and my face slapped? No thanks ... One moment. There's a man waiting outside my office on a disciplinary charge. I can either have him court-martialed or I can send him over to you."

"What's his offense?"

"Insubordination. Arrogance. Disregard of orders. He's a loner. He does as he pleases and to hell with the rule book."

"What about results?"

"He gets results-of a sort. His own kind of results."

"He may be the man to bring back Isabel May. What's his name?"

"Lanarck. He won't use his rank, which is captain."

"He seems something of a free spirit ... Well, send him over."

Lanarck arrived almost immediately. The secretary ushered him into Cardale's office.

"Sit down, please. My name is Cardale. You're Lanarck, right?"

"Quite right."

Cardale inspected his visitor with open curiosity. Lanarck's reputation, thought Cardale, was belied by his appearance. He was neither tall nor heavy, and carried himself unobtrusively. His features, deeply darkened by the hard waves of space, were regular and dominated by a cold directness of the gray eyes and a bold jutting nose. Lanarck's voice was pleasant and soft.

"Major Detering assigned me to you for orders, sir." "He recommended you highly," said Cardale. "I have a ticklish job on hand. Look at this." He passed over the sheet with the photograph of Isabel May. Lanarck scrutinized it without comment and handed it back.

"This girl was imprisoned six months ago for assault with a deadly weapon. She escaped the day before yesterday into space-which is more or less trivial in itself. But she carries with her a quantity of important information, which must be retrieved for the economic well-being of Earth. This may seem to you an extravagant statement, but accept it from me as a fact."

Lanarck said in a patient voice: "Mr. Cardale, I find that I work most efficiently when I am equipped with facts. Give me details of the case. If you feel that the matter is too sensitive for my handling, I will retire and you may bring in operatives better qualified."

Cardale said crossly: "The girl's father is a high-level mathematician, at work for the Exchequer. By his instruction an elaborate method of security to regulate transfer of funds was evolved. As an emergency precaution he devised an over-ride system, consisting of several words in a specific sequence. A criminal could go to the telephone, call the Exchequer, use these words and direct by voice alone the transfer of a billion dollars to his personal account. Or a hundred billion."

"Why not cancel the over-ride and install another?" "Because of Arthur May's devilish subtlety. The over-ride is hidden in the computer; it is buried, totally inaccessible, that it might be protected from someone ordering the computer to revealuate the over-ride. The only way the over-ride can be voided is to use the over-ride first and issue appropriate orders." "Go on."

"Arthur May knew the over-ride. He agreed to transfer the knowledge to the Chancellor and then submit to a hypnotic process which would remove the knowledge from his brain. Now occurred a rather sordid matter in regard to May's remuneration, and in my mind he was absolutely in the right"

"I know the feeling," said Lanarck. "I've had my own troubles with the scoundrels. The only good bursar is a dead bursar."

"In any event there follows an incredible tale of wrangling, proposals, estimates, schemes, counter-proposals, counter-schemes and conniving, all of which caused Arthur May a mental breakdown and he forgot the over-ride. But he had anticipated something of the sort and he left a memorandum with his daughter: Isabel May. When the authorities came for her father, she refused to let them in; she performed violent acts; she was confined in a penal institution, from which she escaped. Regardless of rights and wrongs she must be captured, more or less gently, and brought back-with the override. You will surely understand the implications of the situation."

"It is a complicated business," said Lanarck. "But I will go after the girl, and with luck I will bring her back."

Six hours later Lanarck arrived at Lunar Observatory. The in-iris expanded; the boat lurched through.

Inside the dome Lanarck undamped the port, and stepped out. The master astronomer approached. Behind came the mechanics, one of whom bore an instrument which they welded to the hull of Lanarck's spaceboat.

"It's a detector cell," the astronomer explained. "Right now it's holding a line on the ship, you're to follow. When the indicator holds to the neutral zone, you're on her track."

"And where does this ship seem to be headed?"

The astronomer shrugged. "Nowhere in tellurian space. She's way past Fomalhaut and lining straight out"

Lanarck stood silent. This was hostile space Isabel May was entering. In another day or so she would be slicing the fringe of the Clantlalan System, where the space patrol of that dark and inimical empire without warning destroyed all approaching vessels. Furthar it opened on a region of black stars, inhabited by nondescript peoples little better than pirates. Still farther beyond lay unexplored and consequently dangerous regions.

The mechanics were finished. Lanarck climbed back into the boat. The out-iris opened; he drove his craft through, down the runway, and off into space.

A slow week followed, in which distance was annihilated. Earth empire fell far astern: a small cluster of stars. To one side the Clantlalan System grew ever brighter, and as Lanarck passed by, the Clantlalan space-spheres tried to close with him. He threw in the emergency bank of generators and whisked the warboat far ahead. Someday, Lanarck knew, he would slip down past the guard ships to the home planet by the twin red suns, to discover what secret was held so dear. But now he kept the detector centered in the dial, and day by day the incoming signals from his quarry grew stronger.

They passed through the outlaw-ridden belt of dark stars, and into a region of space unknown but for tales let slip by drunken Clantlalan renegades-reports of planets covered with mighty ruins, legends of an asteroid littered with a thousand wrecked spaceships. Other tales were even more incredible. A dragon who tore spaceships open in its jaws purportedly wandered through this region, and it was said that alone on a desolate planet a godlike being created worlds at his pleasure.

The signals in the detector cell presently grew so strong that Lanarck slackened speed for fear that, overshooting his quarry, the cell would lose its thread of radiation. Now Isabel May began to swing out toward the star-systems which drifted past like fireflies, as if she sought a landmark. Always the signals in the detector cell grew stronger.

A yellow star waxed bright ahead. Lanarck knew that the ship of Isabel May was close at hand. Into that yellow star's system he followed her, and lined out the trail toward the single planet. Presently, as the planet globed out before him, the signals ceased entirely.

The high clear atmosphere braked the motion of Lanarck's space-boat. He found below a dun, sun-baked landscape. Through the telescope the surface appeared to be uniformly stony and flat. Clouds of dust indicated the presence of high winds.

He had no trouble finding Isabel May's ship. In the field of his telescope lay a cubical white building: the only landmark visible from horizon to horizon. Beside the building sat Isabel May's silver spaceboat. Lanarck swooped to a landing, half expecting a bolt from her needle-beam. The port of the spaceboat hung open, but she did not show herself as he came down on his crash-keel close by.

The air, he found, was breathable. Buckling on his needle-beam, he stepped out on the stony ground. The hot gale tore at him, buffeting his face, whipping tears from his eyes. Wind-flung pebbles bounding along the ground stung his legs. Light from the sun burned his shoulders.

Lanarck inspected the terrain, to discover no sign of life, either from the white building or from Isabel May's space-boat. The ground stretched away, bare and sun-drenched, far into the dusty distances. Lanarck looked to the lonely white structure. She must be within. Here was the end of the chase which had brought him across the galaxy.

Lanarck circled the building. On the leeward side he found a low dark archway. From within came the heavy smell of life: an odor half animal, half reptile. He approached the entrance with his needle-beam ready.

He called out: "Isabel May!" He listened. The wind whistled by the corner of the building; little stones clicked past, blowing down the endless sun-dazzled waste. There was no other sound.

A sonorous voice entered his brain. "The one you seek is gone." Lanarck stood stock-still.

"You may come within, Earthman. We are not enemies." The archway loomed dark before him. Step by step he entered. After the glare of the white sun the dimness of the room was like a moonless night Lanarck blinked.

Slowly objects about him assumed form. Two enormous eyes peered through the gloom; behind appeared a tremendous domelike bulk. Thought surged into Lanarck's brain. "You are unnecessarily truculent. Here will be no occasion for violence."

Lanarck relaxed, feeling slightly at a loss. Telepathy was not often practiced upon Earth. The creature's messages came like a paradoxically silent voice, but he had no knowledge how to transmit his own messages. He hazarded the experiment.

"Where is Isabel May?"

"In a place inaccessible to you."

"How did she go? Her spaceboat is outside, and she landed but a half-hour ago."

"I sent her away."

Keeping his needle-beam ready, Lanarck searched the building. The girl was nowhere to be found. Seized by a sudden, fearful thought, he ran to the entrance and looked out. The two spaceboats were as he had left them. He shoved the needle-beam back into the holster and turned to the leviathan, in whom he sensed benign amusement.

"Well, then-who are you and where is Isabel May?"

"I am Laoome," came the reply. "Laoome, the one-time Third of Narfilhet, Laoome the World-Thinker - the Final Sage of the Fifth Universe ... As for the girl, I have placed her, at her own request, upon a pleasant but inaccessible world of my own creation."

Lanarck stood perplexed.

"Look!" Laoome said.

Space quivered in front of Lanarck's eyes. A dark aperture appeared in midair. Looking through, Lanarck saw hanging apparently but a yard before his eyes a lambent sphere-a miniature world. As he watched, it expanded like a toy balloon.

