Author: Mack Reynolds
Date: 2019-07-17T22:27:11+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Short stories; Astronauts -- Fiction; Political fiction; Soviet Union -- Fiction; Soldiers -- Fiction; Balkan Peninsula -- Fiction; Sahara -- Fiction; Sabotage -- Fiction; Desert reclamation -- Mali -- Fiction; Time travel -- Fiction; Assassins -- Fiction; American; Space colonies -- Fiction; Mercenary troops -- Fiction; Corporations -- Corrupt practices -- Fiction; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction; Mars (Planet) -- Fiction; Immortality -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Space flight -- Fiction; Sick children -- Fiction; Journalists -- Fiction; Space travelers -- Fiction
Description: A collection of science fiction short stories by Mack Reynolds ordered by date of publication.
Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Short Fiction

By Mack Reynolds.

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Tourists to Terra

Diomed of Argos, son of Tydeus, drew his sword with a shout and rushed forward to finish off his Trojan opponent before help could arrive. Suddenly he stopped and threw up a shielding arm before his eyes. When he could see again, one who could only have been Aphrodite, Goddess of love and beauty stood between him and the unconscious enemy. She was dressed as though for the bridal room, her Goddess body, breathtakingly beautiful, revealed through the transparent robe she wore. She was attired for love, but held a short sword in her hand.

Aphrodite smiled at him in derision. “Now, then, Prince of Argos, would you fight the Gods?” She advanced the sword, half mockingly.

But the Greek was mad with bloodlust, half crazed with his day’s victories; he snatched up his spear, muttering, “Pallas Athene aids me,” and rushed her.

Her eyes widened, fear flashing in them, and she began to rise from the ground. The barbaric spear flashed out and ripped her arm; blood flowed and she dropped the sword, screaming.

Diomed heard a voice call urgently, “Go back! Go back immediately to—” And the Goddess Aphrodite disappeared.

He whirled to face the newcomer and saw another God confronting him. The extent of his action was beginning to be realized but Diomed had gone too far to turn back now; he charged his new opponent, shield held high and sword at the ready. The God lifted his hand, sending forth a bolt of power that brought the Greek to his knees.

Diomed’s eyes were filled with sudden fear and despair. “Phoebus Apollo,” he quavered.

The God was scornful. “Beware, Diomed,” he said. “Do not think to fight with Gods.”

The Greek cowered before him.

Later, in the invisible space ship, hovering five hundred feet above the battle, Cajun faced her, his features impassive and his tone of voice faultless. He was boiling with rage beneath his courtesy.

“I will present your complaint to the Captain, but I would like to remind the Lady Jan that she has been warned repeatedly against appearing in the battle clothed as she is and without greater defenses. It was fortunate I was able to appear as soon as I did. If you’d been injured seriously, I hesitate to say what repercussions would’ve taken place on the home planet.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Injured seriously! Just what do you mean by that? Do you realize this horrible wound will probably take half the night to heal? You saw that barbarian was insane, why didn’t you come to my assistance sooner? You haven’t heard the last of this, you inefficient nincompoop. When we return home I’ll have you stripped of your rank!”

Cajun’s face remained blank. “Yes, your ladyship,” he said. “And, before I go, may I deliver a message from the Lady Marid? She said they await you in the salon.”

She drew a cape about her and without speaking further, swept from the compartment.

A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Parasites,” he muttered savagely, and turned to go to his own quarters where he could change from this ridiculous glittering armor, into his own uniform as ship’s officer.

The Lady Jan stormed into the salon where the others had gathered to try the new concoction the steward had named ambrosia. Some of them still wore their costumes, others had changed into the more comfortable dress of their own world.

Her eyes blazed at them. “Who in the name of Makred told that Greek he would conquer anyone he fought today, even a God? The damned barbarian nearly killed me!”

The Lord Daren laughed gently. “It was Marid; she was playing the Goddess Athene. The sport was rather poor with that new bow of hers so she thought she’d inflame one of the Greeks and see just how berserk he would become if he thought he had the protection of a Goddess.”

“He could have killed me!”

“Oh, come, now, Jan, you were barely scratched. Besides, Marid didn’t know this Greek, Diomed, was going to run into you, or that he’d have the fantastic nerve to attack whom he thought one of his Gods.”

She took up a goblet of the new drink, but she wasn’t placated, “I’m of the opinion this stop shouldn’t be made; it’s too dangerous. I’m going to insist Captain Foren blast the city and obliterate both sides of this barbaric conflict.”

The Lady Marid, who was still dressed in her Pallas Athene armor, broke in. “Don’t be so upset, Jan. We’re sorry that brute hurt your arm, but what can you expect on this type of cruise? They guaranteed us thrills, didn’t they? The very dangers we face are what we’re paying so highly for.” She laughed lightly. “Besides, that costume you wear as Aphrodite. Really! I don’t know why you didn’t get worse than a scratch on the arm. These Greeks aren’t exactly civilized—nor exactly cold-blooded, either.”

The other’s face went red and she snatched another of the drinks from a tray. “Nevertheless, I’m going to complain. This war is absolutely too perilous to be part of the tour. And after all the trouble we went to in order to learn their fantastic languages and customs. Why I was under that damned Psycho-Study Impressor for nearly two hours!”

Captain Foren had entered behind her. “I agree with you Lady Jan, and can only apologize. I should’ve realized last week when Lord General Baris, fighting in the battle as the God Ares on the Trojan side, was speared by this same Greek. The company would never hear the end of it, if, on one of these cruises, a passenger was seriously injured.”

The Lord General Baris shrugged. “It was wonderful sport. I killed a score of the beggars that day. I don’t know how that one found a chink in my armor. I’ll take measures against my costumer when we return home.” He grinned wryly. “I doubt if the Emperor would appreciate having one of his generals killed in a primitive war, while on leave.”

“I think I’ll have to take a crack at this Diomed, myself,” Lord Doren said.

The Lady Marid laughed. “If I know you, you’ll do it with a blaster from a hundred feet in the air above him.”

Doren smiled in return. “Of course. Do you think. I’d make a fool of myself by going down into their battle as Baris does? It’s insane. This hand to hand conflict is much too risky.”

The Captain changed the subject. “I’m sure you’ll all appreciate our next stop,” he said. “I plan to visit an even more astounding planet than this. We are to fight the swamp dragons of Venus.”

“From what distance, Captain?” Lord Doren drawled.

The Captain smiled. “Their poisonous breath reaches half a mile, so it will be necessary to use long distance weapons.”

Lord General Baris scowled. “It sounds too easy. I like to fight humanoids; there’s more thrill in killing when your opponent looks like yourself, as do these earthlings.”

The Lady Jan was nearing the nasty stage of intoxication. “It wouldn’t be so thrilling if you weren’t provided with defenses making it practically impossible to be hurt. You wouldn’t enter these battles if you weren’t sure you’d come out safely.”

“I wouldn’t deny it. Sport is sport; but I have no desire to be killed at it. At any rate, I’m opposed to killing these swamp dragons. It sounds as though it would be boring, and, Makred knows, we had enough boredom butchering those dwarfs at our last stop.”

The Lady Marid backed him. She also thought Venus unattractive. If the Captain was of the opinion this war was too dangerous, wasn’t there some other conflict on this planet?

The Captain told them he’d consult with his officers and let them know in the morning.

One thing was sure, Captain Foren thought, as he made his way toward the officer’s mess. He’d have to get this group of thrill-crazy wastrels away from Troy. If one of them was hurt badly, he’d undoubtedly lose his lucrative position on the swank cruise ship.

The idea was his own, really, and a good one. In a luxury mad world the cry was for new titillations, new pleasures, new planets on which to play, new drugs to bring ever wilder dreams, new foods, new drinks, new loves; but, most of all, new thrills.

Yes, the idea of taking cruise ships of wealthy thrill seekers to the more backward planets and letting them join in primitive wars, had been his. It proved the thrill supreme. His cruises were the rage of half a dozen planets, and the company had increased his pay several times in the past few years. But he knew it could crumple like a house of cards, given one serious injury to a wealthy guest. The theory of the cruise was to let them kill without endangering themselves.

The stop at Troy, had, as a rule, been a successful one. The Greeks and their opponents were both highly superstitious and readily accepted the presence of the aliens from space as Gods taking place in the battle. Usually, they were too terrified to take measures against the strangers in their gleaming armor, but today had been the second occasion in which a tourist had been injured, in spite of scientific, protective armor.

His officers were awaiting him in the mess hall. They too had been conscious of the wounds suffered by the thrill seeking guests, and hadn’t liked it. Lady Jan was the daughter of a noble strong enough to have them all imprisoned, if the whim took him.

Captain Foren growled, “Have any of you an idea? I proposed the Venus trip, but, although they admit being leary about further risks here, they prefer fighting humanoids.”

First Officer Cajun said, “Perhaps it would be better to head for the home planet, Captain.”

Captain Foren shook his head. “We can’t do that; the cruise has another week to go. If we went back now it would be obvious that something had happened and just bring matters to a head. If we can give them another week of thrills, possibly they’ll have forgotten their wounds by the time we return.”

The Chief Engineer turned to Cajun. “At what stage of development is this planet?”

“I believe it’s at H-2S. Why?”

“I was wondering at the possibility of going forward a few thousand years in time and participating in a war that dealt less in hand to hand conflict. They could have their fill of killing, with a minimum of danger—protected, of course, with suitable anti-projectile force fields.”

Cajun went over to the ship’s Predictinformer and spoke into its mouthpiece. “What will be the military development of this planet in two or three thousand years; and would it be safe to take the ship into that period?”

They awaited the answer, which came approximately one minute later. “Probability shows the inhabitants of Terra will begin utilizing explosives for propelling missiles in two thousand years. About five hundred years later they will have developed this means of warfare to its ultimate. Safety for the ship is indicated.”

Captain Foren mused, “That sounds practical. We could participate in some war in which our passengers could use such weapons as snipers, from a distance.” Another thought struck him. “Besides, the Lord General Baris is quite intrigued with the possibilities involved in fighting the humanoids here. He had spoken of transporting large numbers of his troops to Terra and using the planet for a training ground in actual combat. Undoubtedly, the earthlings of the future would make better victims for his soldiers than these more primitive types. It might be well to look at the future of this planet.”

The First Engineer said, “Such a step would wipe out the development of civilization on the planet.”

Captain Foren shrugged impatiently. He ordered Cajun to make immediate preparations to take the ship forward twenty-five hundred years, and gave instructions to a sub-officer to locate a suitable conflict as soon as they arrived, so that the guests could begin their participation when they awoke in the morning.

The ship arrived effortlessly in its new location in time, but when the sub-officer returned from his patrol, First Officer Cajun took him to the Captain’s quarters himself.

He saluted. “I don’t believe this is quite it, Captain.”

“Why not? Weren’t there any wars in progress?”

Cajun said, “It wasn’t that. There were several. They don’t seem to have reached the development for which we were looking. For instance, in the region in which we’ve landed, the first stage of a conflict between two nations have begun. The countries are called Mexico and the United States and they’re fighting over the northwestern possessions of the former, although, as always, both sides claim they are involved for idealistic reasons. However, the fighting still consists, to an extent, of hand to hand conflict. The soldiers carry explosive propelled missile weapons, but they’re usually slow in loading and single shot in operation. Swords are carried at the ends of these weapons so that after it is fired the soldier may dash forward and engage his enemy personally.”

The Captain was glum. “That’s as bad as before, and I can’t risk our passengers in any more hand to hand combat.”

“Sir, these humanoids on Terra seem slow in progressing but I have an idea if we move forward another hundred years they will be using automatic weapons, and hand to hand combat will be antiquated. The calendar system they use calls this the year 1845. I suggest we travel forward to 1945.”

Captain Foren made a snap decision. “All right, we’ll go forward a century. As soon as we arrive, have a patrol go out again.”

When Captain Foren awoke in the morning, the hot desert sun was already well into the sky. The invisible space ship had stationed itself a hundred feet off the ground in an area in which there were no signs of habitation and few of the works of man. He strode leisurely to the control room and returned the greetings of the morning watch.

“Any word from the patrol as yet?” he asked.

First Officer Cajun was worried. “No, sir, and he should’ve been back long before this.”

“I trust nothing has happened to him. Has he reported at all?”

“Only once, several hours ago. Evidently there is a globewide war raging.” Cajun ran his tongue over thin lips. “Our passengers should have excellent sport. In fact, Captain, if you can spare me, I would like to participate myself.”

Captain Foren looked at him and laughed. “You, also? I’m afraid this must be a racial characteristic, this love of imposing death. I must confess, on my first trips, I too liked to join in the sport.” He turned and glanced out an observation port. “What is that steel tower down there on the desert?”

“We couldn’t decide, Captain, unless it’s some structure for conducting tests of some sort or other. The surprising thing about it is that our instruments detect radioactivity. …”

The Captain interrupted sharply, “Has anyone checked the ship’s Predictinformer on whether or not this era is completely safe?”

Cajun said, “I assumed that you had, sir.” He stepped to the instrument and spoke into its mouthpiece. “What is the military development of this planet? Is the ship safe?”

The Predictinformer began its report. “ ‘In the past thirty-five years military science on Terra has developed tremendously under the impetus of two worldwide conflicts. At present the dominant power on this continent is experimenting with nuclear fission. …’ ”

Sudden fear came into the eyes of the captain of the thrill ship. “That radioactive steel tower! Blast off,” he shrieked, “Blast off!”

The Predictinformer went on dispassionately, “… and is about to test an atomic bomb against which this ship’s defenses would be. …”

It got no further.

Not in the Rules

I got the bad news as soon as we landed on Mars. The minute I got off the spacer, the little yellow Martie was standing there with a yellow envelope. He said, “Gladiator Jak Demsi?”

I admitted it and he handed me the envelope. Made me feel kind of good, as though I was somebody important, which I’m not. I’d been taking plenty of guff on the trip. Not only from Suzi, but from Alger Wilde, who was also along. Yeah, between them they’d ridden me as well as the liner, all the way from Terra.

I handed the Martie a kopek and put the yellow envelope in my pocket, as though I was used to getting spacegrams.

I said to Suzi, “Let’s hit the chow line.” I don’t usually talk that fancy, but I was trying to impress her with my knowledge of antique phrases. Both Suzi and Alger Wilde are students of ancient times and love to lard their conversation with such stuff.

Suzi said, “Sure, Jak. Come on Alger,” which wasn’t what I’d meant at all. And then she said, “Aren’t you going to open that spacegram, Jak? It might be important.”

“Probably is,” I said carelessly. “But it can wait, whatever it is.”

And it did. I opened it after we’d ordered at the spaceport restaurant. I should have waited until after I’d eaten, but I couldn’t know that until I read:

Spacer transporting gladiator Earth–Mars for Interplanetary Games lost. You have been appointed emergency replacement representing Earth. Good luck.

I gulped. If you don’t know all about the Interplanetary Meet which is held every decade, then maybe you don’t know why I gulped. If you do, you do. It’s tough enough being a gladiator on Terra but at least you have a chance of coming out alive; you’ve even got a chance of winning. But at the Interplanetary Meet! Who ever heard of a Terran coming out in one piece? Not to speak of winning.

Sure, I’m a gladiator, but I’ve always been strictly a second rater; in fact, some of the sports writers call me a third rater. Anyway, I’ve always worked in the smaller meets where the gladiators, even when they lose, usually get off with their lives. In the small town stuff, they don’t kill expensive gladiators, if they can help it.

My head was doing double flips trying to figure out some way of making myself scarce, when Suzi said, “What is it, Jak?”

Like a fool, I handed the message to her and she and Alger read it together.

Suzi’s eyes widened and she started to say something, worriedly, but Alger stuck out his hand and said, “Congratulations, Jak. I knew you had great things in you. Now they’ll be coming out. … Er. … That is, just think, one of the three gladiators representing Terra. What an honor!”

I was sunk.

The Interplanetary Meet was just three days off and I had three days to live.

I wouldn’t have been on Mars in the first place if it hadn’t been for an argument I had with Suzi back on Terra just before she was scheduled to blast off for Mars to cover the Interplanetary Games. Suzi is a sports reporter, see. She covers the meets from the woman’s angle. What she really wanted to do was write books about primitive culture; and what I wanted her to do was spend the rest of her life being my wife. Neither of us seemed to have much of a chance of making good.

As usual, Suzi was giving me kert. If you’ll pardon my language. “I don’t know why I bother with you, Jak,” she said scowling. “You’ve had the book a week and don’t know a thing about it. You’re nothing but a drip, a square.”

“Listen,” I said resentfully. “Don’t use those mythological terms on me. Last time it took me all day to look them up. Besides, I try don’t I? My manager’s going crazy because I’ve been spending so much time reading instead of training for my next meet.”

You get the idea. The girl was just gone on the ancients. She wouldn’t have tolerated me for an hour if I hadn’t been willing to let her cram her nonsense into me at every opportunity.

“How long do you expect to be on Mars?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Perhaps three months, Terra time.”

“Three months!”

She patted my hand. “Don’t worry about me, Jak. I’m taking along an extensive microfilm library dealing with the literature and drama of Twentieth Century North America. As you undoubtedly know, it reached its height in the comic books and cartoon movies of the time. Besides,” she went on, “Alger Wilde will be there, covering the meet from the society angle. He’ll be good company. Alger is quite an authority on prehistoric literature.”

“And also on today’s women,” I yelped. “You didn’t tell me that makron was going to be on Mars with you.”

She held her hands over her ears and said indignantly, “Please, Jak, save your vulgarities for the games.”

“I’m going with you,” I grated. “I don’t trust that guy with my woman.”

She flared up at that. “Your woman! Let me tell you, Jak Demsi, when you begin to display the cultural achievements of Alger Wilde, you may begin, just begin, mind you, to think of me as your woman, as you so crudely put it. Meanwhile, I have no desire to link myself with an ignoramus. Besides, I’m beginning to believe that you have no interest in cultural pursuits. You’ve merely deceived me these past months with pretended. …”

“Aw, Suzi,” I began.

I had trouble enough raising credits for my fare, but more still getting last minute reservations on the crowded excursion liner to Mars. It took some string pulling on my manager’s part to get me the tickets. Nobody who can raise the credits would dream of missing the Interplanetary Meet, and every spacer to Mars was packed.

Suzi was surprised when I stepped up to her table in the spacer’s lounge. At least, her eyebrows raised. The little minx was as pretty as a Venusian rose-orchid. She was sitting with Alger Wilde, a makron from the word glorm.

“Hi,” I said, using a prehistoric formal salutation in hopes of pleasing her with my knowledge of olden times.

“By Jove,” Alger Wilde exclaimed. “If it isn’t Jak Demsi.” He added, smirking, “Pardon the expression. Jove was an ancient deity. I sometimes slip and use such terms.”

Did he think I was stupid? Hadn’t I been reading up on all that stuff for months? I sat down casually in an empty acceleration chair.

“Of course,” I said. “An Egyptian God; also known as Jupiter by their neighbors, the Aztecs, and by the name of Zeus, by the Chinese.”

And that’s the way it was all the way to Mars. I tried to hang on and stick it out with them, but I came in a bad third. I was fighting out of my class. In fact, just before we arrived on Mars, Suzi made it plain that she thought I might as well give up my attempts to become cultured. She said I just didn’t assimilate the stuff, that it didn’t come off on me. I could read whole libraries of the ancient classics and recall none of the significance of what I’d read. In short, I wasn’t doing so good with Suzi.

Well, three days after getting the telegram, I met the other two gladiators from Terra in our dressing room at the arena. They weren’t much happier about the meet than I was.

It’s one of the occupational hazards of our trade. If you get too good, you’ll probably be chosen as Terra representative to the Interplanetary Meet and your chances of surviving are almost nil. Of course, the pay is high and your survivors get a big chunk of credits but it’s a chilly prospect at best.

The other two were pretty well armored and had chosen spears as weapons, but I left off all armor and took a short sword. I planned on moving fast and the less weight I carried the better.

When the various preliminaries were over and the crowd shouting for the main event, we trotted out to the field, joined the gladiators from the other planets and paraded toward the stand at which the judges and diplomats were seated. There was a mob of these, each with his assistants and secretaries. You could bet that little that happened would miss them. After all, on this meet hung the destinies of planets.

Thousands of spectators from every planet and every principal satellite in the system stared down from their arena seats. I knew that the majority of them had expended a fortune in transport from their homes and for tickets to the meet. But why not! It was the equivalent of having a box seat at a full scale war of the type held in legendary times. Certainly, the ultimate effect was as great or greater. Each spectator knew that upon the manner in which their planet’s representatives fought this day, their fates depended.

The planets have long since abolished war, but they put great store by these Interplanetary Meets. The theory is: Why fight a war and kill off billions of population when you can figure out before the fighting ever takes place who’d win? It’s the natural ultimate development of diplomacy. Everything is settled by the diplomats without resorting to armed conflict.

Suppose, for instance, that Mars decided to assume domination of Terra. She notes, as do the Terran diplomats, that, at the Interplanetary Meet, the Martian gladiators wiped up on those from Terra. Obviously, if the same fighting would take place on a gigantic scale the same thing would result. So why fight the war? Terra simply accepts the domination. Of course, it’s all done in very diplomatic language so that nobody loses face, but the results are the same.

As a matter of fact, I’m surprised that one of the other planets hasn’t already taken over Terra. The most recent addition to the League of Solar System Planets, we’re by far the weakest. Probably our strongest defense has been the fact that several different League members have had their eyes upon us and each has counteracted the other. It’s certain that Venus, Saturn, and even Pluto would like to assimilate Terra. Actually, any one of them could do it.

As is customary, a beauty from the planet upon which the meet is being held, a Martian Princess in this case, opened the main event by throwing out the prize. It was a tremendous Venusian emerald, the largest ever discovered and the size of a man’s hand. It doesn’t really make much difference who catches the prize, except that it’s considered to be a lucky sign; the gladiator who survives the contest is the one who finally takes it.

I could see Suzi in the press box, sitting next to Alger. She seemed pale. I thought I might as well show her that some of the stuff she’d given me to read had been remembered. So just before the Princess tossed out the emerald and while the others stood about nervously and impatient, I drew my sword, flourished it, and called out, “We who are about to die, salute you!”

The Martian Princess smiled down at me. “Good fortune to you, gladiator from Terra,” she said, and deliberately threw the stone.

I’d just as well she hadn’t. The man with the prize is always the center of conflict and to have a hundred or so of the most efficient killers in the system out after you is no way to live to a ripe old age.

But I caught the emerald and the battle was on. I’d hardly got it into my belt before I heard a swish and a Mercurian Bouncer, the steel knives on his heels flashing, missed me by a fraction of an inch. Before it could jump again, a four armed Martian pierced it with a javelin. The Martian went down in his turn under a crushing blow from a Slaber.

I ran backward quickly, knowing that where there’s one Bouncer there’s another. They fight in a group of twenty or thirty.

Sometimes I wonder about that rule. Each planet is represented in the final free-for-all, the climax of the Interplanetary Meet, by weight. The Mercurians, who are about the size of Terran chickens, have thirty gladiators in the battle. The group from Calypso numbers eight, and looks like a gang of human dwarfs. Jupiter and Saturn have only one representative each because of their gigantic size. Mars has four, Terra three. The others have varying numbers.

The other two gladiators from Terra tried to cover me, but went down in the rush. The first fell victim to the heavy, ponderous and nearly weapon proof gladiator from Saturn, victor of the last Interplanetary Meet. The Terran tried to run in close, beneath the other’s guard, but was smashed with a sweeping blow that broke half the bones in his body. The crowd cheered for the nice try, and the Saturnian brandished his half ton club again and peered about near-sightedly for another enemy.

My second companion in arms had an arm severed near the shoulder by a fast moving Plutonian Gadaboot. He fell to the ground bleeding profusely. At least, he’d probably survive and get back to Terra.

I had seconds to live. As I said, we Terrans don’t show up so well in the games. The gladiators from any planet can take us. Oh, I don’t mean that a Terran couldn’t defeat one Mercurian Bouncer, or one Calypso Dwoorf, but face our three Terrans with the whole Calypso, or the whole Mercurian delegation and we don’t last very long.

I had seconds to live. They were all centering toward me, taking side swipes at one another if the opportunity allowed, but heading for me.

Ordinarily, before a contest, my manager fills me full of last minute advice and instructions; but I’d hardly seen him in the past few months. I’d been too busy reading Suzi’s books about the ancients. I was on my own.

I didn’t have time to figure it out. It just happened automatically. I remembered something and before I had time to place the memory, I had taken the emerald from my belt, held it up momentarily so they could all see it, and yelled, “For the greatest fighter of all,” and threw it into the midst of them.

Later, I recalled a guy in one of Suzi’s books having done something similar, except I believe he yelled, “For the fairest,” and threw a golden apple. At any rate, the result seemed to be about the same. That guy started the Trojan War.

It gave me a breathing spell. They piled on one another until I thought that the meet would end then and there. A Venusian spiderman bent to pick up the emerald and had five of his limbs and his head cut off before he could straighten again. A Gadaboot grabbed it and tried to dart out of the crush but ran into the darting rapier of a Uranian. Rising dust swirled up and enveloped the rest.

In moments, the fight had settled down into a series of individual combats all over the field.

I could see the slow moving Slaber from Jupiter stalking about weaponless, seizing and crushing all with whom he came in contact. I could see the Mercurian Bouncers dying like flies, but killing their share and more of opponents with the razor sharp spurs attached to their feet. They would fling themselves high into the air and come down from above, heels slashing death.

I had no more time to observe. Five remaining Calypso Dwoorfs disengaged themselves from a fight centering about two Venusians, spied me, and dashed in my direction.

Ordinarily, the Calypso gladiators would be even weaker than we Terrans, but they have the advantage of a universal mind. That is, they think together. Each knows what every other Dwoorf is thinking; it goes beyond mere mental telepathy. They act as though they were a single individual. Talk about team work! You get three or four of them about you, all working in complete and perfect harmony, and you’re sunk.

I groaned for my manager’s advice again and resigned myself. When they got within fifteen feet of me they opened their mouths and cried in unison. “Prepare to die, Terran makron.”

For a second that did it. I raised my short sword and started toward them. They spread out like a fan to encircle me. Once again I didn’t consciously figure it out. The idea came spontaneously with my acting upon it. I just suddenly turned on my heel and started to run. They followed me like a pack.

I’d gotten halfway across the arena and could hear the thousands in the arena seats booing me like thunder, before it came back to me what I’d read. It was a trick some gladiator from Rome or Greece had pulled once. I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, they were still coming, but now they were strung out in a line. The fastest runner of them all was only a short distance behind me, the slowest, quite a ways back. The other three were in between at varying distances.

This next is going to sound like it took some time but actually it was all over in split seconds.

I stopped, whirled, and said tightly to the one pressing me, “Who’s calling who a makron now?” At the same time my sword parried his and ripped into his unprotected belly. He died, his eyes wide with surprise and pain.

I hardly had time to disengage my sword before the second Dwoorf was upon me. I dropped to one knee and slashed upward cutting completely through his right arm. The arm fell to the ground, his hand still clutching the three pronged javelin with which he’d expected to spit me. He screamed in agony and stumbled away hopelessly trying to staunch the flow of blood with his left hand.

The third came running up, both hands high over his head, ready to bring down his battle ax. I kicked him savagely with a spiked shoe, cracking a knee and bringing him to the ground. I could have finished him then and there but didn’t have the time. The fourth, yelling like a maniac, slashed into me, his blade ripping my right arm from elbow to shoulder. He brought up his sword for another stroke.

I was short winded from the long run across the arena and from the fast action of the past few moments. I drew all my strength together and lunged desperately forward. My sword pierced his throat. He fell, writhing, taking my blade with him.

I stood up wearily to confront the fifth one. My arm was bleeding freely and I had no weapon nor time to get one.

He came shouting, raging with bloodlust and desire for revenge. His arm flew back for the javelin cast when a Plutonian Gadaboot shot out from a nearby melee and struck him from the rear. The Dwoorf collapsed, bleeding his life away in moments. The Gadaboot straightened up, shrilling its death whistle, preparatory to darting at me, but a Mercurian Bouncer, wounded and fluttering, came down from above and made a last desperate stroke. They died together.

I shook my head to clear it, and reached down to disengage my sword from the neck of the fallen Dwoorf I’d killed last. I looked about. There were no others near me.

For a moment there was a breathing spell. In the past ten minutes, two thirds of the contestants had either died or had been carried off the field incapacitated. Those of us that remained were wounded but still in the fight. As I stood there staggering, panting, aching, it occurred to me that never before had a Terran lasted so long in an Interplanetary Meet.

As though by common consent, we all gravitated toward the center of the arena. This was it. In the next few moments the contest would be over.

And so would I.

As I stumbled forward, a wounded Martian staggered to his feet and made a halfhearted stab at me. I bypassed him. He was too far gone to fight. Shortly, the judges’ assistants would get to him and take him from the field; possibly he’d have a chance to survive. I had no desire to finish him off. In fact, I envied him.

We were quiet momentarily; and so was the crowd. A hush hung over the whole arena. I noted in seconds that among the survivors were two of the four limbed Martians, half a dozen Bouncers, the gigantic Slaber from Jupiter, one of the Calypso Dwoorfs almost helpless now that his fellows were all gone, three or four Gadaboots, and a Venusian spiderman.

I wondered vaguely if my namesake, that gladiator of the fabulous days of the legendary United States, the original Jak Demsi, had ever found himself in a spot like this. I suppose that he had, possibly worse. Suzi, who gave me the name, saying that it would be good for publicity, claimed he was one of the greatest of all. I shook my head again, trying to clear it, my loss of blood making me faint.

And then it broke. The dust swirled high as we rushed together. I felt a crushing blow, tried to deal one back, was struck again by the ponderous gladiator from Jupiter and was thrown heavily to the ground.

I tried to push myself to my knees, my already bloody sword still in hand, still at the ready. I was in the center of the crush. This was the end. Suzi flashed before my mind.

Well, there was a tremendous controversy afterward and I was brought before the judges and the diplomats more like a prisoner than the victor of the Interplanetary Meet. I was laden down with bandages and weak from loss of blood but they didn’t look in the least-sympathetic, not even the judge and diplomats from Terra.

They got right to the point.

The Martian judge, as senior, since the meet was taking place on his planet, acted as spokesman. He was excited and indignant and would wave three or four of his arms at a time to emphasize his point. I thought vaguely of one of the olden time windmills I’d seen pictured in one of Suzi’s books.

“Gladiator Jak Demsi,” he rapped, “Our tendency is to rule your conduct in the affray so unbecoming that not only will the prize not be awarded you, as last standing contestant on the field, but we are considering. …”

I wasn’t having any. After coming through that scrap, I wasn’t ever figuring on taking a back seat again. I interrupted him, growling, “I’m willing to stand behind anything I did in the arena on the grounds that it was compatible with Terran custom and therefore allowable on the part of a Terran gladiator.”

The Venusian judge sneered, without bothering to say anything; the Plutonian tittered his disbelief; the Terran judge blinked at me, shocked by my words.

I was getting mad. “In the press box, you’ll find two reporters from Terra. Bring them here. They are both students of Terran history and ancient custom and will support what I say.”

Suzi and Alger Wilde were located and brought before us after a brief debate between the judges. By their appearance, it was obvious that the press box boys had similar ideas to those of the judges. Suzi showed signs of concern about my wounds but she also half indicated that I was a leper. There was no half about it as far as Alger Wilde was concerned.

“You might have died like a man, Demsi,” he said sharply, “instead of bringing disgrace to Terra.”

The Martian judge said coldly, “This gladiator claims that his astounding actions in the arena were excusable on the grounds that everything he did is in accord with Terran customs and, consequently, permissible by the rules of the Interplanetary Meet.”

Suzi’s eyes widened. Alger Wilde began to protest.

I didn’t give them a chance to deny anything. “Just what are the complaints?” I asked the judge.

“As though they weren’t obvious,” he snorted, beginning to wave his arms again. “First, your trick of throwing the emerald, the Princess was so kind to honor you with, into the midst of the others and thus diverting the strife from yourself. This was an act of—”

“Strategy,” I interrupted him. “The custom is to be found in Terran history. An old maxim of the Sioux Indians was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ That’s what I did. I got my opponents to fighting among themselves so that I could defeat them easier.”

“The Romans, not the Sioux Indians,” Alger muttered.

“Then you mean that this was actually a maxim of Terra?” the judge said in surprise. I could see the other judges and diplomats, including those from earth, were as shocked as the Martian.

“Well, yes,” Suzi told him. “Of course, they usually didn’t use quite the method that Jak did. …”

The judge snorted again. “Be that as it may, I don’t see how Demsi can justify his fleeing before the Calypso gladiators like a common coward. Meet rules are that each gladiator must fight any who oppose him.”

Suzi shot a worried look at me.

“Right in accord with Terran history and custom,” I said decisively. “For one thing, it was always a basic rule with a Terran general to choose the battlefield where the fight was to be joined. It was considered a major advantage. Another maxim was, ‘Git there fustest, with the mostest.’ I merely ran to the ground that best suited me, and then, when the Calypso Dwoorfs were no longer the mostest, I fought them one at a time.”

The judge raised his eyes questioningly at Alger and was rewarded with a gruding nod.

The Martian shook his head as though in disbelief but went on. “Those two matters you have explained, surprisingly, but acceptably. But to this last charge there can be no possible honorable background in Terran custom. I refer to the fact that in the final conflict you fell as though dead and remained on the ground until the other contestants had all but eliminated each other. When only the badly wounded Slaber and the half dead Venusian gladiator remained, you got up again and, reentering the fight, finished off these opponents.”

The judge threw up his four hand in horror. “Certainly, you can’t claim justification for that! Not on any grounds, not by and. …”

I stood up as straight and defiantly as my heavy bandages would allow. “Listen,” I growled. “It’s one of the oldest traditions of Terra. It’s called playing possum.”

For a full minute silence fell on the whole group. Then I could hear one diplomat whisper questioningly to another. “Playing possum? What does that mean?”

And then with one of the most outstanding bits of pure statesmanship the system has even seen, Suzi took up the cue and spoke in collaboration.

“He’s quite right. Playing possum is in full accord with Terran custom. Why,” she added innocently, “earth always acts in that manner. She pretends she’s weak, helpless, someone to be ignored; and, then, suddenly, and without warning, she shows her full strength.”

The various judges and diplomats shot glances at each other from the sides of their eyes, especially those from Venus, Saturn, and Pluto.

The Terran judge was no makron. When somebody yelled glorm he knew enough to grab the gaboot and run with it. He looked at Suzi and I severely. “Say no more, either of you. You are not here to reveal Terran secrets.”

The other diplomats eyed each other again, nervously.

The Martian judge, more genial now, said, “Undoubtedly, a mistake has been made due to our lack of knowledge of Terran customs and practices. The emerald shall be awarded the Terran gladiator, Jak Demsi, as soon as it is found. It is undoubtedly still in the arena in the possession of some slain contestant.”

I took it from my belt. “As a matter of fact, I have it here. I picked it up while playing possum under that heap of corpses. It’s an old custom handed down from a Terran city named Brooklyn. ‘When you see something that ain’t nailed down, latch onto it.’ ”

Alger Wilde left the room hurriedly, followed hand in hand by Suzi and I. It was time for the diplomats to begin their wrangling, the wrangling that would settle the fate of worlds. As we passed through the door, I could see the anticipation on the faces of the diplomats from Terra.

From what I heard later, they must have given the other diplomats kert. If you’ll pardon my language.

The Martians and the Coys

Maw Coy climbed the fence down at the end of the south pasture and started up the side of the creek, carrying her bundle over her shoulder and puffing slightly at her exertion.

She forded the creek there at the place where Hank’s old coon dog Jigger was killed by the boar three years ago come next hunting season. Jumping from rock to rock across the creek made her puff even harder; Maw Coy wasn’t as young as she once was.

On the other side she rested a minute to light up her pipe and to look carefully about before heading up the draw. She didn’t really expect to see any Martins around here, but you never knew. Besides, there might’ve been a revenue agent. They were getting mighty thick and mighty uppity these days. You’d think the government’d have more to do than bother honest folks trying to make an honest living.

The pipe lit, Maw swung the bundle back over her shoulder and started up the draw. Paw and the boys, she reckoned were probably hungry as a passel of hound dogs by now. She’d have to hurry.

When she entered the far side of the clearing, she couldn’t see any signs of them so she yelled, “You Paw! You Hank and Zeke!” Maw Coy liked to give the men folks warning before she came up on the still. Hank, in particular, was mighty quick on the trigger sometimes.

But there wasn’t any answer. She trudged across the clearing to where the still was hidden in a cluster of pines. Nobody was there but Lem.

She let the bundle down and glowered at him. “Lem, you no-account, why didn’t you answer me when I hollered?”

He grinned at her vacuously, not bothering to get up from where he sat whittling, his back to an old oak. “Huh?” he said. A thin trickle of brown ran down from the side of his mouth and through the stubble on his chin.

“I said, how come you didn’t answer when I hollered?”

He said, “You called Paw and Hank and Zeke, you didn’t holler for me. What you got there, Maw, huh?” His watery eyes were fixed on the bundle.

Maw Coy sighed deeply and sat down on a tree stump. “Now what you think I got there, Lem? I been a bringing your vittles to you every day since Paw and you boys started up this new still. Where’s Paw and Zeke and Hank?”

Lem scratched himself with the stick he’d been whittling on. “They went off scoutin’ around for the revenooers or maybe the Martins.” He let his mouth fall open and peered wistfully into the woods. He added, “I wish I could shoot me a Martin, Maw. I wish I could. I sure wish I could shoot me a Martin.”

The idea excited him. He brought his hulking body to its feet and went over to pick up an ancient shotgun from where it leaned against a mash barrel.

Maw Coy was taking corn pone, some cold fried salt pork, and a quart of black-strap molasses from her bundle and arranging it on the top of an empty keg. “You mind yourself with that gun now, Lem. Mind how you shot up your foot that time.”

Lem didn’t hear her, he was stroking the stock of the shotgun absently. “I could do it easy,” he muttered. “I could shoot me a Martin easy. I sure could Maw. I’d show Hank and Zeke, I would.”

“You forget about the Martins, son,” Maw Coy said softly. “Yore my simple son—there’s at least one in every family, mostly more—and it ain’t fittin’ that you get into fights. You got a strong back, strongest in the hills, but yore too simple, Lem.”

“I ain’t as simple as Jim Martin, Maw,” Lem protested.

“Son, they don’t come no more simple than you,” his mother told him gently. “And mind that gun. You know how you bent the barrel of Zeke’s Winchester back double that time, absentminded like.”

He stroked the gun stock, patted it, half in anger, half in protest. His lower lip hung down in a pout. “You stop talkin’ thataway, Maw,” he growled, “or I’ll larrup you one.”

Maw Coy didn’t answer. She reckoned she’d better set off into the woods and see if she could locate the rest of the men folks, so they could eat.

Lem said under his breath, “I could shoot me a Martin real easy, I could.”

To the Most High, the Glorious, the Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient, the Lord of the Seven, the Leader of the Chosen, Neo Geek XXXVIII:

In regard to: Testing of special weapons designed to eliminate present population of the third planet with the eventual view of colonizing.

From: Seegeel Wan, Commander of Space-cruiser 12B44.

Your Omnipotence:

Upon the receipt of your orders, we proceeded to the planet in question (known to its inhabitants as Earth, or Terra) first touching at its satellite (Luna) in order to pick up the observation group which has been studying the potential foe for several decals.

Commander of the observation group, Baren Darl, has enjoyed the reputation of being our most outstanding authority on Earthlings. It has been principally through his recommendations that the secret, supplementary weapons, worked upon for the past “decal,” were devised. Baren Darl has successfully deciphered the principal language of Earth and though listening to their radio emanations has compiled a formidable work on his findings. But of his abilities, more later.

It might be added here that Baren Darl and all his group were more than ready to proceed to Earth and begin the slaughter of its inhabitants. It seems that these investigators have for decals listened most carefully to every radio emanation possible to pick up. This has evidently led them to the edge of complete frenzy—especially those who have been assigned the morning programs, sometimes known as “soap operas” by the Earthlings.

Baren Darl inspected the newly created weapons with considerable care and proclaimed them excellent for our purposes. In particular he was impressed with the I.Q. Depressor; the deadly poison, nark; and the lepbonic plague carrying fleas. He was convinced that these secret weapons would give our forces that advantage we seek before launching our all out attack upon Earth.

Acting on Darl’s suggestions, we avoided the more heavily populated areas of Earth and landed our Space-cruiser in a mountainous area of the planet known as Kentucky, a subdivision of the United States of America, one of the more advanced Earth nations.

Our plans did not work out exactly as expected.

Keeping well in mind the need for secrecy, we made every attempt to land the Space-cruiser without detection. We settled in a small valley near a stream and immediately sent out scouts to determine if there was any sign that our craft had been sighted in descent.

Evidently, the population of the vicinity was so small that our plans were successful. Our patrols reported only one small group of Earthlings in the immediate area.

Deciding to test the new weapons on this gathering, we disembarked a force of a dozen warriors, all disguised as Earthlings and with myself as commander and Baren Darl as our technical advisor.

“We must keep our senses alert for Sam Spade, Superman and the Lone Ranger,” Baren Darl said nervously, peering around among the strange exotic trees and other vegetation that grows on Earth.

I was somewhat surprised at his tone and obvious unease.

“Who?” I asked. “What?”

“Three Terran warriors of amazing ability and viciousness,” he told me. “I have been gathering reports of their activities from the radio for some time. They seem to have clairvoyant minds; one or the other of them almost invariably appears on the scene of violence.”

I said impatiently, “Without doubt, our weapons would mean the end of these warriors.”

I did not share his belief that any Earthling warriors might be our equals or superiors, but to remain on the cautious side, I immediately ordered that the Elect-no be switched on. This weapon, one of the several designed for the Earth campaign, as your Omnipotence is undoubtedly aware, is so constructed as to prevent the use of any internal combustion engine within a dozen miles of the Elect-no. In this case, no aircraft, nor landcraft, utilizing internal combustion, could enter our zone.

Baren Darl seemed somewhat relieved at this precaution, but his attitude to a certain extent began to affect the rest of us. To prepare for any eventuality, I had the Fission-Suppressor activated. This, of course, automatically made it impossible for nuclear fission to take place within a hundred miles of our ship.

That measure pleased Baren Darl exceedingly in view of the fact that the Earth nations seemed to be spending practically all of their military appropriations on their so-called A-Bombs and H-Bombs. According to the radio emanations our Luna base had picked up, the Earthlings were interested in little else in a military way, except possibly bacteriological weapons, and, of course, we were prepared to deal them a strong blow along that line with our lepbonic plague spreading fleas.

At any rate, knowing that we had suppressed the use of their major weapon, the fission bomb, and had prevented transportation from entering the vicinity, we proceeded toward the clearing where the Earthlings had gathered, determined to test the I.Q. Depressor, nark, and the lepbonic plague fleas, for it was upon the success of these weapons that our Earth campaign depended.

We proceeded with care toward the clearing on the edge of which our scouts had detected the Earthlings, and carefully approached from behind the one specimen we saw there. Evidently, the others had gone off.

Baren Darl, the only member of our little group who was familiar with the language, acted as spokesman, and we concealed for the moment at least, the purpose of our “visit.” The following conversation was recorded by Baren Darl himself and later translated as literally as possible into our own superior language.

Earthling: “Huh? What’s that?”

Baren Darl: “Have no fear.”

Earthling: “Revenooers! Paw! Hank!”

(The meaning of the word revenooers was completely unknown to Baren Darl but from the Earthling’s tone of voice it is to be assumed that the term is a derogatory one.)

Baren Darl: “We are not revenooers. We are friends.”

Earthling: “Huh?”

Baren Darl: “We are not revenooers. We are friends.”

Earthling (suspiciously): “Well, you can’t have no free corn, if that’s what you’re looking for. Can’t buy none neither. Paw won’t sell no raw corn. Says corn ain’t fitten to drink unless it’s been aged a week.”

(This conversation seemed to puzzle Baren Darl and I was beginning to suspect already that his knowledge of the Earthlings was somewhat less than he had led me to believe.)

Baren Darl: “Where are the others?”

Earthling: “Huh?”

(This continual inability on the Earthling’s part to understand the questions put to him by Baren Darl also caused me to wonder whether or not the decals spent on Luna in observing Earth were quite as fruitful as they might have been.)

Baren Darl: “Where are the others?”

Earthling: “Oh, you mean Maw and Paw and Hank and Zeke. They’re off looking for Martins.”

(Your Omnipotence is of course aware that in the language of the Earthlings our glorious planet is known as Mars, and we as Martians, or, evidently, as this Earthling pronounced it, Martins.)

This information was, as you can well imagine, startling, since we had supposed that our landing had been made in the most complete secrecy. What means they had utilized to discover us is unknown.

Baren Darl: “Ahhhhh. And, er … what made them suspect there were Martians in the vicinity?”

Earthling: “Huh?”

Baren Darl: “What made Maw and Paw and Hank and Zeke think there were Martians around?”

Earthling: “Oh.”

Baren Darl: “What made them think there were Martians about?”

Earthling: “Paw says he can smell him a Martin from most twenty miles away. Paw’s got a regular feelin’ for Martins, like. Paw’d rather shoot him a Martin than eat fried chicken. I wish I could shoot me a Martin, I wish. Yup, I sure wish I could shoot me a Martin. I wish—”

(This sixth sense of some of the Earthlings had been unsuspected by Baren Darl in spite of his decals of investigation. Evidently, the Earthlings have an unusual ability to detect the presence of alien life forms. Also surprising was the fact that the Earthlings were evidently aware of our plans to conquer their planet and were already worked up to a pitch of patriotism which made them extremely anxious to destroy us.)

Baren Darl turned to me and explained that there were four more of the Earthlings in the woods searching for us and that undoubtedly they would soon return. He suggested that we immediately try some of our weapons upon this specimen.

The plan seemed feasible enough so I ordered one of the warriors to find a suitable liquid in which to place a portion of the poison nark.

Ultimate plans, as you are aware, had been to drop, by spacecraft, small containers of nark in the reservoirs, rivers and lakes of the Earthlings. One drop was designated to be, as your Omnipotence knows, sufficient to poison a reservoir capable of supplying the water needs of a hundred thousand Earthlings.

Although water was not available, the warrior was soon able to find what was obviously a container for some type of beverage. It was nearly full of a colorless fluid.

The following conversation then took place between Baren Darl and the Earthling:

Baren Darl: “What is this?”

Earthling: “Huh? Oh, that’s white mule. Yup, sure is.”

Baren Darl (puzzled): “I thought a mule was a four legged animal of burden particularly noted for kicking.”

Earthling (vaguely): “Paw’s white mule’s got lots of kick in it. Yup.”

Upon finding it was a beverage, as we had suspected, a small quantity of nark was quickly inserted.

Baren Darl: “Try a drink.”

Earthling: “What say?”

Baren Darl: “Have a drink?”

Earthling: “Uhhhhh. Maybe I will, but don’t tell Paw. Paw says I’m simple enough without no white mule.”

(Here he took a long draught without seeming effect, although we were expecting him to fall dead at our feet. We stood there staring at him, unbelievingly.)

Earthling: “That tasted mighty good. Got more of a kick than usual. Yup, sure did. Tasted like maybe somebody put in a wallop of turpentine.”

He seemed perfectly at ease. I turned to Baren Darl and snapped, “The type of poison you recommended seems less than effective.”

Baren Darl was obviously shocked. “It is inconceivable,” he said. “Possibly the fluid in which we dissolved the nark acted as an antidote.”

I turned my back on him angrily. “I begin to wonder about the effect of your other weapons!”

He waved to one of the warriors who had been burdened with the I.Q. Depressor. “We’ll try this immediately,” he said, anxiety in his tone.

While the machine was being readied, Baren Darl explained its workings to me in some detail. Meanwhile, the Earthling continued to sip at the jug which supposedly contained sufficient poison to eliminate an average large Terran city.

“As you know,” Baren Darl told me, “the mind, whether of Earthlings or Martian type, is capable of being either stimulated or depressed. For hundreds of decals our race has possessed chemicals capable of such depression or stimulation. However, to my knowledge, this device is the only one yet developed which can suppress the intelligence quotient of anyone within an area of many square miles.

“The plan for utilizing it is a simple but effective one. When we confront a body of Earthling soldiery, our men need only to turn on the I.Q. Depressor to turn the enemy into brainless idiots. Their defeat would then obviously be quite simple.”

“Very well,” I told him stiffly, “let us proceed to try it on this Earthling.”

The device seemed quite elementary in construction. Baren Darl activated it by the simple flicking of a switch. We ourselves, of course, were immune to its workings since it was tuned only to the Earth type brain.

“It is now in operation?” I asked Baren Darl.

“Definitely. Watch the Earthling.”

“I am watching.”

The supposed top authority on Earth and Earthlings approached the specimen and eyed him carefully. The following conversation ensued:

Baren Darl: “How do you feel?”

Earthling: “Huh?”

(Baren Darl seemed pleased at this response, and, indeed, it would seem that the subject was on the verge of idiocy.)

Baren Darl: “How do you feel?”

Earthling: “I guess I feel fine. Yup, yup. Feel fine.—How’d you feel, stranger?”

Baren Darl (scowling): “Does your head feel somewhat different? Does your mind seem more sluggish?”

Earthling: “Huh?”

Baren Darl: “Does your thinking seem weaker?”

Earthling: “Nope. Can’t say it does, stranger. Fact is, it’d be purdy hard to make my thinking much weaker. Yup, sure would.”

Baren Darl stared at him for a long period, unbelievingly. Obviously, the I.Q. Depressor had been worthless as far as undermining the earthling’s intelligence is concerned.

Finally this alleged authority on Earthlings and upon Earth affairs flashed a look of despair at me, and at the others of us who stood around him.

“The fleas,” he blurted finally, “the lepbonic plague fleas. This weapon alone might well destroy the whole population of earth. Bring the fleas.”

I said coldly, “We shall see, Baren Darl.” Then to one of the warriors, “Bring the fleas that carry this so deadly—so Baren Darl tells us—lepbonic plague.”

The Earthling was ignoring us now and had gone back to taking an occasional drink from his jug. Our warrior approached carefully from behind him and dropped a half dozen of the supposedly deadly insects upon the Earthling’s back.

We then stood back and watched cautiously. According to Baren Darl, the fast spreading disease should take effect almost immediately.

The Earthling sat there, the I.Q. Depressor still tuned on but obviously unable to lower his intelligence an iota. He continued to sip from the jug of white mule, which had enough nark in it to kill thousands. Occasionally, he scratched himself.

“I guess I’ll take me a nap,” he said thickly, his words slurred. He scratched himself once again, yawned deeply, and slumped against the tree, obviously in sleep.

Baren Darl looked at me triumphantly. “The reaction is somewhat different than we’d expected, but obviously the fleas have given him lepbonic plague. This weapon at least is as successful as we had—”

I peered down at the Earthling suspiciously. His clothes were disarrayed and torn. I pointed at a speck on his uncouthly hairy chest.

“And what is that?” I snapped at Baren Darl.

He bent down to see what I indicated.

“It seems to be one of the fleas,” he told me.

“Then what is it doing on its back with its feet up in the air?”

“It seems indisposed.”

“It seems dead you numbskull!” I roared at him. “After biting this Earthling your fleas have died!”

In a high rage, I strode up and down the clearing trying to coordinate my thoughts to the point where I could make an intelligent decision on this situation. Obviously, a crisis was at hand. Using these weapons devised by our scientists, after detailed instructions on their construction by Baren Darl and his group of efficient “experts,” would obviously be suicidal. They were completely worthless.

I came to a snap conclusion. Our plan must be to reveal ourselves to the Earthlings as Martians and pretend to come bearing them only good will and desire for peace and commerce. A few months on their planet, closely—but unbeknown to them—studying their life form, should give us ample opportunity to plan more effective weapons against them.

This then was my decision.

I snapped to Baren Darl. “Awaken the Earthman; tell him that we are Martians and that we seek peace with the inhabitants of Earth.”

There was some difficulty in the awakening, but finally Baren Darl succeeded. The Earthling shook his head groggily and scowled at my interpreter. The following conversation ensued:

Baren Darl: “Awaken. We have a message of great importance for you.”

Earthling: “Huh?”

Baren Darl: “We have a message for you.”

Earthling (Rolling over on his other side): “Oh.”

Baren Darl said impressively: “In the name of the Most High, the Glorious, the Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and Omniscient, the Lord of the Seven, the Leader of the Chosen, Neo Geek XXXVIII; we bring you greetings from the Martians.”

Earthling: “Huh?”

Baren Darl: “We Martians offer you the friendship and the good will of a people that—”

Earthling: “Martins! Are you’uns Martins?”

Baren Darl: “That is correct. We Martians come with the greetings and—”

At this point, your Omnipotence, my account must of necessity be somewhat vague, for even after we had made good our escape back to the space-cruiser, bearing our more serious casualties with us, we were unable to agree among ourselves on just what had happened.

Baren Darl, who is now under arrest and in the darkest recess of the Space-cruiser 12B44 laden down with chains, is of the opinion that the Earthling was none other than either Superman or the Lone Ranger in disguise. He contends that both of these earthling warriors are prone to adopt disguises in this manner, revealing themselves only at the last moment to their enemies.

Suffice to say, however, that we were all successful in making good our retreat to the space-cruiser although all of our equipment and supplies were destroyed in the melee. Upon regaining the spacecraft we blasted off hurriedly, to return to our own sacred planet.

I recommend, your Omnipotence, that the plans to subjugate the planet Earth be indefinitely postponed in view of the fact that our specially designed weapons proved worthless and in particular view of the abilities of Earthling warriors.

I further recommend that the unspeakable Baren Darl, who obviously frittered away his time during the decals spent on Luna supposedly studying the Earthlings, be sent to the Nairebis Salt Mines.

Yours, Obediently,

Seegeel Wan

Commander Space-cruiser 12B44.

Maw and Paw Coy and Hank and Zeke came back into the clearing wearily. The boys had done a lot of tramping and were hungry for their vittles, and Maw was feeling bodacious about their taking off to go hunting for Martins. Paw had told her to shut up two or three times but it hadn’t been much use.

Lem was sitting on an upended mash barrel loading his old shotgun and grinning vacuously. He seemed unaware of the fact that the stock of the gun was a splintered ruin.

“Guess what, Paw,” he yelled. “I got me a Martin. I got me a whole passel of Martins, Paw, I sure did. Yup, I—”

Paw Coy grunted, and started poking around in the vittles Maw had brought up from the cabin.

The boys leaned their rifles up against the oak and each picked up a handy fruit jar of corn squeezins.

Hank said nastily, “Sure you got a whole passel of Martins, Lem. In yore sleep, you got a passel of Martins.”

Lem said belligerently, “Don’t you go a talkin’ thataway Hank, or I’ll … I’ll throw you up into the tree the way I did that time you hit me with the ax. I did so get me some Martins. I was a sittin’ here when a whole passel come outen the woods. Didn’t know they was Martins at first. Then—”

Maw Coy handed him a chunk of corn pone. “Now you be quiet, Lem, and eat your vittles. Sure you got yourself a Martin, Lem.”

A thin trickle of brown ran down from the side of Lem’s mouth. He spit on the ground before him, with an air of happy belligerence.

“I sure did, Maw. I sure got me a passel of Martins. Yup, I sure did.”

Mercy Flight

The phone rang and Ed Kerry wasn’t doing anything so he picked it up and said, “Yeah?”

He said yeah a few more times, his eyes widening infinitesimally each time, and finally wound up with, “Okay, Bunny.”

He hung up and said, “That was Bunny, up in Oneonta. She says a guy is coming in from Luna with a kid for emergency hospitalization, radiation burns or something.”

Jake was sitting back in his swivel chair, his feet on the desk and his hands clasped behind his head. He growled, “That’s the trouble with women in this game; they’ve got no story sense. She phones all the way from Oneonta on a story that’s been run a hundred times. Every time somebody gets good and sick up on Luna they bring ’em to Earth for treatment.” He shrugged. “Okay, so it’s a kid this time. Do up about a stick of it, Kerry, and we’ll put it on page three if you can work it into a tearjerker.”

Ed Kerry said, “You didn’t let me finish, Jake. Something’s wrong with this guy’s radio.”

Somebody on the rewrite desk said, “Something wrong with his radio? He’s gotta have his radio or he can’t come in.”

Jake took his feet from the desk and sat up. “What’d’ ya mean, something’s wrong with his radio?”

“Bunny said he’s calling for his landing instructions but they can’t get anything back to him. He’s just reached Brennschluss and he’s in free fall now; it’ll be four days before he gets here. That’s the way they work it—he’s supposed to get in touch with the spaceport he wants to land at, and. …”

“I know how they work it,” Jake growled. “See if there’s anything on the last newswire from Luna about him.”

Phil Mooney flicked his set on again and repeated carefully, “Calling Oneonta Spaceport. Phil Mooney Outbound Luna, Calling Oneonta Spaceport. Come in Oneonta.”

Calling Phil Mooney. Calling Phil Mooney. Oneonta Spaceport Calling Phil Mooney. Come in Mooney.

