Short Fiction

I

Rocket Row is the Joy Street of three planets. It’s got neon lights, crummy dives, cheap hotels, and women to match. Every man who’s ever rode a ship into space knows about Rocket Row. It runs along the far side of Flushing Spaceport, down toward the Sound.

The New Shanghai was full of dockworkers and crewmen on liberty. It was noisy. I sat on a bar stool and watched the fog trying to infiltrate the open door. It didn’t have a chance against the tobacco smoke that rolled out to meet it. Outside, the streets and alleys would be choked with wet, creeping darkness, full of quiet footsteps, and the cops would find empty-pocketed corpses behind the ashcans in the morning.

But none of that was any of my business. I was sick and tired of fog⁠—the real kind, the kind they grow on Venus⁠—and I was sick of the thought of blood. I’d seen too much of it, soaking into the hot mud, and some of it spilled by my guns. I wanted to forget the night, and fog that gave cover to every kind of dirty deal a man could imagine. I wanted to pull the corners of my world together until all that was left was the drink, the bar stool, and me. But it wasn’t going to work out that way, because I was in the New Shanghai on business.

And my kind of business was the dirtiest, lousiest, most thankless racket in the world.

The bartender moved up to where I was sitting. “Have another one, Ash?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure, Ming,” I said. “You still make the best Stingers in the System. Maybe that’s because you don’t brew your own gin.”

“Could be, Ash, could be,” he laughed. He shook up the drink and poured it in my glass. “How’d it go on Venus?”

“It went,” I said.

Ming was one of the few people who admitted knowing I was a D.O.⁠—a Detached Operative. It was a crummy job, but it suited me.

We were the hired-gun rabble of the System, thrown together into the damnedest police force there had ever been. Spacial expansion hadn’t really gotten underway until after the Terro-Martian War, and after it ended every would-be bigshot there was had realized that all he really needed to set himself up as a pocket-size dictator was some salvaged gear from the mess the war had left, a crew that wasn’t too particular, and a good-looking piece of territory in the practically limitless areas of space. Most of them had picked slices of Venus. There were a few in the Asteroids, hooked up with renegade Marties, and one or two that had actually grabbed sections of Mars.

Sending regular law enforcement officers or Marines after each one of these boys would have been physically impossible. Earth government had come up with a cuter idea.

It was a lot more economical to fight one big decisive battle than to endure a series of inconclusive skirmishes. There were a lot of us boys out in space, most of us just drifting from one port to the next, picking up a living by our wits, and by our skill with a gun, some of us. Earth government had quietly picked out the ones they considered trustworthy, sworn us in, and turned us loose with a few standing orders and a lot of dependence on our discretion.

Whenever something brewed between two of these minor warlords, we’d come flocking in and hire ourselves out to whichever side we felt had slightly more justice. Sometimes we wound up shooting at each other, but you couldn’t even be sure of that, since most of us didn’t know, beyond a guess or two, who the other D.O.’s were. Usually, though, we had enough brains to pick the right side, and we’d make sure that was the one that came out on top.

It was a process of elimination, actually. The warlords were helped to knock each other off until, eventually, those who remained either proved themselves to be strong leaders, which was what frontier planets needed, or else megalomaniacs, in which case it paid to devote a full-scale military campaign to them.

It was a highly informal system, but it had worked. It was tough on us, but it wasn’t any harder than freelance grifting had been. It left an awful lot to personal discretion, and we paid ourselves out of whatever came to hand, but there hadn’t been any big totalitarian regimes lately, either.

“Yeah, I did pretty well,” I repeated.

Ming puckered his mouth and winked. I used to try and figure out how he did it, standing behind his bar all day, never going out, never talking much except to a few people like me. But I knew for sure that he could have told me exactly how much I’d made on that Venus job⁠—and the gimmick I’d pulled to get it past Customs, too.

But that was why I was in here. Something was up⁠—something big, and I wanted to find out what it was before every grifter and chiseler in the System tried to cut a piece of it for himself.

“I got a note in my mailbox today,” I said casually.

“Yeah?” he asked, just as quietly.

“Must have been put there as soon as I touched down this morning. Somebody wants me to go to work for them. They’re paying high⁠—too high, maybe. Hear anything about a big job coming off somewhere?”

Ming grinned. “If you mean that little letter from Transolar, yeah, I know about that.” He got serious, and moved closer.

“But that’s all I know, and nobody else knows even that much. Sure, something’s cooking, but nobody knows what it is. I⁠—” He broke off. “You’ve got company. Boy, have you got company!”

I looked in the backbar mirror. A girl had come in the doorway and was walking toward me. Her dress tightened in intriguing places. Her face was as much of a treat. High-cheeked, brown-eyed, with a small, uptilted nose and a full mouth, it was framed by short curly hair the color of new copper wire. I liked it.

So did the spacemen and the dockworkers sitting at the bar. One or two half-rose to invite her to join them, but they sat down again when they saw who she was headed for.

There was something about that hair. I’d seen it before, somewhere.

The guy next to me got up and slid out of the way. I let my eyes stay on the bottles on the backbar until she sat down beside me. I gave Ming a look. He nodded, and moved down the bar.

“Ash?”

The voice was low, but crisp. It had whispers and murmurs in it, too, and I knew I’d heard it before.

“I’m Pat McKay.”

I turned my head and looked at her. Her dress, tight as paint from hem to bodice, was mysteriously loose in the sleeves. Ruffles at each shoulder hid bulges that Mother Nature never put there. They looked more like twin shoulder holsters. They were.

And the last time I’d seen her, she was seventeen⁠—eighteen, maybe⁠—in a ball gown, her hair long then, curling around her shoulders.

And the voice hadn’t been as controlled, or as crisp, but she’d been saying, “You’re a good dancer, Mr. Holcomb. Not much on the light conversation, but a good leader.”

I’d swept her around another couple, and kept my cheek away from hers. “The Academy is geared to the production of good leaders, Pat. Good conversationalists, on the other hand, are born, not made.”

She laughed⁠—a giddy party laugh from a girl who dated Academy boys exclusively, who loved the glitter and pomp of graduation ceremonies, who hung around the Academy all she could, who had been to Graduation Balls before, and would certainly be to a number of them again, before she managed to separate all the black and silver uniforms she’d danced with and found herself a man from inside one of them. An Academy drag⁠—a number in a score of little black books.

“Like Harry⁠—oh, pardon me, it’s Graduation Night⁠—like Mr. Thorsten, you mean?” And she looked up at me, raking my face with her green eyes.

“If you will.”

“You’re jealous, Mr. Holcomb,” she said, breaking out her best little tease manner.

“Maybe.” I knew she was trying to get me angry. She was getting there fast, too.

“Well, now, if you displayed some of Mr. Thorsten’s other gifts, I could forget about the conversation,” she said lightly.

“Meaning you’d like me to dance you out on the terrace and make a pass at you?”

“Maybe.”

She was daring me.

I danced her out on the terrace, and found a darker corner. She looked up at me, her eyes a little surprised, but her lips were parted.

I tightened my arms and kissed her. It started gently⁠—just a kiss sneaked in between dances⁠—but her arms were growing tighter too, and her fingers were hooking. We held it, while I listened to the blood running in my ears, until we broke apart, both of us dropping our arms, standing and looking at each other, dragging air down our throats.

“Ash! You⁠—”

She started to say something, and broke it. It sounded a little too much like a movie heroine, all of a sudden. She was holding the pose a little too long, too. “Hell, she’s a kid⁠—she’s doing it the way the grownups in the movies do it,” I told myself, but I’d danced her out here for a purpose. Maybe she didn’t deserve it, but I was sick to death of the little bits of fluff that hung around, drinking in borrowed glamor, getting the big play from boys like Harry Thorsten.

I reached out and grabbed.

“Now comes the part you’ve really been asking for,” I said. I crouched, bent her over my knee, and brought my hand down. Hard. Three times in all, putting everything I had into it.

“Now,” I said, letting her get up, “maybe you’ll quit bothering guys who worked all their lives to get in a spot where they could go out and be of some help in the only job they ever wanted⁠—the T.S.N. Do you think you really stack up worth a damn beside the only thing that counts?”

She just stood there, tears of rage in her eyes. I was never sure whether it was what I’d done or what I said that had her so mad, but the last thing I heard her say as I walked away was: “Damn you, Ash Holcomb! Damn you for being such a snobbish stuck-up.⁠ ⁠…”

Well, maybe I was wrong and maybe I wasn’t. I didn’t know as much in those days as I should have, either. But it was too late now⁠—too late by a war and a hundred revolutions, too late by all the men who’d gone down before my guns, too late by years of loneliness and bitterness.

But if it was too late, why did I remember it all now, with Thorsten up in the Asteroids, a little king in his own right, with me in the New Shanghai, a white ray-burn splashed through my hair, with the Academy a dim thing behind both of us, and Pat⁠—

Why was Pat here? What had she done through the years, while I fought my way from one end of the System to the other, and Harry took the easy way out during the war?

“Hello, Pat,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” Well, what else was I going to say?

I don’t know what she had expected me to say. She kept her face in profile, and didn’t let me see what it was showing.

“I’m here on business. I hear you’re a good man, these days, for the job I’ve got.” She twisted the words like a knife.

All right, if she wanted it that way, she’d get it.

“So they tell me,” I said.

“Fifteen thousand for a month’s work.”

She said it quietly, without any buildup. Maybe she figured fifteen thousand didn’t need one.

I sat there for a minute, not saying anything, but thinking hard. What kind of a setup was she offering me? Was this the big job that was floating around? There’s usually a sure way to find out. When someone offers you a blind deal, argue. Maybe they’ll get mad, or scared you won’t take it, and spill something.

“No, thanks,” I said.

She frowned. “Don’t try haggling with me, Ash. I can get somebody just as good for less.”

“I don’t doubt it. You could probably get three. That’s why I don’t want any part of it. It’s sucker bait.”

She looked at me for the first time, mouth twisted.

“Since when does a hired gun like you turn down that kind of money? The job’s worth it, believe me.”

That hit me. But I couldn’t afford to get touchy.

“Probably is. But with standard pay at three thousand a month, plus bounties and commissions, this little errand of yours, whatever it may be, must break so many laws it could land me in a death house,” I said, watching her eyes.

It didn’t add up. Nothing added up. Why had she picked me, in the first place? I had a reputation as one of the better gunnies, sure, but there were at least twenty guys I’d never draw against, if I could help it, and four or five of them were available. Because she’d known me? And this job⁠—what kind of hanky-panky was going on at these prices?

I watched her eyes acquiring dangerous highlights. The temper that went with that hair was beginning to stir.

“Do you want to get in on the biggest deal that’s ever been pulled off in space or don’t you?” she said. “Or are you going to chicken out?” she added contemptuously.

I let it slide off my shoulders.

“I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to get a chance to really talk things out with her, and this wasn’t the place for it. “Anyway, this is no place to talk business. Walk out of here as if I’d turned you down, and go up the street. I’ll catch up to you.”

“Okay.” She got up and walked out.

“Sorry, Honey,” I called after her, loud enough for everybody to hear. A snicker went up. I cut it off with a look at the characters lined up against the bar, and got back to my drink. I finished it casually, put it down, paid, and walked slowly to the door. I let everybody get a good look at me turning down the street in the opposite direction from the one Pat had taken.

I ducked into the first cross street and moved swiftly over to the alley that paralleled the street that Pat was on. I was thinking all the way.

Being a D.O. was one thing⁠—getting into something solo was another. I could get killed, for all I knew, and maybe by a lawman’s gun. That was a risk I ran on every job, but in this case, I didn’t even know, yet, what was going on. The smart thing to do would have been to pass the word to my S.B.I. contact, but that would take too much time. There was nothing I could do but dive into this mess head-on, and hope I’d have time to yell for help later.

I was about to turn into another alley that ran back to the main street when I heard the coughing of a Saro airgun and the faint sizzle of a Colt in reply.

Instantly, I was running silently up the alley. One hand unzipped the chest of my coverall, and the other one dove in and grabbed the butt of the heavy Sturmey that’s my favorite man-killer. I reached the mouth of the alley and stopped abruptly in the shadows.

A man lay in the middle of the street, unnaturally flat against the concrete slab. The street lamp up the block was dark, its base surrounded by shattered glass.

The Saro went into action again from the roof of a building across the street. I saw the slugs chip cement from the railing of a flight of steps four doors up. A pale blue flare winked from behind the railing, and the man with the Saro ducked, but was up again as another gun raked the stairs from a spot on my side of the street. I didn’t like that setup one bit.

The Sturmey in my hand went whoomp! and the man on the roof sailed out over the street and landed with a crunch. The other gun cut off abruptly. Two Colt beams probed for it from the stairs, and that clinched it. It was Pat, all right, and somewhere, she’d become a fair hand at street fighting.

“Hey, Pat!” I yelled, and ducked away from the storm of bullets the other gunman flung at me. The result was what I’d hoped for. The man had exposed himself to Pat’s fire by shooting at me. The Colts sizzled viciously, and the burst of Saro noise stopped in mid-clip.

A gun clattered on cement. I poked my head cautiously around the corner. Silence blanketed Rocket Row, and then was tempered by a scuffing noise. Up the street, a leather belt was being pressed against the side of a building by the weight of a body that was sliding slowly downwards. I spotted a glowing dot that was a tunic smoldering around a Colt burn.

“Ash!”

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

I grinned. She sounded a little worried.

I sprinted across the street at a weaving run, and dove behind the stairway.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know⁠—but I’ve got an idea. I got about a hundred yards up the street when I spotted this guy tailing me. I yelled, and he ducked. At the same time, this other fellow started running toward me across the street. I burned him down, and ducked in here just as the bird on the roof opened up. That’s it, until you came along.”

I swore. I didn’t go for three men gunning one girl. I looked over the top of the railing. One or two people were starting to come out of doorways.

“Maybe we’d better get out of here,” I said.

We ran up the street to another alley. She re-holstered her guns on the way, revealing a lot of what the dress advertised.

We stopped inside the alley and caught our breaths. “Well, anyway,” I said, “I know what you’re in this for.”

She looked up sharply. “What?”

“You need money to buy some underwear with.”

She slammed her hand into my face. I ducked back, and stood there, blinking.

“Look, Holcomb, as far as I’m concerned, the deal’s on. Fine. Thanks for helping me out back there, too. But just thanks⁠—no further payment. And no kidding around. This is a business deal. Have you got that straight, or do I burn you down where you stand and find another boy?”

She meant it. I looked down at her hand, and one of the Colts was in it.

“Okay.” I hadn’t meant that crack as a pass, but as long as the question had come up, it was all right by me to have it settled right here. “But put that thing away before I make you eat it.”

She grinned, suddenly, and put the gun back. “I’m sorry, Ash. But it’s the best way I’ve ever found to establish a clear-cut business relationship. Partners?”

She stuck out her hand, and I took it.

“Deal.”

A siren rose and died on Rocket Row. Pat jumped back. “Damn it!” she said. She shot a glance up the alley. “We’d better split up,” she said. “Look, Ash,” she said hastily, “I’ll get in touch with you. Meanwhile, do what I tell you to, and don’t waste time asking me why. I’ll tell you later. All you have to do now is take the job Transolar is going to offer you. That’s all. Take that job, and start to carry it out. I’ll be in touch with you somewhere along the line.”

She looked down toward the alley’s mouth. I followed her glance, and saw shadowy figures of men running by.

“They’ll be in here in a minute. I’ve got a car a couple of blocks away. I’ll see you, Ash.”

“Yeah. Hurry up,” I added, as the first of the cops came warily into the alley.

I pulled my gun and ducked behind a barrel as she started to run. The cop yelled and came after her. I snapped a shot over his head, and that drove him into cover. Over the shouts that rose, I could hear her footsteps fading out.

I followed her cautiously, sliding from behind one ashcan to another, keeping the cops down with an occasional shot. I made it out of the alley and into the street, then ducked into a doorway, kicked the lock loose, took the stairs two at a time to the roof, and got away over the housetops.

And all the time, I was wondering about Pat, the job that Transolar was going to offer me, and how she’d known about it.

II

Mort Weidmann was the same Captain Weidmann who’d left an arm in the cockpit of a K class scoutbomber that he’d flown through a formation of Marties while he almost bled to death. He looked very military in his blue and silver uniform. It wasn’t a T.S.N. uniform, of course, but even a Transolar Express rig makes an old soldier feel better.

He was another old friend of mine, like Thorsten. The three of us had been touched by the war, each in our separate ways. Mort was the one who didn’t just feel a yearning for space, who didn’t just ride on a T.S.N. uniform because it was the one available way. Mort had loved the T.S.N. itself, with a pride in the traditions that guys like Thorsten and me hadn’t quite had. He’d been a better officer because of it⁠—and the only one who couldn’t have stayed.

And, as we’d gone our separate ways, so our ways of thinking had changed. Thorsten⁠—well, he’d taken his choice, and some day I might have to go into the Belt and do something about it, but Mort’s attitude hurt. He didn’t have any respect for me⁠—he couldn’t have, for a man who’d resigned his commission and become a planet-hopper.

He stood at the window in his office, his phony arm tucked into a pocket, his moustache moving up and down as he talked to me.

“I don’t know why they picked you, Ash,” he said.

I leaned back in my chair. “I don’t either⁠—unless maybe it’s because they couldn’t find anybody else with my qualifications. Or maybe it’s because they can trust me, and they know it.” I was getting pretty mad. Weidmann was a right guy, but I was getting sick of being offered jobs without being told what they were. Two in two days was a little too much.

Weidmann turned around. “Don’t get edgy, Ash! I’ve got my orders⁠—they came down from the top brass, and I’ll carry them, whether I approve or not. But don’t get me sore. I’m authorized to offer you ten thousand dollars, plus expenses, for one trip to Titan and back. You’ll be carrying extremely valuable cargo, and you’ll be expected to deliver it intact. Do you want the job, or not?”

I didn’t answer him right away. What was wrong with him? There was more than just dislike riding his voice.

“I don’t get,” I stalled. “Like you’ve said, why me? And why Titan? There’s nothing out there. Besides, the Asteroid Belt is full of Marties, to say nothing of Thorsten and his crew. Nobody in his right mind would try to make that trip without a convoy.”

Weidmann flushed. “For your information,” he said, “there’s a small scientific staff in a bubble on Titan. They need a new charge for their power pile, and we’ve got the shipping contract. Our problem is to get it to them without Thorsten or the Martians learning about it and grabbing it up. That’s why we dug you up. We need somebody who can fly it out to them and fight off raiders at the same time. You’re still the best available.”

So that was the big job! No wonder there were so many phony things going on!

“For God, for Country, and for Transolar, huh?” I said, watching the blood leave his face. “Now why should I help you pull your fat contracts out of the fire? What’s it to me if a bunch of technicians don’t get their damn fuel? The stuff’d be worth plenty to either Thorsten or the Marties. Living in the Asteroids isn’t fun⁠—I’ve done it, and it takes power to maintain a bubble. Believe me, they’ll throw everything they’ve got to keep a ship carrying a pile charge from making it past them.”

I must have sounded pretty nasty about it, because Weidmann actually yanked that murderous motorized artificial arm out of his pocket. He pulled up his shoulders and looked at me like I was something floating down a sewer, but he kept his voice even.

“All right, Ash. Ten thousand, plus expenses. You’ll be given a new kind of ship. It’s a model we picked up from a manufacturer who had his contract cancelled by the T.S.N. She was originally designed for armed reconnaissance, and we’ve installed the weapons called for in the original specifications. She’ll outfly anything with jets on it, and stand off a cruiser, given room to maneuver. Does that soothe you, or do you want a convoy, too?” he added scornfully.

I lit a cigarette and pretended to think it over. Actually, of course, I was going to take the job. I would have, anyway, but there were two additional reasons why I wouldn’t turn it down. There was Pat, of course, and her orders. Most important though, had been the fact that the message to report to Weidmann that I’d found in my mailbox at the Spacemen’s Hiring Hall had borne a slightly different Post Office cancellation on the stamp than the usual. The T in United wasn’t quite formed the way it was on the regular stamp. It wasn’t apparent unless you looked for it⁠—but it was as good as a big red sign that spelled out “Official United Terrestrial Government Business⁠—Act as Directed Within,” because that was what it meant.

“Sounds better than I expected,” I admitted. “All right. When do I go?”

Weidmann didn’t show any expression to indicate disappointment or satisfaction. He simply said, “Tonight, after we check over the details. The ship’s equipped with standard T.S.N. controls, and you’ll have lots of time to test her flight characteristics once you get out in space.”

“What happens if she explodes? Don’t I get to test her first?”

“No⁠—there isn’t time, and it would be a dead giveaway.” For the first time, I saw something like satisfaction on Weidmann’s face. “And if she explodes⁠ ⁠… well, frankly, Holcomb, that’s your problem.”

I spent the afternoon being briefed. One thing was off my mind⁠—if I had official orders to take this job, then the S.B.I. would be keeping a tab on me. It made a difference, knowing that no matter what kind of a mess I got into, somebody would at least know what had happened to me, and, most important, why.

I was given a Company flight suit, and a hip rig for my Sturmey. I put those on, and was taken to within a block of the port in a shuttered car.

Not going all the way to the spaceport was my idea. The reason I gave Weidmann was good enough⁠—there was no sense putting up neon markers to indicate that I was up to something special⁠—but I had a better one than that. I had to give Pat a chance to get in touch with me.

It didn’t work out that way.

I began walking down toward the Transolar revetment, using a shortcut street, looking around for Pat. It was a cinch she’d had some kind of a tail on me, and I was expecting to see her step out of almost any of the doorways I passed.

Instead, I heard something.

Back up the street, the way I had come, boot soles whispered on concrete. I turned around and looked, buried in shadow.

I couldn’t see anything. I turned back around, and kept on walking, and I heard a holster being unsnapped. I stopped to listen, and there was only silence. I moved, and somebody slipped a safety catch.

I leaped suddenly to my right. My shoulders touched the wall of a house. My hands blurred forward, one locking on my holster and holding it down, the other scooping the Sturmey out and clear of the leather, then blurring again as I shot my hand as far away from me as I could, fired down the street, and spun myself away from the building. I fired again, and the street lamp above my head smashed into bits. Then I was in a deep doorway, crouched, waiting, while ribbons of light cut creases in the wall where I’d been.

That was how it began. There were endless minutes of silence, and then someone would drag a heel or kick a step. There’d be the kick of my gun against my palm, and once, the count on their side dropped from five to four.

A dot of light flickered from behind a high gutter, and rock chipped off a wall near my head. I ducked, kissed the sidewalk with my belly, slithered down a flight of steps to a basement alcove, rolled over, and slid behind the stone. On the way down, I fired back, and I heard a rasp of metal on stone. Not the momentary rake of a belt buckle or button, but a gun, dragging its muzzle against curbing while the man who’d fired it kicked his life away in the gutter. I heard it drop the last inch to the street.

I knew they’d be flanking me pretty soon. I heard cloth whisper as two of them slipped off to each side. The fellow they’d left behind began firing from all angles, weaving back and forth to cover them. He put too much pattern in his weave, though, and that was his mistake. The pattern broke, and became random as the guns spun out of his hands before he could even realize there was a shot coming.

Two! I rolled away from behind the steps, crouched, and padded away on the balls of my feet. My boots had special sponge soles on them, but even so, a lance of blue slashed from down the street against my calf. I plowed into the sidewalk, furrowing my face and tearing meat off the knuckles wrapped around my gun. I tried not to catch my breath too loudly as I dragged myself behind the ornamental outcrop of the bannister on the next flight of steps.

My leg felt like there was a railroad spike driven into it, and my knuckles were numb and stiff. I worked my fingers to keep them from freezing up on me, even though jolts of pain came up and hammered at the backs of my eyes. My face felt wet and itchy. I lay there, waiting.

I got one more of them. He decided I was dead, and poked his pale face out against a black wall. The face vanished in a burst of red, and he sprawled back. I chuckled.

There wasn’t much I could do but chuckle. The one guy left had me cold. I had no idea where he was, but he’d seen the flash of my gun. I couldn’t shift position fast enough or quietly enough to get away. All I could do was lie there.

He took a chance and jumped me. I never heard him coming.