Its horizons vanished past the confines of the opening, Continents and oceans assumed shape, flecked with cloud-wisps. Polar ice caps glinted blue-white in the light of an unseen sun. Yet all the time the world seemed to be but a yard distant. A plain appeared, rimmed by black, flinty mountains. The color of the plain, a ruddy ocher, he saw presently, was due to a forest carpet of rust-colored foliage. The expansion ceased.

The World-Thinker spoke: "That which you see before you is matter as real and tangible as yourself. I have indeed created it through my mind. Until I dissolve it in the same manner, it exists. Reach out and touch it."

Lanarck did so. It was actually only a yard from his face, and the red forest crushed like dry moss under his fingertips.

"You destroyed a village," commented Laoome, and caused the world to expand once more at a breathtaking rate, until the perspectives were as if Lanarck hung a hundred feet above the surface. He was looking into the devastation which his touch had wrought a moment before. The trees, far larger than he had supposed, with boles thirty or forty feet through, lay tossed and shattered. Visible were the ruins of rude huts, from which issued calls and screams of pain, thinly audible to Lanarck. Bodies of men and women lay crushed. Others tore frantically at the wreckage.

Lanarck stared in disbelief. "There's life! Men!"

"Without life, a world is uninteresting, a lump of rock. Men, like yourself, I often use. They have a large capacity for emotion and initiative, a flexibility to the varied environments which I introduce."

Lanarck gazed at the tips of his fingers, then back to to the shattered village. "Are they really alive?"

"Certainly. And you would find, should you converse with one of them, that they possess a sense of history, a racial heritage of folklore, and a culture well-adapted to their environment."

"But how can one brain conceive the detail of a world? The leaves of each tree, the features of each man-"

"That would be tedious," Laoome agreed. "My mind only broadly conceives, introduces the determinate roots into the hypostatic equations. Detail then evolves automatically."

"You allowed me to destroy hundreds of these-men."

Curious feelers searched his brain. Lanarck sensed Laoome's amusement.

"The idea is repugnant? In a moment I shall dissolve the entire world... . Still, if it pleases you, I can restore it as it was. See!"

Immediately the forest was unmarred, the village whole again, secure and peaceful in a small clearing.

Awareness came to Lanarck of a curious rigidity in the rapport he had established with the World-Thinker. Looking about, he saw that the great eyes had glazed, that the tremendous black body was twitching and jerking. Now Laoome's dream-planet was changing. Lanarck leaned forward in fascination. The noble red trees had become gray rotten stalks and were swaying drunkenly. Others slumped and folded like columns of putty.

On the ground balls of black slime rolled about with vicious energy pursuing the villagers, who in terror fled anywhere, everywhere.

From the heavens came a rain of blazing pellets. The villagers were killed, but the black slime-things seemed only agonized. Blindly they lashed about, burrowed furiously into the heaving ground to escape the impacts. More suddenly than it had been created, the world vanished. Lanarck tore his gaze from the spot where the world had been. He looked about and found Laoome as before.

"Don't be alarmed." The thoughts came quietly. "The seizure is over. It occurs only seldom, and why it should be I do not know. I imagine that my brain, under the pressure of exact thought, lapses into these reflexive spasms for the sake of relaxation. This was a mild attack. The world on which I am concentrating is usually totally destroyed."

The flow of soundless words stopped abruptly. Moments passed. Then thoughts gushed once more into Lanarck's brain.

"Let me show you another planet-one of the most interesting I have ever conceived. For almost a million Earth years it has been developing in my mind."

The space before Lanarck's eyes quivered. Out in imaginary void hung another planet. As before, it expand until the features of the terrain assumed an earthly perspective. Hardly a mile in diameter, the world was divided around the equator by a belt of sandy desert. At one end glimmered a lake, at the other grew a jungle of lush vegetation.

From this jungle now, as Lanarck watched, crept a semi-human shape. A travesty upon man, its face was long, chinless and furtive, with eyes beady and quick. The legs were unnaturally long; the shoulders and arms were undeveloped. It slunk to the edge of the desert, paused a moment, looking carefully in both directions, then began a mad dash through the sand to the lake beyond.

Halfway across, a terrible roar was heard. Over the the horizon bounded a dragonlike monster. With fearsome speed it pursued the fleeing man-thing, who outdistanced it and gainied the edge of the desert by two hundred feet. When the dragon came to the limits of the sandy area, it halted abd bellowed an eerie mournful note which sent shivers down Lanarck's spine. Casually now, the man-thing loped to the lake, threw himself flat and drank deeply.

"An experiment in evolution," came Laoome's thought "A million years ago those creatures were men like yourself. This world is oddly designed. At one end is food, at the other drink. In order to survive, the 'men' must cross the desert every day or so. The dragon is prevented from leaving the desert by actinic boundaries. Hence, if the men can cross the desert, they are safe.

"You have witnessed how admirably they have adapted to the environment. The women are particularly fleet, for they have adjusted to the handicap of caring for their young. Sooner or later, of course, age overtakes them and their speed gradually decreases until finally they are caught and devoured

"A curious religion and set of taboos have evolved here. I am worshipped as the primary god of Life, and Shillal, as they call the dragon, is the deity of Death. He, of course, is the basic concern of their lives and colors all their thoughts. They are close to elementals, these folk. Food, drink, and death are intertwined for them into almost one concept.

"They can build no weapons of metal against Shillal, for their world is not endowed with the raw materials. Once, a hundred thousand years ago, one of the chiefs contrived a gigantic catapult, to hurl a sharp-pointed tree trunk at Shillal. Unluckily, the fibers of the draw-cord snapped and the chief was killed by the recoil. The priests interpreted this as a sign and-

"Look there! Shillal catches a weary old woman, sodden with water, attempting to return to the jungle!"

Lanarck witnessed the beast's great gulping.

"To continue," Laoome went on, "a taboo was created, and no further weapons were ever built."

"But why have you forced upon these folk a million years of wretched existence?" asked Lanarck.

Laoome gave an untranslatable mental shrug. "I am just, and indeed benevolent," he said. "These men worship me as a god. Upon a certain hillock, which they hold sacred, they bring their sick and wounded. There, if the whim takes me, I restore them to health. So far as their existence is concerned, they relish the span of their lives as much as you do yours."

"Yet, in creating these worlds, you are responsible for the happiness of the inhabitants. If you were truly benevolent, why should you permit disease and terror to exist?"

Laoome again gave his mental shrug. "I might say that I use this universe of our own as a model. Perhaps there is another Laoome dreaming out the worlds we ourselves live on. When man dies of sickness, bacteria live. Dragon lives by eating man. When man eats, plants and animals die."

Lanarck was silent, studiously preventing his thoughts from rising to the surface of his mind.

"I take it that Isabel May is upon neither of these planets?"

"That is correct."

"I ask that you make it possible for me to communicate with her."

"But I put her upon a world expressly to assure her safety from such molestation."

"I believe that she would profit by hearing me."

"Very well," said Laoome. "In justice I should accord to you the same opportunity that I did her. You may proceed to this world. Remember, however, the risk is your own, exactly as it is for Isabel May. If you perish upon Markawel, you are as thoroughly dead as you might be upon Earth. I do not play Destiny to influence either one of your lives."

There was a hiatus in Laoome's thoughts, a whirl of ideas too rapid for Lanarck to grasp. At last Laoome's eyes focused upon him again. An instant of faintness as Lanarck felt knowledge forced into his brain.

As Laoome silently regarded him, it occurred to Lanarack that Laoome's body, a great dome of black flesh, was singularly ill-adapted to life on the planet where he dwelt.

"You are right," came the thoughts of Laoome. "From Beyond unknown to you I came, banished from the dead planet Narfilhet, in whose fathomless black waters I swam. This was long ago, but even now I may not return." Laoome lapsed once more into introspection.

Lanarck moved restlessly. Outside the wind tore past the building. Laoome continued silent, dreaming perhaps of the dark oceans of ancient Narfilhet. Lanafck impatiently launched a thought.

"How do I reach Markawel? And how do I return?"

Laoome fetched himself back to the present. His eyes settled upon a point beside Lanarck. The aperture which led into his various imaginary spaces was now wrenched open the third time. A little distance off in the void, a spaceboat drifted. Lanarck's eyes narrowed with sudden interest.

"That's a 45-G-my own ship!" he exclaimed.

"No, not yours. One like it. Yours is still outside." The craft drew nearer? gradually floated within reach.

"Climb in," said Laoome. "At present Isabel May is in the city which lies at the apex of the triangular continent." "But how do I get back?"

"Aim your ship, when you leave Markawel, at the brightest star visible. You will then break through the mental dimensions into this universe."

Lanarck reached his arm into the imaginary universe and pulled the imagined space-boat close to the aperture. He opened the port and gingerly stepped in as Laoome's parting thoughts reached him.

"Should you fall into danger, I can not modify the natural course of events. On the other hand, I will not intentionally place dangers in your way. If such befall you, it will be due solely to circumstance."

Lanarck slammed shut the port, half expecting the ship to dissolve under his feet. But the ship was solid enough. He looked back. The gap into his own universe had disappeared, leaving in its place a brilliant blue star. He found himself in space. Below glimmered the disk of Markawel, much like other planets he had approached from the void. He tugged at the throttle, threw the nose hard over and down. Let the abstracts take care for themselves. The boat dropped down at Markawel.

