The Shipshape Miracle : And Other Stories

Paradise

The dome was a squatted, alien shape that did not belong beneath the purple mist of Jupiter, a huddled, frightened structure that seemed to cower against the massive planet.

The creature that had been Kent Fowler stood spraddling on his thick-set legs.

An alien thing, he thought. That’s how far I’ve left the human race. For it’s not alien at all. Not alien to me. It is the place I lived in, dreamed in, planned in. It is the place I left—afraid. And it is the place I come back to—driven and afraid.

Driven by the memory of the people who were like me before I became the thing I am, before I knew the liveness and the fitness and the pleasure that is possible if one is not a human being.

Towser stirred beside him and Fowler sensed the bumbling friendliness of the one-time dog, the expressed friendliness and comradeship and love that had existed all the time, perhaps, but was never known so long as they were dog and man.

The dog’s thoughts seeped into his brain. “You can’t do it, pal,” said Towser.

Fowler’s answer was almost a wail. “But I have to, Towser. That’s what I went out for. To find what Jupiter really is like. And now I can tell them, now I can bring them word.”

You should have done it long ago, said a voice deep inside of him, a faint, far-off human voice that struggled up through his Jovian self. But you were a coward and you put it off—and put it off. You ran away because you were afraid to go back. Afraid to be turned into a man again.

“I’ll be lonesome,” said Towser, and yet he did not say it. At least there were no words—rather a feeling of loneliness, a heart-wrench cry at parting. As if, for the moment, Fowler had moved over and shared Towser’s mind.

Fowler stood silent, revulsion growing in him. Revulsion at the thought of being turned back into a man—into the inadequacy that was the human body and the human mind.

“I’d come with you,” Towser told him, “but I couldn’t stand it. I might die before I could get back. I was darn near done for, you remember. I was old and full of fleas. My teeth were wore right down to nubbins and my digestion was all shot. And I had terrible dreams. Used to chase rabbits when I was a pup, but toward the last it was the rabbits that were chasing me.”

“You stay here,” said Fowler. “I’ll be coming back.”

If I can make them understand, he thought. If I only can. If I can explain.

He lifted his massive head and stared at the lift of hills which swelled to mountain peaks shrouded in the rose and purple mist. A lightning bolt snaked across the sky and the clouds and mist were lighted with a fire of ecstasy.

He shambled forward, slowly, reluctantly. A whiff of scent came down the breeze and his body drank it in—like a cat rolling in catnip. And yet it wasn’t scent—although that was the closest he could come to it, the nearest word he had. In years to come the human race would develop a new terminology.

How could one, he wondered, explain the mist that drifted on the land and the scent that was pure delight. Other things they’d understand, he knew. That one never had to eat, that one never slept, that one was done with the whole range of depressive neuroses of which Man was victim. Those things they would understand, because they were things that could be told in simple terms, things which could be explained in existent language.

But what about the other things—the factors that called for a new vocabulary? The emotions that Man had never known. The abilities that Man had never dreamed of. The clarity of mind and the understanding—the ability to use one’s brain down to the ultimate cell. The things one knew and could do instinctively that Man could never do because his body did not carry the senses with which they could be done.

“I’ll write it down,” he told himself. “I’ll take my time and write it down.”

But the written word, he realized, was a sorry tool.

A televisor port bulged out of the crystalline hide of the dome and he shambled toward it. Rivulets of condensed mist ran down across it and he reared up to stare straight into the port.

Not that he could see anything, but the men inside would see him. The men who always watched, staring out at the brutality of Jupiter, the roaring gales and ammonia rains, the drifting clouds of deadly methane scudding past. For that was the way that men saw Jupiter.

He lifted a forepaw and wrote swiftly in the wetness on the port—printing backwards.

They had to know who it was, so there would be no mistake. They had to know what co-ordinates to use. Otherwise they might convert him back into the wrong body, use the wrong matrix and he would come out somebody else—young Allen, maybe, or Smith, or Pelletier. And that might well be fatal.

The ammonia ran down and blurred the printing, wiped it out. He wrote the name again.

They would understand that name. They would know that one of the men who had been converted into a Loper had come back to report.

He dropped to the ground and whirled around, staring at the door which led into the converter unit. The door moved slowly, swinging outward.

“Good-bye, Towser,” said Fowler, softly.

A warning cry rose in his brain: It’s not too late. You aren’t in there yet. You still can change your mind. You still can turn and run.

He plodded on, determined, gritting mental teeth. He felt the metal floor underneath his pads, sensed the closing of the door behind him. He caught one last, fragmentary thought from Towser and then there was only darkness.

The conversion chamber lay just ahead and he moved up the sloping ramp to reach it.

A man and dog went out, he thought, and now the man comes back.

The press conference had gone well. There had been satisfactory things to report.