He cast a quick glance back at the child, strapped carefully in the metal bunk. She was unconscious now, possibly as a result of the acceleration in leaving Luna. He’d had to reach a speed of approximately two miles per second to escape Earth’s satellite, and that had called for more G’s acceleration than Lillian’s sick body could bear. His lips thinned back over his teeth; it would be even worse when they came in for landing and he had to brake against Earth’s gravity.

He switched on the set again to give it another try. Instructions were to contact the spaceport at which you planned to land as soon as possible. There was plenty of time, of course, but the sooner the better.

He said, “Calling Oneonta Spaceport. This is Phil Mooney, Luna, Calling Oneonta. Come in Oneonta.”

Calling Phil Mooney. Calling Phil Mooney. Oneonta Spaceport Calling Phil Mooney. Come in Mooney.

Ed Kerry came back to the city room with a sheet of yellow paper that he’d torn off the radiotype.

He said, “Here it is, Jake. This kid—her name is Lillian Marshall—is the only survivor of an explosion at that nuclear-fission laboratory they had on the dark side. Her old man and her mother were working under this Professor Deems; both of them killed.”

His eyes went on scanning the story. “Evidently this Phil Mooney runs an unscheduled spaceline. Anyway, he blasted off to rush the kid to an earth hospital.”

Jake took the dispatch and scowled at it. “Kerry,” he growled, “see what we got on this Phil Mooney in the morgue.” He rubbed the end of his nose thoughtfully. “They’ll probably pick him up all right when he gets nearer.”

Somebody on rewrite said, “It doesn’t make any difference how far he is; they should be able to reach him even if he was halfway to Mars. Something’s wrong with his set.”

He decided to try one of the other spaceports. As a matter of fact, it made very little difference at which of them he landed. There’d be suitable hospital facilities within reasonable distance of any spaceport. He was three days out now, and, according to spaceways custom, had to let them know he was coming in. It wasn’t like landing an airplane—they want plenty of time to prepare for a spacecraft’s arrival.

He said, “Calling New Albuquerque Spaceport. Calling New Albuquerque Spaceport. Phil Mooney, Luna, Calling New Albuquerque. Please come in New Albuquerque.”

Calling Phil Mooney. Calling Phil Mooney. New Albuquerque Spaceport Calling Phil Mooney. We are receiving you perfectly. Come in Mooney.

He tried once more.

“Calling New Albuquerque Spaceport. Calling New Albuquerque Spaceport. Please come in New Albuquerque. Emergency. Repeat Emergency. Please come in New Albuquerque.”

Calling Phil Mooney. Calling Phil Mooney. We are receiving you perfectly, Mooney. Come in Mooney.

Kitty Kildare took up her notes and prepared to make her way back to her own tiny office.

“I’ve got it, Jake,” she said breathlessly. Kitty was always breathless over any story carrying more pathos than a basketball score. “My column tomorrow’ll have them melting. Actually, I mean.”

Jake shuddered inwardly after she left.

Ed Kerry came up and drooped on the edge of the desk.

“Here’s the dope on this Phil Mooney, Jake,” he said. “He’s about thirty. Was in the last war and saw action when we had our space-forces storming New Petrograd. Did some fighting around the satellites, too. Piloted a one seater, got a couple of medals, but never really made big news.”

“Got any pix of him?”

Ed Kelly shook his head. “Like I said, he never really made the big news. Just one more of these young fellas that saw plenty of action and when the war was over was too keyed up to settle down to everyday life.”

Jake picked up the thin folder and riffled through the few clippings there. “What’s he doing now?” he growled.

“Evidently when the war ended he got one of these surplus freighters and converted it. Name of his company is Mooney Space Service; sounds impressive, but he’s the only one in it. Probably going broke; most of those guys are—can’t make the grade against the competition of Terra-Luna Spaceways and the other big boys with the scheduled flights.”

The city editor scratched the end of his nose speculatively. “Maybe we ought to have Jim do up an editorial on these unscheduled spacelines. Something along the line of how heroic some of these guys are; that sort of stuff. Do up the idea that they’re always ready, fair weather or foul, to make an emergency trip. …”

Kerry said, “There isn’t any weather, fair or foul, in space.”

Jake scowled at him. “You know what I mean, wise guy. Meanwhile, get some statements from some authorities.”

Ed Kerry said painfully, “What statements from what authorities?”

The city editor glared at him. “So help me, Ed. I’m going to stick you on obituaries. Any statements from any authorities. You know damn well what I mean. Get some doctor to beef about the fact there aren’t suitable hospitalization facilities on Luna. Get some president of one of these unscheduled spacelines to sound off about what a hero Mooney is and how much good these unscheduled spacelines are—and that reminds me of something—”

He yelled to a tall lanky reporter at the far end of the city room: “Hey, Ted. Get Bunny on the line up in Oneonta and tell her I said to look up some of these unscheduled spacelines guys and see if she can get a photograph of Phil Mooney from them. Maybe he’s got some buddies in Oneonta.”

There was one thing about being in free fall. You had lots of time to sit and think. Too much time, perhaps.

You had the time to think it all over. And over and over again.

There was the war which had torn you from the routine into which life had settled, from friends and relations and sweethearts, and thrown you into a one man space-fighter in which you sometimes stayed for weeks on end without communication with anyone, friend or foe.

There had probably been no equivalent situation in the history of past warfare to the one man space-scouts. The nearest thing to them might have been the flyers of 1914, in the first World War—but, of course, they were up there alone only for hours at a time, not weeks.

“You develop self-reliance, men,” was the way the colonel had put it. “You develop self-reliance, or you’re sunk.

“You’re in space by yourself, alone. You can’t use your radio or they can locate you. If something happens, some emergency, or some contact with the enemy, you’re on your own. You have to figure it out; there’s no superior officer to do your thinking; you’re the whole works.”

And the colonel had been right, of course. It was a matter of using your own wits, your own ability. Fighting in a space-scout was the work of an individual, not of a team. Perhaps it would be different someday in the future when machines and instruments had been developed further; but now it was an individualistic game, each man for himself.

And probably it was because of this training that he, Phil Mooney, was unable to get back into the crowd after the war had ended. He was an individualist who rebelled against working not only for but even with someone else.

He should have known better. Industry had reached beyond the point where one man goes out by himself and makes a fortune—or even a living, he thought wryly. It’s the day of the big concerns, of tremendous trusts and cartels, who didn’t even have to bother with the task of squeezing out tiny competitors like himself. He was out before he started.

The Mooney Space Service. He snorted in self deprecation.

Oh, well.

He pulled himself erect and made his way to the bunk. The kid was awake. He grinned down at her and said, “How’s it going, Lillian?”

Her eyes seemed glazed, even worse than they’d been yesterday, but she tried to smile back at him. “All right,” she whispered, her child’s voice so low he could hardly make it out. “Where’s mother. …”

Phil Mooney held a finger to his lips. “Maybe you’d better not talk too much, Lillian. Your mother and father are … they’re all right. The thing now is to get you to the hospital and make you well again. Understand?”

Kitty Kildare was saying indignantly, “What’s this about no insurance on Luna?”

“Use your head, Kitty,” Jake grunted. “What company’d be crazy enough to insure anybody working on Luna? By the way, that was a good piece on Mooney and the Marshall kid.”

“Did you read it?” Kitty Kildare was pleased.

He shuddered. “No, but the letters have been pouring in. Maybe you ought to do another. Take it from some other angle this time.”

“That’s why I wanted to know about the insurance. Do you realize that this child, this poor, sick, defenseless child, is penniless? Actually, I mean. Bad enough that her parents have left her an orphan, but, Jake, that child is penniless.”

“All right, all right,” he told her, “work on that for tomorrow’s column.”

Ed came up with another radiotype report, just as Kitty was leaving. “This guy Mooney’s calling all the other spaceports now, Jake. Evidently he’s getting desperate; he’s only two days out. And by the way, here’s a new angle. This guy Harry Marshall, the kid’s father, was a wartime buddy of Phil Mooney; they went to cadet school or something together.”

Jake growled thoughtfully, “He hasn’t got a chance, but it makes a tremendous story. Get somebody to rig up a set in the radiotype room, Ed, and we’ll see if we can listen in.”

There was a desperate, tense, taut inflection in his voice now.

“Calling New Albuquerque Spaceport or Oneonta Spaceport. Phil Mooney calling any Earth spaceport. Phil Mooney Calling Oneonta, New Albuquerque, Casablanca, Mukden, any Earth spaceport. Emergency. Emergency. Request landing instructions. Have Lillian Marshall, eight years old, needing immediate medical care, aboard. Please come in any Earth Spaceport.”

Calling Phil Mooney. New Albuquerque calling Phil Mooney. Ambulance waiting on grounds. Receiving you perfectly. Come in. …

Calling Phil Mooney. Casablanca Spaceport Calling Phil. …

Calling Phil Mooney. Mukden Spaceport Calling. …

Calling Phil Mooney. Oneonta Spaceport Calling Phil Mooney. …

Ed Kerry looked up over the set in the radiotype room at the city editor. He wet his lips carefully and said, “He’s only got one day now. They’ve got to pick him up in hours or he’s sunk.”

Jake said, “I never did understand how that works. Why can’t he land himself? I know he can’t, but why?”

The reporter shrugged. “I don’t quite get it either, but evidently the whole operation is pretty delicate stuff. They bring him down with radar, somehow or other. It’s not like landing an airplane. Landing a spacecraft is done from the ground up—not from the spacecraft down. The pilot has comparatively little to do about it. At least, that’s the way it is with nine ships out of ten.”

The set began to blare again, and they both listened tensely. It was Phil Mooney.

“Listen, you guys down there. If you’re sitting around playing craps or something, I’m going to have a few necks to break when I get down.”

The two newspapermen stared at each other over the set. Ed Kerry ran his tongue over his lips again.

The strained tone had gone from the voice of the space-pilot now and had been replaced by one of hopelessness. He said, “I don’t know who I think I’m kidding. I know darn well that something’s wrong with my receiver and I can’t find out what it is. Maybe my sender is off too, for all I know. All I can pick up is some girl singing something about white roses. White roses, yet! I want landing instructions and I get white roses.”

Ed Kerry jerked his head up and snapped, “Holy jumping hell, he’s able to pick some commercial station!”

Jake came to his feet, stuck his neck out of the door and yelled at the top of his voice, “Phil Mooney is receiving some commercial station! Some dame singing something about white roses! Check every station in the city! Find out if any of them are broadcasting some dame singing about white roses.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program for an emergency situation. Undoubtedly, you have heard on your newscasts and have read in your papers of the tragic case of Lillian Marshall, child victim of an atomic explosion on Luna which orphaned her and necessitated her immediate flight to an Earth hospital.

For the past three days the spacecraft carrying her, piloted by war hero Phillip Mooney, has been having trouble with its radio. Due to circumstances surrounding landing of spacecraft, the two have been given up as lost in spite of the fact that almost hourly it has been possible to receive messages from Mooney.

It is now revealed that he is able to pick up this program on the Interplanetary Broadcasting System network. We are not sure which of the nearly two thousand stations of our system he is receiving, but we will now attempt to reach Phillip Mooney with relayed messages from the Oneonta Spaceport where expert medical care is awaiting little Lillian Marshall.

Come in Oneonta.

Calling Phil Mooney. Calling Phil Mooney. Come in, Phil. This is Oneonta Spaceport, relaying through the Interplanetary Broadcasting System. Come in, Phil.

“Phil Mooney, calling Oneonta. I’m getting you, Oneonta. Come in, Oneonta. Over.”

Okay, Phil. Now this is it. We should have had you two hours ago, but we’ll make out all right. Your velocity is a little too high. Give it six more units on your Kingston valves. Get that? Over.

“Got it. Six more units on the Kingstons. Over.”

All right now. Switch on your remote control, Phil. We’ll take it from here. Stand by the coordinators. …

It was night, but a blaze of lights illuminated the Oneonta Spaceport. Hundreds of landcars stood on the parking lots, thousands of persons crowded the wire fence which kept all but port personnel from the field itself.

The old space-freighter sank easily to the apron and in seconds the rocket flames died. A surge of humanity ebbed over the field toward the craft.

Phil Mooney opened the pilot-compartment’s hatch and stuck his head out, blinking in surprise at the mob beneath him.

“I don’t know what this is all about,” he began, “but I’ve got a sick kid aboard. There’s supposed to be an ambulance. …”

Police wedged through the crowd, convoying a white-haired, white-jacketed man. He called up to the space-pilot, “We won’t need an ambulance, Mr. Mooney. I’ve already made arrangements for facilities here at the airport for immediate treatment.”

Phil Mooney made his way to the ground and scowled, still obviously startled by the swelling crowd.

“Who in kert are you?” he asked.

The other motioned for two assistants to enter the ship and bring out the child. “I’m Doctor Kern,” he said. “I’ll see. …”

“Doctor Adrian Kern, the radiation expert?” The pilot frowned worriedly. “See here, doctor, the Marshalls were friends of mine, and I’ve taken over the care of little Lillian, but I’m—well, I’m afraid I couldn’t afford to pay you … I mean. …”

The famous doctor smiled at him. “I’ve been retained by the Interplanetary Golden Heart, Phil. You needn’t worry about my fee. Besides,” and he smiled easily, “I’m not going to accept any fee for this case. You see, I was listening to Marsha Malloy singing ‘Love of White Roses’ when your call came through. I believe it was the most poignant experience I have ever been through.”

A girl next to the doctor gushed, “I’m Bunny Davis, Mr. Mooney. The managing editor of our newspaper chain has authorized me to buy your story for five thousand. If you’ll just—”

Phil Mooney blinked. “I—I—”

A heavyset man in a business suit grasped his hand and shook it with fervor, while flashbulbs went off blindingly. “Phil,” he said huskily, as though moved by deep emotion, “as president of the board of directors of Terra-Luna Spaceways, I wish to take this opportunity to offer you a full—”

“Hey! Give us a smile, Phil,” a man on top of a television truck yelled. …

He was headed back for Luna the next day.

They’d been indignant, of course. There was Hollywood, and the television networks, and that Terra-Luna Spaceways guy who wanted to get in on all the publicity by offering him a vice-presidency. And the newspaper editors, and the magazine editors, and all the rest of them.

Approximately a billion persons had been tuned in to the Interplanetary network when the emergency landing instructions had been broadcast to him through that system. A billion persons had sat on the edge of their chairs, tensely, as his ship had been brought in.

He and little Lillian had received more publicity in the past twenty-four hours than anyone since Lindbergh.

And the child would be all right now. Before he’d left, checks totaling over a quarter of a million had come in for her. Donations from all over the Earth and from Mars and Venus and even some from the Jupiter satellites.

And offers of adoption. Thousands of them, from rich and poor—even including Marsha Malloy, the video star who’d been singing that song, “Love of White Roses.”

Yes, Lillian would be all right. He wouldn’t have been able to pay for the medical care she’d needed; but now she had the most capable experts on Earth at her disposal.

They had been indignant when he blasted off again for Luna. They’d wanted to make a hero of him. This leaving on his part they interpreted as modesty—which, come to think of it, would make him all the more of a hero.

Phil Mooney slipped a hand down to his set and flicked it on. He dialed over a dozen different stations. The news programs were all full of him and of Lillian. You’d think, to hear them, that he was the noblest, the most daring, the greatest man since Alexander the Great.

He grinned wryly. One of the reasons he’d been so anxious to leave was to get away before somebody thought to check his set to see what was wrong with it. Why, if anybody had found that it was actually in perfect shape, they’d probably have lynched him.

Yeah. The colonel had been right. In the space-forces you learned to be self-reliant. When you got in a bad spot, you figured it out yourself. You’re on your own; it’s you against everything and everybody. Anything goes.

His grin broadened. Maybe he wasn’t a hero—the way they were all painting him; but at least Lillian was all right now, and no longer penniless the way her parents’ death had left her.

—And he wasn’t doing so badly himself.

Halftripper

This section of New Sante Fe was off my beaten track. I’ve been on Mars a long time and am more than usually familiar with the various centers where we Terrans do our congregating. However, it’d been years since I’d come through here.

I was sitting in an obscure tavern, called, with commendable restraint, simply Sam’s Bar, lapping up Martian brandy and facing the prospect of returning to the spaceport in a few hours with no particular enthusiasm.

I only half-noticed the old man who got up on the stool next to me. Sam came over and asked him what he’d have.

The oldster carefully counted out some coins on the bar and said, “Wine, Sam; a glass of Martian wine.”

“You know I don’t want your money, Joseph,” Sam told him.

The old man answered reproachfully, “The wine would taste that much the less, my friend, if I had not earned it by the sweat of my. …”

“Okay,” Sam sighed. He poured the wine and rang up the money and went off to wait on someone else.

A halftripper sidled up to me. “How about a drink, spaceman?” he whined. “I’m a graduate of the academy myself, class of ’72.” He must have noted my United Space Lines uniform.

“Sorry,” I said gruffly, keeping my back to him. Any spaceman can tell you that if you talk to a halftripper for long you’ll soon be showing symptoms of space cafard yourself. The underlying terror in him; the mind shattering fear of space; the way he stares at you, thinking that you can go home, while he is afraid to risk the trip. There are few of them that can hide their disease.

“I need a shot bad,” he whispered urgently. He probably did, too. Few halftrippers are able to secure jobs on the planets of their exile. Most of them become beachcombers of space. Of course, there are some exceptions, especially if they have money and connections.

I shuddered. “Beat it,” I grated, hating myself and him.

The fear of space cafard must be somewhat similar to that of seasickness every new sailor had back in ancient days when man sailed the oceans of Terra. He never knew until he made his first voyage if he was going to be susceptible; and, if he turned out to be, it meant the sea wasn’t for him.

Of course, space cafard goes tragically further. A new man usually succumbs his first few hours in space, if he is going to get it at all. He probably makes it to the next planet, sometimes not; sometimes he goes incurably mad, right off the bat. But even if he does make it, wild horses could never get him on another rocketship. He becomes a halftripper, marooned on an alien world. Usually, although I have known of several exceptions, if you don’t get it on your first trip, it seldom bothers you; you’re immune for the rest of your life.

He repeated, “How about it, spaceman?”

Sam began to approach threateningly. He couldn’t afford to have halftrippers hang out in his place. For one thing, the shipping lines would soon declare him out of bounds for their crews. You just can’t let good men come in contact with obvious victims of space cafard.

The old-timer Sam had called Joseph was distressed. “You know not what you say,” he told me gently.

I managed a sneer. “Am I supposed to buy a drink for every spacebum that comes along?”

The halftripper’s eyes lit up and he came closer to the old man. “How about it, pop? Could you loan me the price of a nip of woji?”

Joseph’s face was compassionate. “I am sorry, brother, I myself have nothing, but I commend you to the generosity of the tavern keeper.”

I snorted at that. I could imagine how much generosity the space leper would get from the bartender.

That’s where the surprise came. Sam sighed. “Okay, halftripper, what’ll it be?”

The spacebum ordered a double woji, got it down quickly, as though he was afraid Sam might change his mind, and then beat it to find a place to have his dreams when the full force of the also-narcotic drink hit him.

I finished my brandy, ordered another, and grinned wryly at the old-timer. “You give me kert for telling him to beat it, but you give Sam the high sign to let him have woji with which to rot out his brains. I’d think I was being the kinder of the two of us.”

“Each man’s salvation is within himself,” Joseph said softly. “You won’t redeem him by attempting to keep him from his weaknesses.”

“You talk like a saint but I notice you’re sitting here at a bar.”

He looked at me penetratingly, and there was vast emptiness behind his eyes. “There is little to enjoy in life,” he said softly, “but I have had ample time to investigate all of the supposed pleasures. At one time I drank greatly and kept myself in a state of continual intoxication for a period longer than you could believe. Then I went through a state when I let nothing pass my lips but water. Now I see the mistake of both extremes and can enjoy an occasional glass without feeling the need of swilling it down until intoxication dulls me.”

He had me interested now. I said, “You sound as though you’ve found the way in which to get the greatest satisfaction from everything in life but I notice that you don’t appear particularly happy.”

He was silent for a long time. Finally he sighed and answered, “Happiness is not to be found in wine, nor in food, nor in beautiful women, nor even in wealth and power. It is from within, what you have done, what you are in the eyes of your fellow man.”

He looked as though he was about to say more, but he fell silent, his eyes on something far away, although he seemed to be looking directly into my face. Then a light returned to them and he came back to our conversation. “I am sorry,” he said. “For a moment you reminded me of someone I knew long and long ago. But now I must be on my way.” He left his drink half-finished on the bar and walked wearily to the door.

Sam took his glass away and wiped the bar reflectively. “Whenever he’s here, I can’t turn down any halftrippers or other spacebums,” he complained. “I tried it once, and the old boy looked so pathetic that I damn near cried myself.”

“He seems to be quite a character,” I said, only half-interested.

“Sure,” Sam said. “Haven’t you heard about Joseph? He’s immortal.”

“What?” I said, startled.

“Immortal. You know, he lives forever.” He poured me another brandy and leaned on the bar. His other customers had left and he was obviously in the mood for talking.

“I thought everybody knew about Joseph,” he went on. “He was one of the first spacebarons, a real bigshot, controlled the whole of Calypso; him and his brother. They not only personally owned all of the satellite, but even all of the space lines that served it. When it came to law there, he was judge, jury, and owner of the courthouse and jail. Brother, that was one monopoly.”

“You mean that old man that was just here?” I said in amazement.

“That’s right. Joseph, we call him now. He probably had a longer name then. It was a long time ago.

“Anyway, to get back to the story, one day a space liner radios in that it wants to make an emergency landing on Calypso for medical assistance. They had some virulent disease on board and the passengers and crew were dying like flies.

“Well, this brother of Joseph, Micheal, or something like that his name was, advises Joseph not to give them permission to land. The captain of the liner pleads with him, but Joseph tells him to move on, he doesn’t want to take any chances. The ship tried to make the next port, I forget just what it was, but, anyway, to cut it short, they all died. That’s what started things churning in Joseph’s bailiwick; a full-scale revolution, no less.”

“You missed something there,” I said. “The people wouldn’t have been expected to be so upset. After all, no matter how mistaken, he must have thought he was acting in the interests of everyone on Calypso.”

“Yeah,” Sam pointed out, “but the thing is that among the passengers was Joseph’s own boy, the most popular person on the satellite and the apple of his old man’s eye. Nobody had known it, but the kid was playing hookey from his school on Terra and was making a cruise of the Jupiter moons.

“Joseph himself had never been very popular with his people, neither had this younger brother of his, Micheal. Too strict, see. But everybody liked the boy and were looking forward to the day when he’d take over the reins of government. When it came out what happened, they went berserk. They cornered Joseph and Micheal and a dozen or so of their close associates in the palace, which was actually more of a fortress than anything else.”

Sam wiped the bar again without need, and said reflectively, “It must’ve been quite a fight. Not that Joseph himself participated. The boy had been his whole life, and he just moved around like he was in a trance.

“They threw everything at that palace. Every weapon, every device, that had been thought up for centuries; but it didn’t crack. Finally, the fight was ended by a fleet of battle cruisers from Terra. Joseph and Micheal and the rest were removed and brought here to Mars. None of them dared to remain on Calypso.”

I poured myself another brandy from the bottle that Sam had left on the bar. “You make quite a story of it,” I told him, “but you didn’t tell me what you’d started to—about the immortality.”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s right. Well, it seems that in the atomic bombardment of the palace something happened that wound up with Joseph and his friends all immortal. Don’t ask me what; I don’t know and neither did these scientist guys when they tried to figure it out. Of course, it didn’t become known for years; not until it became obvious they weren’t dying, or even aging. They continued to appear as they had at the time of the fight. I don’t mean they couldn’t die at all; one by one they dropped away. Two were lost in space; one was blown up in an explosion on Terra; another was burned to death; but the only way they could die was through accident—or suicide. After a few hundred years they were all gone but Joseph, and, of course, he’d gone batty.”

I interrupted. “You mean he’s insane?”

The bartender grinned. “Crazy as a makron.”

I said slowly, “He seemed normal enough to me. Uh … perhaps a bit eccentric.”

Sam said, “Brother, he’s as far around the corner as you can get. You know what he thinks? He thinks that he’s wandering through space, going from planet to planet, trying to find a situation similar to that in which he sent away the person he loved most to his death. He thinks that if he ever finds that similar situation, he’ll be able to make the opposite decision from the one he made before and that will redeem him.”

I frowned. “Where does he get the money for his wandering around the planets?”

“He don’t need no money. He’s good luck. There’s not a captain in the system that would refuse free passage to old Joseph.” Sam shrugged his beefy shoulders. “And who am I to say otherwise? That’s why I give the bums free drinks when he’s around; so does every other bartender.”

Two customers had entered and Sam made his way down to them, leaving me alone.

A halftripper scurried through the door and cringed up to me. He whimpered, “How about a drink, spaceman? I. …”

I flipped him a coin. “Sure, buddy,” I said, repressing my usual nausea at the sight of him. I got down from my stool and made my way out. It was time for me to return to the spaceport and my job.

I suppose that I forgot to tell the cabbie to take me to the administration building entrance—the first time I’d made that mistake in years. I was preoccupied with thoughts of Joseph and the story Sam had told of him. The guards at the main gate must have let us through without question when they saw my United Space Lines uniform. At any rate, when I looked up, it was too late. Not only was I on the landing field and in full view of the concrete takeoff aprons, but one gigantic freighter was in the process of blasting off.

All the horror of it flowed over me with a rush. The careful training of years; the work of the doctors who had treated me; all my own self-discipline—were gone. I shook with terrified frenzy. The depths of space! The free fall! The black emptiness! The utter, uncontrollable terror!

I screamed shrilly and the cabbie turned, wide-eyed, to stare at me.

He knew the symptoms. “Space cafard! A halftripper!” he gasped, and spun the cab about to get me to a hospital. He must have realized then that my uniform didn’t necessarily mean that I worked on the liners themselves, but that I could be an office employee who only on rare occasions went near the ships.

He knew too, that the very sight of a spacecraft blasting off was enough to put me in bed for a week; and that I was uncommonly lucky to have the funds for the hospitalization. Mars was strewn with the human wrecks of halftrippers who hadn’t.

As we whirled from the yard, we passed the bent figure of Joseph walking unhurriedly toward a liner which was loading for the Venus run.

My heart cried out, even through my terror, my sickness:

Joseph, Joseph. … So you too are still alive; and still seeking forgiveness. I had thought I was the last.

But you are by far the better off of we two, Joseph. For at least you have been free to wander while I have stayed on this one hated spot since all those centuries ago when we fled from Calypso and the wrath of the people who had loved the boy so. As though we hadn’t loved him ourselves, Joseph.

Yes, you are the better off, you can seek throughout the stars for forgiveness. Then, too, your mind is forever dulled with your madness, while mine is horribly aware, always, of what we’ve been through and of the centuries ahead; it is only blurred when the space cafard comes.

Joseph, Joseph … you didn’t even recognize your brother Micheal, nor I you, when we met.

The Cosmic Bluff

To everyone in the Solar System I was a big shot, understand? Everyone but two—the two that counted most. One of the two was Suzi, and the other was me. The difference was that Suzi made no bones about telling me I was a fake; in my own mind the knowledge was there but more or less subconscious.

On this particular occasion Suzi was standing in the center of the half acre living room of my new penthouse on top the two hundred story Spacenter Building in Neuve Los Angeles. She had her hands on her hips and was glaring around at the furniture, the pictures, the statuary.

She said bitingly, “Jak, you’re a phony.”

“A what?” I complained. “Listen, Suzi, don’t start calling me those prehistoric names again.”

“A phony,” she said, “a humbug, a four flusher, a quack, a faker. …”

She’d finally got to a word I knew. “Hey,” I protested, “what’s this all about?”

She indicated the portraits of me hanging on the wall. She pointed out the statuettes. She picked up a magazine and showed me the ad on the back page—me, endorsing a boomerang. I’d got a thousand credits for that.

She went over to the bookcase and pulled out a copy of How I Became Champ and the first volume of Gladiator Technique. Both by me. That is, ghost written for me; but my name was on the cover. She indicated two or three other books I was cashing in on.

“You’re a phony, Jak,” she repeated. “You used to be a nice quiet fellow, actually more shy and retiring than was good for you. Now your head is swollen beyond bearing.”

I was getting a little hot about this. For the past few months I’d been acquiring the habit of having people look up to me, admiring me, asking for my autograph, that sort of thing.

“Look here,” I said. “Just because you’ve known me for years and just because for most of that time I’ve been chasing you, doesn’t mean that the Gladiator Champion of the Solar System is a nobody.” I finished with what I thought would be the clincher. “Let me tell you, there isn’t one girl in a billion who wouldn’t be glad to be in your shoes—engaged to Jak Dempsi.”

It was the clincher all right. She took her hands from her hips and folded them over her breasts and glared. “Oh yes there is,” she told me. “There’s exactly one girl who isn’t interested in being engaged to you Gladiator Jak Dempsi. Me,” she snapped.

I glared back at her. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “We’re going to be married the day after tomorrow.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she snapped again. “I became engaged to a nice, quiet, thoughtful, second-rate gladiator. A mistake happened and he wound up Solar System Champion—and a stuffed shirt. The engagement is off.”

“Second-rate gladiator. …” I blurted indignantly, but she was already on her way, stamping across the Venusian Chameleon rug to the door.

I was so surprised I stood there, letting her go. It took me a full minute to understand that Suzi had just run out on me. Me! The victor at the Interplanetary Meet. The sole survivor of the scores of gladiators who fought it out once every ten years to see which planet of the System would dominate interplanetary affairs.

I went over to the bookcase and wrenched out one of the many books on prehistoric times that Suzi was always insisting I read. That’s Suzi’s bug, if you didn’t know. Prehistoric times, customs, history, language, legends—all of a period that most people don’t even know ever existed, and don’t care.

The book was Glossary of Ancient Terminology. I thumbed through it and finally found my words.

“Stuffed shirt!” I yelped indignantly. “A stuffed shirt! Me?”

Ten minutes later I was in the Gladiator Room of the Spacenter Building and already had three or four slugs of woji under my belt.

“A stuffed shirt, yet. Me! Solar System Champ.” I grunted sarcastically and made with a curt flip of my hand to the bartender. He was a Venusian spiderman, who of course, make the best barkeeps in the System.

“Another woji,” I ordered.

A guy drifted down to me from the other end of the bar. “Hanging one on, Champ?” he asked. “You must be out of training.”

I looked him up and down. I’d never seen him before. However, in my position you have to be nice to the fans.

I said, “Woji doesn’t bother me. I train on it.” Suzi’s words were still burning. I added, out of the side of my mouth, “If you really got it, you got it, and if you haven’t you haven’t and all the training in the world won’t give it to you.”

I flexed my muscles. “Woji isn’t going to hurt a man like me.”

He blinked in admiration. “Guess you’re right at that, Champ,” he said. “It’s the second-raters that have to be watching everything they eat, everything they drink, everything they do.”

“Right,” I told him, condescendingly.

He climbed up on the stool next to me.

“Have a woji?” I asked him. I was glad to have his company; at least it’d keep my mind off Suzi.

“No thanks,” he said, shuddering. “But I wouldn’t mind a bloor.”

So I ordered him a bloor and another double woji for me.

My new friend said hesitantly, “Champ, what’d ’ya think of these visitors, explorers, or whatever you want to call them, from Centaurus?”

How is it that when you become a celebrity—no matter in what field—your opinions on every subject seem noteworthy to everybody else? I’d read a little about the Centaurians, seen an item or two on the viziscreen, but I didn’t know anything about them worth mentioning. I was too busy with my own rapidly developing affairs to spend much time keeping up with Solar System news.

“What about them?” I asked, noticing that my tongue was at last beginning to get a bit thick. I ordered another drink. The bartender started to protest, but then shrugged six of his shoulders and began mixing it.

“Didn’t you hear the latest?” the guy asked. “They’re looking for room for colonization and the Solar System attracts them.”

It was shortly after this that the fog rolled in, and it didn’t roll out again until the following morning when my manager gave me a dealcoholizer.

He was hopping mad. And when I say hopping mad I mean just that since Mari Nown, my manager, is a chicken-headed Mercurian Bouncer. A nationalized citizen of Terra, of course, but a Mercurian with all their characteristic excitability.

When my head cleared, he was jumping up and down in front of me and waving a sheet of newspaper he’d torn off the recorder on the viziscreen.

“Simmer down,” I told him. “My head still aches, and besides, I can’t understand what you’re yelling about.” I added nastily, “In fact, I can’t understand how anything could happen that you’d yell about. All you do is sit around and let ten percent of everything I make roll into your pockets. You’re probably the richest gladiator manager in the system and—”

He stopped hopping long enough to fix me with a beady eye. Finally he became coherent. “And that’s exactly what I want to remain!” he shrilled. “You stupid makron, what’re you trying to do, get yourself killed?” He waved the news sheet again.

I began to catch on to the fact that I must have done something the day before while under the influence of—ugh, I couldn’t even think of the word without my stomach churning.

“All right,” I said. “What is it? I don’t remember.”

He was prancing again. “You don’t remember! I’ll say you don’t remember! If you did, you’d be hiding under the bed.”

That got to me. I raised up indignantly. “Hiding under the bed? Me? I don’t have to hide from anything. I’m champ!”

“That’s pronounced chump,” he whistled nastily. He tossed me the news sheet.

The headline read: Interplanetary Champ says issues between Solar System and Centaurus should be settled in the arena.

“Did I say that?” I said interestedly. “When?”

He was almost hopping again. “To that cub reporter in the Gladiator Room, you stupid makron!”

“Don’t swear at me,” I growled. “I didn’t know he was a reporter. Besides, what’re you so excited about? Maybe it’d be a good idea.”

“Look at that next head,” he shrilled.

It read: Centaurians accept challenge of Jak Dempsi.

“Hey,” I said, “that ought to be quite a fight. Who do you think we’ll have representing the Solar System? A Slaber from Jupiter would be a good bet. He—”

There he went again. He screamed, “Of course! Of course, a Slaber would be best, but you’re the champion! A stupid idiot—but champion!”

I gaped at that, then let my eyes go down to the news account. He was right. As champion, I was scheduled to meet the Centaurian gladiator. On the outcome would depend the fate of the System.

“Well,” I said slowly. “Guess it makes sense at that. I am the best gladiator in the System.”

He closed his little bird eyes in anguish.

I added, “As a matter of fact, I could use the exercise. I haven’t had a meet in months.” I eyed him accusingly. “What kind of a manager are you? Here I am, Solar System Champ and you haven’t got me a fight since I won the Interplanetary Meet. The biggest drawing card in—”

He’d got to the point where he was so mad he wasn’t hopping any more. Just breathing real deep.

He said, “The reason you haven’t had any meets since you became champ is because I’d rather have a live champ making a good living endorsing Callipso Snak-goat Cheese—and me getting ten percent—than I would have a dead champ.”

“What’d’ya mean?” I scoffed. “Nobody gets killed in an exhibition match.” I flexed my muscles. “Besides, I can take care of myself up against any earth-side gladiator after—”

He glowered at me. “Anybody who killed the champ, by accident or otherwise, in an exhibition match, would have a nice reputation for himself. You might go into the arena with the idea of not killing your opponent, but would he?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “I can take care of myself—”

“Look,” he shrilled, “let’s go back over a little recent arena history. Less than a year ago you were a second-rater fighting at the state fairs. You went to Mars to watch the Interplanetary Meet which is held once every decade to decide interplanetary affairs. The ship carrying Terra’s gladiators was lost in space and you were tossed in as an emergency replacement.”

“Sure,” I said. “The first time a Terran ever won an Interplanetary Meet.”

He whistled disgustedly, “The first time a Terran ever lasted more than five minutes.”

“Well?” I said proudly.

He pointed a few fingers at me. “By a fluke! By using a lot of ideas you got from that quotation spouting girl friend of yours, you won by a fluke! Among other things, you played possum, as you called it, under a heap of corpses until all the others were either killed or wounded and then got up and finished them off. The fans throughout the system are still screaming about that.”

“Well, I’m still champ,” I said truculently. “I licked them once, and. …”

“Aw, shut up,” he shrilled. He whirled about and started for the door. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that, but I shrugged and rang for my breakfast. The twinge of conscience I felt inside, I manfully suppressed. I suppose that I really knew he was right, but I’d been getting a good deal of ego-boo the past months and it was hard—almost impossible, in fact—not to listen to it.

By noon the dealcoholizer had completed its work and I felt more or less normal. I suppose I should have been worrying about the bout with the Centaurian, but I wasn’t. Not particularly. I was worrying about Suzi.

Suzi worked for a chain of publications as a female sports reporter covering the gladiator meets from the woman’s angle. What she wanted to do was write books about primitive culture, and for years that had been the barrier between us. She couldn’t stand the fact that I wasn’t particularly interested in the ancients and spent half the time we had together in trying to fill me with the lore she thought the big interest in life. She’d even given me my professional name, explaining that the original Jak Dempsi was one of the outstanding gladiators in ancient times.

At any rate, I knew where she usually had her lunch and made my way there, hoping to be able to patch things up. She’d promised to marry me, after I’d won the championship for Earth, and if there was anything I could do about it, I was going to see her hold to the engagement.

The Interplanetary Viziscreen Service, the I.V.S., occupies a building in Neuve Los Angeles nearly as large as Spacenter. Almost all of the I.V.S. people eat in the Auto Café, and it was there I made my way.

Soft music was playing as I entered and looked over the three acre expanse of tables. Of course, I didn’t have to check them all—Suzi always sat in the sport section with perhaps a few hundred others.

The soft pleasant dining music cut off abruptly and the autorch started blaring out an earsplitting tune that brought back enough of my headache to make me grimace.

Several thousand heads came up and looked toward the entrance where I stood. A movement started somewhere or other and before you knew it, everybody in the place was standing on his feet and slapping his hands like crazy.

Everybody but two.

I could spot them now. Suzi and Alger Wilde were sitting at a table in the sport section. I made my way toward them.

Alger Wilde, I might as well explain here, is a makron from the word glorm, if you’ll pardon my language. He’s been trying, in his smirking way, to get in with Suzi for almost as many years as I have, and until I won the championship was doing at least as well as I. His strong point was the fact that he was even further around the corner in regard to the ancients than was Suzi. They could sit and talk for hours about the primitive comic books and other cultural matters that the average person had no interest in whatsoever.

I still didn’t know what all the clapping was about, and I still didn’t like the raucous music, but I ignored it all and made my way toward their table, rehearsing to myself what I was going to say to Suzi.

When I got nearer, the two of them, self-consciously, also came to their feet and both made with feeble applause to the extent of clapping their hands together once or twice.

I said, “What goes on here?”

We all sat down—with me congratulating myself that Suzi didn’t object—and Suzi, her eyes shining, gushed, “Oh Jak, isn’t it wonderful?”

I said, “I guess so. What?” I looked around the room in irritation. “What’s all the noise about? I can hardly hear ourselves talk.”

Alger Wilde said stiffly, “It’s the new anthem, ‘The Solar System Forever.’ Very patriotic. It was just completed by a staff of more than three hundred of the System’s outstanding musicians. I understand that it’s being played on every viziscreen on nine planets and twenty satellites. On order of the governments of all Solar System League members, the musicians rushed it through.”

“It sounds like it,” I growled. At least everybody had sat down again and were eating their lunch.

The stars were still in Suzi’s eyes. She said softly, “It’s dedicated to you, Jak.”

“Huh?”

Alger Wilde bit out, “Why’d you think everybody was clapping? You’re the hero of the System.” He added, barely audibly, “They know not what they do.”

It was beginning to dawn on me. My mind had been so full of Suzi that I’d almost forgotten about the Centaurian fight.

Suzi cast her eyes down to the table and said softly, “I’m sorry about yesterday, Jak. When I heard about your heroic challenge I realized how wrong I was.”

I scowled and said, “I didn’t exactly challenge them, just suggested that the whole thing ought to be settled in the arena. Maybe a Slaber or a Saturnian gladiator, or—”

Alger said, satisfaction oozing, “But you’re the Champ, Jak.”

And Suzi gushed, “So you’ll certainly have the honor. Oh, Jak, our engagement will have to be postponed until after the fight.”

There was a gleam in Wilde’s eye. He said, “And after the fight the marriage can take place. Only the brave deserve the fair, and, to the victor belongs the spoils, as the ancients used to say.”

I knew what he was thinking. If I was killed in the arena, he’d be back in the running for Suzi. I growled, “What the kert do you mean by that, Wilde?”

Suzi placed her hands over her ears. “Please, Jak, your language.”

Alger Wilde said indignantly, “Yes, what the hell is the idea talking that way before Suzi?”

I said disgustedly, “I’ll be a makron”—she covered her ears there, too—“if I understand how you two figure. I say kert and you’re shocked. Five seconds later Wilde says hell, an ancient word meaning practically the same thing, and it’s all right.”

Wilde said indignantly, “It’s an entirely different matter. Hell is now a scholarly word, and quite acceptable. Of course, in ancient times it wasn’t and when a cultivated person wished to use a strong expletive he said Hades, which was still a more ancient word meaning the same thing. Using the scholarly expression made it all right.”

“I give up,” I said and turned to Suzi. “Let’s get out of here. I want to talk to you.”

She said demurely, “Yes, dear.”

I grunted a goodbye to Wilde and arose. There was applause again and the autorch started blaring “The Solar System Forever” as we left.

“You could get awfully tired of music like that,” I said.

Suzi said, “Not me, Jak.”

The usually crowded street outside the I.V.S. Building was curiously empty, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was trying to figure out some way of talking Suzi into marrying me before the fight, so it was several minutes before I noticed what was out of whack.

A hundred yards before us, a hundred yards behind us, and across the street, were several scores of white uniformed officers, Solar League police, clearing the pedestrians, and even vehicular traffic from our way.

I started to say, “What goes on here any—”

But Suzi looked at me soulfully and said, “Your guard of honor, Jak. There’s been some talk that the Centaurians might try to get at you before the meet.”

To quote one of Suzi’s favorite primitive exclamations, Oh, Brother.

“Look,” I said. “I can’t talk to you in front of all this. I feel like a parade. Let’s go into a theatre, take a box and have this out.”

Suzi wasn’t disagreeing with anything today.

We entered the theatre and made our way as quietly as possible toward a soundproof box where we could be alone.

Suddenly, the three dimensional figures on the stage faded, the lights went on and the autorch started blaring that confounded tune again. Everyone in the theatre turned, spotted us and arose and began whistling and clapping.

I winced, but Suzi seemed to be in her glory. I hurried her along and we entered the enclosed box where at least we couldn’t hear them after I’d turned off the sound device.

Finally, the lights went out again. Instead of resuming the play, however, we had a flash of the face of the President of Terra. He spoke very seriously, very earnestly—and I had to sit through it after Suzi had switched on the sound again. He pointed out at some length that we all must maintain faith and calm and hold in our hearts the image of the champion of the Solar System, our own Terran Gladiator, Jak Dempsi.

The President’s face faded and was replaced with a still of mine.

The audience rose to a man, faced our box and applauded like crazy. I had a sneaking suspicion that the show wasn’t going to go on as long as Suzi and I were there.

I said, “Let’s get out of here before that autorch—” but I was too late. It started blaring “The Solar System Forever” before we reached the door. Everybody was singing too, which made it worse. I hadn’t known before that it had words.

Otherwise, it was a successful evening. Particularly after I convinced the Solar System League officers that there was no need for around a dozen of them to be stationed in my apartment. I told them that they could patrol the corridors, my roof, and the street outside to their hearts’ content, but my apartment was out. The officer in charge took another look at Suzi and evidently decided I was probably right—there are things more important than personal safety.

The rest of the evening was spent by Suzi proving that she still loved me. She offered some excellent evidence. Anyway, it satisfied me. …

I was awakened again the next morning by Mari Nown who, as he had the morning before, was waving a sheet of newspaper before my eyes. This could grow into a very unpleasant habit.

But at least he wasn’t hopping this time. In fact, he seemed quite pleased with himself.

I turned over on my other side and growled, “Go away, I was having a beautiful dream about Suzi.”

He whistled happily, “I’ve done it for you, Jak. Everything’ll be fine now.”

“That’s good,” I began sleepily, but then I sat upright in bed, with quick suspicion. “You’ve done what?” I grabbed the newspaper from his hand. It read, “Champ’s Manager reveals he has Venusian Elephantiasis.”

I stared at it and then at him. “What in kert is Venusian Elephantiasis, and where’d you get the idea I have it?”

He shrilled proudly, “I had to do a lot of research. It’s one of the few diseases left in the system that’s incurable. So rare, for one thing.”

I was still half asleep. I shook my head.

He said, “Don’t you get it? You won’t have to fight now. You can retire from the arena, as undefeated champ, and make a top notch living for the rest of your life endorsing—”

I jumped out of the bed and dashed to the telo, but even before I could reach it it glowed on and Suzi’s face, cold as a winter day on Pluto, was there.

Her eyes seemed to focus about three feet beyond my head and she said, “Jak Dempsi, you’re a phony. A cheap, petty, cowardly phony. Venusian Elephantiasis, indeed!” Her voice dripped scorn. “I never want to hear from you again.”

“Suzi, wait a minute. I can explain,” I yelled. “My manager—” But the screen had died.

I spun on him, but he wasn’t at the side of the bed where I’d seen him last. Instead he was over at the Viziscreen, the glee gone from his chicken-like face, and anxiety beginning to become evident.

He shrilled, “They can’t do this to me. We’re being robbed!”

I started for him, my fingers stretched out like claws. Here was one Mercurian Bouncer who was going to have his neck wrung, like the fowl he resembled.

Something in his attitude stopped me. I came up beside him and growled, “What now, you makron?”

He pointed at the news sheet which had recorded the item.

“Forty-three thousand Solar System scientists working on cure for Venusian Elephantiasis.”

He shrilled despairingly, “They’ll have you cured in days.”

I snorted, “Especially since I haven’t got it in the first place. Listen, what gave you the idea I wanted to get out of this fight, anyway? I’m not afraid—”

He started hopping at that. “You’re not afraid! You’re too stupid, too conceited to be afraid. I’m afraid, understand? I’m your manager; I know how good a gladiator you are, and I’m afraid. I’m afraid first that you’ll get killed and I’ll lose the best thing I’ve ever had, but even more than that I’m afraid that this Solar System isn’t going to be fit to live in after you lose this fight and the Centaurians take over.”

I growled truculently, “I can whip anybody in the Solar System and I can whip—”

He flung two of his wing-arms up in despair. “We have Slabers, we have fast moving Spidermen, we have four armed Martians; but who do we get to represent us in the most important gladiatorial fight in history? A second-rate, inflated, balloon headed—”

“Hey. …” I protested indignantly.

But he’d stopped of his own accord and clicked his heels in the Mercurian version of snapping of fingers in sudden inspiration.

“Look,” he whistled. “If they can put forty-three thousand scientists to work figuring out a way to cure a disease they think you have, why can’t they put ten times that number—a thousand times—to work on some new weapons you can use against this Centaurian makron?”

I scowled at him, not getting it. “You know better than that. In the arena the only weapons allowed are primitive ones, swords, spears, battle axes, boomerangs—”

“Yes, yes,” he shrilled excitedly, beginning to hop again. “But this is different. They—the Centaurians—don’t know that.” He clicked his heels together again. “It’s the solution! We’ll devise, in the next month, some sure thing weapon. You can’t lose!”

But I was worried more about Suzi than about the fight. I growled at him, “I don’t need anything but my short sword. All I want to be sure about is that I’m in that fight, see? If I’m not I’ll never see—”

But he was already darting for the door.

Well, within the week the scientists had “cured” me of the disease that Mari Nown had dreamed up. I was scheduled for the fight again.

But no word from Suzi. And no way of getting in touch with her. I tried everything, but Suzi just wasn’t having any of me.

We started my training, and it became more or less of an Earth-wide secret that the scientists were fixing me up with some secret weapons which would guarantee the victory. Most of the sportswriters who came to the training camp were tight lipped and disapproving about it—not quite playing the game, you know—but the governmental big shots who were trembling in their boots over the Centaurian threat, made it clear that anything was going to go to insure Solar System victory. So the reporters didn’t print the stories they might have.

Except for Suzi.

Evidently the word got back to her about the weapons I was learning to use, and she let loose at me in her column. Nothing that the Centaurians would understand, of course, but the digs were there. She made it pretty clear that Jak Dempsi was a phony and that only with the use of unsportsmanlike weapons would he consent to go into the arena at all.

She had some nasty comebacks, because sentiment was running pretty high throughout the League planets, and anybody saying a word against the Champ was apt to find himself mobbed. They were frightened, understand? The whole Solar System was frightened, and they couldn’t bear the thought that I was less than their saviour.

But Suzi kept it up. She was the only sports reporter in the system who dared point out what they were all probably feeling.

The great trouble in the training was that we hadn’t the vaguest idea of what the Centaurians looked like. Their tremendous ship, several times the size of the greatest of ours, hovered motionlessly over Krishna-Krishna, the Venusian capitol city, but thus far not one of them had been spotted. They communicated with us, blank-screened, and we had nothing to go on to decide whether or not they were humanoid, or even if they were air breathers, although the latter would seem likely if they wished to colonize the Solar System since all our life forms are based on oxygen.

The only thing was to provide me with several weapons, one each for the various different types of creature our Centaurians might be. In fact, it was only by dint of argument that I was allowed to take my short sword with me into the arena when the day finally arrived. The managers who’d had my training in hand wanted to use the space and weight the sword would take up to carry another half dozen atomic grenades.

I growled at them. “Listen, if these grenades are going to work—and how the kert they could possibly fail to work, I don’t know—one of them will do the job. I’ll take my sword along if only for a good luck charm; I’ve never been in an arena without it yet.”

And I added sarcastically, “This is going to be some fight, this is. I feel like a murderer.”

I kept the sword.

Needless to say, the amphitheatre was packed. Tens of thousands must have pauperized themselves for fare to Venus and for the highly priced seats. But whatever the cost, the stands were packed beyond belief. And, of course, throughout the system every man, woman and child, every brim, mador and loet, every—but you get the idea. Every intelligent living thing in the Solar System was glued to his viziscreen.

And above the arena floated the Centaurian ship, silent, sinister.

There were no preliminaries. That would have been too much.

Instead, when the moment of conflict arrived, I came out into the arena—staggered, might have been the better word. I had a burden of weapons that was just about all I could carry.

When the stands first saw me enter, they came to their feet and began a cheer that should have echoed and reechoed—but didn’t. It died almost before it began. When they saw my equipment, the cheer faltered, then died in shame.

They realized, those citizens from all over the Solar System, what was happening. The stakes were too high. The Solar System was trading honor for security. Instead of being armed with the traditional sword or spear, battleaxe or boomerang, I was laden with the most deadly devices our scientists could develop.

As I said, the cheers died almost before they began.

Maybe I flushed a little. I don’t know. But I tightened my jaw. At least they didn’t boo. Everyone in the stands knew the issue; however he writhed in shame there must be no indication to the Centaurians that we weren’t playing the game, that we weren’t living up to our own rules.

I stood, my back to the judge’s stand, and waited. To the left was the sports box, and I could make out Suzi, even at that distance. Her face was expressionless.

A great helicopter suddenly and deftly detached itself from the Centaurian ship and gracefully swooped down. It was beautifully handled, settling to the opposite side of the arena as gently as a butterfly.

A large door in its side opened, the Centaurian emerged, and a gasp from the stands went up; a gasp louder than the cheer that had originally greeted me.

Of all Solar System intelligent life forms, Jupiter’s Slaber is by far the largest, and, for that reason, that and its natural armor shell, Jupiter had been winning the Interplanetary Meets two out of three times for centuries.

But this hulking brute made the Slaber seem a babe in arms. It resembled somewhat a six legged turtle, roughly twice the size of a Terran elephant. It had two lobster-like claws and four other limbs.

Evidently, it had decided to end the battle as quickly as possible, because without either salute or warning it headed for me, the dust churning up behind it as it came. Its legs were short but fantastically fast. They seemed a blur of speed and before I had got over the surprise of its appearance it was halfway across the arena toward me.

A shout, almost a moan, of warning went up from the stands, and suddenly those citizens of the Solar System were no longer ashamed of the weapons I carried, no longer contemptuous of my honor.

I grasped my atomic grenade from its hook on my belt, dropped the projectile thrower to the ground to give my arm free play, and threw.

Half the total acreage of the arena went up in a gust of dirt, dust, gravel and colored smoke. Seconds later I had been thrown prostrate by the blast. Probably half the amphitheatre’s occupants had been similarly treated, and how many blast casualties might have been among them, I couldn’t know.

But at least, I thought, the fight was over and I’d done the Solar League’s dirty work for it. I’d never be able to hold up my head again in a circle of gladiators, but the System was safe.

I came to my feet and turned to go.

A shout, incredulous, unbelieving, arose from the stands, drowning out the cries of those wounded by the blast of my grenade.

I spun and stared.

Crawling laboriously over the lip of the crater my grenade had caused was the Centaurian. One of his many limbs seemed limp and useless, and his shell was battered and begrimed, but he was still alive, and not too much the worse for wear.

When it got to level ground again it seemed to pause momentarily, seeking me out.

I grabbed up the heavy submachine gat—as Suzi tells me they called them in the old days—and threw it to my shoulder. The projectiles it threw were only half an inch in diameter but each of them packed a charge of atomic explosive.

I trained it and held the trigger down. The two hundred round drum was exhausted in less than a half minute, and the sound of the projectiles exploding against the shell of my foe was ear shocking in intensity. Once again, a cloud of smoke and dust enveloped the Centaurian. And only after the last cartridge had been expended and the submachine gat now useless, was the sigh of relief that went up over the stands audible.

But through the smoke, of a sudden, charged the six legged Centaurian and my eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. He was seemingly not further injured.

I dodged quickly to one side, stumbling over the gat I’d thrown away, thinking the fight over, and it uselessly empty. It was only the stumbling that saved me. I rolled to the side and it was past me and spinning about for another attack.

The Centaurian growled in a thunderous voice, “And now the fight begins, Terran makron.” Its bulk evidently was no indication of a lack of intelligence. It had already not only learned to speak Amer-English, but could swear in our language.

I had one more major weapon in my deadly arsenal. I whipped the blunderbuss-nosed, pistol-like device from my belt and trained it. Even though shielded with my especially designed ear plugs, the subsonic sounds flowed over me, enveloped me, terrified me. What it was doing to the enemy I could only guess.

Shaking my head in an attempt to clear it of the desperate, soul shaking fears brought on by the subsonic vibrator, I stared in the direction of the Centaurian.

He seemed to be watching me, questioningly. And suddenly I understood that he was waiting for the weapon to work! He wanted to see what it was going to do.

It wasn’t doing anything!

A quarter of a mile away, on the other side of the amphitheatre, and supposedly out of range, spectators were fainting in droves, literally thousands of them screaming or keeling over. But a few yards before me he stood unimpressed.

I swore and threw the thing down, ripped off the rest of the belts and equipment they’d foisted upon me and reached for my sword.

It dashed forward, extending a tentacle from its body that formerly I’d been unaware of. I swung desperately and the sword clanged against the limb. I darted backward, noticing a large dent in the cutting edge.

Like a flash one of the lobster claws snapped out at me, nipping a cut in my left side, just below the ribs. Had it been another six inches over, I would have been cut in half.

I dashed to one side and it rushed past, stirring up a breeze as it went. How such a large creature could get up momentum so rapidly was a mystery to me.

I grated out one of Suzi’s slogans to give myself courage. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And then it came to me that the trouble was that if they’re big enough perhaps they don’t get around to falling at all.

It was about and after me again.

I stood in its path, sword in hand, waiting. A massive groan went up from the stands.

Just before it reached me, I darted forward, crouched low, and dashed under its belly. Here, if anywhere, was the soft spot. As I ran, I thrust desperately upward with all my strength, then I was suddenly completely under and beyond it.

I spun around and stood there panting and staring at the end of my broken pointed sword.

It turned too, as though looking to find my trampled body, and surprised that I’d survived. It was about thirty feet away, and seemingly resting.

Suddenly from its mouth gushed forth a stream of flame, reaching out for me.

It was only by the merest chance that my grenade-made crater was immediately behind me. I tripped again and fell backward, and the sheet of flame passed over me.

A sigh went up from the stands.

Suddenly, over the ridge it came tearing. Hoping, evidently, to catch me before I recovered from my fall.

It had miscalculated and passed a good six feet to my right. I sprung to my feet and dashed over in time to deal its tail a smashing blow—and to accumulate another dent in my blade.

At this pace, my strength was rapidly giving out, and his seemed as great as ever—but I was still quicker in that my size and build enabled me to turn, spin, dodge, more effectively.

He tried twice more to get me with his flaming breath, and both times I was able to avoid it by inches. Or nearly so, at least. I kept my life, though hair and clothes were singed.

I had worked my way, involuntarily toward the press boxes, and took time to shoot up a desperate glance in Suzi’s direction. Her face had lost its coldness now; her lips were parted in fear.

Almost, I was able to smile. Suzi knew the signs—as did all the rest of the reporters—she’d seen too many meets not to know when a gladiator was using his last iota of strength and was on the verge of collapse. She knew—possibly even better than I—how long I could keep up this pace. And then—

Seeing her, recalled her way of finding a slogan, a quotation of the ancients, for almost every situation that arose.