It seemed a pleasant world. A hot white sun hung off in space; blue oceans covered a large part of the surface. Among the scattered land masses he found the triangular continent. It was not large. There were mountains with green-forested slopes and a central plateau: a not un-Earth-like scene, and Lanarck did not feel the alien aura which surrounded most extraterrestrial planets.

Sighting through his telescope Lanarck found the city, sprawling and white, at the mouth of a wide river. He sent his ship streaking down through the upper atmosphere, then slowed and leveled off thirty miles to sea. Barely skimming the sparkling blue waves, he flew toward the city.

A few miles to the left an island raised basalt cliffs against the ocean. In his line of sight there heaved up on the crest of a swell a floating black object. After an instant it disappeared into the trough: a ramshackle raft. Upon it a girl with tawny golden hair desperately battled sea-things which sought to climb aboard.

Lanarck dropped the ship into the water beside the raft The wash threw the raft up and over and down on the girl.

Lanarck slipped through the port and dived into clear green water. He glimpsed only sub-human figures paddling downward, barely discernible. Bobbing to the surface, he swam to the raft, ducked under, grasped the girl's limp form, pulled her into the air.

For a moment he clung to the raft to catch his breath, while holding the girl's head clear of the water. He sensed the return of the creatures from below. Dark forms rose in the shadow cast by the raft, and a clammy, long-fingered hand wound around his ankle. He kicked and felt his foot thud into something like a face. More dark forms came up from the depths. Lanarck measured the distance to his spaceboat, Forty feet. Too far. He crawled onto the raft, and pulled the girl after him. Leaning far out, he recovered the paddle and prepared to smash the first sea-thing to push above water. But instead, they swam in tireless circles twenty feet below.

The blade of the paddle had broken, Lanarck could not move the unwieldly bulk of the raft. The breeze, meanwhile, was easing the spaceboat even farther away. Lanarck exerted himself another fifteen minutes, pushing against the water with the splintered paddle, but the gap increased He cast down the paddle in disgust and turned to the girl, who, sitting cross-legged, regarded him thoughtfully. For no apparent reason, Lanarck was reminded of Laoome in the dimness of his white building, on the windy world. All this, he thought, looking from clear-eyed girl to heaving sun-lit sea to highlands of the continent ahead, was an idea in Laoome's brain.

He looked back at the girl. Her bright wheat-colored hair frothed around her head in ringlets, producing, thought Lanarck, a most pleasant effect. She returned his gaze for a moment, then, with jaunty grace, stood up.

She spoke to Lanarck who found to his amazement that he understood her. Then, remembering Laoome's manipulation of his brain, extracting ideas, altering, instilling new concepts, he was not so amazed.

"Thank you for your help," she said. "But now we are both in the same plight."

Lanarck said nothing. He knelt and began to remove his boots.

"What will you do?"

"Swim," he answered. The new language seemed altogether natural.

"The Bottom-people would pull you under before you went twenty feet." She pointed into the water, which teemed with circling dark shapes. Lanarck knew she spoke the truth.

"You are of Earth also?" she asked, inspecting him carefully.

"Yes. Who are you and what do you know of Earth?"

"I am Jiro from the city yonder, which is Gahadion. Earfh is the home of Isabel May, who came in a ship such as yours."

"Isabel May arrived but an hour ago! How could you know about her?"

"An hour?" replied the girl. "She has been here three months!" This last a little bitterly.

Lanarck reflected that Laoome controlled time in his universes as arbitrarily as he did space. "How did you come to be here on this raft?"

She grimaced toward the island. "The priests came for me. They live on the island and take people from the mainland. They took me but last night I escaped."

Lanarck looked from the island to the city on the mainland. "Why do not Gahadion authorities control the priests?"

Her lips rounded to an O. "They are sacred to the Great God Laoome, and so inviolate."

Lanarck wondered what unique evolutionary process Laoome had in progress here.

"Few persons thus taken return to the mainland," she went on. "Those who win free, and also escape the Bottom-people, usually live in the wilderness. If they return to Gahadion they are molested by fanatics and sometimes recaptured by the priests."

Lanarck was silent. After all, it concerned him little how these people fared. They were beings of fantasy, inhabiting an imaginary planet. And yet, when he looked at Jiro, detachment became easier to contemplate than to achieve.

"And Isabel May is in Gahadion?"

Tiro's lips tightened. "No. She lives on the island. She is the Thrice-Adept, the High Priestess."

Lanarck was surprised. "Why did they make her High Priestess?"

"A month after she arrived, the Hierarch, learning of the woman whose hair was the color of night, even as yours, tried to take her to Drefteli, the Sacred Isle, as a slave. She killed him with her weapon. Then when the lightnings of Laoome did not consume her, it was known that Laoome approved, and so she was made High Priestess in place of the riven Hierarch."

The philosophy, so Lanarck reflected, would have sounded naive on Earth, where the gods were more covert in their supervision of human affairs.

"Is Isabel May a friend of yours-or your lover?" asked Jiro softly.

"Hardly."

'Then what do you want with her?"

"I've come to take her back to Earth," He looked dubiously across the ever-widening gap between the raft and his spaceboat. "That at least was my intention."

"You shall see her soon," said Jiro. She pointed to a long black galley approaching from the island. "The Ordained Ones. I am once more a slave."

"Not yet," said Lanarck, feeling for the bulk of his needle-beam.

The galley, thrust by the force of twenty long oars, lunged toward them. On the after-deck stood a young woman, her black hair blowing in the wind. As her features became distinct, Lanarck recognized the face of Cardale's photograph, now serene and confident

Isabel May, looking from the silent two on the raft to the wallowing spaceboat a quarter-mile distant, seemed to laugh. The galley, manned by tall, golden-haired men, drew alongside.

"So Earth Intelligence pays me a visit?" She spoke in English. "How you found me, I cannot guess." She looked curiously at Lanarck's somber visage. "How?"

"I followed your trail, and then explained the situation to Laoome."

"Just what is the situation?"

"'I'd like to work out some kind of compromise to please everyone."

"I don't care whether I please anyone or not."

"Understandable."

The two studied each other. Isabel May suddenly asked, "What is your name?"

"Lanarck."

"Just Lanarck? No rank? No first name?"

"Lanarck is enough."

"Just as you like. I hardly know what to do with you. I'm not vindictive, and I don't want to handicap your career. But ferrying you to your spaceboat would be rather quixotic. I'm comfortable here, and I haven't the slightest intention of turning my property over to you."

Lanarck reached for his needle-beam.

She watched him without emotion. "Wet needle-beams don't work well."

"This one is the exception." Lanarck blasted the figurehead from the galley.

Isabel May's expression changed suddenly. "I see that I'm wrong. How did you do it?"

"A personal device," replied Lanarck. "No I have to request that you take me to my spaceboat."

Isabel May stared at him a moment, and in those blue eyes Lanarck detected something familiar. Where had he seen eyes with that expression? On Fan, the Pleasure Planet? In the Magic Groves of Hycithil? During the raids on the slave pens of Starlen? In Earth's own macropolis Tran?

She turned and muttered to her boatswain, a bronzed giant, his golden hair bound back by a copper band. He bowed and moved away.

"Very well," said Isabel May. "Come aboard."

Jiro and Lanarck clambered over the carven gunwale. The galley swept ahead, foaming up white in its wake.

Isabel May turned her attention to Jiro, who sat looking disconsolately toward the island Drefteli. "You make friends quickly," Isabel told Lanarck. "She's very beautiful What are you planning for her?"

"She's one of your escaped slaves. I don't have any plans. This place belongs to Laoome; he makes all plans. I'm interested only in getting you out. If you don't want to come back to Earth, give me the document which you brought with you, and stay here as long as you like."

"Sorry. The document stays with me. I don't carry it on my person, so please don't try to search me."

"That sounds quite definite," said Lanarck. "Do you know what's in the document?"

"More or less. It's like a blank check on the wealth of the world."

"That's a good description. As I understand this sorry affair, you became angry at the treatment accorded your father."

"That's a very quiet understatement."

"Would money help soothe your anger?"

"I don't want money. I want revenge. I want to grind faces into the mud; I want to kick people and make their lives miserable."

"Still don't dismiss money. It's nice to be rich. You have your life ahead of you. I don't imagine you want to spend it here, inside Laoome's head."

"Very true."

"So name a figure."*

"I can't measure anger and grief in dollars."

"Why not? A million? Ten million? A hundred million?"

"Stop there. I can't count any higher."

"That's your figure."

"What good will money do me? They'll take me back to Nevada."

"No. I'll give you my personal guarantee of this."

"Meaningless. I know nothing about you."

"You'll learn during the trip back to Earth."

Isabel May said: "Lanarck, you are persuasive. If the truth be known, I'm homesick." She turned away and stood looking over the ocean. Lanarck stood watching her. She was undeniably attractive and he found it difficult to take his eyes from her. But as he settled on the bench beside Jiro, he felt a surge of a different, stronger, feeling. It irritated him, and he tried to put it aside.