A gun bounced off my head, and I went under⁠—But not before I looked up and saw that it was Pat herself.

III

I remember lying on my back for quite awhile before I wanted to open my eyes. I knew I wasn’t on the street. The air was warm, and heated, and I was on a bed, or something like it. My leg was giving me hell where it had been burned, but I could feel the pressure of a bandage. I couldn’t tell about my hand and face⁠—they felt as if something had been done about them, too, but I couldn’t find out for sure without looking or touching them, and I didn’t want to do that yet.

Why the hell had Pat jumped me? I couldn’t figure it.

I opened my eyes, and she was standing over me, a gun dangling from one hand. I threw a look at my watch, and saw I’d been out a half hour, at most.

“What the hell⁠—” I began.

She cut me off with a gesture of the gun. “Shut up,” she said wearily. “You’ll have plenty of time to start lying later.” She grimaced with tired disgust.

I shook my head, but I knew better than to go on talking. There was anger working its way into the hurt look in her eyes.

I got up, ignoring the feeling in my calf, and noticed several other things. I’d been lying on a low couch. My flying boots were unzipped, so that I couldn’t move faster than a shuffle. The coveralls were loose around my waist where my harness had been.

I pressed my left upper arm against my ribs. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t found my insurance policy⁠—a little singleshot burner hidden between two of my ribs under a strip of what looked like skin. There was collodion on my face, and tape on my knuckles.

“Happy?” she asked.

“Uh-huh. I’m Prince Charming, you’re Snow White, and, as far as I can add up, somebody’s fresh out of dwarves. What’s going on around here, anyway?”

“You double-crossed me, that’s what happened. We made a deal, and you sold out on it!” She was working herself to boiling mad, clear through⁠—and that explained why she’d looked at me the way she had.

I shook my head again, trying to clear it. I was getting mad myself.

“Look, Pat, I can take just so much mysterious crap, and no more,” I said, feeling the blood starting to work itself into my face. “I got in from Venus, after winding up one of the prettiest insurrections you ever saw. I got my belly full of the sound of guns and the smell of death, and all I wanted to do was relax and spend the dough I made. No sooner do I take my first drink of decent liquor in six months than you walk up to me and start the goddamdest mess I’ve ever been in!

“All right⁠—we made a deal. As far as I know, I’ve carried out the orders you gave me. I got the job for Transolar, and I started it. Nobody but you and I know there’s something funny going on, though I suppose the cops are starting to suspect⁠—seeing as I’ve killed five men in two days, and helped you knock off two more. Now let’s get a few things straight around here! I’ve been shot at, slugged, and generally treated like a supporting star in a cloak and dagger movie. Either I get some fast answers, or I start slugging!”

I’d been moving forward as I talked, getting madder and madder, and closer to being ready to dive for that gun and rip it out of her hand.

She was starting to lose some of her determination. The gun muzzle was dipping. I reached out my hand.

The gun was centered on me again in an instant, but the fire was gone out of her eyes.

“Hold it, Ash!” she said. “You sound too mad to be lying, but you haven’t convinced me yet. Just stay put a minute. You want to know what’s going on? You should have a pretty fair idea by now,” she went on, still keeping the gun on me. “I’m after that power pile you’re supposed to fly out to Titan. Harry needs it.”

I should have known, I suppose. Well, maybe she was still space-struck. Thorsten played rough, and he had some strange friends, but so far he hadn’t earned a full-scale visit from the T.S.N. It didn’t mean as much in this case, though. He would have been a tough nut to crack, sitting out there in the Asteroids with a good-sized fleet behind him. Still⁠—

But that was for another time. I let her see by my face that the subject wasn’t closed, and then I went on.

“Yeah⁠—keep talking. Who jumped you on Rocket Row last night? Why were you trying to pot me a while ago?”

“Because⁠—goddam it, I don’t know what to think!” she said. “Those were S.B.I. men last night. I knew they were trailing me, but I thought I’d gotten rid of them before I contacted you. Maybe I did⁠—maybe they picked me up again when I went back out on the street. Anyway, we killed them, but the S.B.I. knows damn well who did it. We did enough yelling back and forth to let all of New York City know who it was.”

That had been a dumb play, all right. I didn’t have time to curse my stupidity, though. I didn’t care one bit for the idea of me having shot an S.B.I. man. It was his own fault, but it wouldn’t help my record any.

“All right,” I said, “so they were S.B.I. men. That’s tough⁠—for them.”

“Why haven’t we been picked up? I’ve been hiding out all day⁠—but how did you get away with walking in Transolar in broad daylight and coming out again, if you didn’t make some kind of deal?” She was gnawing on her lip. “Damn it, give me a reasonable explanation, and I’ll forget the whole thing.”

That sent me off. I knew why I hadn’t been picked up, all right⁠—they were waiting for me to blow this deal open for them. Maybe, if I did that, they’d forget I’d killed one of them. I’d have to do a really good job, though.

But I wasn’t doing too much reasoning, right then. I’d been mad all night, but that was nothing to what I felt right then.

I could feel a big red ball of pure rage building up inside me. My fingers started to tremble, and my vision got hazy.

I swung out my hand and slapped the muzzle of the gun as hard as I could, and to hell with what it did to my bum hand. The gun went spinning away, taking skin off her fingers as it went, and crashed into a wall. I swung my hand back and slapped her across the face. She fell back and hit the floor. She lay huddled in a corner, looking up at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open with surprise.

“You’ll forget the whole thing, huh? All I have to do is explain away some half-baked idea that came into your head, and you’ll forgive me, is that it?” I reached down, grabbed her shoulder, pulled her to her feet, and held her there. Her mouth was still open, and she couldn’t get any words out of her throat.

“You’re going to forgive me for getting me into a deal that involves killing S.B.I. men. You’re going to forgive me for having a guy that used to be a buddy of mine hate my guts, I suppose. You’re going to forgive me for slapping my face, and I’m going to get your gracious pardon for having to fight it out for my life tonight against five guns. That’s just fine! Is that supposed to cover getting shot and knocked around and slugged?”

I hauled back and slapped her again. “And that’s for pointing a gun at me! Twice. I live by a gun, and I expect to die by one, someday. But not at the hands of a woman who can’t fight a man on his own terms, and has to keep him off with a gun after she gets herself into a mess. All right⁠—you know how to use one. But, so help me, you wave one of those things at me again, and I’ll ram it down your throat catty-cornered!”

I pushed her away, and she slammed back against the wall. “One more thing,” I said. “Have you ever heard of the S.B.I. fooling around making deals with a guy that’s killed one of their men? Not on your life! They’re a tough crew, and a smart one. If they thought I had anything to do with that fracas last night, I’d be on my way to a Federal gas chamber right now, if I was lucky enough to live through the working-over they’d give me! Use your brains!”

She stood against the wall, staring at me, making sounds in her throat. One of her cheeks was starting to puff.

I started for her again. Her eyes got even wider.

“Ash!”

Her voice was high and frightened. Somehow, it cut through the deadly anger in my chest, and made me stop.

“Ash! Please⁠—Ash⁠—I.⁠ ⁠…” She put her hands up to her face and stood there, sobbing into them.

My nails were digging into my palms. I opened my hands, and saw blood running over my knuckles where the tape had torn away. There was some of my blood on her dress, where I’d grabbed her shoulder.

“Ash! Please⁠—I’m sorry⁠—It⁠—it’s just that I didn’t know what to think.”

I don’t know how I got over to her, but then I had my arms around her, and she was digging her teeth into the cloth of my shoulder, and sobbing.

“Pat, why do you have to be this way? Why can’t you⁠—” I was saying, and stroking that red-brown hair. She wasn’t a tough, self-assured woman who could gun a man down without blinking. She was a soft, hurt, crying girl, mumbling through tears, her body shaking.

I wasn’t a guy who’d fought his way through a war and countless battles since, either.

She pulled her face away from me, and looked up. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn’t scared any more.

I looked down at her. I started to say something, but she stopped me.

“I had it coming, Ash,” she said softly. “I didn’t trust you. I should have known better.”

She half-smiled. “I haven’t met too many people who could get worked up over not being trusted.”

I couldn’t look at her. I was going to have to turn her over to the S.B.I. some day, and I couldn’t look at her.

“Ash, remember the night you spanked me? Remember what you did first?”

I felt her hand on my face, turning it. Then she was kissing me, her lips soft and fresh, her wet face under my glance, her long lashes down over closed eyes. Her arms moved on my back, and her body was as light as a dream in my arms.

My own eyes closed.

IV

Flight coveralls are designed to be airtight when fully zipped. Hoods with transparent faceplates and oxygen leads can be hermetically sealed to the collars, and every ship has emergency plug-ins for the oxygen tubes. In combat, all spacemen keep their hoods thrown back, like mackinaw hoods, so that if a hole is blown in the hull, they can slip the hoods on and plug into the emergency oxygen supply. Struggling into a full-dress spacesuit is too complicated a job to entrust to the few frantic minutes that spell the difference between life and death, and meanwhile, the coveralls are far more comfortable in flight.

Besides, anyone who’d seen what a spacesuit does to a figure like Pat’s will agree that it’s a dirty shame.

While Pat was climbing into her outfit, I was outlining the plan we’d have to follow. As long as I was going to go along with this offer of hers, temporarily, at least, I might as well do it right.

“I got into a cab accident, or something,” I said. “That accounts for the shape I’m in. You’re an old friend of mine, and since I’m in no condition to fly and fight at the same time, I’m taking you along as copilot.

“Weidmann’ll stick me for your pay, of course. I’ll make sure he does⁠—that way there won’t be much kick about you coming along, especially if I make it a ‘both or neither’ proposition.

“When we get out in space, you show me how to get to Thorsten’s bubble in the Asteroids, and that’s it. We deliver the pile charge, shoot back out into space, fake the signs of a big battle, and yell for help over the radio. There’ll be a squawk about you being a woman then, of course, but hell, us spacebums are supposed to be devil-may-care, aren’t we?”

It was a great little plan, all right. It would give S.B.I. the location of Thorsten’s base, and it wouldn’t hold up delivery of the pile charge any longer than it would take to salvage it. Meanwhile, space would be rid of Harry.

“Sounds like it’ll work, all right,” she said. “I wish I was surer the S.B.I. didn’t have anything big on me. It’ll be a bad enough stink as it is.” She grinned. “But we’ll make out.”

Weidmann was out at the field, fuming over the fact that I was an hour and a half late.

He surprised me, though. He didn’t boggle over taking Pat along, once I gave him a story about being lightly hit by a car and having to take my friend along.

Pat had had a tight cloth strapped across her breasts, her hood over her face, and I’d gotten her into the ship fast.

“Okay, okay, who gives a damn what happens to you, as long as the job’s done,” Weidmann said, but I couldn’t believe him, somehow, when he added, “I don’t even care who does it, personally.”

He slipped an envelope into my pocket. “Something for you,” he said. “Don’t open it until you’re past Mars, and don’t let your friend see it⁠—for awhile, anyway.” He chuckled, and surprised me by doing it. He looked secretly happy over something, as if he knew about something awful that was going to happen to me. “You’ll have some sweet explaining to do to your friend, Holcomb. I’d love to see it.” But there was still that note of something more than laughter, more than most feelings, in his voice.

He wouldn’t say more than that. He just shoved me into the ship and slammed the hatch.

I kept watching him in the starboard screens as we checked off the instrument board. He was a little figure at the edge of the field, staring wistfully up at the ship, his mechanical arm in his pocket.

I couldn’t wait until we were past Mars to open the letter, of course. We’d be too close to the Belt by then. I read it while Pat was at the controls.

Holcomb:

I don’t know exactly why⁠—except that you’re the best there is, I guess⁠—but you’ve been picked for this job.

As you may have guessed, Transolar Express is a blind for some pretty big Government bureaus. This isn’t a ship the T.S.N. cancelled, of course. It’s a top-secret job built according to the specifications laid down by the Titan labs.

When you hit Titan, turn the ship over to the technicians there, and they’ll install the additional equipment that’s part of your cargo of “pile fuels.” The rest of your load really is fuel, but it’s not meant for the Titan pile⁠—it’s for the engines in the ship.

When it’s ready, you’ll fly the ship to God knows where. You won’t refuse, I know, because I wouldn’t either, if I’d been given the chance to fly the first ship into hyperspace.

When I’d finished it, I went back to the engine room and took a look at the drive. Then I went to the cargo compartment and stood looking at the hatches. They were sealed⁠—welded shut.

I went back up forward, and waited until Pat had to leave the controls for a few minutes.

The minute she dropped through the hatch I was over at an emergency tool kit, and a few seconds later I was ripping off bulkhead panels with a screwdriver. I got a fast look at banks of dials and instruments, and slapped the panels back up before Pat got back. Then I went down to my cabin and just sat on a bunk, staring at the wall.

That cocky little bastard! That frozen-faced terrier of a man, cursing me with all his heart because I was getting the chance he’d have had, if he hadn’t given his right arm too soon!

And he had wished me luck.

I was proud, then, of being an Earthman, of being a fighting man, of having earned the right to get my name in the history books.

I stood there, a big dumb jackass.

All of a sudden, it had hit me. I’d been asking a lot of questions lately, and getting only partial answers. Now I had all the answers, and I hated every one of them.

The misdirection and lying on Weidmann’s part was clear as a bell. It had been designed to get me off Earth and headed for Titan without anybody knowing the real reasons⁠—even me. They knew that if the real secret ever leaked out, every renegade and pirate in the system would swarm down, battling to the death to get their hands on this ship.

So they pulled the purloined letter gag. They hid the ship and its mission in plain sight. They sent me off in her to deliver the engine parts to where the hyperspatial drive could be assembled, and from there I’d be able to fly her to whatever star they chose, ghosting along in a universe where the speed of light as we knew it was not the fastest speed a ship could hit.

They’d given me a good excuse, too. “Pile fuels!” A big enough cargo to justify using me and a special ship, but not so big that I couldn’t handle the opposition I’d get from the Belt gangs, who’d fight for it, sure, but who’d try a lot less hard, and discourage a lot easier, than they would if they knew what was really up.

The only trouble with that was that they did know.

Sure⁠—what else could it be? Earth was thick with two-bit sneaks and spies who sold information to anybody with the price. Even Earth government thought enough of them to cook up this big production. One of them must have dug deeper than anyone thought.

Thorsten knew, that was a cinch. He knew so well, that he hadn’t even wanted to chance a fight out in space, where the drive might get shot up. He’d sent Pat out to decoy me into him.

I stood there, cursing, my big fists closed into sledges. Pat⁠—Pat, that beautiful, wonderful actress. Pat, who was death with a gun and arson for me with her lips.

All my life, I’d been getting mad at people and things. During the war, I was crazy mad at Marties. Afterward, I was mad at anybody who wanted to push other people around. I got mad at Pat, because I thought she was playing me for a sucker.

And Pat had taught me what hatred could do. She’d given me love to replace it.

And played me for a sucker.

I stood there⁠—Ash Holcomb, the toughest man in space, maybe. Not the smartest⁠—no, not the smartest. The dumbest, the stupidest chump who’d ever fallen for the oldest gag in history.

And nobody knew about it. Back on Earth, they were sure they’d gotten away with it. Even Weidmann⁠—Weidmann with the grin, Mort Weidmann who had gone helling around in a hundred dives with me, who didn’t need obvious signs like long hair or breasts to spot a woman’s figure⁠—he thought everything was all right, too. He was probably shaking his head with envy, back on Earth, thinking of all the fun I’d be having in hyperspace.

Nobody knew the mess the System was in, except me. And nobody could do anything about it, now, except me.

That thought knocked me out of the raging mood I had been working myself into. I couldn’t afford to lose my head.

I’d been wondering how Thorsten was going to work a rendezvous right in the middle of the Belt, with renegade Marties that had held out from the war swarming all over the place, just waiting for a prize like this.

The answer was simple⁠—he’d worked out an alliance with them. Probably the Marties thought they could use it to reconquer the System. If I knew Harry, he had other plans, but they were probably just as bad.

What in hell was I going to do?

One more thought hit me, that was the worst one of all, because it held out an impossible hope.

It was all right to picture Weidmann getting a boot out of me taking a woman along. Under ordinary circumstances, that might have been true. But this was too big, too important. There were two alternatives.

Weidmann must have known I was a D.O. I could assume that. But, knowing how important the job was, Weidmann wouldn’t have let Pat come along, no matter what, if he hadn’t thought she and I were working together.

And that one stopped me cold.

Was she, or wasn’t she?

V

What was Pat doing, tied up with Thorsten? She was a high grade operator now, as far from the immature tease I’d known at the Academy as I could imagine. Where had she learned to handle a gun like that? Where had she gotten the experience that let her handle a job this size by herself?

I couldn’t answer that⁠—not any of it, and it was driving me nuts. I stared over the control banks at the forward screen, watching the stars, and beating my brains out.

We’d been out in space for two days, and I hadn’t dared to try and find out. You don’t, when you’re alone with the woman you love.

She was standing next to me, and I looked up at her. The coveralls gave a pretty good indication of what lay beneath, and it was top grade. Not that her figure was that spectacular⁠—she had something more than figures on a tape measure. There was a precision, a slim freshness and freedom to the way one curve flowed into another. It sounds silly, but the way she held herself reminded me of a thing I’d seen once; a rocket transiting the sun, fire sparkling from the shimmering hull, and the Milky Way behind it.

I finally caught what I was trying to phrase; she looked as if she was poised for flight.

She grinned down at me. “Like it?” she asked, chuckling. Her green eyes crackled with light, and there were little demons in her laugh.

I tried to think of a clever comeback, but I couldn’t. I just said, “Yes.”

I did like it. And I hated it, at the same time.

The ship was fast, but space is big. I had a week to plan my next moves while we worked our way through the area between Earth and Mars’ orbit where the T.S.N. kept the raiders down.

But the week went by, and I didn’t think of anything. I’d be working over the control board, and then I’d look up, and she’d be smiling at me. I’d raise an eyebrow, and she’d stick her tongue out. We shared cigarettes. I’d take a drag, hand her the butt, and she’d cuff me when I blew smoke in her face.

“Hey, Goon,” she’d say from behind the plotting board, “d’ja hear the one about the lady sociologist who wandered into Bessie’s place on Venus?”

I taught her original verses to “The Song of the Wandering Spacemen.” Then she taught me the verses she knew.

We crossed Mars’ orbit. I couldn’t think of any way to find out what I’d been killing myself over except to ask.

“Ever hear of the D.O.’s?” I asked quietly.

“Will chewing chlorophyl tablets cure ’em?” she asked.

I laughed so hard that I cried.

“I don’t think so,” I answered automatically, and got busy checking the breech assembly on one of the ship’s rocket launchers.

“Lay off that, apeface,” Pat said. “We won’t need it.”

“How come?”

“If anybody comes around looking unfriendly, just give ’em this on the radio,” she said, and whistled off a recognition signal in Martian.

I turned slowly away from the launcher.

Thorsten did have a deal with the Marties. What was more, Pat was in on it. She had to be.

She looked at my face.

“What’s the matter, Lump? Something you ate?”

“Sit down, Pat,” I said, pointing to the navigation table. “Go on, sit down!” I yelled.

She turned white.

“You know what kind of a ship this is, don’t you?” I said, feeling like I was a hundred years old.

“Sure.” She nodded. She was beginning to get it. “You weren’t supposed to know about that.”

“I didn’t. Not until we were spaceborne.”

Didn’t she realize? Couldn’t she see what she was doing to me?

“Pat, do you know what’ll happen if the Marties get this drive? They’ll be able to hit Earth and Venus with everything they’ve got, coming out of nowhere and going back into hyperspace when they’re through. The T.S.N. won’t stand a chance against them.”

She shrugged. “They probably would, if they ever got it, but they won’t. Harry’s going to assemble the drive, install it in his ships, and then we’ll take off. The Marties’ll be stuck.”

“Wait a minute⁠—you just mentioned taking off. Where to?”

She looked up at me. “Harry says there’s another planet out in hyperspace, somewhere, circling another star. He says people can live on it.” Her eyes were shining, and I remembered a girl on a terrace, back at the Academy, with a dream in her voice that I’d been too dumb to recognize.

“He does, does he? Can he prove it? How do you know what he’s really going to do?”

“Because he’s told me!” she flared. “He’s going to bypass the fumbling bureaucrats who run things on Earth and take mankind out to the stars⁠—mankind, Ash, the toughest, the strongest men in space, and their women. Space belongs to us, Ash, not to those Earthbound lilies!”

“And whose speech are you repeating?” I said, getting more and more mad every minute. “Thorsten’s?”

“Yes!”

“All right, if you think so God damned much of him, suppose you tell me what he is to you now?” I asked.

“He’s my husband.” She didn’t even hesitate.

I started for her, before I could think of words for the doublecrossing.⁠ ⁠…

She came off the navigation table like a coiled spring. She had a gun in her hand.

“Ash⁠—get back! I don’t want to hurt you. Ash⁠—can’t you see why? Do you think I’m the kind who⁠—?”

I kept coming. “No,” I said, “I can’t see why. I’m not built so I could see why. And yes, I do think you’re the kind.”

“I don’t know why I had to pick you!” she screamed then. “Maybe I remembered something⁠—maybe I found something out, after it was too late⁠—”

She was crying, but she was bringing the gun up at the same time.

I didn’t care. I didn’t care if she pulled the trigger or not.

“I told you,” I said between my teeth.

She had the gun aimed right at me. Her face was gray, and her hand was shaking.

“I told you the last time what I’d do if you ever pointed a gun at me again.” My voice was coming out low, but it had absolutely nothing in it. It was just words, coming out one by one.

The gun muzzle was shaking badly. She put up her hand to steady it.

“I⁠—” she said. There were tears running down her cheeks in a steady wet stream.

She should have pulled the trigger. I think she should have. But she didn’t.

I smashed my fist against the gun, and it was out of her hands, crashing into metal somewhere.

“Ash!” she screamed, and raked her nails across my face.

She kicked up her knee, and fire exploded in my groin. I fell forward, slamming her down on the deck, and threw my entire dead weight across her shoulders.

I didn’t have to. Her head had hit the deck, and she lay unconscious, blood seeping out through her hair.

She wouldn’t talk to me. She lay on her bunk, her chest rising and falling under the straps I’d buckled around her.

I tried to explain, to make her understand, somehow.

“Pat, I’ve got a responsibility to the people I work for. I’ve spent the last ten years keeping characters like Harry Thorsten from taking over this System. It’s a rough job, and it’s a dirty one. I can’t help that. I don’t like it. Pat, it’s got to be this way.”

She wouldn’t talk to me. She wouldn’t listen. I walked out of her cabin, locking the door behind me.

Locking a door and forgetting what’s on the other side are two different things.

I went up to the control room and set a course for Titan. Maybe once we got out there, I’d be able to convince her.

It was a lousy hope. I didn’t even understand her⁠—she was like something I’d never seen before. How could she be like she was? How, goddam it, how?

VI

Titan lay ahead of me, pursuing its track around Saturn.

My ship drove toward it, flaming out fuel in reckless amounts as I poured on the acceleration. I had to get there fast. We’d already missed our rendezvous time with Thorsten by two days. He was going to figure out what happened⁠—must have done so already⁠—and would be hot behind us. I had to land, get the engines installed, load supplies, and take off into hyperspace before he hit.

It was a race against time. I built up velocity to a point no sane skipper would ever dream of, leaving just enough fuel to brake with, knowing I wouldn’t need it to get back.

Part of me sat in the control room, plotting curves, charting fuel consumption figures on a graph, watching the black line rise hour by hour to the red crayon slash that meant I had done all I could.

And part of me was down in the cabin with Pat, but if I’d let the two parts mix.⁠ ⁠…

No ship in the System had ever hit the speed I begged out of my ship’s heaving engines. No human being had ever traveled as fast before, tracing his track across the white stars in the blue fire of his jets.

If I made it to Titan in time to get into hyperspace, I would have Pat with me. There’d be stars to look at, and the worlds that circled them. Star on star, marching past the ship, world after spinning world, fair against the stars, and a million things to see, a thousand lifetimes to live.