Yes, Tyler Webster told the newsmen, the trouble on Venus had been all smoothed out. Just a matter of the parties involved sitting down and talking. The life experiments out in the cold laboratories of Pluto were progressing satisfactorily. The expedition for Centauri would leave as scheduled, despite reports it was all balled up. The trade commission soon would issue new monetary schedules on various interplanetary products, ironing out a few inequalities.

Nothing sensational. Nothing to make headlines. Nothing to lead off the newscast.

“And Jon Culver tells me,” said Webster, “to remind you gentlemen that today is the one hundred twenty-fifth anniversary of the last murder committed in the Solar System. One hundred and twenty-five years without a death by premeditated violence.”

He leaned back in the chair and grinned at them, masking the thing he dreaded, the question that he knew would come.

But they were not ready to ask it yet—there was a custom to be observed—a very pleasant custom.

Burly Stephen Andrews, press chief for Interplanetary News, cleared his throat as if about to make an important announcement, asked with what amounted to mock gravity:

“And how’s the boy?”

A smile broke across Webster’s face. “I’m going home for the weekend,” he said. “I bought my son a toy.”

He reached out, lifted the little tube from off the desk.

“An old-fashioned toy,” he said. “Guaranteed old-fashioned. A company just started putting them out. You put it up to your eye and turn it and you see pretty pictures. Colored glass falling into place. There’s a name for it—”

“Kaleidoscope,” said one of the newsmen, quickly. “I’ve read about them. In an old history on the manners and customs of the early twentieth century.”

“Have you tried it, Mr. Chairman?” asked Andrews.

“No,” said Webster. “To tell the truth, I haven’t. I just got it this afternoon and I’ve been too busy.”

“Where’d you get it, Mr. Chairman?” asked a voice. “I got to get one of those for my own kid.”

“At the shop just around the corner. The toy shop, you know. They just came in today.”

Now, Webster knew, was the time for them to go. A little bit of pleasant, friendly banter and they’d get up and leave.

But they weren’t leaving—and he knew they weren’t. He knew it by the sudden hush and the papers that rattled quickly to cover up the hush.

Then Stephen Andrews was asking the question that Webster had dreaded. For a moment Webster was grateful that Andrews should be the one to ask it. Andrews had been friendly, generally speaking, and Interplanetary Press dealt in objective news, with none of the sly slanting of words employed by interpretative writers.

“Mr. Chairman,” said Andrews, “we understand a man who was converted on Jupiter has come back to Earth. We would like to ask you if the report is true?”

“It is true,” said Webster, stiffly.

They waited and Webster waited, unmoving in his chair.

“Would you wish to comment?” asked Andrews, finally.

“No,” said Webster.

Webster glanced around the room, ticking off the faces. Tensed faces, sensing some of the truth beneath his flat refusal to discuss the matter. Amused faces, masking brains that even now were thinking how they might twist the few words he had spoken. Angry faces that would write outraged interpretative pieces about the people’s right to know.

“I am sorry, gentlemen,” said Webster.

Andrews rose heavily from the chair. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” he said.

Webster sat in his chair and watched them go, felt the coldness and emptiness of the room when they were gone.

They’ll crucify me, he thought. They’ll nail me to the barn door and I haven’t got a comeback. Not a single one.

He rose from the chair and walked across the room, stood staring out the window at the garden in the sun of afternoon.

Yet, you simply couldn’t tell them.

Paradise! Heaven for the asking! And the end of humanity! The end of all the ideals and all the dreams of mankind, the end of the race itself.

The green light on his desk flashed and chirped and he strode back across the room.

“What is it?” he asked.

The tiny screen flashed and a face was there.

“The dogs just reported, sir, that Joe, the mutant, went to your residence and Jenkins let him in.”

“Joe! You’re sure?”

“That’s what the dogs said. And the dogs are never wrong.”

“No,” said Webster slowly, “no, they never are.”

The face faded from the screen and Webster sat down heavily.

He reached with numbed fingers for the contro1 panel on his desk, twirled the combination without looking.

The house loomed on the screen, the house in North America that crouched on the windy hilltop. A structure that had stood for almost a thousand years. A place where a long line of Websters had lived and dreamed and died.

Far in the blue above the house a crow was flying and Webster heard, or imagined that he heard, the wind-blown caw of the soaring bird.

Everything was all right—or seemed to be. The house drowsed in the morning light and the statue still stood upon the sweep of lawn—the statue of that long-gone ancestor who had vanished on the star-path. Allen Webster, who had been the first to leave the Solar System, heading for Centauri—even as the expedition now on Mars would head out in a day or two.

There was no stir about the house, no sign of any moving thing.

Webster’s hand moved out and flipped a toggle. The screen went dead.

Jenkins can handle things, he thought. Probably better than a man could handle them. After all, he’s got almost a thousand years of wisdom packed in that metal hide of his. He’ll be calling in before long to let me know what it’s all about.