Wallowing in the swells, the spaceboat lay dead ahead. The galley scudded through the water at a great rate, and the oarsmen did not slacken speed as they approached. Lanarck's eyes narrowed; he jumped upright shouting orders. The galley, unswerving, plowed into the spaceboat, grinding it under the metal-shod keel. Water gushed in through the open port the spaceboat shuddered and sank, a dark shadow plummeting into green depths.

"Too bad," remarked Isabel. "On the other hand, this puts us more on an equal footing. You have a needle-beam, I have a spaceboat."

Lanarck silently seated himself. After a moment he spoke, "Where is your own needle-beam?"

"I blew it up trying to recharge it from the spaceboat generators."

"And where is your spaceboat?"

Isabel laughed at this. "Do you expect me to tell you?"

"Why not? I wouldn't maroon you here."

"Nevertheless, I don't think I'll tell you."

Lanarck turned to Jiro. "Where is Isabel May's space boat?"

Isabel spoke in a haughty voice: "As High Priestess to A mighty Laoome, I command you to be silent!"

Jiro looked from one to the other. She made up her mind "It is on the plaza of the Malachite Temple in Gahadion."

Isabel was silent "Laoome plays tricks," she said at las

"Jiro has taken a fancy to you. You're obviously interested in her."

"Laoome will not interfere," said Lanarck.

She laughed bitterly. "That's what he told me-and look I'm High Priestess. He also told me he wouldn't let anyone come to Markawel from the outside to molest me. But you are here!"

"My intention is not to molest you," said Lanarck curtly. "We can as easily be friends as enemies."

"I don't care to be a friend of yours. And as an enemy, you are no serious problem. Now!" Isabel called, as the tall boatswain came near.

The boatswain whirled on Lanarck. Lanarck twisted, squirmed, heaved, and the golden-haired boatswain sprawled back into the bilge, where he lay dazed.

A soft hand brushed Lanarck's thigh. He looked around, smoothing his lank black hair, and found Isabel May smiling into his face. His needle-beam dangled from her fingers.

Jiro arose from the bench. Before Isabel could react Jiro had pushed a hand into her face, and with the other seized the needle-beam. She pointed the weapon at Isabel.

"Sit down," said Jiro.

Weeping with rage, Isabel fell back upon the bench.

Jiro, her young face flushed and happy, backed over to the thwart, needle-beam leveled.

Lanarck stood still.

"I will take charge now," said Jiro. "You-Isabel! Tell your men to row toward Gahadion!"

Sullenly Isabel gave the order. The long black galley turned its bow toward the city.

"This may be sacrilege," Jiro observed to Lanarck. "But then I was already in trouble for escaping from Drefteli."

"What do you plan in this new capacity of yours?" Lanarck inquired, moving closer.

"First, to try this weapon on whomever thinks he can take it away from me." Lanarck eased back. "Secondly-but you'll see soon enough."

White-tiered Gahadion rapidly drew closer across the water.

Isabel sulked on the bench. Lanarck had little choice but to let matters move on their own momentum. He relaxed against a thwart, watching Jiro from the corner of his eye. She stood erect behind the bench where Isabel sat, her clear eyes looking over the leaping sparkles of the ocean. Breeze whipped her hair behind and pressed the tunic against her slim body. Lanarck heaved a deep sad sigh. This girl with the wheat-colored hair was unreal. She would vanish into oblivion as soon as Laoome lost interest in the world Markawel. She was less than a shadow, less than a mirage, less than a dream. Lanarck looked over at Isabel, the Earth girl, who glared at him with sullen eyes. She was real enough.

They moved up the river and toward the white docks of Gahadion. Lanarck rose to his feet. He looked over the city, surveyed the folk on the dock who were clad in white, red and blue tunics, then turned to Jiro. "I'll have to take the weapon now."

"Stand back or I'll-" Lanarck took the weapon from her limp grasp. Isabel watched in sour amusement.

A dull throbbing sound, like the pulse of a tremendous heart, came down from the heavens. Lanarck cocked his head, listening. He scanned the sky. At the horizon appeared a strange cloud, like a band of white-gleaming metal, swelling in rhythm to the celestial throbbing. It lengthened with miraculous speed, until in all directions the horizon was encircled. The throb became a vast booming. The air itself seemed heavy, ominous. A terrible idea struck Lanarck. He turned and yelled to the awestruck oarsmen who were trailing their oars in the river.

"Quickly-get to the docks!"

They jerked at their oars, frantic, yet the galley moved no faster. The water of the river had become oily smooth, almost syrupy. The boat inched close to the dock. Lanarck was grimly aware of the terrified Isabel on one side of him, Jiro on the other.

"What is happening?" whispered Isabel. Lanarck watched the sky. The cloud-band of bright metal quivered and split into another which wobbled, bouncing just above.

"I hope I'm wrong," said Lanarck, "but I suspect that Laoome is going mad. Look at our shadows!" He turned to look at the sun, which jerked like a dying insect, vibrating through aimless arcs. His worst fears were realized.

"It can't be!" cried Isabel. "What will happen?"

"Nothing good."

The galley lurched against a pier. Lanarck helped Isabel and Jiro up to the dock, then followed.

Masses of tall golden-haired people milled in panic along the avenue.

"Lead me to the spaceboat!" Lanarck had to shout to make himself heard over the tumult of the city. His mind froze at a shocking thought: what would happen to Jiro?

He pushed the thought down. Isabel pulled at him urgently. "Come, hurry!"

Taking Jiro's hand, he ran off after Isabel toward the black-porticoed temple at the far end of the avenue.

A constriction twisted the air; down came a rain of warm red globules: small crimson jellyfish which stung naked flesh like nettles. The din from the city reached hysterical pitch. The red plasms increased to become a cloud of pink slime, now oozing ankle-deep on the ground.

Isabel tripped and fell headlong in the perilous mess. She struggled until Lanarck helped her to her feet.

They continued toward the temple, Lanarck supporting both girls and keeping an uneasy eye on the structures to either side.

The rain of red things ceased, but the streets flowed with ooze.

The sky shifted color-but what color? It had no place in any spectrum. The color only a mad god could conceive.

The red slime curdled and fell apart like quicksilver, to jell in an instant to millions upon millions of bright blue manikins three inches high. They ran, hopped, scuttled; the streets were a quaking blue carpet of blank-faced little homunculi. They clung to Lanarck's garments, they ran up his legs like mice. He trod them under, heedless of their squeals.

The sun, jerking in small spasmodic motions, slowed, lost its glare, became oblate. It developed striations and, as the stricken population of Gahadion quieted in awe, the sun changed to a segmented white slug, as long as five suns, as wide as one. It writhed its head about and stared down through the strange-colored sky at Markawel.

In a delirium, the Gahadionites careened along the wide avenues. Lanarck and the two girls almost were trod under as they fought past a cross street

In a small square, beside a marble fountain, the three found refuge. Lanarck had reached a state of detachment: a conviction that this experience was a nightmare.

A blue man-thing pulled itself into his hair. It was singing in a small clear baritone. Lanarck set it upon the ground. His mind grew calmer. This was no nightmare; this was reality, however the word could be interpreted! Haste! The surge of people had passed; the way was relatively open. "Let's go!"

He pulled at the two girls who had been watching the slug which hung across the sky. As they started off, there came the metamorphosis Lanarck had been expecting, and dreading. The matter of Gahadion, and all Markavvel, altered into unnatural substances. The buildings of white marble became putty, slumped beneath their own weight. The Malachite Temple, an airy dome on green malachite pillars, sagged and slid to a sodden lump. Lanarck urged the gasping girls to greater speed.

The Gahadionites no longer ran; there was no destination. They stood staring up, frozen in horror by the glittering slug in the sky. A voice screamed: "Laoome, Laoome!" Other voices took up the cry: "Laoome, Laoome!"

If Laoome heard, he gave no sign.

Lanarck kept an anxious eye on these folk, dreading lest they also, as dream-creatures, alter to shocking half-things. For should they change, so would Jiro. Why take her to the spaceboat? She could not exist outside the mind of Laoome. ... But how could he let her go?

The face of Markavvel was changing. Black pyramids sprouted through the ground and, lengthening tremendously, darted upward, to become black spikes, miles high.

Lanarck saw the spaceboat, still sound and whole, a product of more durable mind-stuff, perhaps, than Markavvel itself. Tremendous processes were transpiring beneath his feet, as if the core of the planet itself were degenerating. Another hundred yards to the spaceboat! "Faster!" he panted to the girls.

All the while they ran, he watched the folk of Gahadion. Like a cold wind blowing on his brain, he knew that the change had come. He almost slowed his steps for despair. The Gahadionites themselves knew. They staggered in unbelieving surprise, regarding their hands, feeling their faces.

Too late! Unreasonably Lanarck had hoped that once in space, away from Markavvel, Jiro might retain her identity. But too late! A blight had befallen the Gahadionites. They clawed their shriveling faces, tottered and fell, their shrunken legs unable to support them.

In anguish Lanarck felt one of the hands he was holding become hard and wrinkled. As her legs withered, he felt her sag. He paused and turned, to look sadly upon what had been Jiro.