Out there, where other beings lived, was adventure enough for both of us, and enough of dreaming. Maybe she’d forget Thorsten, maybe some of the things she’d said had been lies, maybe the whisperings in darkness were true.

If I could get to Titan in time.

I might as well have walked. I knew there was no hope before I finished landing.

Titan was an empty moon. Where the project bubble had been was a circle of fused concrete around a mess of melted alloys. A corpse in a T.S.N. spacesuit lay on its back and stared at Saturn.

I looked down at it, cursing, my shoulders slumping under the weight of my helmet.

And I heard the voice on the command frequency.

“Hey⁠—you⁠—you down by the bubble.” The voice was weak, and getting weaker.

“Yeah!” I shouted into my mike.

“Holcomb?”

“Yeah, for Christ’s sake! Where are you?”

“Your right⁠—about a hundred yards. Start walking over here. I’ll talk you in.”

I started off at a lope, kicking my way over the rough ground. That voice was pitifully weak.

I found him, curled around a rock, his head and arm supported on a rifle that was leaned against the stone.

“Holcomb⁠—”

“Yeah.” He couldn’t even turn his head to look at me.

“I’m Foster⁠—Lou Foster. Commanding, Marine guard detail.”

I remembered him. The one who filled a practice football with water.

“Yeah, Lou. How’s it?”

“No damn good at all, Ash. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Thorsten?”

“Yeah⁠—our old classmate, Harry the horse. About thirty-forty hours back.”

“You been in that thing all this time!”

“Sure⁠—snap, if you breathe shallow and don’t drink anything. Helps to have a couple of spare tanks.” He could still try to chuckle.

“Well, hell, guy, let’s get you over to my ship.”

“No can do, Ash. No sense to it.”

I was straining to hear the words now, even with his set right next to mine, I knelt down and touched helmets with him.

“Listen, Ash⁠—he’s got the stuff. The diagrams, the charts, the figures⁠—everything. He’s even got the tech detail to put it together for him.”

“All right, Lou. It figured. But can the yak. Come on, boy, over my shoulder you go, and down to the can with you.”

“Lemme lay! Goddam it, quit tryin’ to move me! I didn’t walk over here⁠—I got flung when the dome let go!” He was screaming.

“Sorry, Lou!”

“S’all right.” He bubbled a chuckle. “I see by my infallible little T.S.N. instruments that I’m gonna run outta breathin’ material ’na couple minutes. ’S’all right by me. Luck to ya, Ash.”

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t strangle. He didn’t choke in his helmet; there was still air in his tanks when he died.

I went back to my ship and sat behind the control board, smoking a cigarette. I rubbed a hand across my tired eyes, and wondered what I was going to do next.

Thorsten had thought of everything. He couldn’t have found technicians to assemble the drive anywhere else, so he’d come out here and kidnapped them. That was an elementary move, obviously planned far in advance.

I’d been running a useless race. I would have realized it long ago, if I hadn’t been half-crazy about Pat.

She laughed at me when I told her about it, but she laughed in a peculiar way.

“I could have told you,” she said, laughing. “Ash Holcomb, the big undercover agent, heading like mad for Titan! And what does he find?”

“I found Lou Foster, Pat,” I said, feeling the steel in my voice slicing upward in my throat.

“That wasn’t anybody’s fault!” she said quickly. “He happened to get in Harry’s way.”

“Go tell Andrea Foster,” I said.

“Stop it, Ash! You can keep bringing up horrible examples, but it still doesn’t mean anything, compared to travel to the stars.”

“What was wrong with the way it was going to be done?” I asked.

But she was pulling her protective shell of mockery around her again. “Oh, stop it, Ash! You’re licked, and now you’re trying to justify it by claiming foul, the way losers always have.”

But the last thing she said, as I slammed out of the cabin, was: “This time, you got the spanking, Ash. Now stop crying about it.” But somehow, she didn’t sound as happy as she’d probably expected.

I took the ship back out into space, finally, heading Sunward. All I could do was hope I’d get within radio range of a T.S.N. ship before Thorsten found me.

But that didn’t happen. I wasn’t anywhere near the Belt when I had to sit and watch Thorsten’s fleet come flaming at me out of space and surround my ship, sliding into tight courses that held me on a deadly and invisible leash.

And I could feel things crumbling inside me. All the principles the Academy had built in, and love, and fear⁠—remorse, friendship, bravery⁠—none of it meant anything. They were things that human hearts and minds were capable of, but when yesterday’s love is today’s revulsion, when friends are deadly enemies, when all the world thinks of you as just another space bum⁠—what then? I had the destiny of the System riding in the holds behind me, and nobody really knew or cared that I’d break my heart to keep it safe.

They were my eyes, but they weren’t altogether normal as I stared out of the control room screens at the waiting fleet.

They kept their distances. They all had their launchers pointed at me, and on a few of the old T Class rack-mounts I could see the homing torps lying in wait on the flat upper decks.

I went back to Pat’s cabin. She was sitting up on her bunk, staring at me. Fire lay buried deep in her eyes, but she kept her face smooth.

“Okay, Pat,” I said. “Thorsten’s got his crew in a globe around me. He wants this ship. Should I give it to him?”

What I was saying didn’t match my voice. I was tired, and mad, and I couldn’t look at her. I could feel my lower teeth sliding back and forth against my upper ones.

“No⁠—I know you too well, Ash,” she said. “Not the way you’d give it to him.” She pushed herself up and stood in front of me. Her eyes kept getting wider and wider. “Ash! You’re crazy. If you think you can fight your way out of this⁠—” her voice broke. “You know you don’t have a chance. I’ve seen Harry’s fleet in action. This is one ship, Ash⁠—one ship!”

Her entire body was radiating urgency. She was standing stiff-legged, every muscle quivering, trying to get her words through the desperate red haze that was building up in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see her very clearly.

But I could see her well enough to laugh at her.

“Fight?” I said. “Fight? I’ve had fighting⁠—all the fighting I’m ever going to do. I’ve been fighting too much, too often. I had a name and a friend, once⁠—and I had a girl, once, too. Now all I’ve got is a job, and some orders, and a conscience, maybe. No⁠—I’m not going to fight.” I threw back my head and laughed again. I reached out and grabbed her arm. “Come on⁠—you’re going to have a grandstand seat.”

I pulled her up the companionway and into the control room, and threw her into the copilot’s seat. I pulled out my gun.

“Reach for those controls,” I said, “and I’ll blow your hand off.” She sat in the chair, her face gray, staring out at Thorsten’s fleet.

I reached over and switched the radio to Thorsten’s frequency.

“Thorsten!”

“Yes. Holcomb?”

His, too, wasn’t quite the same voice it had been. It was even, clipped, used to commanding a crew that didn’t enjoy being commanded.

“I’ve got Pat,” I said, keeping my gun on her.

“Let’s stick to relevancies, Holcomb. How much for the ship?”

He’d given himself away! I could have laughed.

“No, Thorsten, let’s keep it where I want it⁠—how much for Pat?”

There was a pause on the other transmitter. I was playing my cards right. Thorsten had me, and the ship. But I had his wife, and that was swinging the scales my way. Why should he offer to pay me, now? A bluff? No⁠—he had a better one in the ships, with their launchers ready. Why should he be willing to dicker for the ship? Because she was in it, that was why. If I refused to give up, he could always blow me out of space, or take the ticklish chance of trying to disable the ship without wrecking the engines. But he wasn’t going to do that. Pat was worth too much to him.

“Thorsten! You heard me⁠—how much for your wife?”

He cursed me. His voice was a lot lower than it had been.

“I’ve got a gun on her, Thorsten.”

Suddenly, he sighed. “All right, Holcomb. You win⁠—but not as much as you’d think. I’ll make a deal.”

I laughed at him, still keeping my gun pointed at Pat with a rock-steady hand. “What am I supposed to think you’ve been doing, Thorsten?”

It was getting to be too much for me. I could feel all the pressure that had built up in the last ten days starting to come to a head, ready to explode and to hell with who the pieces hit.

“Oh, no, Thorsten⁠—no deals. No bargains, no sellouts, no compromises. I’m up to here on doublecrossing and crisscrossing. I hired out to you and Transolar, and before that I hired out to anybody who had money or a chance for me to get some. And all the time, I was hired out to Earth government. I’ve had too many jobs, Thorsten⁠—my gun’s been on the line too long. There are too many oaths and too many loyalties. Too much of my honor’s been spread from one end of the System to the other. Now I’m quitting. The towel’s going in, and from now on, it’s me that I fight for.”

I had the mike up against my mouth, and I was yelling into it. “I know what you’re going to offer me, Thorsten. I know what I’d offer. You want the girl and the ship. You want one as bad as the other, but you won’t settle for half. So you’re offering me my life, and a free ride to Earth. Well, you can take that deal and stuff it. Earth! Who the hell would want to live on the Earth you’d leave, after you and your Martie friends got through with it. No, Thorsten, it’s no bargain. It’s a Heads you win, Tails I lose proposition, no matter how you slice it.”

I laughed again, enjoying it, because it was going to be my last laugh.

“Holcomb!” He must have guessed what I was working myself up to do, because there was sheer desperation in his voice, but I cut him off.

“Shut up, Harry! I told you I was quitting. You know the racket I’m in. You don’t just quit it. You go out with your hand on the wheel and your jets full on. And here I come!”

I fed flame into my portside jets, throwing the mike away from me as I grabbed the controls. The ship arced over, singing her death-song in snapping stanchions and straining plates, in the angry howl of the converters, in the drumfire of jets that coughed and choked as fuel poured into them, but which opened their throats and bellowed just the same.

“Ash!” That was Pat.

“Holcomb!” That was Thorsten.

But I was pure metal-jacketed, fireborne death, howling silently toward the sleek cruiser that was Thorsten’s flagship, the best known and most feared silhouette in space.

The gates of Hell opened in space. Every ship in the hemisphere ahead of me vomitted fire as the ones behind me and beside me lanced out of the way of the arrowing missiles.

There was no way for Thorsten to avoid me. Fire blossomed at the throats of his jets, and the flagship shot forward.

I snarled, twisted the wheel, and kept my nose pointed for his bridge.

Proximity torps began exploding all around me. They weren’t doing Thorsten a bit of good. Either they hit me, or, without air to carry the shock, they were as good as not there at all.

“Here’s your hyperspacial drive, Harry!” I howled. “Here it comes⁠—compliments of Ash Holcomb, hired gun!”

Suddenly a missile exploded under my bow. It was a clean hit. The ship screamed escaping air, and shuddered, bucking upward. It wasn’t just stanchions ripping loose now, or buckling plates. It was snapping girders, and metal spewing out into space like teeth from a broken mouth. The trouble board winked solid fire at me.

I didn’t care about that. The ship was unhurt in the only place that counted⁠—her engine room⁠—and the stern jets kept firing. But I was bent over the wheel, sobbing in pure, white-hot, frustrated rage, because I was going to miss. I’d been slammed up off my trajectory high enough to miss, and Thorsten’s ship was firing every tube he had to drive herself down and away, behind a protective screen of other ships.

I could hear the hysterical relief in Thorsten’s laugh over the radio.

I could hear something else, too. It hadn’t mattered what Pat did, once I’d swung the ship into line. I couldn’t have pulled it out of the collision course myself. It had taken an atomic rocket to blast me out of the way.

But it was different, now.

I was folded over the wheel, blood running down my chin from my bitten lip, my knuckles aching as I tightened my fists.

Pat said: “Ash⁠—I’m sorry.” There was a sob in her voice. “But you won’t give up,” she stumbled on. “You’ll never give up, until you and Harry are both dead. And I couldn’t stand losing both of you.”

I never knew what she hit me with, but the back of my skull seemed to explode inward, and I slid out of the seat to the deck. I started crawling toward her. She sobbed, but she hit me again.

VII

The fleet had scattered back to the hundreds of hidden berths among the farflung Asteroids. I came awake in a pressurized burrow dug out in the particular rock Thorsten had chosen for himself and his crew. I’d been dropped in a corner and searched down to my shorts. There wasn’t anything on me that I could use for a weapon.

Except⁠—no, I caught myself before there was even a quiver in my left arm. Now wasn’t the time to press against my ribs, to try to feel the almost imperceptible bulge of the singleshot capsule between my ribs.

I groaned and let my eyes flicker open.

“How’s it, Ash?”

I looked up. Thorsten was standing a few feet away from me, looking down from under his spreading black eyebrows.

I put my hand up to my head. “Crummy. She hits hard.”

Harry chuckled.

He wasn’t a specially big man, but he was large enough. He had deep black eyes under his brows, an aristocratic nose that had been broken, a slightly off-center mouth whose lower lip was tighter on one side than the other, and a firm jaw. His hair was black⁠—almost as black as mine, and as short. He hadn’t changed much.

His voice started in the pit of his stomach, and worked its way up. When he chuckled, the sound was almost operatic, deeper than I remembered it.

“Why shouldn’t I kill you, Holcomb?” he said.

I climbed to my feet, and looked into those probing eyes. “Go ahead. Give me half a chance, and I’ll kill you.”

He laughed. “The old school tie,” he said. His voice dropped an octave. “Relax, Holcomb. You’re alive, for the time being. Come on, let’s get some food.”

He reached out and slapped me on the back.

Thorsten’s mess hall was another pocket in the Asteroid. It was connected to the burrow I’d been in by a tunnel in the rock, and as we walked down it, I’d had a chance to get quick looks into branching corridors and other burrows that were machine shops, arsenals, ration dumps, and living quarters. Just before we turned into the mess hall, I caught a glimpse of an airlock hatch at the end of the tunnel. That was where Thorsten’s ship had to be⁠—and my own, too, unless I missed my guess.

As long as I had a functioning mind, I was going to use it. Automatically, a map of as much of the layout as I’d seen was filed away in my brain.

The mess hall must have been the largest single unit in the entire chain of burrows that honeycombed the Asteroid. It was lit by clamp-on units, like the rest of the place, but the lamps were spread a little farther apart, so it was darker. Even so, I could see that most of the space was filled with men sitting at the long mess tables.

“Quite a setup, isn’t it, Holcomb?” Thorsten asked, leading me toward a table that was slightly set apart from the others.

“Looks like an improved standard T.S.N. base,” I said.

Thorsten chuckled again. He must have liked the sound of it.

“In many ways, that’s more or less what it is,” he said, sounding pleased.

We got to the table, and stopped.

All the other mess tables ran end to end from the far side of the burrow to this. Thorsten’s table was set at right angles to the others, and a separate chair that was obviously his was placed so that he could look over all the other men. The table had a snow-fresh cloth on it, and was set in high-polish silver. Heavy napkins lay beside each of the places. I glanced down at the other tables. They were bare-boarded, but that wasn’t going to make much difference to the men sitting at them.

But all of that took about half a minute’s looking. What stopped my eye cold was Pat, dressed in an elaborate gown, seated at one end of Thorsten’s table.

“Stop staring, Ash,” Thorsten said, the laughter running under his words like the whisper of a river. “Let’s not keep our hostess waiting.”

“Hello, Pat,” I said as I walked over to the chair that Thorsten indicated was mine. I was sitting next to her.

She half-smiled, but her eyes were uncertain. “Hello, Ash.” She glanced quickly over toward Thorsten, who had reached his own chair.

Thorsten stopped next to the chair and laid his hand on its back. It was a signal.

“Attention!”

A paradeground voice near the door wiped out every other sound in the hall.

There were close to six hundred men in the mess hall. All of them were suddenly on their feet, snapping to, the sound of boots on rock thundering through the burrow. The men faced each other across the long tables, staring straight ahead.

The successive crashes of sound died out. I stood casually next to my place. Pat was the only seated person in the hall.

Thorsten stood where he was, his hand still on the chair, looking out over his men. The silence held.

“All right, men. Let’s eat,” Thorsten said casually. There was another roll of sound through the hall as six hundred men sat down and long platters of hot food were rushed out to them by table orderlies.

Thorsten and I sat down, and the three of us at the table faced each other.

“Enjoy the show?” I asked Thorsten. He came back with a peeved look.

It was my turn to chuckle, but I had enough sense to keep it inside. I was right back to not being sure of what to think, as far as Pat was concerned. How much of our affair had been pure bait, and how much of it did Harry know about?

He motioned to a waiting orderly, who stepped forward and poured wine into the crystal goblets beside our plates. Thorsten reached forward and picked his up. “A toast, Holcomb!” The black eyes bored into mine. I picked up my glass.

Thorsten turned toward Pat and raised his glass. I looked at her. Her face was pale, and her eyes were oddly urgent. She couldn’t seem to take them off Thorsten’s face.

“To my wife!” Thorsten said, and drained his glass.

I drank out of my own. It was good Burgundy⁠—cold and dry in my mouth, and warm as it came down my throat. I set the glass gently down. If Thorsten was expecting me to react, he was disappointed.

But he was laughing, the sound echoing through the burrow, none of the men paying any attention to it. I looked at Pat.

“Another toast!” Thorsten’s glass had been refilled.

“To Ash Holcomb⁠—hired gun and angel of death!” He was laughing at me, and at Pat. He knew, or guessed, and death was lightly hidden by his laughter.

“Don’t do it, Holcomb!”

Thorsten’s voice was ice. I looked at my hands. They were hooked into talons, and I realized that there wasn’t a muscle in my body that wasn’t tensed and ready to cannon me across the table. I could even hear the snarl rumbling at the base of my throat.

I looked to the side. A man with an open holster flap was standing there, his eyes locked on me.

“Do what, Harry,” I asked casually, “propose another toast?”

He looked uncertain for a moment. Then the smile and the laugh came on, and Thorsten was Thorsten again. He didn’t know about the chained lightning that was running in my arteries instead of blood. He was a dead man as he sat there, and he didn’t know it. In a way, that was funny enough to me to keep waiting.

“A toast? It certainly is a night for toasts, isn’t it?” Thorsten murmured.

Pat hadn’t moved, and stopped looking at him. I didn’t know if she’d looked at me when I was ready to go for Thorsten’s throat⁠—but I didn’t think so. Now she smiled. I wonder how much it cost her because her lower lip was gray where she’d had it between her teeth.

I had my glass refilled. I nodded toward Pat⁠—and gave Thorsten the Academy toast. “Here’s to space, and the Academy. To stars, to the men that walk them, and to the flaming ships that fly.”

I looked at Thorsten for the first time since I’d raised my glass, and it was my turn to laugh.

He was gray, and somehow smaller in his thronelike chair. He stared across the table at me, and then let his eyes fall. Hesitantly, he spread the fingers of his hand, and looked at the pale circle where the ring had been.

And, incredibly, he laughed.

“Score one for the opposition,” he chuckled. “Nice going, Ash.”

I laughed with him, keeping it on a casual plane. I’d done what I wanted to⁠—hit him where he lived. Now, if I could give the conversation a nudge in just the right direction, I might be able to start him talking about his plans. I was that much closer to an outside chance to do something about them.

“What happened, Harry?” I asked. “How’d you get from the T.S.N. into being the top man in the Belt?”

He bit. While Pat and I sat there, Pat nervously shifting her glance from him to me, and me not daring to look at her because of the things I’d say to myself, he told his story. The orderlies brought our dinner, putting dishes down and taking them away as he talked between mouthfuls.

“They don’t talk much about me, I guess,” he began. “It’s a pretty ordinary story, anyway. I was in the war, with my own squadron. We ran into some bad luck, combined with a set of orders that got mixed up. I lost my men. I lost a leg, too.”

He leaned down and slapped his right thigh. It rang with metal. “I didn’t enjoy that. While I was in the hospital, they brought charges against me. I wasn’t given time to prepare an adequate defense, and they threw several paragraphs of the book at me. I was dropped a rank in grade, and slated for duty at a procurement office. I got my break, then. The Marties, under Kull, hit the Moon at practically that time.”

I remembered that. They’d gotten a toehold and established a forward base, and Earth had started getting hit with atomic missiles.

“All of a sudden, anybody who could walk or be carried into a ship was tossed into a raggle-taggle fleet the T.S.N. dredged up. That included me.”

He grinned, “Only they made two mistakes. The first one was in thinking I still owed Earth any kind of a debt. The second was the bigger one⁠—they gave me a crew raked out of every brig and detention barracks in the fleet. I guess they didn’t think I was fit to command anything else.”

He grinned. “Pat was in a Wasp unit attached to the base. I took her along.”

He waved his hand at the men in the mess hall. “Some of my original crew are still with me. I simply headed for the Belt, and sat out the war. The boys didn’t mind one bit. We had plenty of stores, and they knew nobody would bother us while there were more important things going on. Afterwards⁠—well, we’ve done all right.”

He had. Some of the freight lines bribed him. Some didn’t.

Uncounted millions in rare minerals were scattered among the tumbling rocks of the Belt, but nobody dared to mine them. He’d given refuge to the stragglers from Mars’ broken navies, and built a kingdom on blood and loot.

“I know what I’m called on Earth,” he said. “I’m a butcher, a brigand⁠—all the names there are. Even another fighting man, like you, Holcomb, thinks I’m a renegade and a traitor to humanity for throwing in with the Marties. Well, they’re blind, Holcomb!”

His open palm came cracking down on the table. “They can’t see that Earth is rotten to the very marrow in its misshapen bones, that any system that would do to a man what it did to me is based on stupid bungling! The war⁠—Holcomb, you were in that, you know it was the most useless piece of imperialism the System has ever seen.”

He was staring intently into my face. I did him the favor of keeping my expression blank, but if he expected me to nod, he was going to wait a long time. I couldn’t help thinking of Mort Weidmann. Mort left an arm on Mars; he wasn’t bitter about that, and he didn’t think it had been a useless war. It had been the Marties for System bosses or us, and they wouldn’t have been gentle overlords.

But Thorsten was going on, and now he’d gotten to the part I wanted to know.

“There’s got to be a change, Holcomb. Humanity isn’t fit to go out to the stars the way it is. It’s not ready for the hyperspatial drive.

“It’s not going to get it.”

I was beginning to understand. Most important, I could finally understand what was wrong with Thorsten. I could see the Messiah complex building up in front of my eyes. The laugh⁠—the easy, chuckling, self-assured laugh⁠—the laugh of a man who was never wrong, and knew it.

“I’ve got the drive, Holcomb, and I’m going to use it. I’ll be the standard-bearer of the human race among the stars. There won’t be any fumbling and bumbling⁠—no bureaucrats, Holcomb, no splinter groups, no special interests, no lobbies.”

The dream was like a banner in his eyes.

“Nobody but you, right?” I said.

“Right!” the palm went down on the table again. The wine was beginning to loosen him up. His voice was losing the first fine edge of control.

And I finally understood about Pat. She was looking at Thorsten, and the same dream was plain on her face. That was all she saw⁠—that, and the man. She couldn’t see the gray rockets bellowing above the burning cities.

“Have you got the drive?”

“Damn right! Those technicians I lifted from Titan are working on your ship now. Then a test flight, and after that, a whole fleet⁠—my fleet, equipped with the drive and ready for the jump.

“There’s a planet out there, Holcomb. The Titan Project found it. A planet, Holcomb! Earth-type! Do you think I’d let those idiots on Earth have it!”

That locked it up. He was completely paranoid.

Pat was still looking at him, lost in the dream. She couldn’t be bought, and she couldn’t be taken. But she could be in love. Maybe, as a man, I stacked higher up with her than Thorsten did⁠—but I couldn’t rival the Dream.

“Seems to me a thing like that will take more supplies than generations of intercepting freight would give you. Where’ll you get your equipment?” I asked.

I’d timed it right. A lot of Burgundy had gone down, followed by Sauterne and Chablis.

“That’s where my Martian⁠—friends come in,” he said. Pat leaned forward. This was a part she’d never heard before, an answer to a question nobody but an old hand at expeditionary forces would ask.

“The Marties think they’re going to get the System back, some day.” He laughed. “They’ve been trying to persuade me to help them for a long time, now. Well, I’m going to. After my fleet has the drive. We’ll invade Earth, then. The T.S.N. won’t be able to stand up to us⁠—not when torps start coming out of nowhere. Picture it⁠—all of Earth, busy fighting us off, all its attention on the invasion, and on nothing else. Then, when the fighting’s going nicely, my men and I will raid a few choice supply dumps I’ve had spotted for a long time. We’ll load up on equipment and supplies, and take off, leaving some badly disconcerted Marties to finish their little revolt any way they want to⁠—with no Earth for them to conquer!”