His hand reached out, set up another combination.

He waited for long seconds before the face came on the screen.

“What is it, Tyler?” asked the face.

“Just got a report that Joe—”

Jon Culver nodded. “I just got it, too. I’m checking up.”

“What do you make of it?”

The face of the World Security chief crinkled quizzically. “Softening up, maybe. We’ve been pushing Joe and the other mutants pretty hard. The dogs have done a top-notch job.”

“But there have been no signs of it,” protested Webster. “Nothing in the records to indicate any trend that way.”

“Look,” said Culver. “They haven’t drawn a breath for more than a hundred years we haven’t known about. Got everything they’ve done down on tape in black and white. Every move they’ve made, we’ve blocked. At first they figured it was just tough luck, but now they know it isn’t. Maybe they’ve up and decided they are licked.”

“I don’t think so,” said Webster, solemnly. “Whenever those babies figure they’re licked, you better start looking for a place that’s soft to light.”

“I’ll keep on top of it,” Culver told him. “I’ll keep you posted.”

The plate faded and was a square of glass. Webster stared at it moodily.

The mutants weren’t licked—not by a long shot. He knew that, and so did Culver. And yet—

Why had Joe gone to Jenkins? Why hadn’t he contacted the government here in Geneva? Face saving, maybe. Dealing through a robot. After all, Joe had known Jenkins for a long, long time.

Unaccountably, Webster felt a surge of pride. Pride that if such were the case, Joe had gone to Jenkins. For Jenkins, despite his metal hide, was a Webster, too.

Pride, thought Webster. Accomplishment and mistake. But always counting for something. Each of them down the years. Jerome, who had lost the world the Juwain philosophy. And Thomas, who had given the world the space-drive principle that now had been perfected. And Thomas’ son, Allen, who had tried for the stars and failed. And Bruce, who had first conceived the twin civilization of man and dog. Now, finally, himself—Tyler Webster, chairman of the World Committee.

Sitting at the desk, he clasped his hands in front of him, stared at the evening light pouring through the window.

Waiting, he confessed. Waiting for the snicker of the signal that would tell him Jenkins was calling to report on Joe. If only—

If only an understanding could be reached. If only mutants and men could work together. If they could forget this half-hidden war of stalemate, they could go far, the three of them together—man and dog and mutant.

Webster shook his head. It was too much to expect. The difference was too great, the breach too wide. Suspicion on the part of men and a tolerant amusement on the part of the mutants would keep the two apart. For the mutants were a different race, an offshoot that had jumped too far ahead. Men who had become true individuals with no need of society, no need of human approval, utterly lacking in the herd instinct that had held the race together, immune to social pressures.

And because of the mutants the little group of mutated dogs so far had been of little practical use to their older brother, man. For the dogs had watched for more than a hundred years, had been the police force that kept the human mutants under observation.

Webster slid back his chair, opened a desk drawer, took out a sheaf of papers.

One eye on the televisor plate, he snapped over the toggle that called his secretary.

“Yes, Mr. Webster.”

“I’m going to call on Mr. Fowler,” said Webster. “If a call comes through—”

The secretary’s voice shook just a little. “If one does, sir, I’ll contact you right away.”

“Thanks,” said Webster.

He snapped the toggle back.

They’ve heard of it already, he thought. Everyone in the whole building is standing around with their tongues hanging out, waiting for the news.

Kent Fowler lounged in a chair in the garden outside his room, watching the little black terrier dig frantically after an imagined rabbit.

“You know, Rover,” said Fowler, “you aren’t fooling me.”

The dog stopped digging, looked over his shoulder with grinning teeth, barked excitedly. Then went back to digging.

“You’ll slip up one of these days,” Fowler told him, “and say a word or two and I’ll have you dead to rights.”

Rover went on digging.

Foxy little devil, thought Fowler. Smarter than a whip. Webster sicked him on me and he’s played the part, all right. He’s dug for rabbits and he’s been disrespectful to the shrubs and he’s scratched for fleas—the perfect picture of a perfect dog. But I’m on to him. I’m on to all of them.

A foot crunched in the grass and Fowler looked up.

“Good evening,” said Tyler Webster.

“I’ve been wondering when you’d come,” said Fowler shortly. “Sit down and give it to me—straight. You don’t believe me, do you?”

Webster eased himself into the second chair, laid the sheaf of papers in his lap.

“I can understand how you feel,” he said.

“I doubt if you can,” snapped Fowler. “I came here, bringing news that I thought was important. A report that had cost me more than you can imagine.”

He hunched forward in his chair. “I wonder if you can realize that every hour I’ve spent as a human being has been mental torture.”

“I’m sorry,” said Webster. “But we had to be sure. We had to check your reports.”

“And make certain tests?”

Webster nodded.

“Like Rover over there?”

“His name isn’t Rover,” said Webster, gently. “If you’ve been calling him that, you’ve hurt his feelings. All the dogs have human names. This one’s Elmer.”