The ground beneath his feet lurched. Around him twisted dying Gahadionites. Above, dropping through the weird sky, came the slug. Black spikes towered tremendously over his head. Lanarck heeded none of these. Before him stood Jiro - a Jiro gasping and reeling in exhaustion, but a Jiro sound and golden still! Dying on the marble pavement was the shriveled dream-thing he had known as Isabel May. Taking lire's hand, he turned and made for the spaceboat.

Hauling back the port, he pushed Jiro inside. Even as he touched the hull, he realized that the spaceboat was changing also. The cold metal had acquired a palpitant life of its own. Lanarck slammed shut the port, and, heedless of fracturing cold thrust-tubes, gushed power astern.

Off careened the spaceboat, dodging through the forest of glittering black spines, now hundreds of miles tall, swerving a thousand miles to escape the great slug falling inexorably to the surface of Markavvel. As the ship darted free into space, Lanarck looked back to see the slug sprawled across half a hemisphere. It writhed, impaled on the tall black spikes.

Lanarck drove the spaceboat at full speed toward the landmark star. Blue and luminous it shone, the only steadfast object in the heavens. All else poured in turbulent streams through black space: motes eddying in a pool of ink.

Lanarck looked briefly toward Jiro, and spoke. "Just when I decided that nothing else could surprise me, Isabel May died, while you, Jiro the Gahadionite, are alive." "I am Isabel May. You knew already." "I knew, yes, because it was the only possibility." He put his hand against the hull. The impersonal metallic feel had altered to a warm vitality. "Now, if we escape from this mess, it'll be a miracle."

Changes came quickly. The controls atrophied; the ports grew dull and opaque, like cartilage. Engines and fittings became voluted organs; the walls were pink moist flesh, pulsing regularly. From outside came a sound like the snapping of pinions; about their feet swirled dark liquid. Lanarck, pale, shook his head. Isabel pressed close to him. "We're in the stomach of-something." Isabel made no answer.

A sound like a cork popped from a bottle, a gush of gray light. Lanarck had guided the spaceboat aright; it had continued into the sane universe and its own destruction.

The two Earth creatures found themselves stumbling on the floor of Laoome's dwelling. At first they could not comprehend their deliverance; safety seemed but another shifting of scenes. Lanarck regained his equilibrium. He helped Isabel to feet; together they surveyed Laoome, who was still in midst of his spasm. Rippling tremors ran along his hide, the saucer eyes were blank and glazed.

"Let's go!" whispered Isabel.

Lanarck silently took her arm; they stepped out on the glaring wind-whipped plain. There stood the two spaceboats just as before. Lanarck guided Isabel to his craft, opened the port and motioned her inside. "I'm going back for one moment." .

Lanarck locked the power-arm. "Just to guard against any new surprises."

Isabel said nothing.

Walking around to the spaceboat in which Isabel May had arrived, Lanarck similarly locked the mechanism. Then he crossed to the white concrete structure.

Isabel listened, but the moaning of the wind drowned all other sounds. The chatter of a needle-beam? She could not be sure.

Lanarck emerged from the building. He climbed into boat and slammed the port. They sat in silence as the thrust tubes warmed, nor did they speak as he threw over the power-arm and the boat slanted off into the sky.

Not until they were far off in space did either of themspeak. Lanarck looked toward Isabel. "How did you know Laoome?"

"Through my father. Twenty years ago he did Laoome some trifling favor-killed a lizard which had been annoyi Laoome, or something of the sort."

"And that's why Laoome shielded you from me by creating the dream Isabel?"

"Yes. He told me you were coming down looking for me. He arranged that you should meet a purported Isabel May that I might assess you without your knowledge."

"Why don't you look more like the photograph?"

"I was furious; I'd been crying; I was practically gnashing my teeth. I certainly hope I don't look like that"

"How about your hair?"

"It's bleached."

"Did the other Isabel know your identity?"

"I don't think so. No, I know she didn't. Laoome equip her with my brain and all its memories. She actually was I."

Lanarck nodded. Here was the source of the inklings recognition. He said thoughtfully: "She was very perceptive. She said that you and I were, well, attracted to each other. I Wonder if she was right"

"I wonder."

'There will be time to consider the subject... . One last point: the documents, with the over-ride."

Isabel laughed cheerfully. "There aren't any documents."

"No documents?"

"None. Do you care to search me?"

"Where are the documents?"

"Document, in the singular. A slip of paper. I tore it up."

"What was on the paper?"

"The over-ride. I'm the only person alive who knows it. Don't you think I should keep the secret to myself?"

Lanarck reflected a moment. "I'd like to know. That kind of knowledge is always useful."

"Where is the hundred million dollars you promised me?"

"It's back on Earth. When we get there you can use the over-ride."

Isabel laughed. "You're a most practical man. What happened to Laoome?"

"Laoome is dead."

"How?"

"I destroyed him. I thought of what we just went through, his dream-creatures-were they real? They seemed real to me and to themselves. Is a person responsible for what happens during a nightmare? I don't know. I obeyed my instincts, or conscience, whatever it's called, and killed him."

Isabel May took his hand. "My instincts tell me that I can trust you. The over-ride is a couplet:

"Tom, Tom, the piper's son Stole a pig and away he run."

Lanarck reported to Cardale. "I am happy to inform you that the affair is satisfactorily concluded." Cardale regarded him skeptically. "What do you mean by that?"

"The over-ride is safe." "Indeed? Safe where?"

"I thought it best to consult with you before carrying the over-ride on my person."

"That is perhaps over-discreet. What of Isabel May? Is she in custody?"

"In order to get the over-ride I had to make broad but reasonable concessions, including a full pardon, retraction of all charges against her, and official apologies as well as retributive payments for false arrest and general damages. She wants an official document, certifying these concessions. If you will prepare the document, I will transmit it, and the affair will be terminated."

Cardale said in a cool voice: "Who authorized you to make such far-reaching concessions?"

Lanarck spoke indifferently. "Do you want the over-ride?"

"Of course."

"Then do as I suggest."

"You're even more arrogant than Detering led me to expect."

"The results speak for themselves, sir."

"How do I know that she won't use the over-ride?"

"You can now call it up and change it, so I'm given to understand."

"How do I know that she hasn't used it already, to the hilt?"

"I mentioned compensatory payments. The adjustment has been made."

Cardale ran his fingers through his hair. "How much damages?"

"The amount is of no great consequence. If Isabel May had chosen to make intemperate demands, they would only partially balance the damage she has suffered."

"So you say." Cardale could not decide whether to bluster, to threaten, or to throw his hands in the air. At last he leaned back in his chair. "I'll have the document ready tomorrow and you can bring in the over-ride."

"Very well, Mr. Cardale."

"I'd still like to know, unofficially, if you like, just how much she took in settlement."

"We requisitioned a hundred and one million, seven hundred and sixty-two dollars into a set of personal accounts."

Cardale stared. "I thought you said that she'd made an intemperate settlement!"

"It seemed as easy to ask for a large sum as a small."

"No doubt even easier. It's a strange figure. Why seven hundred and sixty-two dollars?"

"That, sir, is money owing to me for which the bursar refuses to issue a voucher. It represents expenses in a previous case: bribes, liquor and the services of a prostitute, if you want the details."

"And why the million extra?"

"That represents a contingency fund for my own convenience, so that I won't be harassed in the future. In a quiet and modest sense it also reflects my annoyance with the bursar."

Lanarck rose to his feet. "I'll see you tomorrow"

"a|t the same time, sir."

"Until tomorrow, Lanarck."

Green Magic

Howard Fair, looking over the relics of his great uncle Gerald Mclntyre, found a large ledger entitled:

WORKBOOK & JOURNAL Open at Peril!

Fair read the journal with interest, although his own work went far beyond ideas treated only gingerly by Gerald Mclntyre.

"The existence of disciplines concentric fo the elementary magics must now be admitted without further controversy,' wrote Mclntyre. "Guided by a set of analogies from the white and black magics (to be detailed in due course), I have! delineated the basic extension of purple magic, as well as its corollary, Dynamic Nomism."

Fair read on, remarking the careful charts, the projections and expansions, the transportations and transformations by which Gerald Mclntyre had conceived his systemology. So swiftly had the technical arts advanced that Mclntyre's expositions, highly controversial sixty years before, now seemed pedantic and overly rigorous.

"Whereas benign creatures: angels, white sprites, merri-hews, sandestins-are typical of the white cycle; whereas demons, magners, trolls and warlocks are evinced by black magic; so do the purple and green cycles sponsor their own particulars, but these are neither good nor evil, bearing, rather, the same relation to the black and white provinces that these latter do to our own basic realm." Fair reread the passage. The "green cycle"? Had Gerald Mclntyre wandered into regions overlooked by modern workers?

He reviewed the journal in the light of this suspicion, and discovered additional hints and references. Especially provocative was a bit of scribbled marginalia: "More concerning my latest researches I may not state, having been promised an infinite reward for this forbearance."