“What?” It ripped out of me. Pat was sitting there, her mouth open too, the same stunned question written on her face.

Thorsten laughed his omnipotent laugh again.

“Certainly! Didn’t you know, Holcomb? Ordinarily, of course, a hyperspatial ship will take off from a planet on standard atomic drive, and cut to her hyperspatial engines when it’s out in deep space. But it’s possible to take off directly into hyperspace⁠—the only trouble being that the warp changes a hundred cubic miles of adjacent mass to C.-T. matter.”

“Seetee! You mean contraterrene?” That was Pat, tense-faced.

I couldn’t say anything. I sat there, staring at Thorsten⁠—calm, laughing, deliberate bringer of death to a world and its billions.

Because C.-T. atoms, in contact with normal matter, reacted violently. A hundred cubic miles, detonating instantaneously, would leave a ring of dust where Earth and Moon now swung.

“There will be no cancer of humanity in space!” Thorsten declared.

I jumped for him.

One slug caught my shoulder. The other plowed through the muscles of my back. I lay bleeding among the broken glass and dishes on the table. Thorsten swung a rabbit punch at my head, and laughed.

VIII

The cell was small, dark, and damp. There were stitches across my back, under tape, and a traction splint and bandages on my shoulder. Let’s forget pain. Pain.⁠ ⁠… Let’s forget it! Forget it!

I lay on my belly. I’d been on my belly for most of a week. And for most of a week, I’d thought of how it would be to dig my fingernails into my side, rip loose the phony skin over my ribs, and fire that one shot into Thorsten’s guts.

All I needed was a chance. Here in the cell, in a corridor somewhere, alone with him, surrounded by his men, chance of life or no⁠—that wasn’t what counted. I wasn’t sane myself, anymore. There were two people in the Universe⁠—Thorsten and me⁠—and room for one!

A chance. Lord God, a chance!

But all I had was dampness and darkness.

I was fed twice a day⁠—or something like it. It was almost time for my next meal, but that wasn’t the important time. It was the helpless week behind me, the week in which Thorsten’s kidnaped technicians had had time to assemble the ship’s engines. The test flight was due, and after that the production of engines for the other ships in Thorsten’s fleet. If I was going to do anything, I had to do it now.

I dragged myself up the side of the cell, leaving meat from my fingers on the rough stone. I staggered over to the wall beside the door and waited.

Time went by⁠—hours or minutes⁠—and a sound of feet came down the tunnel leading to my cell.

I couldn’t use my back muscles, but I tensed them now, feeling stitches give way.

Tumblers clicked, and the door was opened.

I kicked it shut and sprang, wrapping my hands around a dimly seen throat, a thin and soft neck.

“Ash!” Pat’s voice was half-choked under my grip.

“Pat!” I opened my hands, and she stumbled free. But not for long, because an instant later she was pressed against me again, her mouth over mine.

We stood together in the darkness and in hunger. Finally, she moved her lips away.

“Ash, Ash, you can stand!” She was sobbing with relief.

“Yeah⁠—I’m on my feet.”

“Can you fight?”

“Nothing bigger than you,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“He’s crazy, Ash. That plan of his⁠—I’d never heard it before. All he told me was that he was going to take humanity out to the stars⁠—he said he didn’t trust Earth government to do it.”

“Yeah. I know. For that dream, I would have done what you did, too.”

“I didn’t love him, Ash. He⁠—I don’t know, he was his dream, somehow, and in spite of it all, he was a better, stronger man than anyone I ever knew. Except you, Ash.”

That was good enough. That was good enough to give her everything I had or could get. And that made my spot even worse. It wasn’t just she that was going to get hurt⁠—but she was the most important one of them all.

I couldn’t even stay with her, here in the cell.

But she knew that too, and there was more to her coming here than that.

“Ash⁠—they’ve finished assembling the drive in your ship. They’ve finished repairs on her bow, too. They’re going to run the tests in a few hours. Everybody’s sleeping, except for the maintenance crew, and they’re scattered through the base. Ash⁠—I think we can get out of here. If we don’t run into any guards, we can make it to the airlock. There’ll be a few suits in a locker there. We can make a run for the ship.” Her voice was urgent, and full of hope, and bitterness for the desertion of a dream⁠—a sick, tainted dream, but her dream for so many years at Thorsten’s side.

And I knew, for the first time in weeks, that Earth had a chance. I knew, too, that Pat and I.⁠ ⁠…

I could have kissed her then. But I had to be a damned fool. I didn’t.

The tunnels and corridors were empty. The machine shops and storage rooms were dark, and the doors to the bunkrooms were closed. We reached the airlock.

All I had to do now was to get into a spacesuit and open the lock. The ship lay beyond it.

Then I heard Harry’s laugh!

He stood behind us, holding a slim handgun.

“Running out, people?” he asked. “Bribing that orderly wasn’t bright, Pat. He not only gets to keep his money, but he gets a promotion from me. That’s the way I operate⁠—that’s my justice.”

Pat and I had turned halfway around, watching him carefully.

“Justice!” Pat flared. “Worry some more about Earth. Worry about the Universe. Teach them your justice!”

Again the laughter. “I will, Pat.”

But the laughter broke.

“Pat⁠—you’re my wife. You know my dream⁠—you shared it. Why did you do it?”

“Yes, she knows your sick dream, Harry,” I said.

“Shut up, Ash;” he said quietly. “Don’t die with your mouth open.”

He fired, but I was on the floor of the tunnel.

“Ash!” That was Pat’s voice, but I was rolling, and tearing at my side.

“Get back, Pat!” Thorsten shouted. I was up on my knees, the singleshot gun in my hand. I charged forward.

He brought up his gun. The noise had awakened everybody in hearing distance. Doors were opening, men were running.

I pointed the slim tube at his belly and jammed my thumb down on the firing stud.

He screamed, cupping his hand over the smoking hole I had punched in his stomach. His knees bent, and he sank backwards, toppling, finally, as he lost his balance. He opened his mouth, choking, and blood welled over his chin.

One last shred of laughter bubbled up through his throat.

And someone, down at the other end of the tunnel, fired at us. He missed me as I crouched over Thorsten’s body.

“Ash⁠—”

I had Thorsten’s gun in my hand, but I didn’t fire back. I spun around, and looked at Pat, crushed back against the tunnel wall.

“Pat!”

She slid down the wall, and huddled on the floor.

“Pat!” I bent down beside her. It was bad.

Her voice was thick. “How long have I got?”

“Five minutes⁠—maybe ten.” I knew I was lying. It was less.

“Ash⁠ ⁠… you heard what he said. I was in a Wasp unit. Space was my dream, too. Always.”

I wanted to tell her I knew, now⁠—knew a lot of things. But there was no use in holding a dying woman, kissing her, and caressing her tumbled hair for one last time. No use at all, when a world depended on not taking time for those things.

I put Thorsten’s gun in her hand. “Can you still shoot, Pat?”

Her fingers tightened on the butt, and her eyes met mine just once more before she turned her head.

She was a beauty to watch. Sprawled on the tunnel floor, not looking at anything but targets over the notch of her sights, calm and skilled while she covered my retreat as her heartbeats slowed. She cauterized the tunnel, weaving a fan of death that marched down the corridor, encompassing and moving beyond huddled and broken men.

I clamped on my suit helmet and spun the airlock controls. I snapped one quick look back at her. Then the airlock hatch thudded shut behind me. In a moment, I was on the surface of the Asteroid and running for the ship.

IX

Earth lies ahead of me, green and safe. The muted atomics behind me have brought me back from beyond Venus, where the split-second jump into hyperspace threw me.

Let Mort Weidmann have his farther stars⁠—or anyone else who cares to try. I’ve had all I want from the new drive.

I gave Pat a funeral pyre. And now the lonely Asteroids have a star of their own.

I

The aging man was sweating profusely, and he darted sidelong glances at the windowless walls of the outer office. By turns, he sat stiffly in a corner chair or paced uneasily, his head swiveling constantly.

His hand was clammy when Mead shook it.

“Hello, Mr. Mead,” he said in a husky, hesitant voice, his eyes never quite still, never long on Mead’s face, but darting hither and yon, his glance rebounding at every turn from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the closed outer door.

Christopher Mead, Assistant Undersecretary for External Affairs, returned the handshake, smiling. “Please come into my office,” he said quickly. “It’s much more spacious.”

“Thank you,” the aging man said gratefully and hurried into the next room. Mead rapidly opened the windows, and some of the man’s nervousness left him. He sank down into the visitor’s chair in front of Mead’s desk, his eyes drinking in the distances beyond the windows. “Thank you,” he repeated.

Mead sat down behind the desk, leaned back, and waited for the man’s breathing to slow. Finally he said, “It’s good to see you again, Mr. Holliday. What can I do for you?”

Martin Holliday tore his glance away from the window long enough to raise his eyes to Mead’s face and then drop them to the hands he had folded too deliberately in his lap.

“I’d⁠—” His voice husked into unintelligibility, and he had to begin again. “I’d like to take an option on a new planet,” he finally said.

Mead nodded. “I don’t see why not.” He gestured expressively at the star chart papered over one wall of his office. “We’ve certainly got plenty of them. But what happened with your first one?”

“It d-d-duh⁠—”

“Mr. Holliday, I certainly won’t be offended if you’d prefer to look out the window,” Mead said quickly.

“Thank you.” After a moment, he began again. “It didn’t work out,” he said, his glance flickering back to Mead for an instant before he had to look out the window again.

“I don’t know where my figuring went wrong. It didn’t go wrong. It was just⁠ ⁠… just things. I thought I could sell enough subdivisions to cover the payments and still keep most of it for myself, but it didn’t work out.”

He looked quickly at Mead with a flash of groundless guilt in his eyes. “First I had to sell more than I’d intended, because I had to lower the original price. Somebody’d optioned another planet in the same system, and I hadn’t counted on the competition. Then, even after I’d covered the option and posted surety on the payments, there were all kinds of expenses. Then I couldn’t lease the mineral rights⁠—” He looked at Mead again, as though he had to justify himself. “I don’t know how that deal fell through. The company just⁠ ⁠… just withdrew, all of a sudden.”

“Do you think there might have been anything peculiar about that?” Mead asked. “I mean⁠—could the company have made a deal with the colonists for a lower price after you’d been forced out?”

Holliday shook his head quickly. “Oh, no⁠—nothing like that. The colonists and I got along fine. It wasn’t as though I hadn’t put the best land up for sale, or tried to make myself rich. Why, after I’d had to sell some of the remaining land, and I knew it wasn’t worth staying, any more, some of them offered to lend me enough money to keep fifty thousand square miles for myself.” He smiled warmly, his eyes blank while he focused on memory.

“But that wasn’t it, of course,” he went on. “I had my original investment back. But I couldn’t tell them why I couldn’t stay. It was people⁠—even if I never saw them, it was the thought of people, with aircraft and rockets and roads⁠—”

“I understand, Mr. Holliday,” Mead said in an effort to spare him embarrassment.

Holliday looked at him helplessly. “I couldn’t tell them that, could I, Mr. Mead? They were good, friendly people who wanted to help me. I couldn’t tell them it was people, could I?”

He wet his dry lips and locked his eyes on the view outside the window. “All I want, Mr. Mead, is half a planet to myself,” he said softly.

He shook his head. “Well, it’ll work out this time. This time, I won’t have to sell so much, and I’ll have a place to spend what time I’ve got left in peace, without this⁠ ⁠… this⁠—” He gestured helplessly in an effort to convey his tortured consciousness of his own fear.

Mead nodded quickly as he saw his features knot convulsively. “Of course, Mr. Holliday. We’ll get you an option on a new planet as quickly as we can.”

“Thank you,” Holliday said again. “Can we⁠ ⁠… can we handle it today? I’ve had my credit transferred to a local bank.”

“Certainly, Mr. Holliday. We won’t keep you on Earth a moment longer than absolutely necessary.” He took a standard form out of a desk drawer and passed it to Holliday for his signature.

“I’ll be smarter this time,” the aging man said, trying to convince himself, as he uncapped his pen. “This time, it’ll work out.”

“I’m sure it will, Mr. Holliday,” Mead said.

II

Marlowe was obese. He sat behind his desk like a tuskless sea lion crouched behind a rock, and his cheeks merged into jowls and obliterated his neck. His desk was built specially, so that he could get his thighs under it. His office chair was heavier and wider by far than any standard size, its casters rolling on a special composition base that had been laid down over the carpeting, for Marlowe’s weight would have cut any ordinary rug to shreds. His jacket stretched like pliofilm to enclose the bulk of his stooped shoulders, and his eyes surveyed his world behind the battlemented heaviness of the puffing flesh that filled their sockets.

A bulb flickered on his interphone set, and Marlowe shot a glance at the switch beneath it.

“Secretary, quite contrary,” he muttered inaudibly. He flicked the switch. “Yes, Mary?” His voice rumbled out of the flabby cavern of his chest.

“Mr. Mead has just filed a report on Martin Holliday, Mr. Secretary. Would you like to see it?”

“Just give me a summary, Mary.”

Under his breath he whispered, “Summary that mummery, Mary,” and a thin smile fell about his lips while he listened. “Gave him Karlshaven IV, eh?” he observed when his secretary’d finished. “OK. Thanks, Mary.”

He switched off and sat thinking. Somewhere in the bowels of the Body Administrative, he knew, notations were being made and cross-filed. The addition of Karlshaven IV to the list of planets under colonization would be made, and Holliday’s asking prices for land would be posted with Emigration, together with a prospectus abstracted from the General Galactic Survey.

He switched the interphone on again.

“Uh⁠ ⁠… Mary? Supply me with a copy of the GenSurv on the entire Karlshaven system. Tell Mr. Mead I’ll expect him in my office sometime this afternoon⁠—you schedule it⁠—and we’ll go into it further.”

“Yes, Mr. Secretary. Will fifteen-fifteen be all right?”

“Fifteen-fifteen’s fine, uh⁠ ⁠… Mary,” Marlowe said gently.

“Yes, sir,” his secretary replied, abashed. “I keep forgetting about proper nomenclature.”

“So do I, Mary, so do I,” Marlowe sighed. “Anything come up that wasn’t scheduled for today?”

It was a routine question, born of futile hope. There was always something to spoil the carefully planned daily schedules.

“Yes and no, sir.”

Marlowe cocked an eyebrow at the interphone.

“Well, that’s a slight change, anyway. What is it?”

“There’s a political science observer from Dovenil⁠—that’s Moore II on our maps, sir⁠—who’s requested permission to talk to you. He’s here on the usual exchange program, and he’s within his privileges in asking, of course. I assume it’s the ordinary thing⁠—what’s our foreign policy, how do you apply it, can you give specific instances, and the like.”

Precisely, Marlowe thought. For ordinary questions there were standard answers, and Mary had been his secretary for so long that she could supply them as well as he could.

Dovenil. Moore II, eh? Obviously, there was something special about the situation, and Mary was leaving the decision to him. He scanned through his memorized star catalogues, trying to find the correlation.

“Mr. Secretary?”

Marlowe grunted. “Still here. Just thinking. Isn’t Dovenil that nation we just sent Harrison to?”

“Yes, sir. On the same exchange program.”

Marlowe chuckled. “Well, if we’ve got Harrison down there, it’s only fair to let their fellow learn something in exchange, isn’t it? What’s his name?”

“Dalish ud Klavan, sir.”

Marlowe muttered to himself: “Dalish ud Klavan, Irish, corn beef and cabbage.” His mind filed it away together with a primary-color picture of Jiggs and Maggie.

“All right, Mary, I’ll talk to him, if you can find room in the schedule somewhere. Tell you what⁠—let him in at fifteen-thirty. Mead and I can furnish a working example for him. Does that check all right with your book?”

“Yes, sir. There’ll be time if we carry over on the Ceroii incidents.”

“Ceroii’s waited six years, four months, and twenty-three days. They’ll wait another day. Let’s do that, then, uh⁠ ⁠… Mary.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marlowe switched off and picked up a report which he began to read by the page-block system, his eyes almost unblinking between pages. “Harrison, eh?” he muttered once, stopping to look quizzically at his desktop. He chuckled.

III

At fifteen-fifteen, the light on his interphone blinked twice, and Marlowe hastily initialed a directive with his right hand while touching the switch with his left.

“Yes, Mary?”

“Mr. Mead, sir.”

“OK.” He switched off, pushed the directive into his out box, and pulled the GenSurv and the folder on Martin Holliday out of the hold tray. “Come in, Chris,” he said as Mead knocked on the door.

“How are you today, Mr. Marlowe?” Mead asked as he sat down.

“Four ounces heavier,” Marlowe answered dryly. “I presume you’re not. Cigarette, Chris?”

Apparently, the use of the first name finally caught Mead’s notice. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then took a cigarette and lit it. “Thanks⁠—Dave.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” Marlowe chuckled, his eyes almost disappearing in crinkles of flesh. “How’s Mary?”

Mead grinned crookedly. “Miss Folsom is in fine fettle today, thank you.”

Marlowe rumbled a laugh. Mead had once made the mistake of addressing the woman as “Mary,” under the natural assumption that if Marlowe could do it, everyone could.

“Mary, I fear,” Marlowe observed, “lives in more stately times than these. She’ll tolerate informality from me because I’m in direct authority over her, and direct authority, of course, is Law. But you, Mead, are a young whippersnapper.”

“But that’s totally unrealistic!” Mead protested. “I don’t respect her less by using her first name⁠ ⁠… it’s just⁠ ⁠… just friendliness, that’s all.”

“Look,” Marlowe said, “it makes sense, but it ain’t logical⁠—not on her terms. Mary Folsom was raised by a big, tough, tightlipped authoritarian of a father who believed in bringing kids up by the book. By the time she got tumbled out into the world, all big men were unquestionable authority and all young men were callow whippersnappers. Sure, she’s unhappy about it, inside. But it makes her a perfect secretary, for me, and she does her job well. We play by her rules on the little things, and by the world’s rules on the big ones. Kapish?”

“Sure, Dave, but⁠—”

Marlowe picked up the folder on Holliday and gave Mead one weighty but understanding look before he opened it.

“Your trouble, Chris, is that your viewpoint is fundamentally sane,” he said. “Now, about Holliday, Martin, options 062‒26‒8729, 063‒108‒1004. I didn’t get time to read the GenSurv on the Karlshaven planets, so I’ll ask you to brief me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s IV like?”

“Good, arable land. A little mountainous in spots, but that’s good. Loaded with minerals⁠—industrial stuff, like silver. Some tin, but not enough to depress the monetary standard. Lots of copper. Coal beds, petroleum basins, the works. Self-supporting practically from the start, a real asset to the Union in fifty-six years.”

Marlowe nodded. “Good. Nice picking, Chris. Now⁠—got a decoy?”

“Yes, sir. Karlshaven II’s a False-E. I’ve got a dummy option on it in the works, and we’ll be able to undercut Holliday’s prices for his land by about twenty percent.”

“False-E, huh? How long do you figure until the colony can’t stick on it any longer?”

“A fair-sized one, with lots of financial backing, might even make it permanently. But we won’t be able to dig up that many loafers, and, naturally, we can’t give them that big a subsidy. Eventually, we’ll have to ferry them all out⁠—in about eight years, say. But that’ll give us time enough to break Holliday.”

Marlowe nodded again. “Sounds good.”

“Something else,” Mead said. “II’s mineral-poor. It’s near to being solid metal. That’s what makes it impossible to really live on, but I figure we can switch the mineral companies right onto it and off IV.”

Marlowe grinned approvingly. “You been saving this one for Holliday?”

“Yes, sir,” Mead said, nodding slowly. He looked hesitantly at Marlowe.

“What’s up, Boy?”

“Well, sir⁠—” Mead began, then stopped. “Nothing important, really.”

Marlowe gave him a surprising look full of sadness and brooding understanding.

“You’re thinking he’s an old, frightened man, and why don’t we leave him alone?”

“Why⁠ ⁠… yes, sir.”

“Dave.”

“Yes, Dave.”

“You’re quite right. Why don’t we?”

“We can’t, sir. I know that. But it doesn’t seem fair⁠—”

“Exactly, Chris. It ain’t right, but it’s correct.”

The light on Marlowe’s interphone blinked once. Marlowe looked at it in momentary surprise. Then his features cleared, and he muttered “Cabbage.” He reached out toward the switch.

“We’ve got a visitor, Chris. Follow my lead.” He reviewed his information on Dovenilid titular systems while he touched the switch. “Ask ud Klavan to come in, uh⁠ ⁠… Mary.”

IV

Dalish ud Klavan was almost a twin for the pictured typical Dovenilid in Marlowe’s library. Since the pictures were usually idealized, it followed that Klavan was an above-average specimen of his people. He stood a full eight feet from fetters to crest, and had not yet begun to thicken his shoes in compensation for the stoop that marked advancing middle age for his race.

Marlowe, looking at him, smiled inwardly. No Dovenilid could be so obviously superior and still only a lowly student. Well, considering Harrison’s qualifications, it might still not be tit for tat.

Mead began to get to his feet, and Marlowe hastily planted a foot atop his nearest shoe. The assistant winced and twitched his lips, but at least he stayed down.

“Dalish ud Klavan,” the Dovenilid pronounced, in good English.

“David Marlowe, Secretary for External Affairs, Solar Union,” Marlowe replied.

Ud Klavan looked expectantly at Mead.

“Christopher Mead, Assistant Undersecretary for External Affairs,” the assistant said, orientating himself.

“If you would do us the honor of permitting us to stand⁠—” Marlowe asked politely.

“On the contrary, Marlowe. If you would do me the honor of permitting me to sit, I should consider it a privilege.”

“Please do so. Mr. Mead, if you would bring our visitor a chair⁠—”

They lost themselves in formalities for a few minutes, Marlowe being urbanely correct, Mead following after as best he could through the maze of Dovenilid mores. Finally they were able to get down to the business at hand, ud Klavan sitting with considerable comfort in the carefully designed chair which could be snapped into almost any shape, Marlowe bulking behind his desk, Mead sitting somewhat nervously beside him.

“Now, as I understand it, ud Klavan,” Marlowe began, “you’d like to learn something of our policies and methods.”

“That is correct, Marlowe and Mead.” The Dovenilid extracted a block of opaque material from the flat wallet at his side and steadied it on his knee. “I have your permission to take notes?”

“Please do. Now, as it happens, Mr. Mead and I are currently considering a case which perfectly illustrates our policies.”

Ud Klavan immediately traced a series of ideographs on the note block, and Marlowe wondered if he was actually going to take their conversation down verbatim. He shrugged mentally. He’d have to ask him, at some later date, whether he’d missed anything. Undoubtedly, there’d be a spare recording of the tape he himself was making.

“To begin: As you know, our government is founded upon principles of extreme personal freedom. There are no arbitrary laws governing expression, worship, the possession of personal weapons, or the rights of personal property. The state is construed to be a mechanism of public service, operated by the Body Politic, and the actual regulation and regimentation of society is accomplished by natural socioeconomic laws which, of course, are both universal and unavoidable.

“We pride ourselves on the high status of the individual in comparison to the barely-tolerable existence of the state. We do, naturally, have ordinances and injunctions governing crimes, but even these are usually superseded by civil action at the personal level.”

Marlowe leaned forward a trifle. “Forgetting exact principles for a moment, ud Klavan, you realize that the actuality will sometimes stray from the ideal. Our citizens, for example, do not habitually carry weapons except under extraordinary conditions. But that is a civil taboo, rather than a fixed amendation of our constitution. I have no doubt that some future generation, mores having shifted, will, for example, revive the code duello.”

Ud Klavan nodded. “Quite understood, thank you, Marlowe.”

“Good. Now, to proceed:

“Under conditions such as those, the state and its agencies cannot lay down a fixed policy of any sort, and expect it to be in the least permanent. The people will not tolerate such regulation, and with each new shift in social mores⁠—and the institution of any policy is itself sufficient to produce such a shift within a short time⁠—successive policies are repudiated by the Body Politic, and new ones must be instituted.”