Elmer had stopped his digging, was trotting toward them. He sat down beside Webster’s chair, scrubbed at his dirt-filled whiskers with a clay-smeared paw.

“What about it, Elmer?” asked Webster.

“He’s human, all right,” said the dog, “but not all human. Not a mutant, you know. But something else. Something alien.”

“That’s to be expected,” said Fowler. “I was a Loper for five years.”

Webster nodded. “You’d retain part of the personality. That’s understandable. And the dog would spot it. They’re sensitive to things like that. Psychic, almost. That’s why we put them on the mutants. They can sniff one out no matter where he is.”

“You mean that you believe me?”

Webster rustled the papers in his lap, smoothed them out with a careful hand. “I’m afraid I do.”

“Why afraid?”

“Because,” Webster told him, “you’re the greatest threat mankind’s ever faced.”

“Threat! Man, don’t you understand? I’m offering you… offering you—”

“Yes, I know,” said Webster. “The word is Paradise.”

“And you’re afraid of that?”

“Terrified,” said Webster. “Just try to envision what it would mean if we told the people and the people all believed. Everyone would want to go to Jupiter and become a Loper. The very fact that the Lopers apparently have life spans running into thousands of years would be reason enough if there were no others.

“We would be faced by a system-wide demand that everyone immediately be sent to Jupiter. No one would want to remain human. In the end there would be no humans—all the humans would be Lopers. Had you thought of that?”

Fowler licked his lips with a nervous tongue. “Certainly. That is what I had expected.”

“The human race would disappear,” said Webster, speaking evenly. “It would be wiped out. It would junk all the progress it has made over thousands of years. It would disappear just when it is on the verge of its greatest advancement.”

“But you don’t know,” protested Fowler. “You can’t know. You’ve never been a Loper. I have.” He tapped his chest. “I know what it is like.”

Webster shook his head. “I’m not arguing on that score. I’m ready to concede that it may be better to be a Loper than a human. What I can’t concede is that we would be justified in wiping out the human race—that we should trade what the human race has done and will do for what the Lopers might do. The human race is going places. Maybe not so pleasantly nor so clear-headedly nor as brilliantly as your Lopers, but in the long run I have a feeling that it will go much farther. We have a racial heritage and a racial destiny that we can’t throw away.”

Fowler leaned forward in his chair. “Look,” he said, “I’ve played this fair. I came straight to you and the World Committee. I could have told the press and radio and forced your hand, but I didn’t do it.”

“What you’re getting at,” suggested Webster, “is that the World Committee doesn’t have the right to decide this thing themselves. You’re suggesting that the people have their say about it.”

Fowler nodded, tight-lipped.

“Frankly,” said Webster, “I don’t trust the people. You’d get mob reaction. Selfish response. Not a one of them would think about the race, but only of themselves.”

“Are you telling me,” asked Fowler, “that I’m right, but you can’t do a thing about it?”

“Not exactly. We’ll have to work out something. Maybe Jupiter could be made a sort of old folks’ home. After a man had lived out a useful life—”

Fowler made a tearing sound of disgust deep inside his throat. “A reward,” he snapped. “Turning an old horse out to pasture. Paradise by special dispensation.”

“That way,” Webster pointed out, “we’d save the human race and still have Jupiter.”

Fowler came to his feet in a swift, lithe motion. “I’m sick of it,” he shouted. “I brought you a thing you wanted to know. A thing you spent billions of dollars and, so far as you knew, hundreds of lives, to find out. You set up reconversion stations all over Jupiter and you sent out men by dozens and they never came back and you thought that they were dead and still you sent out others. And none of them came back—because they didn’t want to come back, because they couldn’t come back, because they couldn’t stomach being men again. Then I came back and what does it amount to? A lot of high-flown talk … a lot of quibbling … questioning me and doubting me. Then finally saying I am all right, but that I made a mistake in coming back at all.”

He let his arms fall to his side and his shoulders drooped.

“I’m free, I suppose,” he said. “I don’t need to stay here.”

Webster nodded slowly. “Certainly, you are free. You were free all the time. I only asked that you stay until I could check.”

“I could go back to Jupiter?”

“In the light of the situation,” said Webster, “that might be a good idea.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t suggest it,” said Fowler, bitterly. “It would be an out for you. You could file away the report and forget about it and go on running the Solar System like a child’s game played on a parlor floor. Your family has blundered its way through centuries and the people let you come back for more. One of your ancestors lost the world the Juwain philosophy and another blocked the effort of the humans to co-operate with the mutants—”

Webster spoke sharply. “Leave me and my family out of this, Fowler! It is a thing that’s bigger—”

But Fowler was shouting, drowning out his words. “And I’m not going to let you bungle this. The world has lost enough because of you Websters. Now the world’s going to get a break. I’m going to tell the people about Jupiter. I’ll tell the press and radio. I’ll yell it from the housetops. I’ll—”

His voice broke and his shoulders shook.