The passage was dated a day before Gerald Mclntyre's death, which had occurred on March 21, 1898, the first day of spring. Mclntyre had enjoyed very little of his infinite reward," whatever had been its nature... . Fair returned to a consideration of the journal, which, in a sentence or two, had opened a chink on an entire new panorama. Mclntyre provided no further illumination, and Fair set out to make a fuller investigation.

His first steps were routine. He performed two divinations, searched the standard indexes, concordances, handbooks and formularies, evoked a demon whom he had previously found knowledgeable: all without success. He found no direct reference to cycles beyond the purple; the demon refused even to speculate.

Fair was by no means discouraged; if anything, the intensity of his interest increased. He reread the journal, with particular care to the justification for purple magic, reasoning that Mclntyre, groping for a lore beyond the purple, might well have used the methods which had yielded results before. Applying stains and ultraviolet light to the pages, Fair made legible a number of notes Mclntyre had jotted down, then erased.

Fair was immensely stimulated. The notes assured him that he was on the right track, and further indicated a number of blind alleys which Fair profited by avoiding. He applied himself so successfully that before the week was out he had evoked a sprite of the green cycle.

It appeared in the semblance of a man with green glass eyes and a thatch of young eucalyptus leaves in the place of hair. It greeted Fair with cool courtesy, would not seat itself, and ignored Fair's proffer of coffee.

After wandering around the apartment inspecting Fair's books and curios with an air of negligent amusement, it agreed to respond to Fair's questions.

Fair asked permission to use his tape-recorder, which the sprite allowed, and Fair set the apparatus in motion. (When subsequently he replayed the interview, no sound could be heard.)

"What realms of magic lie beyond the green?" asked Fair.

"I can't give you an exact answer," replied the sprite, "because I don't know. There are at least two more, corresponding to the colors we call rawn and pallow, and very likely others."

Fair arranged the microphone where it would directly intercept the voice of the sprite.

"What," he asked, "is the green cycle like? What is physical semblance?"

The sprite paused to consider. Glistening mother-of-pearl films wandered across its face, reflecting the tinge of its' thoughts. "I'm rather severely restricted by your use of word 'physical.' And 'semblance' involves a subjective interpretation, which changes with the rise and fall of the seconds.

"By all means," Fair said hastily, "describe it in your words."

"Well-we have four different regions, two of which floresce from the basic skeleton of the universe, and subsede the others. The first of these is compressed and ishthiated, but is notable for its wide pools of mottle which we sometimes use for deranging stations. We've transplated mosses from Earth's Devonian and a few ice-fires from Perdition. They climb among the rods which we call devil-hair-he went on for several minutes but the meaning almost entirely escaped Fair. And it seemed as if the question by which he had hoped to break the ice might run away with the the entire interview. He introduced another idea.

"Can we freely manipulate the physical extensions Earth?"

The sprite seemed amused. "You refer, so I assume, to the various aspects of space, tune, mass, energy, thought and recollections."

"Exactly."

The sprite -raised its green corn-silk eyebrows. "I might sensibly ask can you break an egg by striking it with a club. The response is on a similar level of seriousness."

Fair had expected a certain amount of condescension and impatience, and was not abashed. "How may I learn that techniques?"

"In the usual manner: through diligent study." "Ah, indeed-but where could I study? Who would teach me?"

The sprite made an easy gesture, and whorls of smoke trailed from his fingers to spin through the air. I could arrange the matter, but since I bear you no particular animosity, I'll do nothing of the sort. And now, I must gone."

"Where do you go?" Fair asked in wonder and longing. "May I go with you?"

The sprite, swirling a drape of bright green dust over its shoulders, shook his head. "You would be less than comfortable."

"Other men have explored the worlds of magic!"

"True: your uncle Gerald Mclntyre, for instance."

"My uncle Gerald learned green magic?"

To the limit of his capabilities. He found no pleasure in learning. You would do well to profit by his experience and modify your ambitions." The sprite turned and walked away.

Fair watched it depart. The sprite receded in space and direction, but never reached the wall of Fair's room. At a distance which might have been fifty yards, the sprite glanced back, as if to make sure that Fair was not following, then 'Stepped off at another angle and disappeared.

Fair's first impulse was to take heed and limit his explorations. He was an adept in white magic, and had mastered the black art - occasionally he evoked a demon to liven a social gathering which otherwise threatened to become dull -but he had by no means illuminated every mystery of purple magic, which is the realm of Incarnate Symbols.

Howard Fair might have turned away from the green cycle except for three factors.

First was his physical appearance. He stood rather under medium height, with a swarthy face, sparse black hair, a gnarled nose, a small heavy mouth. He felt no great sensitivity about his appearance, but realized that it might be improved. In his mind's eye he pictured the personified ideal of himself: he was taller by six inches, his nose thin and keen, his skin cleared of its muddy undertone. A striking figure, but still recognizable as Howard Fair. He wanted the love of women, but he wanted it without the interposition of his craft. Many times he had brought beautiful girls to his bed, lips wet and eyes shining; but purple magic had seduced them rather than Howard Fair, and he took limited satisfaction in such conquests.

Here was the first factor which drew Howard Fan back to the green lore; the second was his yearning for extended, perhaps eternal, life; the third was simple thirst for knowledge.

The fact of Gerald Mclntyre's death, or dissolution, or disappearance-whatever had happened to him-was naturally a matter of concern. If he had won to a goal so precious, why had he died so quickly? Was the "infinite reward" miraculous, so exquisite, that the mind failed under its session? (If such was the case, the reward was hardly a reward.)

Fair could not restrain himself, and by degrees returned to a study of green magic. Rather than again invoke the sprite, whose air of indulgent contempt he had found exasperating he decided to seek knowledge by an indirect method, employing the most advanced concepts of technical and cabalistil science.

He obtained a portable television transmitter which he loaded into his panel truck along with a receiver. On a Monday night in early May he drove to an abandoned graveyard far out in the wooded hills, and, there by the laight of the wandering moon, he buried the television camera in graveyard clay until only the television camera protruded from the soil.

With a sharp alder twig he scratched on the ground a monstrous outline. The television lens served for one eye, a beer bottle pushed neck-first into the soil the other.

During the middle hours, while the moon died behind wisps of pale cloud, he carved a word on the dark forehead then recited the activating incantation.

The ground rumbled and moaned, the golem heaved up to blot out the stars.

The glass eyes stared down at Fair, secure in his pentagon. "Speak!" called out Fair. "Enteresthes, Akmai Adonai! Bidemigir, Elohim, pa rahulli! Enteresthes, HVOI. Speak!"

"Return me to earth, return my clay to the quiet clay from whence you roused me."

"First you must serve."

The golem stumbled forward to crush Fair, but was halted by the pang of protective magic.

"Serve you I will, if serve you I must."

Fair stepped boldly forth from the pentagon, strung forty yards of green ribbon down the road in the" shape of a narrow V. "Go forth into the realm of green magic," he told the monster. "The ribbons reach forty miles, walk to the end, turn about, return, and then fall back, return to the earth from which you rose."

The golem turned, shuffled into the V of green ribbon shaking off clods of mold, jarring the ground with its ponderous tread.

Fair watched the squat shape dwindle, recede, yet never reach the angle of the magic V. He returned to his panel truck, tuned the receiver to the golem's eye and surveyed the fantastic vistas of the green realm.

Two elementals of the green realm met on a silver spun landscape. They were Jaadian and Misthemar, and they fell to discussing the earthen monster which had stalked forty miles through the region known as Cil; which then, turning in its tracks, had retraced its steps, gradually increasing its pace until at the end it moved in a shambling rush, leaving a trail of clods on the fragile moth-wing mosaics.

"Events, events, events," Misthemar fretted, "they crowd the chute of time till the bounds bulge. Or then again, the course is as lean and spare as a stretched tendon ... But in regard to this incursion ..." He paused for a period of reflection, and silver clouds moved over his head and under his feet.

Jaadian remarked, "You are aware that I conversed with Howard Fair; he is so obsessed to escape the squalor of his world that he acts with recklessness."

"The man Gerald Mclntyre was his uncle," mused Misthemar. "Mclntyre besought, we yielded; as perhaps now we must yield to Howard Fair."

Jaadian uneasily opened his hand; shook off a spray of emerald fire. "Events press, both in and out. I find myself unable to act in this regard."

"I likewise do not care to be the agent of tragedy."

A Meaning came fluttering up from below: "A disturbance among the spiral towers! A caterpillar of glass and metal has come clanking; it has thrust electric eyes into the Portinone and broke open the Egg of Innocence. Howard Fair is the fault."

Jaadian and Misthemar consulted each other with wry disinclination, "Very well, both of us will go; such a duty needs two souls in support."

They impinged upon Earth and found Howard Fair in a wall booth at a cocktail bar. He looked up at the two strangers and one of them asked, "May we join you?"

Fair examined the two men. Both wore conservative suits rand carried cashmere topcoats over their arms. Fair noticed that the left thumb-nail of each man glistened green.

Fair rose politely to his feet "Will you sit down?" The green sprites hung up their overcoats and slid into the booth. Fair looked from one to the other. He addressed Jaadian. "Aren't you he whom I interviewed several weeks ago?"

Jaadian assented. "You have not accepted my advice."