Marlowe leaned back and spread his hands. “Therefore,” he said with a rueful smile, “it can fairly be said that we have no foreign policy, effectively speaking. We pursue the expedient, ud Klavan, and hope for the best. The case which Mr. Mead and I are currently considering is typical.

“The Union, as you know, maintains a General Survey Corps whose task it is to map the galaxy, surveying such planets as harbor alien races or seem suitable for human colonization. Such a survey team, for example, first established contact between your people and ours. Exchange observation rights are worked out, and representatives of both races are given the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the society of the other.

“In the case of unoccupied, habitable planets, however, the state’s function ceases with the filing of a complete and definitive survey at the Under-Ministry for Emigration. The state, as a state, sponsors no colonies and makes no establishments except for the few staging bases which are maintained for the use of the Survey Corps. We have not yet found any need for the institution of an offensive service analogous to a planetary army, nor do we expect to. War in space is possible only under extraordinary conditions, and we foresee no such contingency.

“All our colonization is carried out by private citizens who apply to Mr. Mead, here, for options on suitable unoccupied planets. Mr. Mead’s function is to act as a consultant in these cases. He maintains a roster of surveyed human-habitable planets, and either simply assigns the requested planet or recommends one to fit specified conditions. The cost of the option is sufficient to cover the administrative effort involved, together with sufficient profit to the government to finance further surveys.

“The individual holding the option is then referred to Emigration, which provides copies of a prospectus taken from the General Survey report, and advertises the option holder’s asking prices on subdivisions. Again, there is a reasonable fee of a nature similar to ours, devoted to the same purposes.

“The state then ceases to have any voice in the projected colonization whatsoever. It is a totally private enterprise⁠—a simple real estate operation, if you will, with the state acting only as an advertising agency, and, occasionally, as the lessor of suitable transportation from Earth to the new planet. The colonists, of course, are under our protection, maintaining full citizenship unless they request independence, which is freely granted.

“If you would like to see it for purposes of clarification, you’re welcome to examine our file on Martin Holliday, a citizen who is fairly typical of these real estate operators, and who has just filed an option on his second planet.” Smiling, Marlowe extended the folder.

“Thank you, I should like to,” ud Klavan said, and took the file from Marlowe. He leafed through it rapidly, pausing, after asking Marlowe’s leave, to make notes on some of the information, and then handed it back.

“Most interesting,” ud Klavan observed. “However, if you’ll enlighten me⁠—This man, Martin Holliday; wouldn’t there seem to be very little incentive for him, considering his age, even if there is the expectation of a high monetary return? Particularly since his first attempt, while not a failure, was not an outstanding financial success?”

Marlowe shrugged helplessly. “I tend to agree with you thoroughly, ud Klavan, but⁠—” he smiled, “you’ll agree, I’m sure, that one Earthman’s boredom is another’s incentive? We are not a rigorously logical race, ud Klavan.”

“Quite,” the Dovenilid replied.

V

Marlowe stared at his irrevocable clock. His interphone light flickered, and he touched the switch absently.

“Yes, Mary?”

“Will there be anything else, Mr. Secretary?”

“No, thank you, Mary. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

There was no appeal. The day was over, and he had to go home.

He stared helplessly at his empty office, his mind automatically counting the pairs of departing footsteps that sounded momentarily as clerks and stenographers crossed the walk below his partly-open window. Finally he rolled his chair back and pushed himself to his feet. Disconsolate, he moved irresolutely to the window and watched the people leave.

Washington⁠—aging, crowded Washington, mazed by narrow streets, carrying the burden of the severe, unimaginative past on its grimy architecture⁠—respired heavily under the sinking sun.

The capital ought to be moved, he thought as he’d thought every night at this time. Nearer the heart of the empire. Out of this steamy bog. Out of this warren.

His heavy lips moved into an ironical comment on his own thoughts. No one was ever going to move the empire’s traditional seat. There was too much nostalgia concentrated here, along with the humidity. Some day, when the Union was contiguous with the entire galaxy, men would still call Washington, on old, out-of-the-way Earth, their capital. Man was not a rigorously logical race, as a race.

The thought of going home broke out afresh, insidiously avoiding the barriers of bemusement which he had tried to erect, and he turned abruptly away from the window, moving decisively so as to be able to move at all. He yanked open a desk drawer and stuffed his jacket pockets with candy bars, ripping the film from one and chewing on its end while he put papers in his briefcase.

Finally, he could not delay any longer. Everyone else was out of the building, and the robots were taking over. Metal treads spun along the corridors, bearing brooms, and the robot switchboards guarded the communications of the Ministry. Soon the char-robots would be bustling into this very office. He sighed and walked slowly out, down the empty halls where no human eye could see him waddling.

He stepped into his car, and as he opened the door the automatic recording said “Home, please,” in his own voice. The car waited until he was settled and then accelerated gently, pointing for his apartment.

The recording had been an unavoidable but vicious measure of his own. He’d had to resort to it, for the temptation to drive to a terminal, to an airport, or rocket field, or railroad station⁠—anywhere⁠—had become excruciating.

The car stopped for a pedestrian light, and a sports model bounced jauntily to a stop beside it. The driver cocked an eyebrow at Marlowe and chuckled. “Say, Fatso, which one of you’s the Buick?” Then the light changed, the car spurted away, and left Marlowe cringing.

He would not get an official car and protect himself with its license number. He would not be a coward. He would not!

His fingers shaking, he tore the film from another candy bar.

Marlowe huddled in his chair, the notebook clamped on one broad thigh by his heavy hand, his lips mumbling nervously while his pencil-point checked off meter.

“Dwell in aching discontent,” he muttered. “No. Not that.” He stared down at the floor, his eyes distant.

“Bitter discontent,” he whispered. He grunted softly with breath that had to force its way past the constricting weight of his hunched chest. “Bitter dwell.” He crossed out the third line, substituted the new one, and began to read the first two verses to himself.

“We are born of Humankind⁠—
This our destiny:
To bitter dwell in discontent
Wherever we may be.

“To strangle with the burden
Of that which heels us on.
To stake our fresh beginnings
When frailer breeds have done.”

He smiled briefly, content. It still wasn’t perfect, but it was getting closer. He continued:

“To pile upon the ashes
Of races in decease
Such citadels of our kind’s own
As fortify no⁠—”

“What are you doing, David?” his wife asked over his shoulder.

Flinching, he pulled the notebook closer into his lap, bending forward in an instinctive effort to protect it.

The warm, loving, sawing voice went on. “Are you writing another poem, David? Why, I thought you’d given that up!”

“It’s⁠ ⁠… it’s nothing, really, uh⁠ ⁠… Leonora. Nothing much. Just a⁠ ⁠… a thing I’ve had running around my head. Wanted to get rid of it.”

His wife leaned over and kissed his cheek clumsily. “Why, you old big dear! I’ll bet it’s for me. Isn’t it, David? Isn’t it for me?”

He shook his head in almost desperate regret. “I’m⁠ ⁠… I’m afraid not, uh⁠—” Snorer. “It’s about something else, Leonora.”

“Oh.” She came around the chair, and he furtively wiped his cheek with a hasty hand. She sat down facing him, smiling with entreaty. “Would you read it to me anyway, David? Please, dear?”

“Well, it’s not⁠ ⁠… not finished yet⁠—not right.”

“You don’t have to, David. It’s not important. Not really.” She sighed deeply.

He picked up the notebook, his breath cold in his constricted throat. “All right,” he said, the words coming out huskily, “I’ll read it. But it’s not finished yet.”

“If you don’t want to⁠—”

He began to read hurriedly, his eyes locked on the notebook, his voice a suppressed hoarse, spasmodic whisper.

“Such citadels of our kind’s own
As fortify no peace.

“No wall can offer shelter,
No roof can shield from pain.
We cannot rest; we are the damned;
We must go forth again.

“Unnumbered we must⁠—”

“David, are you sure about those last lines?” She smiled apologetically. “I know I’m old-fashioned, but couldn’t you change that? It seems so⁠ ⁠… so harsh. And I think you may have unconsciously borrowed it from someone else. I can’t help thinking I’ve heard it before, somewhere? Don’t you think so?”

“I don’t know, dear. You may be right about that word, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, I’m not going to try to get it published, or anything.”

“I know, dear, but still⁠—”

He was looking at her desperately.

“I’m sorry, dear!” she said contritely. “Please go on. Don’t pay any attention to my stupid comments.”

“They’re not stupid⁠—”

“Please, dear. Go on.”

His fingers clamped on the edge of the notebook.

“Unnumbered we must wander,
Break, and bleed, and die.
Implacable as ocean,
Our tide must drown the sky.

“What is our expiation,
For what primeval crime,
That we must go on marching
Until the crash of time?

“What hand has shaped so cruelly?
What whim has cast such fate?
Where is, in our creation,
The botch that makes us great?”

“Oh, that’s good, darling! That’s very good. I’m proud of you, David.”

“I think it stinks,” he said evenly, “but, anyway, there are two more verses.”

“David!”

Grimly, he spat out the last eight lines.

“Why are we ever gimleted
By empire’s irony?
Is discontent the cancered price
Of Earthman’s galaxy?”

Leonora, recoiling from his cold fury, was a shaking pair of shoulders and a mass of lank hair supported by her hands on her face while she sobbed.

“Are our souls so much perverted?
Can we not relent?
Or are the stars the madman’s cost
For his inborn discontent?

“Good night, Leonora.”

VI

The light flickered on Marlowe’s interphone.

“Good morning, Mr. Secretary.”

“Good morning, Mary. What’s up?”

“Harrison’s being deported from Dovenil, sir. There’s a civil crime charged against him. Quite a serious one.”

Marlowe’s eyebrows went up. “How much have we got on it?”

“Not too much, sir. Harrison’s report hasn’t come in yet. But the story’s on the news broadcasts now, sir. We haven’t been asked to comment yet, but Emigration has been called by several news outlets, and the Ministry for Education just called here and inquired whether it would be all right to publish a general statement of their exchange students’ careful instructions against violating local customs.”

Marlowe’s glance brooded down on the mass of papers piled in the tray of his in box. “Give me a tape of a typical broadcast,” he said at last. “Hold everything else. Present explanation to all news outlets: None now, statement forthcoming after preliminary investigation later in the day. The Ministry regrets this incident deeply, and will try to settle matters as soon and as amicably as possible, et cetera, et cetera. OK?”

“Yes, sir.”

He swung his chair around to face the screen let into a side wall, and colors began to flicker and run in the field almost immediately. They steadied and sharpened, and the broadcast tape began to roll.

Dateline: Dovenil, Sector Three, Day 183, 2417 G.S.T. Your Topical News reporter on this small planet at the Union’s rim was unable today to locate for comment any of the high officials of this alien civilization directly concerned with the order for the deportation of exchange student-observer Hubert Harrison, charged with theft and violent assault on the person of a Dovenilid citizen. Union citizen Harrison was unavailable for comment at this time, but Topical News will present his views and such other clues when more ensues.

Marlowe grunted. Journalese was getting out of hand again. That last rhyming sentence was sure to stick in the audience’s brains. It might be only another advertising gimmick, but if they started doing it with the body of the news itself, it might be well to feed Topical enough false leads to destroy what little reputation for comprehensibility they had left.

He touched his interphone switch.

“Uh⁠ ⁠… Mary, what was the hooper on that broadcast?”

“Under one percent, sir.”

Which meant that, so far, the Body Politic hadn’t reacted.

“Thank you. Is there anything else coming in?”

“Not at the moment, sir.”

“What’s⁠—” Cabbage. “What’s Dalish ud Klavan doing?”

“His residence is the Solar Hostel, sir. The management reports that he is still in his room, and has not reserved space on any form of long-distance transportation. He has not contacted us, either, and there is a strong probability that he may still be unaware of what’s happened.”

“How many calls did he make yesterday, either before or after he was here, and to whom?”

“I can get you a list in ten minutes, sir.”

“Do that, Mary.”

He switched off, sat slapping the edge of his desk with his hand, and switched on again.

“Mary, I want the GenSurvs on the Dovenil area to a depth of ten cubic lights.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And get me Mr. Mead on the phone, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marlowe’s lips pulled back from his teeth as he switched off. He snatched a candy bar out of his drawer, tore the film part way off, then threw it back in the drawer as his desk phone chimed.

“Here, Chris.”

“Here, Mr. Marlowe.”

“Look, Chris⁠—has Holliday left Earth yet?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, Dave.”

“Where is he?”

“Luna, en route to Karlshaven. He was lucky enough to have me arrange for his accidentally getting a ride on a GenSurv ship that happened to be going out that way, if you follow me.” Mead grinned.

“Get him back.”

The smile blanked out. “I can’t do that, Mr. Marlowe! He’d never be able to take it. You should have seen him when I put him on the shuttle. We doped him up with EasyRest, and even then his subconscious could feel the bulkheads around him, even in his sleep. Those shuttles are small, and they don’t have ports.”

“We can’t help that. We need him, and I’ve got to talk to him first. Personally.”

Mead bit his lip. “Yes, sir.”

“Dave.”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… Dave.”

VII

Dalish ud Klavan sat easily in his chair opposite Marlowe. He rested one digit on his notebook and waited.

“Ud Klavan,” Marlowe said amiably, “you’re undoubtedly aware by now that your opposite number on Dovenil has been charged with a civil crime and deported.”

The Dovenilid nodded. “An unfortunate incident. One that I regret personally, and which I am sure my own people would much rather not have had happen.”

“Naturally.” Marlowe smiled. “I simply wanted to reassure you that this incident does not reflect on your own status in any way. We are investigating our representative, and will take appropriate action, but it seems quite clear that the fault is not with your people. We have already forwarded reparations and a note of apology to your government. As further reparation, I wish to assure you personally that we will cooperate with your personal observations in every possible way. If there is anything at all you wish to know⁠—even what might, under ordinary conditions, be considered restricted information⁠—just call on us.”

Ud Klavan’s crest stirred a fraction of an inch, and Marlowe chuckled inwardly. Well, even a brilliant spy might be forgiven an outward display of surprise under these circumstances.

The Dovenilid gave him a piercing look, but Marlowe presented a featureless façade of bulk.

The secretary chuckled in his mind once more. He doubted if ud Klavan could accept the hypothesis that Marlowe did not know he was a spy. But the Dovenilid must be a sorely confused being at this point.

“Thank you, Marlowe,” he said finally. “I am most grateful, and I am sure my people will construe it as yet another sign of the Union’s friendship.”

“I hope so, ud Klavan,” Marlowe replied. Having exchanged this last friendly lie, they went through the customary Dovenilid formula of leave-taking.

Marlowe slapped his interphone switch as soon as the alien was gone. “Uh⁠ ⁠… Mary, what’s the latest on Holliday?”

“His shuttle lands at Idlewild in half an hour, sir.”

“All right, get Mr. Mead. Have him meet me out front, and get an official car to take us to the field. I’ll want somebody from Emigration to go with us. Call Idlewild and have them set up a desk and chairs for four out in the middle of the field. Call the Ministry for Traffic and make sure that field stays clear until we’re through with it. My Ministerial prerogative, and no backtalk. I want that car in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mary’s voice was perfectly even, without the slightest hint that there was anything unusual happening. Marlowe switched off and twisted his mouth.

He picked up the GenSurv on the Dovenil area and began skimming it rapidly.

He kept his eyes carefully front as he walked out of his office, past the battery of clerks in the outer office, and down the hall. He kept them rigidly fixed on the door of his personal elevator which, during the day, was human-operated under the provisions of the Human Employment Act of 2302. He met Mead in front of the building and did not look into the eyes of Bussard, the man from Emigration, as they shook hands. He followed them down the walk in a sweating agony of obliviousness, and climbed into the car with carefully normal lack of haste.

He sat sweating, chewing a candy bar, for several minutes before he spoke. Then, slowly, he felt his battered defenses reassert themselves, and he could actually look at Bussard, before he turned to Mead.

“Now, then,” he rapped out a shade too abruptly before he caught himself. “Here’s the GenSurv on the Dovenil area, Chris. Anything in it you don’t know already?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“OK, dig me up a habitable planet⁠—even a long-term False-E will do⁠—close to Dovenil, but not actually in their system. If it’s at all possible, I want that world in a system without any rich planets. And I don’t want any rich systems anywhere near it. If you can’t do that, arrange for the outright sale of all mineral and other resource rights to suitable companies. I want that planet to be habitable, but I want it to be impossible for any people on it to get at enough resources to achieve a technological culture. Can do?”

Mead shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes to find out. I’m going to start talking to Holliday, and when I tell him I’ve got another planet for him, I’ll be depending on you to furnish one. Sorry to pile it on like this, but must be.”

Mead nodded. “Right, Mr. Marlowe. That’s why I draw pay.”

“Good boy. Now, uh⁠—” Rabbit. “Bussard. I want you to be ready to lay out a complete advertising and prospectus program. Straight routine work, but about four times normal speed. The toughest part of it will be following the lead that Chris and I set. Don’t be surprised at anything, and act like it happens every day.”

“Yes, Mr. Marlowe.”

“Right.”

Bussard looked uncomfortable. “Ah⁠ ⁠… Mr. Marlowe?”

“Yes?”

“About this man, Harrison. I presume all this is the result of what happened to him on Dovenil. Do you think there’s any foundation in truth for what they say he did? Or do you think it’s just an excuse to get him off their world?”

Marlowe looked at him coldly. “Don’t be an ass,” he snorted.

VIII

Martin Holliday climbed slowly out of the shuttle’s lock and moved fumblingly down the stairs, leaning on the attendant’s arm. His face was a mottled gray, and his hands shook uncontrollably. He stepped down to the tarmac and his head turned from side to side as his eyes gulped the field’s distances.

Marlowe sat behind the desk that had been put down in the middle of this emptiness, his eyes brooding as he looked at Holliday. Bussard stood beside him, trying nervously to appear noncommittal, while Mead went up to the shaking old man, grasped his hand, and brought him over to the desk.

Marlowe shifted uncomfortably. The desk was standard size, and he had to sit far away from it. He could not feel at ease in such a position.

His thick fingers went into the side pocket of his jacket and peeled the film off a candy bar, and he began to eat it, holding it in his left hand, as Mead introduced Holliday.

“How do you do, Mr. Holliday?” Marlowe said, his voice higher than he would have liked it, while he shook the man’s hand.

“I’m⁠ ⁠… I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Secretary,” Holliday replied. His eyes were darting past Marlowe’s head.

“This is Mr. Bussard, of Emigration, and you know Mr. Mead, of course. Now, I think we can all sit down.”

Mead’s chair was next to Holliday’s, and Bussard’s was to one side of the desk, so that only Marlowe, unavoidably, blocked his complete view of the stretching tarmac.

“First of all, Mr. Holliday, I’d like to thank you for coming back. Please believe me when I say we would not have made such a request if it were not urgently necessary.”

“It’s all right,” Holliday said in a low, apologetic voice. “I don’t mind.”

Marlowe winced, but he had to go on.

“Have you seen a news broadcast recently, Mr. Holliday?”

The man shook his head in embarrassment. “No, sir. I’ve been⁠ ⁠… asleep most of the time.”

“I understand, Mr. Holliday. I didn’t really expect you had under the circumstances. The situation is this:

“Some time ago, our survey ships, working out in their usual expanding pattern, encountered an alien civilization on a world designated Moore II on our maps, and which the natives call Dovenil. It was largely a routine matter, no different from any other alien contact which we’ve had. They had a relatively high technology, embracing the beginnings of interplanetary flight, and our contact teams were soon able to work out a diplomatic status mutually satisfactory to both.

“Social observers were exchanged, in accordance with the usual practice, and everything seemed to be going well.”

Holliday nodded out of painful politeness, not seeing the connection with himself. Some of his nervousness was beginning to fade, but it was impossible for him to be really at ease with so many people near him, with all of Earth’s billions lurking at the edge of the tarmac.

“However,” Marlowe went on as quickly as he could, “today, our representative was deported on a trumped-up charge. Undoubtedly, this is only the first move in some complicated scheme directed against the Union. What it is, we do not yet know, but further observation of the actions of their own representative on this planet has convinced us that they are a clever, ruthless people, living in a society which would have put Machiavelli to shame. They are single-minded of purpose, and welded into a tight group whose major purpose in life is the service of the state in its major purpose, which, by all indications, is that of eventually dominating the universe.

“You know our libertarian society. You know that the Union government is almost powerless, and that the Union itself is nothing but a loose federation composed of a large number of independent nations tied together by very little more than the fact that we are all Earthmen.

“We are almost helpless in the face of such a nation as the Dovenilids. They have already outmaneuvered us once, despite our best efforts. There is no sign that they will not be able to do so again, at will.

“We must, somehow, discover what the Dovenilids intend to do next. For this reason, I earnestly request that you accept our offer of another planet than the one you have optioned, closer to the Dovenilid system. We are willing, under these extraordinary circumstances, to consider your credit sufficient for the outright purchase of half the planet, and Mr. Bussard, here, will do his utmost to get you suitable colonists for the other half as rapidly as it can be done. Will you help us, Mr. Holliday?”

Marlowe sank back in his chair. He became conscious of a messy feeling in his left hand, and looked down to discover the half-eaten candy bar had melted. He tried furtively to wipe his hand clean on the underside of the desk, but he knew Bussard had noticed, and he cringed and cursed himself.

Holliday’s face twisted nervously.

“I⁠ ⁠… I don’t know⁠—”

“Please don’t misunderstand us, Mr. Holliday,” Marlowe said. “We do not intend to ask you to spy for us, nor are we acting with the intention of now establishing a base of any sort on the planet. We simply would like to have a Union world near the Dovenilid system. Whatever Dovenil does will not have gathered significant momentum by the end of your life. You will be free to end your days exactly as you have always wished, and the precautions we have outlined will ensure that there will be no encroachments on your personal property during that time. We are planning for the next generation, when Dovenil will be initiating its program of expansion. It is then that we will need an established outpost near their borders.”

“Yes,” Holliday said hesitantly, “I can understand that. I⁠ ⁠… I don’t know,” he repeated. “It seems all right. And, as you say, it won’t matter, during my lifetime, and it’s more than I had really hoped for.” He looked nervously at Mead. “What do you think, Mr. Mead? You’ve always done your best for me.”

Mead shot one quick glance at Marlowe. “I think Mr. Marlowe’s doing his best for the Union,” he said finally, “and I know he is fully aware of your personal interests. I think what he’s doing is reasonable under the circumstances, and I think his proposition to you, as he’s outlined it, is something which you cannot afford to not consider. The final decision is up to you, of course.”

Holliday nodded slowly, staring down at his hands. “Yes, yes, I think you’re right, Mr. Mead.” He looked up at Marlowe. “I’ll be glad to help. And I’m grateful for the consideration you’ve shown me.”

“Not at all, Mr. Holliday. The Union is in your debt.”

Marlowe wiped his hand on the underside of the desk again, but he only made matters worse, for his fingers picked up some of the chocolate he had removed before.

“Mr. Mead, will you give Mr. Holliday the details on the new planet?” he said, trying to get his handkerchief out without smearing his suit. He could almost hear Bussard snickering.

Holliday signed the new option contract and shook Marlowe’s hand. “I’d like to thank you again, sir. Looking at it from my point of view, it’s something for nothing⁠—at least, while I’m alive. And it’s a very nice planet, too, from the way Mr. Mead described it. Even better than Karlshaven.”

“Nevertheless, Mr. Holliday,” Marlowe said, “you have done the Union a great service. We would consider it an honor if you allowed us to enter your planet in our records under the name of Holliday.”

He kept his eyes away from Mead.

Martin Holliday’s eyes were shining. “Thank you, Mr. Marlowe,” he said huskily.

Marlowe could think of no reply. Finally, he simply nodded. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Holliday. We’ve arranged transportation, and your shuttle will be taking off very shortly.”

Holliday’s face began to bead with fresh perspiration at the thought of bulkheads enclosing him once more, but he managed to smile, and then ask, hesitantly: “May I⁠ ⁠… may I wait for the shuttle out here, sir?”

“Certainly. We’ll arrange for that. Well, goodbye, Mr. Holliday.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Marlowe. Goodbye, Mr. Bussard. And goodbye, Mr. Mead. I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing me again.”