And in the recalling one came to me!

Meet fire with fire.

The Centaurian was emerging from the crater where its most recent charge had taken it. I ran with what speed I could muster to the Judges’ stand and grasped one of the sacred Venusian torches that flanked the Judges’ bench. I turned then and sped toward the enemy in hopes of getting him as he climbed over the crater edge.

He saw me coming and tried ineffectively to scorch me with his flaming breath, but he was either growing weak, or had utilized all the fuel his body produced for the effort. The flame leaped out a mere six or eight feet.

Holding the torch in hand, I dashed straight at him. As I had hoped, one of the lobster claws darted at me. I leaped nimbly to one side, bounced up upon the claw and scampered up it toward the four glaring eyes. I thrust the torch out and into them, hearing as though from a great distance, the cheer of victory that went up from the stands.

Then sliding, falling, tumbling, I was on the ground again and hurrying as fast as possible from what I expected to be the painful, blinded throes of the thing.

I turned and stared. It stood there, watching me. Showing no signs of distress.

It rumbled, finally, angrily, “You can’t fool me all of the time, Terran. Soon you will tire, then I will get you—”

Suzi’s books came back to me again. What was it I was trying to remember? I stood there panting, realizing the ridiculousness of standing exhausted in the middle of the arena and remembering odds and ends that Suzi had told me about the ancients.

And then, just as the Centaurian headed for me again, it clicked.

A silence had settled down over the crowd. Arena wise, through years of watching gladiatorial events, they knew my knees were sagging, my reflexes slowed, my muscles screaming protest.

I stood there, sword in hand, directly in its path—waiting. It had said, “You can’t fool me all of the time, Terran.”

And that’s what had clicked.

You can fool some of the people some of the time. …

Praying that I had strength enough left for this, I waited until it was nearly upon me, its lobster claws out-thrust, its six heavy feet pounding. Then I jumped, to one side, back again. I bounded high to the knee joint of the second limb on the left, as the Centaurian skidded to a halt. A second scrambling leap and I was on its back. Half on my feet, half on my hands, I scampered forward toward its head, even as several tentacles made their way gropingly toward me.

No, I wasn’t looking for a soft spot for my now dull sword. I knew there wouldn’t be any.

The tentacles were reaching, almost touching me, but I ignored them. I found the tiny door right behind its massive head. I was right! I found the lock and sprung it.

The door swung open and inside the tiny, leaded shielded compartment the little creature occupying it looked up at me fearfully.

I grasped it by the scruff of the neck and hoisted it out of its seat. The “Centaurian Gladiator” had stopped completely now.

I dropped to the ground and tossed the thing before me. It was about the size of, and looked considerably like a small Terran pig. It was pink, fat, and, as Suzi said later, cute. Right now I didn’t appreciate its cuteness.

“Please,” it squealed, “don’t touch me. I can’t bear being hurt!”

I kicked it where its hams would have been had it really been a pig. It squealed again and started out, hampered in its speed by its fat, running across the arena with me after it, giving it kert with the toe of my boot.

It dashed for the helicopter and I gave it one last kick as it scampered for the craft’s door so that it flew the last four feet. In the background I could hear the crowd roaring like thunder.

In seconds, the helicopter had taken off and returned to the spaceship above. It was swallowed up and the Centaurian ship blasted off and away. Evidently, it wasn’t waiting to see what the Solar System fleet would do when the farce was made known.

I turned, and for a moment stared at the robot the Centaurian had occupied. Then my injuries and fatigue caught up with me. The fog rolled in and I slumped to the arena sands.

I explained later in the hospital room to the diplomats, the I.V.S. reporters, and the others. And I made the explanation as short as possible.

In the first place, how could a thing that big and awkward have handled the helicopter so gracefully? How could any organic creature survive the explosion of an atomic grenade? How could it breath fire? How could it stand a burning torch being thrust into its eyes?

But it was the quotation that had brought it all home to me. I suddenly realized I was being fooled—and another of Suzi’s quotations came to mind. This is a horse of another color. Then it clicked in its entirety.

The Trojan Horse, I had thought, something is inside. It’s a robot, a mechanical fighting machine, like the tanks of old.

Suddenly the diplomats and the reporters were gone and Suzi was there, the star dust in her eyes again.

Before she could speak, I told her, humbly, “You were right, Suzi, I am a phony. I’m no champ. I was scared to death out there, when I found that all the super-weapons they’d made for me were—”

“But, darling, you won!” She knelt beside the bed, but I turned my head away.

“Won,” I said bitterly. “Sure, by a fluke again. I won against a little half pint that could have been defeated by a child.” I snorted in self-deprecation. “I wonder what the crowd out there is thinking. I enter the arena with enough weapons to depopulate a small planet, and it takes me half an hour to find out it’s all a hoax.”

She remained kneeling there, but it was another voice that said, “The crowd doesn’t see it that way, Jak.” It was Alger Wilde, who had entered with my manager.

“Of course not,” Suzi insisted. “You didn’t know what you were against, but you were in there all the time, taking on something worse than any gladiator in the System.—You proved yourself, Jak.”

Alger went to the window and opened it. “Listen to this,” he said grudgingly. From the distance I could hear the arena crowd singing “The Solar System Forever.”

Even Mari Nown was happy. It seemed as though the judges unanimously voted to make me Interplanetary Champ for the rest of my life. The situation was obvious. Terra couldn’t afford to let anything happen to me now. As soon as I died, the next Interplanetary Meet would result in a new champ and a new change in the balance of power. Terra wouldn’t allow me to fight—not even in exhibitions.

Mari Nown’s chicken head beamed as he bounced back and forth on his heels. “You’re going to live to a ripe old age,” he shrilled happily, “and the most dangerous thing you’ll ever do is sign endorsements for Venusian Salt Water Taffy.” He added, more happily still, “And I’ll get ten percent of everything you make.”

“Everything but Suzi,” I told him, sticking out an arm to encircle her.

Alger Wilde frowned. “You know, Jak,” he grunted, “I think you’re right about that music. ‘The Solar System Forever’ is a raucous thing.”

It was welling, ever louder, through the window.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said as soon as I took my lips from Suzi’s. “I’m beginning to like it.”

Dogfight—1973

My radar picked him up when he was about five hundred miles to my north-northeast and about forty-five miles above me. I switched the velocity calculator on him as fast as I could reach it.

The enemy ship was doing sixteen, possibly even sixteen and a half. I took the chance that it was most likely an Ivar Interceptor, at that speed, and punched out a temporary evasion pattern with my right hand while with my left I snapped an Ivar K-12 card into my calculator along with his estimated speed, altitude and distance. It wasn’t much to go on as yet but he couldn’t have much more on me, if as much; inwardly I congratulated myself on the quick identification I’d managed.

He was near enough now for my visor screen to pick him up. At least he was alone, that was something. My nearest squadron mate was a good minute and a half away. It might as well have been a century.

Now, this is what is always hard to get over to a civilian; the time element. Understand, it will take me a while to tell this but it all took less than sixty seconds to happen.

He had guessed my evasion pattern already—either guessed it or had some new calculator that was far and beyond anything our techs were turning out. I could tell he’d anticipated me by the Bong-Sonic roll he slipped into.

I quickly punched up a new pattern based on the little material I had in the calculator. At least I’d caught the roll. I punched that up, hurriedly, slipped it into the I.B.M., guessed that his next probability was a pass, took a chance on that and punched it in.

I was wrong there. He didn’t take his opportunity for a front-on pass. He was either newly out of their academy or insultingly confident. My lips felt tight as I canceled the frontal pass card, punched up two more to take its place.

The base supervisor cut in on the phone. “It looks like old Dmitri himself, Jerry, and he’s flying one of the new K-12a models. Go get him, boy!”

I felt like snapping back. He knew better than to break in on me at a time like this. I opened my mouth, then shut it again. Did he say K-12a? Did he say K-12a?

I squinted at the visor screen. The high tail, the canopy, the oddly shaped wing tanks.

I’d gone off on the identification!

I slapped another evasion pattern into the controls, a standard set, I had no time to punch up an improvisation. But he was on me like a wasp. I rejected it, threw in another set. Reject. Another!

Even as I worked, I kicked the release on my own calculator, dumped it all, selected like a flash an Ivar K-12a card, and what other estimations I could make while my mind was busy with the full-time job of evasion.

My hands were still making the motions, my fingers were flicking here, there, my feet touching here, there. But my heart wasn’t in it.

He already had such an advantage that it was all I could do to keep him in my visor screen. He was to the left, to the right. I got him for a full quarter-second in the wires, but the auto gunner was too far behind, much too far.

His own guns flicked red.

I punched half a dozen buttons, slapped levers, tried to scoot for home.

To the left of my cubicle two lights went yellowish and at the same time my visor screen went dead. I was blind.

I sank back in my chair, helpless.

The speed indicator wavered, went slowly, deliberately to zero; the altimeter died; the fuel gauge. Finally, even the dozen or so trouble-indicators here, there, everywhere about the craft. Fifteen million dollars worth of warcraft was being shot into wreckage.

I sat there for a long, long minute and took it.

Then I got to my feet and wearily opened the door of my cubicle. Sergeant Walters and the rest of the maintenance crew were standing there. They could read in my face what had happened.

The sergeant began, “Captain, I …”

I grunted at him. “Never mind, Sergeant. It had nothing to do with the ship’s condition.” I turned to head for the operations office.

Bill Dickson strolled over from the direction of his own cubicle. “Somebody said you just had a scramble with old Dmitri himself.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if it was him or not. Maybe some of you guys can tell a man’s flying but I can’t.”

He grinned at me. “Shot you down, eh?”

I didn’t answer.

He said, “What happened?”

“I thought it was an Ivar K-12, and I put that card in my calculator. Turned out it was one of those new models, K-12a. That was enough, of course.”

Bill grinned at me again. “That’s two this week. That flak got you near that bridge and now you get …”

“Shut up,” I told him.

He counted up on his fingers elaborately. “The way I figure it, you lose one more ship and you’re an enemy ace.”

He was irrepressible. “Damn it,” I said, “will you cut it out! I’ve got enough to worry about without you working me over. This means I’ll have to spend another half an hour in operations going over the fight. And that means I’ll be late for dinner again. And you know Molly.”

Bill sobered. “Gee,” he said, “I’m sorry. War is hell, isn’t it?”

Potential Enemy

Alexander the Great had not dreamed of India, nor even Egypt, when he embarked upon his invasion of the Persian Empire. It was not a matter of being like the farmer: “I ain’t selfish, all I want is the land that jines mine.” It was simply that after regaining the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Darius, he could not stop. He could not afford to have powerful neighbors that might threaten his domains tomorrow. So he took Egypt, and the Eastern Satrapies, and then had to continue to India. There he learned of the power of Cathay, but an army mutiny forestalled him and he had to return to Babylon. He died there while making plans to attack Arabia, Carthage, Rome. You see, given the military outlook, he could not afford powerful neighbors on his borders; they might become enemies some day.

Alexander had not been the first to be faced with this problem, nor was he the last. So it was later with Rome, and later with Napoleon, and later still with Adolf the Aryan, and still later—

It isn’t travel that is broadening, stimulating, or educational. Not the traveling itself. Visiting new cities, new countries, new continents, or even new planets, yes. But the travel itself, no. Be it by the methods of the Twentieth Century—automobile, bus, train, or aircraft—or be it by spaceship, travel is nothing more than boring.

Oh, it’s interesting enough for the first few hours, say. You look out the window of your car, bus, train, or airliner, or over the side of your ship, and it’s very stimulating. But after that first period it becomes boring, monotonous, sameness to the point of redundance.

And so it is in space.

Markham Gray, freelance journalist for more years than he would admit to, was en route from the Neptune satellite Triton to his home planet, Earth, mistress of the Solar System. He was seasoned enough as a space traveler to steel himself against the monotony with cards and books, with chess problems and wire tapes, and even with an attempt to do an article on the distant earthbase from which he was returning for the Spacetraveler Digest.

When all these failed, he sometimes spent a half hour or so staring at the vision screen which took up a considerable area of one wall of the lounge.

Unless you had a vivid imagination of the type which had remained with Markham Gray down through the years, a few minutes at a time would have been enough. With rare exception, the view on the screen seemed almost like a still; a velvety blackness with pinpoints of brilliant light, unmoving, unchanging.

But even Markham Gray, with his ability to dream and to discern that which is beyond, found himself twisting with ennui after thirty minutes of staring at endless space. He wished that there was a larger number of passengers aboard. The half-dozen businessmen and their women and children had left him cold and he was doing his best to avoid them. Now, if there had only been one good chess player—

Copilot Bormann was passing through the lounge. He nodded to the distinguished elderly passenger, flicked his eyes quickly, professionally, over the vision screen and was about to continue on his way.

Gray called idly, “Hans, I thought the space patrols very seldom got out here.”

“Practically never, sir,” the other told him politely, hesitating momentarily. Part of the job was to be constantly amiable, constantly watchful of the passengers out here in deep space—they came down with space cafard at the drop of a hat. Markham Gray reminded Bormann of pictures of Benjamin Franklin he’d seen in history books, and ordinarily he didn’t mind spending a little time now and then talking things over with him. But right now he was hoping the old duffer wasn’t going to keep him from the game going on forward with Captain Post and the steward.

“Just noticed one on the screen,” the elderly journalist told him easily.

The copilot smiled courteously. “You must have seen a meteorite, sir. There aren’t any—”

Markham Gray flushed. “I’m not as complete a space neophyte as your condescending air would indicate, Lieutenant. As a matter of fact, I’ll stack my space-months against yours any day.”

Bormann said soothingly, “It’s not that, sir. You’ve just made a mistake. If a ship was within reasonable distance, the alarms would be sounding off right now. But that’s not all, either. We have a complete record of any traffic within a considerable distance, and I assure you that—”

Markham Gray pointed a finger at the lower left hand corner of the screen. “Then what is that, Lieutenant?” he asked sarcastically.

The smile was still on the copilot’s face as he turned and followed the direction of the other’s finger. The smile faded. “I’ll be a makron!” he blurted. Spinning on his heel, he hurried forward to the bridge, muttering as he went.

The older man snorted with satisfaction. Actually, he shouldn’t have been so snappy with the young man; he hated to admit he was growing cranky with age. He took up his half completed manuscript again. He really should finish this article, though, space knew, he hadn’t enough material for more than a few paragraphs. Triton was a barren satellite if he’d ever seen one—and he had.

He had almost forgotten the matter ten minutes later when the ship’s public address system blurted loudly.

Battle stations! Battle stations! All crew members to emergency stations. All passengers immediately to their quarters. Battle stations!

Battle Stations?

Markham Gray was vaguely familiar with the fact that every Solar System spacecraft was theoretically a warcraft in emergency, but it was utterly fantastic that—

He heaved himself to his feet, grunting with the effort, and, disregarding the repeated command that passengers proceed to their quarters, made his way forward to the bridge, ignoring the hysterical confusion in passengers and crew members hurrying up and down the ship’s passageways.

It was immediately obvious, there at the craft’s heart, that this was no farce, at least not a deliberate one. Captain Roger Post, youthful officer in command of the Neuve Los Angeles, Lieutenant Hans Bormann and the two crew members on watch were white-faced and shaken, momentarily confused in a situation which they had never expected to face. The two officers stood before the bridge vision screen watching, wide-eyed, that sector of space containing the other vessel. They had enlarged it a hundredfold.

At the elderly journalist’s entrance, the skipper had shot a quick, irritated glance over his shoulder and had begun to snap something; he cut it off. Instead, he said, “When did you first sight the alien ship, Mr. Gray?”

“Alien?”

“Yes, alien. When did you first sight it? It is obviously following us in order to locate our home planet.” There was extreme tension in the captain’s voice.

Markham Gray felt cold fingers trace their way up his back. “Why, why, I must have noticed it several hours ago, Captain. But … an alien! … I …” He peered at the enlarged craft on the screen. “Are you sure, Captain? It seems remarkably like our own. I would say—”

The captain had spun back around to stare at the screen again, as though to reassure himself of what he had already seen.

“There are no other ships in the vicinity,” he grated, almost as though to himself. “Besides that, as far as I know, and I should know, there are no Earth craft that look exactly like that. There are striking similarities, I’ll admit, to our St. Louis class scouts, but those jets on the prow—there’s nothing like them either in existence or projected.”

His voice rose in an attempt to achieve decisiveness, “Lieutenant Bormann, prepare to attack.”

Suddenly, the telviz blared.

Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Calling the Neuve Los Angeles. Be unafraid. We are not hostile.

There was quiet on the bridge of the earth ship. Screaming quiet. It was seemingly hours before they had recovered even to the point of staring at one another.

Hans Bormann gasped finally, unbelievingly, “How could they possibly know the name of our ship? How could they possibly know the Amer-English language?”

The captain’s face was white and frozen. He said, so quietly that they could hardly make it out, “That’s not all. Our alarms still haven’t been touched off, and our estimators aren’t functioning; we don’t know how large they are nor how far away. It’s unheard of—. Somehow they’ve completely disrupted our instruments.”

Markham Gray followed the matter with more than average interest, after their arrival at the New Albuquerque spaceport. Not that average interest wasn’t high.

Finally man had come in contact with another intelligence. He had been dreading it, fearing it, for decades; now it was here. Another life form had conquered space, and, seemingly, had equipment, in some respects at least, superior to humanity’s.

The court martial of Captain Roger Post had been short and merciless. Free access to the trial had been given to the press and telviz systems, and the newscasts had carried it in its entirety, partially to stress to the public mind the importance of the situation, and partially as a warning to other spacemen.

Post had stood before the raised dais upon which were seated SupSpaceCom Michell and four other high-ranking officers and heard the charge read—failure to attack the alien craft, destroy it, and thus prevent the aliens—wherever they might be from—returning to their own world and reporting the presence of man in the galaxy.

Markham Gray, like thousands of others, had sat on the edge of his chair in the living room of his small suburban home, and followed the trial closely on his telviz.

SupSpaceCom Michell had been blunt and ruthless. He had rapped out, bitingly, “Roger Post, as captain of the Neuve Los Angeles, why did you not either destroy the alien craft, or, if you felt it too strong for your ship, why did you not blast off into space, luring it away from your home planet?”

Post said hesitantly, “I didn’t think it necessary, sir. His attitude was—well, of peace. It was as if we were two ships that had met by chance and dipped their flags in the old manner and passed on to their different destinations. They even were able to telviz us a message.”

The SupSpaceCom snapped, “That was undoubtedly a case of telepathy. The alien is equipped in some manner to impose thoughts upon the human brain. You thought the telviz was used; actually the alien wasn’t speaking Amer-English, he was simply forcing thoughts into your minds.”

Markham Gray, watching and listening to this over his set, shook his head in dissatisfaction. As always, the military mind was dull and unreceptive. The ridiculousness of expecting Post to blast off into space in an attempt to fool the other craft in regard to his home planet was obvious. The whole affair had taken place within the solar system; obviously the alien would know that one of Sol’s nine major planets was mankind’s home. Finding out which one wouldn’t be too difficult a job.

Roger Post was saying hesitantly, “Then it is assumed that the alien craft wasn’t friendly?”

SupSpaceCom Michell indicated his disgust with an impatient flick of his hand. “Any alien is a potential enemy, Post; that should be elementary. And a potential enemy is an enemy in fact. Even though these aliens might seem amiable enough today, how do we know they will be in the future—possibly in the far future? There can be no friendship with aliens. We can’t afford to have neighbors; we can’t afford to be encircled by enemies.”

“Nor even friends?” Captain Post had asked softly.

Michell glared at his subordinate. “That is what it amounts to, Captain; and the thing to remember is that they feel the same way. They must! They must seek us out and destroy us completely and as quickly as possible. By the appearance of things, and partially through your negligence, they’ve probably won the first round. They know our location; we don’t know theirs.”

The supreme commander of Earth’s space forces dropped that point. “Let us go back again. When you received this telepathic message—or whatever it was—what was your reaction? Did it seem friendly, domineering, or what?”

Roger Post stood silent for a moment. Finally he answered, “Sir, I still think it was the telviz, rather than a telepathic communication, but the … the tone of voice seemed to give me the impression of pitying.”

“Pitying!” Michell ejaculated.

The captain was nervous but determined. “Yes, sir. I had the distinct feeling that the being that sent the message felt sorry for us.”

The SupSpaceCom’s face had gone red with indignation.

It was three years before another of the aliens was sighted. Three hurried, crowded, harassed years during which all the Solar System’s resources were devoted to building and arming a huge space fleet and rushing space defenses. The total wars of the Twentieth Century paled in comparison to the all out efforts made to prepare for this conflict.

The second view of the alien ship was similar to the first. This, time the Pendleton, a four-man scout returning to the Venus base after a patrol in the direction of Sirius, held the intruder in its viewer for a full five minutes. Once again, no estimation of its distance nor size could be made. All instruments pertaining to such detection seemed to fail to function properly.

And again the alien had sent a message—seemingly, at least, by telviz. We are no danger to you, mankind. Seek your destiny in peace. Your troubles are from within.

The Pendleton would have attempted to follow the strange craft, but her fuel tanks were nearly dry and she had to proceed to Venus. Her captain’s report made a sensation.

In a way, the whole business had been a good thing for Markham Gray. As a freelancing journalist, he’d had a considerable advantage. First, he was more than usually informed on space travel and the problems relating to it, second, he had been present at—in fact, had made himself—the first sighting of the aliens.

His articles were in continuous demand in both magazines and newspaper supplements; editors clamored for additional material from his voco-typer. There was but one complaint against his copy—it wasn’t alarmist enough, sensational enough. Humanity had been whipped into a state of hysteria, an emotional binge, and humanity loved it.

And it was there that Markham Gray refused to go along. He had agreed with poor Captain Post, now serving a life sentence in the Martian prison camps; there had been no sign of hostility from the alien craft. It was man who was preparing for war—and Gray knew of no period in history in which preparations for war did not eventually culminate in one.

So it was not really strange that it was he the aliens chose to contact.

It came in the early hours of the morning. He awakened, not without a chill of fear, the sound of his telviz set in his ears. He had left it turned off, he knew that. He shook his head to clear it, impatient of the fact that with advancing years it was taking an increasing time to become alert after sleep.

He had not caught the message. For a brief moment he thought the sound had been a dream.

Then the telviz spoke again. The screen was blank. It said, You are awake, Mr. Gray?

He stared at it, uncomprehending.

He said, “I … I don’t understand.” Then, suddenly, he did understand, as though by an inspired revelation. Why they were able to speak Amer-English. Why their ship looked like a Terran one. Why they had been able to “disrupt” the Earth ships instruments.

He said haltingly, “Why are you here?”

We are familiar with your articles. You alone, Mr. Gray, seem at least to seek understanding. Before we left, we felt it our duty to explain our presence and our purpose—that is, partially.

“Yes,” he said. Then, in an attempt to check the conclusion at which he had just arrived, he added, “You are going from the Solar System—leaving your home for a new one?”

There was a long silence.

Finally: As we said, we were going to explain partially our presence and purpose, but obviously you know more than we had thought. Would you mind revealing the extent of your knowledge?

Gray reached to the foot of the bed and took up his night robe; partly because it was chilly, partly to give himself time to consider his answer. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that. He was alone in this small house; he had no knowledge of their intentions toward him.

But he had gone too far now. He said, “Not at all. I am not sure of where we stand, but things should be much clearer, shortly. First of all, your spaceships are tiny. Probably less than ten pounds.”

About four, Mr. Gray.

“Which explains why our instruments did not record them; the instruments weren’t disrupted, your ships were really too small to register. That’s where we made our first mistake. We assumed, for no valid reason, that you were approximately our own size. We were willing to picture you as nonhuman and possessing limbs, organs, and even senses different from ours; but we have pictured ‘aliens,’ as we’ve been calling you, as approximately our own size. Actually, you must be quite tiny.”

Quite tiny, Markham Gray. Although, of course, the way we think of it is that you are quite huge.

He was becoming more confident now; widely awake, it was less strange to hear the words come from his commonplace home model telviz set. “Our second mistake was in looking for you throughout space,” he said softly.

There was hesitation again, then, And why was that a mistake, Markham Gray?

Gray wet his lips. He might be signing his death warrant, but he couldn’t stop now. “Because you are not really ‘aliens,’ but of Earth itself. Several facts point that way. For instance, your ships are minute models of Earth ships, or, rather, of human ships. You have obviously copied them. Then, too, you have been able to communicate with humans too easily. An alien to our world would have had much more trouble. Our ways, our methods of thinking, are not strange to you.”

You have discovered a secret which has been kept for many centuries, Markham Gray.

He was more at ease now; somehow there was no threat in the attitude of the other. Gray said, “The hardest thing for me to understand is why it has been kept a secret. Obviously, you are a tiny form of Earth life, probably an insect, which has progressed intellectually as far beyond other insect forms as man beyond other mammals. Why have you kept this a secret from humans?”

You should be able to answer that yourself, Mr. Gray. As we developed, we were appalled by the only other form of life on our planet with a developed intelligence. Why, not even your own kind is safe from your bloodlust. The lesser animals on Earth have been either enslaved by man—or slaughtered to extinction. And even your fellows in the recent past were butchered; man killed man wholesale. Do you blame us for keeping our existence a secret? We knew that the day humans discovered there was another intelligence on Earth they would begin making plans to dominate or, even more likely, to destroy us. Our only chance was to find some refuge away from Earth. That is why we began to search the other stars for a planet similar to this and suitable to our form of life.

“You could have fought back, had we attempted to destroy you,” Gray said uncomfortably.

The next words were coldly contemptuous. We are not wanton killers, like man. We have no desire to destroy.

Gray winced and changed the subject. “You have found your new planet?”

At last. We are about to begin transportation of our population to the new world. For the first time since our ancestors became aware of the awful presence of man on the Earth, we feel that we can look forward to security.

Markham Gray remained quiet for a long time. “I am still amazed that you were able to develop so far without our knowledge,” he said finally.

There was an edge of amusement in the answering thought. We are very tiny, Mr. Gray. And our greatest efforts have always been to keep from under man’s eyes. We have profited greatly, however, by our suitability to espionage; little goes on in the human world of which we don’t know. Our progress was greatly aided by our being able to utilize the science that man has already developed. You’ve noted, for instance, how similar our spaceships are to your own.

Gray nodded to himself. “But I’m also impressed by the manner in which you have developed some mechanical device to duplicate human speech. That involved original research.”

At any rate, neither man nor we need dread the future any longer. We have escaped the danger that overhung us, and you know now that we are no alien enemies from space threatening you. We wish you well, mankind; perhaps the future will see changes in your nature. It is in this friendly hope that we have contacted humanity through you, Mr. Gray.

The elderly journalist said quietly, “I appreciate your thoughtfulness and hope you are correct. Good luck to you in your new world.”

Thank you, Markham Gray, and goodbye.

The set was suddenly quiet again.

Markham Gray stood before the assembled Military Council of the Solar System. He had told his story without interruption to this most powerful body on Earth. They listened to him in silence.

When he had finished, he waited for their questions. The first came from SupSpaceCom Michell. He said, thoughtfully, “You believe their words to be substantially correct, Gray?”

“I believe them to be entirely truthful, your excellency,” the journalist told him sincerely.

“Then they are on the verge of leaving the Earth and removing to this other planet in some other star system?”

“That is their plan.”

The SupSpaceCom mused aloud. “We’ll be able to locate them when they blast off en masse. Their single ships are so small that they missed being observed, but a mass flight we’ll be able to detect. Our cruisers will be able to follow them all the way, blasting them as they go. If any get through to their new planet, we’ll at least know where they are and can take our time destroying it.”

The President of the Council added thoughtfully, “Quite correct, Michell. And in the early stages of the fight, we should be able to capture some of their ships intact. As soon as we find what kind of insect they are, our bacteriologists will be able to work on a method to eliminate any that might remain on Earth.”

Markham Gray’s face had paled in horror. “But why?” he blurted. “Why not let them go in peace? All they’ve wanted for centuries is to escape us, to have a planet of their own.”

SupSpaceCom Michell eyed him tolerantly. “You seem to have been taken in, Mr. Gray. Once they’ve established themselves in their new world, we have no idea of how rapidly they might develop and how soon they might become a threat. Even though they may be peaceful today, they are potential enemies tomorrow. And a potential enemy is an enemy, who must be destroyed.”

Gray felt sickness well through him “But … but this policy … What happens when man finally finds on his borders a life-form more advanced than he—an intelligence strong enough to destroy rather than be destroyed?”

The tolerance was gone now. The SupSpaceCom said coldly, “Don’t be a pessimistic defeatist, Gray.”

He turned to the admirals and generals of his staff. “Make all preparations for the attack, gentlemen.”

Off Course

First on the scene were Larry Dermott and Tim Casey of the State Highway Patrol. They assumed they were witnessing the crash of a new type of Air Force plane and slipped and skidded desperately across the field to within thirty feet of the strange craft, only to discover that the landing had been made without accident.

Patrolman Dermott shook his head. “They’re gettin’ queerer looking every year. Get a load of it—no wheels, no propeller, no cockpit.”

They left the car and made their way toward the strange egg-shaped vessel.

Tim Casey loosened his .38 in its holster and said, “Sure, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s one of ours. No insignia and—”

A circular door slid open at that point and Dameri Tass stepped out, yawning. He spotted them, smiled and said, “Glork.”

They gaped at him.

“Glork is right,” Dermott swallowed.

Tim Casey closed his mouth with an effort. “Do you mind the color of his face?” he blurted.

“How could I help it?”

Dameri Tass rubbed a blue-nailed pink hand down his purplish countenance and yawned again. “Gorra manigan horp soratium,” he said.

Patrolman Dermott and Patrolman Casey shot stares at each other. “ ’Tis double talk he’s after givin’ us,” Casey said.

Dameri Tass frowned. “Harama?” he asked.

Larry Dermott pushed his cap to the back of his head. “That doesn’t sound like any language I’ve even heard about.”

Dameri Tass grimaced, turned and reentered his spacecraft to emerge in half a minute with his hands full of contraption. He held a boxlike arrangement under his left arm; in his right hand were two metal caps connected to the box by wires.

While the patrolmen watched him, he set the box on the ground, twirled two dials and put one of the caps on his head. He offered the other to Larry Dermott; his desire was obvious.

Trained to grasp a situation and immediately respond in manner best suited to protect the welfare of the people of New York State, Dermott cleared his throat and said, “Tim, take over while I report.”

“Hey!” Casey protested, but his fellow minion had left.

“Mandaia,” Dameri Tass told Casey, holding out the metal cap.

“Faith, an’ do I look balmy?” Casey told him. “I wouldn’t be puttin’ that dingus on my head for all the colleens in Ireland.”

“Mandaia,” the stranger said impatiently.

“Bejasus,” Casey snorted, “ye can’t—”

Dermott called from the car, “Tim, the captain says to humor this guy. We’re to keep him here until the officials arrive.”

Tim Casey closed his eyes and groaned. “Humor him, he’s after sayin’. Orders it is.” He shouted back, “Sure, an’ did ye tell ’em he’s in technicolor? Begorra, he looks like a man from Mars.”

“That’s what they think,” Larry yelled, “and the governor is on his way. We’re to do everything possible short of violence to keep this character here. Humor him, Tim!”

“Mandaia,” Dameri Tass snapped, pushing the cap into Casey’s reluctant hands.

Muttering his protests, Casey lifted it gingerly and placed it on his head. Not feeling any immediate effect, he said, “There, ’tis satisfied ye are now, I’m supposin’.”

The alien stooped down and flicked a switch on the little box. It hummed gently. Tim Casey suddenly shrieked and sat down on the stubble and grass of the field. “Begorra,” he yelped, “I’ve been murthered!” He tore the cap from his head.

His companion came running, “What’s the matter, Tim?” he shouted.

Dameri Tass removed the metal cap from his own head. “Sure, an’ nothin’ is after bein’ the matter with him,” he said. “Evidently the bhoy has niver been a-wearin’ of a kerit helmet afore. ’Twill hurt him not at all.”

“You can talk!” Dermott blurted, skidding to a stop.

Dameri Tass shrugged. “Faith, an’ why not? As I was after sayin’, I shared the kerit helmet with Tim Casey.”

Patrolman Dermott glared at him unbelievingly. “You learned the language just by sticking that Rube Goldberg deal on Tim’s head?”

“Sure, an’ why not?”

Dermott muttered, “And with it he has to pick up the corniest brogue west of Dublin.”

Tim Casey got to his feet indignantly. “I’m after resentin’ that, Larry Dermott. Sure, an’ the way we talk in Ireland is—”

Dameri Tass interrupted, pointing to a bedraggled horse that had made its way to within fifty feet of the vessel. “Now what could that be after bein’?”

The patrolmen followed his stare. “It’s a horse. What else?”

“A horse?”

Larry Dermott looked again, just to make sure. “Yeah—not much of a horse, but a horse.”

Dameri Tass sighed ecstatically. “And jist what is a horse, if I may be so bold as to be askin’?”

“It’s an animal you ride on.”

The alien tore his gaze from the animal to look his disbelief at the other. “Are you after meanin’ that you climb upon the crature’s back and ride him? Faith now, quit your blarney.”

He looked at the horse again, then down at his equipment. “Begorra,” he muttered, “I’ll share the kerit helmet with the crature.”

“Hey, hold it,” Dermott said anxiously. He was beginning to feel like a character in a shaggy dog story.

Interest in the horse was ended with the sudden arrival of a helicopter. It swooped down on the field and settled within twenty feet of the alien craft. Almost before it had touched, the door was flung open and the flying windmill disgorged two bestarred and efficient-looking Army officers.

Casey and Dermott snapped them a salute.

The senior general didn’t take his eyes from the alien and the spacecraft as he spoke, and they bugged quite as effectively as had those of the patrolmen when they’d first arrived on the scene.

“I’m Major General Browning,” he rapped. “I want a police cordon thrown up around this, er, vessel. No newsmen, no sightseers, nobody without my permission. As soon as Army personnel arrives, we’ll take over completely.”

“Yes, sir,” Larry Dermott said. “I just got a report on the radio that the governor is on his way, sir. How about him?”

The general muttered something under his breath. Then, “When the governor arrives, let me know; otherwise, nobody gets through!”

Dameri Tass said, “Faith, and what goes on?”

The general’s eyes bugged still further. “He talks!” he accused.

“Yes, sir,” Dermott said. “He had some kind of a machine. He put it over Tim’s head and seconds later he could talk.”

“Nonsense!” the general snapped.

Further discussion was interrupted by the screaming arrival of several motorcycle patrolmen followed by three heavily laden patrol cars. Overhead, pursuit planes zoomed in and began darting about nervously above the field.

“Sure, and it’s quite a reception I’m after gettin’,” Dameri Tass said. He yawned. “But what I’m wantin’ is a chance to get some sleep. Faith, an’ I’ve been awake for almost a ‘decal.’ ”

Dameri Tass was hurried, via helicopter, to Washington. There he disappeared for several days, being held incommunicado while White House, Pentagon, State Department and Congress tried to figure out just what to do with him.

Never in the history of the planet had such a furor arisen. Thus far, no newspapermen had been allowed within speaking distance. Administration higher-ups were being subjected to a volcano of editorial heat but the longer the space alien was discussed the more they viewed with alarm the situation his arrival had precipitated. There were angles that hadn’t at first been evident.

Obviously he was from some civilization far beyond that of Earth’s. That was the rub. No matter what he said, it would shake governments, possibly overthrow social systems, perhaps even destroy established religious concepts.

But they couldn’t keep him under wraps indefinitely.

It was the United Nations that cracked the iron curtain. Their demands that the alien be heard before their body were too strong and had too much public opinion behind them to be ignored. The White House yielded and the date was set for the visitor to speak before the Assembly.

Excitement, anticipation, blanketed the world. Shepherds in Sinkiang, multi-millionaires in Switzerland, fakirs in Pakistan, gauchos in the Argentine were raised to a zenith of expectation. Panhandlers debated the message to come with pedestrians; jinrikisha men argued it with their passengers; miners discussed it deep beneath the surface; pilots argued with their copilots thousands of feet above.

It was the most universally awaited event of the ages.

By the time the delegates from every nation, tribe, religion, class, color, and race had gathered in New York to receive the message from the stars, the majority of Earth had decided that Dameri Tass was the plenipotentiary of a super-civilization which had been viewing developments on this planet with misgivings. It was thought this other civilization had advanced greatly beyond Earth’s and that the problems besetting us—social, economic, scientific—had been solved by the super-civilization. Obviously, then, Dameri Tass had come, an advisor from a benevolent and friendly people, to guide the world aright.

And nine-tenths of the population of Earth stood ready and willing to be guided. The other tenth liked things as they were and were quite convinced that the space envoy would upset their applecarts.

Viljalmar Andersen, Secretary-General of the U.N., was to introduce the space emissary. “Can you give me an idea at all of what he is like?” he asked nervously.

President McCord was as upset as the Dane. He shrugged in agitation. “I know almost as little as you do.”

Sir Alfred Oxford protested, “But my dear chap, you’ve had him for almost two weeks. Certainly in that time—”

The President snapped back, “You probably won’t believe this, but he’s been asleep until yesterday. When he first arrived he told us he hadn’t slept for a ‘decal,’ whatever that is; so we held off our discussion with him until morning. Well—he didn’t awaken in the morning, nor the next. Six days later, fearing something was wrong we woke him.”

“What happened?” Sir Alfred asked.

The President showed embarrassment. “He used some rather ripe Irish profanity on us, rolled over, and went back to sleep.”

Viljalmar Andersen asked, “Well, what happened yesterday?”

“We actually haven’t had time to question him. Among other things, there’s been some controversy about whose jurisdiction he comes under. The State Department claims the Army shouldn’t—”

The Secretary General sighed deeply. “Just what did he do?”

“The Secret Service reports he spent the day whistling ‘Mother Machree’ and playing with his dog, cat and mouse.”

“Dog, cat and mouse? I say!” blurted Sir Alfred.

The President was defensive. “He had to have some occupation, and he seems to be particularly interested in our animal life. He wanted a horse but compromised for the others. I understand he insists all three of them come with him wherever he goes.”

“I wish we knew what he was going to say,” Andersen worried.

“Here he comes,” said Sir Alfred.

Surrounded by F.B.I. men, Dameri Tass was ushered to the speaker’s stand. He had a kitten in his arms; a Scotty followed him.

The alien frowned worriedly. “Sure,” he said, “and what kin all this be? Is it some ordinance I’ve been after breakin’?”

McCord, Sir Alfred and Andersen hastened to reassure him and made him comfortable in a chair.

Viljalmar Andersen faced the thousands in the audience and held up his hands, but it was ten minutes before he was able to quiet the cheering, stamping delegates from all Earth.

Finally: “Fellow Terrans, I shall not take your time for a lengthy introduction of the envoy from the stars. I will only say that, without doubt, this is the most important moment in the history of the human race. We will now hear from the first being to come to Earth from another world.”

He turned and gestured to Dameri Tass who hadn’t been paying overmuch attention to the chairman in view of some dog and cat hostilities that had been developing about his feet.

But now the alien’s purplish face faded to a light blue. He stood and said hoarsely. “Faith, an’ what was that last you said?”

Viljalmar Andersen repeated, “We will now hear from the first being ever to come to Earth from another world.”

The face of the alien went a lighter blue. “Sure, an’ ye wouldn’t jist be frightenin’ a body, would ye? You don’t mean to tell me this planet isn’t after bein’ a member of the Galactic League?”

Andersen’s face was blank. “Galactic League?”

“Cushlamachree,” Dameri Tass moaned. “I’ve gone and put me foot in it again. I’ll be after getting kert for this.”

Sir Alfred was on his feet. “I don’t understand! Do you mean you aren’t an envoy from another planet?”

Dameri Tass held his head in his hands and groaned. “An envoy, he’s sayin’, and meself only a second-rate collector of specimens for the Carthis zoo.”

He straightened and started off the speaker’s stand. “Sure, an’ I must blast off immediately.”

Things were moving fast for President McCord but already an edge of relief was manifesting itself. Taking the initiative, he said, “Of course, of course, if that is your desire.” He signaled to the bodyguard who had accompanied the alien to the assemblage.

A dull roar was beginning to emanate from the thousands gathered in the tremendous hall, murmuring, questioning, disbelieving.

Viljalmar Andersen felt that he must say something. He extended a detaining hand. “Now you are here,” he said urgently, “even though by mistake, before you go can’t you give us some brief word? Our world is in chaos. Many of us have lost faith. Perhaps …”

Dameri Tass shook off the restraining hand. “Do I look daft? Begorry, I should have been a-knowin’ something was queer. All your weapons and your strange ideas. Faith, I wouldn’t be surprised if ye hadn’t yet established a planet-wide government. Sure, an’ I’ll go still further. Ye probably still have wars on this benighted world. No wonder it is ye haven’t been invited to join the Galactic League an’ take your place among the civilized planets.”

He hustled from the rostrum and made his way, still surrounded by guards, to the door by which he had entered. The dog and the cat trotted after, undismayed by the furor about them.

They arrived about four hours later at the field on which he’d landed, and the alien from space hurried toward his craft, still muttering. He’d been accompanied by a general and by the President, but all the way he had refrained from speaking.

He scurried from the car and toward the spacecraft.

President McCord said, “You’ve forgotten your pets. We would be glad if you would accept them as—”

The alien’s face faded a light blue again. “Faith, an’ I’d almost forgotten,” he said. “If I’d taken a crature from this quarantined planet, my name’d be nork. Keep your dog and your kitty.” He shook his head sadly and extracted a mouse from a pocket. “An’ this amazin’ little crature as well.”

They followed him to the spacecraft. Just before entering, he spotted the bedraggled horse that had been present on his landing.

A longing expression came over his highly colored face. “Jist one thing,” he said. “Faith now, were they pullin’ my leg when they said you were after ridin’ on the back of those things?”

The President looked at the woebegone nag. “It’s a horse,” he said, surprised. “Man has been riding them for centuries.”

Dameri Tass shook his head. “Sure, an’ ’twould’ve been my makin’ if I could’ve taken one back to Carthis.” He entered his vessel.

The others drew back, out of range of the expected blast, and watched, each with his own thoughts, as the first visitor from space hurriedly left Earth.

The Galactic Ghost

Despite the widely publicized radar posts encircling our nation and the continuously alerted jet squadrons at its borders, the space ship was about to land before it was detected.

It settled gracefully, quietly, onto an empty field in northern New Jersey. And so unexpected was the event, so unbelievable the fact that man was being visited by aliens from space, that it was a full half hour before the first extra was on the streets in New York, and forty minutes before the news buzzed through the Kremlin.

It might have taken considerably longer for man in earth’s more isolated areas to hear of the event had not the alien taken a hand at this point. Approximately an hour after the landing, into the mind of every human on earth, irrespective of nation, language, age, or intellect, came the thought telepathically:

We come in peace. Prepare to receive our message.

It was a month before the message came.

During that period, more than ninety-nine percent of the earth’s population became aware of the visitor from space. Radio, television, newsreel, telegraph and newspapers reached the greater number; but word of mouth and even throbbing drums, played their part. In four weeks, savages along the Amazon and shepherds in Sinkiang knew that visitors from the stars had arrived with a message for man.

And all awaited the message: scientist and soldier, politician and revolutionist, millionaire and vagrant, bishop and whirling dervish, banker and pickpocket, society matron and street walker. And each was hoping for one thing, and afraid he’d hear another.

All efforts at communication with the alien ship had failed. The various welcoming delegations from the State of New Jersey, from the United States, and even from the United Nations, were ignored. No sign of life aboard was evident, and there seemed no means of entrance to the spacecraft. It sat there impassively; its tremendous, saucer-like shape seemed almost like a beautiful monument.

At the end of a month, when worldwide interest in the visitor from space was at its height, the message came. And once again it was impressed upon the mind of every human being on earth:

Man, know this: Your world is fated to complete destruction. Ordinarily, we of the Galactic Union would not have contacted man until he had progressed much further and was ready to take his place among us. But this emergency makes necessary that we take immediate steps if your kind is to be saved from complete obliteration.

In order to preserve your race, we are making efforts to prepare another planet, an uninhabited one, to receive your colonists. Unfortunately, our means for transporting you to your new world are limited; only a handful can be taken. You are safe for another five of your earth years. At the end of that period we will return. Have a thousand of your people ready for their escape.

The President of the United States lifted an eyebrow wearily and rapped again for order.

“Gentlemen, please! … Let us get back to the fundamental question. Summed up, it amounts to this: only one thousand persons, out of a world population of approximately two billions, are going to be able to escape the earth’s destruction. In other words, one out of every two million. It is going to be most difficult to choose.”

Herr Ernst Oberfeld tapped his glasses fretfully on the conference table. “Mr. President, it need not be quite as bad as all that. After all, we must choose the earth’s best specimens to carry on our race. I believe we will find that the combined populations of Europe and North America total somewhat less than a billion. If we go still further and eliminate all inferior. …”

Monsieur Pierre Duclos flushed. “Herr Oberfeld should keep in mind that his presence at this meeting at all was opposed vigorously by some of the delegates. Isn’t it somewhat too soon after his country’s debacle to again broadcast its super-race theories?”

The British representative spoke up. “My dear Duclos, although I agree with you completely in essence, still it must be pointed out that if we were to handle this allocation on a strictly numerical basis, that our Chinese friends would be alloted something like 200 colonists, while Great Britain would have perhaps twenty.”

Maxim Gregoroff grunted, “Hardly enough for the Royal family, eh?”

Lord Harriman was on his feet. “Sir, I might echo what Monsieur Duclos has said to Herr Oberfeld. It was in spite of the protest from a considerable number of delegates to this conference that your nation is represented at all.”

Gregoroff’s fist thumped on the table and his face went beet red. “It is as expected! You plan to monopolize the escape ship for the imperialistic nations! The atom bomb will probably be used to destroy all other countries!”

The President of the United States held up his hand. This whole thing was getting more chaotic by the minute. As a matter of fact, instructions from Congress were that he explain that the United States expected to have at least one third of the total. This, in view of the fact that the aliens had landed in New Jersey, obviously seeing that the United States was the foremost nation of the world, and, further, in view of the fact that this country was a melting pot of all nations and consequently produced what might be called the “average” member of the human race.

However, that would have to wait. Order had to be brought to this conference if anything was to be accomplished.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, please!” he called. “These accusations. We are getting nowhere. I have taken the liberty to make arrangements to have the representative of the newly formed Congress of American Sciences address you. Are you agreeable?” He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and meeting no objection, pressed the button on the table before him.

Professor Manklethorp was ushered in, bobbed his head to the assembled delegates and came to the point immediately. “The problem which you are discussing has many ramifications. I would like to bring to your attention a few which should be examined with care.

“First, the choice of colonists must not be on a national basis, nor on one based upon political or monetary prominence. If it is, we, as a race, are doomed. This new planet, no matter how well prepared for us by the Galactic Union, is going to be a challenge such as man has never faced before. This challenge cannot be met by politicians, no matter how glib, nor by wealthy men, no matter how many dollars they possess, nor by titled ones, no matter how old and honored their names. We must pick trained specialists who will be able to meet the problems that arise in the new world.

“Our congress recommends that all persons, of all nations, who have college degrees, be given thorough tests both for I.Q. and for accumulated knowledge, and that the highest thousand be chosen irrespective of nation or race.”

Pandit Hari Kuanai smiled quietly. “May I ask the learned professor a question?”

“Of course. That is why I am here. We want only to have this matter decided on a strictly scientific basis.”

“My poverty stricken country has a population of possibly one fifth of the world total, but fewer university men than one of your large cities might boast. Your desire to choose men by their I.Q. has its merits, but I have no doubt that in my country we have men of tremendous intelligence who cannot even read or write, aside from having a university degree. Must my widely illiterate people go unrepresented in the new world?”

A muscle twitched in the professor’s face. “Needless to say, the Congress of American Sciences has considered that. However, we must view this matter in a spirit of sacrifice. The best of the world’s population must go to the new world. Possibly whole nations will go without representation. It is too bad … but, unfortunately, necessary.”

Sven Carlesen put up his finger for recognition. “It seems to me there is another serious loophole in the professor’s recommendation. He wants the thousand to be made up of university graduates of high I.Q. and considerable accumulated knowledge. I am afraid I foresee the new world being populated with elderly scholars.” He smiled. “Like the professor himself, who, I understand, has a phenomenal I.Q.”

Monsieur Duclos nodded. “He is right. We must consider the need to send perfect physical specimens.” He looked down at his own small and bent body. “Gentlemen,” he said wryly, “has it occurred to you that none of us here at this conference are suitable to be represented among the thousand?”

They ignored him.

A pale faced delegate in black, who had thus far said nothing, spoke up softly, “I have been instructed to inform you that our organization demands that all of the colonists be of the true faith.”

His words were drowned by the shouting of half a dozen of the conference delegates. Loud above them all could be heard the bellow of Maxim Gregoroff.

“Our Union now includes the population of approximately half the world. Our allotment, consequently, will be five hundred colonists, of the one thousand. We will choose them by our own methods.”

Lord Harriman murmured, “Undoubtedly, by starting at the top of the party membership list and taking the first five hundred names beginning with your leader.”

The President of the United States ran his hand through his hair and then roughly down the side of his face. A messenger handed him a slip of paper. He read it and intensified his pounding on the table.

“Gentlemen,” he shouted. “If Professor Manklethorp is through, we have here a request from the International Physical Culture Society to have their representative heard.”

“I know,” Sven Carlesen said. “He wants all of the colonists to be able to chin themselves twenty-five times as the first requisite.”

At the end of the five year period the space ship came again, settling into the identical field where it had first landed. This time a delegation awaited it, and a multitude that stretched as far as the eye could see.

A telepathic message came from the visitor from space almost immediately.

Choose from your number three representatives to discuss the situation with us.

Within ten minutes, three advanced and entered the ship by way of a port that opened before them as they approached. Among their number was Pierre Duclos. A passage stretched before them, and, seeing no one, they hesitated a moment before following it to its further end. Monsieur Duclos led the way, depending only slightly on his cane to aid his bent body.

A door opened and they were confronted by the figure of a man seated at a desk. It was several moments before they realized that the entity before them was masked so cleverly that they had been led to believe him human.

He said in faultless English, “I note that you have penetrated my disguise. I thought it would be easier for you if I hid my true appearance. Until your people are used to alien life forms, I must use this measure.”

Monsieur Duclos bowed. “We appreciate your consideration, but I assure you that our. …”

The alien waved a gloved hand. “Please, no argument. My appearance would probably nauseate you. But it is of no importance. Pray be seated.” He noted the cane, and nodded to the little Frenchman. “You sir, must be highly thought of to rate being chosen one of the thousand in view of your age and health.”

Although he was not at ease in the presence of the representative of the Galactic Union, Monsieur Duclos allowed himself a wry smile. “You misunderstand. I am not one of the colonists. My presence here at this meeting is an honor that has been awarded me in return for some small services in aiding in the selection of the favored ones.”

“And what were these services?”

“Of no real importance. I suppose you might say that the most important was that I was the first to refuse to be a colonist.”

Bently, one of the other earthmen spoke up, “Had it not been for Pierre Duclos, it is doubtful if the thousand would have been chosen, and even possible that there would be no earth to which to return for your colonists.”

Behind the mask the eyes of the alien gleamed. “Enlighten me further, please.”

Duclos demurred. “You honor me overmuch, Mr. Bently. Let us approach the problem of the colonists and their transportation.”

But John Bently went on. “For more than two years after your ship’s departure, complete confusion reigned in regard to selection of the thousand. Happily, all out warfare between nations had been avoided although conditions were rapidly coming to a point where it was momentarily expected.

“Each race, each nation, each religion, even each sex, thought they should have the greater representation. And each of these groups in turn were divided into subgroups by wealth, age, class, education and others. Almost everyone on earth knew of some reason why he should be one of the colonists. And most of us were willing to take any steps to make our desire come true.”

The alien said, “That was to be expected. And then?”

“And then Pierre Duclos formed his Society of Racial Preservation whose first requisite for membership was a refusal to become one of the colonists. The purpose of the organization was to find the thousand most suitable colonists without regard to race, nationality, creed, color, education, class, wealth or any other grouping.

“At first, the growth of membership was slow, but, after a time, man saw that his chance of survival as an individual was practically nil, that his chance of being chosen was at best less than one in two million. When he realized this, his next desire was to make sure that, even though he as an individual was doomed, the race survived. Membership in the society grew rapidly and internationally. The members, you might say, were fanatical. Why not? They knew that they had less than five years to live. Why not sacrifice those last years of life to such a noble cause?

“As the society grew in strength, nothing could stand before it. Governments that stood in the way were overthrown, social systems abolished, prejudices and institutions that had stood for centuries were wiped out. It became necessary to institute world government, to guarantee to all equal opportunity. Step by step, the society took the measures necessary to insure the selection of the best specimens earth had to offer.

“And scientific development was pushed to the utmost. We wished to send our colonists off with as much as earth could possibly give them. We eliminated a dozen diseases that have plagued us for centuries; we devised a thousand new tools and techniques.”

“In short,” said the alien, “because of this stimulus, man has progressed as much in this past few years as he could have expected in the next fifty.”

“That is correct,” Pierre Duclos said. “It is unfortunate that now we have on our threshold a world really worth living in, that it is fated to be destroyed.”

“I see,” said the alien, what would have been a smile on a human face flickered on his. “I am glad to report that the danger which confronted the earth has been removed and the need to populate the new planet with colonists in order to preserve your race is now eliminated.

“Gentlemen, the earth is safe. Man may go on with his plans without fear of destruction.”

Monsieur Duclos fingered his cane thoughtfully while the other two earthmen jumped to their feet, thumped each other’s backs, shouted, and otherwise demonstrated their joy. They finally dashed from the room and from the space craft to give the news to the world.

The alien eyed the little Frenchman. “And why have you remained?”

“I do not believe the world was faced with destruction, monsieur. I have come to the conclusion that you have perpetrated a farce upon mankind.”

The alien sat himself down at the desk again. “I see you will need an explanation. But you are wrong, you know. Faced with destruction you were. The destruction, however, was not a matter of collision with some other body, or whatever you might have imagined. The destruction would have come from within. Man was on the verge of destroying himself. One more conflict, or, at most, two, would have done it.

“The Galactic Union has long been aware of man who has developed mechanically in a phenomenal manner but has not been able to develop socially to the point where his science is less than a danger. This ship was sent to you in hopes of accomplishing exactly what has been accomplished. We believed your racial instinct would be strong enough to unite you when the race as a whole thought it was threatened with extinction.”

The alien got to his feet. “I am afraid we must leave now. Let me say that I hope that man will soon be able to take his place in the Galactic Union.”

Monsieur Duclos winced. “The Galactic Union,” he said. “The League of Nations and the United Nations were bad enough.” He smiled wryly. “And I thought that with the establishment of a world government, we had abolished such conferences forever. I can just see myself as the first delegate from earth. Heaven forbid!”

Happy Ending

By Mack Reynolds and Frederic Brown

There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic Guards.

The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at their goal, hunched and silent, bundled up in a greatcoat against the coolness of space—a greatcoat which he would never need again after this morning. The brim of his hat was pulled down far over his forehead, and he studied the nearing shore through dark-lensed glasses. Bandages, as though for a broken jaw, covered most of the lower part of his face.

He realized suddenly that the dark glasses, now that they had left the cruiser, were unnecessary. He slipped them off. After the cinematographic grays his eyes had seen through these lenses for so long, the brilliance of the color below him was almost like a blow. He blinked, and looked again.

They were rapidly settling toward a shoreline, a beach. The sand was a dazzling, unbelievable white such as had never been on his home planet. Blue the sky and water, and green the edge of the fantastic jungle. There was a flash of red in the green, as they came still closer, and he realized suddenly that it must be a marigee, the semi-intelligent Venusian parrot once so popular as pets throughout the solar system.

Throughout the system blood and steel had fallen from the sky and ravished the planets, but now it fell no more.

And now this. Here in this forgotten portion of an almost completely destroyed world it had not fallen at all.

Only in some place like this, alone, was safety for him. Elsewhere—anywhere—imprisonment or, more likely, death. There was danger, even here. Three of the crew of the space-cruiser knew. Perhaps, someday, one of them would talk. Then they would come for him, even here.

But that was a chance he could not avoid. Nor were the odds bad, for three people out of a whole solar system knew where he was. And those three were loyal fools.

The lifeboat came gently to rest. The hatch swung open and he stepped out and walked a few paces up the beach. He turned and waited while the two spacemen who had guided the craft brought his chest out and carried it across the beach and to the corrugated-tin shack just at the edge of the trees. That shack had once been a space-radar relay station. Now the equipment it had held was long gone, the antenna mast taken down. But the shack still stood. It would be his home for a while. A long while. The two men returned to the lifeboat preparatory to leaving.

And now the captain stood facing him, and the captain’s face was a rigid mask. It seemed with an effort that the captain’s right arm remained at his side, but that effort had been ordered. No salute.

The captain’s voice, too, was rigid with unemotion. “Number One …”

“Silence!” And then, less bitterly. “Come further from the boat before you again let your tongue run loose. Here.” They had reached the shack.