Webster’s voice was cold with sudden rage. “I’ll fight you, Fowler. I’ll go on the beam against you. I can’t let you do a thing like this.”

Fowler had swung around, was striding toward the garden gate.

Webster, frozen in his chair, felt the paw clawing at his leg.

“Shall I get him, Boss?” asked Elmer. “Shall I go and get him?”

Webster shook his head. “Let him go,” he said. “He has as much right as I have to do the thing he wishes.”

A chill wind came across the garden wall and rustled the cape about Webster’s shoulders.

Words beat in his brain—words that had been spoken here in this garden scant seconds ago, but words that came from centuries away. One of your ancestors lost the Juwain philosophy. One of your ancestors—

Webster clenched his fists until the nails dug into his palms.

A jinx, thought Webster. That’s what we are. A jinx upon humanity. The Juwain philosophy. And the mutants. But the mutants had had the Juwain philosophy for centuries now and they had never used it. Joe had stolen it from Grant and Grant had spent his life trying to get it back. But he never had.

Maybe, thought Webster, trying to console himself, it really didn’t amount to much. If it had, the mutants would have used it. Or maybe—just maybe—the mutants had been bluffing. Maybe they didn’t know any more about it than the humans did.

A metallic voice coughed softly and Webster looked up. A small gray robot stood just outside the doorway.

“The call, sir,” said the robot. “The call you’ve been expecting.”

Jenkins’ face came into the plate—an old face, obsolete and ugly. Not the smooth, lifelike face boasted by the latest model robots.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but it is most unusual. Joe came up and asked to use our visor to put in a call to you. Won’t tell me what he wants, sir. Says it’s just a friendly call to an old-time neighbor.”

“Put him on,” said Webster.

“He went at it most unusual, sir,” persisted Jenkins. “He came up and sat around and chewed the fat for an hour or more before he asked to use it. I’d say, if you’d pardon me, that it’s most peculiar.”

“I know,” said Webster. “Joe is peculiar, in a lot of ways.”

Jenkins’ face faded from the screen and another face came in—that of Joe, the mutant. It was a strong face with a wrinkled, leathery skin and blue-gray eyes that twinkled, hair that was just turning salt and pepper at the temples.

“Jenkins doesn’t trust me, Tyler,” said Joe, and Webster felt his hackles rising at the laughter that lurked behind the words.

“For that matter,” he told him bluntly, “neither do I.”

Joe clucked with his tongue. “Why, Tyler, we’ve never given you a single minute’s trouble. Not a single one of us. You’ve watched us and you’ve worried and fretted about us, but we’ve never hurt you. You’ve had so many of the dogs spying on us that we stumble over them everywhere we turn and you’ve kept files on us and studied us and talked us up and down until you must be sick to death of it.”

“We know you,” said Webster, grimly. “We know more about you than you know about yourselves. We know how many there are of you and we know each of you personally. Want to know what any one of you were doing at any given moment in the last hundred years or so? Ask us and we’ll tell you.”

Butter wouldn’t have melted in Joe’s mouth. “And all the time,” he said, “we were thinking kindly of you. Figuring out how sometime we might want to help you.”

“Why didn’t you do it, then?” snapped Webster. “We were ready to work with you at first. Even after you stole the Juwain philosophy from Grant—”

“Stole it?” asked Joe. “Surely, Tyler, you must have that wrong. We only took it so we could work it out. It was all botched up, you know.”

“You probably figured it out the day after you had your hands on it,” Webster told him, flatly. “What were you waiting for? Any time you had offered that to us we’d known that you were with us and we’d have worked with you. We’d have called off the dogs, we’d have accepted you.”

“Funny thing,” said Joe. “We never seemed to care about being accepted.”

And the old laughter was back again, the laughter of a man who was sufficient to himself, who saw the whole fabric of the human community of effort as a vast, ironic joke. A man who walked alone and liked it. A man who saw the human race as something that was funny and probably just a little dangerous—but funnier than ever because it was dangerous. A man who felt no need of the brotherhood of man, who rejected that brotherhood as a thing as utterly provincial and pathetic as the twentieth century booster clubs.

“O.K.,” said Webster sharply. “If that’s the way you want it. I’d hoped that maybe you had a deal to offer—some chance of conciliation. We don’t like things as they are—we’d rather they were different. But the move is up to you.”

“Now, Tyler,” protested Joe, “no use in flying off the handle. I was thinking maybe you’d ought to know about the Juwain philosophy. You’ve sort of forgotten about it now, but there was a time when the System was all stirred up about it.”

“All right,” said Webster, “go ahead and tell me.” The tone of his voice said he knew Joe wouldn’t.