“Good luck, Mr. Holliday,” Mead said.

Marlowe twisted awkwardly on the car’s back seat, wiping futilely at the long smear of chocolate on his trouser pocket.

Well, he thought, at least he’d given the old man his name on the star maps until Earthmen stopped roving.

At least he’d given him that.

Mead was looking at him. “I don’t suppose we’ve got time to let him die in peace, have we?” he asked.

Marlowe shook his head.

“I suppose we’ll have to start breaking him immediately, won’t we?”

Marlowe nodded.

“I’ll get at it right away, sir.”

Dave! Does everyone have to hate me? Can’t anyone understand? Even you, uh⁠—Creed. Even you, Mead?

IX

Dalish ud Klavan, stooped and withered, sat hopelessly, opposite Marlowe, who sat behind his desk like a grizzled polar bear, his thinning mane of white hair unkempt and straggling.

“Marlowe, my people are strangling,” the old Dovenilid said.

Marlowe looked at him silently.

“The Holliday Republic has signed treaty after treaty with us, and still their citizens raid our mining planets, driving away our own people, stealing the resources we must have if we are to live.”

Marlowe sighed. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“We have gone to the Holliday government repeatedly,” ud Klavan pleaded. “They tell us the raiders are criminals, that they are doing their best to stop them. But they still buy the metal the raiders bring them.”

“They have to,” Marlowe said. “There are no available resources anywhere within practicable distances. If they’re to have any civilization at all, they’ve got to buy from the outlaws.”

“But they are members of the Union!” ud Klavan protested. “Why won’t you do anything to stop them?”

“We can’t,” Marlowe said again. “They’re members of the Union, yes, but they’re also a free republic. We have no administrative jurisdiction over them, and if we attempted to establish one our citizens would rise in protest all over our territory.”

“Then we’re finished. Dovenil is a dead world.”

Marlowe nodded slowly. “I am very sorry. If there is anything I can do, or that the Ministry can do, we will do it. But we cannot save the Dovenilid state.”

Ud Klavan looked at him bitterly. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for your generous offer of a gracious funeral.

“I don’t understand you!” he burst out suddenly. “I don’t understand you people! Diplomatic lies, yes. Expediency, yes! But this⁠ ⁠… this madness, this fanatical, illogical devotion of the state in the cause of a people who will tolerate no state! This⁠ ⁠… no, this I cannot understand.”

Marlowe looked at him, his eyes full of years.

“Ud Klavan,” he said, “you are quite right. We are a race of maniacs. And that is why Earthmen rule the galaxy. For our treaties are not binding, and our promises are worthless. Our government does not represent our people. It represents our people as they once were. The delay in the democratic process is such that the treaty signed today fulfills the promise of yesterday⁠—but today the Body Politic has formed a new opinion, is following a new logic which is completely at variance with that of yesterday. An Earthman’s promise⁠—expressed in words or deeds⁠—is good only at the instant he makes it. A second later, new factors have entered into the total circumstances, and a new chain of logic has formed in his head⁠—to be altered again, a few seconds later.”

He thought, suddenly, of that poor claustrophobic devil, Holliday, harried from planet to planet, never given a moment’s rest⁠—and civilizing, civilizing, spreading the race of humankind wherever he was driven. Civilizing with a fervor no hired dummy could have accomplished, driven by his fear to sell with all the real estate agent’s talent that had been born in him, selling for the sake of money with which to buy that land he needed for his peace⁠—and always being forced to sell a little too much.

Ud Klavan rose from his chair. “You are also right, Marlowe. You are a race of maniacs, gibbering across the stars. And know, Marlowe, that the other races of the universe hate you.”

Marlowe with a tremendous effort heaved himself out of his chair.

“Hate us?” He lumbered around the desk and advanced on the frightened Dovenilid, who was retreating backwards before his path.

“Can’t you see it? Don’t you understand that, if we are to pursue any course of action over a long time⁠—if we are ever going to achieve a galaxy in which an Earthman can some day live at peace with himself⁠—we must each day violate all the moral codes and creeds which we held inviolate the day before? That we must fight against every ideal, every principle which our fathers taught us, because they no longer apply to our new logic?

“You hate us!” He thrust his fat hand, its nails bitten down to the quick and beyond, in front of the cringing alien’s eyes.

“You poor, weak, single-minded, ineffectual thing! We hate ourselves!”

I

Soft as the voice of a mourning dove, the telephone sounded at Rufus Sollenar’s desk. Sollenar himself was standing fifty paces away, his leonine head cocked, his hands flat in his hip pockets, watching the nighted world through the crystal wall that faced out over Manhattan Island. The window was so high that some of what he saw was dimmed by low clouds hovering over the rivers. Above him were stars; below him the city was traced out in light and brimming with light. A falling star⁠—an interplanetary rocket⁠—streaked down toward Long Island Facility like a scratch across the soot on the doors of Hell.

Sollenar’s eyes took it in, but he was watching the total scene, not any particular part of it. His eyes were shining.

When he heard the telephone, he raised his left hand to his lips. “Yes?” The hand glittered with utilijem rings; the effect was that of an attempt at the sort of copper-binding that was once used to reinforce the ribbing of wooden warships.

His personal receptionist’s voice moved from the air near his desk to the air near his ear. Seated at the monitor board in her office, wherever in this building her office was, the receptionist told him:

“Mr. Ermine says he has an appointment.”

“No.” Sollenar dropped his hand and returned to his panorama. When he had been twenty years younger⁠—managing the modest optical factory that had provided the support of three generations of Sollenars⁠—he had very much wanted to be able to stand in a place like this, and feel as he imagined men felt in such circumstances. But he felt unimaginable, now.

To be here was one thing. To have almost lost the right, and regained it at the last moment, was another. Now he knew that not only could he be here today but that tomorrow, and tomorrow, he could still be here. He had won. His gamble had given him EmpaVid⁠—and EmpaVid would give him all.

The city was not merely a prize set down before his eyes. It was a dynamic system he had proved he could manipulate. He and the city were one. It buoyed and sustained him; it supported him, here in the air, with stars above and light-thickened mist below.

The telephone mourned: “Mr. Ermine states he has a firm appointment.”

“I’ve never heard of him.” And the left hand’s utilijems fell from Sollenar’s lips again. He enjoyed such toys. He raised his right hand, sheathed in insubstantial midnight-blue silk in which the silver threads of metallic wiring ran subtly toward the fingertips. He raised the hand, and touched two fingers together: music began to play behind and before him. He made contact between another combination of finger circuits, and a soft, feminine laugh came from the terrace at the other side of the room, where connecting doors had opened. He moved toward it. One layer of translucent drapery remained across the doorway, billowing lightly in the breeze from the terrace. Through it, he saw the taboret with its candle lit; the iced wine in the stand beside it; the two fragile chairs; Bess Allardyce, slender and regal, waiting in one of them⁠—all these, through the misty curtain, like either the beginning or the end of a dream.

“Mr. Ermine reminds you the appointment was made for him at the Annual Business Dinner of the International Association of Broadcasters, in 1998.”

Sollenar completed his latest step, then stopped. He frowned down at his left hand. “Is Mr. Ermine with the I.A.B.’s Special Public Relations Office?”

“Yes,” the voice said after a pause.

The fingers of Sollenar’s right hand shrank into a cone. The connecting door closed. The girl disappeared. The music stopped. “All right. You can tell Mr. Ermine to come up.” Sollenar went to sit behind his desk.

The office door chimed. Sollenar crooked a finger of his left hand, and the door opened. With another gesture, he kindled the overhead lights near the door and sat in shadow as Mr. Ermine came in.

Ermine was dressed in rust-colored garments. His figure was spare, and his hands were empty. His face was round and soft, with long dark sideburns. His scalp was bald. He stood just inside Sollenar’s office and said: “I would like some light to see you by, Mr. Sollenar.”

Sollenar crooked his little finger.

The overhead lights came to soft light all over the office. The crystal wall became a mirror, with only the strongest city lights glimmering through it. “I only wanted to see you first,” said Sollenar; “I thought perhaps we’d met before.”

“No,” Ermine said, walking across the office. “It’s not likely you’ve ever seen me.” He took a card case out of his pocket and showed Sollenar proper identification. “I’m not a very forward person.”

“Please sit down,” Sollenar said. “What may I do for you?”

“At the moment, Mr. Sollenar, I’m doing something for you.”

Sollenar sat back in his chair. “Are you? Are you, now?” He frowned at Ermine. “When I became a party to the By-Laws passed at the ’98 Dinner, I thought a Special Public Relations Office would make a valuable asset to the organization. Consequently, I voted for it, and for the powers it was given. But I never expected to have any personal dealings with it. I barely remembered you people had carte blanche with any I.A.B. member.”

“Well, of course, it’s been a while since ’98,” Ermine said. “I imagine some legends have grown up around us. Industry gossip⁠—that sort of thing.”

“Yes.”

“But we don’t restrict ourselves to an enforcement function, Mr. Sollenar. You haven’t broken any By-Laws, to our knowledge.”

“Or mine. But nobody feels one hundred percent secure. Not under these circumstances.” Nor did Sollenar yet relax his face into its magnificent smile. “I’m sure you’ve found that out.”

“I have a somewhat less ambitious older brother who’s with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When I embarked on my own career, he told me I could expect everyone in the world to react like a criminal, yes,” Ermine said, paying no attention to Sollenar’s involuntary blink. “It’s one of the complicating factors in a profession like my brother’s, or mine. But I’m here to advise you, Mr. Sollenar. Only that.”

“In what matter, Mr. Ermine?”

“Well, your corporation recently came into control of the patents for a new video system. I understand that this in effect makes your corporation the licensor for an extremely valuable sales and entertainment medium. Fantastically valuable.”

“EmpaVid,” Sollenar agreed. “Various subliminal stimuli are broadcast with and keyed to the overt subject matter. The home receiving unit contains feedback sensors which determine the viewer’s reaction to these stimuli, and intensify some while playing down others in order to create complete emotional rapport between the viewer and the subject matter. EmpaVid, in other words, is a system for orchestrating the viewer’s emotions. The home unit is self-contained, semi-portable and not significantly bulkier than the standard TV receiver. EmpaVid is compatible with standard TV receivers⁠—except, of course, that the subject matter seems thin and vaguely unsatisfactory on a standard receiver. So the consumer shortly purchases an E.V. unit.” It pleased Sollenar to spell out the nature of his prize.

“At a very reasonable price. Quite so, Mr. Sollenar. But you had several difficulties in finding potential licensees for this system, among the networks.”

Sollenar’s lips pinched out.

Mr. Ermine raised one finger. “First, there was the matter of acquiring the patents from the original inventor, who was also approached by Cortwright Burr.”

“Yes, he was,” Sollenar said in a completely new voice.

“Competition between Mr. Burr and yourself is long-standing and intense.”

“Quite intense,” Sollenar said, looking directly ahead of him at the one blank wall of the office. Burr’s offices were several blocks downtown, in that direction.

“Well, I have no wish to enlarge on that point, Mr. Burr being an I.A.B. member in standing as good as yours, Mr. Sollenar. There was, in any case, a further difficulty in licensing E.V., due to the very heavy cost involved in equipping broadcasting stations and network relay equipment for this sort of transmission.”

“Yes, there was.”

“Ultimately, however, you succeeded. You pointed out, quite rightly, that if just one station made the change, and if just a few E.V. receivers were put into public places within the area served by that station, normal TV outlets could not possibly compete for advertising revenue.”

“Yes.”

“And so your last difficulties were resolved a few days ago, when your EmpaVid Unlimited⁠—pardon me; when EmpaVid, a subsidiary of the Sollenar Corporation⁠—became a major stockholder in the Transworld TV Network.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Ermine,” Sollenar said. “Why are you recounting this? Are you trying to demonstrate the power of your knowledge? All these transactions are already matters of record in the I.A.B. confidential files, in accordance with the By-Laws.”

Ermine held up another finger. “You’re forgetting I’m only here to advise you. I have two things to say. They are:

“These transactions are on file with the I.A.B. because they involve a great number of I.A.B. members, and an increasingly large amount of capital. Also, Transworld’s exclusivity, under the I.A.B. By-Laws, will hold good only until thirty-three percent market saturation has been reached. If E.V. is as good as it looks, that will be quite soon. After that, under the By-Laws, Transworld will be restrained from making effective defenses against patent infringement by competitors. Then all of the I.A.B.’s membership and much of their capital will be involved with E.V. Much of that capital is already in anticipatory motion. So a highly complex structure now ultimately depends on the integrity of the Sollenar Corporation. If Sollenar stock falls in value, not just you but many I.A.B. members will be greatly embarrassed. Which is another way of saying E.V. must succeed.”

“I know all that! What of it? There’s no risk. I’ve had every related patent on Earth checked. There will be no catastrophic obsolescence of the E.V. system.”

Ermine said: “There are engineers on Mars. Martian engineers. They’re a dying race, but no one knows what they can still do.”

Sollenar raised his massive head.

Ermine said: “Late this evening, my office learned that Cortwright Burr has been in close consultation with the Martians for several weeks. They have made some sort of machine for him. He was on the flight that landed at the Facility a few moments ago.”

Sollenar’s fists clenched. The lights crashed off and on, and the room wailed. From the terrace came a startled cry, and a sound of smashed glass.

Mr. Ermine nodded, excused himself and left.

—A few moments later, Mr. Ermine stepped out at the pedestrian level of the Sollenar Building. He strolled through the landscaped garden, and across the frothing brook toward the central walkway down the Avenue. He paused at a hedge to pluck a blossom and inhale its odor. He walked away, holding it in his naked fingers.

II

Drifting slowly on the thread of his spinneret, Rufus Sollenar came gliding down the wind above Cortwright Burr’s building.

The building, like a spider, touched the ground at only the points of its legs. It held its wide, low bulk spread like a parasol over several downtown blocks. Sollenar, manipulating the helium-filled plastic drifter far above him, steered himself with jets of compressed gas from plastic bottles in the drifter’s structure.

Only Sollenar himself, in all this system, was not effectively transparent to the municipal anti-plane radar. And he himself was wrapped in long, fluttering streamers of dull black, metallic sheeting. To the eye, he was amorphous and non-reflective. To electronic sensors, he was a drift of static much like a sheet of foil picked by the wind from some careless trash heap. To all of the senses of all interested parties he was hardly there at all⁠—and, thus, in an excellent position for murder.

He fluttered against Burr’s window. There was the man, crouched over his desk. What was that in his hands⁠—a pomander?

Sollenar clipped his harness to the edges of the cornice. Swayed out against it, his sponge-soled boots pressed to the glass, he touched his left hand to the window and described a circle. He pushed; there was a thud on the carpeting in Burr’s office, and now there was no barrier to Sollenar. Doubling his knees against his chest, he catapulted forward, the riot pistol in his right hand. He stumbled and fell to his knees, but the gun was up.

Burr jolted up behind his desk. The little sphere of orange-gold metal, streaked with darker bronze, its surface vermicular with encrustations, was still in his hands. “Him!” Burr cried out as Sollenar fired.

Gasping, Sollenar watched the charge strike Burr. It threw his torso backward faster than his limbs and head could follow without dangling. The choked-down pistol was nearly silent. Burr crashed backward to end, transfixed, against the wall.

Pale and sick, Sollenar moved to take the golden ball. He wondered where Shakespeare could have seen an example such as this, to know an old man could have so much blood in him.

Burr held the prize out to him. Staring with eyes distended by hydrostatic pressure, his clothing raddled and his torso grinding its broken bones, Burr stalked away from the wall and moved as if to embrace Sollenar. It was queer, but he was not dead.

Shuddering, Sollenar fired again.

Again Burr was thrown back. The ball spun from his splayed fingers as he once more marked the wall with his body.

Pomander, orange, whatever⁠—it looked valuable.

Sollenar ran after the rolling ball. And Burr moved to intercept him, nearly faceless, hunched under a great invisible weight that slowly yielded as his back groaned.

Sollenar took a single backward step.

Burr took a step toward him. The golden ball lay in a far corner. Sollenar raised the pistol despairingly and fired again. Burr tripped backward on tiptoe, his arms like windmills, and fell atop the prize.

Tears ran down Sollenar’s cheeks. He pushed one foot forward⁠ ⁠… and Burr, in his corner, lifted his head and began to gather his body for the effort of rising.

Sollenar retreated to the window, the pistol sledging backward against his wrist and elbow as he fired the remaining shots in the magazine.

Panting, he climbed up into the window frame and clipped the harness to his body, craning to look over his shoulder⁠ ⁠… as Burr⁠—shredded; leaking blood and worse than blood⁠—advanced across the office.

He cast off his holds on the window frame and clumsily worked the drifter controls. Far above him, volatile ballast spilled out and dispersed in the air long before it touched ground. Sollenar rose, sobbing⁠—

And Burr stood in the window, his shattered hands on the edges of the cut circle, raising his distended eyes steadily to watch Sollenar in flight across the enigmatic sky.

Where he landed, on the roof of a building in his possession, Sollenar had a disposal unit for his gun and his other trappings. He deferred for a time the question of why Burr had failed at once to die. Empty-handed, he returned uptown.

He entered his office, called and told his attorneys the exact times of departure and return and knew the question of dealing with municipal authorities was thereby resolved. That was simple enough, with no witnesses to complicate the matter. He began to wish he hadn’t been so irresolute as to leave Burr without the thing he was after. Surely, if the pistol hadn’t killed the man⁠—an old man, with thin limbs and spotted skin⁠—he could have wrestled that thin-limbed, bloody old man aside⁠—that spotted old man⁠—and dragged himself and his prize back to the window, for all that the old man would have clung to him, and clutched at his legs, and fumbled for a handhold on his somber disguise of wrappings⁠—that broken, immortal old man.

Sollenar raised his hand. The great window to the city grew opaque.

Bess Allardyce knocked softly on the door from the terrace. He would have thought she’d returned to her own apartments many hours ago. Tortuously pleased, he opened the door and smiled at her, feeling the dried tears crack on the skin of his cheeks.

He took her proffered hands. “You waited for me,” he sighed. “A long time for anyone as beautiful as you to wait.”

She smiled back at him. “Let’s go out and look at the stars.”

“Isn’t it chilly?”

“I made spiced hot cider for us. We can sip it and think.”

He let her draw him out onto the terrace. He leaned on the parapet, his arm around her pulsing waist, his cape drawn around both their shoulders.

“Bess, I won’t ask if you’d stay with me no matter what the circumstances. But it might be a time will come when I couldn’t bear to live in this city. What about that?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

And Cortwright Burr put his hand up over the edge of the parapet, between them.

Sollenar stared down at the straining knuckles, holding the entire weight of the man dangling against the sheer face of the building. There was a sliding, rustling noise, and the other hand came up, searched blindly for a hold and found it, hooked over the stone. The fingers tensed and rose, their tips flattening at the pressure as Burr tried to pull his head and shoulders up to the level of the parapet.

Bess breathed: “Oh, look at them! He must have torn them terribly climbing up!” Then she pulled away from Sollenar and stood staring at him, her hand to her mouth. “But he couldn’t have climbed! We’re so high!”

Sollenar beat at the hands with the heels of his palms, using the direct, trained blows he had learned at his athletic club.

Bone splintered against the stone. When the knuckles were broken the hands instantaneously disappeared, leaving only streaks behind them. Sollenar looked over the parapet. A bundle shrank from sight, silhouetted against the lights of the pedestrian level and the Avenue. It contracted to a pinpoint. Then, when it reached the brook and water flew in all directions, it disappeared in a final sunburst, endowed with glory by the many lights which found momentary reflection down there.

“Bess, leave me! Leave me, please!” Rufus Sollenar cried out.

III

Rufus Sollenar paced his office, his hands held safely still in front of him, their fingers spread and rigid.

The telephone sounded, and his secretary said to him: “Mr. Sollenar, you are ten minutes from being late at the TTV Executives’ Ball. This is a First Class obligation.”

Sollenar laughed. “I thought it was, when I originally classified it.”

“Are you now planning to renege, Mr. Sollenar?” the secretary inquired politely.

Certainly, Sollenar thought. He could as easily renege on the Ball as a king could on his coronation.

“Burr, you scum, what have you done to me?” he asked the air, and the telephone said: “Beg pardon?”

“Tell my valet,” Sollenar said. “I’m going.” He dismissed the phone. His hands cupped in front of his chest. A firm grip on emptiness might be stronger than any prize in a broken hand.

Carrying in his chest something he refused to admit was terror, Sollenar made ready for the Ball.

But only a few moments after the first dance set had ended, Malcolm Levier of the local TTV station executive staff looked over Sollenar’s shoulder and remarked:

“Oh, there’s Cort Burr, dressed like a gallows bird.”

Sollenar, glittering in the costume of the Medici, did not turn his head. “Is he? What would he want here?”

Levier’s eyebrows arched. “He holds a little stock. He has entrée. But he’s late.” Levier’s lips quirked. “It must have taken him some time to get that makeup on.”

“Not in good taste, is it?”

“Look for yourself.”

“Oh, I’ll do better than that,” Sollenar said. “I’ll go and talk to him a while. Excuse me, Levier.” And only then did he turn around, already started on his first pace toward the man.

But Cortwright Burr was only a pasteboard imitation of himself as Sollenar had come to know him. He stood to one side of the doorway, dressed in black and crimson robes, with black leather gauntlets on his hands, carrying a staff of weathered, natural wood. His face was shadowed by a sackcloth hood, the eyes well hidden. His face was powdered gray, and some blend of livid colors hollowed his cheeks. He stood motionless as Sollenar came up to him.

As he had crossed the floor, each step regular, the eyes of bystanders had followed Sollenar, until, anticipating his course, they found Burr waiting. The noise level of the Ball shrank perceptibly, for the lesser revelers who chanced to be present were sustaining it all alone. The people who really mattered here were silent and watchful.

The thought was that Burr, defeated in business, had come here in some insane reproach to his adversary, in this lugubrious, distasteful clothing. Why, he looked like a corpse. Or worse.

The question was, what would Sollenar say to him? The wish was that Burr would take himself away, back to his estates or to some other city. New York was no longer for Cortwright Burr. But what would Sollenar say to him now, to drive him back to where he hadn’t the grace to go willingly?

“Cortwright,” Sollenar said in a voice confined to the two of them. “So your Martian immortality works.”

Burr said nothing.

“You got that in addition, didn’t you? You knew how I’d react. You knew you’d need protection. Paid the Martians to make you physically invulnerable? It’s a good system. Very impressive. Who would have thought the Martians knew so much? But who here is going to pay attention to you now? Get out of town, Cortwright. You’re past your chance. You’re dead as far as these people are concerned⁠—all you have left is your skin.”

Burr reached up and surreptitiously lifted a corner of his fleshed mask. And there he was, under it. The hood retreated an inch, and the light reached his eyes; and Sollenar had been wrong, Burr had less left than he thought.

“Oh, no, no, Cortwright,” Sollenar said softly. “No, you’re right⁠—I can’t stand up to that.”

He turned and bowed to the assembled company. “Good night!” he cried, and walked out of the ballroom.

Someone followed him down the corridor to the elevators. Sollenar did not look behind him.

“I have another appointment with you now,” Ermine said at his elbow.

They reached the pedestrian level. Sollenar said: “There’s a café. We can talk there.”

“Too public, Mr. Sollenar. Let’s simply stroll and converse.” Ermine lightly took his arm and guided him along the walkway. Sollenar noticed then that Ermine was costumed so cunningly that no one could have guessed the appearance of the man.

“Very well,” Sollenar said.

“Of course.”

They walked together, casually. Ermine said: “Burr’s driving you to your death. Is it because you tried to kill him earlier? Did you get his Martian secret?”

Sollenar shook his head.

“You didn’t get it.” Ermine sighed. “That’s unfortunate. I’ll have to take steps.”

“Under the By-Laws,” Sollenar said, “I cry laissez faire.”

Ermine looked up, his eyes twinkling. “Laissez faire? Mr. Sollenar, do you have any idea how many of our members are involved in your fortunes? They will cry laissez faire, Mr. Sollenar, but clearly you persist in dragging them down with you. No, sir, Mr. Sollenar, my office now forwards an immediate recommendation to the Technical Advisory Committee of the I.A.B. that Mr. Burr probably has a system superior to yours, and that stock in Sollenar, Incorporated, had best be disposed of.”