“You are right, Number …”

“No. I am no longer Number One. You must continue to think of me as Mister Smith, your cousin, whom you brought here for the reasons you explained to the under-officers, before you surrender your ship. If you think of me so, you will be less likely to slip in your speech.”

“There is nothing further I can do—Mister Smith?”

“Nothing. Go now.”

“And I am ordered to surrender the—”

“There are no orders. The war is over, lost. I would suggest thought as to what spaceport you put into. In some you may receive humane treatment. In others—”

The captain nodded. “In others, there is great hatred. Yes. That is all?”

“That is all. And, Captain, your running of the blockade, your securing of fuel en route, have constituted a deed of high valor. All I can give you in reward is my thanks. But now go. Goodbye.”

“Not goodbye,” the captain blurted impulsively, “but hasta la vista, auf Wiedersehen, until the day … you will permit me, for the last time to address you and salute?”

The man in the greatcoat shrugged. “As you will.”

Click of heels and a salute that once greeted the Caesars, and later the pseudo-Aryan of the 20th Century, and, but yesterday, he who was now known as the last of the dictators. “Farewell, Number One!”

“Farewell,” he answered emotionlessly.

Mr. Smith, a black dot on the dazzling white sand, watched the lifeboat disappear up into the blue, finally into the haze of the upper atmosphere of Venus. That eternal haze that would always be there to mock his failure and his bitter solitude.

The slow days snarled by, and the sun shone dimly, and the marigee screamed in the early dawn and all day and at sunset, and sometimes there were the six-legged baroons, monkey-like in the trees, that gibbered at him. And the rains came and went away again.

At nights there were drums in the distance. Not the martial roll of marching, nor yet a threatening note of savage hate. Just drums, many miles away, throbbing rhythm for native dances or exorcising, perhaps, the forest-night demons. He assumed these Venusians had their superstitions, all other races had. There was no threat, for him, in that throbbing that was like the beating of the jungle’s heart.

Mr. Smith knew that, for although his choice of destinations had been a hasty choice, yet there had been time for him to read the available reports. The natives were harmless and friendly. A Terran missionary had lived among them some time ago—before the outbreak of the war. They were a simple, weak race. They seldom went far from their villages; the space-radar operator who had once occupied the shack reported that he had never seen one of them.

So, there would be no difficulty in avoiding the natives, nor danger if he did encounter them.

Nothing to worry about, except the bitterness.

Not the bitterness of regret, but of defeat. Defeat at the hands of the defeated. The damned Martians who came back after he had driven them halfway across their damned arid planet. The Jupiter Satellite Confederation landing endlessly on the home planet, sending their vast armadas of spacecraft daily and nightly to turn his mighty cities into dust. In spite of everything; in spite of his score of ultra-vicious secret weapons and the last desperate efforts of his weakened armies, most of whose men were under twenty or over forty.

The treachery even in his own army, among his own generals and admirals. The turn of Luna, that had been the end.

His people would rise again. But not, now after Armageddon, in his lifetime. Not under him, nor another like him. The last of the dictators.

Hated by a solar system, and hating it.

It would have been intolerable, save that he was alone. He had foreseen that—the need for solitude. Alone, he was still Number One. The presence of others would have forced recognition of his miserably changed status. Alone, his pride was undamaged. His ego was intact.

The long days, and the marigees’ screams, the slithering swish of the surf, the ghost-quiet movements of the baroons in the trees and the raucousness of their shrill voices. Drums.

Those sounds, and those alone. But perhaps silence would have been worse.

For the times of silence were louder. Times he would pace the beach at night and overhead would be the roar of jets and rockets, the ships that had roared over New Albuquerque, his capitol, in those last days before he had fled. The crump of bombs and the screams and the blood, and the flat voices of his folding generals.

Those were the days when the waves of hatred from the conquered peoples beat upon his country as the waves of a stormy sea beat upon crumbling cliffs. Leagues back of the battered lines, you could feel that hate and vengeance as a tangible thing, a thing that thickened the air, that made breathing difficult and talking futile.

And the spacecraft, the jets, the rockets, the damnable rockets, more every day and every night, and ten coming for every one shot down. Rocket ships raining hell from the sky, havoc and chaos and the end of hope.

And then he knew that he had been hearing another sound, hearing it often and long at a time. It was a voice that shouted invective and ranted hatred and glorified the steel might of his planet and the destiny of a man and a people.

It was his own voice, and it beat back the waves from the white shore, it stopped their wet encroachment upon this, his domain. It screamed back at the baroons and they were silent. And at times he laughed, and the marigee laughed. Sometimes, the queerly shaped Venusian trees talked too, but their voices were quieter. The trees were submissive, they were good subjects.

Sometimes, fantastic thoughts went through his head. The race of trees, the pure race of trees that never interbred, that stood firm always. Someday the trees—

But that was just a dream, a fancy. More real were the marigee and the kifs. They were the ones who persecuted him. There was the marigee who would shriek “All is lost!” He had shot at it a hundred times with his needle gun, but always it flew away unharmed. Sometimes it did not even fly away.

“All is lost!”

At last he wasted no more needle darts. He stalked it to strangle it with his bare hands. That was better. On what might have been the thousandth try, he caught it and killed it, and there was warm blood on his hands and feathers were flying.

That should have ended it, but it didn’t. Now there were a dozen marigee that screamed that all was lost. Perhaps there had been a dozen all along. Now he merely shook his fist at them or threw stones.

The kifs, the Venusian equivalent of the Terran ant, stole his food. But that did not matter; there was plenty of food. There had been a cache of it in the shack, meant to restock a space-cruiser, and never used. The kifs would not get at it until he opened a can, but then, unless he ate it all at once, they ate whatever he left. That did not matter. There were plenty of cans. And always fresh fruit from the jungle. Always in season, for there were no seasons here, except the rains.

But the kifs served a purpose for him. They kept him sane, by giving him something tangible, something inferior, to hate.

Oh, it wasn’t hatred, at first. Mere annoyance. He killed them in a routine sort of way at first. But they kept coming back. Always there were kifs. In his larder, wherever he did it. In his bed. He sat the legs of the cot in dishes of gasoline, but the kifs still got in. Perhaps they dropped from the ceiling, although he never caught them doing it.

They bothered his sleep. He’d feel them running over him, even when he’d spent an hour picking the bed clean of them by the light of the carbide lantern. They scurried with tickling little feet and he could not sleep.

He grew to hate them, and the very misery of his nights made his days more tolerable by giving them an increasing purpose. A pogrom against the kifs. He sought out their holes by patiently following one bearing a bit of food, and he poured gasoline into the hole and the earth around it, taking satisfaction in the thought of the writhings in agony below. He went about hunting kifs, to step on them. To stamp them out. He must have killed millions of kifs.

But always there were as many left. Never did their number seem to diminish in the slightest. Like the Martians—but unlike the Martians, they did not fight back.

Theirs was the passive resistance of a vast productivity that bred kifs ceaselessly, overwhelmingly, billions to replace millions. Individual kifs could be killed, and he took savage satisfaction in their killing, but he knew his methods were useless save for the pleasure and the purpose they gave him. Sometimes the pleasure would pall in the shadow of its futility, and he would dream of mechanized means of killing them.

He read carefully what little material there was in his tiny library about the kif. They were astonishingly like the ants of Terra. So much that there had been speculation about their relationship—that didn’t interest him. How could they be killed, en masse? Once a year, for a brief period, they took on the characteristics of the army ants of Terra. They came from their holes in endless numbers and swept everything before them in their devouring march. He wet his lips when he read that. Perhaps the opportunity would come then to destroy, to destroy, and destroy.

Almost, Mr. Smith forgot people and the solar system and what had been. Here in this new world, there was only he and the kifs. The baroons and the marigee didn’t count. They had no order and no system. The kifs—

In the intensity of his hatred there slowly filtered through a grudging admiration. The kifs were true totalitarians. They practiced what he had preached to a mightier race, practiced it with a thoroughness beyond the kind of man to comprehend.

Theirs the complete submergence of the individual to the state, theirs the complete ruthlessness of the true conqueror, the perfect selfless bravery of the true soldier.

But they got into his bed, into his clothes, into his food.

They crawled with intolerable tickling feet.

Nights he walked the beach, and that night was one of the noisy nights. There were high-flying, high-whining jet-craft up there in the moonlight sky and their shadows dappled the black water of the sea. The planes, the rockets, the jet-craft, they were what had ravaged his cities, had turned his railroads into twisted steel, had dropped their H-Bombs on his most vital factories.

He shook his fist at them and shrieked imprecations at the sky.

And when he had ceased shouting, there were voices on the beach. Conrad’s voice in his ear, as it had sounded that day when Conrad had walked into the palace, white-faced, and forgotten the salute. “There is a breakthrough at Denver, Number One! Toronto and Monterey are in danger. And in the other hemispheres—” His voice cracked. “—the damned Martians and the traitors from Luna are driving over the Argentine. Others have landed near New Petrograd. It is a rout. All is lost!”

Voices crying, “Number One, hail! Number One, hail!”

A sea of hysterical voices. “Number One, hail! Number One—”

A voice that was louder, higher, more frenetic than any of the others. His memory of his own voice, calculated but inspired, as he’d heard it on playbacks of his own speeches.

The voices of children chanting, “To thee, O Number One—” He couldn’t remember the rest of the words, but they had been beautiful words. That had been at the public school meet in the New Los Angeles. How strange that he should remember, here and now, the very tone of his voice and inflection, the shining wonder in their children’s eyes. Children only, but they were willing to kill and die, for him, convinced that all that was needed to cure the ills of the race was a suitable leader to follow.

“All is lost!”

And suddenly the monster jet-craft were swooping downward and starkly he realized what a clear target he presented, here against the white moonlit beach. They must see him.

The crescendo of motors as he ran, sobbing now in fear, for the cover of the jungle. Into the screening shadow of the giant trees, and the sheltering blackness.

He stumbled and fell, was up and running again. And now his eyes could see in the dimmer moonlight that filtered through the branches overhead. Stirrings there, in the branches. Stirrings and voices in the night. Voices in and of the night. Whispers and shrieks of pain. Yes, he’d shown them pain, and now their tortured voices ran with him through the knee-deep, night-wet grass among the trees.

The night was hideous with noise. Red noises, an almost tangible din that he could nearly feel as well as he could see and hear it. And after a while his breath came raspingly, and there was a thumping sound that was the beating of his heart and the beating of the night.

And then, he could run no longer, and he clutched a tree to keep from falling, his arms trembling about it, and his face pressed against the impersonal roughness of the bark. There was no wind, but the tree swayed back and forth and his body with it.

Then, as abruptly as light goes on when a switch is thrown, the noise vanished. Utter silence, and at last he was strong enough to let go his grip on the tree and stand erect again, to look about to get his bearings.

One tree was like another, and for a moment he thought he’d have to stay here until daylight. Then he remembered that the sound of the surf would give him his directions. He listened hard and heard it, faint and far away.

And another sound—one that he had never heard before—faint, also, but seeming to come from his right and quite near.

He looked that way, and there was a patch of opening in the trees above. The grass was waving strangely in that area of moonlight. It moved, although there was no breeze to move it. And there was an almost sudden edge, beyond which the blades thinned out quickly to barrenness.

And the sound—it was like the sound of the surf, but it was continuous. It was more like the rustle of dry leaves, but there were no dry leaves to rustle.

Mr. Smith took a step toward the sound and looked down. More grass bent, and fell, and vanished, even as he looked. Beyond the moving edge of devastation was a brown floor of the moving bodies of kifs.

Row after row, orderly rank after orderly rank, marching resistlessly onward. Billions of kifs, an army of kifs, eating their way across the night.

Fascinated, he stared down at them. There was no danger, for their progress was slow. He retreated a step to keep beyond their front rank. The sound, then, was the sound of chewing.

He could see one edge of the column, and it was a neat, orderly edge. And there was discipline, for the ones on the outside were larger than those in the center.

He retreated another step—and then, quite suddenly, his body was afire in several spreading places. The vanguard. Ahead of the rank that ate away the grass.

His boots were brown with kifs.

Screaming with pain, he whirled about and ran, beating with his hands at the burning spots on his body. He ran head-on into a tree, bruising his face horribly, and the night was scarlet with pain and shooting fire.

But he staggered on, almost blindly, running, writhing, tearing off his clothes as he ran.

This, then, was pain. There was a shrill screaming in his ears that must have been the sound of his own voice.

When he could no longer run, he crawled. Naked, now, and with only a few kifs still clinging to him. And the blind tangent of his flight had taken him well out of the path of the advancing army.

But stark fear and the memory of unendurable pain drove him on. His knees raw now, he could no longer crawl. But he got himself erect again on trembling legs, and staggered on. Catching hold of a tree and pushing himself away from it to catch the next.

Falling, rising, falling again. His throat raw from the screaming invective of his hate. Bushes and the rough bark of trees tore his flesh.

Into the village compound just before dawn, staggered a man, a naked terrestrial. He looked about with dull eyes that seemed to see nothing and understand nothing.

The females and young ran before him, even the males retreated.

He stood there, swaying, and the incredulous eyes of the natives widened as they saw the condition of his body, and the blankness of his eyes.

When he made no hostile move, they came closer again, formed a wondering, chattering circle about him, these Venusian humanoids. Some ran to bring the chief and the chief’s son, who knew everything.

The mad, naked human opened his lips as though he were going to speak, but instead, he fell. He fell, as a dead man falls. But when they turned him over in the dust, they saw that his chest still rose and fell in labored breathing.

And then came Alwa, the aged chieftain, and Nrana, his son. Alwa gave quick, excited orders. Two of the men carried Mr. Smith into the chief’s hut, and the wives of the chief and the chief’s son took over the Earthling’s care, and rubbed him with a soothing and healing salve.

But for days and nights he lay without moving and without speaking or opening his eyes, and they did not know whether he would live or die.

Then, at last, he opened his eyes. And he talked, although they could make out nothing of the things he said.

Nrana came and listened, for Nrana of all of them spoke and understood best the Earthling’s language, for he had been the special protégé of the Terran missionary who had lived with them for a while.

Nrana listened, but he shook his head. “The words,” he said, “the words are of the Terran tongue, but I make nothing of them. His mind is not well.”

The aged Alwa said, “Aie. Stay beside him. Perhaps as his body heals, his words will be beautiful words as were the words of the Father-of-Us who, in the Terran tongue, taught us of the gods and their good.”

So they cared for him well, and his wounds healed, and the day came when he opened his eyes and saw the handsome blue-complexioned face of Nrana sitting there beside him, and Nrana said softly, “Good day, Mr. Man of Earth. You feel better, no?”

There was no answer, and the deep-sunken eyes of the man on the sleeping mat stared, glared at him. Nrana could see that those eyes were not yet sane, but he saw, too, that the madness in them was not the same that it had been. Nrana did not know the words for delirium and paranoia, but he could distinguish between them.

No longer was the Earthling a raving maniac, and Nrana made a very common error, an error more civilized beings than he have often made. He thought the paranoia was an improvement over the wider madness. He talked on, hoping the Earthling would talk too, and he did not recognize the danger of his silence.

“We welcome you, Earthling,” he said, “and hope that you will live among us, as did the Father-of-Us, Mr. Gerhardt. He taught us to worship the true gods of the high heavens. Jehovah, and Jesus and their prophets the men from the skies. He taught us to pray and to love our enemies.”

And Nrana shook his head sadly, “But many of our tribe have gone back to the older gods, the cruel gods. They say there has been great strife among the outsiders, and no more remain upon all of Venus. My father, Alwa, and I are glad another one has come. You will be able to help those of us who have gone back. You can teach us love and kindliness.”

The eyes of the dictator closed. Nrana did not know whether or not he slept, but Nrana stood up quietly to leave the hut. In the doorway, he turned and said, “We pray for you.”

And then, joyously, he ran out of the village to seek the others, who were gathering bela-berries for the feast of the fourth event.

When, with several of them, he returned to the village, the Earthling was gone. The hut was empty.

Outside the compound they found, at last, the trail of his passing. They followed and it led to a stream and along the stream until they came to the taboo of the green pool, and could go no farther.

“He went downstream,” said Alwa gravely. “He sought the sea and the beach. He was well then, in his mind, for he knew that all streams go to the sea.”

“Perhaps he had a ship-of-the-sky there at the beach,” Nrana said worriedly. “All Earthlings come from the sky. The Father-of-Us told us that.”

“Perhaps he will come back to us,” said Alwa. His old eyes misted.

Mr. Smith was coming back all right, and sooner than they had dared to hope. As soon in fact, as he could make the trip to the shack and return. He came back dressed in clothing very different from the garb the other white man had worn. Shining leather boots and the uniform of the Galactic Guard, and a wide leather belt with a holster for his needle gun.

But the gun was in his hand when, at dusk, he strode into the compound.

He said, “I am Number One, the Lord of all the Solar System, and your ruler. Who was chief among you?”

Alwa had been in his hut, but he heard the words and came out. He understood the words, but not their meaning. He said, “Earthling, we welcome you back. I am the chief.”

“You were the chief. Now you will serve me. I am the chief.”

Alwa’s old eyes were bewildered at the strangeness of this. He said, “I will serve you, yes. All of us. But it is not fitting that an Earthling should be chief among—”

The whisper of the needle gun. Alwa’s wrinkled hands went to his scrawny neck where, just off the center, was a sudden tiny pin prick of a hole. A faint trickle of red coursed over the dark blue of his skin. The old man’s knees gave way under him as the rage of the poisoned needle dart struck him, and he fell. Others started toward him.

“Back,” said Mr. Smith. “Let him die slowly that you may all see what happens to—”

But one of the chief’s wives, one who did not understand the speech of Earth, was already lifting Alwa’s head. The needle gun whispered again, and she fell forward across him.

“I am Number One,” said Mr. Smith, “and Lord of all the planets. All who oppose me, die by—”

And then, suddenly all of them were running toward him. His finger pressed the trigger and four of them died before the avalanche of their bodies bore him down and overwhelmed him. Nrana had been first in that rush, and Nrana died.

The others tied the Earthling up and threw him into one of the huts. And then, while the women began wailing for the dead, the men made council.

They elected Kallana chief and he stood before them and said, “The Father-of-Us, the Mister Gerhardt, deceived us.” There was fear and worry in his voice and apprehension on his blue face. “If this be indeed the Lord of whom he told us—”

“He is not a god,” said another. “He is an Earthling, but there have been such before on Venus, many many of them who came long and long ago from the skies. Now they are all dead, killed in strife among themselves. It is well. This last one is one of them, but he is mad.”

And they talked long and the dusk grew into night while they talked of what they must do. The gleam of firelight upon their bodies, and the waiting drummer.

The problem was difficult. To harm one who was mad was taboo. If he was really a god, it would be worse. Thunder and lightning from the sky would destroy the village. Yet they dared not release him. Even if they took the evil weapon-that-whispered-its-death and buried it, he might find other ways to harm them. He might have another where he had gone for the first.

Yes, it was a difficult problem for them, but the eldest and wisest of them, one M’Ganne, gave them at last the answer.

“O Kallana,” he said, “Let us give him to the kifs. If they harm him—” and old M’Ganne grinned a toothless, mirthless grin “—it would be their doing and not ours.”

Kallana shuddered. “It is the most horrible of all deaths. And if he is a god—”

“If he is a god, they will not harm him. If he is mad and not a god, we will not have harmed him. It harms not a man to tie him to a tree.”

Kallana considered well, for the safety of his people was at stake. Considering, he remembered how Alwa and Nrana had died.

He said, “It is right.”

The waiting drummer began the rhythm of the council-end, and those of the men who were young and fleet lighted torches in the fire and went out into the forest to seek the kifs, who were still in their season of marching.

And after a while, having found what they sought, they returned.

They took the Earthling out with them, then, and tied him to a tree. They left him there, and they left the gag over his lips because they did not wish to hear his screams when the kifs came.

The cloth of the gag would be eaten, too, but by that time, there would be no flesh under it from which a scream might come.

They left him, and went back to the compound, and the drums took up the rhythm of propitiation to the gods for what they had done. For they had, they knew, cut very close to the corner of a taboo—but the provocation had been great and they hoped they would not be punished.

All night the drums would throb.

The man tied to the tree struggled with his bonds, but they were strong and his writhings made the knots but tighten.

His eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

He tried to shout, “I am Number One, Lord of—”

And then, because he could not shout and because he could not loosen himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was, and all the old hatreds and bitterness welled up in him.

He remembered, too, what had happened in the compound, and wondered why the Venusian natives had not killed him. Why, instead, they had tied him here alone in the darkness of the jungle.

Afar, he heard the throbbing of the drums, and they were like the beating of the heart of night, and there was a louder, nearer sound that was the pulse of blood in his ears as the fear came to him.

The fear that he knew why they had tied him here. The horrible, gibbering fear that, for the last time, an army marched against him.

He had time to savor that fear to the uttermost, to have it become a creeping certainty that crawled into the black corners of his soul as would the soldiers of the coming army crawl into his ears and nostrils while others would eat away his eyelids to get at the eyes behind them.

And then, and only then, did he hear the sound that was like the rustle of dry leaves, in a dank, black jungle where there were no dry leaves to rustle nor breeze to rustle them.

Horribly, Number One, the last of the dictators, did not go mad again; not exactly, but he laughed, and laughed and laughed. …

After Some Tomorrow

Before the first shots rang out, Alan had been sitting with some twenty young people of the Wolf clan in a grove of aspen approximately halfway between the fields and the citadel on the hilltop. He had been teaching them myth-legend and, as usual, the girls were bored and unbelieving, the boys open mouthed.

He realized, even as he spoke, that the telling had changed even since his own youth. As a boy of ten, before it was definitely known whether or not he was a sterilie, he had sat at the feet of the Turtle clan’s husband as open mouthed as those who sat at his feet now. But the telling was different. Now, had he spoken openly of when men bore weapons and women lived at home with the children, he would have crossed the boundaries of decency. It hadn’t been so in his own youth, but then, when he was a boy, they had been one generation nearer to the old days, which weren’t so far back after all.

Helen complained, “This is so silly, Alan. Why don’t you tell us something about … well, about hunting, or true fighting?”

He looked at her. Could this be a daughter of his? Tall for her fourteen years and straight, clear of eye, aggressive and brooking of no nonsense. The old books told of the femininity of women, but. …

The shots went bang, bang, bang, from below, faint in the half mile or more of distance. And then bang, bang again and several booms from the new muzzle loading muskets.

Helen was on her feet first, her eyes flashing. Instantly she was in command. “Alan,” she snapped. “Quick, to the citadel. All of you boys, hurry! To the citadel!”

She whirled to her older classmates. “Ruth, Margo, Jenny, Paula. Get stones, sharp stones. You younger girls go with Alan. See if you can help at the citadel. We’ll come last. Hurry Alan.”

Alan was already off, herding the boys before him. Possibly all of them were sterilies and so wouldn’t count. But you never knew.

As they climbed the hill, he looked back over his shoulder. Down in the fields he could see the workers scattering for their weapons and for cover. One stumbled and was down. In the distance he couldn’t make out whether she had fallen accidentally or been wounded. Further beyond the fields he could see the smoke from a half dozen or more places where the shots had originated. It didn’t seem to be an attack in force.

Not far up the hill from the field workers, on a overhanging boulder in a lookout position, he could make out Vivian, the scout chief. She sat, seemingly in unconcerned ease, one elbow supported on a knee as her telescoped rifle went crack, crack, crack. If he knew Vivian there was more than one casualty among the raiders.

Who could it be this time? Deer from the south, Coyote or Horse from the east? Possibly Eagles, Crows or Dogs from Denver way. The clan couldn’t stand much more of this pressure. It was the third raid in six months. They couldn’t stand it and put in a crop, nor could the drain on the arsenal be maintained. He had heard that the Turtle clan, near Colorado Springs, the clan of his birth, had got to the point where they were using bows and arrows even for defense. If so, it wouldn’t be long before they would be losing their husband.

He was puffing somewhat by the time they reached the citadel. Helen and her four girls were coming much more slowly, watching the progress of the fight below them, keeping their eyes peeled for a possible break through of individual enemies. The stones in their hands were pathetically brave.

The rounded citadel building, stone built, loopholed for rifles, loomed before them. He swung open the door and hurried inside.

“Hello, honey,” a strange voice said pseudo-pleasantly. “Hey, you’re kind of cute.”

Alan’s eyes went from the two figures before him, automatic rifles cuddled under their arms, to the two Wolf clan sentries collapsed in their own blood on the floor. They had paid for lack of vigilance with their lives.

He could see that the strangers were of different clans by their kilts, one a Horse the other a Crow. This would mean two clans had united in order to raid the Wolves and that, in turn, would mean the Wolves were outnumbered as much as two to one.

“Relax, darling,” the second one said, a lewd quality in her voice. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.” Her eyes took in the dozen boys ranging in age from five to twelve. “Look like a bunch of sterilies to me,” she sneered. “Get them up above, and those girls too. You stay here where we can watch you, honey.”

The Crow went to a small window, stared down below. “Wanda is holding them pretty well but they’re beginning to work their way back in this direction.” She laughed harshly. “These Wolves never could fight.”

Her companion fingered the Bren gun which lay on the heavy table top in the round room’s center. Aside from four equally heavily constructed chairs the table was the large room’s sole furniture. While Alan was ushering the boys and younger girls up to the second floor where they would be safe, the Horse said musingly, “We could turn this loose on them even at this distance.”

The Crow shook her head. “No. It’ll be better to wait until they’re closer. Besides, by that time Peggy and her group’ll be coming up from the arroyo. There won’t be a Wolf left half an hour from now.”

Alan, his stomach empty, stared out the loophole nearest him.

One of the women said, grinning, “You better get away from there, honey. Make you sick. That’s a mighty pretty suit you’ve got on. Make it yourself?”

“No,” Alan said. As a matter of fact one of the sterilies had made it.

She laughed. “Well, don’t be so uppity. You’re going to have to learn how to be nice to me, you know.”

Both of them laughed, but Alan said nothing. He wondered how long the women of these clans had been without a husband.

Down below he could make out the progress of the fighting and then realized the battle plan of the aggressors. They must have planned it for months, waiting until the season was such that practically the whole Wolf clan, and particularly the fighters, would be at work in the fields. They’d sent these two scouts, probably their best warriors, to take the citadel by stealth. Only two of them, more would have been conspicuous.

They had then, with a limited force, opened fire on the field workers, pinning them down temporarily.

Meanwhile, the main body was ascending the arroyo to the left, completely hidden from the defending forces although they would have been in open sight from above had the citadel remained uncaptured.

Alan could see plainly what the next fifteen minutes would mean. The Wolf clan would draw back on the citadel, Vivian and her younger warriors bringing up the rear. When they broke into the clear and started the last dash for the safety of their fortress, they would be in the open and at the mercy of the crossfire from arroyo and citadel.

If only these two had failed in their attempt to. …

The Crow woman said, “Look at this. Five young brats with stones in their hands. What do you say?”

It was Helen and her four girls.

Alan said, “They’re only children! You can’t. …”

“You be quiet, sweetheart. We can’t be bothered with you.”

The Horse said, “Two years from now they’ll all be warriors. Here, let me turn this on them.”

Alan closed his eyes and he wanted to retch as he heard the automatic rifle speak out in five short bursts. In spite of himself he opened them again. Helen, his first born, Paula, his second. Ruth, Margo and Jenny, all his children. They were crumbled like rag dolls, fifty feet from the citadel door.

Now he was able to tell himself that he should have called out a warning. One or two of them, at least, might have escaped. Might have escaped to warn the approaching fighters of the trap behind them. Tradition had been too strong within him, the tradition that a man did not interfere in the business of the warriors, that war was a thing apart.

Jenny’s body moved, stirred again, and she tried to drag herself away. Little Jenny, twelve years old. The rifle spat just once again and she slumped forward and remained quiet.

“Little bitch,” the Crow woman said.

The heavy chair was in his hands and high above his head, he had brought it down on her before the rage of his hate had allowed him to think of what he was doing. The chair splintered but there was still a good half of it in his hands when he spun on the Horse woman. She stepped back, her eyes wide in disbelief. As her companion went down, the side of her face and her scalp welling blood, the Horse at first brought up her rifle and then, in despair, tried to reverse it to use its butt as a club.

She was stumbling backward, trying to get out of the way of his improvised weapon, when her heel caught on the body of one of the fallen Wolf sentries. She tried to catch herself, her eyes still staring horrified disbelief, even as he caught her over the head, and then once again. He beat her, beat her hysterically, until he knew she must be dead.

He worked now in a mental vacuum, all but unconsciously. He ran to the stair bottom and called, “Come down,” his voice was shrill. “Alice, Tommy, all of you.”

They came, hesitantly, and when they saw the shambles of the room stared at him with as much disbelief as had the enemy women. He pointed a finger at the oldest of the girls. “Alice,” he said, “you’ve been given instruction by the warriors. How is the Bren gun fired?”

The eleven year old bug eyed at him. “But you’re a husband, Alan. …”

“How is it fired?” he shrilled. “Unless you tell me, there will be no Wolf clan left!”

He lugged the heavy gun to the window, mounted it there as he had seen the women do in practice.

“Tommy,” he said to a thirteen-year-old boy. “Quick, get me a pan of ammunition.”

“I can’t,” Tommy all but wailed.

“Get it!”

“I can’t. It’s … it’s unmanly!” Tommy melted into a sea of tears, utterly confused.

“Maureen,” Alan snapped, cooler now. “Get me a pan of ammunition for the Bren gun. Quickly. Alice, show me how the gun is charged.”

Alice was at his side, trying to explain. He would have let her take over had she been larger, but he knew she couldn’t handle the bucking of the weapon. Maureen had returned with the ammunition, slipped it expertly into place. She too had had instructions in the gun’s operation.

Alan ran his eyes down the arroyo. There were possibly forty of them, Horses and Crows—well armed, he could see. Less than a quarter of them had the new muzzle loaders being resorted to by many as ammunition stocks for the old arms became increasingly rare. The others had ancient arms, rifles, both military and sport, one or two tommy guns.

He waited another three or four minutes, one eye cocked on the progress of the running battle below. Vivian, the scout chief, had dropped back to take over command of the younger warriors. She was probably beginning to smell a rat. The intensity of fire wasn’t such as to suggest a large body of enemy.

The women in the arroyo were placed now as he wanted them. He forced himself to keep his eyes open as he pressed the trigger.

Blat, blat, blat.

The gun spoke, kicking high the dust and gravel before the Horse and Crow warriors advancing up the arroyo.

They stopped, startled. The citadel was supposedly in their hands.

They reversed themselves and scurried back to get out of their exposed position.

He touched the trigger again. Blat, blat, blat. The heavy slugs tore up the arroyo wall behind them, they could retreat no further without running into his fire.

They stopped, confused.

Alan said, “Maureen, get another pan of ammunition. I’ll have to hold them there until Vivian comes up. Alice, run down to the matriarch and tell her about the warriors in the arroyo. Quickly, now.”

Little Alice said sourly, “A husband shouldn’t interfere in warrior affairs,” but she went.

When Vivian strode into the citadel she had her sniper rifle slung over her back and was admiring a tommy gun she had taken from one of the captured Horses. “Perfect,” she said, stroking the stock. “Perfect shape. And they seem to have worlds of ammunition too. Must have made some kind of deal with the Denver clans.”

Her eyes swept the room and her mouth turned down in sour amusement. The Horse woman was dead and the Crow had by now been marched off to take her place with the other prisoners who were being held in the stone corral.

“What warriors,” she said contemptuously. “A man overcomes two of them. Two of them, mind you.” She looked at Alan, the reaction was upon him now and he was white-faced and couldn’t keep his hands from trembling. “What a cutie you turned out to be. Who ever heard of such a thing?”

Alan said, defensively, “They didn’t expect it. I took them unawares.”

Vivian laughed aloud, her even white teeth sparkling in the redness of her lips. She was tall, shapely, a twenty-five-year-old goddess in her Wolf clan kilts. “I’ll bet you did, sweetie.”

One of the other warriors entered from behind Vivian, looked at the dead Horse woman and shuddered. “What a way to die, not even able to defend yourself.” She said to Vivian worriedly, “They’ve got an awful lot of equipment, chief.”

Vivian said, “Well, what’re you worrying about, Jean? We have it now.”

The girl said, “They have three tommy guns, four automatic rifles, twenty grenades and forty sticks of dynamite.”

Vivian was impatient. “They had them, now they’re ours. It’s good, not bad.”

Jean said doggedly, “These raids are coming more and more often. We’ve lost ten fighters in less than a year. And each time they come at us they’re better equipped and there’re more of them.” She looked over at Alan. “If it hadn’t been for this … this queer way things worked out, they’d have our husband now and we’d be done for.”

“Well, it didn’t happen that way,” Vivian said abruptly, “and we still have our husband and we’re going to keep him. This wasn’t a bad action at all. They killed three of us, we’ve got more than forty of them.”

“Not three, eight,” Jean said. “You forget the five girls. In another couple of years they’d have been warriors. And besides, what difference does it make if we’ve got forty of them? There’re always more of them where they came from. There must be a thousand women toward Denver without a husband between them.”

Vivian quieted. “Let’s hope they don’t all decide on Alan at once,” she said. “I wonder if the Turtles are having the same trouble.”

“They’re having more,” Alan said. He had lowered himself wearily into one of the chairs.

The two warriors looked at him. “How do you know, sweetie?” Vivian asked him.

“I was talking to Warren, a few weeks ago. He’s husband of the Turtle clan now, they traded him from the Foxes. Both clans were getting too interbred. …”

“Get to the point, honey,” Jean said, embarrassed at this man talk.

“The Turtles are having more trouble than we are. They have a stronger natural fortress at the center of their farm lands, but they’ve had so many raids that their arsenal is depleted and half their warriors dead or wounded. They’re getting desperate.”

“That’s too bad,” Vivian muttered. “They make good neighbors.”

Jean said, “The matriarch told me to let you know there’d be a meeting this afternoon in the assembly hall. Clan meeting, all present.”

“What about?” Vivian said, her attention going back to the beauty of her captured weapon again.

“About the prisoners. We’ve got to decide what to do with them.”

“Do with them? We’ll push them over the side of the canyon. Nobody thought we’d waste bullets on them did they?”

Alan said, mildly, “The question has come up whether we ought to destroy them at all.”

Vivian looked at him in gentle annoyance. “Sweetie,” she said, “don’t bother your handsome head with these things. You’ve had enough excitement to last a nice looking fellow like you a lifetime.”

Jean said, echoing her chief’s disgust, “Anyway, that’s what the meeting is about. Alan, here, has been talking to the matriarch and she’s agreed to bring it up for discussion.”

Vivian said nastily, “Sally is beginning to lose her grip. If there’s anything a clan needs it’s a strong matriarch.”

“A wise matriarch,” Alan amended, knowing he shouldn’t.

Vivian stared at him for a moment, then threw her head back and laughed. “I’m going to have to spank your bottom one of these days,” she told him. “You get awfully sassy for a man.”

As chairman, Alan had a voice but not a vote in the meetings of the Wolf clan. He sometimes wondered at the institution which had come down from pre-bomb days. Why was it necessary to have a chairman. Of course, myth-legend had it that men were once just as numerous and active in society’s economic (and even martial!) life as were women. But that was myth-legend. It all had a basis in reality, perhaps, but some of it was undoubtedly stretched all but to the breaking point.

Of course if all men had been fertile in the old days. But if you started with if, as a beginning point, you could go as far as you wished in any direction.

He called the meeting to order in the assembly hall which stood possibly a hundred feet below the citadel in one direction, another hundred from the stone corral which housed their prisoners, in the other. The Wolf clan was present in its entirety with the exception of children under ten and except for four scouts who were holding the prisoners. As chairman, Alan sat on the dais flanked by Sally, the matriarch, 35 years of age, tall, Junoesque, on one side and by Vivian the scout chief, on the other.

Before them sat, first, the active warrior-workers, some thirty-five of them. Second, the older women, less than a score. Further back were the sterilies, possibly twenty of these and quite young, only within recent memory had they been allowed to become part of the clan, in the past they had been driven away or killed. Further back still were the children above ten but too young to join the ranks of either warrior-workers or sterilies.

Alan called the meeting to order, quieted them somewhat and then invited the matriarch to take the floor.

Sally stood and looked out over her clan, the dignity of her presence silencing them where Alan’s plea had not.

She said, “We have two matters to bring to our attention. First, I believe the clan should make it clear to Alan, our husband, that such interference in the affairs of women is utterly out of the question. I am speaking of his unmanly activities in the raid this morning.”

There were mumblings of approval throughout the hall.

Alan came to his feet, his face bewildered. “But, Sally, what else could I do? If I hadn’t overcome the enemy warriors and turned the Bren gun on the others you would all be gone now. Possibly none of you would have survived.”

Sally quieted him with a chill look. “Let me repeat what is well known to every member of the clan. We consist of less than sixty women, a few more than thirty-five of whom are active. There are twenty sterilies and twenty-five or so children. And one husband. A few more than one hundred in all.”

Her voice slowed and lowered for the sake of emphasis. “All of our women—except for two or three—might die and the clan would live on. The sterilies certainly might all die, and the clan live on. Even the children could all die and the clan live on. But if our husband dies, the clan dies. The greatest responsibility of every member of any clan is to protect the husband. Under no circumstances is he to be endangered. You know this, it should not have to be brought to your attention.”

There was a strong murmur of assent from those seated before them.

Alan said, “But, Sally, I saved your lives! And if I hadn’t, I would have been captured by the Crows and Horses and you would have lost me at any rate.”

This was hard for Sally Wolf, but she said, “Then, at least, they would have had you. If you had died, in your foolhardiness, you would have been gone for all of us. Alan, two clans, husbandless clans, united in this attempt to capture you from us. While we fought to protect our husband, the life of our clan, we hold no rancor against them. In their position, we would have done the same. Much rather would we see you taken by them, than to see you dead. Even though the Wolf clan might die, the race must go on.” She added, but not very believably, “If they had captured you, perhaps we could have, in our turn, captured a husband from some other clan.”

“The reason we probably couldn’t,” Vivian said mildly, “is that since we’ve turned to agriculture and settled, our numbers have dropped off by half. We had more than sixty warriors while we were hunter-foragers.”

“That’s enough, Vivian,” Sally snapped. “The question isn’t being discussed this afternoon.”

“Ought to be,” somebody whispered down in front.

“Order,” Alan said. He knew it was a growing belief in the clan that giving up the nomadic life had been a mistake. From raiders, they had become the raided.

Sally said, “The second order of business is the disposal of the Horse and Crow prisoners captured in the action today.”

Vivian said, “We can’t afford to waste valuable ammunition. I say shove them into the canyon.”

Most of those seated in the hall approved of that. Some were puzzled of face, wondering why the matter hadn’t been left simply in the scout chief’s hands.

Sally said, dryly, “I haven’t formed an opinion myself. However, our chairman has some words to say.”

Vivian looked at Alan as though he was a precocious child. She shook her head. “You cutie, you. You’re getting bigger and bigger for your britches every day.”

Two or three of the warriors echoed her by chuckling fondly.

Alan said nothing to that, needing to maintain what dignity and prestige he could muster.

He stood and faced them and waited for their silence before saying, “You feminine members of the clan are too busy with work and with defense to pursue some of the studies for which we men find time.”

Vivian murmured, “You ain’t just a whistlin’, honey. But we don’t mind. You do what you want with your time, honey.”

He tried to smile politely, but went on. “It has come to the point where few women read to any extent and most learning has fallen into the hands of the men—few as we are.”

Sally said impatiently, “What has this got to do with the prisoners, Alan dear?”

It would seem that he had ignored her when he said, “I have been discussing the matter with Warren of the Turtle clan and two or three other men with whom I occasionally come in contact. At the rate the race is going, there will be no men left at all in another few generations.”

There was quiet in the long hall. Deathly quiet.

Sally said, “How … how do you mean, dear?”

“I mean our present system can’t go on. It isn’t working.”

“Of course it’s working,” Vivian snapped. “Here we are aren’t we? It’s always worked, it always will. Here’s the clan. You’re our husband. After we’ve had you for twenty years, we’ll trade you to another clan for their husband—prevents interbreeding. If you have a fertile son, the clan will either split, each half taking one husband, or we’ll trade him off for land, or guns, or whatever else is valuable. Of course, it works.”

He shook his head, stubbornly. “Things are changing. For a generation or two after bomb day, we were in chaos. By time things cleared we were divided as we are now, in clans. However, we were still largely able to exist on the canned goods, the animals, left over from the old days. There was food and guns for all and only a few of the men were sterilies.”

Vivian began to say something again, but he shook a hand negatively at her, pleading for silence. “No, I’m not talking about myth-legend now. Warren’s great-grandfather, whom he knew as a boy, remembers when there were four times or more the number of men we have today and when the sterilies were very few.”

Vivian said impatiently, “What’s this got to do with the prisoners? There they are. We can kill them or let them go. If we let them go, they’ll be coming back, six months from now, to take another crack at us. Alan is cute as a button, but I don’t think he should meddle in women’s affairs.”

But most of them were silent. They looked up at him, waiting for him to go on.

“I suppose,” Sally said, “that you’re coming to a point, dear?”

He nodded, his face tight. “I’m coming to the point. The point is that we’ve got to change the basis of clan society. This isn’t working any more—if it ever did. There’s such a thing as planned breeding …” it had been hard to say this, and the younger women in the audience, in particular, tittered “… and we’re going to have to think in terms of it.”

Sally had flushed. She said now, “A certain dignity is expected at a clan meeting, Alan dear. But just what did you mean?”

Vivian said, “This is nonsense, I’m leaving,” and she was up from the speaker’s table and away. Two or three of her younger girls looked after, scowling, but they didn’t follow her out of the hall.

“I mean,” Alan said doggedly, “that one of those Crow women has been the mother of two fertile men. To my knowledge she is the only woman within hundreds of miles this can be said about. We men have been keeping records of such things.”

Sally was as mystified as the rest of the clan.

Alan said, “I say bring these women into the clan. Unite with the Turtles and the Burros so that we’ll have three clans, five counting the Horses and Crows. Then we’ll have enough strength to fight off the forager-hunters, and we’ll have enough men to experiment in selective breeding.”

Half of the hall was on its feet in a roar.

“Share you with these … these desert rats who just raided us, who killed eight of our clan?” Sally snapped, flabbergasted.

He stood his ground. “Yes. I’ll repeat, one of those Crow women has borne two fertile men children. We can’t afford to kill her. For all we know, she might have a dozen more. This haphazard method of a single husband for a whole clan must be replaced. …”

The hall broke down into chaos again.

Sally held up a commanding hand for silence. She said, “And if we share you with another forty or fifty women, to what extent will the rest of us have any husband at all?”

He pointed out the sterilies, seated silently in the back. “It would be healthier if you gave up some of this superior contempt you hold for sterile males and accept their companionship. Although they cannot be fathers, they can be mates otherwise. As it is, how much true companionship do you secure from me—any of you? Less than once a month do you see me more than from a distance.”

“Mate with sterilies?” someone gasped from the front row.

“Yes,” Alan snapped back. “And let fertile men be used expressly for attempting to produce additional fertile men. Confound it, can’t you warriors realize what I’m saying? I have reports that there is a woman among the Crows who has borne two fertile male children. Have you ever heard of any such phenomenon before? Do you realize that in the fifteen years I have been the husband of this clan, we have not had even one fertile man child born? Do you realize that in the past twenty years there has been born not one fertile man child in the Turtle clan? Only one in the Burro clan?”

He had them in the palm of his hand now.

“What—what does the Turtle clan think of this plan of yours?” Sally said.

“I was talking to Warren just the other day. He thinks he can win their approval. We can also probably talk the Burros into it. They’re growing desperate. Their husband is nearly sixty years old and has produced only one fertile male child, which was later captured in a raid by the Denver foragers.”

Sally said, “And we’d have to share you with all these, and with our prisoners as well?”

“Yes, in an attempt to breed fertile men back into the race.”

Sally turned to the assembled clan.

A heavy explosion, room-shaking in its violence, all but threw them to the floor. Half a dozen of the younger warriors scurried to the windows, guns at the ready.

In the distance, from the outside, there was the chatter of a machine gun, then individual pistol shots.

“The corral,” Jean the scout said, her lips going back over her teeth.

Vivian came sauntering back into the assembly hall, patting the stock of her new tommy gun appreciately. “Works like a charm,” she said. “That dynamite we captured was fresh too. Blew ’em to smithereens. Only had to finish off half a dozen.”

Alan said, agonizingly, “Vivian! You didn’t … the prisoners?”

She grinned at him. “Alan, you’re as cute as a button, but you don’t know anything about women’s affairs. Now you be a honey and go back to taking care of the children.”

Unborn Tomorrow

Betty looked up from her magazine. She said mildly, “You’re late.”

“Don’t yell at me, I feel awful,” Simon told her. He sat down at his desk, passed his tongue over his teeth in distaste, groaned, fumbled in a drawer for the aspirin bottle.

He looked over at Betty and said, almost as though reciting, “What I need is a vacation.”

“What,” Betty said, “are you going to use for money?”

“Providence,” Simon told her whilst fiddling with the aspirin bottle, “will provide.”

“Hm-m-m. But before providing vacations it’d be nice if Providence turned up a missing jewel deal, say. Something where you could deduce that actually the ruby ring had gone down the drain and was caught in the elbow. Something that would net about fifty dollars.”

Simon said, mournful of tone, “Fifty dollars? Why not make it five hundred?”

“I’m not selfish,” Betty said. “All I want is enough to pay me this week’s salary.”

“Money,” Simon said. “When you took this job you said it was the romance that appealed to you.”

“Hm-m-m. I didn’t know most sleuthing amounted to snooping around department stores to check on the clerks knocking down.”

Simon said, enigmatically, “Now it comes.”

There was a knock.

Betty bounced up with Olympic agility and had the door swinging wide before the knocking was quite completed.

He was old, little and had bug eyes behind pince-nez glasses. His suit was cut in the style of yesteryear but when a suit costs two or three hundred dollars you still retain caste whatever the styling.

Simon said unenthusiastically, “Good morning, Mr. Oyster.” He indicated the client’s chair. “Sit down, sir.”

The client fussed himself with Betty’s assistance into the seat, bug-eyed Simon, said finally, “You know my name, that’s pretty good. Never saw you before in my life. Stop fussing with me, young lady. Your ad in the phone book says you’ll investigate anything.”

“Anything,” Simon said. “Only one exception.”

“Excellent. Do you believe in time travel?”

Simon said nothing. Across the room, where she had resumed her seat, Betty cleared her throat. When Simon continued to say nothing she ventured, “Time travel is impossible.”

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes, why?”

Betty looked to her boss for assistance. None was forthcoming. There ought to be some very quick, positive, definite answer. She said, “Well, for one thing, paradox. Suppose you had a time machine and traveled back a hundred years or so and killed your own great-grandfather. Then how could you ever be born?”

“Confound it if I know,” the little fellow growled. “How?”

Simon said, “Let’s get to the point, what you wanted to see me about.”

“I want to hire you to hunt me up some time travelers,” the old boy said.

Betty was too far in now to maintain her proper role of silent secretary. “Time travelers,” she said, not very intelligently.

The potential client sat more erect, obviously with intent to hold the floor for a time. He removed the pince-nez glasses and pointed them at Betty. He said, “Have you read much science fiction, Miss?”

“Some,” Betty admitted.

“Then you’ll realize that there are a dozen explanations of the paradoxes of time travel. Every writer in the field worth his salt has explained them away. But to get on. It’s my contention that within a century or so man will have solved the problems of immortality and eternal youth, and it’s also my suspicion that he will eventually be able to travel in time. So convinced am I of these possibilities that I am willing to gamble a portion of my fortune to investigate the presence in our era of such time travelers.”

Simon seemed incapable of carrying the ball this morning, so Betty said, “But … Mr. Oyster, if the future has developed time travel why don’t we ever meet such travelers?”

Simon put in a word. “The usual explanation, Betty, is that they can’t afford to allow the space-time continuum track to be altered. If, say, a time traveler returned to a period of twenty-five years ago and shot Hitler, then all subsequent history would be changed. In that case, the time traveler himself might never be born. They have to tread mighty carefully.”

Mr. Oyster was pleased. “I didn’t expect you to be so well informed on the subject, young man.”

Simon shrugged and fumbled again with the aspirin bottle.

Mr. Oyster went on. “I’ve been considering the matter for some time and—”

Simon held up a hand. “There’s no use prolonging this. As I understand it, you’re an elderly gentleman with a considerable fortune and you realize that thus far nobody has succeeded in taking it with him.”

Mr. Oyster returned his glasses to their perch, bug-eyed Simon, but then nodded.

Simon said, “You want to hire me to find a time traveler and in some manner or other—any manner will do—exhort from him the secret of eternal life and youth, which you figure the future will have discovered. You’re willing to pony up a part of this fortune of yours, if I can deliver a bona fide time traveler.”

“Right!”

Betty had been looking from one to the other. Now she said, plaintively, “But where are you going to find one of these characters—especially if they’re interested in keeping hid?”

The old boy was the center again. “I told you I’d been considering it for some time. The Oktoberfest, that’s where they’d be!” He seemed elated.

Betty and Simon waited.

“The Oktoberfest,” he repeated. “The greatest festival the world has ever seen, the carnival, feria, fiesta to beat them all. Every year it’s held in Munich. Makes the New Orleans Mardi gras look like a quilting party.” He began to swing into the spirit of his description. “It originally started in celebration of the wedding of some local prince a century and a half ago and the Bavarians had such a bang-up time they’ve been holding it every year since. The Munich breweries do up a special beer, Marzenbräu they call it, and each brewery opens a tremendous tent on the fair grounds which will hold five thousand customers apiece. Millions of liters of beer are put away, hundreds of thousands of barbecued chickens, a small herd of oxen are roasted whole over spits, millions of pair of weisswurst, a very special sausage, millions upon millions of pretzels—”

“All right,” Simon said. “We’ll accept it. The Oktoberfest is one whale of a wingding.”

“Well,” the old boy pursued, into his subject now, “that’s where they’d be, places like the Oktoberfest. For one thing, a time traveler wouldn’t be conspicuous. At a festival like this somebody with a strange accent, or who didn’t know exactly how to wear his clothes correctly, or was off the ordinary in any of a dozen other ways, wouldn’t be noticed. You could be a four-armed space traveler from Mars, and you still wouldn’t be conspicuous at the Oktoberfest. People would figure they had D.T.’s.”

“But why would a time traveler want to go to a—” Betty began.

“Why not! What better opportunity to study a people than when they are in their cups? If you could go back a few thousand years, the things you would wish to see would be a Roman Triumph, perhaps the Rites of Dionysus, or one of Alexander’s orgies. You wouldn’t want to wander up and down the streets of, say, Athens while nothing was going on, particularly when you might be revealed as a suspicious character not being able to speak the language, not knowing how to wear the clothes and not familiar with the city’s layout.” He took a deep breath. “No ma’am, you’d have to stick to some great event, both for the sake of actual interest and for protection against being unmasked.”

The old boy wound it up. “Well, that’s the story. What are your rates? The Oktoberfest starts on Friday and continues for sixteen days. You can take the plane to Munich, spend a week there and—”

Simon was shaking his head. “Not interested.”

As soon as Betty had got her jaw back into place, she glared unbelievingly at him.

Mr. Oyster was taken aback himself. “See here, young man, I realize this isn’t an ordinary assignment, however, as I said, I am willing to risk a considerable portion of my fortune—”

“Sorry,” Simon said. “Can’t be done.”

“A hundred dollars a day plus expenses,” Mr. Oyster said quietly. “I like the fact that you already seem to have some interest and knowledge of the matter. I liked the way you knew my name when I walked in the door; my picture doesn’t appear often in the papers.”

“No go,” Simon said, a sad quality in his voice.

“A fifty-thousand dollar bonus if you bring me a time traveler.”

“Out of the question,” Simon said.

“But why?” Betty wailed.

“Just for laughs,” Simon told the two of them sourly, “suppose I tell you a funny story. It goes like this:”

I got a thousand dollars from Mr. Oyster (Simon began) in the way of an advance, and leaving him with Betty who was making out a receipt, I hustled back to the apartment and packed a bag. Hell, I’d wanted a vacation anyway, this was a natural. On the way to Idlewild I stopped off at the Germany Information Offices for some tourist literature.

It takes roughly three and a half hours to get to Gander from Idlewild. I spent the time planning the fun I was going to have.

It takes roughly seven and a half hours from Gander to Shannon and I spent that time dreaming up material I could put into my reports to Mr. Oyster. I was going to have to give him some kind of report for his money. Time travel yet! What a laugh!

Between Shannon and Munich a faint suspicion began to simmer in my mind. These statistics I read on the Oktoberfest in the Munich tourist pamphlets. Five million people attended annually.

Where did five million people come from to attend an overgrown festival in comparatively remote Southern Germany? The tourist season is over before September 21st, first day of the gigantic beer bust. Nor could the Germans account for any such number. Munich itself has a population of less than a million, counting children.

And those millions of gallons of beer, the hundreds of thousands of chickens, the herds of oxen. Who ponied up all the money for such expenditures? How could the average German, with his twenty-five dollars a week salary?

In Munich there was no hotel space available. I went to the Bahnhof where they have a hotel service and applied. They put my name down, pocketed the husky bribe, showed me where I could check my bag, told me they’d do what they could, and to report back in a few hours.

I had another suspicious twinge. If five million people attended this beer bout, how were they accommodated?

The Theresienwiese, the fair ground, was only a few blocks away. I was stiff from the plane ride so I walked.

There are seven major brewers in the Munich area, each of them represented by one of the circuslike tents that Mr. Oyster mentioned. Each tent contained benches and tables for about five thousand persons and from six to ten thousands pack themselves in, competing for room. In the center is a tremendous bandstand, the musicians all lederhosen clad, the music as Bavarian as any to be found in a Bavarian beer hall. Hundreds of peasant garbed fräuleins darted about the tables with quart sized earthenware mugs, platters of chicken, sausage, kraut and pretzels.

I found a place finally at a table which had space for twenty-odd beer bibbers. Odd is right. As weird an assortment of Germans and foreign tourists as could have been dreamed up, ranging from a seventy- or eighty-year-old couple in Bavarian costume, to the bald-headed drunk across the table from me.

A desperate waitress bearing six mugs of beer in each hand scurried past. They call them masses, by the way, not mugs. The bald-headed character and I both held up a finger and she slid two of the masses over to us and then hustled on.

“Down the hatch,” the other said, holding up his mass in toast.

“To the ladies,” I told him. Before sipping, I said, “You know, the tourist pamphlets say this stuff is eighteen percent. That’s nonsense. No beer is that strong.” I took a long pull.

He looked at me, waiting.

I came up. “Mistaken,” I admitted.

A mass or two apiece later he looked carefully at the name engraved on his earthenware mug. “Löwenbräu,” he said. He took a small notebook from his pocket and a pencil, noted down the word and returned the things.

“That’s a queer looking pencil you have there,” I told him. “German?”

“Venusian,” he said. “Oops, sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.”

I had never heard of the brand so I skipped it.

“Next is the Hofbräu,” he said.

“Next what?” Baldy’s conversation didn’t seem to hang together very well.

“My pilgrimage,” he told me. “All my life I’ve been wanting to go back to an Oktoberfest and sample every one of the seven brands of the best beer the world has ever known. I’m only as far as Löwenbräu. I’m afraid I’ll never make it.”

I finished my mass. “I’ll help you,” I told him. “Very noble endeavor. Name is Simon.”

“Arth,” he said. “How could you help?”

“I’m still fresh—comparatively. I’ll navigate you around. There are seven beer tents. How many have you got through, so far?”

“Two, counting this one,” Arth said.

I looked at him. “It’s going to be a chore,” I said. “You’ve already got a nice edge on.”

Outside, as we made our way to the next tent, the fair looked like every big State Fair ever seen, except it was bigger. Games, souvenir stands, sausage stands, rides, side shows, and people, people, people.

The Hofbräu tent was as overflowing as the last but we managed to find two seats.

The band was blaring, and five thousand half-swacked voices were roaring accompaniment.

In Muenchen steht ein Hofbräuhaus!
Eins, Zwei, G’sufa!

At the G’sufa everybody upped with the mugs and drank each other’s health.

“This is what I call a real beer bust,” I said approvingly.

Arth was waving to a waitress. As in the Löwenbräu tent, a full quart was the smallest amount obtainable.

A beer later I said, “I don’t know if you’ll make it or not, Arth.”

“Make what?”

“All seven tents.”

“Oh.”

A waitress was on her way by, mugs foaming over their rims. I gestured to her for refills.

“Where are you from, Arth?” I asked him, in the way of making conversation.

“2183.”

“2183 where?”

He looked at me, closing one eye to focus better. “Oh,” he said. “Well, 2183 South Street, ah, New Albuquerque.”

“New Albuquerque? Where’s that?”

Arth thought about it. Took another long pull at the beer. “Right across the way from old Albuquerque,” he said finally. “Maybe we ought to be getting on to the Pschorrbräu tent.”

“Maybe we ought to eat something first,” I said. “I’m beginning to feel this. We could get some of that barbecued ox.”