“Basically,” said Joe, “you humans are a lonely lot of folks. You never have known your fellow-man. You can’t know him because you haven’t the common touch of understanding that makes it possible to know him. You have friendships, sure, but those friendships are based on pure emotions, never on real understanding. You get along together, sure. But you get along by tolerance rather than by understanding. You work out your problems by agreement, but that agreement is simply a matter of the stronger-minded among you beating down the opposition of the weaker ones.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Why, everything,” Joe told him. “With the Juwain philosophy you’d actually understand.”

“Telepathy?” asked Webster.

“Not exactly,” said Joe. “We mutants have telepathy. But this is something different. The Juwain philosophy provides an ability to sense the viewpoint of another. It won’t necessarily make you agree with that viewpoint, but it does make you recognize it. You not only know what the other fellow is talking about, but how he feels about it. With Juwain’s philosophy you have to accept the validity of another man’s ideas and knowledge, not just the words he says, but the thought back of the words.”

“Semantics,” said Webster.

“If you insist on the term,” Joe told him. “What it really means is that you understand not only the intrinsic meaning, but the implied meaning of what someone else is saying. Almost telepathy, but not quite. A whole lot better, some ways.”

“And Joe, how do you go about it? How do you—”

The laughter was back again. “You think about it a while, Tyler … find out how bad you want it. Then maybe we can talk.”

“Horse trading,” said Webster.

Joe nodded.

“Booby-trapped, too, I suppose,” said Webster.

“Couple of them,” said Joe. “You find them and we’ll talk about that, too.”

“What are you fellows going to want?”

“Plenty,” Joe told him, “but maybe it’ll be worth it.”

The screen went dead and Webster sat staring at it with unseeing eyes. Booby-trapped? Of course it was. Clear up to the hilt.

Webster screwed his eyes shut and felt the blood pounding in his brain.

What was it that had been claimed for the Juwain philosophy in that far-gone day when it had been lost? That it would have put mankind a hundred thousand years ahead in two short generations. Something like that.

Maybe stretching it a bit—but not too much. A little justified exaggeration, that was all.

Men understanding one another, accepting one another’s ideas at face value, each man seeing behind the words, seeing the thing as someone else would see it and accepting that concept as if it were his own. Making it, in fact, part of his own knowledge that could be brought to bear upon the subject at hand. No misunderstanding, no prejudice, no bias, no jangling—but a clear, complete grasp of all the conflicting angles of any human problem. Applicable to anything, to any type of human endeavor. To sociology, to psychology, to engineering, to all the various facets of a complex civilization. No more bungling, no more quarrelling, but honest and sincere appraisal of the facts and the ideas at hand.

A hundred thousand years in two generations? Perhaps not too far off, at that.

But booby-trapped? Or was it? Did the mutants really mean to part with it? For any kind of price? Just another bait dangled in front of mankind’s eyes while around the corner the mutants rolled with laughter.

The mutants hadn’t used it. Of course, they hadn’t, for they had no real need of it. They already had telepathy and that would serve the purpose as far as the mutants were concerned. Individualists would have little use for a device which would make them understand one another, for they would not care whether they understood one another. The mutants got along together, apparently, tolerating whatever contact was necessary to safeguard their interests. But that was all. They’d work together to save their skins, but they found no pleasure in it.

An honest offer? A bait, a lure to hold man’s attention in one quarter while a dirty deal was being pulled off in another? A mere ironic joke? Or an offer that had a stinger in it?

Webster shook his head. There was no telling. No way to gauge a mutant’s motives or his reason.

Soft, glowing light had crept into the walls and ceiling of the office with the departing of the day, the automatic, hidden light growing stronger as the darkness fell. Webster glanced at the window, saw that it was an oblong of blackness, dotted by the few advertising signs that flared and flickered on the city’s skyline.

He reached out, thumbed over a tumbler, spoke to the secretary in the outer office.

“I’m sorry I kept you so long. I forgot the time.”

“That’s all right, sir,” said the secretary. “There’s a visitor to see you. Mr. Fowler.”

“Fowler?”

“Yes, the gentleman from Jupiter.”

“I know,” said Webster, wearily. “Ask him to come in.”

He had almost forgotten Fowler and the threat the man had made.

He stared absent-mindedly at his desk, saw the kaleidoscope lying where he’d left it. Funny toy, he thought. Quaint idea. A simple thing for the simple minds of long ago. But the kid would get a boot out of it.

He reached out a hand and grasped it, lifted it to his eyes. The transmitted light wove a pattern of crazy color, a geometric nightmare. He twirled the tube a bit and the pattern changed. And yet again—

His brain wrenched with a sudden sickness and the color burned itself into his mind in a single flare of soul-twisting torture.

The tube dropped and clattered on the desk. Webster reached out with both hands and clutched at the desk edge.

And through his brain went the thought of horror: What a toy for a kid!

The sickness faded and he sat stock-still, brain clear again, breath coming regularly.