“There’s a bench,” Sollenar said. “Let’s sit down.”

“As you wish.” Ermine moved beside Sollenar to the bench, but remained standing.

“What is it, Mr. Sollenar?”

“I want your help. You advised me on what Burr had. It’s still in his office building, somewhere. You have resources. We can get it.”

“Laissez faire, Mr. Sollenar. I visited you in an advisory capacity. I can do no more.”

“For a partnership in my affairs could you do more?”

“Money?” Ermine tittered. “For me? Do you know the conditions of my employment?”

If he had thought, Sollenar would have remembered. He reached out tentatively. Ermine anticipated him.

Ermine bared his left arm and sank his teeth into it. He displayed the arm. There was no quiver of pain in voice or stance. “It’s not a legend, Mr. Sollenar. It’s quite true. We of our office must spend a year, after the nerve surgery, learning to walk without the feel of our feet, to handle objects without crushing them or letting them slip, or damaging ourselves. Our mundane pleasures are auditory, olfactory, and visual. Easily gratified at little expense. Our dreams are totally interior, Mr. Sollenar. The operation is irreversible. What would you buy for me with your money?”

“What would I buy for myself?” Sollenar’s head sank down between his shoulders.

Ermine bent over him. “Your despair is your own, Mr. Sollenar. I have official business with you.”

He lifted Sollenar’s chin with a forefinger. “I judge physical interference to be unwarranted at this time. But matters must remain so that the I.A.B. members involved with you can recover the value of their investments in E.V. Is that perfectly clear, Mr. Sollenar? You are hereby enjoined under the By-Laws, as enforced by the Special Public Relations Office.” He glanced at his watch. “Notice was served at 1:27 a.m., City time.”

“1:27,” Sollenar said. “City time.” He sprang to his feet and raced down a companionway to the taxi level.

Mr. Ermine watched him quizzically.

He opened his costume, took out his omnipresent medical kit, and sprayed coagulant over the wound in his forearm. Replacing the kit, he adjusted his clothing and strolled down the same companionway Sollenar had run. He raised an arm, and a taxi flittered down beside him. He showed the driver a card, and the cab lifted off with him, its lights glaring in a Priority pattern, far faster than Sollenar’s ordinary legal limit allowed.

IV

Long Island Facility vaulted at the stars in great kangaroo-leaps of arch and cantilever span, jeweled in glass and metal as if the entire port were a mechanism for navigating interplanetary space. Rufus Sollenar paced its esplanades, measuring his steps, holding his arms still, for the short time until he could board the Mars rocket.

Erect and majestic, he took a place in the lounge and carefully sipped liqueur, once the liner had boosted away from Earth and coupled in its Faraday main drives.

Mr. Ermine settled into the place beside him.

Sollenar looked over at him calmly. “I thought so.”

Ermine nodded. “Of course you did. But I didn’t almost miss you. I was here ahead of you. I have no objection to your going to Mars, Mr. Sollenar. Laissez faire. Provided I can go along.”

“Well,” Rufus Sollenar said. “Liqueur?” He gestured with his glass.

Ermine shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said delicately.

Sollenar said: “Even your tongue?”

“Of course my tongue, Mr. Sollenar. I taste nothing. I touch nothing.” Ermine smiled. “But I feel no pressure.”

“All right, then,” Rufus Sollenar said crisply. “We have several hours to landing time. You sit and dream your interior dreams, and I’ll dream mine.” He faced around in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“Mr. Sollenar,” Ermine said gently.

“Yes?”

“I am once again with you by appointment as provided under the By-Laws.”

“State your business, Mr. Ermine.”

“You are not permitted to lie in an unknown grave, Mr. Sollenar. Insurance policies on your life have been taken out at a high premium rate. The I.A.B. members concerned cannot wait the statutory seven years to have you declared dead. Do what you will, Mr. Sollenar, but I must take care I witness your death. From now on, I am with you wherever you go.”

Sollenar smiled. “I don’t intend to die. Why should I die, Mr. Ermine?”

“I have no idea, Mr. Sollenar. But I know Cortwright Burr’s character. And isn’t that he, seated there in the corner? The light is poor, but I think he’s recognizable.”

Across the lounge, Burr raised his head and looked into Sollenar’s eyes. He raised a hand near his face, perhaps merely to signify greeting. Rufus Sollenar faced front.

“A worthy opponent, Mr. Sollenar,” Ermine said. “A persevering, unforgiving, ingenious man. And yet⁠—” Ermine seemed a little touched by bafflement. “And yet it seems to me, Mr. Sollenar, that he got you running rather easily. What did happen between you, after my advisory call?”

Sollenar turned a terrible smile on Ermine. “I shot him to pieces. If you’d peel his face, you’d see.”

Ermine sighed. “Up to this moment, I had thought perhaps you might still salvage your affairs.”

“Pity, Mr. Ermine? Pity for the insane?”

“Interest. I can take no part in your world. Be grateful, Mr. Sollenar. I am not the same gullible man I was when I signed my contract with I.A.B., so many years ago.”

Sollenar laughed. Then he stole a glance at Burr’s corner.

The ship came down at Abernathy Field, in Aresia, the Terrestrial city. Industrialized, prefabricated, jerry-built and clamorous, the storm-proofed buildings huddled, but huddled proudly, at the desert’s edge.

Low on the horizon was the Martian settlement⁠—the buildings so skillfully blended with the landscape, so eroded, so much abandoned that the uninformed eye saw nothing. Sollenar had been to Mars⁠—on a tour. He had seen the natives in their nameless dwelling place; arrogant, venomous and weak. He had been told, by the paid guide, they trafficked with Earthmen as much as they cared to, and kept to their place on the rim of Earth’s encroachment, observing.

“Tell me, Ermine,” Sollenar said quietly as they walked across the terminal lobby. “You’re to kill me, aren’t you, if I try to go on without you?”

“A matter of procedure, Mr. Sollenar,” Ermine said evenly. “We cannot risk the investment capital of so many I.A.B. members.”

Sollenar sighed. “If I were any other member, how I would commend you, Mr. Ermine! Can we hire a car for ourselves, then, somewhere nearby?”

“Going out to see the engineers?” Ermine asked. “Who would have thought they’d have something valuable for sale?”

“I want to show them something,” Sollenar said.

“What thing, Mr. Sollenar?”

They turned the corner of a corridor, with branching hallways here and there, not all of them busy. “Come here,” Sollenar said, nodding toward one of them.

They stopped out of sight of the lobby and the main corridor. “Come on,” Sollenar said. “A little further.”

“No,” Ermine said. “This is farther than I really wish. It’s dark here.”

“Wise too late, Mr. Ermine,” Sollenar said, his arms flashing out.

One palm impacted against Ermine’s solar plexus, and the other against the muscle at the side of his neck, but not hard enough to kill. Ermine collapsed, starved for oxygen, while Sollenar silently cursed having been cured of murder. Then Sollenar turned and ran.

Behind him Ermine’s body struggled to draw breath by reflex alone.

Moving as fast as he dared, Sollenar walked back and reached the taxi lock, pulling a respirator from a wall rack as he went. He flagged a car and gave his destination, looking behind him. He had seen nothing of Cortwright Burr since setting foot on Mars. But he knew that soon or late, Burr would find him.

A few moments later Ermine got to his feet. Sollenar’s car was well away. Ermine shrugged and went to the local broadcasting station.

He commandeered a private desk, a firearm and immediate time on the I.A.B. interoffice circuit to Earth. When his call acknowledgement had come back to him from his office there, he reported:

“Sollenar is enroute to the Martian city. He wants a duplicate of Burr’s device, of course, since he smashed the original when he killed Burr. I’ll follow and make final disposition. The disorientation I reported previously is progressing rapidly. Almost all his responses now are inappropriate. On the flight out, he seemed to be staring at something in an empty seat. Quite often when spoken to he obviously hears something else entirely. I expect to catch one of the next few flights back.”

There was no point in waiting for comment to wend its way back from Earth. Ermine left. He went to a cab rank and paid the exorbitant fee for transportation outside Aresian city limits.

Close at hand, the Martian city was like a welter of broken pots. Shards of wall and roof joined at savage angles and pointed to nothing. Underfoot, drifts of vitreous material, shaped to fit no sane configuration, and broken to fit such a mosaic as no church would contain, rocked and slid under Sollenar’s hurrying feet.

What from Aresia had been a solid front of dun color was here a façade of red, green and blue splashed about centuries ago and since then weathered only enough to show how bitter the colors had once been. The plum-colored sky stretched over all this like a frigid membrane, and the wind blew and blew.

Here and there, as he progressed, Sollenar saw Martian arms and heads protruding from the rubble. Sculptures.

He was moving toward the heart of the city, where some few unbroken structures persisted. At the top of a heap of shards he turned to look behind him. There was the dust-plume of his cab, returning to the city. He expected to walk back⁠—perhaps to meet someone on the road, all alone on the Martian plain if only Ermine would forebear from interfering. Searching the flat, thin-aired landscape, he tried to pick out the plodding dot of Cortwright Burr. But not yet.

He turned and ran down the untrustworthy slope.

He reached the edge of the maintained area. Here the rubble was gone, the ancient walks swept, the statues kept upright on their pediments. But only broken walls suggested the fronts of the houses that had stood here. Knifing their sides up through the wind-rippled sand that only constant care kept off the street, the shadow-houses fenced his way and the sculptures were motionless as hope. Ahead of him, he saw the buildings of the engineers. There was no heap to climb and look to see if Ermine followed close behind.

Sucking his respirator, he reached the building of the Martian engineers.

A sounding strip ran down the doorjamb. He scratched his fingernails sharply along it, and the magnified vibration, ducted throughout the hollow walls, rattled his plea for entrance.

V

The door opened, and Martians stood looking. They were spindly-limbed and slight, their faces framed by folds of leathery tissue. Their mouths were lipped with horn as hard as dentures, and pursed, forever ready to masticate. They were pleasant neither to look at nor, Sollenar knew, to deal with. But Cortwright Burr had done it. And Sollenar needed to do it.

“Does anyone here speak English?” he asked.

“I,” said the central Martian, his mouth opening to the sound, closing to end the reply.

“I would like to deal with you.”

“Whenever,” the Martian said, and the group at the doorway parted deliberately to let Sollenar in.

Before the door closed behind him, Sollenar looked back. But the rubble of the abandoned sectors blocked his line of sight into the desert.

“What can you offer? And what do you want?” the Martian asked. Sollenar stood half-ringed by them, in a room whose corners he could not see in the uncertain light.

“I offer you Terrestrial currency.”

The English-speaking Martian⁠—the Martian who had admitted to speaking English⁠—turned his head slightly and spoke to his fellows. There were clacking sounds as his lips met. The others reacted variously, one of them suddenly gesturing with what seemed a disgusted flip of his arm before he turned without further word and stalked away, his shoulders looking like the shawled back of a very old and very hungry woman.

“What did Burr give you?” Sollenar asked.

“Burr.” The Martian cocked his head. His eyes were not multifaceted, but gave that impression.

“He was here and he dealt with you. Not long ago. On what basis?”

“Burr. Yes. Burr gave us currency. We will take currency from you. For the same thing we gave him?”

“For immortality, yes.”

“Im⁠—This is a new word.”

“Is it? For the secret of not dying?”

“Not dying? You think we have not-dying for sale here?” The Martian spoke to the others again. Their lips clattered. Others left, like the first one had, moving with great precision and very slow step, and no remaining tolerance for Sollenar.

Sollenar cried out: “What did you sell him, then?”

The principal engineer said: “We made an entertainment device for him.”

“A little thing. This size.” Sollenar cupped his hands.

“You have seen it, then.”

“Yes. And nothing more? That was all he bought here?”

“It was all we had to sell⁠—or give. We don’t yet know whether Earthmen will give us things in exchange for currency. We’ll see, when we next need something from Aresia.”

Sollenar demanded: “How did it work? This thing you sold him.”

“Oh, it lets people tell stories to themselves.”

Sollenar looked closely at the Martian. “What kind of stories?”

“Any kind,” the Martian said blandly. “Burr told us what he wanted. He had drawings with him of an Earthman device that used pictures on a screen, and broadcast sounds, to carry the details of the story told to the auditor.”

“He stole those patents! He couldn’t have used them on Earth.”

“And why should he? Our device needs to convey no precise details. Any mind can make its own. It only needs to be put into a situation, and from there it can do all the work. If an auditor wishes a story of contact with other sexes, for example, the projector simply makes it seem to him, the next time he is with the object of his desire, that he is getting positive feedback⁠—that he is arousing a similar response in that object. Once that has been established for him, the auditor may then leave the machine, move about normally, conduct his life as usual⁠—but always in accordance with the basic situation. It is, you see, in the end a means of introducing system into his view of reality. Of course, his society must understand that he is not in accord with reality, for some of what he does cannot seem rational from an outside view of him. So some care must be taken, but not much. If many such devices were to enter his society, soon the circumstances would become commonplace, and the society would surely readjust to allow for it,” said the English-speaking Martian.

“The machine creates any desired situation in the auditor’s mind?”

“Certainly. There are simple predisposing tapes that can be inserted as desired. Love, adventure, cerebration⁠—it makes no difference.”

Several of the bystanders clacked sounds out to each other. Sollenar looked at them narrowly. It was obvious there had to be more than one English-speaker among these people.

“And the device you gave Burr,” he asked the engineer, neither calmly nor hopefully. “What sort of stories could its auditors tell themselves?”

The Martian cocked his head again. It gave him the look of an owl at a bedroom window. “Oh, there was one situation we were particularly instructed to include. Burr said he was thinking ahead to showing it to an acquaintance of his.

“It was a situation of adventure; of adventure with the fearful. And it was to end in loss and bitterness.” The Martian looked even more closely at Sollenar. “Of course, the device does not specify details. No one but the auditor can know what fearful thing inhabits his story, or precisely how the end of it would come. You would, I believe, be Rufus Sollenar? Burr spoke of you and made the noise of laughing.”

Sollenar opened his mouth. But there was nothing to say.

“You want such a device?” the Martian asked. “We’ve prepared several since Burr left. He spoke of machines that would manufacture them in astronomical numbers. We, of course, have done our best with our poor hands.”

Sollenar said: “I would like to look out your door.”

“Pleasure.”

Sollenar opened the door slightly. Mr. Ermine stood in the cleared street, motionless as the shadow buildings behind him. He raised one hand in a gesture of unfelt greeting as he saw Sollenar, then put it back on the stock of his rifle. Sollenar closed the door, and turned to the Martian. “How much currency do you want?”

“Oh, all you have with you. You people always have a good deal with you when you travel.”

Sollenar plunged his hands into his pockets and pulled out his billfold, his change, his keys, his jeweled radio; whatever was there, he rummaged out onto the floor, listening to the sound of rolling coins.

“I wish I had more here,” he laughed. “I wish I had the amount that man out there is going to recover when he shoots me.”

The Martian engineer cocked his head. “But your dream is over, Mr. Sollenar,” he clacked drily. “Isn’t it?”

“Quite so. But you to your purposes and I to mine. Now give me one of those projectors. And set it to predispose a situation I am about to specify to you. Take however long it needs. The audience is a patient one.” He laughed, and tears gathered in his eyes.

Mr. Ermine waited, isolated from the cold, listening to hear whether the rifle stock was slipping out of his fingers. He had no desire to go into the Martian building after Sollenar and involve third parties. All he wanted was to put Sollenar’s body under a dated marker, with as little trouble as possible.

Now and then he walked a few paces backward and forward, to keep from losing muscular control at his extremities because of low skin temperature. Sollenar must come out soon enough. He had no food supply with him, and though Ermine did not like the risk of engaging a man like Sollenar in a starvation contest, there was no doubt that a man with no taste for fuel could outlast one with the acquired reflexes of eating.

The door opened and Sollenar came out.

He was carrying something. Perhaps a weapon. Ermine let him come closer while he raised and carefully sighted his rifle. Sollenar might have some Martian weapon or he might not. Ermine did not particularly care. If Ermine died, he would hardly notice it⁠—far less than he would notice a botched ending to a job of work already roiled by Sollenar’s break away at the space field. If Ermine died, some other S.P.R.O. agent would be assigned almost immediately. No matter what happened, S.P.R.O. would stop Sollenar before he ever reached Abernathy Field.

So there was plenty of time to aim an unhurried, clean shot.

Sollenar was closer, now. He seemed to be in a very agitated frame of mind. He held out whatever he had in his hand.

It was another one of the Martian entertainment machines. Sollenar seemed to be offering it as a token to Ermine. Ermine smiled.

“What can you offer me, Mr. Sollenar?” he said, and shot.

The golden ball rolled away over the sand. “There, now,” Ermine said. “Now, wouldn’t you sooner be me than you? And where is the thing that made the difference between us?”

He shivered. He was chilly. Sand was blowing against his tender face, which had been somewhat abraded during his long wait.

He stopped, transfixed.

He lifted his head.

Then, with a great swing of his arms, he sent the rifle whirling away. “The wind!” he sighed into the thin air. “I feel the wind.” He leapt into the air, and sand flew away from his feet as he landed. He whispered to himself: “I feel the ground!”

He stared in tremblant joy at Sollenar’s empty body. “What have you given me?” Full of his own rebirth, he swung his head up at the sky again, and cried in the direction of the Sun: “Oh, you squeezing, nibbling people who made me incorruptible and thought that was the end of me!”

With love he buried Sollenar, and with reverence he put up the marker, but he had plans for what he might accomplish with the facts of this transaction, and the myriad others he was privy to.

A sharp bit of pottery had penetrated the sole of his shoe and gashed his foot, but he, not having seen it, hadn’t felt it. Nor would he see it or feel it even when he changed his stockings; for he had not noticed the wound when it was made. It didn’t matter. In a few days it would heal, though not as rapidly as if it had been properly attended to.

Vaguely, he heard the sound of Martians clacking behind their closed door as he hurried out of the city, full of revenge, and reverence for his savior.

I

I’ve come a long, long way to die alone, David Greaves thought as Defiance tumbled through the misty shroud of Venus, hopelessly torn apart by the explosion in her engines. On the console in front of him, the altimeter was one of the last few meaningful instruments, and it told him there were only a few tortured miles remaining before the ship he had brought this far⁠—had spent his fortune in building when no government would yet consider risking a manned rocket on his flight⁠—would smash down to its doom on a planet no man had ever walked.

Battered and tossed in his seat by the ship’s crazy tumbling, Greaves tensed the oak-hard muscles of his arms and thrust himself up to his feet. He wasn’t dead yet. He wasn’t dead and, if the slim chance paid off, he’d still be present to laugh in the government’s face when the first, safe, cautious official venture finally made its way across the emptiness between Earth and the Sun’s second planet.

Dragging himself from handhold to handhold, his tendons cracking with the strain, he levered himself toward the Crash Capsule, forced open its hatch and pulled himself through, while the winds of Venus tore at the shattered hull and the scream of Defiance’s passage through the murky sky rose to a savage howl.

Outside the cloud-lashed hull there were no stars. Below, no one knew what sort of jungle, or sea, or desert of whipping poison sand might lie in wait. Greaves had not cared when he set out, and did not care now. If men had always waited to be sure, if all the adventurers of mankind had waited until the signposts had gone up, the cave bears would still be the dominant form of life on Earth, and races undreamed of might never know such a thing as man to contest their sway over the Universe.

I’ll live to see my share of that, Greaves thought as he pulled the capsule’s hatch shut and dropped into the special padding that, in theory, would cushion much of the impact. Or else I’ll know I tried. He tripped the lever that would flood the capsule with Doctor Eckstrom’s special anesthetic⁠—the experimental compound that might⁠—just barely, might⁠—offer a chance.

As the hiss of the yellow-tinged, acrid gas became louder and louder in his ears, David Greaves thought again of the almost obsessive lengths to which he had gone in making sure that there would be such a thing as the capsule. The entire project⁠—the decision to build the ship, to sacrifice for it the personal fortune he had built up in his meteoric rise from obscurity to being one of the world’s most dynamic and certainly youngest industrialists⁠—had been marked by his fanatical persistence and dedication. But that dream had come first, and the fortune second⁠—the sole purpose of his career, from its very beginnings when he was only another engineer test pilot, had simply been to accumulate the means so Defiance could be built. But the ship had been three-quarters complete when he conceived the idea for the capsule. He could not even now remember exactly when or how he had decided that he must have some device aboard that would protect him from a crash and⁠—here was the vital thing he insisted upon⁠—keep him alive, no matter how injured, no matter how long might be necessary, until rescuers could reach him.

For him to even think in terms of rescuers⁠—of depending on others⁠—was totally uncharacteristic. For him to divert a major portion of his dwindling resources from work on the ship itself, and push toward the elaborate design of the capsule, was, in some lights, again uncharacteristically foolish. But he had done it, and now.⁠ ⁠…

… Now the anesthetic created by the man some said was a medical genius and some said was a quack had flooded over him.

He could feel the first effect⁠—the calm, the drowsy peace. By the time the Defiance smashed into the ground⁠—very soon now⁠—his metabolism would have slowed to a carefully metered rate. It would take hours for his heart to beat once. To him it would seem as if each day was only a few minutes. The jagged nerve-flashes of pain would be only a faraway slow tingle; the blink of an eye would encompass hours of actual time, and he would lie here, safe, asleep, until the hatch was opened and he was taken out into the air, where slowly the effects would wear off.

Meanwhile, there was more than enough gas compressed into the capsule’s tanks to keep him perfectly relaxed for a hundred years. The valve⁠—a simple device he had sketched out in five minutes, as if the design had been part of his mind for years⁠—would continue to meter out the supply at the optimum rate and pressure.

It was only now⁠—perhaps a hundred feet from impact, perhaps only a hundred hairsbreadths⁠—that he suddenly saw the flaw in the design.

He struggled to reach the valve, in a useless reflex, for there would have been nothing he could have done, no matter how much time remained. Then he fell back, a twisted grin on his face. I’ve come a long, long way to trap myself, he laughed in his drowsing mind, as the ship crashed, and the capsule, torn from Defiance’s side, rebounded like a cannon shell from Heaven upon the outraged soil of Venus, and the overhead clouds sprang into flamed reflection from the blast of Defiance’s end.

In the capsule, the valve controlling the flow from the illogically copious supply of anesthetic snapped off cleanly. David Greaves’ lungs jolted to the impact as a century’s dosage of the high-pressure gas delivered its one giant hammerblow of sleep.⁠ ⁠… Of sleep like death.⁠ ⁠…

Of sleep so slow, so majestic, that only the eternally ageless body might testify to life. Of sleep without end, without motion, until.⁠ ⁠…

II

The woman⁠—the sensuous ivory-skinned woman with eyes like dark jewels and hair like midnight framing her red-lipped face⁠—kissed him again and then drew back to touch his cheek.

“Wake,” she whispered softly. “Wake, sleeper.”

David Greaves looked up at her through slowly dawning eyes. The scent of spices was in his nostrils. As the woman’s hair brushed his face again, the fragrance increased.

“My name is David Greaves,” he said, and looked up at the sky and then around him.

There was now no envelope of cloud to hide the face of this planet from the Sun; no such shroud as had concealed the Venus of his day in dazzling white without and muffled it in somber black within. This sky was ruddy, ruddy with the light of the day’s last moments, and the clouds through which the sunset burned were only crayon-strokes of ochre across the orange sky.

He lay in state, facing that sunset, on some sort of black metal couch which supported him on a multitude of sweeping, back-bent arms. Beneath him, a dozen low broad steps of olive-green polished stone led down to a long forum, flagged with the same gold-veined, masterfully fitted paving. Around the court ran a low wall, again of stone; friezed, and burnished to a dull glow. From the wall, tall slim pillars thrust into the air.

And atop each pillar, cast and carved in black metal washed by the lingering light, crouched a monster.

No single artist could have created such a bestiary of gargoyles. Some he could trace in their evolution⁠—the vulpine, the crustacean, the insectile. Fangs and pincers slit the cool, invigorating breeze that flowed over the court. Antennae quivered and hummed in the air, and a myriad legs were poised in tension, forever prepared to leap. Others were beyond any creation he knew of⁠—limbs and wings contorted into shapes that had, undoubtedly, been taken by living things⁠ ⁠… in lives unimaginable to any man. And all of them, imaginable or not, faced toward him forever.