Fair shrugged. "You asked me to remain ignorant, to accept my stupidity and ineptitude."

"And why should you not?" asked Jaadian gently. "You are a primitive in a primitive realm; nevertheless not one man in a thousand can match your achievements."

Fair agreed, smiling faintly. "But knowledge creates a craving for further knowledge. Where is the harm in knowledge?"

Mithemar, the more mercurial of the sprites, spoke angrily. "Where is the harm? Consider your earthen monster! It befouled forty miles of delicacy, the record of ten million years. Consider your caterpillar! It trampled our pillars of carved milk, our dreaming towers, damaged the nerve-skeins which extrude and waft us our Meanings."

"I'm dreadfully sorry," said Fair. "I meant no destruction."

The sprites nodded. "But your apology conveys no guarantee of restraint."

Fair toyed with his glass. A waiter approached the table, addressed the two sprites. "Something for you two gentlemen?"

Jaadian ordered a glass of charged water, as did Misthemar. Fair called for another highball.

"What do you hope to gain from this activity?" inquired Misthemar. "Destructive forays teach you nothing!"

Fair agreed. "I have learned little. But I have seen miraculous sights. I am more than ever anxious to learn."

The green sprites glumly watched the bubbles rising in their glasses. Jaadian at last drew a deep sigh. "Perhaps we can obviate toil on your part and disturbance on ours. Explicitly, what gains or advantages do you hope to derive from green magic?"

Fair, smiling, leaned back into the red imitation-leather cushions. "I want many things. Extended life-mobility in time-comprehensive memory-augmented perception, with vision across the whole spectrum. I want physical charm and magnetism, the semblance of youth, muscular endurance ... Then there are qualities more or less speculative, such as-"

Jaadian interrupted. "These qualities and characteristics we will confer upon you. In return you will undertake never again to disturb the green realm. You will evade centuries of toil; we will be spared the nuisance of your presence, and the inevitable tragedy."

'Tragedy?" inquired Fair in wonder. "Why tragedy?"

Jaadian spoke in a deep reverberating voice. "You are a man of Earth. Your goals are not our goals. Green magic makes you aware of our goals."

Fair thoughtfully sipped his highball. "I can't see that this is a disadvantage. I am willing to submit to the discipline of instruction. Surely a knowledge of green magic will not change me into a different entity?"

"No. And this is the basic tragedy!"

Misthemar spoke in exasperation. "We are forbidden to harm lesser creatures, and so you are fortunate; for to dissolve you into air would end all the annoyance."

Fair laughed. "I apologize again for making such a nuisance of myself. But surely you understand how important this is to me?"

Jaadian asked hopefully, "Then you agree to our offer?"

Fair shook his head. "How could I live, forever young, capable of extended learning, but limited to knowledge which I already see bounds to? I would be bored, restless, miserable."

"That well may be," said Jaadian. "But not so bored, restless and miserable as if you were learned in green magic."

Fair drew himself erect. "I must learn green magic. It is an opportunity which only a person both torpid and stupid could refuse."

Jaadian sighed. "In your place I would make the same response." The sprites rose to their feet. "Come then, we will teach you." "Don't say we didn't warn you," said Misthemar.

Time passed. Sunset waned and twilight darkened. A man walked up the stairs, entered Howard Fair's apartment. He was tall, unobtrusively muscular. His face was sensitive, keen, humorous; his left thumb-nail glistened green.

Time is a function of vital processes. The people of Earth had perceived the motion of their clocks. On this understanding, two hours had elapsed since Howard Fair had followed the green sprites from the bar.

Howard Fair had perceived other criteria. For him the interval had been seven hundred years, during which he had lived in the green realm, learning to the utmost capacity of his brain. He had occupied two years training his senses to the new conditions. Gradually he learned to walk in the six basic three-dimensional directions, and accustomed himself to the fourth-dimensional short-cuts. By easy stages the blinds over his eyes were removed, so that the dazzling over-human intricacy of the landscape never completely confounded him.

Another year was spent training him to the use of a code language-an intermediate step between the vocalizations of Earth and the meaning patterns of the green realm, where a hundred symbol-flakes (each a flitting spot of delicate iridescence) might be displayed in a single swirl of import. During this time Howard Fair's eyes and brain were altered, to allow him the use of the many new colors, without which the meaning-flakes could not be recognized.

These were preliminary steps. For forty years he studied the flakes, of which there were almost a million. Another forty years was given to elementary permutations and shifts, and another forty to parallels, attenuation, diminishments and extensions; and during this time he was introduced to flake patterns, and certain of the more obvious displays.

Now he was able to study without recourse to the code language, and his progress becasme more marked. Another twenty years found him able to recognize more complicated Meanings, and he was introduced to a more varied program. He floated over the field of moth-wing mosaics, which still showed the footprints of the golem. He sweated in embarrassment, the extent of his wicked willfulness now clear to him.

So passed the years. Howard Fair learned as much green magic as his brain could encompass.

He explored much of the green realm, finding so much beauty that he feared his brain might burst. He tasted, he heard, he felt, he sensed, and each one of his senses was a hundred times more discriminating than before. Nourishment came in a thousand different forms: from pink eggs which burst into a hot sweet gas, suffusing his entire body; from passing through a rain of stinging metal crystals; from simple contemplation of the proper symbol.

Homesickness for Earth waxed and waned. Sometimes it was insupportable and he was ready to forsake all he had learned and abandon his hopes for the future. At other times the magnificence of the green realm permeated him, and the thought of departure seemed like the threat of death itself.

By stages so gradual he never realized them he learned green magic.

But the new faculty gave him no pride: between his crude ineptitudes and the poetic elegance of the sprites remained a tremendous gap-and he felt his innate inferiority much more keenly than he ever had in his old state. Worse, his most earnest efforts failed to improve his technique, and sometimes, observing the singing joy of an improvised manifestation by one of the sprites, and contrasting it to his own labored constructions, he felt futility and shame.

The longer he remained in the green realm, the stronger grew the sense of his own maladroitness, and he began to long for the easy environment of Earth, where each of his acts would not shout aloud of vulgarity and crassness. At times he would watch the sprites (in the gossamer forms natural to them) at play among the pearl-petals, or twining like quick flashes of music through the forest of pink spirals. The contrast between their verve and his brutish fumbling could not be borne and he would turn away. His self-respect dwindled with each passing hour, and instead of pride in his learning, he felt a sullen ache for what he was not and could never become. The first few hundred years he worked with the enthusiasm of ignorance, for the next few he was buoyed by hope. During the last part of his time, only dogged obstinacy kept him plodding through what now he knew for infantile exercises.

In one terrible bittersweet spasm, he gave up. He found Jaadian weaving tinkling fragments of various magics into a warp of shining long splines. With grave courtesy, Jaadian gave Fair his attention, and Fair laboriously set forth his meaning.

Jaadian returned a message. "I recognize your discomfort, and extend my sympathy. It is best that you now return to your native home."

He put aside his weaving and conveyed Fair down through the requisite vortices. Along the way they passed Misthemar. No nicker of meaning was expressed or exchanged, but Howard Fair thought to feel a tinge of faintly malicious amusement.

Howard Fair sat in his apartment. His perceptions, augmented and sharpened by his sojourn in the green realm, took note of the surroundings. Only two hours before, by the clocks of Earth, he had found them both restful and stimulating; now they were neither. His books: superstition, spuriousness, earnest nonsense. His private journals and workbooks: a pathetic scrawl of infantilisms. Gravity tugged at his feet, held him rigid. The shoddy construction of the house, which heretofore he never had noticed, oppressed him. Everywhere he looked he saw slipshod disorder, primitive filth. The thought of the food he must now eat revolted him.

He went out on his little balcony which overlooked the street. The air was impregnated with organic smells. Across the street he could look into windows where his fellow humans lived in stupid squalor.

Fair smiled sadly. He had tried to prepare himself for these reactions, but now was surprised by their intensity. He returned into his apartment. He must accustom himself to the old environment. And after all there were compensations. The most desirable commodities of the world were now his to enjoy.

Howard Fair plunged into the enjoyment of these pleasures. He forced himself to drink quantities of expensive wines, brandies, liqueurs, even though they offended his palate. Hunger overcame his nausea, he forced himself to the consumption of what he thought of as fried animal tissue, the hypertrophied sexual organs of plants. He experimented with erotic sensations, but found that beautiful women no longer seemed different from the plain ones, and that he could barely steel himself to the untidy contacts. He bought libraries of erudite books, glanced through them with contempt. He tried to amuse himself with his old magics; they seemed ridiculous.

He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic contamination.

After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of events which had started with his discovery of Gerald Mclntyre's workbook. He frowned. Gerald Mclntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the crags.

He found Gerald Mclntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. Mclntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.

He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of icicle. His left thumbnail glistened green. Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each Other with wry curiosity.

"I see you have adapted yourself," said Howard Fair.

Mclntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance between solitude and the pressure of humanity." He looked into the bright blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I lived in isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."

Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and Mclntyre could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a peevish woman in expensive clothes.

'There are other advantages to residence here," said Mclntyre. "For instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passersby with trifles of novel adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.