Funny, he thought. Funny that it should do a thing like that. Or could it have been something else and not the kaleidoscope at all? A seizure of some sort. Heart acting up. A bit too young for that and he’d been checked just recently.

The door clicked and Webster looked up.

Fowler came across the room with measured step, slowly, until he stood across from the desk.

“Yes, Fowler?”

“I left in anger,” Fowler said, “and I didn’t want it that way. You might have understood, but again you might not have. It was just that I was upset, you see. I came from Jupiter, feeling that finally all the years I’d spent there in the domes had been justified, that all the anguish I had felt when I saw the men go out somehow had paid off. I was bringing news, you understand, news that the world awaited. To me it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened and I thought you’d see it, too. I thought the people would see it. It was as if I had been bringing them word that Paradise was just around the corner. For that is what it is, Webster… that is what it is.”

He put his hands flat upon the desk and leaned forward, whispering.

“You see how it is, don’t you, Webster? You understand a bit.”

Webster’s hands were shaking and he laid them in his lap, clenched them together until the fingers hurt.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “Yes, I think I know.”

For he did know.

Knew more than the words had told him. Knew the anguish and the pleading and bitter disappointment that lay behind the words. Knew them almost as if he’d said the words himself—almost as if he were Fowler.

Fowler’s voice broke in alarm. “What’s the matter, Webster? What’s the trouble with you?”

Webster tried to speak and the words were dust. His throat tightened until there was a knot of pain above his Adam’s apple.

He tried again and the words were low and forced. “Tell me, Fowler. Tell me something straight. You learned a lot of things out there. Things that men don’t know or know imperfectly. Like high grade telepathy, maybe … or… or—”

“Yes,” said Fowler, “a lot of things. But I didn’t bring them back with me. When I became a man again, that was all I was. Just a man, that’s all. None of it came back. Most of it is just hazy memories and a … well, you might call it yearning.”

“You mean that you haven’t a one of the abilities you had when you were a Loper?”

“Not a single one.”

“You couldn’t, by chance, be able to make me understand a thing you wanted me to know. Make me feel the way you feel.”

“Not a chance,” said Fowler.

Webster reached out a hand, pushed the kaleidoscope gently with his finger. It rolled forward a ways, then came to rest again.

“What did you come back for?” asked Webster.

“To square myself with you,” said Fowler. “To let you know I wasn’t really sore. To try to make you understand that I had a side, too. Just a difference of opinion, that’s all. I thought maybe we might shake on it.”

“I see. And you’re still determined to go out and tell the people?”

Fowler nodded. “I have to, Webster. You must surely know that. It’s… it’s… well, almost a religion with me. It’s something I believe in. I have to tell the rest of them that there’s a better world and a better life. I have to lead them to it.”

“A messiah,” said Webster.

Fowler straightened. “That’s one thing I was afraid of. Scoffing isn’t—”

“I wasn’t scoffing,” Webster told him, almost gently.

He picked up the kaleidoscope, polishing its tube with the palm of his hand, considering. Not yet, he thought. Not yet. Have to think it out. Do I want him to understand me as well as I understand him?

“Look, Fowler,” he said, “lay off a day or two. Wait a bit. Just a day or two. Then let us talk again.”

“I’ve waited long enough already.”

“But I want you to think this over: A million years ago man first came into being—just an animal. Since that time he had inched his way up a cultural ladder. Bit by painful bit he has developed a way of life, a philosophy, a way of doing things. His progress has been geometrical. Today he does much more than he did yesterday. Tomorrow he’ll do even more than he did today. For the first time in human history, Man is really beginning to hit the ball. He’s just got a good start, the first stride, you might say. He’s going a lot farther in a lot less time than he’s come already.

“Maybe it isn’t as pleasant as Jupiter, maybe not the same at all. Maybe humankind is drab compared with the life forms of Jupiter. But it’s man’s life. It’s the thing he’s fought for. It’s the thing he’s made himself. It’s a destiny he has shaped.

“I hate to think, Fowler, that just when we’re going good we’ll swap our destiny for one we don’t know about, for one we can’t be sure about.”

“I’ll wait,” said Fowler. “Just a day or two. But I’m warning you. You can’t put me off. You can’t change my mind.”

“That’s all I ask,” said Webster. He rose and held out his hand. “Shake on it?” he asked.

But even as he shook Fowler’s hand, Webster knew it wasn’t any good. Juwain philosophy or not, mankind was heading for a showdown. A showdown that would be even worse because of the Juwain philosophy. For the mutants wouldn’t miss a bet. If this was to be their joke, if this was their way of getting rid of the human race, they wouldn’t overlook a thing. By tomorrow morning every man, woman and child somehow or other would have managed to look through a kaleidoscope. Or something else. Lord only knew how many other ways there were.