At the foot of each pillar, mounted in a cresset on the wall at its base, burned a torch. And so, when night fell, then the shadows of all these monsters would be cast upward onto the stars, and he would lie sleeping in the pooled light of the torches, while all around him these creatures stood watch.

How many nights had he lain here? How many centuries to wash the fog of sleep out of every nook and cranny of his lungs, when each breath might take a thousand years⁠—ten thousand?

But he was not done with studying his surroundings. He had heard sound when he turned his head. Now the sound was a rising murmur as he lifted his shoulders to look down the length of the court of monsters toward the far end. There were people there. They had been seated on stone tiers that rose up toward a colonnaded temple. There he could see an altar through the open sides and, on that altar, a flame that burned bright and unwinking against the outline of the lowering Sun.

The people were rising to their feet. From them came an open-throated murmur that became a cry of savage joy⁠—of unbearable tension finding release.

“Who are they?” he asked the woman as he sat up and felt his body stretch with power cramped too long, as he squared back his shoulders and peered through the twilight in the court of monsters.

“Your worshippers, David Greaves,” she said, standing beside him among the many arms of his couch. “The people whose last hope you are.” She added softly: “My name, though you did not ask, is Adelie.” She paused. “I, too, am one of your worshippers. Wherever there are human beings, throughout the Universe, you are worshipped.”

He looked at her more closely. There was a lift to one black-winged eyebrow that was less reverent than a god might like, though a man could have no quarrel with it. She stood gracefully on sandaled feet, dressed in a single white garment girdled around her waist by a belt made of the same metal in which the monsters were cast. He saw that the clasp was shaped into a profile of his own face. And he saw from the wear that it showed that it was old⁠—older than she could be, older perhaps than this court. This⁠ ⁠… shrine? He wondered how many priestesses had worn that belt.

How many of his priestesses.

He frowned and got down, feeling the touch of the day-warmed stone on his bare feet. He was dressed, he saw, in a black kilt and nothing else. He returned his glance to the worshippers and saw that the men were dressed similarly, and that the women wore flowing, calf-length, translucently light robes like Adelie’s.

There was motion at one corner of his eye, and he turned his head sharply to see the arms of the couch sweeping down, folding and bending against its sides. Now he saw that he had been cradled in the arms of a great black metal beast. It crouched atop the dais. Its head was bent supplicatingly, bright oily metal barely visible at the joinings of its mechanical body.

He glanced quickly up at the monsters atop their columns. “Are they all like that?” he asked Adelie.

An old man’s gruff voice answered him from the other side of the beast-couch. “They won’t spring down to devour you⁠—you needn’t be afraid of that.” Two men came into view, one old, one young and very slim. The old one rapped the couch with his knuckles. “This tended you in your sleep. It is made in the shape of the most ferocious race that ever rivaled Man. It is now extinct⁠—as are all those others up there, for the same reason.”

The thin young man⁠—very pale, very long of limb⁠—stretched his broad, tight mouth into a smile that covered half his face without mirth. “Not the most ferocious, Vigil.”

“Your kind will learn about that,” the old man snapped.

“Not from you and yours,” the slim man said lightly.

Greaves turned to Adelie, who waited, poised, while old Vigil and the young man quarreled. “Tell me the situation,” Greaves said.

Adelie’s lips parted. But the old man interrupted.

“The situation is that you have been awakened needlessly and would best go back to sleep at once. My daughter and these fanatical sheep⁠—” he waved an angry arm at the standing worshippers⁠—“have forced me to permit this. But in fact Humanity neither needs you nor wants you awake.”

“Oh, on the contrary,” the young man said. “Humanity needs its gods very badly at this hour. But you are only a man, not so?”

Greaves looked from one to the other⁠—the leather-skinned old man with his mop of ringleted white hair, the young one who was human in appearance but somehow claimed some other status. “Who are you two?”

“I am Vigil, your guardian, and this is⁠—”

“I am Mayron of The Shadows,” the young man said, and he held himself as carelessly as before, but his face looked directly into Greaves’s. “See my eyes.”

There was nothing there. Only darkness speckled by pinpoints of light; thick, sooty darkness like oil smoke, and sharp lights that burned through it without illuminating it.

“Mayron that was First of Men,” Vigil said bitterly.

“Mayron that is First of Shadows,” the empty-skinned thing replied proudly, and began to weep great, black tears that soon emptied it, so that the skin drooped down into a huddle on the pave and a black cloud in the shape of a man stood sparkling in the dusk before Greaves. “Mayron that will again be First of Men, when all men are shadows. Mayron that is already First of many men. And which of us is a god, David Greaves?”

Adelie’s face glowed with excitement. Her red lips were parted breathlessly. The crowd on the tiers had loosed a great, wailing moan, which hung over the court of conquered monsters as the first stars became visible on the far horizon.

Greaves took a deep breath. He could feel his body tensing itself, the muscles rippling, as though his hide needed comfort.

“Which of us is a god, man?” Mayron repeated softly, his voice coming from the entire cloud. “What is it you can do against me, you whose entire virtue rests on doing nothing?”

“That would depend on what was expected of me at this moment,” Greaves said.

“This moment?” Mayron chuckled. “At this moment, nothing.”

“In that case, get out of my court and come back when there’s something to do.”

Mayron laughed, throwing his head back, the laughter high and insolent. “How like a god! How very like the real thing.”

Greaves frowned. “If you were a man, once, you might remember how that feels.” But the laugh had bothered him.

“Oh, I remember, I remember. And tomorrow we fight, man.” Laughing, Mayron bent and picked up the skin he had discarded. He crumpled it by the waist in one fist, and brandished it negligently at the worshippers. They shrank back with a moan of horror as he strode toward the far wall. At the wall, he flipped the white, fluttering thing over, and as a cloud passed through the stone. Perhaps on the other side he put on his human form again. Greaves could not tell. The sun was down, and only a little light glowed on the far horizon. The torches guttered in the court of monsters, and the worshippers were hurrying up the steps, out through the temple and away.

III

Greaves, Adelie and Vigil stood beside the beast-couch. “All right,” Greaves said. “Now there are things I want to know, and I want no quarrels, Vigil.”

“And by what right do you order me around?” the old man growled. “You may be a god to some, but you are not my god.”

“You owe it to me, atheist. If I was awakened today, at this pat moment, I could have been awakened before. I wasn’t. You kept me asleep, guardian, when I could have been free as any other man. So you owe me.”

The old man grunted. “You’re brave with Mayron and brave with me. But all men are brave, each in his own way. We need no gods.”

“But you have one.”

Adelie touched his arm. “You have lived from the beginning of human history. And you were a great hero. That much the legends tell us. You were braver than any man, and for your bravery, you could not die. While other heroes conquered the stars and, in their time, died, you lived on. While enemy after enemy was beaten by Man, and the victorious men died, you lived on. The stars and all worlds became ours. Men loved and begat, and men died, but you lived on. It seemed to us that as long as you lived, all men would have something to remember⁠—how great Man is; what the reward of courage can be. It seemed only fitting that we should bring to you the trophies of our achievements. It seemed only right to believe that you had survived to some purpose⁠—that a day would come when Man would need his greatest hero.”

“Precisely,” Vigil snorted. “Man worships nothing but himself. You were a convenient symbol. It did no harm. It may have done some good. Of course, the chuckleheads took it all literally. And so⁠—thanks to Man’s stupid persistence in breeding idiots as well as men with some brains, you, whoever you are, whatever kind of filibustering bravo you actually were, have become the focus of a cult populated by the credulous, the neurotic and those who profit by them. I hope you are grateful for your legacy!”

Greaves looked up at the stars. There were some constellations that might have been the ones he knew, distorted by his transit to another viewpoint⁠ ⁠… or by time. He was no astronomer.

I’ve come a long way, he thought, and I wonder what the end of it will be. “Those who profit from the credulous, hmm?” he said to Vigil.

“I am your guardian and I guarded you. As many others have done before me, from various motives. This is not your first court, nor your tenth. The ritual around you is compounded from thousands of years of hogwash, as witness my worshipful daughter who inherits a post from some time when every venturing hero had to have a leman patiently awaiting his return. My duties no doubt were originally medical. But the couch has been attending to that⁠—with some exceptions⁠—for centuries. And you may be assured, Man’s history has not been one unbroken triumph, nor his civilization any steady upward climb. But we built while you slumbered. I had thought to prevent your besmirching Man’s greatness with your cheap legend.”

“Or perhaps he was afraid of the god he denies,” Adelie murmured, her eyes glowing warmly.

Greaves looked from her to her father. “So she believes in me and you do not,” he said to Vigil. “But it may be you’re not entirely sure⁠—and from the looks she gives me, it may be she isn’t, either.” He grinned crookedly. “Man may have climbed, but I assure you he hasn’t changed.”

He smiled at the looks on both their faces. Divinity was new to him, but humanity was not. If these two had thought perhaps they had some dull-witted barbarian here⁠—the one for his faith in his faithlessness, the other for her pleasures⁠—it had been time their error was corrected.

“Old man, god or not I have been called out⁠ ⁠… whether it pleases you or not. And I won’t willingly lay me down to sleep again until I think it’s time. So you had better tell me what all this is about, or I will blunder around and perhaps break something you’re fond of.”

Adelie laughed.

Vigil swung his arm sharply toward her. “This⁠—this would-be courtesan was once Mayron’s great love, when he was First of us all. Because he could find nothing to conquer for her in all the Universe, he began dabbling beyond it for a worthy prize. And he found it. Oh, he found it, didn’t he, my child?”

“Be careful, Father,” Adelie spat. “The worshippers follow me now that I’ve wakened him as promised, and you⁠—”

“Quiet,” Greaves said mildly. “He was telling me something.”

“That I was,” Vigil said angrily, while his daughter’s look at Greaves was the least sure it had ever been, “and for all the need you have of it, I might as well not. But if I may say it once and get it said, I can then go to my meal and the two of you will be free to amuse yourselves. Mayron discovered the Shadows, when his machines touched some continuum beyond this one, and the Shadows ate him. But like the fox that lost his tail in the trap and then cozened other foxes with the lie that it was better so and fashionable besides, Mayron made a virtue of his slavery. Those who give themselves up to the Shadows never rest and never hunger. They know no barrier. And no love. No true joy. No noble sorrow. An untailed fox is safe from catching by the tail. A Shadow has no spirit, no humanity, no⁠—soul. But there are always dunderheads. Mayron has them, and down in that city of his down there⁠—” the old man waved a hand at the horizon, but all Greaves could see from where he stood were the glowing tops of what he took to be three fitfully active volcanoes⁠—“he has a city full of dunderheaded shadows who go to some temple he has built and enter the Shadow chamber to be changed. The admission is easily gained; the price of freedom from human care is humanity.”

“And up here,” Greaves said, “other dunderheads come to gain what in exchange for what?”

“Gain at least some sort of affirmation at the cost of remaining men!” the old man growled. “If they are simple, at least they are human! And even an intelligent man can see the value in what is embodied here.”

“As witness yourself. Yes.”

“I didn’t want to wake you! We know enough so you could have been awakened centuries ago. But to what purpose? To turn another hooligan loose to upset civilization, and lose the symbol of that precious thing? When Man himself can rescue himself? But, no, this one, this superstition-ridden tramp I wish I’d strangled in her cradle⁠—she stirred the worshippers up, she arranged the combat between yourself and Mayron, she⁠—”

“When and where?”

“What?”

“This fight Mayron and you have both spoken of.”

“Tomorrow at noon. In the city. But there’s no need for it. Tomorrow Mayron dies, and the other Shadows die. You can watch or not⁠—as long as you stay out of the way.”

Greaves looked at Adelie. “Your daughter, Vigil, does not look much impressed.”

“Impressed! Impressed!” The old man was very nearly dancing with rage. “I’ll show you! Come with me.” Vigil turned without looking back and pattered rapidly down the steps of the dais, his calloused feet slapping indignantly on the time-buffed stones.

Greaves frowned after him. Then he jerked his head to Adelie. “Come on,” he said and they, too, walked quickly down the length of the court of the conquered monsters. And for the first time since their creation the pillared gargoyles did not have to bear the sight of Man.

The scent of Adelie’s fragrance was in Greaves nostrils again as they followed the old man through the temple, past the altar where the eternal flame burned bright enough to sting. He said nothing to her. She volunteered no words of her own. But she walked close enough to brush his thigh with hers. Greaves smiled appreciatively.

Vigil led them to a small chamber in one wing of the temple. He flung open the door with a clatter of bolts in a concealed lock, and pointed inside. “Look⁠—the two of you. It’s not just Mayron who can dabble with machines. For every clever man, there is another just as clever.”

A gun of green metal was mounted on a pedestal in the center of the chamber. Slim and graceful as a wading bird with one extended leg, it poised atop its mount and sang quietly of power and intent to kill. The friezed walls of the chamber hummed in harmonic response to the idle melody of the gun. Greaves felt his hackles rising unreasonably, and he very nearly growled with outrage at the sight of it.

“Tomorrow at noon,” Vigil said in a high, triumphant voice, “the weapon will be swung to point through that window and down upon Mayron’s city. And when it is done, there will not be a single Shadow alive down there.”

Greaves walked to the window in the chamber’s far wall and looked down. But it was dark below; nothing to mark the outlines of a city as cities had been in the time he remembered. The temple apparently stood atop a high hill, with the city in a great valley at its foot, but again all Greaves could see were three glowing mountaintops across the way, and, beyond them, the night sky.

Then suddenly one of the volcanos flared for an instant, and the few overhead clouds reflected redly down into the valley.

Greaves caught his breath. The city had emerged black and immense, extending for miles, its lightless towers like the spine-bones of a beast half-eaten and rotting in a tidal pool. Then the light was gone, and once again there was nothing visible down there⁠—if the undead beast had chosen to bestir itself and stealthily move on some errand of the night, no one standing here could have known until it was too late.

“So that’s the city of the Shadows,” Greaves said.

“The city that was once the First City of Man,” Vigil said bitterly. “That Mayron has made into an outpost of Hell. Where no man dares live; where they say that those with Shadows, once they were in sufficient number, dragged women and children into the Chamber of Shadows so that their men, heartbroken, joined them when their Shadow-children returned to plead with them.”

“And this gun of yours is going to do what to them?” he asked.

“Kill them.”

“I know that. How?” Greaves stared at the old man through narrowing eyes.

“A beam of power, made of the stuff that spins within all things⁠—the pure force of this continuum.”

“You mean this thing is some kind of particle emitter⁠—an electron or photon gun?”

“Our science need not concern itself with crudities like names, barbarian. This gun was made as a song or a poem is made⁠—in the mind of a man who dreams weapons where another man might dream bridges⁠ ⁠… and when the gun finds its fruition, tomorrow when Mayron expects no mightier enemy than you, then the beam will sweep that city, and when it stops Mayron’s city will be a tomb for empty skins. And Man will build another First City, and those who fled shall have a place again, and⁠—”

“Who built⁠—who dreamed⁠—this piece of ironmongery?” Greaves growled. “Who was the poet⁠—you?”

“Yes! Why not? Do you think because I am an old man⁠—”

“A heedlessly spiteful one who hasn’t stopped to think.”

“Stopped to think! Look!” Vigil seized the torch at the doorway and lifted it high. “Did you think I wasn’t sure? That the weapon has not been tested?”

Now Greaves could see why the gun sang rather than rested in quiet patience. A Shadow hung against the far wall, supported by its outstretched arms, its hands sunken wrist-deep in the stone. And though it jerked its legs and struggled feebly to be free, the hands remained trapped. Under the sound of the idling gun, he could distinguish a quiet, thin, whimpering.

Adelie laughed softly to herself.

Vigil crowed: “He cannot move⁠—what little strength remains to him is needed for bare existence⁠ ⁠… if I were to touch that control⁠—

“The weapon is at its lowest setting⁠—it has incomparably more power than that; it has the power of all the Universe in it⁠—and look what it can do when it is barely tapped in to its source of power!”

Greaves rumbled in his throat. Suddenly the gun’s song was more than he could stand. He barely seemed to move, but Vigil had time to shout, the outraged cry beginning to echo in the chamber when suddenly there came the snap of rending metal, and a choked stammer from the gun. And then Greaves had the gun in his hands, completely torn from its pedestal. He threw it out into the night in a bright flash of fire that bathed them all in a thunderclap of light. Greaves stared after it, his teeth bared, the horrid sound of his hatred still rumbling within him. When that had dwindled, leaving him with his heavy chest heaving for air, the trapped Shadow had vanished, no doubt to tell Mayron that Humanity’s godling had gone insane.

Adelie was very pale. Vigil was trying to speak.

And that from the old man was enough to bring back the first scarlet edge of the fury he had turned on the gun.

“Close your mouth!” Greaves commanded him. “I have to go fight Mayron tomorrow, and I don’t want another word out of you. Go find something useless to do. Adelie, I want a bath, some food and drink. Right now!”

IV

During the night, he asked Adelie: “I’m supposed to fight him with my hands, is that it? Or with simple weapons of some kind? And this will prove to the worshippers all over the Universe or to the Shadows that either my or Mayron’s way of life is right?”

“Yes,” she said. “And you are very strong. I’m sure you will win. I was sure when I suggested it to Mayron. He’s so completely confident⁠—I knew I could trick him into it.”

Later, he asked her: “Tell me⁠—was there a famous weapon poet in First City?” And he took her hand, not letting go of it. When she asked him, once, hesitantly, why he had broken the gun, he answered honestly: “Because it seemed hateful.” And other than that, they said very little to each other during that night, and whatever they did say had about as much truth in it as all the things they had said or he had been told from the first moment of his awakening. He did not sleep. For one thing, he felt no need of it. For another, he was frightened. He did not want to be a Shadow.⁠ ⁠…

In the morning he had forgotten fear. Steps led from the temple to a pathway that wound down toward the city. He stood for a moment at their head, with the altar burning behind him, and then stepped out into the morning, with Adelie and Vigil following.

There were people waiting out there. They lined the path, murmuring among themselves. As he strode along they fell in behind him, leaving behind the temporary shelters they had put up when they fled from the city and took refuge here.

“Sheep,” Vigil snorted as he padded through the dust beside Greaves. “All right, let them see you brought down. I’ll make another gun⁠—if your stupidity hasn’t robbed me of the time I need⁠—and then they’ll see.⁠ ⁠…”

“I’m sure that if I lose today, Mayron will give you all the time you need. Maybe he’ll even send that same Shadow poet back to you with whatever story you’ll believe this time.”

“What⁠—?” Vigil stammered.

“What did he tell you? That he would create the gun for you because he hated the Shadows, even though he was a Shadow? Did he tell you how he remembered how fine it was to be a man? Is that the story you believed? You simple, credulous murderer! And you repaid him by testing it on him. As he well suspected you might. It’s not only humans who can be brave. Or sacrifice themselves for the ferocity of their race. Or were you too busy taking Humanity’s name in vain to ever consider that? You never dreamed that gun. Not you⁠—you may be foolish, but you don’t hate this Universe.”

Vigil was blinking at him. “What⁠—?”

Adelie laughed. “Last night, father. He asked me about weapon poets. There’s no use trying to lie out of it.”

Greaves smiled at her. “That’s right. I asked you, and from that moment on you knew I was cleverer than Mayron thinks. But you never got away to tell him that, did you? You know,” he said thoughtfully, “you’d better hope I win today. Mayron won’t be too fond of you if I give him any more shocks.”

Adelie grinned. “I thought of that. But if you win, he dies. And if you die⁠ ⁠… ?”

“You will have had your glory anyway? You will have engineered the battle of the gods, and dabbled in other pleasures, too?” Greaves was still smiling, but Adelie’s eyes grew wider. “Maybe it’ll be that simple, Adelie. But who can tell the minds of gods, hmm?”

And so David Greaves strode into the city of Shadows, followed by a fearful multitude and two badly shaken people. He walked down a broad avenue at whose end something black bulked and glimmered, while things with black-filled eyes stood watching thin-lipped. And as he walked he showed none of his fear.

He stopped at the end of the avenue, with the tall towers looming over him, and stood facing the Temple of Shadows. There was no sign of life in the square black opening that served as a door for the featureless stone block, dark but not as dark as a Shadow.

He threw back his head and called: “Mayron!”

The worshippers huddled around him. Vigil, like them, was throwing anxious looks over his shoulders as the city’s Shadows crowded closer.

Adelie murmured: “There he is.”

And he was, trotting lightly down the steps, smiling. He wore his human skin as naturally as if it were more than a cloak, and Greaves had to look hard to see that when he smiled his lips stretched but no teeth showed.

“Well, Man in all your pride. Are you ready?”

“Ready as any man. How do you propose to go about this?”

“Adelie didn’t tell you?”

“She told me as much as I asked. I didn’t ask much. Could you suggest any way I could have refused the conditions, no matter what they are? That loses the fight right there. Wasn’t I supposed to understand that? Do you think politics is a recent invention?”

“Fierce, fierce,” Mayron murmured. “Well spoken.” He chuckled. “When I was a man, I would have liked you.”

“Get to the business, Mayron.”

The Shadow held up his hand. “Not so fast. Perhaps we can arrive at some⁠—”

“Arrive at nothing. Put up or shut up. Vigil no longer has that monstrous gun and there’s no point in this for you today. But there is for me, and you don’t have much time to realize that.” He glowered at the Shadow, feeling the rage, feeling the onrush of the bright white exaltation when the body moves too fast for the brain to speak, when what directs the body is the reflex founded on the silent knowledge of the brain’s deep layers, where the learning has no words.

Mayron frowned. His head was cocked to one side. If he had had eyes, he would have been peering at Greaves’ face. But he said nothing; he had lost the moment, and now Greaves used it.

“You scum,” Greaves said, his voice booming through the Temple square for all the Shadows to hear. “A weapon that drains the power of this continuum! You leech⁠—you would have had that doddering old man put all my stars out!”

And now the moment was at its peak, and Greaves screamed with rage, so that the faces of the towers were turned into sounding boards and the shout crackled in the air like thunder. He jumped forward, one sweeping arm tossing Mayron out of his way and flailing for balance, while Greaves sprang into the Temple and charged the Chamber of Shadows.

And now the fear⁠—the great devouring fear that came like fangs in his belly but did not stop him. Now the fear as he burst through the acolytes and into the black, light-shot sphere that quivered at the focus of Mayron’s machine. And he stood there, feeling the suck not of one voracious universe but many⁠—all the universes that had eaten the overcurious Mayron and sent back a Judas goat in his skin to conquer what belonged to Man. Feeling the icy cold, and the energy-hunger that could suck Man’s Universe dry and still leave a hunger immeasurable.

But the rage⁠—the rage that came to him, that came to the god uncounted generations of men had made while David Greaves lay sleeping but his deepest mind lay awake, feeling, feeling the faith, knowing the splendor of what Man had done⁠—The rage that could make a god, that could give a creature like David Greaves the power to create, to dream a man⁠—to make a David Greaves who would lie waiting, ready to become a god.⁠ ⁠…

That rage went forth.

And in parallel continuums of life unimaginable, the dawn of Apocalypse burst upon suns unnameable and worlds unheard-of⁠—upon all the universes which were the true Shadows. The god who was David Greaves again, when the rage had passed⁠—that image which Man himself had made stood blazing his fury in the Chamber of Shadows, and the Universe of Man was free and safe. But in the places of the Shadows there was no hope, no joy, no place of refuge. Mankind was come forth, and galaxies were dying.

One last snap of the fangs⁠—one moment when the death-spurred Shadows almost had their greatest prize of all⁠—and then it was over. Greaves turned and strode out of the blasted Chamber, and the acolytes cowered, covering their eyes, not yet realizing that once more they had eyes.

David Greaves appeared on the temple steps, and began walking slowly down, his legs shaking with exhaustion. Adelie watched him coming toward her. Around her, Shadows that had once been men were men again, but at her feet Mayron lay without his skin, and though her father had fled, she did not dare go without learning what the look on David Greaves’ face meant for her.