Arth closed his eyes in pain. “Vegetarian,” he said. “Couldn’t possibly eat meat. Barbarous. Ugh.”

“Well, we need some nourishment,” I said.

“There’s supposed to be considerable nourishment in beer.”

That made sense. I yelled, “Fräulein! Zwei neu bier!”

Somewhere along in here the fog rolled in. When it rolled out again, I found myself closing one eye the better to read the lettering on my earthenware mug. It read Augustinerbräu. Somehow we’d evidently navigated from one tent to another.

Arth was saying, “Where’s your hotel?”

That seemed like a good question. I thought about it for a while. Finally I said, “Haven’t got one. Town’s jam packed. Left my bag at the Bahnhof. I don’t think we’ll ever make it, Arth. How many we got to go?”

“Lost track,” Arth said. “You can come home with me.”

We drank to that and the fog rolled in again.

When the fog rolled out, it was daylight. Bright, glaring, awful daylight. I was sprawled, complete with clothes, on one of twin beds. On the other bed, also completely clothed, was Arth.

That sun was too much. I stumbled up from the bed, staggered to the window and fumbled around for a blind or curtain. There was none.

Behind me a voice said in horror, “Who … how … oh, Wodo, where’d you come from?”

I got a quick impression, looking out the window, that the Germans were certainly the most modern, futuristic people in the world. But I couldn’t stand the light. “Where’s the shade,” I moaned.

Arth did something and the window went opaque.

“That’s quite a gadget,” I groaned. “If I didn’t feel so lousy, I’d appreciate it.”

Arth was sitting on the edge of the bed holding his bald head in his hands. “I remember now,” he sorrowed. “You didn’t have a hotel. What a stupidity. I’ll be phased. Phased all the way down.”

“You haven’t got a handful of aspirin, have you?” I asked him.

“Just a minute,” Arth said, staggering erect and heading for what undoubtedly was a bathroom. “Stay where you are. Don’t move. Don’t touch anything.”

“All right,” I told him plaintively. “I’m clean. I won’t mess up the place. All I’ve got is a hangover, not lice.”

Arth was gone. He came back in two or three minutes, box of pills in hand. “Here, take one of these.”

I took the pill, followed it with a glass of water.

And went out like a light.

Arth was shaking my arm. “Want another mass?”

The band was blaring, and five thousand half-swacked voices were roaring accompaniment.

In Muenchen steht ein Hofbräuhaus!
Eins, Zwei, G’sufa!

At the G’sufa everybody upped with their king-size mugs and drank each other’s health.

My head was killing me. “This is where I came in, or something,” I groaned.

Arth said, “That was last night.” He looked at me over the rim of his beer mug.

Something, somewhere, was wrong. But I didn’t care. I finished my mass and then remembered. “I’ve got to get my bag. Oh, my head. Where did we spend last night?”

Arth said, and his voice sounded cautious, “At my hotel, don’t you remember?”

“Not very well,” I admitted. “I feel lousy. I must have dimmed out. I’ve got to go to the Bahnhof and get my luggage.”

Arth didn’t put up an argument on that. We said goodbye and I could feel him watching after me as I pushed through the tables on the way out.

At the Bahnhof they could do me no good. There were no hotel rooms available in Munich. The head was getting worse by the minute. The fact that they’d somehow managed to lose my bag didn’t help. I worked on that project for at least a couple of hours. Not only wasn’t the bag at the luggage checking station, but the attendant there evidently couldn’t make heads nor tails of the check receipt. He didn’t speak English and my high school German was inadequate, especially accompanied by a blockbusting hangover.

I didn’t get anywhere tearing my hair and complaining from one end of the Bahnhof to the other. I drew a blank on the bag.

And the head was getting worse by the minute. I was bleeding to death through the eyes and instead of butterflies I had bats in my stomach. Believe me, nobody should drink a gallon or more of Marzenbräu.

I decided the hell with it. I took a cab to the airport, presented my return ticket, told them I wanted to leave on the first obtainable plane to New York. I’d spent two days at the Oktoberfest, and I’d had it.

I got more guff there. Something was wrong with the ticket, wrong date or some such. But they fixed that up. I never was clear on what was fouled up, some clerk’s error, evidently.

The trip back was as uninteresting as the one over. As the hangover began to wear off—a little—I was almost sorry I hadn’t been able to stay. If I’d only been able to get a room I would have stayed, I told myself.

From Idlewild, I came directly to the office rather than going to my apartment. I figured I might as well check in with Betty.

I opened the door and there I found Mr. Oyster sitting in the chair he had been occupying four—or was it five—days before when I’d left. I’d lost track of the time.

I said to him, “Glad you’re here, sir. I can report. Ah, what was it you came for? Impatient to hear if I’d had any results?” My mind was spinning like a whirling dervish in a revolving door. I’d spent a wad of his money and had nothing I could think of to show for it; nothing but the last stages of a granddaddy hangover.

“Came for?” Mr. Oyster snorted. “I’m merely waiting for your girl to make out my receipt. I thought you had already left.”

“You’ll miss your plane,” Betty said.

There was suddenly a double dip of ice cream in my stomach. I walked over to my desk and looked down at the calendar.

Mr. Oyster was saying something to the effect that if I didn’t leave today, it would have to be tomorrow, that he hadn’t ponied up that thousand dollars advance for anything less than immediate service. Stuffing his receipt in his wallet, he fussed his way out the door.

I said to Betty hopefully, “I suppose you haven’t changed this calendar since I left.”

Betty said, “What’s the matter with you? You look funny. How did your clothes get so mussed? You tore the top sheet off that calendar yourself, not half an hour ago, just before this marble-missing client came in.” She added, irrelevantly, “Time travelers yet.”

I tried just once more. “Uh, when did you first see this Mr. Oyster?”

“Never saw him before in my life,” she said. “Not until he came in this morning.”

“This morning,” I said weakly.

While Betty stared at me as though it was me that needed candling by a head shrinker preparatory to being sent off to a pressure cooker, I fished in my pocket for my wallet, counted the contents and winced at the pathetic remains of the thousand. I said pleadingly, “Betty, listen, how long ago did I go out that door—on the way to the airport?”

“You’ve been acting sick all morning. You went out that door about ten minutes ago, were gone about three minutes, and then came back.”

“See here,” Mr. Oyster said (interrupting Simon’s story), “did you say this was supposed to be amusing, young man? I don’t find it so. In fact, I believe I am being ridiculed.”

Simon shrugged, put one hand to his forehead and said, “That’s only the first chapter. There are two more.”

“I’m not interested in more,” Mr. Oyster said. “I suppose your point was to show me how ridiculous the whole idea actually is. Very well, you’ve done it. Confound it. However, I suppose your time, even when spent in this manner, has some value. Here is fifty dollars. And good day, sir!”

He slammed the door after him as he left.

Simon winced at the noise, took the aspirin bottle from its drawer, took two, washed them down with water from the desk carafe.

Betty looked at him admiringly. Came to her feet, crossed over and took up the fifty dollars. “Week’s wages,” she said. “I suppose that’s one way of taking care of a crackpot. But I’m surprised you didn’t take his money and enjoy that vacation you’ve been yearning about.”

“I did,” Simon groaned. “Three times.”

Betty stared at him. “You mean—”

Simon nodded, miserably.

She said, “But Simon. Fifty thousand dollars bonus. If that story was true, you should have gone back again to Munich. If there was one time traveler, there might have been—”

“I keep telling you,” Simon said bitterly, “I went back there three times. There were hundreds of them. Probably thousands.” He took a deep breath. “Listen, we’re just going to have to forget about it. They’re not going to stand for the space-time continuum track being altered. If something comes up that looks like it might result in the track being changed, they set you right back at the beginning and let things start—for you—all over again. They just can’t allow anything to come back from the future and change the past.”

“You mean,” Betty was suddenly furious at him, “you’ve given up! Why this is the biggest thing—Why the fifty thousand dollars is nothing. The future! Just think!”

Simon said wearily, “There’s just one thing you can bring back with you from the future, a hangover compounded of a gallon or so of Marzenbräu. What’s more you can pile one on top of the other, and another on top of that!”

He shuddered. “If you think I’m going to take another crack at this merry-go-round and pile a fourth hangover on the three I’m already nursing, all at once, you can think again.”

The Good Seed

Written as Mark Mallory

They said—as they have said of so many frontiersmen just like him—that there must have been a woman in his past, to make him what he was. And indeed there had, but she was no flesh-and-blood female. The name of his lady was Victoria, whom the Greeks called Nike and early confounded with the Pallas Athena, that sterile maiden. And at the age of thirty-four she had Calvin Mulloy most firmly in her grasp, for he had neither wife nor child, nor any close friend worth mentioning—only his hungry dream for some great accomplishment.

It had harried him to the stars, that dream of his. It had driven him to the position of top survey engineer on the new, raw planet of Mersey, still largely unexplored and unmapped. And it had pushed him, too, into foolishnesses like this latest one, building a sailplane out of scrap odds and ends around the Mersey Advance Base—a sailplane which had just this moment been caught in a storm and cracked up on an island the size of a city backyard, between the banks of one of the mouths of the Adze River.

The sailplane was gone the moment it hit. Actually it had come down just short of the island and floated quickly off, what was left of it, while Calvin was thrashing for the island with that inept stroke of his. He pulled himself up, gasping, onto the rocks, and, with the coolness of a logical man who has faced crises before, set himself immediately to taking stock of his situation.

He was wet and winded, but since he was undrowned and on solid land in the semitropics, he dismissed that part of it from his mind. It had been full noon when he had been caught in the storm, and it could not be much more than minutes past that now, so swiftly had everything happened; but the black, low clouds, racing across the sky, and the gusts of intermittent rain, cut visibility down around him.

He stood up on his small island and leaned against the wind that blew in and up the river from the open gulf. On three sides he saw nothing but the fast-riding waves. On the fourth, though, shading his eyes against the occasional bursts of rain, he discerned a long, low, curving blackness that would be one of the river shores.

There lay safety. He estimated its distance from him at less than a hundred and fifty yards. It was merely, he told himself, a matter of reaching it.

Under ordinary conditions, he would have settled down where he was and waited for rescue. He was not more than fifteen or twenty miles from the Advance Base, and in this storm they would waste no time waiting for him to come in, before starting out to search for him. No sailplane could survive in such a blow. Standing now, with the wind pushing at him and the rain stinging against his face and hands, he found time for a moment’s wry humor at his own bad luck. On any civilized world, such a storm would have been charted and predicted, if not controlled entirely. Well, the more fool he, for venturing this far from Base.

It was in his favor that this world of Mersey happened to be so Earthlike that the differences between the two planets were mostly unimportant. Unfortunately, it was the one unimportant difference that made his present position on the island a death trap. The gulf into which his river emptied was merely a twentieth the area of the Gulf of Mexico—but in this section it was extremely shallow, having an overall average depth of around seventy-five feet. When one of these flash storms formed suddenly out over its waters, the wind could either drain huge tidal areas around the mouths of the Adze, or else raise the river level within hours a matter of thirty feet.

With the onshore wind whistling about his ears right now, it was only too obvious to Calvin that the river was rising. This rocky little bit sticking some twelve or fifteen feet above the waves could expect to be overwhelmed in the next few hours.

He looked about him. The island was bare except for a few straggly bushes. He reached out for a shoot from a bush beside him. It came up easily from the thin layer of soil that overlaid the rocks, and the wind snatched it out of his hand. He saw it go skipping over the tops of the waves in the direction of the shore, until a wave-slope caught it and carried it into the next trough and out of sight. It at least, he thought, would reach the safety of the river bank. But it would take a thousand such slender stems, plaited into a raft, to do him any good; and there were not that many stems, and not that much time.

Calvin turned and climbed in toward the center high point of the island. It was only a few steps over the damp soil and rocks, but when he stood upright on a little crown of rock and looked about him, it seemed that the island was smaller than ever, and might be drowned at any second by the wind-lashed waves. Moreover, there was nothing to be seen which offered him any more help or hope of escape.

Even then, he was not moved to despair. He saw no way out, but this simply reinforced his conviction that the way out was hiding about him somewhere, and he must look that much harder for it.

He was going to step down out of the full force of the wind, when he happened to notice a rounded object nestling in a little hollow of the rock below him, about a dozen or so feet away.

He went and stood over it, seeing that his first guess as to its nature had been correct. It was one of the intelligent traveling plants that wandered around the oceans of this world. It should have been at home in this situation. Evidently, however, it had made the mistake of coming ashore here to seed. It was now rooted in the soil of the island, facing death as surely as he; if the wind or the waves tore it from its own helplessly anchored roots.

“Can you understand me?” he asked it.

There was an odd sort of croaking from it, which seemed to shape itself into words, though the how of it remained baffling to the ear. It was a sort of supplemental telepathy at work, over and above the rough attempts to imitate human speech. Some of these intelligent plants they had got to know in this area could communicate with them in this fashion, though most could not.

“I know you, man,” said the plant. “I have seen your gathering.” It was referring to the Advance Base, which had attracted a steady stream of the plant visitors at first.

“Know any way to get ashore?” Calvin asked.

“There is none,” said the plant.

“I can’t see any, either.”

“There is none,” repeated the plant.

“Everyone to his own opinion,” said Calvin. Almost he sneered a little. He turned his gaze once more about the island. “In my book, them that won’t be beat can’t be beat. That’s maybe where we’re different, plant.”

He left the plant and went for a walk about the island. It had been in his mind that possibly a drifting log or some such could have been caught by the island and he could use this to get ashore. He found nothing. For a few minutes, at one end of the island, he stood fascinated, watching a long sloping black rock with a crack in it, reaching down into the water. There was a small tuft of moss growing in the crack about five inches above where the waves were slapping. As he watched, the waves slapped higher and higher, until he turned away abruptly, shivering, before he could see the water actually reach and cover the little clump of green.

For the first time a realization that he might not get off the island touched him. It was not yet fear, this realization, but it reached deep into him and he felt it, suddenly, like a pressure against his heart. As the moss was being covered, so could he be covered, by the far-reaching inexorable advance of the water.

And then this was wiped away by an abrupt outburst of anger and self-ridicule that he—who had been through so many dangers—should find himself pinned by so commonplace a threat. A man, he told himself, could die of drowning anywhere. There was no need to go light-years from his place of birth to find such a death. It made all dying—and all living—seem small and futile and insignificant, and he did not like that feeling.

Calvin went back to the plant in its little hollow, tight-hugging to the ground and half-sheltered from the wind, and looked down on its dusky basketball-sized shape, the tough hide swollen and ready to burst with seeds.

“So you think there’s no way out,” he said roughly.

“There is none,” said the plant.

“Why don’t you just let yourself go if you think like that?” Calvin said. “Why try to keep down out of the wind, if the waves’ll get you anyway, later?”

The plant did not answer for a while.

“I do not want to die,” it said then. “As long as I am alive, there is the possibility of some great improbable chance saving me.”

“Oh,” said Calvin, and he himself was silent in turn. “I thought you’d given up.”

“I cannot give up,” said the plant. “I am still alive. But I know there is no way to safety.”

“You make a lot of sense.” Calvin straightened up to squint through the rain at the dark and distant line of the shore. “How much more time would you say we had before the water covers this rock?”

“The eighth part of a daylight period, perhaps more, perhaps less. The water can rise either faster or more slowly.”

“Any chance of it cresting and going down?”

“That would be a great improbable chance such as that of which I spoke,” said the plant.

Calvin rotated slowly, surveying the water around them. Bits and pieces of flotsam were streaming by them on their way before the wind, now angling toward the near bank. But none were close enough or large enough to do Calvin any good.

“Look,” said Calvin abruptly, “there’s a fisheries survey station upriver here, not too far. Now, I could dig up the soil holding your roots. If I did that, would you get to the survey station as fast as you could and tell them I’m stranded here?”

“I would be glad to,” said the plant. “But you cannot dig me up. My roots have penetrated into the rock. If you tried to dig me up, they would break off—and I would die that much sooner.”

“You would, would you?” grunted Calvin. But the question was rhetorical. Already his mind was busy searching for some other way out. For the first time in his life, he felt the touch of cold about his heart. Could this be fear, he wondered. But he had never been afraid of death.

Crouching down again to be out of the wind and rain, he told himself that knowledge still remained a tool he could use. The plant must know something that was, perhaps, useless to it, but that could be twisted to a human’s advantage.

“What made you come to a place like this to seed?” he asked.

“Twenty nights and days ago, when I first took root here,” said the plant, “this land was safe. The signs were good for fair weather. And this place was easy of access from the water. I am not built to travel far on land.”

“How would you manage in a storm like this, if you were not rooted down?”

“I would go with the wind until I found shelter,” said the plant. “The wind and waves would not harm me then. They hurt only whatever stands firm and opposes them.”

“You can’t communicate with others of your people from here, can you?” asked Calvin.

“There are none close,” said the plant. “Anyway, what could they do?”

“They could get a message to the fisheries station, to get help out here for us.”

“What help could help me?” said the plant. “And in any case they could not go against the wind. They would have to be upwind of the station, even to help you.”

“We could try it.”

“We could try it,” agreed the plant. “But first one of my kind must come into speaking range. We still hunt our great improbable chance.”

There was a moment’s silence between them in the wind and rain. The river was noisy, working against the rock of the island.

“There must be something that would give us a better chance than just sitting here,” said Calvin.

The plant did not answer.

“What are you thinking about?” demanded Calvin.

“I am thinking of the irony of our situation,” said the plant. “You are free to wander the water, but cannot. I can wander the water, but I am not free to do so. This is death, and it is a strange thing.”

“I don’t get you.”

“I only mean that it makes no difference—that I am what I am, or that you are what you are. We could be any things that would die when the waves finally cover the island.”

“Right enough,” said Calvin impatiently. “What about it?”

“Nothing about it, man,” said the plant. “I was only thinking.”

“Don’t waste your time on philosophy,” said Calvin harshly. “Use some of that brain power on a way to get loose and get off.”

“Perhaps that and philosophy are one and the same.”

“You’re not going to convince me of that,” said Calvin, getting up. “I’m going to take another look around the island.”

The island, as he walked around its short margin, showed itself to be definitely smaller. He paused again by the black rock. The moss was lost now, under the water, and the crack was all but under as well. He stood shielding his eyes against the wind-driven rain, peering across at the still visible shore. The waves, he noted, were not extreme—some four or five feet in height—which meant that the storm proper was probably paralleling the land some distance out in the gulf.

He clenched his fists in sudden frustration. If only he had hung on to the sailplane—or any decent-sized chunk of it! At least going into the water then would have been a gamble with some faint chance of success.

He had nowhere else to go, after rounding the island. He went back to the plant.

“Man,” said the plant, “one of my people has been blown to shelter a little downstream.”

Calvin straightened up eagerly, turning to stare into the wind.

“You cannot see him,” said the plant. “He is caught below the river bend and cannot break loose against the force of the wind. But he is close enough to talk. And he sends you good news.”

“Me?” Calvin hunkered down beside the plant. “Good news?”

“There is a large tree torn loose from the bank and floating this way. It should strike the little bit of land where we are here.”

“Strike it? Are you positive?”

“There are the wind and the water and the tree. They can move only to one destination—this island. Go quickly to the windward point of the island. The tree will be coming shortly.”

Calvin jerked erect and turned, wild triumph bursting in him.

“Goodbye, man,” said the plant.

But he was already plunging toward the downstream end of the island. He reached it and, shielding his eyes with a hand, peered desperately out over the water. The waves hammered upon his boots as he stood there, and then he saw it, a mass of branches upon which the wind was blowing as on a sail, green against black, coming toward him.

He crouched, wrung with impatience, as the tree drifted swiftly through the water toward him, too ponderous to rise and fall more than a little with the waves and presenting a galleonlike appearance of mass and invincibility. As it came closer, a fear that it would, in spite of the plant’s assurances, miss the island, crept into his heart and chilled it.

It seemed to Calvin that it was veering—that it would pass to windward of the island, between him and the dimly seen shore. The thought of losing it was more than he could bear to consider; and with a sudden burst of panic, he threw himself into the waves, beating clumsily and frantically for it.

The river took him into its massive fury. He had forgotten the strength of it. His first dive took him under an incoming wave, and he emerged, gasping, into the trough behind, with water exploding in his face. He kicked and threw his arms about, but the slow and futile-seeming beatings of his limbs appeared helpless as the fluttering of a butterfly in a collector’s net. He choked for air, and, rising on the crest of one wave, found himself turned backward to face the island, and being swept past it.

Fear came home to him then. He lashed out, fighting only for the solid ground of the island and his life. His world became a place of foam and fury. He strained for air. He dug for the island. And then, suddenly, he felt himself flung upon hard rock and gasping, crawling, he emerged onto safety.

He hung there on hands and knees, battered and panting. Then the remembrance of the tree cut like a knife to the core of his fear-soaked being. He staggered up, and, looking about, saw that he was almost to the far end of the island. He turned. Above him, at the windward point, the tree itself was just now grounding, branches first, and swinging about as the long trunk, caught by the waves, pulled it around and onward.

With an inarticulate cry, he ran toward it. But the mass of water against the heavy tree trunk was already pulling the branches from their tanglings with the rock. It floated free. Taking the wind once more in its sail of leaves, it moved slowly—and then more swiftly on past the far side of the island.

He scrambled up his side of the island’s crest. But when he reached its top and could see the tree again, it was already moving past and out from the island, too swiftly for him to catch it, even if he had been the swimmer he had just proved himself not to be.

He dropped on his knees, there on the island’s rocky spine, and watched it fade in the grayness of the rain, until the green of its branches was lost in a grayish blob, and this in the general welter of storm and waves. And suddenly a dark horror of death closed over him, blotting out all the scene.

A voice roused him. “That is too bad,” said the plant.

He turned his head numbly. He was kneeling less than half a dozen feet from the little hollow where the plant still sheltered. He looked at it now, dazed, as if he could not remember what it was, nor how it came to talk to him. Then his eyes cleared a little of their shock and he crept over to it on hands and knees and crouched in the shelter of the hollow.

“The water is rising more swiftly,” said the plant. “It will be not long now.”

“No!” said Calvin. The word was lost in the sound of the waves and wind, as though it had never been. Nor, the minute it was spoken, could he remember what he had meant to deny by it. It had been only a response without thought, an instinctive negation.

“You make me wonder,” said the plant, after a little, “why it hurts you so—this thought of dying. Since you first became alive, you have faced ultimate death. And you have not faced it alone. All things die. This storm must die. This rock on which we lie will not exist forever. Even worlds and suns come at last to their ends, and galaxies, perhaps even the Universe.”

Calvin shook his head. He did not answer.

“You are a fighting people,” said the plant, almost as if to itself. “Well and good. Perhaps a life like mine, yielding, giving to the forces of nature, traveling before the wind, sees less than you see, of a reason for clawing hold on existence. But still it seems to me that even a fighter would be glad at last to quit the struggle, when there is no other choice.”

“Not here,” said Calvin thickly. “Not now.”

“Why not here, why not now,” said the plant, “when it has to be somewhere and sometime?”

Calvin did not answer.

“I feel sorry for you,” said the plant. “I do not like to see things suffer.”

Raising his head a little and looking around him, Calvin could see the water, risen high around them, so that waves were splashing on all sides, less than the length of his own body away.

“It wouldn’t make sense to you,” said Calvin then, raising his rain-wet face toward the plant. “You’re old by your standards. I’m young. I’ve got things to do. You don’t understand.”

“No,” the plant agreed. “I do not understand.”

Calvin crawled a little closer to the plant, into the hollow, until he could see the vibrating air-sac that produced the voice of the plant. “Don’t you see? I’ve got to do something—I’ve got to feel I’ve accomplished something—before I quit.”

“What something?” asked the plant.

“I don’t know!” cried Calvin. “I just know I haven’t! I feel thrown away!”

“What is living? It is feeling and thinking. It is seeding and trying to understand. It is companionship of your own people. What more is there?”

“You have to do something.”

“Do what?”

“Something important. Something to feel satisfied about.” A wave, higher than the rest, slapped the rock a bare couple of feet below them and sent spray stinging in against them. “You have to say, ‘Look, maybe it wasn’t much, but I did this.’ ”

“What kind of this?”

“How do I know?” shouted Calvin. “Something—maybe something nobody else did—maybe something that hasn’t been done before!”

“For yourself?” said the plant. A higher wave slapped at the very rim of their hollow, and a little water ran over and down to pool around them. Calvin felt it cold around his knees and wrists. “Or for the doing?”

“For the doing! For the doing!”

“If it is for the doing, can you take no comfort from the fact there are others of your own kind to do it?”

Another wave came in on them. Calvin moved spasmodically right up against the plant and put his arms around it, holding on.

“I have seeded ten times and done much thinking,” said the plant—rather muffledly, for Calvin’s body was pressing against its air-sac. “I have not thought of anything really new, or startling, or great, but I am satisfied.” It paused a moment as a new wave drenched them and receded. They were half awash in the hollow now, and the waves came regularly. “I do not see how this is so different from what you have done. But I am content.” Another and stronger wave rocked them. The plant made a sound that might have been of pain at its roots tearing. “Have you seeded?”

“No,” said Calvin, and all at once, like light breaking at last into the dark cave of his being, in this twelfth hour, it came to him—all of what he had robbed himself in his search for a victory. Choking on a wave, he clung to the plant with frenzied strength. “Nothing!” The word came torn from him as if by some ruthless hand. “I’ve got nothing!”

“Then I understand at last,” said the plant. “For of all things, the most terrible is to die unfruitful. It is no good to say we will not be beaten, because there is always waiting, somewhere, that which can beat us. And then a life that is seedless goes down to defeat finally and forever. But when one has seeded, there is no ending of the battle, and life mounts on life until the light is reached by those far generations in which we have had our own small but necessary part. Then our personal defeat has been nothing, for though we died, we are still living, and though we fell, we conquered.”

But Calvin, clinging to the plant with both arms, saw only the water closing over him.

“Too late—” he choked. “Too late—too late—”

“No,” bubbled the plant. “Not too late yet. This changes things. For I have seeded ten times and passed on my life. But you—I did not understand. I did not realize your need.”

The flood, cresting, ran clear and strong, the waves breaking heavily on the drowned shore by the river mouth. The rescue spinner, two hours out of Base and descending once again through the fleeting murk, checked at the sight of a begrimed human figure, staggering along the slick margin of the shore, carrying something large and limp under one arm, and with the other arm poking at the ground with a stick.

The spinner came down almost on top of him, and the two men in it reached to catch Calvin. He could hardly stand, let alone stumble forward, but stumble he did.

“Cal!” said the pilot. “Hold up! It’s us.”

“Let go,” said Calvin thickly. He pulled loose, dug with his stick, dropped something from the limp thing into the hole he had made, and moved on.

“You out of your head, Cal?” cried the copilot. “Come on, we’ve got to get you back to the hospital.”

“No,” said Calvin, pulling away again.

“What’re you doing?” demanded the pilot. “What’ve you got there?”

“Think-plant. Dead,” said Calvin, continuing his work. “Let go!” He fought weakly, but so fiercely that they did turn him loose again. “You don’t understand. Saved my life.”

“Saved your life?” The pilot followed him. “How?”

“I was on an island. In the river. Flood coming up.” Calvin dug a fresh hole in the ground. “It could have lived a little longer. It let me pull it ahead of time—so I’d have something to float to shore on.” He turned exhaustion-bleared eyes on them. “Saved my life.”

The pilot and the copilot looked at each other as two men look at each other over the head of a child, or a madman.

“All right, Cal,” said the pilot. “So it saved your life. But how come you’ve got to do this? And what are you doing, anyhow?”

“What am I doing?” Calvin paused entirely and turned to face them. “What am I doing?” he repeated on a rising note of wonder. “Why, you damn fools, I’m doing the first real thing I ever did in my life! I’m saving the lives of these seeds!”

Summit

Two king-sized bands blared martial music, the “Internationale” and the “Star-Spangled Banner,” each seemingly trying to drown the other in a Götterdämmerung of acoustics.

Two lines of troops, surfacely differing in uniforms and in weapons, but basically so very the same, so evenly matched, came to attention. A thousand hands slapped a thousand submachine gun stocks.

Marshal Vladimir Ignatov strode stiff-kneed down the long march, the stride of a man for years used to cavalry boots. He was flanked by frozen visaged subordinates, but none so cold of face as he himself.

At the entrance to the conference hall he stopped, turned and waited.

At the end of the corridor of troops a car stopped and several figures emerged, most of them in civilian dress, several bearing briefcases. They in their turn ran the gauntlet.

At their fore walked James Warren Donlevy, spritely, his eyes darting here, there, politician-like. A half smile on his face, as though afraid he might forget to greet a voter he knew, or was supposed to know.

His hand was out before that of Vladimir Ignatov’s.

“Your Excellency,” he said.

Ignatov shook hands stiffly. Dropped that of the other’s as soon as protocol would permit.

The field marshal indicated the door of the conference hall. “There is little reason to waste time, Mr. President.”

“Exactly,” Donlevy snapped.

The door closed behind them and the two men, one uniformed and bemedaled, the other nattily attired in his business suit, turned to each other.

“Nice to see you again, Vovo. How’re Olga and the baby?”

The soldier grinned back in response. “Two babies now—you don’t keep up on the real news, Jim. How’s Martha?” They shook hands.

“Not so good,” Jim said, scowling. “I’m worried. It’s that new cancer. As soon as we conquer one type two more rear up. How are you people doing on cancer research?”

Vovo was stripping off his tunic. He hung it over the back of one of the chairs, began to unbutton his high, tight military collar. “I’m not really up on it, Jim, but I think that’s one field where you can trust anything we know to be in the regular scientific journals our people exchange with yours. I’ll make some inquiries when I get back home, though. You never know, this new strain—I guess you’d call it—might be one that we’re up on and you aren’t.”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Thanks a lot.” He crossed to the small portable bar. “How about a drink? Whisky, vodka, rum—there’s ice.”

Vovo slumped into one of the heavy chairs that were arranged around the table. He grimaced, “No vodka, I don’t feel patriotic today. How about one of those long cold drinks, with the cola stuff?”

“Cuba libra,” Jim said. “Coming up. Look, would you rather speak Russian?”

“No,” Vovo said, “my English is getting rusty. I need the practice.”

Jim brought the glasses over and put them on the table. He began stripping off his own coat, loosening his tie. “God, I’m tired,” he said. “This sort of thing wears me down.”

Vovo sipped his drink. “Now there’s as good a thing to discuss as any, in the way of killing time. The truth now, Jim, do you really believe in a God? After all that’s happened to this human race of ours, do you really believe in divine guidance?” He twisted his mouth sarcastically.

The other relaxed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose so. I was raised in a family that believed in God. Just as, I suppose, you were raised in one that didn’t.” He lifted his shoulders slightly in a shrug. “Neither of us seems to be particularly brilliant in establishing a position of our own.”

Vovo snorted. “Never thought of it that way,” he admitted. “We’re usually contemptuous of anyone still holding to the old beliefs. There aren’t many left.”

“More than you people admit, I understand.”

Vovo shook his heavy head. “No, not really. Mostly crackpots. Have you ever noticed how it is that the nonconformists in any society are usually crackpots? The people on your side that admit belonging to our organizations, are usually on the wild eyed and uncombed hair side—I admit it. On the other hand, the people in our citizenry who subscribe to your system, your religion, that sort of thing, are crackpots, too. Applies to religion as well as politics. An atheist in your country is a nonconformist—in mine, a Christian is. Both crackpots.”

Jim laughed and took a sip of his drink.

Vovo yawned and said, “How long are we going to be in here?”

“I don’t know. Up to us, I suppose.”

“Yes. How about another drink? I’ll make it. How much of that cola stuff do you put in?”

Jim told him, and while the other was on his feet mixing the drinks, said, “You figure on sticking to the same line this year?”

“Have to,” Vovo said over his shoulder. “What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t know. We’re building up to a whale of a depression as it is, even with half the economy running full blast producing defense materials.”

Vovo chuckled, “Defense materials. I wonder if ever in the history of the human race anyone ever admitted to producing offense materials.”

“Well, you call it the same thing. All your military equipment is for defense. And, of course, according to your press, all ours is for offense.”

“Of course,” Vovo said.

He brought the glasses back and handed one to the other. He slumped back into his chair again, loosened two buttons of his trousers.

“Jim,” Vovo said, “why don’t you divert more of your economy to public works, better roads, reforestation, dams—that sort of thing.”

Jim said wearily, “You’re a better economist than that. Didn’t your boy Marx, or was it Engels, write a small book on the subject? We’re already overproducing—turning out more products than we can sell.”

“I wasn’t talking about your government building new steel mills. But dams, roads, that sort of thing. You could plow billions into such items and get some real use out of them. We both know that our weapons will never be used—they can’t be.”

Jim ticked them off on his fingers. “We already are producing more farm products than we know what to do with; if we build more dams it’ll open up new farm lands and increase the glut. If we build more and better roads, it will improve transportation, which will mean fewer men will be able to move greater tonnage—and throw transportation employees into the unemployed. If we go all out for reforestation, it will eventually bring down the price of lumber and the lumber people are howling already. No,” he shook his head, “there’s just one really foolproof way of disposing of surpluses and using up labor power and that’s war—hot or cold.”

Vovo shrugged, “I suppose so.”

“It amounts to building pyramids, of course.” Jim twisted his mouth sourly. “And since we’re asking questions about each other’s way of life, when is your State going to begin to wither away?”

“How was that?” Vovo asked.

“According to your sainted founder, once you people came to power the State was going to wither away, class rule would be over, and Utopia be on hand. That was a long time ago, and your State is stronger than ours.”

Vovo snorted. “How can we wither away the State as long as we are threatened by capitalist aggression?”

Jim said, “Ha!”

Vovo went on. “You know better than that, Jim. The only way my organization can keep in power is by continually beating the drums, keeping our people stirred up to greater and greater sacrifices by using you as a threat. Didn’t the old Romans have some sort of maxim to the effect that when you’re threatened with unease at home stir up trouble abroad?”

“You’re being even more frank than usual,” Jim said. “But that’s one of the pleasures of these get-togethers, neither of us resorts to hypocrisy. But you can’t keep up these tensions forever.”

“You mean we can’t keep up these tensions forever, Jim. And when they end? Well, personally I can’t see my organization going out without a blood bath.” He grimaced sourly, “And since I’d probably be one of the first to be bathed, I’d like to postpone the time. It’s like having a tiger by the tail, Jim. We can’t let go.”

“Happily, I don’t feel in the same spot,” Jim said. He got up and went to the picture window that took up one entire wall. It faced out over a mountain vista. He looked soberly into the sky.

Vovo joined him, glass in hand.

“Possibly your position isn’t exactly the same as ours but there’ll be some awfully great changes if that military based economy of yours suddenly had peace thrust upon it. You’d have a depression such as you’ve never dreamed of. Let’s face reality, Jim, neither of us can afford peace.”

“Well, we’ve both known that for a long time.”

They both considered somberly, the planet Earth blazing away, a small sun there in the sky.

Jim said, “I sometimes think that the race would have been better off, when man was colonizing Venus and Mars, if it had been a joint enterprise rather than you people doing one, and we the other. If it had all been in the hands of that organization …”

“The United Nations?” Vovo supplied.

“… Then when Bomb Day hit, perhaps these new worlds could have gone on to, well, better things.”

“Perhaps,” Vovo shrugged. “I’ve often wondered how Bomb Day started. Who struck the spark.”

“Happily there were enough colonists on both planets to start the race all over again,” Jim said. “What difference does it make, who struck the spark?”

“None, I suppose.” Vovo began to button his collar, readjust his clothes. “Well, shall we emerge and let the quaking multitudes know that once again we have made a shaky agreement? One that will last until the next summit meeting.”

Revolution

Paul Koslov nodded briefly once or twice as he made his way through the forest of desks. Behind him he caught snatches of tittering voices in whisper.

“… That’s him … The Chief’s hatchetman … Know what they call him in Central America, a pistola, that means … About Iraq … And that time in Egypt … Did you notice his eyes … How would you like to date him … That’s him. I was at a cocktail party once when he was there. Shivery … cold-blooded—”

Paul Koslov grinned inwardly. He hadn’t asked for the reputation but it isn’t everyone who is a legend before thirty-five. What was it Newsweek had called him? “The T. E. Lawrence of the Cold War.” The trouble was it wasn’t something you could turn off. It had its shortcomings when you found time for some personal life.

He reached the Chief’s office, rapped with a knuckle and pushed his way through.

The Chief and a male secretary, who was taking dictation, looked up. The secretary frowned, evidently taken aback by the cavalier entrance, but the Chief said, “Hello, Paul, come on in. Didn’t expect you quite so soon.” And to the secretary, “Dickens, that’s all.”

When Dickens was gone the Chief scowled at his troubleshooter. “Paul, you’re bad for discipline around here. Can’t you even knock before you enter? How is Nicaragua?”

Paul Koslov slumped into a leather easy-chair and scowled. “I did knock. Most of it’s in my report. Nicaragua is … tranquil. It’ll stay tranquil for a while, too. There isn’t so much as a parlor pink—”

“And Lopez—?”

Paul said slowly, “Last time I saw Raul was in a swamp near Lake Managua. The very last time.”

The Chief said hurriedly, “Don’t give me the details. I leave details up to you.”

“I know,” Paul said flatly.

His superior drew a pound can of Sir Walter Raleigh across the desk, selected a briar from a pipe rack and while he was packing in tobacco said, “Paul, do you know what day it is—and what year?”

“It’s Tuesday. And 1965.”

The bureau chief looked at his disk calendar. “Um-m-m. Today the Seven Year Plan is completed.”

Paul snorted.

The Chief said mildly, “Successfully. For all practical purposes, the U.S.S.R. has surpassed us in gross national product.”

“That’s not the way I understand it.”

“Then you make the mistake of believing our propaganda. That’s always a mistake, believing your own propaganda. Worse than believing the other man’s.”

“Our steel capacity is a third again as much as theirs.”

“Yes, and currently, what with our readjustment—remember when they used to call them recessions, or even earlier, depressions—our steel industry is operating at less than sixty percent of capacity. The Soviets always operate at one hundred percent of capacity. They don’t have to worry about whether or not they can sell it. If they produce more steel than they immediately need, they use it to build another steel mill.”

The Chief shook his head. “As long ago as 1958 they began passing us, product by product. Grain, butter, and timber production, jet aircraft, space flight, and coal—”

Paul leaned forward impatiently. “We put out more than three times as many cars, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, washing machines.”

His superior said, “That’s the point. While we were putting the product of our steel mills into automobiles and automatic kitchen equipment, they did without these things and put their steel into more steel mills, more railroads, more factories. We leaned back and took it easy, sneered at their progress, talked a lot about our freedom and liberty to our allies and the neutrals and enjoyed our refrigerators and washing machines until they finally passed us.”

“You sound like a Tass broadcast from Moscow.”

“Um-m-m, I’ve been trying to,” the Chief said. “However, that’s still roughly the situation. The fact that you and I personally, and a couple of hundred million Americans, prefer our cars and such to more steel mills, and prefer our personal freedoms and liberties is beside the point. We should have done less laughing seven years ago and more thinking about today. As things stand, give them a few more years at this pace and every neutral nation in the world is going to fall into their laps.”

“That’s putting it strong, isn’t it?”

“Strong?” the Chief growled disgustedly. “That’s putting it mildly. Even some of our allies are beginning to waver. Eight years ago, India and China both set out to industrialize themselves. Today, China is the third industrial power of the world. Where’s India, about twentieth? Ten years from now China will probably be first. I don’t even allow myself to think where she’ll be twenty-five years from now.”

“The Indians were a bunch of idealistic screwballs.”

“That’s one of the favorite alibis, isn’t it? Actually we, the West, let them down. They couldn’t get underway. The Soviets backed China with everything they could toss in.”

Paul crossed his legs and leaned back. “It seems to me I’ve run into this discussion a few hundred times at cocktail parties.”

The Chief pulled out a drawer and brought forth a king-size box of kitchen matches. He struck one with a thumbnail and peered through tobacco smoke at Paul Koslov as he lit up.

“The point is that the system the Russkies used when they started their first five-year plan back in 1928, and the system used in China, works. If we, with our traditions of freedom and liberty, like it or not, it works. Every citizen of the country is thrown into the grinding mill to increase production. Everybody,” the Chief grinned sourly, “that is, except the party elite, who are running the whole thing. Everybody sacrifices for the sake of the progress of the whole country.”

“I know,” Paul said. “Give me enough time and I’ll find out what this lecture is all about.”

The Chief grunted at him. “The Commies are still in power. If they remain in power and continue to develop the way they’re going, we’ll be through, completely through, in another few years. We’ll be so far behind we’ll be the world’s laughingstock—and everybody else will be on the Soviet bandwagon.”

He seemed to switch subjects. “Ever hear of Somerset Maugham?”

“Sure. I’ve read several of his novels.”

“I was thinking of Maugham the British Agent, rather than Maugham the novelist, but it’s the same man.”

“British agent?”

“Um-m-m. He was sent to Petrograd in 1917 to prevent the Bolshevik revolution. The Germans had sent Lenin and Zinoviev up from Switzerland, where they’d been in exile, by a sealed train in hopes of starting a revolution in Czarist Russia. The point I’m leading to is that in one of his books, The Summing Up, I believe, Maugham mentions in passing that had he got to Petrograd possibly six weeks earlier he thinks he could have done his job successfully.”

Paul looked at him blankly. “What could he have done?”

The Chief shrugged. “It was all out war. The British wanted to keep Russia in the allied ranks so as to divert as many German troops as possible from the Western front. The Germans wanted to eliminate the Russians. Maugham had carte blanche. Anything would have gone. Elements of the British fleet to fight the Bolsheviks, unlimited amounts of money for anything he saw fit from bribery to hiring assassins. What would have happened, for instance, if he could have had Lenin and Trotsky killed?”

Paul said suddenly, “What has all this got to do with me?”

“We’re giving you the job this time.”

“Maugham’s job?” Paul didn’t get it.

“No, the other one. I don’t know who the German was who engineered sending Lenin up to Petrograd, but that’s the equivalent of your job.” He seemed to go off on another bent. “Did you read Djilas’ The New Class about a decade ago?”

“Most of it, as I recall. One of Tito’s top men who turned against the Commies and did quite a job of exposing the so-called classless society.”

“That’s right. I’ve always been surprised that so few people bothered to wonder how Djilas was able to smuggle his book out of one of Tito’s strongest prisons and get it to publishers in the West.”

“Never thought of it,” Paul agreed. “How could he?”

“Because,” the Chief said, knocking the ash from his pipe and replacing it in the rack, “there was and is a very strong underground in all the Communist countries. Not only Yugoslavia, but the Soviet Union as well.”

Paul stirred impatiently. “Once again, what’s all this got to do with me?”

“They’re the ones you’re going to work with. The anti-Soviet underground. You’ve got unlimited leeway. Unlimited support to the extent we can get it to you. Unlimited funds for whatever you find you need them for. Your job is to help the underground start a new Russian Revolution.”

Paul Koslov, his face still bandaged following plastic surgery, spent a couple of hours in the Rube Goldberg department inspecting the latest gadgets of his trade.

Derek Stevens said, “The Chief sent down a memo to introduce you to this new item. We call it a Tracy.”

Paul frowned at the wristwatch, fingered it a moment, held it to his ear. It ticked and the second hand moved. “Tracy?” he said.

Stevens said, “After Dick Tracy. Remember, a few years ago? His wrist two-way radio.”

“But this is really a watch,” Paul said.

“Sure. Keeps fairly good time, too. However, that’s camouflage. It’s also a two-way radio. Tight beam from wherever you are to the Chief.”

Paul pursed his lips. “The transistor boys are really doing it up brown.” He handed the watch back to Derek Stevens. “Show me how it works, Derek.”

They spent fifteen minutes on the communications device, then Derek Stevens said, “Here’s another item the Chief thought you might want to see:”

It was a compact, short-muzzled hand gun. Paul handled it with the ease of long practice. “The grip’s clumsy. What’s its advantage? I don’t particularly like an automatic.”

Derek Stevens motioned with his head. “Come into the firing range, Koslov, and we’ll give you a demonstration.”

Paul shot him a glance from the side of his eyes, then nodded. “Lead on.”

In the range, Stevens had a man-size silhouette put up. He stood to one side and said, “OK, let her go.”

Paul stood easily, left hand in pants pocket, brought the gun up and tightened on the trigger. He frowned and pressed again.

He scowled at Derek Stevens. “It’s not loaded.”

Stevens grunted amusement. “Look at the target. First time you got it right over the heart.”

“I’ll be … ,” Paul began. He looked down at the weapon in surprise. “Noiseless and recoilless. What caliber is it, Derek, and what’s the muzzle velocity?”

“We call it the .38 Noiseless,” Stevens said. “It has the punch of that .44 Magnum you’re presently carrying.”

With a fluid motion Paul Koslov produced the .44 Magnum from the holster under his left shoulder and tossed it to one side. “That’s the last time I tote that cannon,” he said. He balanced the new gun in his hand in admiration. “Have the front sight taken off for me, Derek, and the fore part of the trigger guard. I need a quick draw gun.” He added absently, “How did you know I carried a .44?”

Stevens said, “You’re rather famous, Koslov. The Colonel Lawrence of the Cold War. The journalists are kept from getting very much about you, but what they do learn they spread around.”

Paul Koslov said flatly, “Why don’t you like me, Stevens? In this game I don’t appreciate people on our team who don’t like me. It’s dangerous.”

Derek Stevens flushed. “I didn’t say I didn’t like you.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“It’s nothing personal,” Stevens said.

Paul Koslov looked at him.

Stevens said, “I don’t approve of Americans committing political assassinations.”

Paul Koslov grinned wolfishly and without humor. “You’ll have a hard time proving that even our cloak and dagger department has ever authorized assassination, Stevens. By the way, I’m not an American.”

Derek Stevens was not the type of man whose jaw dropped, but he blinked. “Then what are you?”

“A Russian,” Paul snapped. “And look, Stevens, we’re busy now, but when you’ve got some time to do a little thinking, consider the ethics of warfare.”

Stevens was flushed again at the tone. “Ethics of warfare?”

“There aren’t any,” Paul Koslov snapped. “There hasn’t been chivalry in war for a long time, and there probably never will be again. Neither side can afford it. And I’m talking about cold war as well as hot.” He scowled at the other. “Or did you labor under the illusion that only the Commies had tough operators on their side?”

Paul Koslov crossed the Atlantic in a supersonic T.U.−180 operated by Europa Airways. That in itself galled him. It was bad enough that the Commies had stolen a march on the West with the first jet liner to go into mass production, the T.U.−104 back in 1957. By the time the United States brought out its first really practical transatlantic jets in 1959 the Russians had come up with the T.U.−114 which its designer, old Andrei Tupolev named the largest, most efficient and economical aircraft flying.

In civil aircraft they had got ahead and stayed ahead. Subsidized beyond anything the West could or at least would manage, the airlines of the world couldn’t afford to operate the slower, smaller and more expensive Western models. One by one, first the neutrals such as India, and then even members of the Western bloc began equipping their airlines with Russian craft.

Paul grunted his disgust at the memory of the strong measures that had to be taken by the government to prevent even some of the American lines from buying Soviet craft at the unbelievably low prices they offered them.

In London he presented a card on which he had added a numbered code in pencil. Handed it over a desk to the British intelligence major.

“I believe I’m expected,” Paul said.

The major looked at him, then down at the card. “Just a moment, Mr. Smith. I’ll see if his lordship is available. Won’t you take a chair?” He left the room.

Paul Koslov strolled over to the window and looked out on the moving lines of pedestrians below. He had first been in London some thirty years ago. So far as he could remember, there were no noticeable changes with the exception of automobile design. He wondered vaguely how long it took to make a noticeable change in the London street scene.

The major reentered the room with a new expression of respect on his face. “His lordship will see you immediately, Mr. Smith.”

“Thanks,” Paul said. He entered the inner office.

Lord Carrol was attired in civilian clothes which somehow failed to disguise a military quality in his appearance. He indicated a chair next to his desk. “We’ve been instructed to give you every assistance Mr. … Smith. Frankly, I can’t imagine of just what this could consist.”

Paul said, as he adjusted himself in the chair, “I’m going into the Soviet Union on an important assignment. I’ll need as large a team at my disposal as we can manage. You have agents in Russia, of course?” He lifted his eyebrows.

His lordship cleared his throat and his voice went even stiffer. “All major military nations have a certain number of espionage operatives in each other’s countries. No matter how peaceful the times, this is standard procedure.”

“And these are hardly peaceful times,” Paul said dryly. “I’ll want a complete list of your Soviet based agents and the necessary information on how to contact them.”

Lord Carrol stared at him. Finally sputtered, “Man, why? You’re not even a British national. This is—”

Paul, held up a hand. “We’re cooperating with the Russian underground. Cooperating isn’t quite strong enough a word. We’re going to push them into activity if we can.”

The British intelligence head looked down at the card before him. “Mr. Smith,” he read. He looked up. “John Smith, I assume.”

Paul said, still dryly, “Is there any other?”

Lord Carrol said, “See here, you’re really Paul Koslov, aren’t you?”

Paul looked at him, said nothing.

Lord Carrol said impatiently, “What you ask is impossible. Our operatives all have their own assignments, their own work. Why do you need them?”

“This is the biggest job ever, overthrowing the Soviet State. We need as many men as we can get on our team. Possibly I won’t have to use them but, if I do, I want them available.”

The Britisher rapped, “You keep mentioning our team but according to the dossier we carry on you, Mr. Koslov, you are neither British nor even a Yankee. And you ask me to turn over our complete Soviet machinery.”

Paul came to his feet and leaned over the desk, there was a paleness immediately beneath his ears and along his jaw line. “Listen,” he said tightly, “if I’m not on this team, there just is no team. Just a pretense of one. When there’s a real team there has to be a certain spirit. A team spirit. I don’t care if you’re playing cricket, football or international cold war. If there’s one thing that’s important to me, that I’ve based my whole life upon, it’s this, understand? I’ve got team spirit. Perhaps no one else in the whole West has it, but I do.”

Inwardly, Lord Carrol was boiling. He snapped, “You’re neither British nor American. In other words, you are a mercenary. How do we know that the Russians won’t offer you double or triple what the Yankees pay for your services?”

Paul sat down again and looked at his watch. “My time is limited,” he said. “I have to leave for Paris this afternoon and be in Bonn tomorrow. I don’t care what opinions you might have in regard to my mercenary motives, Lord Carrol. I’ve just come from Downing Street. I suggest you make a phone call there. At the request of Washington, your government has given me carte blanche in this matter.”

Paul flew into Moscow in an Aeroflot jet, landing at Vnukovo airport on the outskirts of the city. He entered as an American businessman, a camera importer who was also interested in doing a bit of tourist sightseeing. He was traveling deluxe category which entitled him to a Zil complete with chauffeur and an interpreter-guide when he had need of one. He was quartered in the Ukrayna, on Dorogomilovskaya Quai, a twenty-eight floor skyscraper with a thousand rooms.

It was Paul’s first visit to Moscow but he wasn’t particularly thrown off. He kept up with developments and was aware of the fact that as early as the late 1950s, the Russians had begun to lick the problems of ample food, clothing and finally shelter. Even those products once considered sheer luxuries were now in abundant supply. If material things alone had been all that counted, the Soviet man in the street wasn’t doing so badly.

He spent the first several days getting the feel of the city and also making his preliminary business calls. He was interested in a new “automated” camera currently being touted by the Russians as the world’s best. Fastest lens, foolproof operation, guaranteed for the life of the owner, and retailing for exactly twenty-five dollars.

He was told, as expected, that the factory and distribution point was in Leningrad and given instructions and letters of introduction.

On the fifth day he took the Red Arrow Express to Leningrad and established himself at the Astoria Hotel, 39 Hertzen Street. It was one of the many of the Intourist hotels going back to before the revolution.

He spent the next day allowing his guide to show him the standard tourist sights. The Winter Palace, where the Bolshevik revolution was won when the mutinied cruiser Aurora steamed up the river and shelled it. The Hermitage Museum, rivaled only by the Vatican and Louvre. The Alexandrovskaya Column, the world’s tallest monolithic stone monument. The modest personal palace of Peter the Great. The Peter and Paul Cathedral. The king-size Kirov Stadium. The Leningrad subway, as much a museum as a system of transportation.

He saw it all, tourist fashion, and wondered inwardly what the Intourist guide would have thought had he known that this was Mr. John Smith’s home town.

The day following, he turned his business problem over to the guide. He wanted to meet, let’s see now, oh yes, here it is, Leonid Shvernik, of the Mikoyan Camera works. Could it be arranged?

Of course it could be arranged. The guide went into five minutes of oratory on the desire of the Soviet Union to trade with the West, and thus spread everlasting peace.

An interview was arranged for Mr. Smith with Mr. Shvernik for that afternoon.

Mr. Smith met Mr. Shvernik in the latter’s office at two and they went through the usual amenities. Mr. Shvernik spoke excellent English so Mr. Smith was able to dismiss his interpreter-guide for the afternoon. When he was gone and they were alone Mr. Shvernik went into his sales talk.

“I can assure you, sir, that not since the Japanese startled the world with their new cameras shortly after the Second War, has any such revolution in design and quality taken place. The Mikoyan is not only the best camera produced anywhere, but since our plant is fully automated, we can sell it for a fraction the cost of German, Japanese or American—”

Paul Koslov came to his feet, walked quietly over to one of the pictures hanging on the wall, lifted it, pointed underneath and raised his eyebrows at the other.

Leonid Shvernik leaned back in his chair, shocked.

Paul remained there until at last the other shook his head.

Paul said, in English, “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.” Shvernik said. “There are no microphones in here. I absolutely know. Who are you?”

Paul said, “In the movement they call you Georgi, and you’re top man in the Leningrad area.”

Shvernik’s hand came up from under the desk and he pointed a heavy military revolver at his visitor. “Who are you?” he repeated.

Paul ignored the gun. “Someone who knows that you are Georgi,” he said. “I’m from America. Is there any chance of anybody intruding?”

“Yes, one of my colleagues. Or perhaps a secretary.”

“Then I suggest we go to a bar, or some place, for a drink or a cup of coffee or whatever the current Russian equivalent might be.”

Shvernik looked at him searchingly. “Yes,” he said finally. “There’s a place down the street.” He began to stick the gun in his waistband, changed his mind and put it back into the desk drawer.

As soon as they were on the open street and out of earshot of other pedestrians, Paul said, “Would you rather I spoke Russian? I have the feeling that we’d draw less attention than if we speak English.”

Shvernik said tightly, “Do the Intourist people know you speak Russian? If not, stick to English. Now, how do you know my name? I have no contacts with the Americans.”

“I got it through my West German contacts.”

The Russian’s face registered unsuppressed fury. “Do they ignore the simplest of precautions! Do they reveal me to every source that asks?”

Paul said mildly, “Herr Ludwig is currently under my direction. Your secret is as safe as it has ever been.”

The underground leader remained silent for a long moment. “You’re an American, eh, and Ludwig told you about me? What do you want now?”

“To help,” Paul Koslov said.

“How do you mean, to help? How can you help? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Help in any way you want. Money, printing presses, mimeograph machines, radio transmitters, weapons, manpower in limited amounts, know-how, training, anything you need to help overthrow the Soviet government.”

They had reached the restaurant. Leonid Shvernik became the Russian export official. He ushered his customer to a secluded table. Saw him comfortably into his chair.

“Do you actually know anything about cameras?” he asked.

“Yes,” Paul said, “we’re thorough. I can buy cameras from you and they’ll be marketed in the States.”

“Good.” The waiter was approaching. Shvernik said, “Have you ever eaten caviar Russian style?”

“I don’t believe so,” Paul said. “I’m not very hungry.”

“Nothing to do with hunger.” Shvernik said. From the waiter he ordered raisin bread, sweet butter, caviar and a carafe of vodka.

The waiter went off for it and Shvernik said, “To what extent are you willing to help us? Money, for instance. What kind of money, rubles, dollars? And how much? A revolutionary movement can always use money.”

“Any kind,” Paul said flatly, “and any amount.”

Shvernik was impressed. He said eagerly, “Any amount within reason, eh?”

Paul looked into his face and said flatly, “Any amount, period. It doesn’t have to be particularly reasonable. Our only qualification would be a guarantee it is going into the attempt to overthrow the Soviets—not into private pockets.”

The waiter was approaching. Shvernik drew some brochures from his pocket, spread them before Paul Koslov and began to point out with a fountain pen various features of the Mikoyan camera.

The waiter put the order on the table and stood by for a moment for further orders.

Shvernik said, “First you take a sizable portion of vodka, like this.” He poured them two jolts. “And drink it down, ah, bottoms up, you Americans say. Then you spread butter on a small slice of raisin bread, and cover it with a liberal portion of caviar. Good? Then you eat your little sandwich and drink another glass of vodka. Then you start all over again.”

“I can see it could be fairly easy to get stoned, eating caviar Russian style,” Paul laughed.

They went through the procedure and the waiter wandered off.