He watched until Fowler had closed the door behind him, then walked to the window and stared out. Flashing on the skyline of the city was a new advertising sign—one that had not been there before. A crazy sign that made crazy colored patterns in the night. Flashing on and off as if one were turning a kaleidoscope.

Webster stared at it, tight-lipped.

He should have expected it.

He thought of Joe with a flare of murderous fury surging through his brain. For that call had been a cackling chortle behind a covering hand, a smart-Aleck gesture designed to let man know what it was all about, to let him know after he was behind the eight-ball and couldn’t do a thing about it.

We should have killed them off, thought Webster, and was surprised at the calm coldness of the thought. We should have stamped them out like we would a dangerous disease.

But man had forsaken violence as a world and individual policy. Not for one hundred twenty-five years had one group been arrayed against another group in violence.

When Joe had called, the Juwain philosophy had lain on the desk. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it, Webster thought.

He stiffened with the realization of it. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it. And I did just that!

Something more than telepathy, something more than guessing. Joe knew he would pick up the kaleidoscope—must have known it. Foresight—an ability to roll back the future. Just an hour or so, perhaps, but that would be enough.

Joe—and the other mutants, of course—had known about Fowler. Their probing, telepathic minds could have told them all that they wished to know. But this was something else, something different.

He stood at the window, staring at the sign. Thousands of people, he knew, were seeing it. Seeing it and feeling that sudden sick impact in their mind.

Webster frowned, wondering about the shifting pattern of the lights. Some physiological impact upon a certain center of the human brain, perhaps. A portion of the brain that had not been used before—a portion of the brain that in due course of human development might naturally have come into its proper function. A function now that was being forced.

The Juwain philosophy, at last! Something for which men had sought for centuries, now finally come to pass. Given man at a time when he’d have been better off without it.

Fowler had written in his report: I cannot give a factual account because there are no words for the facts that I want to tell. He still didn’t have the words, of course, but he had something else that was even better—an audience that could understand the sincerity and the greatness which lay beneath the words he did have. An audience with a new-found sense which would enable them to grasp some of the mighty scope of the thing Fowler had to tell.

Joe had planned it that way. Had waited for this moment. Had used the Juwain philosophy as a weapon against the human race.

For with the Juwain philosophy, man would go to Jupiter. Faced by all the logic in the world, he still would go to Jupiter. For better or for worse, he would go to Jupiter.

The only chance there had ever been of winning against Fowler had been Fowler’s inability to describe what he saw, to tell what he felt, to reach the people with a clear exposition of the message that he brought. With mere human words that message would have been vague and fuzzy and while the people at first might have believed, they would have been shaky in their belief, would have listened to other argument.

But now that chance was gone, for the words would be no longer vague and fuzzy. The people would know, as clearly and as vibrantly as Fowler knew himself, what Jupiter was like.

The people would go to Jupiter, would enter upon a life other than the human life.

And the Solar System, the entire Solar System, with the exception of Jupiter, would lie open for the new race of mutants to take over, to develop any kind of culture that they might wish—a culture that would scarcely follow the civilization of the parent race.

Webster swung away from the window, strode back to the desk. He stooped and pulled out a drawer, reached inside. His hand came out clutching something that he had never dreamed of using—a relic, a museum piece he had tossed there years before.

With a handkerchief, he polished the metal of the gun, tested its mechanism with trembling fingers.

Fowler was the key. With Fowler dead—

With Fowler dead and the Jupiter stations dismantled and abandoned, the mutants would be licked. Man would have the Juwain philosophy and would retain his destiny. The Centauri expedition would blast off for the stars. The life experiments would continue on Pluto. Man would march along the course that his culture plotted.

Faster than ever before. Faster than anyone could dream.

Two great strides. The renunciation of violence as a human policy—the understanding that came with the Juwain philosophy. The two great things that would speed man along the road to wherever he was going.

The renunciation of the violence and the—

Webster stared at the gun clutched in his hand and heard the roar of winds tumbling through his head.

Two great strides—and he was about to toss away the first.

For one hundred twenty-five years no man had killed another—for more than a thousand years killing had been obsolete as a factor in the determination of human affairs.

A thousand years of peace and one death might undo the work. One shot in the night might collapse the structure, might hurl man back to the old bestial thinking.

Webster killed—why can’t I? After all, there are some men who should be killed. Webster did right, but—he shouldn’t have stopped with only one. I don’t see why they’re hanging him, he’d ought to get a medal. We ought to start on the mutants first. If it hadn’t been for them—

That was the way they’d talk.

That, thought Webster, is the wind that’s roaring in my brain.

The flashing of the crazy colored sign made a ghostly flicker along the walls and floor.

Fowler is seeing that, thought Webster. He is looking at it and even if he isn’t, I still have the kaleidoscope.

He’ll be coming in and we’ll sit down and talk. We’ll sit down and talk—

He tossed the gun back into the drawer, walked toward the door.