The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.

"A paltry affair," said Mclntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter is that I am bored." He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see."

Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. Mclntyre laughed. "No more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently share my malaise."

"I share it already," said Fair. "Sometimes I wish I could abandon all my magic and return to my former innocence."

"I have toyed with the idea," Mclntyre replied thoughtfully. "In fact I have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter." He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was open, the interior showed a thick darkness.

Mclntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical curl to his lip. "You need only enter. All your magic, all your recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your melancholy, your dissatisfaction."

Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his discomfort.

He glanced at Mclntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic amusement. They returned to the front of the building.

"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness," said Mclntyre. "Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious commodity is so much misery,"

Fair made himself ready for departure. "I thank you for this new wisdom, what a hundred more years in the green realm would not have taught me. And now-for a time, at least-I go back to my crag in the Andes."

Mclntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. "And I-for a time, at least-will wait for the next passerby."

"Good-bye, then, Uncle Gerald."

"Good-bye, Howard."

The Ten Books

They were as alone as it is possible for living man to be in the black gulf between the stars. Far astern shone the suns of the home worlds-ahead the outer stars and galaxies in a fainter ghostly glimmer.

The cabin was quiet. Betty Welstead sat watching her husband at the assay table, her emotions tuned to his. When the centrifuge scale indicated heavy metal and Welstead leaned forward she leaned forward too in unconscious sympathy. When he burnt scrapings in the spectroscope and read Lead from the brightest pattern and chewed at his lips Betty released her pent-up breath, fell back in her seat.

Ralph Welstead stood up, a man of medium height- rugged, tough-looking-with hair and skin and eyes the same tawny color. He brushed the whole clutter of rock and ore into the waste chute and Betty followed him with her eyes.

Welstead said sourly, "We'd be millionaires if that asteroid had been inside the Solar system. Out here, unless it's pure platinum or uranium, it's not worth mining."

Betty broached a subject which for two months had been on the top of her mind. "Perhaps we should start to swing back in."

Welstead frowned, stepped up into the observation dome. Betty watched after him anxiously. She understood very well that the instinct of the explorer as much as the quest for minerals had brought them out so far.

Welstead stepped back down into the cabin. "There's a star ahead"-he put a finger into the three-dimensional chart- "this one right here, Eridanus two thousand nine hundred and thirty-two. Let's make a quick check-and then we'll head back in."

Betty nodded, suddenly happy. "Suits me." She jumped up, and together they went to the screen. He aimed the catch-all vortex, dialed the hurrying blur to stability and the star pulsed out like a white-hot coin. A single planet made up the entourage.

"Looks about Earth-size," said Welstead, interest in his voice, and Betty's heart sank a trifle. He tuned the circuit finer, turned up the magnification and the planet leapt at them. "Look at that atmosphere! Thick!" He swiveled across the jointed arm holding the thermocouple and together they bent over the dial.

"Nineteen degrees Centigrade. About Earth-norm. Let's look at that atmosphere. You know, dear, we might have something tremendous here! Earth-size, Earth temperature ..." His voice fell off in a mutter as he peered through the spectroscope, flipping screen after screen past the pattern from the planet. He stood up, cast Betty a swift exultant glance, then squinted in sudden reflection. "Better make sure before we get too excited."

Betty felt no excitement. She watched without words as Welstead thumbed through the catalogue.

"Whee!" yelled Welstead, suddenly a small boy. "No listing! It's ours!" And Betty's heart melted at the news. Delay, months of delay, while Welstead explored the planet, charted its oceans and continents, classified its life. At the same time, a spark of her husband's enthusiasm caught fire in her brain and interest began to edge aside her gloom.

"We'll name it 'Welstead,'" he said. "Or, no-'Elizabeth' for you. A planet of your own! Some day there'll be cities and millions of people. And every time they write a letter or throw a shovelful of dirt or a ship lands-they'll use your name."

"No, dear," she said. "Don't be ridiculous. We'll call it 'Welstead'-for us both."

They felt an involuntary pang of disappointment later on when they found the planet already inhabited, and by men.

Yet their reception astonished them as much as the has discovery of the planet and its people. Curiosity, even hostilily might have been expected....

They had been in no hurry to land, preferring to fall in an orbit just above the atmosphere, the better to study the planet and its inhabitants.

It looked to be a cheerful world. There were a thousand kinds of forest, jungle, savannah. Sunny rivers coursed green fields. A thousand lakes and three oceans glowed blue. To the far north and far south snowfields glittered, dazzled. Such cities as they found-the world seemed sparsely settled-merged indistinguishably with the countryside.

They were wide low cities, very different from the clanging hives of Earth, and lay under the greenery like carvings in alabaster or miraculous snowflakes. Betty, in whose nature ran a strong streak of the romantic, was entranced.

"They look like cities of Paradise-cities in a dream!"

Welstead said reflectively, "They're evidently not backward. See that cluster of long gray buildings off to the side? Those are factories."

Betty voiced a doubt which had been gradually forming into words. "Do you think they might-resent our landing? If they've gone to the trouble of creating a secret - well, call it Utopia - they might not want to be discovered."

Welstead turned his head, gazed at her eye to eye. "Do you want to land?" he asked soberly.

"Why, yes - if you do. If you don't think it's dangerous."

"I don't know whether it's dangerous or not. A people as enlightened as those cities would seem to indicate would hardly maltreat strangers."

Betty searched the face of the planet "I think it would be safe."

Welstead laughed. "I'm game. We've got to die sometime. Why not out here?"

He jumped up to the controls, nosed the ship down.

"We'll land right in their laps, right in the middle of that big city down there."

Betty looked at him questioningly.

"No sense sneaking down out in the wilds," said Welstead. "If we're landing we'll land with a flourish."

"And if they shoot us for our insolence?"

"Call it Fate."

They bellied down into a park in the very center of the city. From the observation dome Welstead glimpsed hurrying knots of people.

"Go to the port, Betty. Open it just a crack and show yourself. I'll stay at the controls. One false move, one dead cat heaved at us, and we'll be back in space so fast they won't remember we arrived."

Thousands of men and women of all ages had surrounded the ship, all shouting, all agitated by strong emotion..

"They're throwing flowers" Betty gasped. She opened the port and stood in the doorway and the people below shouted, chanted, wept. Feeling rather ridiculous, Betty waved, smiled.

She turned to look back up at Welstead. "I don't know what we've done to deserve all this but we're heroes. Maybe they think we're somebody else."

Welstead craned his neck through the observation dome, "They look healthy-normal."

"They're beautiful," said Betty. "All of them."

The throng opened, a small group of elderly men and women approached. The leader, a white-haired man, tall, lean, with much the same face as Michelangelo's Jehovah, stood forth.

"Welcome!" he called resonantly. "Welcome from the people of Haven!"

Betty stared, and Welstead clambered down from the controls: The words were strangely pronounced, the grammar was archaic-but it was the language of Earth.

The white-haired man spoke on, without calculation, as if delivering a speech of great familiarity. "We have waited two hundred and seventy-one years for your coming, for the deliverance you will bring us."

Deliverance? Welstead considered the word. "Don't see much to deliver 'Emn from," he muttered aside to Betty. "The sun's shining, they look well-fed-a lot more enthusiastic than I do. Deliver 'Em from what?"

Betty was climbing down to the ground and Welstead followed.

"Thanks for the welcome," said Welstead, trying not to sound like a visiting politician. "We're glad to be here. It's a wonderful experience, coming unexpectedly on a world like this."

The white-haired man bowed gravely. "Naturally you must be curious-as curious as we are about the civilized universe. But for the present, just one question for the ears of our world. How goes it with Earth?"

Welstead rubbed his chin, acutely conscious of the thousands of eyes, the utter silence.

"Earth," he said, "goes about as usual. There's the same seasons, the same rain, sunshine, frost and wind." And the people of Haven breathed in his words as devoutly as if they were the purest poetry. "Earth is still the center of the Cluster and there's more people living on Earth than ever before. More noise, more nuisance ..."

"Wars? New governments? How far does science reach?"

Welstead considered. "Wars? None to speak of-not since the Hieratic League broke up. The government still governs, uses lots of statistical machinery. There's still graft, robbery, inefficiency, if that's what you mean.

"Science-that's a big subject. We know a lot but we don't know a lot more, the way it's always been. Everything considered, it's the same Earth it's always been-some good, a lot of bad."

He paused, and the pent breath of the listeners went in a great sigh. The white-haired man nodded again, serious, sober-though evidently infected with the excitement that fixed his fellows.

"No more for the present! You'll be tired and there's much time for talk. May I offer you the hospitality of my house?"

Welstead looked uncertainly at Betty. Instinct urged him not to leave his ship.

"Or if you'd prefer to remain aboard ..." suggested the man of Haven.

"No," said Welstead. "We'll be delighted." If harm were intended - as emphatically did not seem likely - their presence aboard the ship would not prevent it. He craned his neck, looked here and there for the officialdom that would be bumptiously present on Earth.

"Is there anyone we should report to? Any law we'll be breaking by parking our ship here?"