Paul said, “I can take several days arranging the camera deal with you. Then I can take a tour of the country, supposedly giving it a tourist look-see, but actually making contact with more of your organization. I can then return in the future, supposedly to make further orders. I can assure you, these cameras are going to sell very well in the States. I’ll be coming back, time and again—for business reasons. Meanwhile, do you have any members among the interpreter-guides in the local Intourist offices?”

Shvernik nodded. “Yes. And, yes, that would be a good idea. We’ll assign Ana Furtseva to you, if we can arrange it. And possibly she can even have a chauffeur assigned you who’ll also be one of our people.”

That was the first time Paul Koslov heard the name Ana Furtseva.

In the morning Leonid Shvernik came to the hotel in a Mikoyan Camera Works car loaded with cameras and the various accessories that were available for the basic model. He began gushing the advantages of the Mikoyan before they were well out of the hotel.

The last thing he said, as they trailed out of the hotel’s portals was, “We’ll drive about town, giving you an opportunity to do some snapshots and then possibly to my country dacha where we can have lunch—”

At the car he said, “May I introduce Ana Furtseva, who’s been assigned as your guide-interpreter by Intourist for the balance of your stay? Ana, Mr. John Smith.”

Paul shook hands.

She was blond as almost all Russian girls are blond, and with the startling blue eyes. A touch chubby, by Western standards, but less so than the Russian average. She had a disturbing pixie touch around the mouth, out of place in a dedicated revolutionist.

The car took off with Shvernik at the wheel. “You’re actually going to have to take pictures as we go along. We’ll have them developed later at the plant. I’ve told them that you are potentially a very big order. Possibly they’ll try and assign one of my superiors to your account after a day or two. If so, I suggest that you merely insist that you feel I am competent and you would rather continue with me.”

“Of course,” Paul said. “Now then, how quickly can our assistance to you get underway?”

“The question is,” Shvernik said, “just how much you can do in the way of helping our movement. For instance, can you get advanced type weapons to us?”

The .38 Noiseless slid easily into Paul’s hands. “Obviously, we can’t smuggle sizable military equipment across the border. But here, for instance, is a noiseless, recoilless hand gun. We could deliver any reasonable amount within a month.”

“Five thousand?” Shvernik asked.

“I think so. You’d have to cover once they got across the border, of course. How well organized are you? If you aren’t, possibly we can help there, but not in time to get five thousand guns to you in a month.”

Ana was puzzled. “How could you possibly get that number across the Soviet borders?” Her voice had a disturbing Slavic throatiness. It occurred to Paul Koslov that she was one of the most attractive women he had ever met. He was amused. Women had never played a great part in his life. There had never been anyone who had really, basically, appealed. But evidently blood was telling. Here he had to come back to Russia to find such attractiveness.

He said, “The Yugoslavs are comparatively open and smuggling across the Adriatic from Italy, commonplace. We’d bring the things you want in that way. Yugoslavia and Poland are on good terms, currently, with lots of trade. We’d ship them by rail from Yugoslavia to Warsaw. Trade between Poland and U.S.S.R. is on massive scale. Our agents in Warsaw would send on the guns in well concealed shipments. Freight cars aren’t searched at the Polish-Russian border. However, your agents would have to pick up the deliveries in Brest or Kobryn, before they got as far as Pinsk.”

Ana said, her voice very low, “Visiting in Sweden at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm is a colonel who is at the head of the Leningrad branch of the K.G.B. department in charge of counterrevolution, as they call it. Can you eliminate him?”

“Is it necessary? Are you sure that if it’s done it might not raise such a stink that the K.G.B. might concentrate more attention on you?” Paul didn’t like this sort of thing. It seldom accomplished anything.

Ana said, “He knows that both Georgi and I are members of the movement.”

Paul Koslov gaped at her. “You mean your position is known to the police?”

Shvernik said, “Thus far he has kept the information to himself. He found out when Ana tried to enlist his services.”

Paul’s eyes went from one to the other of them in disbelief. “Enlist his services? How do you know he hasn’t spilled everything? What do you mean he’s kept the information to himself so far?”

Ana said, her voice so low as to be hardly heard, “He’s my older brother. I’m his favorite sister. How much longer he will keep our secret I don’t know. Under the circumstances, I can think of no answer except that he be eliminated.”

It came to Paul Koslov that the team on this side could be just as dedicated as he was to his own particular cause.

He said, “A Colonel Furtseva at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm. Very well. A Hungarian refugee will probably be best. If he’s caught, the reason for the killing won’t point in your direction.”

“Yes,” Ana said, her sensitive mouth twisting. “In fact, Anastas was in Budapest during the suppression there in 1956. He participated.”

The dacha of Leonid Shvernik was in the vicinity of Petrodvorets on the Gulf of Finland, about eighteen miles from Leningrad proper. It would have been called a summer bungalow in the States. On the rustic side. Three bedrooms, a moderately large living-dining room, kitchen, bath, even a carport. Paul Koslov took a mild satisfaction in deciding that an American in Shvernik’s equivalent job could have afforded more of a place than this.

Shvernik was saying, “I hope it never gets to the point where you have to go on the run. If it does, this house is a center of our activities. At any time you can find clothing here, weapons, money, food. Even a small boat on the waterfront. It would be possible, though difficult, to reach Finland.”

“Right,” Paul said. “Let’s hope there’ll never be occasion.”

Inside, they sat around a small table, over the inevitable bottle of vodka and cigarettes, and later coffee.

Shvernik said, “Thus far we’ve rambled around hurriedly on a dozen subjects but now we must become definite.”

Paul nodded.

“You come to us and say you represent the West and that you wish to help overthrow the Soviets. Fine. How do we know you do not actually represent the K.G.B. or possibly the M.V.D.?”

Paul said, “I’ll have to prove otherwise by actions.” He came to his feet and, ignoring Ana, pulled out his shirt tail, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his pants and unbuckled the money belt beneath.

He said, “We have no idea what items you’ll be wanting from us in the way of equipment, but as you said earlier all revolutions need money. So here’s the equivalent of a hundred thousand American dollars—in rubles, of course.” He added apologetically, “The smallness of the amount is due to bulk. Your Soviet money doesn’t come in sufficiently high denominations for a single person to carry really large amounts.”

He tossed the money belt to the table, rearranged his clothing and returned to his chair.

Shvernik said, “A beginning, but I am still of the opinion that we should not introduce you to any other members of the organization until we have more definite proof of your background.”

“That’s reasonable,” Paul agreed. “Now what else?”

Shvernik scowled at him. “You claim you are an American but you speak as good Russian as I do.”

“I was raised in America,” Paul said, “but I never became a citizen because of some minor technicality while I was a boy. After I reached adulthood and first began working for the government, it was decided that it might be better, due to my type of specialization, that I continue to remain legally not an American.”

“But actually you are Russian?”

“I was born here in Leningrad,” Paul said evenly.

Ana leaned forward, “Why then, actually, you’re a traitor to Russia.”

Paul laughed. “Look who’s talking. A leader of the underground.”

Ana wasn’t amused. “But there is a difference in motivation. I fight to improve my country. You fight for the United States and the West.”

“I can’t see much difference. We’re both trying to overthrow a vicious bureaucracy.” He laughed again. “You hate them as much as I do.”

“I don’t know.” She frowned, trying to find words, dropped English and spoke in Russian. “The Communists made mistakes, horrible mistakes and—especially under Stalin—were vicious beyond belief to achieve what they wanted. But they did achieve it. They built our country into the world’s strongest.”

“If you’re so happy with them, why are you trying to eliminate the Commies? You don’t make much sense.”

She shook her head, as though it was he who made no sense. “They are through now, no longer needed. A hindrance to progress.” She hesitated, then, “When I was a student I remember being so impressed by something written by Nehru that I memorized it. He wrote it while in a British jail in 1935. Listen.” She closed her eyes and quoted:

“Economic interests shape the political views of groups and classes. Neither reason nor moral considerations override these interests. Individuals may be converted, they may surrender their special privileges, although this is rare enough, but classes and groups do not do so. The attempt to convert a governing and privileged class into forsaking power and giving up its unjust privileges has therefore always so far failed, and there seems to be no reason whatever to hold that it will succeed in the future.”

Paul was frowning at her. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that the Communists are in the position Nehru speaks of. They’re in power and won’t let go. The longer they remain in power after their usefulness is over, the more vicious they must become to maintain themselves. Since this is a police state the only way to get them out is through violence. That’s why I find myself in the underground. But I am a patriotic Russian!” She turned to him. “Why do you hate the Soviets so, Mr. Smith?”

The American agent shrugged. “My grandfather was a member of the minor aristocracy. When the Bolsheviks came to power he joined Wrangel’s White Army. When the Crimea fell he was in the rear guard. They shot him.”

“That was your grandfather?” Shvernik said.

“Right. However, my own father was a student at the Petrograd University at that time. Left wing inclined, in fact. I think he belonged to Kerensky’s Social Democrats. At any rate, in spite of his upper class background he made out all right for a time. In fact he became an instructor and our early life wasn’t particularly bad.” Paul cleared his throat. “Until the purges in the 1930s. It was decided that my father was a Bukharinist Right Deviationist, whatever that was. They came and got him one night in 1938 and my family never saw him again.”

Paul disliked the subject. “To cut it short, when the war came along, my mother was killed in the Nazi bombardment of Leningrad. My brother went into the army and became a lieutenant. He was captured by the Germans when they took Kharkov, along with a hundred thousand or so others of the Red Army. When the Soviets, a couple of years later, pushed back into Poland he was recaptured.”

Ana said, “You mean liberated from the Germans?”

“Recaptured, is the better word. The Soviets shot him. It seems that officers of the Red Army aren’t allowed to surrender.”

Ana said painfully, “How did you escape all this?”

“My father must have seen the handwriting on the wall. I was only five years old when he sent me to London to a cousin. A year later we moved to the States. Actually, I have practically no memories of Leningrad, very few of my family. However, I am not very fond of the Soviets.”

“No,” Ana said softly.

Shvernik said, “And what was your father’s name?”

“Theodore Koslov.”

Shvernik said, “I studied French literature under him.”

Ana stiffened in her chair, and her eyes went wide. “Koslov,” she said. “You must be Paul Koslov.”

Paul poured himself another small vodka. “In my field it is a handicap to have a reputation. I didn’t know it had extended to the man in the street on this side of the Iron Curtain.”

It was by no means the last trip that Paul Koslov was to make to his underground contacts, nor the last visit to the dacha at Petrodvorets.

In fact, the dacha became the meeting center of the Russian underground with their liaison agent from the West. Through it funneled the problems involved in the logistics of the thing. Spotted through the rest of the vast stretches of the country, Paul had his local agents, American, British, French, West German. But this was the center.

The Mikoyan Camera made a great success in the States. And little wonder. Unknown to the Soviets, the advertising campaign that sold it cost several times the income from the sales. All they saw were the continued orders, the repeated visits of Mr. John Smith to Leningrad on buying trips. Leonid Shvernik was even given a promotion on the strength of his so ably cracking the American market. Ana Furtseva was automatically assigned to Paul as interpreter-guide whenever he appeared in the Soviet Union’s second capital.

In fact, when he made his “tourist” jaunts to the Black Sea region, to the Urals, to Turkestan, to Siberia, he was able to have her assigned to the whole trip with him. It gave a tremendous advantage in his work with the other branches of the underground.

Questions, unthought of originally when Paul Koslov had been sent into the U.S.S.R., arose as the movement progressed.

On his third visit to the dacha he said to Shvernik and three others of the organization’s leaders who had gathered for the conference, “Look, my immediate superior wants me to find out who is to be your top man, the chief of state of the new regime when Number One and the present hierarchy have been overthrown.”

Leonid Shvernik looked at him blankly. By this stage, he, as well as Ana, had become more to Paul than just pawns in the game being played. For some reason, having studied under the older Koslov seemed to give a personal touch that had grown.

Nikolai Kirichenko, a higher-up in the Moscow branch of the underground, looked strangely at Paul then at Shvernik. “What have you told him about the nature of our movement?” he demanded.

Paul said, “What’s the matter? All I wanted to know was who was scheduled to be top man.”

Shvernik said, “Actually, I suppose we have had little time to discuss the nature of the new society we plan. We’ve been busy working on the overthrow of the Communists. However, I thought …”

Paul was uneasy now. Leonid was right. Actually in his association with both Ana and Leonid Shvernik they had seldom mentioned what was to follow the collapse of the Soviets. It suddenly occurred to him how overwhelmingly important this was.

Nikolai Kirichenko, who spoke no English, said in Russian, “See here, we are not an organization attempting to seize power for ourselves.”

This was a delicate point, Paul sensed. Revolutions are seldom put over in the name of reaction or even conservatism. Whatever the final product, they are invariably presented as being motivated by liberal idealism and progress.

He said, “I am familiar with the dedication of your organization. I have no desire to underestimate your ideals. However, my question is presented with good intentions and remains unanswered. You aren’t anarchists, I know. You expect a responsible government to be in control after the removal of the police state. So I repeat, who is to be your head man?”

“How would we know?” Kirichenko blurted in irritation. “We’re working toward a democracy. It’s up to the Russian people to elect any officials they may find necessary to govern the country.”

Shvernik said, “However, the very idea of a head man, as you call him, is opposed to what we have in mind. We aren’t looking for a super-leader. We’ve had enough of leaders. Our experience is that it is too easy for them to become misleaders. If the history of this century has proven anything with its Mussolinis, Hitlers, Stalins, Chiangs, and Maos, it is that the search for a leader to take over the problems of a people is a vain one. The job has to be done by the people themselves.”

Paul hadn’t wanted to get involved in the internals of their political ideology. It was dangerous ground. For all he knew, there might be wide differences within the ranks of the revolutionary movement. There almost always were. He couldn’t take sides. His only interest in all this was the overthrow of the Soviets.

He covered. “Your point is well taken, of course. I understand completely. Oh, and here’s one other matter for discussion. These radio transmitters for your underground broadcasts.”

It was a subject in which they were particularly interested. The Russians leaned forward.

“Here’s the problem,” Kirichenko said. “As you know, the Soviet Union consists of fifteen republics. In addition there are seventeen Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics that coexist within these basic fifteen republics. There are also ten of what we call Autonomous Regions. Largely, each of these political divisions speak different languages and have their own cultural differences.”

Paul said, “Then it will be necessary to have transmitters for each of these areas?”

“Even more. Because some are so large that we will find it necessary to have more than one underground station.”

Leonid Shvernik said worriedly, “And here is another thing. The K.G.B. has the latest in equipment for spotting the location of an illegal station. Can you do anything about this?”

Paul said, “We’ll put our best electronics men to work. The problem as I understand it, is to devise a method of broadcasting that the secret police can’t trace.”

They looked relieved. “Yes, that is the problem,” Kirichenko said.

He brought up the subject some time later when he was alone with Ana. They were strolling along the left bank of the Neva River, paralleling the Admiralty Building, supposedly on a sightseeing tour.

He said, “I was discussing the future government with Leonid and some of the others the other day. I don’t think I got a very clear picture of it.” He gave her a general rundown of the conversation.

She twisted her mouth characteristically at him. “What did you expect, a return to Czarism? Let me see, who is pretender to the throne these days? Some Grand Duke in Paris, isn’t it?”

He laughed with her. “I’m not up on such questions,” Paul admitted. “I think I rather pictured a democratic parliamentary government, somewhere between the United States and England.”

“Those are governmental forms based on a capitalist society, Paul.”

Her hair gleamed in the brightness of the sun and he had to bring his mind back to the conversation.

“Well, yes. But you’re overthrowing the Communists. That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Not the way you put it. Let’s set if I can explain. To begin with, there have only been three bases of government evolved by man … I’m going to have to simplify this.”

“It isn’t my field, but go on,” Paul said. She wore less lipstick than you’d expect on an American girl but it went with her freshness.

“The first type of governmental system was based on the family. Your American Indians were a good example. The family, the clan, the tribe. In some cases, like the Iroquois Confederation, a nation of tribes. You were represented in the government according to the family or clan in which you were born.”

“Still with you so far,” Paul said. She had a very slight dimple in her left cheek. Dimples went best with blondes, Paul decided.

“The next governmental system was based on property. Chattel slavery, feudalism, capitalism. In ancient Athens, for example, those Athenians who owned the property of the City-State, and the slaves with which to work it, also governed the nation. Under feudalism, the nobility owned the country and governed it. The more land a noble owned, the larger his voice in government. I’m speaking broadly, of course.”

“Of course,” Paul said. He decided that she had more an American type figure than was usual here. He brought his concentration back to the subject. “However, that doesn’t apply under capitalism. We have democracy. Everyone votes, not just the owner of property.”

Ana was very serious about it. “You mustn’t use the words capitalism and democracy interchangeably. You can have capitalism, which is a social system, without having democracy which is a political system. For instance, when Hitler was in power in Germany the government was a dictatorship but the social system was still capitalism.”

Then she grinned at him mischievously. “Even in the United States I think you’ll find that the people who own a capitalist country run the country. Those who control great wealth have a large say in the running of the political parties, both locally and nationally. Your smaller property owners have a smaller voice in local politics. But how large a lobby does your itinerant harvest worker in Texas have in Washington?”

Paul said, slightly irritated now, “This is a big subject and I don’t agree with you. However, I’m not interested now in the government of the United States. I want to know what you people have in store for Russia, if and when you take over.”

She shook her head in despair at him. “That’s the point the others were trying to make to you. We have no intention of taking over. We don’t want to and probably couldn’t even if we did want to. What we’re advocating is a new type of government based on a new type of representation.”

He noticed the faint touch of freckles about her nose, her shoulders—to the extent her dress revealed them—and on her arms. Her skin was fair as only the northern races produce.

Paul said, “All right. Now we get to this third base of government. The first was the family, the second was property. What else is there?”

“In an ultramodern, industrialized society, there is your method of making your livelihood. In the future you will be represented from where you work. From your industry or profession. The parliament, or congress, of the nation would consist of elected members from each branch of production, distribution, communication, education, medicine—”

“Syndicalism,” Paul said, “with some touches of Technocracy.”

She shrugged. “Your American Technocracy of the 1930s I am not too familiar with, although I understand power came from top to bottom, rather than from bottom to top, democratically. The early syndicalists developed some of the ideas which later thinkers have elaborated upon, I suppose. So many of these terms have become all but meaningless through sloppy use. What in the world does Socialism mean, for instance? According to some, your Roosevelt was a Socialist. Hitler called himself a National Socialist. Mussolini once edited a Socialist paper. Stalin called himself a Socialist and the British currently have a Socialist government—mind you, with a Queen on the throne.”

“The advantage of voting from where you work rather than from where you live doesn’t come home to me,” Paul said.

“Among other things, a person knows the qualifications of the people with whom he works,” Ana said, “whether he is a scientist in a laboratory or a technician in an automated factory. But how many people actually know anything about the political candidates for whom they vote?”

“I suppose we could discuss this all day,” Paul said. “But what I was getting to is what happens when your outfit takes over here in Leningrad? Does Leonid become local commissar, or head of police, or … well, whatever new title you’ve dreamed up?”

Ana laughed at him, as though he was impossible. “Mr. Koslov, you have a mind hard to penetrate. I keep telling you, we, the revolutionary underground, have no desire to take over and don’t think that we could even if we wished. When the Soviets are overthrown by our organisation, the new government will assume power. We disappear as an organization. Our job is done. Leonid? I don’t know, perhaps his fellow employees at the Mikoyan Camera works will vote him into some office in the plant, if they think him capable enough.”

“Well,” Paul sighed, “it’s your country. I’ll stick to the American system.” He couldn’t take his eyes from the way her lips tucked in at the sides.

Ana said, “How long have you been in love with me, Paul?”

“What?”

She laughed. “Don’t be so blank. It would be rather odd, wouldn’t it, if two people were in love, and neither of them realized what had happened?”

“Two people in love,” he said blankly, unbelievingly.

Leonid Shvernik and Paul Koslov were bent over a map of the U.S.S.R. The former pointed out the approximate location of the radio transmitters. “We’re not going to use them until the last moment,” he said. “Not until the fat is in the fire. Then they will all begin at once. The K.G.B. and M.V.D. won’t have time to knock them out.”

Paul said, “Things are moving fast. Faster than I had expected. We’re putting it over, Leonid.”

Shvernik said, “Only because the situation is ripe. It’s the way revolutions work.”

“How do you mean?” Paul said absently, studying the map.

“Individuals don’t put over revolutions. The times do, the conditions apply. Did you know that six months before the Bolshevik revolution took place Lenin wrote that he never expected to live to see the Communist take over in Russia? The thing was that the conditions were there. The Bolsheviks, as few as they were, were practically thrown into power.”

“However,” Paul said dryly, “it was mighty helpful to have such men as Lenin and Trotsky handy.”

Shvernik shrugged. “The times make the men. Your own American Revolution is probably better known to you. Look at the men those times produced. Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Adams. And once again, if you had told any of those men, a year before the Declaration of Independence, that a complete revolution was the only solution to the problems that confronted them, they would probably have thought you insane.”

It was a new line of thought for Paul Koslov. “Then what does cause a revolution?”

“The need for it. It’s not just our few tens of thousands of members of the underground who see the need for overthrowing the Soviet bureaucracy. It’s millions of average Russians in every walk of life and every strata, from top to bottom. What does the scientist think when some bureaucrat knowing nothing of his speciality comes into the laboratory and directs his work? What does the engineer in an automobile plant think when some silly politician decides that since cars in capitalist countries have four wheels, that Russia should surpass them by producing a car with five? What does your scholar think when he is told what to study, how to interpret it, and then what to write? What does your worker think when he sees the bureaucrat living in luxury while his wage is a comparatively meager one? What do your young people think in their continual striving for a greater degree of freedom than was possessed by their parents? What does your painter think? Your poet? Your philosopher?”

Shvernik shook his head. “When a nation is ready for revolution, it’s the people who put it over. Often, the so-called leaders are hard put to run fast enough to say out in front.”

Paul said, “After it’s all over, we’ll go back to the States. I know a town up in the Sierras called Grass Valley. Hunting, fishing, mountains, clean air, but still available to cities such as San Francisco where you can go for shopping and for restaurants and entertainment.”

She kissed him again.

Paul said, “You know, I’ve done this sort of work—never on this scale before, of course—ever since I was nineteen. Nineteen, mind you! And this is the first time I’ve realized I’m tired of it. Fed up to here. I’m nearly thirty-five, Ana, and for the first time I want what a man is expected to want out of life. A woman, a home, children. You’ve never seen America. You’ll love it. You’ll like Americans too, especially the kind that live in places like Grass Valley.”

Ana laughed softly. “But we’re Russians, Paul.”

“Eh?”

“Our home and our life should be here. In Russia. The New Russia that we’ll have shortly.”

He scoffed at her. “Live here when there’s California? Ana, Ana, you don’t know what living is. Why—”

“But, Paul, I’m a Russian. If the United States is a more pleasant place to live than Russia will be, when we have ended the police state, then it is part of my duty to improve Russia.”

It suddenly came to him that she meant it. “But I was thinking, all along, that after this was over we’d be married. I’d be able to show you my country.”

“And, I don’t know why, I was thinking we both expected to be making a life for ourselves here.”

They were silent for a long time in mutual misery.

Paul said finally, “This is no time to make detailed plans. We love each other, that should be enough. When it’s all over, we’ll have the chance to look over each other’s way of life. You can visit the States with me.”

“And I’ll take you on a visit to Armenia. I know a little town in the mountains there which is the most beautiful in the world. We’ll spend a week there. A month! Perhaps one day we can build a summer dacha there.” She laughed happily. “Why practically everyone lives to be a hundred years old in Armenia.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to go there sometime,” Paul said quietly.

He’d been scheduled to see Leonid that night but at the last moment the other sent Ana to report that an important meeting was to take place. A meeting of underground delegates from all over the country. They were making basic decisions on when to move—but Paul’s presence wasn’t needed.

He had no feeling of being excluded from something that concerned him. Long ago it had been decided that the less details known by the average man in the movement about Paul’s activities, the better it would be. There is always betrayal and there are always counterrevolutionary agents within the ranks of an organization such as this. What was the old Russian proverb? When four men sit down to discuss revolution, three are police spies and the third a fool.

Actually, this had been astonishingly well handled. He had operated for over a year with no signs that the K.G.B. was aware of his activities. Leonid and his fellows were efficient. They had to be. The Commies had been slaughtering anyone who opposed them for forty years now. To survive as a Russian underground you had to be good.

No, it wasn’t a feeling of exclusion. Paul Koslov was stretched out on the bed of his king-size Astoria Hotel room, his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. He recapitulated the events of the past months from the time he’d entered the Chief’s office in Washington until last night at the dacha with Leonid and Ana.

The whole thing.

And over and over again.

There was a line of worry on his forehead.

He swung his feet to the floor and approached the closet. He selected his most poorly pressed pair of pants, and a coat that mismatched it. He checked the charge in his .38 Noiseless, and replaced the weapon under his left arm. He removed his partial bridge, remembering as he did so how he had lost the teeth in a street fight with some Commie union organizers in Panama, and replaced the porcelain bridge with a typically Russian gleaming steel one. He stuffed a cap into his back pocket, a pair of steel rimmed glasses into an inner pocket, and left the room.

He hurried through the lobby, past the Intourist desk, thankful that it was a slow time of day for tourist activity.

Outside, he walked several blocks to 25th of October Avenue and made a point of losing himself in the crowd. When he was sure that there could be no one behind him, he entered a pivnaya, had a glass of beer, and then disappeared into the toilet. There he took off the coat, wrinkled it a bit more, put it back on and also donned the cap and glasses. He removed his tie and thrust it into a side pocket.

He left, in appearance a more or less average workingman of Leningrad, walked to the bus station on Nashimson Volodarski and waited for the next bus to Petrodvorets. He would have preferred the subway, but the line didn’t run that far as yet.

The bus took him to within a mile and a half of the dacha, and he walked from there.

By this time Paul was familiar with the security measures taken by Leonid Shvernik and the others. None at all when the dacha wasn’t in use for a conference or to hide someone on the lam from the K.G.B. But at a time like this, there would be three sentries, carefully spotted.

This was Paul’s field now. Since the age of nineteen, he told himself wryly. He wondered if there was anyone in the world who could go through a line of sentries as efficiently as he could.

He approached the dacha at the point where the line of pine trees came nearest to it. On his belly he watched for ten minutes before making the final move to the side of the house. He lay up against it, under a bush.

From an inner pocket he brought the spy device he had acquired from Derek Steven’s Rube Goldberg department. It looked and was supposed to look considerably like a doctor’s stethoscope. He placed it to his ears, pressed the other end to the wall of the house.

Leonid Shvernik was saying, “Becoming killers isn’t a pleasant prospect but it was the Soviet who taught us that the end justifies the means. And so ruthless a dictatorship have they established that there is literally no alternative. The only way to remove them is by violence. Happily, so we believe, the violence need extend to only a small number of the very highest of the hierarchy. Once they are eliminated and our transmitters proclaim the new revolution, there should be little further opposition.”

Someone sighed deeply—Paul was able to pick up even that.

“Why discuss it further?” somebody whose voice Paul didn’t recognize, asked. “Let’s get onto other things. These broadcasts of ours have to be the ultimate in the presentation of our program. The assassination of Number One and his immediate supporters is going to react unfavorably at first. We’re going to have to present unanswerable arguments if our movement is to sweep the nation as we plan.”

A new voice injected, “We’ve put the best writers in the Soviet Union to work on the scripts. For all practical purposes they are completed.”

“We haven’t yet decided what to say about the H-Bomb, the missiles, all the endless equipment of war that has accumulated under the Soviets, not to speak of the armies, the ships, the aircraft and all the personnel who man them.”

Someone else, it sounded like Nikolai Kirichenko, from Moscow, said. “I’m chairman of the committee on that. It’s our opinion that we’re going to have to cover that matter in our broadcasts to the people and the only answer is that until the West has agreed to nuclear disarmament, we’re going to have to keep our own.”

Leonid said, and there was shock in his voice, “But that’s one of the most basic reasons for the new revolution, to eliminate this mad arms race, this devoting half the resources of the world to armament.”

“Yes, but what can we do? How do we know that the Western powers won’t attack? And please remember that it is no longer just the United States that has nuclear weapons. If we lay down our defenses, we are capable of being destroyed by England, France, West Germany, even Turkey or Japan! And consider, too, that the economies of some of the Western powers are based on the production of arms to the point that if such production ended, overnight, depressions would sweep their nations. In short, they can’t afford a world without tensions.”

“It’s a problem for the future to solve,” someone else said. “But meanwhile I believe the committee is right. Until it is absolutely proven that we need have no fears about the other nations, we must keep our own strength.”

Under his hedge, Paul grimaced, but he was getting what he came for, a discussion of policy, without the restrictions his presence would have put on the conversation.

“Let’s deal with a more pleasant subject,” a feminine voice said. “Our broadcasts should stress to the people that for the first time in the history of Russia we will be truly in the position to lead the world! For fifty years the Communists attempted to convert nations into adopting their system, and largely they were turned down. Those countries that did become Communist either did so at the point of the Red Army’s bayonet or under the stress of complete collapse such as in China. But tomorrow, and the New Russia? Freed from the inadequacy and inefficiency of the bureaucrats who have misruled us, we’ll develop a productive machine that will be the envy of the world!” Her voice had all but a fanatical ring.

Someone else chuckled, “If the West thought they had competition from us before, wait until they see the New Russia!”

Paul thought he saw someone, a shadow, at the side of the clearing. His lips thinned and the .38 Noiseless was in his hand magically.

False alarm.

He turned back to the “conversation” inside.

Kirichenko’s voice was saying, “It is hard for me not to believe that within a period of a year or so half the countries of the world will follow our example.”

“Half!” someone laughed exuberantly. “The world, Comrades! The new system will sweep the world. For the first time in history the world will see what Marx and Engels were really driving at!”

Back at the hotel, toward morning, Paul was again stretched out on the bed, hands under his head, his eyes unseeingly staring at the ceiling as he went through his agonizing reappraisal.

There was Ana.

And there was even Leonid Shvernik and some of the others of the underground. As close friends as he had ever made in a life that admittedly hadn’t been prone to friendship.

And there was Russia, the country of his birth. Beyond the underground movement, beyond the Soviet regime, beyond the Romanoff Czars. Mother Russia. The land of his parents, his grandparents, the land of his roots.

And, of course, there was the United States and the West. The West which had received him in his hour of stress in his flight from Mother Russia. Mother Russia, ha! What kind of a mother had she been to the Koslovs? To his grandfather, his father, his mother and brother? Where would he, Paul, be today had he as a child not been sent fleeing to the West?

And his life work. What of that? Since the age of nineteen, when a normal teenager would have been in school, preparing himself for life. Since nineteen he had been a member of the anti-Soviet team.

A star, too! Paul Koslov, the troubleshooter, the always reliable, cold, ruthless. Paul Koslov on whom you could always depend to carry the ball.

Anti-Soviet, or anti-Russian?

Why kid himself about his background. It meant nothing. He was an American. He had only the faintest of memories of his family or of the country. Only because people told him so did he know he was a Russian. He was as American as it is possible to get.

What had he told such Westerners, born and bred, as Lord Carrol and Derek Stevens? If he wasn’t a member of the team, there just wasn’t a team.

But then, of course, there was Ana.

Yes, Ana. But what, actually, was there in the future for them? Now that he considered it, could he really picture her sitting in the drug store on Montez Street, Grass Valley, having a banana split?

Ana was Russian. As patriotic a Russian as it was possible to be. As much a dedicated member of the Russian team as it was possible to be. And as a team member, she, like Paul, knew the chances that were involved. You didn’t get to be a star by sitting on the bench. She hadn’t hesitated, in the clutch, to sacrifice her favorite brother.

Paul Koslov propped the Tracy, the wristwatch-like radio before him, placing its back to a book. He made it operative, began to repeat, “Paul calling. Paul calling.”

A thin, far away voice said finally, “OK Paul. I’m receiving.”

Paul Koslov took a deep breath and said, “All right, this is it. In just a few days we’re all set to kick off. Understand?”

“I understand, Paul.”

“Is it possible that anybody else can be receiving this?”

“Absolutely impossible.”

“All right, then this is it. The boys here are going to start their revolution going by knocking off not only Number One, but also Two, Three, Four, Six and Seven of the hierarchy. Number Five is one of theirs.”

The thin voice said, “You know I don’t want details. They’re up to you.”

Paul grimaced. “This is why I called. You’ve got to make—or someone’s got to make—one hell of an important decision in the next couple of days. It’s not up to me. For once I’m not to be brushed off with that ‘don’t bother me with details,’ routine.”

“Decision? What decision? You said everything was all ready to go, didn’t you?”

“Look,” Paul Koslov said, “remember when you gave me this assignment. When you told me about the Germans sending Lenin up to Petrograd in hopes he’d start a revolution and the British sending Somerset Maugham to try and prevent it?”

“Yes, yes, man. What’s that got to do with it?” Even over the long distance, the Chief’s voice sounded puzzled.

“Supposedly the Germans were successful, and Maugham failed. But looking back at it a generation later, did the Germans win out by helping bring off the Bolshevik revolution? The Soviets destroyed them for all time as a first-rate power at Stalingrad, twenty-five years afterwards.”

The voice from Washington was impatient. “What’s your point, Paul?”

“My point is this. When you gave me this assignment, you told me I was in the position of the German who engineered bringing Lenin up to Petrograd to start the Bolsheviks rolling. Are you sure that the opposite isn’t true? Are you sure it isn’t Maugham’s job I should have? Let me tell you, Chief, these boys I’m working with now are sharp, they’ve got more on the ball than these Commie bureaucrats running the country have a dozen times over.

“Chief, this is the decision that has to be made in the next couple of days. Just who do we want eliminated? Are you sure you don’t want me to tip off the K.G.B. to this whole conspiracy?”

Adaptation

Foreword

Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for the stars.

And suddenly, with an all but religious zeal, mankind conceived its fantasy dream of populating the galaxy. Never in the history of the race had fervor reached such a peak and held so long. The question of why was seemingly ignored. Millions of Earth-type planets beckoned and with a lemming-like desperation humanity erupted into them.

But the obstacles were frightening in their magnitude. The planets and satellites of Sol had proven comparatively tractable and those that were suited to man-life were quickly brought under his dominion. But there, of course, he had the advantage of proximity. The time involved in running back and forth to the home planet was meaningless and all Earth’s resources could be thrown into each problem’s solving.

But a planet a year removed in transportation or even communication? Ay! this was another thing and more than once a million colonists were lost before the Earthlings could adapt to new climates, new flora and fauna, new bacteria—or to factors which the most far out visionary had never fancied, perhaps the lack of something never before missed.

So, mad with the lust to seed the universe with his kind, men sought new methods. To a hundred thousand worlds they sent smaller colonies, as few as a hundred pioneers apiece, and there marooned them, to adapt, if adapt they could.

For a millennium each colony was left to its own resources, to conquer the environment or to perish in the effort.

A thousand years was sufficient. Invariably it was found, on those planets where human life survived at all, man slipped back during his first two or three centuries into a state of barbarism. Then slowly began to inch forward again. There were exceptions and the progress on one planet never exactly duplicated that on another, however the average was surprisingly close to both nadir and zenith, in terms of evolution of society.

In a thousand years it was deemed by the Office of Galactic Colonization such pioneers had largely adjusted to the new environment and were ready for civilization, industrialization and eventual assimilation into the rapidly evolving Galactic Commonwealth.

Of course, even from the beginning, new and unforeseen problems manifested themselves …

From Man in Antiquity

Published in Terra City, Sol

Galactic Year 3,502.

I

The Coordinator said, “I suppose I’m an incurable romantic. You see, I hate to see you go.” Academician Amschel Mayer was a man in early middle years; Dr. Leonid Plekhanov, his contemporary. They offset one another; Mayer thin and high-pitched, his colleague heavy, slow and dour. Now they both showed their puzzlement.

The Coordinator added, “Without me.”

Plekhanov kept his massive face blank. It wasn’t for him to be impatient with his superior. Nevertheless, the ship was waiting, stocked and crewed.

Amschel Mayer said, “Certainly a last minute chat can’t harm.” Inwardly he realized the other man’s position. Here was a dream coming true, and Mayer and his fellows were the last thread that held the Coordinator’s control over the dream. When they left, half a century would pass before he could again check developments.

The Coordinator became more businesslike. “Yes,” he said, “but I have more in mind than a chat. Very briefly, I wish to go over your assignment. Undoubtedly redundant, but if there are questions, no matter how seemingly trivial, this is the last opportunity to air them.”

What possible questions could there be at this late date? Plekhanov thought.

The department head swiveled slowly in his chair and then back again as he talked. “You are the first—the first of many, many such teams. The manner in which you handle your task will effect man’s eternity. Obviously, since upon your experience we will base our future policies on interstellar colonization.” His voice lost volume. “The position in which you find yourselves should be humbling.”

“It is,” Amschel Mayer agreed. Plekhanov nodded his head.

The Coordinator nodded, too. “However, the situation is as near ideal as we could hope. Rigel’s planets are all but unbelievably Earthlike. Almost all our flora and fauna have been adaptable. Certainly our race has been.

“These two are the first of the seeded planets. Almost a thousand years ago we deposited small bodies of colonists upon each of them. Since then we have periodically checked, from a distance, but never intruded.” His eyes went from one of his listeners to the other. “No comments or questions, thus far?”

Mayer said, “This is one thing that surprises me. The colonies are so small to begin with. How could they possibly populate a whole world in one millennium?”

The Coordinator said, “Man adapts, Amschel. Have you studied the development of the United States? During her first century and a half the need was for population to fill the vast lands wrested from the Amerinds. Families of eight, ten, and twelve children were the common thing, much larger ones were not unknown. And the generations crowded one against another; a girl worried about spinsterhood if she reached seventeen unwed. But in the next century? The frontier vanished, the driving need for population was gone. Not only were drastic immigration laws passed, but the family shrunk rapidly until by mid-Twentieth Century the usual consisted of two or three children, and even the childless family became increasingly common.”

Mayer frowned impatiently, “But still, a thousand years. There is always famine, war, disease …”

Plekhanov snorted patronizingly. “Forty to fifty generations, Amschel? Starting with a hundred colonists? Where are your mathematics?”

The Coordinator said, “The proof is there. We estimate that each of Rigel’s planets now supports a population of nearly one billion.”

“To be more exact,” Plekhanov rumbled, “some nine hundred million on Genoa, seven and a half on Texcoco.”

Mayer smiled wryly. “I wonder what the residents of each of these planets call their worlds. Hardly the same names we have arbitrarily bestowed.”

“Probably each call theirs The World,” the Coordinator smiled. “After all, the basic language, in spite of a thousand years, is still Amer-English. However, I assume you are familiar with our method of naming. The most advanced culture on Rigel’s first planet is to be compared to the Italian cities during Europe’s feudalistic era. We have named that planet Genoa. The most advanced nation of the second planet is comparable to the Aztecs at the time of the conquest. We considered Tenochtitlán but it seemed a tongue twister, so Texcoco is the alternative.”

“Modernizing Genoa,” Mayer mused, “should be considerably easier than the task on semiprimitive Texcoco.”

Plekhanov shrugged, “Not necessarily.”

The Coordinator held up a hand and smiled at them. “Please, no debates on methods at present. An hour from now you will be in space with a year of travel before you. During that time you’ll have opportunity for discussion, debate and hair pulling on every phase of your problem.”

His expression became more serious. “You are acquainted with the unique position you assume. These colonists are in your control to an extent no small group has ever dominated millions of others before. No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your educated hands. For a half century you will be as gods. Your science, your productive know-how, your medicine—if it comes to that, your weapons—are many centuries in advance of theirs. As I said before, your position should be humbling.”

Mayer squirmed in his chair. “Why not check upon us, say, once every decade? In all, our ship’s company numbers but sixteen persons. Almost anything could happen. If you were to send a department craft each ten years …”

The Coordinator was shaking his head. “Your qualifications are as high as anyone available. Once on the scene you will begin accumulating information which we, here in Terra City, do not have. Were we to send another group in ten years to check upon you, all they could do would be interfere in a situation all the factors with which they would not be cognizant.”

Amschel Mayer shifted nervously. “But no matter how highly trained, nor how earnest our efforts, we still may fail.” His voice worried. “The department cannot expect guaranteed success. After all, we are the first.”

“Admittedly. Your group is first to approach the hundreds of thousands of planets we have seeded. If you fail, we will use your failure to perfect the eventual system we must devise for future teams. Even your failure would be of infinite use to us.” He lifted and dropped a shoulder. “I have no desire to undermine your belief in yourselves but—how are we to know?—perhaps there will be a score of failures before we find the ideal method of quickly bringing these primitive colonies into our Galactic Commonwealth.”

The Coordinator came to his feet and sighed. He still hated to see them go. “If there is no other discussion …”

II

Specialist Joseph Chessman stood stolidly before a viewing screen. Theoretically he was on watch. Actually his eyes were unseeing, there was nothing to see. The star pattern changed so slowly as to be all but permanent.

Not that every other task on board was not similar. One man could have taken the Pedagogue from the Solar System to Rigel, just as easily as its sixteen-hand crew was doing. Automation at its ultimate, not even the steward department had tasks adequately to fill the hours.

He had got beyond the point of yawning, his mind was a blank during these hours of duty. He was a stolid, bear of a man, short and massive of build.

A voice behind him said, “Second watch reporting. Request permission to take over the bridge.”

Chessman turned and it took a brief moment for the blankness in his eyes to fade into life. “Hello Kennedy, you on already? Seems like I just got here.” He muttered in self-contradiction, “Or that I’ve been here a month.”

Technician Jerome Kennedy grinned. “Of course, if you want to stay …”

Chessman said glumly, “What difference does it make where you are? What are they doing in the lounge?”

Kennedy looked at the screen, not expecting to see anything and accomplishing just that. “Still on their marathon argument.”

Joe Chessman grunted.

Just to be saying something, Kennedy said, “How do you stand in the big debate?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I favor Plekhanov. How we’re going to take a bunch of savages and teach them modern agriculture and industrial methods in fifty years under democratic institutions, I don’t know. I can see them putting it to a vote when we suggest fertilizer might be a good idea.” He didn’t feel like continuing the conversation. “See you later, Kennedy,” and then, as an afterthought, formally, “Relinquishing the watch to Third Officer.”

As he left the compartment, Jerry Kennedy called after him, “Hey, what’s the course!”

Chessman growled over his shoulder, “The same it was last month, and the same it’ll be next month.” It wasn’t much of a joke but it was the only one they had between themselves.

In the ship’s combination lounge and mess he drew a cup of coffee. Joe Chessman, among whose specialties were propaganda and primitive politics, was third in line in the expedition’s hierarchy. As such he participated in the endless controversy dealing with overall strategy but only as a junior member of the firm. Amschel Mayer and Leonid Plekhanov were the center of the fracas and right now were at it hot and heavy.

Joe Chessman listened with only half interest. He settled into a chair on the opposite side of the lounge and sipped at his coffee. They were going over their old battlefields, assaulting ramparts they’d stormed a thousand times over.

Plekhanov was saying doggedly, “Any planned economy is more efficient than any unplanned one. What could be more elementary than that? How could anyone in his right mind deny that?”

And Mayer snapped, “I deny it. That term planned economy covers a multitude of sins. My dear Leonid, don’t be an idiot …”

“I beg your pardon, sir!”

“Oh, don’t get into one of your huffs, Plekhanov.”

They were at that stage again.

Technician Natt Roberts entered, a book in hand, and sent the trend of conversation in a new direction. He said, worriedly, “I’ve been studying up on this and what we’re confronted with is two different ethnic periods, barbarism and feudalism. Handling them both at once doubles our problems.”

One of the junior specialists who’d been sitting to one side said, “I’ve been thinking about that and I believe I’ve got an answer. Why not all of us concentrate on Texcoco? When we’ve brought them to the Genoa level, which shouldn’t take more than a decade or two, then we can start working on the Genoese, too.”

Mayer snapped, “And by that time we’ll have hardly more than half our fifty years left to raise the two of them to an industrial technology. Don’t be an idiot, Stevens.”

Stevens flushed his resentment.

Plekhanov said slowly, “Besides, I’m not sure that, given the correct method, we cannot raise Texcoco to an industrialized society in approximately the same time it will take to bring Genoa there.”

Mayer bleated a sarcastic laugh at that opinion.

Natt Roberts tossed his book to the table and sank into a chair. “If only one of them had maintained itself at a reasonable level of development, we’d have had help in working with the other. As it is, there are only sixteen of us.” He shook his head. “Why did the knowledge held by the original colonists melt away? How can an intelligent people lose such basics as the smelting of iron, gunpowder, the use of coal as a fuel?”

Plekhanov was heavy with condescension. “Roberts, you seem to have entered upon this expedition with a lack of background. Consider. You put down a hundred colonists, products of the most advanced culture. Among these you have one or two who can possibly repair an I.B.M. machine, but is there one who can smelt iron, or even locate the ore? We have others who could design an automated textile factory, but do any know how to weave a blanket on a hand loom?

“The first generation gets along well with the weapons and equipment brought with them from Earth. They maintain the old ways. The second generation follows along but already ammunition for the weapons runs short, the machinery imported from Earth needs parts. There is no local economy that can provide such things. The third generation begins to think of Earth as a legend and the methods necessary to survive on the new planet conflict with those the first settlers imported. By the fourth generation, Earth is no longer a legend but a fable …”

“But the books, the tapes, the films …” Roberts injected.

“Go with the guns, the vehicles and the other things brought from Earth. On a new planet there is no leisure class among the colonists. Each works hard if the group is to survive. There is no time to write new books, nor to copy the old, and the second and especially the third generation are impatient of the time needed to learn to read, time that should be spent in the fields or at the chase. The youth of an industrial culture can spend twenty years and more achieving a basic education before assuming adult responsibilities but no pioneer society can afford to allow its offspring to so waste its time.”

Natt Roberts was being stubborn. “But still, a few would carry the torch of knowledge.”

Plekhanov nodded ponderously. “For a while. But then comes the reaction against these nonconformists, these crackpots who, by spending time at books, fail to carry their share of the load. One day they wake up to find themselves expelled from the group—if not knocked over the head.”

Joe Chessman had been following Plekhanov’s argument. He said dourly, “But finally the group conquers its environment to the point where a minimum of leisure is available again. Not for everybody, of course.”

Amschel Mayer bounced back into the discussion. “Enter the priest, enter the warlord. Enter the smart operator who talks or fights himself into a position where he’s free from drudgery.”

Joe Chessman said reasonably, “If you don’t have the man with leisure, society stagnates. Somebody has to have time off for thinking, if the whole group is to advance.”

“Admittedly!” Mayer agreed. “I’d be the last to contend that an upper class is necessarily parasitic.”

Plekhanov grumbled, “We’re getting away from the subject. In spite of Mayer’s poorly founded opinions, it is quite obvious that only a collectivized economy is going to enable these Rigel planets to achieve an industrial culture in as short a period as half a century.”

Amschel Mayer reacted as might have been predicted. “Look here, Plekhanov, we have our own history to go by. Man made his greatest strides under a freely competitive system.”

“Well now …” Chessman began.

“Prove that!” Plekhanov insisted loudly. “Your so-called free economy countries such as England, France and the United States began their industrial revolution in the early part of the nineteenth century. It took them a hundred years to accomplish what the Soviets did in fifty, in the next century.”

“Just a moment, now,” Mayer simmered. “That’s fine, but the Soviets were able to profit by the pioneering the free countries did. The scientific developments, the industrial techniques, were handed to her on a platter.”

Specialist Martin Gunther, thus far silent, put in his calm opinion. “Actually, it seems to me the fastest industrialization comes under a paternal guidance from a more advanced culture. Take Japan. In 1854 she was opened to trade by Commodore Perry. In 1871 she abolished feudalism and encouraged by her own government and utilizing the most advanced techniques of a sympathetic West, she began to industrialize.” Gunther smiled wryly, “Soon to the dismay of the very countries that originally sponsored bringing her into the modern world. By 1894 she was able to wage a successful war against China and by 1904 she took on and trounced Czarist Russia. In a period of thirty-five years she had advanced from feudalism to a world power.”

Joe Chessman took his turn. He said obdurately, “Your paternalistic guidance, given an uncontrolled competitive system, doesn’t always work out. Take India after she gained independence from England. She tried to industrialize and had the support of the free nations. But what happened?”

Plekhanov leaned forward to take the ball. “Yes! There’s your classic example. Compare India and China. China had a planned industrial development. None of this free competition nonsense. In ten years time they had startled the world with their advances. In twenty years—”

“Yes,” Stevens said softly, “but at what price?”

Plekhanov turned on him. “At any price!” he roared. “In one generation they left behind the China of famine, flood, illiteracy, war lords and all the misery that had been China’s throughout history.”

Stevens said mildly, “Whether in their admitted advances they left behind all the misery that had been China’s is debatable, sir.”

Plekhanov began to bellow an angry retort but Amschel Mayer popped suddenly to his feet and lifted a hand to quiet the others. “Our solution has just come to me!”

Plekhanov glowered at him.

Mayer said excitedly, “Remember what the Coordinator told us? This expedition of ours is the first of its type. Even though we fail, the very mistakes we make will be invaluable. Our task is to learn how to bring backward peoples into an industrialized culture in roughly half a century.”

The messroom’s occupants scowled at him. Thus far he’d said nothing new.

Mayer went on enthusiastically. “Thus far in our debates we’ve had two basic suggestions on procedure. I have advocated a system of free competition; my learned colleague has been of the opinion that a strong state and a planned, not to say totalitarian, economy would be the quicker.” He paused dramatically. “Very well, I am in favor of trying them both.”

They regarded him blankly.

He said with impatience, “There are two planets, at different ethnic periods it is true, but not so far apart as all that. Fine, eight of us will take Genoa and eight Texcoco.”

Plekhanov rumbled, “Fine, indeed. But which group will have the use of the Pedagogue with its library, its laboratories, its shops, its weapons?”

For a moment, Mayer was stopped but Joe Chessman growled, “That’s no problem. Leave her in orbit around Rigel. We’ve got two small boats with which to ferry back and forth. Each group could have the use of her facilities any time they wished.”

“I suppose we could have periodic conferences,” Plekhanov said. “Say once every decade to compare notes and make further plans, if necessary.”

Natt Roberts was worried. “We had no such instructions from the Coordinator. Dividing our forces like that.”

Mayer cut him short. “My dear Roberts, we were given carte blanche. It is up to us to decide procedure. Actually, this system realizes twice the information such expeditions as ours might ordinarily offer.”

“Texcoco for me,” Plekhanov grumbled, accepting the plan in its whole. “The more backward of the two, but under my guidance in half a century it will be the more advanced, mark me.”

“Look here,” Martin Gunther said. “Do we have two of each of the basic specialists, so that we can divide the party in such a way that neither planet will miss out in any one field?”

Amschel Mayer was beaming at the reception of his scheme. “The point is well taken, my dear Martin, however you’ll recall that our training was deliberately made such that each man spreads over several fields. This in case, during our half century without contact, one or more of us meets with accident. Besides, the Pedagogue’s library is such that any literate can soon become effective in any field to the extent needed on the Rigel planets.”

III

Joe Chessman was at the controls of the space lighter. At his side sat Leonid Plekhanov and behind them the other six members of their team. They had circled Texcoco twice at great altitude, four times at a lesser one. Now they were low enough to spot man-made works.

“Nomadic,” Plekhanov muttered. “Nomadic and village cultures.”

“A few dozen urbanized cultures,” Chessman said. “Whoever compared the most advanced nation to the Aztecs was accurate, except for the fact that they base themselves along a river rather than on a mountain plateau.”

Plekhanov said, “Similarities to the Egyptians and Sumerians.” He looked over his beefy shoulder at the technician who was photographing the areas over which they passed. “How does our geographer progress, Roberts?”

Natt Roberts brought his eyes up from his camera viewer. “I’ve got most of what we’ll need for a while, sir.”

Plekhanov turned back to Chessman. “We might as well head for their principal city, the one with the pyramids. We’ll make initial contact there. I like the suggestion of surplus labor available.”

“Surplus labor?” Chessman said, setting the controls. “How do you know?”

“Pyramids,” Plekhanov rumbled. “I’ve always been of the opinion that such projects as pyramids, whether they be in Yucatan or Egypt, are make-work affairs. A priesthood, or other ruling clique, keeping its people busy and hence out of mischief.”

Chessman adjusted a speed lever and settled back. “I can see their point.”

“But I don’t agree with it,” Plekhanov said ponderously. “A society that builds pyramids is a static one. For that matter any society that resorts to make-work projects to busy its citizenry has something basically wrong.”

Joe Chessman said sourly, “I wasn’t supporting the idea, just understanding the view of the priesthoods. They’d made a nice thing for themselves and didn’t want to see anything happen to it. It’s not the only time a group in the saddle has held up progress for the sake of remaining there. Priests, slave-owners, feudalistic barons, or bureaucrats of a twentieth-century police state, a ruling clique will never give up power without pressure.”

Barry Watson leaned forward and pointed down and to the right. “There’s the river,” he said. “And there’s their capital city.”

The small spacecraft settled at decreasing speed.

Chessman said, “The central square? It seems to be their market, by the number of people.”

“I suppose so,” Plekhanov grunted. “Right there before the largest pyramid. We’ll remain inside the craft for the rest of today and tonight.”

Natt Roberts, who had put away his camera, said, “But why? It’s crowded in here.”

“Because I said so,” Plekhanov rumbled. “This first impression is important. Our flying machine is undoubtedly the first they’ve seen. We’ve got to give them time to assimilate the idea and then get together a welcoming committee. We’ll want the top men, right from the beginning.”

“The equivalent of the Emperor Montezuma meeting Cortez, eh?” Barry Watson said. “A real red carpet welcome.”

The Pedagogue’s space lighter settled to the plaza gently, some fifty yards from the ornately decorated pyramid which stretched up several hundred feet and was topped by a small templelike building.

Chessman stretched and stood up from the controls. “Your anthropology ought to be better than that, Barry,” he said. “There was no Emperor Montezuma and no Aztec Empire, except in the minds of the Spanish.” He peered out one of the heavy ports. “And by the looks of this town we’ll find an almost duplicate of Aztec society. I don’t believe they’ve even got the wheel.”

The eight of them clustered about the craft’s portholes, taking in the primitive city that surrounded them. The square had emptied at their approach, and now the several thousand citizens that had filled it were peering fearfully from street entrances and alleyways.

Cogswell, a fiery little technician, said, “Look at them! It’ll take hours before they drum up enough courage to come any closer. You were right, doctor. If we left the boat now, we’d make fools of ourselves trying to coax them near enough to talk.”

Watson said to Joe Chessman “What do you mean, no Emperor Montezuma?”

Chessman said absently, as he watched, “When the Spanish got to Mexico they didn’t understand what they saw, being musclemen rather than scholars. And before competent witnesses came on the scene, Aztec society was destroyed. The conquistadors, who did attempt to describe Tenochtitlán, misinterpreted it. They were from a feudalistic world and tried to portray the Aztecs in such terms. For instance, the large Indian community houses they thought were palaces. Actually, Montezuma was a democratically elected war chief of a confederation of three tribes which militarily dominated most of the Mexican valley. There was no empire because Indian society, being based on the clan, had no method of assimilating newcomers. The Aztec armies could loot and they could capture prisoners for their sacrifices, but they had no system of bringing their conquered enemies into the nation. They hadn’t reached that far in the evolution of society. The Incas could have taught them a few lessons.”

Plekhanov nodded. “Besides, the Spanish were fabulous liars. In Cortez’s attempt to impress Spain’s king, he built himself up far beyond reality. To read his reports you’d think the pueblo of Mexico had a population pushing a million. Actually, if it had thirty thousand it was doing well. Without a field agriculture and with their primitive transport, they must have been hard put to feed even that large a town.”

A tall, militarily erect native strode from one of the streets that debouched into the plaza and approached to within twenty feet of the space boat. He stared at it for at least ten full minutes then spun on his heel and strode off again in the direction of one of the stolidly built stone buildings that lined the square on each side except that which the pyramid dominated.

Cogswell chirped, “Now that he’s broken the ice, in a couple of hours kids will be scratching their names on our hull.”

In the morning, two or three hours after dawn, they made their preparations to disembark. Of them all, only Leonid Plekhanov was unarmed. Joe Chessman had a heavy handgun holstered at his waist. The rest of the men carried submachine guns. More destructive weapons were hardly called for, nor available for that matter; once world government had been established on Earth the age-old race for improved arms had fallen away.

Chessman assumed command of the men, growled brief instructions. “If there’s any difficulty, remember we’re civilizing a planet of nearly a billion population. The life or death of a few individuals is meaningless. Look at our position scientifically, dispassionately. If it becomes necessary to use force—we have the right and the might to back it up. MacBride, you stay with the ship. Keep the hatch closed and station yourself at the fifty-caliber gun.”

The natives seemed to know intuitively that the occupants of the craft from the sky would present themselves at this time. Several thousands of them crowded the plaza. Warriors, armed with spears and bronze headed war clubs, kept the more adventurous from crowding too near.

The hatch opened, the steel landing stair snaked out, and the hefty Plekhanov stepped down, closely followed by Chessman. The others brought up the rear, Watson, Roberts, Stevens, Hawkins and Cogswell. They had hardly formed a compact group at the foot of the spacecraft than the ranks of the natives parted and what was obviously a delegation of officials approached them. In the fore was a giant of a man in his late middle years, and at his side a cold-visaged duplicate of him, obviously a son.

Behind these were variously dressed others, military, priesthood, local officials, by their appearance.

Ten feet from the newcomers they stopped. The leader said in quite understandable Amer-English, “I am Taller, Khan of all the People. Our legends tell of you. You must be from First Earth.” He added with a simple dignity, a quiet gesture, “Welcome to the World. How may we serve you?”

Plekhanov said flatly, “The name of this planet is Texcoco and the inhabitants shall henceforth be called Texcocans. You are correct, we have come from Earth. Our instructions are to civilize you, to bring you the benefits of the latest technology, to prepare you to enter the community of planets.” Phlegmatically he let his eyes go to the pyramids, to the temples, the large community dwelling quarters. “We’ll call this city Tula and its citizens Tulans.”

Taller looked thoughtfully at him, not having missed the tone of arrogant command. One of the group behind the Khan, clad in gray flowing robes, said to Plekhanov, mild reproof in his voice, “My son, we are the most advanced people on … Texcoco. We have thought of ourselves as civilized. However, we—”

Plekhanov rumbled, “I am not your son, old man, and you are far short of civilization. We can’t stand here forever. Take us to a building where we can talk without these crowds staring at us. There is much to be done.”

Taller said, “This is Mynor, Chief Priest of the People.”

The priest bowed his head, then said, “The People are used to ceremony on outstanding occasions. We have arranged for suitable sacrifices to the gods. At their completion, we will proclaim a festival. And then—”

The warriors had cleared a way through the multitude to the pyramid and now the Earthlings could see a score of chained men and women, nude save for loin cloths and obviously captives.

Plekhanov made his way toward them, Joe Chessman at his right and a pace to the rear. The prisoners stood straight and, considering their position, with calm.

Plekhanov glared at Taller. “You were going to kill these?”

The Khan said reasonably, “They are not of the People. They are prisoners taken in battle.”

Mynor said, “Their lives please the gods.”

“There are no gods, as you probably know,” Plekhanov said flatly. “You will no longer sacrifice prisoners.”

A hush fell on the Texcocans. Joe Chessman let his hand drop to his weapon. The movement was not lost on Taller’s son, whose eyes narrowed.

The Khan looked at the burly Plekhanov for a long moment. He said slowly, “Our institutions fit our needs. What would you have us do with these people? They are our enemies. If we turn them loose, they will fight us again. If we keep them imprisoned, they will eat our food. We … Tulans are not poor, we have food aplenty, for we Tulans, but we cannot feed all the thousands of prisoners we take in our wars.”

Joe Chessman said dryly, “As of today there is a new policy. We put them to work.”

Plekhanov rumbled at him, “I’ll explain our position, Chessman, if you please.” Then to the Tulans. “To develop this planet we’re going to need the labor of every man, woman and child capable of work.”

Taller said, “Perhaps your suggestion that we retire to a less public place is desirable. Will you follow?” He spoke a few words to an officer of the warriors, who shouted orders.

The Khan led the way, Plekhanov and Chessman followed side by side and the other Earthlings, their weapons unostentatiously ready, were immediately behind. Mynor the priest, Taller’s son and the other Tulan officials brought up the rear.

In what was evidently the reception hall of Taller’s official residence, the newcomers were made as comfortable as fur padded low stools provided. Half a dozen teenaged Tulans brought a cool drink similar to cocoa; it seemed to give a slight lift.

Taller had not become Khan of the most progressive nation on Texcoco by other than his own abilities. He felt his way carefully now. He had no manner of assessing the powers wielded by these strangers from space. He had no intention of precipitating a situation in which he would discover such powers to his sorrow.

He said carefully, “You have indicated that you intend major changes in the lives of the People.”

“Of all Texcocans,” Plekhanov said, “you Tulans are merely the beginning.”

Mynor, the aged priest, leaned forward. “But why? We do not want these changes—whatever they may be. Already the Khan has allowed you to interfere with our worship of our gods. This will mean—”

Plekhanov growled, “Be silent, old man, and don’t bother to mention, ever again, your so-called gods. And now, all of you listen. Perhaps some of this will not be new, how much history has come down to you I don’t know.

“A thousand years ago a colony of one hundred persons was left here on Texcoco. It will one day be of scholarly interest to trace them down through the centuries but at present the task does not interest us. This expedition has been sent to recontact you, now that you have populated Texcoco and made such adaptations as were necessary to survive here. Our basic task is to modernize your society, to bring it to an industrialized culture.”

Plekhanov’s eyes went to Taller’s son. “I assume you are a soldier?”

Taller said, “This is Reif, my eldest, and by our custom, second in command of the People’s armies. As Khan, I am first.”

Reif nodded coldly to Plekhanov. “I am a soldier.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “And willing to die to protect the People.”

“Indeed,” Plekhanov rumbled, “as a soldier you will be interested to know that our first step will involve the amalgamation of all the nations and tribes of this planet. Not a small task. There should be opportunity for you.”

Taller said, “Surely you speak in jest. The People have been at war for as long as scribes have records and never have we been stronger than today, never larger. To conquer the world! Surely you jest.”

Plekhanov grunted ungraciously. He looked to Barry Watson, a lanky youth, now leaning negligently against the wall, his submachine gun, however, at the easy ready. “Watson, you’re our military expert. Have you any opinions as yet?”

“Yes, sir,” Watson said easily. “Until we can get iron weapons and firearms into full production, I suggest the Macedonian phalanx for their infantry. They have the horse, but evidently the wheel has gone out of use. We’ll introduce the chariot and also heavy carts to speed up logistics. We’ll bring in the stirruped saddle, too. I have available for study, works on every cavalry leader from Tamerlane to Jeb Stuart. Yes, sir, I have some ideas.”

Plekhanov pursed his heavy lips. “From the beginning we’re going to need manpower on a scale never dreamed of locally. We’ll adopt a policy of expansion. Those who join us freely will become members of the State with full privileges. Those who resist will be made prisoners of war and used for shock labor on the roads and in the mines. However, a man works better if he has a goal, a dream. Each prisoner will be freed and become a member of the State after ten years of such work.”

He turned to his subordinates. “Roberts and Hawkins, you will begin tomorrow to seek the nearest practical sources of iron ore and coal. Wherever you discover them we’ll direct our first military expeditions. Chessman and Cogswell, you’ll assemble their best artisans and begin their training in such basic advancements as the wheel.”

Taller said softly, “You speak of advancement but thus far you have mentioned largely war and on such a scale that I wonder how many of the People will survive. What advancement? We have all we wish.”

Plekhanov cut him off with a curt motion of his hand. He indicated the hieroglyphics on the chamber’s walls. “How long does it take to learn such writing?”

Mynor, the priest, said, “This is a mystery known only to the priesthood. One spends ten years in preparation to be a scribe.”

“We’ll teach you a new method which will have every citizen of the State reading and writing within a year.”

The Tulans gaped at him.

He moved ponderously over to Roberts, drew from its scabbard the sword bayonet the other had at his hip. He took it and slashed savagely at a stone pillar, gouging a heavy chunk from it. He tossed the weapon to Reif, whose eyes lit up.

“What metals have you been using? Copper, bronze? Probably. Well, that’s steel. You’re going to move into the iron age overnight.”

He turned to Taller. “Are your priests also in charge of the health of your people?” he growled. “Are their cures obtained from mumbo-jumbo and a few herbs found in the desert? Within a decade, I’ll guarantee you that not one of your major diseases will remain.”

He turned to the priest and said, “Or perhaps this will be the clincher for some of you. How many years do you have, old man?”

Mynor said with dignity, “I am sixty-four.”

Plekhanov said churlishly, “And I am two hundred and thirty-three.” He called to Stevens, “I think you’re our youngest. How old are you?”

Stevens grinned, “Hundred and thirteen, next month.”

Mynor opened his mouth, closed it again. No man but would prolong his youth. Of a sudden he felt old, old.

Plekhanov turned back to Taller. “Most of the progress we have to offer is beyond your capacity to understand. We’ll give you freedom from want. Health. We’ll give you advances in every art. We’ll eventually free every citizen from drudgery, educate him, give him the opportunity to enjoy intellectual curiosity. We’ll open the stars to him. All these things the coming of the State will eventually mean to you.”

Tula’s Khan was not impressed. “This you tell us, man from First Earth. But to achieve these you plan to change every phase of our lives and we are happy with … Tula … the way it is. I say this to you. There are but eight of you and many, many of us. We do not want your … State. Return from whence you came.”

Plekhanov shook his massive head at the other. “Whether or not you want these changes they will be made. If you fail to cooperate, we will find someone who will. I suggest you make the most of it.”

Taller arose from the squat stool upon which he’d been seated. “I have listened and I do not like what you have said. I am Khan of all the People. Now leave in peace, or I shall order my warriors …”

“Joe,” Plekhanov said flatly. “Watson!”

Joe Chessman took his heavy gun from its holster and triggered it twice. The roar of the explosions reverberated thunderously in the confined space, deafening all, and terrifying the Tulans. Bright red colored the robes the Khan wore, colored them without beauty. Bright red splattered the floor.

Leonid Plekhanov stared at his second in command, wet his thick lips. “Joe,” he sputtered. “I hadn’t … I didn’t expect you to be so … hasty.”

Joe Chessman growled, “We’ve got to let them know where we stand, right now, or they’ll never hold still for us. Cover the doors, Watson, Roberts.” He motioned to the others with his head. “Cogswell, Hawkins, Stevens, get to those windows and watch.”

Taller was a crumbled heap on the floor. The other Texcocans stared at his body in shocked horror.

All expect Reif.

Reif bent down over his father’s body for a moment, and then looked up, his lips white, at Plekhanov. “He is dead.”

Leonid Plekhanov collected himself. “Yes.”

Reif’s cold face was expressionless. He looked at Joe Chessman who stood stolidly to one side, gun still in hand.

Reif said, “You can supply such weapons to my armies?”

Plekhanov said, “That is our intention, in time.”

Reif came erect. “Subject to the approval of the clan leaders, I am now Khan. Tell me more of this State of which you have spoken.”

IV

The sergeant stopped the small company about a quarter of a mile from the city of Bari. His detachment numbered only ten but they were well armed with short swords and blunderbusses and wore mail and steel helmets. On the face of it, they would have been a match for ten times this number of merchants.

It was hardly noon but the sergeant had obviously already been at his wine flask. He leered at them. “And where do you think you go?”

The merchant who led the rest was a thin little man but he was richly robed and astride a heavy black mare. He said, “To Bari, soldier.” He drew a paper from a pouch. “I hold this permission from Baron Mannerheim to pass through his lands with my people and chattels.”

The leer turned mercenary. “Unfortunately, city man, I can’t read. What do you carry on the mules?”

“Personal property, which, I repeat, I have permission to transport over Baron Mannerheim’s lands free from harassment from his followers.” He added, in irritation, “The baron is a friend of mine, fond of the gifts I give him.”

One of the soldiers grunted his skepticism, checked the flint on the lock of his piece, then looked at the sergeant suggestively.

The sergeant said, “As you say, merchant, my lord the baron is fond of gifts. Aren’t we all? Unfortunately, I have received no word of your group. My instructions are to stop all intruders upon the baron’s lands and, if there is resistance, to slay them and confiscate such properties as they may be carrying.”

The merchant sighed and reached into a small pouch. The eyes of the sergeant drooped in greed. The hand emerged with two small coins. “As you say,” the merchant muttered bitterly, “we are all fond of gifts. Will you do me the honor to drink my health at the tavern tonight?”

The sergeant said nothing, but his mouth slackened and he fondled the hilt of his sword.

The merchant sighed again and dipped once more into the pouch. This time his hand emerged with half a dozen bits of silver. He handed them down to the other, complaining, “How can a man profit in his affairs if every few miles he must pass another outstretched hand?”

The sergeant growled, “You do not seem to starve, city man. Now, on your way. You are fortunate I am too lazy today to bother going through your things. Besides,” and he grinned widely, “the baron gave me personal instructions not to bother you.”

The merchant snorted, kicked his heels into his beast’s sides and led his half dozen followers toward the city. The soldiers looked after them and howled their amusement. The money was enough to keep them soused for days.

When they were out of earshot, Amschel Mayer grinned his amusement back over his shoulder at Jerome Kennedy. “How’d that come off, Jerry?”

The other sniffed, in mock deprecation. “You’re beginning to fit into the local merchant pattern better than the real thing. However, just for the record, I had this, ah, grease gun, trained on them all the time.”

Mayer frowned. “Only in extreme emergency, my dear Jerry. The baron would be up in arms if he found a dozen of his men massacred on the outskirts of Bari, and we don’t want a showdown at this stage. It’s taken nearly a year to build this part we act.”

At this time of day the gates of the port city were open and the guards lounged idly. Their captain recognized Amschel Mayer and did no more than nod respectfully.

They wended their way through narrow, cobblestoned streets, avoiding the crowds in the central market area. They pulled up eventually before a house both larger and more ornate than its neighbors. Mayer and Kennedy dismounted from the horses and left their care to the others.

Mayer beat with the heavy knocker on the door and a slot opened for a quick check of his identity. The door opened wide and Technician Martin Gunther let them in.

“The others are here already?” Mayer asked him.

Gunther nodded. “Since breakfast. Baron Leonar, in particular, is impatient.”

Mayer said over his shoulder, “All right, Jerry, this is where we put it to them.”

They entered the long conference room. A full score of men sat about the heavy wooden table. Most of them were as richly garbed as their host. Most of them in their middle years. All of them alert of eye. All of them confidently at ease.

Amschel Mayer took his place at the table’s end and Jerome Kennedy sank into the chair next to him. Mayer took the time to speak to each of his guests individually, then he leaned back and took in the gathering as a whole. He said, “You probably realize that this group consists of the twenty most powerful merchants on the continent.”

Olderman nodded. “We have been discussing your purpose in bringing us together, Honorable Mayer. All of us are not friends.” He twisted his face in amusement. “In fact, very few of us are friends.”

“There is no need for you to be,” Mayer said snappishly, “but all are going to realize the need for cooperation. Honorables, I’ve just come from the city of Ronda. Although I’d paid heavily in advance to the three barons whose lands I crossed. I had to bribe myself through a dozen roadblocks, had to pay exorbitant rates to cross three ferries, and once had to fight off supposed bandits.”

One of his guests grumbled, “Who were actually probably soldiers of the local baron who had decided that although you had paid him transit fee, it still might be profitable to go through your goods.”

Mayer nodded. “Exactly, my dear Honorable, and that is why we’ve gathered.”

Olderman had evidently assumed spokesmanship for the others. Now he said warily, “I don’t understand.”

“Genoa, if you’ll pardon the use of this name to signify the planet upon which we reside, will never advance until trade has been freed from these bandits who call themselves lords and barons.”

Eyebrows reached for hairlines.

Olderman’s eyes darted about the room, went to the doors. “Please,” he said, “the servants.”

“My servants are safe,” Mayer said.

One of his guests was smiling without humor. “You seem to forget, Honorable Mayer, that I carry the title of baron.”

Mayer shook his head. “No, Baron Leonar. But neither do you disagree with what I say. The businessman, the merchant, the manufacturer on Genoa today, is only tolerated. Were it not for the fact that the barons have no desire to eliminate such a profitable source of income, they would milk us dry overnight.”

Someone shrugged. “That is the way of things. We are lucky to have wrested, bribed and begged as many favors from the lords as we have. Our twenty cities all have charters that protect us from complete despoilation.”

Mayer twisted excitedly in his chair. “As of today, things begin to change. Jerry, that platen press.”

Jerry Kennedy left the room momentarily and returned with Martin Gunther and two of the servants. While the assembled merchants looked on, in puzzled silence, Mayer’s assistants set up the press and a stand holding two fonts of fourteen-point type. Jerry took up a printer’s stick and gave running instructions as he demonstrated. Gunther handed around pieces of the type until all had examined it, while his colleague set up several lines. Kennedy transposed the lines to a chase, locked it up and placed the form to one side while he demonstrated inking the small press, which was operated by a foot pedal. He mounted the form in the press, took a score of sheets of paper and rapidly fed them, one by one. When they were all printed, he stopped pumping and Gunther handed the still wet finished product around to the audience.

Olderman stared down at the printed lines, scowled in concentration, wet his lips in sudden comprehension.

But it was merchant Russ who blurted, “This will revolutionize the inscribing of books. Why, it can well take it out of the hands of the Temple! With such a machine I could make a hundred books—”

Mayer was beaming. “Not a hundred, Honorable, but a hundred thousand!”

The others stared at him as though he was demented. “A hundred thousand,” one said. “There are not that many literate persons on the continent.”

“There will be,” Mayer crowed. “This is but one of our levers to pry power from the barons. And here is another.” He turned to Russ. “Honorable Russ, your city is noted for the fine quality of its steel, of the swords and armor you produce.”

Russ nodded. He was a small man fantastically rich in his attire. “This is true, Honorable Mayer.”

Mayer said, tossing a small booklet to the other, “I have here the plans for a new method of making steel from pig iron. The Bessemer method, we’ll call it. The principle involved is the oxidation of the impurities in the iron by blowing air through the molten metal.”

Amschel Mayer turned to still another. “And your town is particularly noted for its fine textiles.” He looked to his assistants. “Jerry, you and Gunther bring in those models of the power loom and the spinning jenny.”

While they were gone, he said, “My intention is to assist you to speed up production. With this in mind, you’ll appreciate the automatic flying shuttle that we’ll now demonstrate.”

Kennedy and Gunther reentered accompanied by four servants and a mass of equipment. Kennedy muttered to Amschel Mayer, “I feel like the instructor of a handicrafts class.”

Half an hour later, Kennedy and Gunther wound up passing out pamphlets to the awed merchant guests. Kennedy said, “This booklet will give details on construction of the equipment and its operation.”

Mayer pursed his lips. “Your people will be able to assimilate only so fast, so we won’t push them. Later, you’ll be interested in introducing the mule spinning frame, among other items.”

He motioned for the servants to remove the printing press and textile machinery. “We now come to probably the most important of the devices I have to introduce to you today. Because of size and weight, I’ve had constructed only a model. Jerry!”

Jerry Kennedy brought to the heavy table a small steam engine, clever in its simplicity. He had half a dozen attachments for it. Within moments he had the others around him, as enthusiastic as a group of youngsters with a new toy.

“By the Supreme,” Baron Leonar blurted, “do you realize this device could be used instead of waterpower to operate a mill to power the loom demonstrated an hour ago?”

Honorable Russ was rubbing the side of his face thoughtfully. “It might even be adapted to propel a coach. A coach without horses. Unbelievable!”

Mayer chuckled in excitement and clapped his hands. A servant entered with a toy wagon which had been slightly altered. Martin Gunther lifted the small engine, placed it in position atop the wagon, connected it quickly and threw a lever. The wagon moved smoothly forward, the first engine-propelled vehicle of Genoa’s industrial revolution.

Martin Gunther smiled widely at Russ. “You mean like this, Honorable?”

Half an hour later they were reseated, before each of them a small pile of pamphlets, instructions, plans, blueprints.

Mayer said, “I have just one more device to bring to your attention at this time. I wish it were unnecessary but I am afraid otherwise.”

He held up for their inspection, a forty-five-caliber bullet. Jerry Kennedy handed around samples to the merchants. They fingered them in puzzlement.

“Honorables,” Mayer said, “the barons have the use of gunpowder. Muskets and muzzleloading cannon are available to them both for their wars against each other and their occasional attacks upon our supposedly independent cities. However, this is an advancement on their weapons. This unit includes not only the bullet’s lead, but the powder and the cap which will explode it.”

They lacked understanding, and showed it.

Mayer said, “Jerry, if you’ll demonstrate.”

Jerry Kennedy said, “The bullet can be adapted to various weapons, however, this is one of the simplest.” He pressed, one after another, a full twenty rounds into the gun’s clip.

“Now, if you’ll note the silhouette of a man I’ve drawn on the wooden frame at the end of the room.” He pressed the trigger, sent a single shot into the figure.

Olderman nodded. “An improvement in firearms. But—”

Kennedy said, “However, if you are confronted with more than one of the bad guys.” He grinned and flicked the gun to full automatic and in a Götterdämmerung of sound in the confines of the room, emptied the clip into his target sending splinters and chips flying and all but demolishing the wooden backdrop.

His audience sat back in stunned horror at the demonstration.

Mayer said now, “The weapon is simple to construct, any competent gunsmith can do it. It is manifest, Honorables, that with your people so equipped your cities will be safe from attack and so will trading caravans and ships.”

Russ said shakily, “Your intention is good, Honorable Mayer, however it will be but a matter of time before the barons have solved the secrets of your weapon. Such cannot be held indefinitely. Then we would again be at their mercy.”

“Believe me, Honorable,” Mayer said dryly, “by that time I will have new weapons to introduce, if necessary. Weapons that make this one a very toy in comparison.”

Olderman resumed his office as spokesman. “This demonstration has astounded us, Honorable Mayer, but although we admire your abilities it need hardly be pointed out that it seems unlikely all this could be the product of one brain.”

“They are not mine,” Mayer admitted. “They are the products of many minds.”

“But where—?”

The Earthman shook his head. “I don’t believe I will tell you now.”

“I see.” The Genoese eyed him emotionlessly. “Then the question becomes, why?”

Mayer said, “It may be difficult for you to see, but the introduction of each of these will be a nail in feudalism’s coffin. Each will increase either production or trade and such increase will lead to the overthrow of feudal society.”

Baron Leonar, who had remained largely silent throughout the afternoon, now spoke up. “As you said earlier, although I am a lord myself, my interests are your own. I am a merchant first. However, I am not sure I want the changes these devices will bring. Frankly, Honorable Mayer, I am satisfied with my world as I find it today.”

Amschel Mayer smiled wryly at him. “I am afraid you must adapt to these new developments.”

The baron said coldly, “Why? I do not like to be told I must do something.”

“Because, my dear baron, there are three continents on the planet of Genoa. At present there is little trade due to inadequate shipping. But the steam engine I introduce today will soon propel larger craft than you have ever built before.”

Russ said, “What has this to do with our being forced to use these devices?”

“Because I have colleagues on the other continents busily introducing them. If you don’t adapt, in time competitors will invade your markets, capture your trade, drive you out of business.”

Mayer wrapped it up. “Honorables, modernize or go under. It’s each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, if you’ll allow a saying from another era.”

They remained silent for a long period. Finally Olderman stated bluntly, “The barons are not going to like this.”

Jerry Kennedy grinned. “Obviously, that’s why we’ve introduced you to the tommy gun. It’s not going to make any difference if they like it or not.”

Russ said musingly, “Pressure will be put to prevent the introduction of this equipment.”

“We’ll meet it,” Mayer said, shifting happily in his seat.

Russ added, “The Temple is ever on the side of the barons. The monks will fight against innovations that threaten to disturb the present way.”

Mayer said, “Monks usually do. How much property is in the hands of the Temple?”

Russ admitted sourly, “The monks are the greatest landlords of all. I would say at least one third of the land and the serfs belong to the Temple.”

“Ah,” Mayer said. “We must investigate the possibilities of a Reformation. But that can come later. Now I wish to expand on my reason for gathering you.

“Honorables, Genoa is to change rapidly. To survive, you will have to move fast. I have not introduced these revolutionary changes without self-interest. Each of you are free to use them to his profit, however, I expect a thirty percent interest.”

There was a universal gasp.

Olderman said, “Honorable Mayer, you have already demonstrated your devices. What is there to prevent us from playing you false?”

Mayer laughed. “My dear Olderman, I have other inventions to reveal as rapidly as you develop the technicians, the workers, capable of building and operating them. If you cheat me now, you will be passed by next time.”

Russ muttered, “Thirty percent! Your wealth will be unbelievable.”

“As fast as it accumulates, Honorables, it shall be invested. For instance, I have great interest in expanding our inadequate universities. The advances I expect will only be possible if we educate the people. Field serfs are not capable of running even that simple steam engine Jerry demonstrated.”

Baron Leonar said, “What you contemplate is mind-shaking. Do I understand that you wish a confederation of all our cities? A joining together to combat the strength of the present lords?”

Mayer was shaking his head. “No, no. As the barons lose power, each of your cities will strengthen and possibly expand to become nations. Perhaps some will unite. But largely you will compete against each other and against the nations of the other continents. In such competition you’ll have to show your mettle, or go under. Man develops at his fastest when pushed by such circumstance.”

The Earthling looked off, unseeing, into a far corner of the room. “At least, so is my contention. Far away from here a colleague is trying to prove me wrong. We shall see.”

V

Leonid Plekhanov returned to the Pedagogue with a certain ceremony. He was accompanied by Joe Chessman, Natt Roberts and Barry Watson of his original group, but four young, hard-eyed, hard-faced and armed Tulans were also in the party. Their space lighter swooped in, nestled to the Pedagogue’s hull in the original bed it had occupied on the trip from Terra City, and her port opened to the corridors of the mother ship.

Plekhanov, flanked by Chessman and Watson, strode heavily toward the ship’s lounge. Natt Roberts and two of the Tulans remained with the small boat. Two of the other natives followed, their eyes darting here, there, in amazement, in spite of their efforts to appear grim and untouched by it all.

Amschel Mayer was already seated at the officer’s dining table. His face displayed his irritation at the other’s method of presenting himself. “Good Heavens, Plekhanov, what is this, an invasion?”

The other registered surprise.

Mayer indicated the Texcocans. “Do you think it necessary to bring armed men aboard the Pedagogue? Frankly, I have not even revealed to a single Genoese the existence of the ship.”

Jerry Kennedy was seated to one side, the only member of Mayer’s team who had accompanied him for this meeting. Kennedy winked at Watson and Chessman. Watson grinned back but held his peace.

Plekhanov sank into a chair, rumbling, “We hold no secrets from the Texcocans. The sooner they advance to where they can use our libraries and laboratories, the better. And the fact these boys are armed has no significance. My Tulans are currently embarked on a campaign to unite the planet. Arms are sometimes necessary, and Tula, my capital, is somewhat of an armed camp. All able-bodied men—”

Mayer broke in heatedly, “And is this the method you use to bring civilization to Texcoco? Is this what you consider the purpose of the Office of Galactic Colonization? An armed camp! How many persons have you slaughtered thus far?”

“Easy,” Joe Chessman growled.

Amschel Mayer spun on him. “I need no instruction from you, Chessman. Please remember I’m senior in charge of this expedition and as such rank you.”

Plekhanov thudded a heavy hand on the table. “I’ll call my assistants to order, Mayer, if I feel it necessary. Admittedly, when this expedition left Terra City you were the ranking officer. Now, however, we’ve divided—at your suggestion, please remember. Now there are two independent groups and you no longer have jurisdiction over mine.”

“Indeed!” Mayer barked. “And suppose I decide to withhold the use of the Pedagogue’s libraries and laboratories to you? I tell you, Plekhanov—”

Leonid Plekhanov interrupted him coldly. “I would not suggest you attempt any such step, Mayer.”

Mayer glared but suddenly reversed himself. “Let’s settle down and become more sensible. This is the first conference of the five we have scheduled. Ten years have elapsed. Actually, of course, we’ve had some idea of each other’s progress since team members occasionally meet on trips back here to the Pedagogue to consult the library. I am afraid, my dear Leonid, that your theories on industrialization are rapidly being proven inaccurate.”

“Nonsense!”

Mayer said smoothly, “In the decade past, my team’s efforts have more than tripled the Genoese industrial potential. Last week one of our steamships crossed the second ocean. We’ve located petroleum and the first wells are going down. We’ve introduced a dozen crops that had disappeared through misadventure to the original colonists. And, oh yes, our first railroad is scheduled to begin running between Bari and Ronda next spring. There are six new universities and in the next decade I expect fifty more.”

“Very good, indeed,” Plekhanov grumbled.

“Only a beginning. The breath of competition, of unharnessed enterprise is sweeping Genoa. Feudalism crumbles. Customs, mores and traditions that have held up progress for a century or more are now on their way out.”

Joe Chessman growled, “Some of the boys tell me you’ve had a few difficulties with this crumbling feudalism thing. In fact, didn’t Buchwald barely escape with his life when the barons on your western continent united to suppress all chartered cities?”

Mayer’s thin face darkened. “Never fear, my dear Joseph, those barons responsible for shedding the blood of western hemisphere elements of progress will shortly pay for their crimes.”

“You’ve got military problems too, then?” Barry Watson asked.

Mayer’s eyes went to him in irritation. “Some of the free cities of Genoa are planning measures to regain their property and rights on the western hemisphere. This has nothing to do with my team, except, of course, in so far as they might sell them supplies or equipment.”

The lanky Watson laughed lowly, “You mean like selling them a few quick-firing breech-loaders and trench mortars?”

Plekhanov muttered, “That’ll be enough, Barry.”

But Mayer’s eyes had widened. “How did you know?” He whirled on Plekhanov. “You’re spying on my efforts, trying to negate my work!”

Plekhanov rumbled, “Don’t be a fool, Mayer. My team has neither the time nor interest to spy on you.”

“Then how did you know—”

Barry Watson said mildly, “I was doing some investigation in the ship’s library. I ran into evidence that you people had already used the blueprints for breech-loaders and mortars.”

Jerry Kennedy came to his feet and rambled over to the messroom’s bar. “This seems to be all out spat, rather than a conference to compare progress,” he said. “Anybody for a drink? Frankly, that’s the next thing I’m going to introduce to Genoa, some halfway decent likker. Do you know what those benighted heathens drink now?”

Watson grinned. “Make mine whisky, Jerry. You’ve no complaints. Our benighted heathens have a national beverage fermented from a plant similar to cactus. Ought to be drummed out of the human race.”

He spoke idly, forgetful of the Tulan guards stationed at the doorway.

Kennedy passed drinks around for everyone save Mayer, who shook his head in distaste. If only for a brief spell, some of the tenseness left the air while the men from Earth sipped their beverages.

Jerry Kennedy said, “Well, you’ve heard our report. How go things on Texcoco?”

“According to plan,” Plekhanov rumbled.

Mayer snorted.

Plekhanov said ungraciously, “Our prime effort is now the uniting of the total population into one strong whole, a super-state capable of accomplishing the goals set us by the Coordinator.”

Mayer sneered, “Undoubtedly, this goal of yours, this super-state, is being established by force.”

“Not always,” Joe Chessman said. “Quite a few of the tribes join up on their own. Why not? The State has a lot to offer.”

“Such as what?” Kennedy said mildly.

Chessman looked at him in irritation. “Such as advanced medicine, security from famine, military protection from more powerful nations. The opportunity for youth to get an education and find advancement in the State’s government—if they’ve got it on the ball.”

“And what happens if they don’t have it on the ball?”

Chessman growled, “What happens to such under any society? They get the dirty-end-of-the-stick jobs.” His eyes went from Kennedy to Mayer. “Are you suggesting you offer anything better?”

Mayer said, “Already on most of Genoa it is a matter of free competition. The person with ability is able to profit from it.”

Joe Chessman grunted sour amusement. “Of course, it doesn’t help to be the son of a wealthy merchant or a big politician.”

Plekhanov took over. “In any society the natural leaders come to the top in much the same manner as the big ones come to the top in a bin of potatoes, they just work their way up.”

Jerry Kennedy finished his drink and said easily, “At least, those at the top can claim they’re the biggest potatoes. Remember back in the twentieth century when Hitler and his gang announced they were the big potatoes in Germany and men of Einstein’s stature fled the country—being small potatoes, I suppose.”

Amschel Mayer said, “We’re getting away from the point. Pray go on, my dear Leonid. You say you are forcibly uniting all Texcoco.”

“We are uniting all Texcoco,” Plekhanov corrected with a scowl. “Not always by force. And that is by no means our only effort. We are ferreting out the most intelligent of the assimilated peoples and educating them as rapidly as possible. We’ve introduced iron …”

“And use it chiefly for weapons,” Kennedy murmured.

“… Antibiotics and other medicines, a field agriculture, are rapidly building roads …”

“Military roads,” Kennedy mused.

“… To all sections of the State, have made a beginning in naval science, and, of course, haven’t ignored the arts.”

“On the face of it,” Mayer nodded, “hardly approaching Genoa.”

Plekhanov rumbled indignantly, “We started two ethnic periods behind you. Even the Tulans were still using bronze, but the Genoese had iron and even gunpowder. Our advance is a bit slow to get moving, Mayer, but when it begins to roll—”

Mayer gave his characteristic snort. “A free people need never worry about being passed by a subjected one.”

Barry Watson made himself another drink and while doing so looked over his shoulder at Amschel Mayer. “It’s interesting the way you throw about that term free. Just what type of government do you sponsor?”

Mayer snapped, “Our team does not interfere in governmental forms, Watson. The various nations are free to adapt to whatever local conditions obtain. They range from some under feudalistic domination to countries with varying degrees of republican democracy. Our base of operations in the southern hemisphere is probably the most advanced of all the chartered cities, Barry. It amounts to a city-state somewhat similar to Florence during the Renaissance.”

“And your team finds itself in the position of the Medici, I imagine.”

“You might use that analogy. The Medici might have been, well, tyrants of Florence, dominating her finances and trade as well as her political government, but they were benevolent tyrants.”

“Yeah,” Watson grinned. “The thing about a benevolent tyranny, though, is that it’s up to the tyrants to decide what’s benevolent. I’m not so sure there’s a great basic difference between your governing of Genoa and ours of Texcoco.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Mayer snapped. “We are granting the Genoese political freedoms as fast as they can assimilate them.”

Joe Chessman growled, “But I imagine it’s surprising to find just how slowly they can assimilate. A moment ago you said they were free to form any government they wished. Now you say you feed them what you call freedom, only so fast as they can assimilate it.”

“Obviously we encourage them along whatever path we think will most quickly develop their economies,” Mayer argued. “That’s what we’ve been sent here to do. We stimulate competition, encourage all progress, political as well as economic.”

Plekhanov lumbered to his feet. “Amschel, obviously nothing new has been added to our respective positions by this conference. I propose we adjourn to meet again at the end of the second decade.”

Mayer said, “I suppose it would be futile to suggest you give up this impossible totalitarian scheme of yours and reunite the expedition.”

Plekhanov merely grunted his disgust.

Jerry Kennedy said, “One thing. What stand have you taken on giving your planet immortality?”

“Immortality?” Watson said. “We haven’t it to give.”

“You know what I mean. It wouldn’t take long to extend the life span double or triple the present.”

Amschel Mayer said, “At this stage progress is faster with the generations closer together. A man is pressed when he knows he has only twenty or thirty years of peak efficiency. We on Earth are inclined to settle back and take life as it comes; you younger men are all past the century mark, but none have bothered to get married as yet.”

“Plenty of time for that,” Watson grinned.

“That’s what I mean. But a Texcocan or Genoese feels pressed to wed in his twenties, or earlier, to get his family under way.”

“There’s another element,” Plekhanov muttered. “The more the natives progress the more nearly they’ll equal our abilities. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to our overall plans. As it is now, their abilities taper off at sixty and they reach senility at seventy or eighty. I think until the end we should keep it this way.”

“A cold-blooded view,” Kennedy said. “If we extended their life expectancy, their best men would live to be of additional use to planet development.”

“But they would not have our dream,” Plekhanov rumbled. “Such men might try to subvert us, and, just possibly, might succeed.”

“I think Leonid is right,” Mayer admitted with reluctance.

Later, in the space lighter heading back for Genoa, Mayer said speculatively, “Did you notice anything about Leonid Plekhanov?”

Kennedy was piloting. “He seems the same irascible old curmudgeon he’s always been.”

“It seems to me he’s become a touch power mad. Could the pressures he’s under cause his mind to slip? Obviously, all isn’t peaches and cream in that attempt of his to achieve world government on Texcoco.”

“Well,” Kennedy muttered, “all isn’t peaches and cream with us, either. The barons are far from licked, especially in the west.” He changed the subject. “By the way, that banking deal went through in Pola. I was able to get control.”

“Fine,” Mayer chuckled. “You must be quite the richest man in the city. There is a certain stimulation in this financial game, Jerry, isn’t there?”

“Uh huh,” Jerry told him. “Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a marked deck.”

“Marked deck?” the other frowned.

“It’s handy that gold is the medium of exchange on Genoa,” Jerry Kennedy said. “Especially in view of the fact that we have a machine on the ship capable of transmuting metals.”

VI

Leonid Plekhanov, Joseph Chessman, Barry Watson, Khan Reif and several of the Tulan army staff stood on a small knoll overlooking a valley of several square miles. A valley dominated on all sides but the sea by mountain ranges.

Reif and the three Earthlings were bent over a military map depicting the area. Barry Watson traced with his finger.

“There are only two major passes into this valley. We have this one, they dominate that.”

Plekhanov was scowling, out of his element and knowing it. “How many men has Mynor been able to get together?”

Watson avoided looking into the older man’s face. “Approximately half a million according to Hawkins’ estimate. He flew over them this morning.”

“Half a million!”

“Including the nomads, of course,” Joe Chessman said. “The nomads fight more like a mob than an army.”

Plekhanov was shaking his massive head. “Most of them will melt away if we continue to avoid battle. They can’t feed that many men on the countryside. The nomads in particular will return home if they don’t get a fight soon.”

Watson hid his impatience. “That’s the point, sir. If we don’t break their power now, in a decisive defeat, we’ll have them to fight again, later. And already they’ve got iron swords, the crossbow and even a few muskets. Given time and they’ll all be so armed. Then the fat’ll be in the fire.”

“He’s right,” Joe Chessman said sourly.

Reif nodded his head. “We must finish them now, if we can. The task will be twice as great next year.”

Plekhanov grumbled in irritation. “Half a million of them and something like forty thousand of our Tulans.”

Reif corrected him. “Some thirty thousand Tulans, all infantrymen.” He added, “And eight thousand allied cavalry only some of whom can be trusted.” Reif’s ten-year-old son came up next to him and peered down at the map.

“What’s that child doing here?” Plekhanov snapped.

Reif looked into the other’s face. “This is Taller Second, my son. You from First Earth have never bothered to study our customs. One of them is that a Khan’s son participates in all battles his father does. It is his training.”

Watson was pointing out features on the map again. “It will take three days for their full army to get in here.” He added with emphasis, “In retreat, it would take them the same time to get out.”

Plekhanov scowled heavily. “We can’t risk it. If we were defeated, we have no reserve army. We’d have lost everything.” He looked at Joe Chessman and Watson significantly. “We’d have to flee back to the Pedagogue.”

Reif’s face was expressionless.

Barry Watson looked at him. “We won’t desert you, Reif, forget about that aspect of it.”

Reif said, “I believe you, Barry Watson. You are a … soldier.”

Dick Hawkins’ small biplane zoomed in, landed expertly at the knoll’s foot. The occupant vaulted out and approached them at a half run.

Hawkins called as soon as he was within shouting distance. “They’re moving in. Their advance cavalry units are already in the pass.”

When he was with them, Plekhanov rubbed his hand nervously over heavy lips. He rumbled, “The cavalry, eh? Listen, Hawkins, get back there and dust them. Use the gas.”

The pilot said slowly, “I have four bullet holes in my wings.”

“Bullet holes!” Joe Chessman snapped.

Hawkins turned to him. “By the looks of things, MacBride’s whole unit has gone over to the rebels. Complete with their double-barreled muskets. A full thousand of them.”

Watson looked frigidly at Leonid Plekhanov. “You insisted on issuing guns to men we weren’t sure of.”

Plekhanov grumbled, “Confound it, don’t use that tone of voice with me. We have to arm our men, don’t we?”

Watson said, “Yes, but our still comparatively few advanced weapons shouldn’t go into the hands of anybody but trusted citizens of the State, certainly not to a bunch of mercenaries. The only ones we can really trust even among the Tulans, are those that were kids when we first took over. The one’s we’ve had time to indoctrinate.”

“The mistake’s made. It’s too late now,” Plekhanov said. “Hawkins go back and dust those cavalrymen as they come through the pass.”

Reif said, “It was a mistake, too, to allow them the secret of the crossbow.”

Plekhanov roared, “I didn’t allow them anything. Once the crossbow was introduced it was just a matter of time before its method of construction got to the enemy.”

“Then it shouldn’t have been introduced,” Reif said, his eyes unflinching from the Earthman’s.

Plekhanov ignored him. He said, “Hawkins, get going on that dusting. Watson, pull what units we already have in this valley back through the pass we control. We’ll avoid battle until more of their army has fallen away.”

Hawkins said with deceptive mildness, “I just told you those cavalrymen have muskets. To fly low enough to use gas on them, I’d get within easy range. Point one, this is the only aircraft we’ve built. Point two, MacBride is probably dead, killed when those cavalrymen mutinied. Point three, I came on this expedition to help modernize the Texcocans, not to die in battle.”

Plekhanov snarled at him. “Coward, eh?” He turned churlishly to Watson and Reif. “Start pulling back our units.”

Barry Watson looked at Chessman. “Joe?”

Joe Chessman shook his head slowly. He said to Reif, “Khan, start bringing your infantry through the pass. Barry, we’ll follow your plan of battle. We’ll anchor one flank on the sea and concentrate what cavalry we can trust on the hills on the right. That’s the bad spot, that right flank has to hold.”

Plekhanov’s thick lips trembled. He said in fury, “Is this insubordination?”

Reif turned on his heel and followed by young Taller and his staff hurried down the knoll to where their horses were tethered.

Chessman said to Hawkins, “If you’ve got the fuel, Dick, maybe it’d be a good idea to keep them under observation. Fly high enough, of course, to avoid gunfire.”

Hawkins darted a look at Plekhanov, turned and hurried back to his plane.

Joe Chessman, his voice sullen, said to Plekhanov, “We can’t afford any more mistakes, Leonid. We’ve had too many already.” He said to Watson, “Be sure and let their cavalry units scout us out. Allow them to see that we’re entering the valley too. They’ll think they’ve got us trapped.”

“They will have!” Plekhanov roared. “I countermand that order, Watson! We’re withdrawing.”

Barry Watson raised his eyebrows at Joe Chessman.

“Put him under arrest,” Joe growled sourly. “We’ll decide what to do about it later.”

By the third day, Mynor’s rebel and nomad army had filed through the pass and was forming itself into battle array. Rank upon rank upon rank.

The Tulan infantry had taken less than half a day to enter. They had camped and rested during the interval, the only action being on the part of the rival cavalry forces.

Now the thirty thousand Tulans went into their phalanx and began their march across the valley.

Joe Chessman, Hawkins, Roberts, Stevens and Khan Reif and several of his men again occupied the knoll which commanded a full view of the terrain. With binoculars and wrist radios from the Pedagogue they kept in contact with the battle.

Below, Barry Watson walked behind the advancing infantry. There were six divisions of five thousand men each, twenty-four foot sarissas stretched before their sixteen man deep line. Only the first few lines were able to extend their weapons; the rest gave weight and supplied replacements for the advanced lines’ casualties. Behind them all the Tulan drums beat out the slow, inexorable march.

Cogswell, beside Watson with the wrist radio, said excitedly, “Here comes a cavalry charge, Barry. Reif says right behind it the nomad infantry is coming in.” Cogswell cleared his throat. “All of them.”

Watson held up a hand in signal to his officers. The phalanx ground to a halt, received the charge on the hedge of sarissas. The enemy cavalry wheeled and attempted to retreat to the flanks but were caught in a bloody confusion by the pressure of their own advancing infantry.

Cogswell, his ear to the radio, said, “Their main body of horse is hitting our right flank.” He wet his lips. “We’re outnumbered there something like ten to one. At least ten to one.”

“They’ve got to hold,” Watson said. “Tell Reif and Chessman that flank has to hold.”

The enemy infantrymen in their hundreds of thousands hit the Tulan line in a clash of deafening military thunder. Barry Watson resumed his pacing. He signaled to the drummers who beat out another march. The phalanx moved forward slowly, and slowly went into an echelon formation, each division slightly ahead of the one following. Of necessity, the straight lines of the nomad and rebel front had to break.

The drums went boom, ah, boom, ah, boom, ah, boom.

The Tulan phalanx moved slowly, obliquely across the valley. The hedge of spears ruthlessly pressed the mass of enemy infantry before them.

The sergeants paced behind, shouting over the din. “Dress it up. You there, you’ve been hit, fall out to the rear.”

“I’m all right,” the wounded spearman snarled, battle lust in his voice.

“Fall out, I said,” the sergeant roared. “You there, take his place.”

The Tulan phalanx ground ahead.

One of the sergeants grinned wanly at Barry Watson as his men moved forward with the preciseness of the famed Rockettes of another era. “It’s working,” he said proudly.

Barry Watson snorted, “Don’t give me credit. It belongs to a man named Philip of Macedon, a long ways away in both space and time.”

Cogswell called, “Our right flank cavalry is falling back. Joe wants to know if you can send any support.”

Watson’s face went expressionless. “No,” he said flatly. “It’s got to hold. Tell Joe and the Khan it’s got to hold. Suggest they throw in those cavalry units they’re not sure of. The ones that threatened mutiny last week.”

Joe Chessman stood on the knoll flanked by the Khan’s ranking officers and the balance of the Earthmen. Natt Roberts was on the radio. He turned to the others and worriedly repeated the message.

Joe Chessman looked out over the valley. The thirty-thousand-man phalanx was pressing back the enemy infantry with the precision of a machine. He looked up the hillside at the point where the enemy cavalry was turning the right flank. Given cavalry behind the Tulan line and the battle was lost.

“OK, boys,” Chessman growled sourly, “we’re in the clutch now. Hawkins!”

“Yeah,” the pilot said.

“See what you can do. Use what bombs you have including the napalm. Fly as low as you can in the way of scaring their horses.” He added sourly, “Avoiding scaring ours, if you can.”

“You’re the boss,” Hawkins said, and scurried off toward his scout plane.

Joe Chessman growled to the others, “When I was taking my degree in primitive society and primitive military tactics, I didn’t exactly have this in mind. Come on!”

It was the right thing to say. The other Earthmen laughed and took up their equipment, submachine guns, riot guns, a flame thrower, grenades, and followed him up the hill toward the fray.

Chessman said over his shoulder to Reif, “Khan, you’re in the saddle. You can keep in touch with both Watson and us on the radio.”

Reif hesitated only a moment. “There is no need for further direction of the battle from this point. A warrior is of more value now than a Khan. Come my son.” He caught up a double-barreled musket and followed the Earthmen. The ten years old Taller scurried after with a revolver.

Natt Roberts said, “If we can hold their cavalry for only another half hour, Watson’s phalanx will have their infantry pressed up against the pass they entered by. It took them three days to get through it, they’re not going to be able to get out in hours.”

“That’s the idea,” Joe Chessman said dourly, “Let’s go.”

VII

Amschel Mayer was incensed.

“What’s got into Buchwald and MacDonald?” he spat.

Jerry Kennedy, attired as was his superior in fur trimmed Genoese robes, signaled one of the servants for a refilling of his glass and shrugged.

“I suppose it’s partly our own fault,” he said lightly. He sipped the wine, made a mental note to buy up the rest of this vintage for his cellars before young Mannerheim or someone else did so.

“Our fault!” Mayer glared.

The old boy was getting decreasingly tolerant as the years went by, Kennedy decided. He said soothingly, “You sent Peter and Fred over there to speed up local development. Well, that’s what they’re doing.”

“Are you insane!” Mayer squirmed in his chair. “Did you read this radiogram? They’ve squeezed out all my holdings in rubber, the fastest growing industry on the western continent. Why, millions are involved. Who do they think they are?”

Kennedy put down his glass and chuckled. “See here, Amschel, we’re developing this planet by encouraging free competition. Our contention is that under such a socioeconomic system the best men are brought to the lead and benefit all society by the advances they make.”

“So! What has this got to do with MacDonald and Buchwald betraying my interests?”

“Don’t you see? Using your own theory, you have been set back by someone more efficiently competitive. Fred and Peter saw an opening and, in keeping with your instructions, moved in. It’s just coincidence that the rubber they took over was your property rather than some Genoese operator’s. If you were open to a loss there, then if they hadn’t taken over someone else could have. Possibly Baron Leonar or even Russ.”

“That reminds me,” Mayer snapped, “our Honorable Russ is getting too big for his britches in petroleum. Did you know he’s established a laboratory in Amerus? Has a hundred or more chemists working on new products.”

“Fine,” Kennedy said.

“Fine! What do you mean? Dean is our man in petroleum.”

“Look here, if Russ can develop the industry even faster than Mike Dean, let him go ahead. That’s all to our advantage.”

Mayer leaned forward and tapped his assistant emphatically on the knee. “Look here, yourself, Jerry Kennedy. At this stage we don’t want things getting out of our hands. A culture is in the hands of those who control the wealth; the means of production, distribution, communication. Theirs is the real power. I’ve made a point of spacing our men about the whole planet. Each specializes, though not exclusively. Gunther is our mining man, Dean heads petroleum, MacDonald shipping, Buchwald textiles, Rykov steel, and so forth. As fast as this planet can assimilate we push new inventions, new techniques, often whole new sciences, into use. Meanwhile, you and I sit back and dominate it all through that strongest of power mediums, finance.”

Jerry Kennedy nodded. “I wouldn’t worry about old man Russ taking over Dean’s domination of oil, though. Mike’s got the support of all the Pedagogue’s resources behind him. Besides, we’ve got to let these Genoese get into the act. The more the economy expands, the more capable men we need. As it is, I think we’re already spread a little too thin.”

Amschel Mayer had dropped the subject. He was reading the radiogram again and scowling his anger. “Well, this cooks MacDonald and Buchwald. I’ll break them.”

His assistant raised his eyebrows. “How do you mean?”

“I’m not going to put up with my subordinates going against my interests.”

“In this case, what can you do about it? Business is business.”

“You hold quite a bit of their paper, don’t you?”

“You know that. Most of our team’s finances funnel through my hands.”

“We’ll close them out. They’ve become too obsessed with their wealth. They’ve forgotten why the Pedagogue was sent here. I’ll break them, Jerry. They’ll come crawling. Perhaps I’ll send them back to the Pedagogue. Make them stay aboard as crew.”

Kennedy shrugged. “Well, Peter MacDonald’s going to hate that. He’s developed into quite a high liver—gourmet food, women, one of the swankiest estates on the eastern continent.”

“Ha!” Mayer snorted. “Let him go back to ship’s rations and crew’s quarters.”

A servant entered the lushly furnished room and announced, “Honorable Gunther calling on the Honorables Mayer and Kennedy.”

Martin Gunther hurried into the room, for once his calm ruffled. “On the western continent,” he blurted. “Dean and Rosetti. The Temple got them, they’ve been burned as witches.”

Amschel Mayer shot to his feet. “That’s the end,” he swore shrilly. “Only in the west have the barons held out. I thought we’d slowly wear them down, take over their powers bit by bit. But this does it. This means we fight.”

He spun to Kennedy. “Jerry, make a trip out to the Pedagogue. You know the extent of Genoa’s industrial progress. Seek out the most advanced weapons this technology could produce.”

Kennedy came to his own feet, shocked by Gunther’s news. “But, Amschel, do you think it’s wise to precipitate an intercontinental war? Remember, we’ve been helping to industrialize the west, too. It’s almost as advanced as our continent. Their war potential isn’t negligible.”

“Nevertheless,” Mayer snapped, “we’ve got to break the backs of the barons and the Temple monks. Get messages off to Baron Leonar and young Mannerheim, to Russ and Olderman. We’ll want them to put pressure on their local politicians. What we need is a continental alliance for this war.”

Gunther said, “Should I get in touch with Rykov? He’s still over there.”

Mayer hesitated. “No,” he said. “We’ll keep Nick informed but he ought to remain where he is. We’ll still want our men in the basic positions of power after we’ve won.”

“He might get hurt,” Gunther scowled. “They might get him too, and we’ve only got six team members left now.”

“Nonsense, Nick Rykov can take care of himself.”

Jerry Kennedy was upset. “Are you sure about this war, chief? Isn’t a conflict of this size apt to hold up our overall plans?”

“Of course not,” Mayer scoffed. “Man makes his greatest progress under pressure. A major war will unite the nations of both the western continent and this one as nothing else could. Both will push their development to the utmost.”

He added thoughtfully, “Which reminds me. It might be a good idea for us to begin accumulating interests in such industries as will be effected by a war economy.”

Jerry Kennedy chuckled at him, “Merchant of death.”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Kennedy said. “Something I read about in a history book.”

VIII

At the decade’s end, once again the representatives of the Genoese team were first in the Pedagogue’s lounge. Mayer sat at the officer’s table, Martin Gunther at his right. Jerry Kennedy leaned against the ship’s bar, sipping appreciatively at a highball.

They could hear the impact of the space boat from Texcoco when it slid into its bed.

“Poor piloting,” Gunther mused. “Whoever’s doing that flying doesn’t get enough practice.”

They could hear ports opening and then the sound of approaching feet. The footsteps had a strangely military ring.

Joe Chessman entered, followed immediately by Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins and Natt Roberts. They were all dressed in heavy uniform, complete with decorations. Behind them were four Texcocans, including Reif and his teenage son Taller.

Mayer scowled at them in way of greeting. “Where’s Plekhanov?”

“Leonid Plekhanov is no longer with us,” Chessman said dourly. “Under pressure his mind evidently snapped and he made decisions that would have meant the collapse of the expedition. He resisted when we reasoned with him.”

The four members of the Genoese team stared without speaking. Jerry Kennedy put down his glass at last. “You mean you had to restrict him? Why didn’t you bring him back to the ship!”

Chessman took a chair at the table. The others assumed standing positions behind him. “I’m afraid we’ll have to reject your views on the subject. Twenty years ago this expedition split into two groups. My team will accomplish its tasks, your opinions are not needed.”

Amschel Mayer glared at the others in hostility. “You have certainly come in force this time.”

Chessman said flatly, “This is all of us, Mayer.”

“All of you! Where are Stevens, Cogswell, MacBride?”

Barry Watson said, “Plekhanov’s fault. Lost in the battle that broke the back of the rebels. At least Cogswell and MacBride were. Stevens made the mistake of backing Plekhanov when the showdown came.”

Joe Chessman looked sourly at his military chief. “I’ll act as team spokesman, Barry.”

“Yes, sir,” Watson said.

“Broke the back of the rebels,” Jerry Kennedy mused. “That opens all sorts of avenues, doesn’t it?”

Chessman growled. “I suppose that in the past twenty years your team had no obstacles. Not a drop of blood shed. Come on, the truth. How many of your team has been lost?”

Mayer shifted in his chair. “Possibly your point is well taken. Dean and Rosetti were burned by the formerly dominant religious group. Rykov was killed in a fracas with bandits while he was transporting some gold.” He added, musingly, “We lost more than half a million Genoese pounds in that robbery.”

“Only three men lost, eh?”

Mayer stirred uncomfortably, then flushed in irritation at the other’s tone. “Something has happened to Buchwald and MacDonald. They must be insane. They’ve broken off contact with me, are amassing personal fortunes in the eastern hemisphere.”

Hawkins laughed abruptly. “Free competition,” he said.

Chessman growled, “Let’s halt this bickering and get to business. First let me introduce Reif, Texcocan State Army Chief of Staff and his son Taller. And these other Texcocans are Wiss and Fokin, both of whom have gone far in the sciences.”

The Tulans shook hands, Earth style, but then stepped to the rear again where they followed the conversation without comment.

Mayer said, “You think it wise to introduce natives to the Pedagogue?”

“Of course,” Chessman said. “Following this conference, I’m going to take Fokin and Wiss into the library. What’re we here for if not to bring these people up to our level as rapidly as possible?”

“Very well,” Mayer conceded grudgingly. “And now I have a complaint. When the Pedagogue first arrived we had only so many weapons aboard. You have appropriated more than half in the past two decades.”

Chessman shrugged it off. “We’ll return the greater part to the ship’s arsenal. At this stage we are producing our own.”

“I’ll bet,” Kennedy said. “Look, any of you fellows want a real Earth-side whisky? When we were crewing this expedition, why didn’t we bring someone with a knowledge of distilling, brewing and such?”

Mayer snapped at him, “Jerry, you drink too much.”

“The hell I do,” the other said cheerfully. “Not near enough.”

Barry Watson said easily, “A drink wouldn’t hurt. Why’re we so stiff? This is the first get-together for ten years. Jerry, you’re putting on weight.”

Kennedy looked down at his admittedly rounded stomach. “Don’t get enough exercise,” he said, then reversed the attack. “You look older. Are your taking your rejuvenation treatments?”

Barry Watson grimaced. “Sure, but I’m working under pressure. It’s been one long campaign.”

Kennedy passed around the drinks.

Dick Hawkins laughed. “It’s been one long campaign, all right. Barry has a house as big as a castle and six or eight women in his harem.”

Watson flushed, but obviously without displeasure.

Martin Gunther, of the Genoese team, cocked his head. “Harem?”

Joe Chessman said impatiently, “Man adapts to circumstances, Gunther. The wars have lost us a lot of men. Women are consequently in a surplus. If the population curve is to continue upward, it’s necessary that a man serve more than one woman. Polygamy is the obvious answer.”

Gunther cleared his throat smoothly, “So a man in Barry’s position will have as many as eight wives, eh? You must have lost a good many men.”

Watson grinned modestly. “Everybody doesn’t have that many. It’s according to your ability to support them, and, also, rank has its privileges. Besides, we figure it’s a good idea to spread the best seed around. By mixing our blood with the Texcocan we improve the breed.”

Behind him, Taller, the Tulan boy, stirred, without notice.

Kennedy finished off his highball and began to build another immediately. “Here we go again. The big potatoes coming to the top.”

Watson flushed. “What do you mean by that, Kennedy?”

“Oh, come off it, Barry,” Kennedy laughed. “Just because you’re in a position to push these people around doesn’t make you the prize stud on Texcoco.”

Watson elbowed Dick Hawkins to one side in his attempt to get around the table at the other.

Chessman rapped, “Watson! That’s enough. Knock it off or I’ll have you under arrest.” The Texcocan team head turned abruptly to Mayer and Kennedy. “Let’s stop this nonsense. We’ve come to compare progress. Let’s begin.”

The three members of the Genoese team glared back in antagonism, but then Gunther said grudgingly, “He’s right. There is no longer amiability between us, so let’s forget about it. Perhaps when the fifty years is up, things will be different. Now let’s merely be businesslike.”

“Well,” Mayer said, “our report is that progress accelerates. Our industrial potential expands at a rate that surprises even us. In the near future we’ll introduce the internal combustion engine. Our universities still multiply and are turning out technicians, engineers, scientists at an ever-quickening speed. In several nations illiteracy is practically unknown and per capita production increases almost everywhere.” Mayer paused in satisfaction, as though awaiting the others to attempt to top his report.

Joe Chessman said sourly, “Ah, almost everywhere per capita production increases. Why almost?”

Mayer snapped, “Obviously, in a system of free competition, all cannot progress at once. Some go under.”

“Whole nations?”

“Temporarily whole nations can receive setbacks as a result of defeat in war, or perhaps due to lack of natural resources. Some nations progress faster than others.”

Chessman said, “The whole Texcocan State is one great unit. Everywhere the gross product increases. Within the foreseeable future the standard of living will be excellent.”

Jerry Kennedy, an alcoholic lisp in his voice now, said, “You mean you’ve accomplished a planet-wide government?”

“Well, no. Not as yet,” Chessman’s sullen voice had an element of chagrin in it. “However, there are no strong elements left that oppose us. We are now pacifying the more remote areas.”

“Sounds like a rather bloody program—especially if Barry Watson, here, winds up with eight women,” Martin Gunther said.

Watson started to say something but Chessman held up a restraining hand. “The Texcocan State is too strong to be resisted, Gunther. It is mostly a matter of getting around to the more remote peoples. As soon as we bring in a new tribe, we convert it into a commune.”

“Commune!” Kennedy blurted.

Joe Chessman raised his thick eyebrows at the other. “The most efficient socioeconomic unit at this stage of development. Tribal society is perfectly adapted to fit into such a plan. The principal difference between a tribe and a commune is that under the commune you have the advantage of a State above in a position to give you the benefit of mass industries, schools, medical assistance. In return, of course, for a certain amount of taxes, military levies and so forth.”

Martin Gunther said softly, “I recall reading of the commune system as a student, but I fail to remember the supposed advantages.”

Chessman growled, “They’re obvious. You have a unit of tens of thousands of persons. Instead of living in individual houses, each with a man working while the woman cooks and takes care of the home, all live in community houses and take their meals in messhalls. The children are cared for by trained nurses. During the season all physically capable adults go out en masse to work the fields. When the harvest has been taken in, the farmer does not hole up for the winter but is occupied in local industrial projects, or in road or dam building. The commune’s labor is never idle.”

Kennedy shuddered involuntarily.

Chessman looked at him coldly. “It means quick progress. Meanwhile, we go through each commune and from earliest youth, locate those members who are suited to higher studies. We bring them into State schools where they get as much education as they can assimilate—more than is available in commune schools. These are the Texcocans we are training in the sciences.”

“The march to the anthill,” Amschel Mayer muttered.

Chessman eyed him scornfully. “You amuse me, old man. You with your talk of building an economy with a system of free competition. Our Texcocans are sacrificing today but their children will live in abundance. Even today, no one starves, no one goes without shelter nor medical care.” Chessman twisted his mouth wryly. “We have found that hungry, cold or sick people cannot work efficiently.”

He stared challengingly at the Genoese leader. “Can you honestly say that there are no starving people in Genoa? No inadequately housed, no sick without hope of adequate medicine? Do you have economic setbacks in which poorly planned production goes amuck and depressions follow with mass unemployment?”

“Nevertheless,” Mayer said with unwonted calm, “our society is still far ahead of yours. A mere handful of your bureaucracy and military chiefs enjoy the good things of life. There are tens of thousands on Genoa who have them. Free competition has its weaknesses, perhaps, but it provides a greater good for a greater number of persons.”

Joe Chessman came to his feet. “We’ll see,” he said stolidly. “In ten years, Mayer, we’ll consider the position of both planets once again.”

“Ten years it is,” Mayer snapped back at him.

Jerry Kennedy saluted with his glass. “Cheers,” he said.

On the return to Genoa Amschel Mayer said to Kennedy, “Are you sober enough to assimilate something serious?”

“Sure, chief, of course.”

“Hm-m-m. Well then, begin taking the steps necessary for us to place a few men on Texcoco in the way of, ah, intelligence agents.”

“You mean some of our team?” Kennedy said, startled.

“No, of course not. We can’t spare them, and, besides, there’d be too big a chance of recognition and exposure. Some of our more trusted Genoese. Make the monetary reward enough to attract their services.” He looked at his lieutenants significantly. “I think you’ll agree that it might not be a bad idea to keep our eyes on the developments on Texcoco.”

On the way back to Texcoco, Barry Watson said to his chief, “What do you think of putting some security men on Genoa, just to keep tabs?”

“Why?”

Watson looked at his fingers, nibbled at a hangnail. “It just seems to me it wouldn’t hurt any.”

Chessman snorted.

Dick Hawkins said, “I think Barry’s right. They can bear watching. Besides in another decade or so they’ll realize we’re going to beat them. Mayer’s ego isn’t going to take that. He’d go to just about any extreme to keep from losing face back on Earth.”

Natt Roberts said worriedly, “I think they’re right, Joe. Certainly it wouldn’t hurt to have a few Security men over there. My department could train them and we’d ferry them over in this space boat.”

“I’ll make the decisions,” Chessman growled at them. “I’ll think about this. It’s just possible that you’re right though.”

Behind them, Reif looked thoughtfully at his teenage son.

IX

Down the long palace corridor strode Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins, Natt Roberts, the aging Reif and his son Taller, now in the prime of manhood. Their faces were equally wan from long hours without sleep. Half a dozen Tulan infantrymen brought up their rear.

As they passed Security Police guards, to left and right, eyes took in their weapons, openly carried. But such eyes shifted and the guards remained at their posts. Only one sergeant opened his mouth in protest. “Sir,” he said to Watson, hesitantly, “you are entering Number One’s presence armed.”

“Shut up,” Natt Roberts rapped at him.

Reif said, “That will be all, sergeant.”

The Security Police sergeant looked emptily after them as they progressed down the corridor.

Together, Watson and Reif motioned aside the two Tulan soldiers who stood before the door of their destination, and pushed inward without knocking.

Joe Chessman looked up wearily from his map and dispatch laden desk. For a moment his hand went to the heavy military revolver at his right but when he realized the identity of his callers, it fell away.

“What’s up now?” he said, his voice on the verge of cracking.

Watson acted as spokesman. “It’s everywhere the same. The communes are on the fine edge of revolt. They’ve been pushed too far; they’ve got to the point where they just don’t give a damn. A spark and all Texcoco goes up in flames.”

Reif said coldly, “We need immediate reforms. They’ve got to be pacified. An immediate announcement of more consumer goods, fewer State taxes, above all a relaxation of Security Police pressures. Given immediate promise of these, we might maintain ourselves.”

Joe Chessman’s sullen face was twitching at the right corner of his mouth. Young Taller made no attempt to disguise his contempt at the other’s weakness in time of stress.

Chessman’s eyes went around the half circle of them. “This is the only alternative? It’ll slow up our heavy industry program. We might not catch up with Genoa as quickly as planned.”

Watson gestured with a hand in quick irritation. “Look here, Chessman, don’t we get through to you? Whether or not we build up a steel capacity as large as Amschel Mayer’s isn’t important now. Everything’s at stake.”

“Don’t talk to me that way, Barry,” Chessman growled truculently. “I’ll make the decisions. I’ll do the thinking.” He said to Reif, “How much of the Tulan army is loyal?”

The aging Tulan looked at Watson before turning back to Joe Chessman. “All of the Tulan army is loyal—to me.”

“Good!” Chessman pushed some of the dispatches on his desk aside, letting them flutter to the floor. He bared a field map. “If we crush half a dozen of the local communes … crush them hard! Then the others …”

Watson said very slowly and so low as hardly to be heard, “You didn’t bother to listen, Chessman. We told you, all that’s needed is a spark.”

Joe Chessman sat back in his chair, looked at them all again, one by one. Reevaluating. For a moment the facial tic stopped and his eyes held the old alertness.

“I see,” he said. “And you all recommend capitulation to their demands?”

“It’s our only chance,” Hawkins said. “We don’t even know it’ll work. There’s always the chance if we throw them a few crumbs they’ll want the whole loaf. You’ve got to remember that some of them have been living for twenty-five years or more under this pressure. The valve is about to blow.”

“I see,” Chessman grunted. “And what else? I can see in your faces there’s something else.”

The three Earthmen didn’t answer. Their eyes shifted.

He looked to young Taller and then to Reif. “What else?”

“We need a scapegoat,” Reif said without expression.

Joe Chessman thought about that. He looked to Barry Watson again.

Watson said, “The whole Texcocan State is about to topple. Not only do we have to give them immediate reform, but we’re going to have to blame the past hardships and mistakes on somebody. Somebody has to take the rap, be thrown to the wolves. If not, maybe we’ll all wind up taking the blame.”

“Ah,” Chessman said. His red-rimmed eyes went around them again, thoughtfully. “We should be able to dig up a few local chieftains and some of the Security Police heads.”

They shook their heads. “It has to be somebody big,” Natt Roberts said thickly, “a few of my Security Police won’t do it.”

Joe Chessman’s eyes went to Reif. “The Khan is the highest ranking Texcocan of all,” he said, finally. “The Khan and some Security Police heads would satisfy them.”

Reif’s face was as frigid as the Earthman’s. He said, “I am afraid not, Joseph Chessman. You are Number One. It is your statue that is in every commune square. It is your portrait that hangs in every distribution center, every mess hall, every schoolroom. You are the Number One—as you have so often pointed out to us. My title has become meaningless.”

Joe Chessman spat out a curse, fumbled the gun into his hand and fired before the Tulan soldiers could get to him. In a moment they had wrested the weapon from his hand and had his arms pinioned. It was too late.

Reif had been thrown backward two paces by the blast of the heavy-calibered gun. Now he held a palm over his belly and staggered to a chair. He collapsed into it, looked at his son, let a wash of amusement pass over his face, said, “Khan,” meaninglessly, and died.

Natt Roberts shrilled at Chessman, “You fool, we were going to give you a big, theatrical trial. Sentence you to prison and then, later, claim you’d died in your cell and smuggle you out to the Pedagogue.”

Watson snapped to the guards, “Take him outside and shoot him.”

The Tulans began dragging the snarling, cursing Chessman to the door.

Taller said, “A moment, please.”

Watson, Roberts and Hawkins looked to him.

Taller said, “This perhaps can be done more effectively.”

His voice was completely emotionless. “This man has killed both my father and grandfather, both of them Khans of Tula, heads of the most powerful city on all Texcoco, before the coming of you Earthlings.”

The guards hesitated. Watson detained them with a motion of his hand.

Taller said, “I suggest you turn him over to me, to be dealt with in the traditional way of the People.”

“No,” Chessman said hoarsely. “Barry, Dick, Natt, send me back to the Pedagogue. I’ll be out of things there. Or maybe Mayer can use me on Genoa.”

They didn’t bother to look in his direction. Roberts muttered savagely, “We told you all that was needed was a spark. Now you’ve killed the Khan, the most popular man on Texcoco. There’s no way of saving you.”

Taller said, “None of you have studied our traditions, our customs. But now, perhaps, you will understand the added effect of my taking charge. It will be a more … profitable manner of using the downfall of this … this power mad murderer.”

Chessman said desperately, “Look, Barry, Natt, if you have to, shoot me. At least give me a man’s death. Remember those human sacrifices the Tulans had when we first arrived? Can you imagine what went on in those temples? Barry, Dick—for old time’s sake, boys …”

Barry Watson said to Taller, “He’s yours. If this doesn’t take the pressure off us, nothing will.”

X

At the end of the third decade, the Texcocan delegation was already seated in the Pedagogue’s lounge when Jerome Kennedy, Martin Gunther, Peter MacDonald, Fredric Buchwald and three Genoese, Baron Leonar and the Honorables Russ and Modrin appeared.

The Texcocan group consisted of Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins and Natt Roberts to one side of him, Generalissimo Taller and six highly bemedaled Texcocans on the other.

Before taking a seat Barry Watson barked, “Where’s Amschel Mayer? I’ve got some important points to cover with him.”

“Take it easy,” Kennedy slurred. “For that matter, where’s Joe Chessman?”

Watson glared at the other. “You know where he is.”

“That I do,” Kennedy said. “He’s purged, to use a term of yesteryear. At the rate you laddy-bucks are going, there won’t be anything left of you by the time our half century is up.” He snapped his fingers and a Genoese servant who’d been inconspicuously in the background, hurried to his side. “Let’s have some refreshments here. What’ll everybody have?”

“You act as though you’ve had enough already,” Watson bit out.

Kennedy ignored him, insisted on everyone being served before he allowed the conversation to turn serious. Then he said, slyly, “I see we’ve been successful in apprehending all of your agents, or you’d know more of our affairs.”

“Not all our agents,” Watson barked. “Only those on your southern continent. What happened to Amschel Mayer?”

Peter MacDonald, who, with Buchwald, was for the first time attending one of the decade-end conferences, had been hardly recognized in his new girth by the Texcocan team. But his added weight had evidently done nothing to his keenness of mind. He said smoothly, “Our good Amschel is under arrest. Imprisoned, in fact.” He shook his head, his double chin wobbling. “A tragedy.”

“Imprisoned! By whom?” Taller scowled. “I don’t like this. After all, he was your expedition’s head man.”

Barry Watson rapped, “Don’t leave us there, MacDonald. What happened to him?”

MacDonald explained. “The financial and industrial empire he had built was overextended. A small crisis and it collapsed. Thousands of investors suffered. In brief, he was arrested and found guilty.”

Watson was unbelieving. “There is nothing you could do? The whole team! Couldn’t you bribe him out? Rescue him by force and get him back to the ship? With all the wealth you characters control—”

Jerry Kennedy laughed shortly. “We were busy bailing ourselves out of our own situations, Watson. You don’t know what international finance can be. Besides, he dug his grave … uh … that is, he made his bed.”

Kennedy signaled the servant for another drink, said, “Let’s cut out this dismal talk. How about our progress reports?”

“Progress reports,” Barry Watson said. “That’s a laugh. You have agents on Texcoco, we have them on Genoa. What’s the use of having these conferences at all?”

For the first time, one of the Genoese put in a word. Baron Leonar, son of the original Baron who had met with Amschel Mayer thirty years before, was a man in his mid-forties. He said quietly, “It seems to me the time has arrived when the two planets might profit by intercourse. Surely in this time one has progressed beyond the other in this field, but lagged in that. If I understand the mission of the Pedagogue it is to bring us to as high a technological level as possible in half a century. Already three decades have passed.”

The Texcocans studied him thoughtfully, but Jerry Kennedy waved in negation with the hand that held his glass. “You don’t get it, Baron. You see, the thing is we wanta find out what system is going to do the most the quickest. If we cooperate with Barry’s gang, everything’ll get all mixed up.”

The Honorable Russ, now a wizened man of at least seventy, but still sharply alert, said, “However, Texcoco and Genoa might both profit.”

Kennedy said happily, “What do we care? You gotta take the long view. What we’re working out here is going to be used on half a million planets eventually.” He tried to snap his fingers. “These two lousy planets don’t count that much.” He succeeded in snapping them this time. “Not that much.”

Barry Watson said, “You’re stoned, Kennedy.”

“Why not?” Kennedy grinned. “Finally perfected a decent brandy. I’ll have to send you a few cases, Barry.”

“How would you go about that, Jerry?” Watson said softly.

“Shucks, man, our space lighter makes a trip to Texcoco every month or so. Gotta keep up with you boys. Maybe throw a wrench or so in the works once inna while.”

Peter MacDonald said, “Shut up, Jerry. You talk too much.”

“Don’t talk to me that way. You’ll find yourself having one helluva time floating that loan you need next month. How about another drink, everybody? This party’s dead.”

Watson said, “How about the progress reports? Briefly, we’ve all but completely united Texcoco. Minor setbacks have sometimes deterred us but the march of progress goes on. We—”

“Minor setbacks,” Kennedy chortled. “Must of had to bump off five million of the poor slobs before that commune revolt was finished with.”

Watson said coldly, “We always have a few reactionaries, religious fanatics, misfits, crackpots, malcontents to deal with. However, these are not important. Our industrial potential has finally begun to roll. We doubled steel production this year, will do the same next. Our hydroelectric installations tripled in the past two years. Coal production is four times higher, lumber production six times. We expect to increase grain harvest forty percent next season. And—”

The Honorable Modrin put in gently, “Please, Honorable Watson, your percentage figures are impressive only if we know from what basis you start. If you produced but five million tons of steel last year, then your growth to ten million is very good but it is still not a considerable amount for an entire planet.”

Buchwald said dryly, “If our agents are correct, Texcocan steel production is something like a quarter of our own. I assume your other basic products are at about the same stage of development.”

Watson flushed. “The thing to remember is that our economy continues to grow each year. Yours spurts and stops, jerks ahead a few steps, then grinds to a halt or even retreats. Everything comes to a pause if you few on the top stop making a profit; all that counts in your economy is making money. Which reminds me, how in the world did you ever get out of that planet-wide depression you were in three years ago?”

Peter MacDonald grunted his disgust. “Planet-wide depression, indeed. A small recession. A temporary readjustment due to overextension in certain economic and financial fields.”

From the other side of the table, Dick Hawkins laughed at him. “Where’d you pick up that line of gobbledygook, Peter?” he asked.

Peter MacDonald came to his feet. “I don’t have to put up with this sort of impudence,” he snapped.

Watson lurched to his own feet. “Nor do we have to listen to your snide cracks about the real progress Texcoco is making. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.” He snapped to his associates, “Hawkins, Taller, Roberts! Let’s go. Ten years from now, there’ll be another story to tell. Even a blind man will see the difference.”

They marched down the Pedagogue’s corridor toward their space boat.

Kennedy called after them, “Ten years from now every family on Genoa’ll have a car. Wait’ll you see. Television, too. We’re introducing TV next year. An’ civil aviation. Be all over the place in two, three years—”

The Texcocans slammed the spaceport after them.

Kennedy sloshed some more drink into his glass. “Slobs can’t stand the truth,” he explained to the others.

XI

With the exception of a few additional delegates composed of high-ranking Texcocan and Genoese political and scientific heads, the lineup at the end of forty years was the same as ten years earlier—except for the absence of Jerry Kennedy.

Extra tables had been set up, and chairs to accommodate the added numbers. To one side were the Genoese: Martin Gunther, Fredric Buchwald, Peter MacDonald, with such repeat delegates as Baron Leonar and the Honorables Modrin and Russ and half a dozen newcomers. On the other were Barry Watson, Dick Hawkins and Natt Roberts, Taller and such Texcocans as the scientists Wiss and Fokin, army heads, Security Police officials and other notables.

Note pads had been placed before each of them and both Watson and Gunther were equipped with gavels.

While chairs were still being shuffled, Barry Watson said over the table to Gunther, “Jerry?”

Martin Gunther shrugged “Jerry’s indisposed. As a matter of fact, he’s at one of the mountain sanitariums, taking a cure. He’ll be all right.”

“Good,” Dick Hawkins said. “We’ve lost too many.”

Watson pounded with his gavel. “Let’s come to order. Gunther do you have anything to say in the way of preliminaries?”

“Not especially. I believe we all know where we stand, including the newcomers from Genoa and Texcoco. In brief, this is the fourth meeting of the Earth teams that were sent to these two planets to bring backward colonists to an industrialized culture. It would seem that we are both succeeding—possibly at different rates. Forty years have passed, ten remain to us.”

For a moment there was silence.

Finally Roberts said, “Possibly you have already discovered this through your agents, but we have released the information on prolonging of life.”

Peter MacDonald said wryly, “We, too, were pressured into such a step.”

Baron Leonar said, “And why not?”

Taller, across the table from him, nodded.

Martin Gunther tapped twice on the table with his gavel. “The basic reason for our meeting is to report progress and to reconsider the possibilities of new elements having entered into the situation which might cause us to reexamine our policies. I think we already have a fairly good idea of each other’s development.” His voice went wry. “At least our agents do a fairly good job of reporting yours.”

“And ours, yours,” Watson rapped.

“However,” MacDonald said, “now that we are drawing near the end of our half century, I think it becomes obvious that Amschel Mayer’s original contention—that a freely competitive economy grows faster than one restricted by totalitarian bounds—has been proven.”

Barry Watson snorted amusement. “Do you?” he said. “To the contrary, MacDonald. The proof is otherwise. On Genoa you still have comparative confusion. True enough, several of your nations, particularly those on your southern continent, are greatly advanced and with a high living and cultural standard—when times are good. But at the same time you have other whole peoples who are little, if any, better off, than when you arrived. On the western continent you even have a few feudalistic regimes that are probably worse off—mostly as a result of the wars you’ve crippled them with.”

Natt Roberts said, his voice musing, “But even that isn’t the important thing. The Coordinator sent us here to find a method of bringing backward cultures to industrialization. Have you got a blueprint to show him, when you return? Can you trace out the history of Genoa for this past half century and say, this war was necessary for progress—but that should have been avoided? Or is this whole free competition program of yours actually nothing but chaos which sometimes works out wonderfully for some nations, but actually destroys others? You have scorned our methods, our collectivized society—but when we return, we’ll have a blueprint of how we arrived where we are.”

Gunther banged the table with his gavel. “Just a moment. Is there any reason why we have to listen to these accusations when—”

Watson held up a hand, curtly, “Let us finish. If you have something to say, we’ll gladly listen when we’re through.”

Gunther was flushed but he snapped, “Go ahead then, but don’t think any of we Genoese are being taken in.”

Watson said, “True enough, it took us a time to unite our people …”

“Time and blood,” Peter MacDonald muttered.

“… But once underway the Texcocan State has moved on in a progression unknown in any of the Genoese nations. To industrialize a society you must reach a certain taking off point, a point where you have sufficient industry, particularly steel, sufficient power, sufficient scientists, technicians and skilled workers. Once that point has been reached you can move in almost a geometric progression. You build a steel mill and with the steel produced you build two more mills the following year, which in turn gives you the material for four the next year.”

Buchwald grunted his disbelief.

Watson looked up and down the line of Genoese, the Earthmen as well as the natives. “On Texcoco we have now reached that point. We have a trained, eager population of over one billion persons. Our universities are turning out highly trained effectives at the rate of more than twenty million a year. We have located all the raw materials we will need. We are now under way.” He looked at them in heavy amusement. “By the end of the next decade we will bury you.”

Martin Gunther said calmly, “Are you through?”

“Yes. For the time,” Watson nodded.

“Very well. Then this is our progress report. In the past forty years we have eliminated feudalism in all the more advanced countries. Even in the remote areas the pressures of our changing world are bringing them around. The populace of these countries will no longer stand to one side while the standard of living on the rest of Genoa grows so rapidly. On most of our planet, already the average family not only enjoys freedom but a way of life far in advance of that of Texcoco. Already modern housing and household appliances are everywhere. Already both land cars and aircraft are available to the majority. The nations have formed an Intercontinental League of governments so that it is unlikely that war will ever touch us again. And this is merely a beginning. In ten years, continuing our freely competitive way of developing, all will be living on a scale that only the wealthy can afford today.”

He came to an end and stared antagonistically at the Texcocans.

Taller said, “There seems to be no agreement.”

Across the table from him the ancient Honorable Russ said, “It is difficult to measure. We seem to count refrigerators and privately owned automobiles. You seem to ignore personal standards and concentrate on steel tonnage.”

The Texcocan scientist, Wiss, said easily, “Given the steel mills, and eventually automobiles and refrigerators will run off our assembly lines like water, and will be available for everyone, not just those who can afford to buy them.”

“Hm-m-m, eventually,” Peter MacDonald laughed nastily.

The atmosphere was suddenly hostile. Hostile beyond anything that had gone before in earlier conferences.

And then Martin Gunther said without inflection, “I note that you have removed from the Pedagogue’s library the information dealing with nuclear fission.”

“For the purpose of study,” Dick Hawkins said smoothly.

“Of course,” Gunther said. “Did you plan to return it in the immediate future?”

“I’m afraid our studies will take some time,” Watson said flatly.

“I was afraid so,” Gunther said. “Happily, I took the precaution of making microfilms of the material involved more than a year ago.”

Barry Watson pushed his chair back. “We seem to have accomplished what was possible by this conference,” he said. “If anything.” He looked to right and left at his cohorts. “Let’s go.”

They came stiffly erect. Watson turned on his heel and started for the door.

As they left, Natt Roberts turned for a moment and said to Gunther, “One thing, Martin. During this next ten years you might consider whether or not half a century has been enough to accomplish our task. Should we consider staying on? I would think the Coordinator would accept any recommendation along this line that we might make.”

The Genoese contingent looked after him, long after he was gone.

Finally Martin Gunther said, “Baron Leonar, I think it might be a good idea if you began putting some of your men to work on making steel alloys suitable for spacecraft. The way things are developing, perhaps we’ll be needing them.”

Buchwald and MacDonald looked at him unblinkingly.

XII

It was fifty years to a day since the Pedagogue had first gone into orbit about Rigel. Five decades have passed. Half a century.

Of the original crew of the Pedagogue, six now gathered in the lounge of the spaceship. All of them had changed physically. Some of them softer to the point of flabbiness; some harder both of body and soul.

Barry Watson, Natt Roberts, Dick Hawkins, of the Texcocan team.

Martin Gunther, Peter MacDonald, Fredric Buchwald, of the Genoese.

The gathering wasn’t so large as the one before. Only Taller and the scientist Wiss attended from Texcoco; only Baron Leonar and the son of Honorable Russ from Genoa.

From the beginning they stared with hostility across the conference table. Even the pretense of amiability was gone.

Watson rapped finally, “I am not going to dwell upon the measures you have been taking that can only be construed as military ones aimed eventually at the Texcocan State.”

Martin Gunther laughed nastily. “Is your implication that your own people have not taken the same measures, in fact, inaugurated them?”

Watson said, “As I say, I have no intention of even discussing this. Surely we can arrive at no agreement. There is one point, however that we should consider on this occasion.”

The corpulent Peter MacDonald wheezed, “Well, out with it!”

Natt Roberts said, “I mentioned the matter to you at the last meeting.”

“Ah, yes,” Gunther nodded. “Just as you left. We have considered it.”

The Texcocans waited for him to go on.

“If I understand you,” Gunther said, “you think we should reconsider returning to Terra City at this time.”

“It should be discussed,” Watson nodded. “Whatever the … ah … temporary difficulties between us, the original project of the Pedagogue is still our duty.”

The three of the Genoese team nodded their agreement.

“And the problem becomes, have we accomplished completely what we set out to do? And, further, is it necessary, or at least preferable, for us to stay on and continue administration of the progress of the Rigel planets?”

They thought about it.

Buchwald said hesitantly, “It has been my own belief that Genoa is not quite ready for us to let loose the … ah, reins. If we left now, I am not sure—”

Roberts said, “Same applies to Texcoco. The State has made fabulous strides, but I am not sure what would happen if we leaders were to leave. There might be a complete collapse.”

Watson said, “We seem to be in basic agreement. Is a suggestion in order that we extend, for another twenty-five years, at least, this expedition’s work?”

Dick Hawkins said, “The Office of Galactic Colonization—”

MacDonald said smoothly, “Will undoubtedly send out a ship to investigate. We shall simply inform them that things are not as yet propitious to our leaving, that another twenty-five years is in order. Since we are on the scene, undoubtedly our recommendation will be heeded.”

Watson looked from one Earthman to the next. “We are in agreement?”

Each in turn nodded.

Peter MacDonald said, “And do you all realize that here we have a unique situation that might be exploited for the benefit of the whole race?”

They looked to him, questioningly.

“The dynamic we find in Genoa—and Texcoco, too, for that matter, though we disagree on so many fundamentals—is beyond that in the Solar System. These are new planets, new ambitions are alive. We have at our fingertips man’s highest developments, evolved on Earth. But with this new dynamic, this freshness, might we not in time push even beyond old Earth?”

“You mean—” Natt Roberts said.

MacDonald nodded. “What particular of value is gained by our uniting Genoa and Texcoco with the so-called Galactic Commonwealth? Why not press ahead on our own? With the vigor of these new races we might well leave Earth far behind.”

Watson mused, “Carrying your suggestion to the ultimate, who is to say that one day Rigel might not become the new center of the human race, rather than Sol?”

“A point well taken,” Gunther agreed.

“No,” Taller said softly.

The six Earthmen turned hostile eyes to him.

“This particular matter does not concern you, Generalissimo,” Watson rapped at him.

Taller smiled his amusement at that and came to his feet.

“No,” he said. “I am afraid that hard though it might be for you to give up the powers you have held so long, you Earthlings are going to have to return to Terra City, from whence you came.”

Baron Leonar said in gentle agreement, “Obviously.”

“What is this?” Watson rapped. “I’m not at all amused.”

The Honorable Russ stood also. “There is no use prolonging this. I have heard you Earthlings say, more than once, that man adapts to preserve himself. Very well, we of Genoa and Texcoco are adapting to the present situation. We are of the belief that if you are allowed to remain in power we of the Rigel planets will be destroyed, probably in an atomic holocaust. In self-protection we have found it necessary to unite, we Genoese and Texcocans. We bear you no ill will, far to the contrary. However, it is necessary that you all return to Earth. You have impressed upon us the aforementioned truism that man adapts but in the Pedagogue’s library I have found another that also applies. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

There were heavy automatics in the hands of Natt Roberts and Dick Hawkins. Barry Watson leaned back in his chair, his eyes narrow. “How’d you ever expect to get away with this sort of treason, Taller?”

Martin Gunther blurted, “Or you, Russ?”

Wiss, the Texcocan scientist, held his wrist radio to his mouth and said, “Come in now.”

Dick Hawkins thumbed back the hammer of his hand gun.

“Hold it a minute, Dick,” Barry Watson said. “I don’t like this.” To Taller he rapped, “What goes on here? Talk up, you’re just about a dead man.”

And it was then that they heard the scraping on the outer hull.

The six Earthmen looked at the overhead, dumbfounded.

“I suggest you put up your weapons,” Taller said quietly. “At this late stage I would hate to see further bloodshed.”

In moments they heard the opening and closing of locks and footsteps along the corridor. The door opened and in stepped,

Joe Chessman, Amschel Mayer, Mike Dean, Louis Rosetti, and an emaciated Jerry Kennedy. Their expressions ran the gamut from sheepishness to blank haughtiness.

MacDonald bug-eyed. “Dean … Rosetti … the Temple priests burned you at the stake!”

They grinned at him, shamefaced. “Guess not,” Dean said. “We were kidnaped. We’ve been teaching basic science, in some phony monastery.”

Watson’s face was white. “Joe,” he said.

“Yeah,” Joe Chessman growled. “You sold me out. But Taller and the Texcocans thought I was still of some use.”

Amschel Mayer snapped, bitterly, “And now if you fools will put down your stupid guns, we’ll make the final arrangements for returning this expedition to Terra City. Personally, I’ll be glad to get away!”

Behind the five resurrected Earthmen were a sea of faces representing the foremost figures of both Texcoco and Genoa in every field of endeavor. At least fifty of them in all.

As though protectively, the eleven Earthmen ganged together at the far side of the messtable they’d met over so often.

Martin Gunther, his expression dazed, said, “I … I don’t—”

Taller resumed his spokesmanship. “From the first the most progressive elements on both Texcoco and Genoa realized the value of your expedition and have been in fundamental sympathy with the aims the Pedagogue originally had. Primitive life is not idyllic. Until man is free from nature’s tyranny and has solved the basic problems of sufficient food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education for all, he is unable to realize himself. So we cooperated with you to the extent we found possible.”

His smile was grim. “I am afraid that almost from the beginning, and on both planets, your very actions developed an … underground, I believe you call it. Not an overt one, since we needed your assistance to build the new industrialized culture you showed us was possible. We even protected you against yourselves, since it soon became obvious that if left alone you’d destroy each other in your addiction to power.”

Baron Leonar broke in, “Don’t misunderstand. It wasn’t until the past couple of decades that this underground which had sprung up independently on both planets, amalgamated.”

Barry Watson blurted, “But Joe … Chessman—” he refused to meet the eye of the man he’d condemned.

Taller said, “From the first you made no effort to study our customs. If you had, you’d have realized why my father allied himself to you after you’d killed Taller First. And why I did not take my revenge on Chessman after he’d killed Reif. A Khan’s first training is that no personal emotion must interfere with the needs of the People. When you turned Joe Chessman over to me, I realized his education, his abilities were too great to destroy. We sent him to a mountain university and have used him profitably all these years. In fact, it was Chessman who finally brought us to space travel.”

“That’s right,” Buchwald blurted. “You’ve got a spaceship out there. How could you possibly—?”

Taller said mildly, “There are but a handful of you, you could hardly keep track of two whole planets and all that went on upon them.”

Amschel Mayer said bitingly, “All this can be gone over on our return to Terra City. We’ll have a full year to explain to ourselves and each other why we became such complete idiots. I was originally head of this expedition—before my supposed friends railroaded me to prison—does anyone object if I take over again?”

“No,” Joe Chessman growled.

The others shook their heads.

Taller said, “There is but one other thing. In spite of how you may feel at this moment of embarrassment, basically you have succeeded in your task. That is, you have brought Texcoco and Genoa to an industrialized culture. We hold various reservations about how you accomplished this. However, when you return to your Coordinator of Galactic Colonization, please inform him that we are anxious to receive his ambassadors. The term is ambassadors and we will expect to meet on a basis of equality. Surely in all Earth’s millennia of social evolution man has worked out something better than either of your teams have built here. We should like to be instructed.”

Dick Hawkins said stiffly, “We can instruct you on Earth’s present socioeconomic system.”

“I am afraid we no longer trust you, Richard Hawkins. Send others—uncorrupted by power, privilege or great wealth.”

When they had gone and the sound of their departing spacecraft had faded, Amschel Mayer snapped, “We might as well get underway. And cheer up, confound it, we have lots of time to contrive a reasonable report for the Coordinator.”

Jerry Kennedy managed a thin grin, almost reminiscent of the younger Kennedy of the first years on Genoa. “Say,” he said, “I wonder if we’ll be granted a good long vacation before being sent on another assignment.”

Combat

Henry Kuran answered a nod here and there, a called out greeting from a desk an aisle removed from the one along which he was progressing, finally made the far end of the room. He knocked at the door and pushed his way through before waiting a response.

There were three desks here. He didn’t recognize two of the girls who looked up at his entry. One of them began to say something, but then Betty, whose desk dominated the entry to the inner sanctum, grinned a welcome at him and said, “Hank! How was Peru? We’ve been expecting you.”

“Full of Incas,” he grinned back. “Incas, Russkies and Chinks. A poor capitalist conquistador doesn’t have a chance. Is the boss inside?”

“He’s waiting for you, Hank. See you later.”

Hank said, “Um-m-m,” and when the door clicked in response to the button Betty touched, pushed his way into the inner office.

Morton Twombly, chief of the department, came to his feet, shook hands abruptly and motioned the other to a chair.

“How’re things in Peru, Henry?” His voice didn’t express too much real interest.

Hank said, “We were on the phone just a week ago, Mr. Twombly. It’s about the same. No, the devil it is. The Chinese have just run in their new People’s Car. They look something like our jeep station-wagons did fifteen years ago.”

Twombly stirred in irritation. “I’ve heard about them.”

Hank took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and polished his rimless glasses. He said evenly, “They sell for just under two hundred dollars.”

“Two hundred dollars?” Twombly twisted his face. “They can’t transport them from China for that.”

“Here we go again,” Hank sighed. “They also can’t sell pressure cookers for a dollar apiece, nor cameras with f.2 lenses for five bucks. Not to speak of the fact that the Czechs can’t sell shoes for fifty cents a pair and, of course, the Russkies can’t sell premium gasoline for five cents a gallon.”

Twombly muttered, “They undercut our prices faster than we can vote through new subsidies. Where’s it going to end Henry?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps we should have thought a lot more about it ten or fifteen years ago when the best men our universities could turn out went into advertising, show business and sales—while the best men the Russkies and Chinese could turn out were going into science and industry.” As a man who worked in the field Hank Kuran occasionally got bitter about these things, and didn’t mind this opportunity of sounding off at the chief.

Hank added, “The height of achievement over there is to be elected to the Academy of Sciences. Our young people call scientists eggheads, and their height of achievement is to become a TV singer or a movie star.”

Morton Twombly shot his best field man a quick glance. “You sound as though you need a vacation, Henry.”

Henry Kuran laughed. “Don’t mind me, chief. I got into a hassle with the Hungarians last week and I’m in a bad frame of mind.”

Twombly said, “Well, we didn’t bring you back to Washington for a trade conference.”

“I gathered that from your wire. What am I here for?”

Twombly pushed his chair back and came to his feet. It occurred to Hank Kuran that his chief had aged considerably since the forming of this department nearly ten years ago. The thought went through his mind, a general in the cold war. A general who’s been in action for a decade, has never won more than a skirmish and is currently in full retreat.

Morton Twombly said, “I’m not sure I know. Come along.”

They left the office by a back door and Hank was in unknown territory. Silently his chief led him through busy corridors, each one identical to the last, each sterile and cold in spite of the bustling. They came to a marine-guarded door, were passed through, once again obviously expected.

The inner office contained but one desk occupied by a youthfully brisk army major. He gave Hank a one-two of the eyes and said, “Mr. Hennessey is expecting you, sir. This is Mr. Kuran?”

“That’s correct,” Twombly said. “I won’t be needed.” He turned to Hank Kuran. “I’ll see you later, Henry.” He shook hands.

Hank frowned at him. “You sound as though I’m being sent off to Siberia, or something.”

The major looked up sharply, “What was that?”

Twombly made a motion with his hand, negatively. “Nothing. A joke. I’ll see you later, Henry.” He turned and left.

The major opened another door and ushered Hank into a room two or three times the size of Twombly’s office. Hank formed a silent whistle and then suddenly knew where he was. This was the sanctum sanctorum of Sheridan Hennessey. Sheridan Hennessey, right arm, hatchetman, alter ego, one man brain trust—of two presidents in succession.

And there he was, seated in a heavy armchair. Hank had known of his illness, that the other had only recently risen from his hospital bed and against doctor’s orders. But somehow he hadn’t expected to see him this wasted. TV and newsreel cameramen had been kind.

However, the waste had not as yet extended to either eyes or voice. Sheridan Hennessey bit out, “That’ll be all, Roy,” and the major left them.

“Sit down,” Hennessey said. “You’re Henry Kuran. That’s not a Russian name is it?”

Hank found a chair. “It was Kuranchov. My father Americanized it when he was married.” He added, “About once every six months some Department of Justice or C.I.A. joker runs into the fact that my name was originally Russian and I’m investigated all over again.”

Hennessey said, “But your Russian is perfect?”

“Yes, sir. My mother was English-Irish, but we lived in a community with quite a few Russian born emigrants. I learned the language.”

“Good, Mr. Kuran, how would you like to die for your country?”

Hank Kuran looked at him for a long moment. He said slowly, “I’m thirty-two years old, healthy and reasonably adjusted and happy. I’d hate it.”

The sick man snorted. “That’s exactly the right answer. I don’t trust heroes. Now, how much have you heard about the extraterrestrials?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You haven’t heard the news broadcasts the past couple of days? How the devil could you have missed them?” Hennessey was scowling sourly at him.

Hank Kuran didn’t know what the other was talking about. “Two days ago I was in the town of Machu Picchu in the Andes trying to peddle some mining equipment to the Peruvians. Peddle it, hell. I was practically trying to give it away, but it was still even-steven that the Hungarians would undersell me. Then I got a hurry-up wire from Morton Twombly to return to Washington soonest. I flew here in an Air Force jet. I haven’t heard any news for two days or more.”

“I’ll have the major get you all the material we have to date and you can read it on the plane to England.”

“Plane to England?” Hank said blankly. “Look, I’m in the Department of Economic Development of Neutral Nations, specializing in South America. What would I be doing in England?” He had an uneasy feeling of being crowded, and a suspicion that this was far from the first time Sheridan Hennessey had ridden roughshod over subordinates.

“First step on the way to Moscow,” Hennessey snapped. “The major will give you details later. Let me brief you. The extraterrestrials landed a couple of days ago on Red Square in some sort of spaceship. Our Russkie friends clamped down a censorship on news. No photos at all as yet and all news releases have come from Tass.”

Hank Kuran was bug-eying him.

Hennessey said, “I know. Most of the time I don’t believe it myself. The extraterrestrials represent what the Russkies are calling a Galactic Confederation. So far as we can figure out, there is some sort of league, United Planets, or whatever you want to call it, of other star systems which have achieved a certain level of scientific development.”

“Well … well, why haven’t they shown up before?”

“Possibly they have, through the ages. If so, they kept their presence secret, checked on our development and left.” Hennessey snorted his indignation. “See here, Kuran, I have no details. All of our information comes from Tass, and you can imagine how inadequate that is. Now shut up while I tell you what little I do know.”

Henry Kuran settled back into his chair, feeling limp. He’d had too many curves thrown at him in the past few minutes to assimilate.

“They evidently keep hands off until a planet develops interplanetary exploration and atomic power. And, of course, during the past few years our Russkie pals have not only set up a base on the Moon but have sent off their various expeditions to Venus and Mars.”

“None of them made it,” Hank said.

“Evidently they didn’t have to. At any rate, the plenipotentiaries from the Galactic Confederation have arrived.”

“Wanting what, sir?” Hank said.

“Wanting nothing but to help.” Hennessey said. “Stop interrupting. Our time is limited. You’re going to have to be on a jet for London in half an hour.”

He noticed Hank Kuran’s expression, and shook his head. “No, it’s not farfetched. These other intelligent life forms must be familiar with what it takes to progress to the point of interplanetary travel. It takes species aggressiveness—besides intelligence. And they must have sense enough not to want the wrong kind of aggressiveness exploding into the stars. They don’t want an equivalent of Attila bursting over the borders of the Roman Empire. They want to channel us, and they’re willing to help, to direct our comparatively new science into paths that won’t conflict with them. They want to bring us peacefully into their society of advanced life forms.”

Sheridan Hennessey allowed himself a rueful grimace. “That makes quite a speech, doesn’t it? At any rate, that’s the situation.”

“Well, where do I come into this? I’m afraid I’m on the bewildered side.”

“Yes. Well, damn it, they’ve landed in Moscow. They’ve evidently assumed the Soviet complex—the Soviet Union, China and the satellites—are the world’s dominant power. Our conflicts, our controversies, are probably of little, if any, interest to them. Inadvertently, they’ve put a weapon in the hands of the Soviets that could well end this cold war we’ve been waging for more than twenty-five years now.”

The president’s right-hand man looked off into a corner of the room, unseeingly. “For more than a decade it’s been a bloodless combat that we’ve been waging against the Russkies. The military machines, equally capable of complete destruction of the other, have been stymied Finally it’s boiled down to an attempt to influence the neutrals, India, Africa, South America, to attempt to bring them into one camp or the other. Thus far, we’ve been able to contain them in spite of their recent successes. But given the prestige of being selected the dominant world power by the extraterrestrials and in possession of the science and industrial know-how from the stars, they’ll have won the cold war over night.”

His old eyes flared. “You want to know where you come in, eh? Fine. Your job is to get to these Galactic Confederation emissaries and put a bug in their bonnet. Get over to them that there’s more than one major viewpoint on this planet. Get them to investigate our side of the matter.”

“Get to them how? If the Russkies—”

Hennessey was tired. The flash of spirit was fading. He lifted a thin hand. “One of my assistants is crossing the Atlantic with you. He’ll give you the details.”

“But why me? I’m strictly a—”

“You’re an unknown in Europe. Never connected with espionage. You speak Russian like a native. Morton Twombly says you’re his best man. Your records show that you can think on your feet, and that’s what we need above all.”

Hank Kuran said flatly, “You might have asked for volunteers.”

“We did. You, you and you. The old army game,” Hennessey said wearily. “Mr. Kuran, we’re in the clutch. We can lose, forever—right now. Right in the next month or so. Consider yourself a soldier being thrown into the most important engagement the world has ever seen—combating the growth of the Soviets. We can’t afford such luxuries as asking for volunteers. Now do you get it?”

Hank Kuran could feel impotent anger rising inside him. He was off balance. “I get it, but I don’t like it.”

“None of us do,” Sheridan Hennessey said sourly. “Do you think any of us do?” He must have pressed a button.

From behind them the major’s voice said briskly, “Will you come this way, Mr. Kuran?”

In the limousine, on the way out to the airport, the bright, impossibly cleanly shaven C.I.A. man said, “You’ve never been behind the Iron Curtain before, have you Kuran?”

“No,” Hank said. “I thought that term was passé. Look, aren’t we even going to my hotel for my things?”

The second C.I.A. man, the older one, said, “All your gear will be waiting for you in London. They’ll be sure there’s nothing in it to tip off the K.G.B. if they go through your bags.”

The younger one said, “We’re not sure, things are moving fast, but we suspect that that term, Iron Curtain, applies again.”

“Then how am I going to get in?” Hank said irritably. “I’ve had no background for this cloak and dagger stuff.”

The older C.I.A. man said, “We understand the K.G.B. has increased security measures but they haven’t cut out all travel on the part of non-Communists.”

The other one said, “Probably because the Russkies don’t want to tip off the spacemen that they’re being isolated from the western countries. It would be too conspicuous if suddenly all western travelers disappeared.”

They were passing over the Potomac, to the right and below them Hank Kuran could make out the twin Pentagons, symbols of a military that had at long last by its very efficiency eliminated itself. War had finally progressed to the point where even a minor nation, such as Cuba or Portugal, could completely destroy the whole planet. Eliminated wasn’t quite the word. In spite of their sterility, the military machines still claimed their million masses of men, still drained a third of the products of the world’s industry.

One of the C.I.A. men was saying urgently, “So we’re going to send you in as a tourist. As inconspicuous a tourist as we can make you. For fifteen years the Russkies have boomed their tourist trade—all for propaganda, of course. Now they’re in no position to turn this tourist flood off. If the aliens got wind of it, they’d smell a rat.”

Hank Kuran brought his attention back to them. “All right. So you get me to Moscow as a tourist. What do I do then? I keep telling you jokers that I don’t know a thing about espionage. I don’t know a secret code from judo.”

“That’s one reason the chief picked you. Not only do the Russkies have nothing on you in their files—neither do our own people. You’re safe from betrayal. There are exactly six people who know your mission and only one of them is in Moscow.”

“Who’s he?”

The C.I.A. man shook his head. “You’ll never meet him. But he’s making the arrangements for you to contact the underground.”

Hank Kuran turned in his seat. “What underground? In Moscow?”

The bright, pink faced C.I.A. man chuckled and began to say something but the older one cut him off. “Let me, Jimmy.” He continued to Hank. “Actually, we don’t know nearly as much as we should about it, but a Soviet underground is there and getting stronger. You’ve heard of the stilyagi and the metrofanushka?”

Hank nodded. “Moscow’s equivalent to the juvenile delinquents, or the Teddy Boys, as the British call them.”

“Not only in Moscow, they’re everywhere in urban Russia. At any rate, our underground friends operate within the stilyagi, the so-called jet-set, using them as protective coloring.”

“This is new to me,” Hank said. “And I don’t quite get it.”

“It’s clever enough. Suppose you’re out late some night on an underground job and the police pick you up. They find out you’re a juvenile delinquent, figure you’ve been out getting drunk, and toss you into jail for a week. It’s better than winding up in front of a firing squad as a counterrevolutionary, or a Trotskyite, or whatever they’re currently calling anybody they shoot.”

The chauffeur rapped on the glass that divided their seat from his, and motioned ahead.

“Here’s the airport,” Jimmy said. “We’ll drive right over to the plane. Hid your face with your hat, just for luck.”

“Wait a minute, now,” Hank said. “Listen, how do I contact these beat generation characters?”

“You don’t. They contact you.”

“How.”

“That’s up to them. Maybe they won’t at all; they’re plenty careful.” Jimmy snorted without humor. “It must be getting to be an instinct with Russians by this time. Nihilists, Anarchists, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks, now anti-Communists. Survival of the fittest. By this time the Russian underground must consist of members that have bred true as revolutionists. There’ve been Russian undergrounds for twenty generations.”

“Hardly long enough to affect genetics,” the older one said wryly.

Hank said, “Let’s stop being witty. I still haven’t a clue as to how Sheridan Hennessey expects me to get to these Galactic Confederation people—or things, or whatever you call them.”

“They evidently are humanoid,” Jimmy said. “Look more or less human. And stop worrying, we’ve got several hours to explain things while we cross the Atlantic. You don’t step into character until you enter the offices of Progressive Tours, in London.”

The door of Progressive Tours, Ltd. 100 Rochester Row, was invitingly open. Hank Kuran entered, looked around the small room. He inwardly winced at the appearance of the girl behind the counter. What was it about Commies outside their own countries that they drew such crackpots into their camp? Heavy lenses, horn rimmed to make them more conspicuous, wild hair, mawkish tweeds, and dirty fingernails to top it off.

She said, “What can I do for you, Comrade?”

“Not Comrade,” Hank said mildly. “I’m an American.”

“What did you want?” she said coolly.

Hank indicated the travel folder he was carrying. “I’d like to take this tour to Leningrad and Moscow. I’ve been reading propaganda for and against Russia as long as I’ve been able to read and I’ve finally decided I want to see for myself. Can I get the tour that leaves tomorrow?”

She became businesslike as was within her ability. “There is no country in the world as easy to visit as the Soviet Union, Mr.—”

“Stevenson,” Hank Kuran said. “Henry Stevenson.”

“Stevenson. Fill out these two forms, leave your passport and two photos and we’ll have everything ready in the morning. The Baltika leaves at twelve. The visa will cost ten shillings. What class do you wish to travel?”

“The cheapest.” And least conspicuous, Hank added under his breath.

“Third class comes to fifty-five guineas. The tour lasts eighteen days including the time it takes to get to Leningrad. You have ten days in Russia.”

“I know, I read the folder. Are there any other Americans on the tour?”

A voice behind him said, “At least one other.”

Hank turned. She was somewhere in her late twenties, he estimated. And if her clothes, voice and appearance were any criterion he’d put her in the middle-middle class with a bachelor’s degree in something or other, unmarried and with the aggressiveness he didn’t like in American girls after living the better part of eight years in Latin countries.

On top of that she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen, in a quick, redheaded, almost puckish sort of way.

Hank tried to keep from displaying his admiration too openly. “American?” he said.

“That’s right.” She took in his five-foot ten, his not quite ruffled hair, his worried eyes behind their rimless lenses, darkish tinted for the Peruvian sun. She evidently gave him up as not worth the effort and turned to the fright behind the counter.

“I came to pick up my tickets.”

“Oh, yes, Miss. …”

“Moore.”

The fright fiddled with the papers on an untidy heap before her. “Oh, yes. Miss Charity Moore.”

“Charity?” Hank said.

She turned to him. “Do you mind? I have two sisters named Honor and Hope. My people were the Seventh Day Adventists. It wasn’t my fault.” Her voice was pleasant—but nature had granted that; it wasn’t particularly friendly—through her own inclinations.

Hank cleared his throat and went back to his forms. The visa questionnaire was in both Russian and English. The first line wanted, Surname, first name and patronymic.

To get the conversation going again, Hank said, “What does patronymic mean?”

Charity Moore looked up from her own business and said, less antagonism in her voice, “That’s the name you inherited from your father.”

“Of course, thanks.” He went back to his forms. Under what type of work do you do, Hank wrote, Capitalist in a small sort of way. Auto Agency owner.

He took the forms back to the counter with his passport. Charity Moore was putting her tickets, suitcase labels and a sheaf of tour instructions into her pocketbook.

Hank said, “Look, we’re going to be on a tour together, what do you say to a drink?”

She considered that, prettily, “Well … well, of course. Why not?”

Hank said to the fright, “There wouldn’t be a nice bar around would there?”

“Down the street three blocks and to your left is Dirty Dick’s.” She added scornfully, “All the tourists go there.”

“Then we shouldn’t make an exception,” Hank said. “Miss Moore, my arm.”

On the way over she said, “Are you excited about going to the Soviet Union?”

“I wouldn’t say excited. Curious, though.”

“You don’t sound very sympathetic to them.”

“To Russia?” Hank said. “Why should I be? Personally, I believe in democracy.”

“So do I,” she said, her voice clipped. “I think we ought to try it some day.”

“Come again?”

“So far as I can see, we pay lip service to democracy, that’s about all.”

Hank grinned inwardly. He’d already figured that during this tour he’d be thrown into contact with characters running in shade from gentle pink to flaming red. His position demanded that he remain inconspicuous, as average an American tourist as possible. Flaring political arguments weren’t going to help this, but, on the other hand to avoid them entirely would be apt to make him more conspicuous than ever.

“How do you mean?” he said now.

“We have two political parties in our country without an iota of difference between them. Every four years they present candidates and give us a choice. What difference does it make which one of the two we choose if they both stand for the same thing? This is democracy?”

Hank said mildly, “Well, it’s better than sticking up just one candidate and saying, which one of this one do you choose? Look, let’s steer clear of politics and religion, eh? Otherwise this’ll never turn out to be a beautiful friendship.”

Charity Moore’s face portrayed resignation.

Hank said, “I’m Hank, what do they call you besides Charity?”

“Everybody but my parents call me Chair. You spell it C-H-A-R but pronounce it like Chair, like you sit in.”

“That’s better,” Hank said. “Let’s see. There it is, Dirty Dick’s. Crummy looking joint. You want to go in?”

“Yes,” Char said. “I’ve read about it. An old coaching house. One of the oldest pubs in London. Dickens wrote a poem about it.”

The pub’s bar extended along the right wall, as they entered. To the left was a sandwich counter with a dozen or so stools. It was too early to eat, they stood at the ancient bar and Hank said to her, “Ale?” and when she nodded, to the bartender, “Two Worthingtons.”

While they were being drawn, Hank turned back to the girl, noticing all over again how impossibly pretty she was. It was disconcerting. He said, “How come Russia? You’d look more in place on a beach in Biarritz or the Lido.”

Char said, “Ever since I was about ten years of age I’ve been reading about the Russian people starving to death and having to work six months before making enough money to buy a pair of shoes. So I’ve decided to see how starving, barefooted people managed to build the largest industrial nation in the world.”

“Here we go again,” Hank said, taking up his glass. He toasted her silently before saying, “The United States is still the largest single industrial nation in the world.”

“Perhaps as late as 1965, but not today,” she said definitely.

“Russia, plus the satellites and China has a gross national product greater than the free world’s but no single nation produces more than the United States. What are you laughing at?”

“I love the way the West plasters itself so nicely with high flown labels. The free world. Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, South Africa—just what is your definition of free?”

Hank had her placed now. A college radical. One of the tens of thousands who discover, usually somewhere along in the sophomore year, that all is not perfect in the land of their birth and begin looking around for answers. Ten to one she wasn’t a Commie and would probably never become one—but meanwhile she got a certain amount of kicks trying to upset ideological applecarts.

For the sake of staying in character, Hank said mildly, “Look here, are you a Communist?”

She banged her glass down on the bar with enough force that the bartender looked over worriedly. “Did it ever occur to you that even though the Soviet Union might be wrong—if it is wrong—that doesn’t mean that the United States is right? You remind me of that … that politician, whatever his name was, when I was a girl. Anybody who disagreed with him was automatically a Communist.”

“McCarthy,” Hank said. “I’m sorry, so you’re not a Communist.”

She took up her glass again, still in a huff. “I didn’t say I wasn’t. That’s my business.”

The turboelectric ship Baltika turned out to be the pride of the U.S.S.R. Baltic State Steamship Company. In fact, she turned out to be the whole fleet. Like the rest of the world, the Soviet complex had taken to the air so far as passenger travel was concerned and already the Baltika was a leftover from yesteryear. For some reason the C.I.A. thought there might be less observation on the part of the K.G.B. if Hank approached Moscow indirectly, that is by sea and from Leningrad. It was going to take an extra four or five days, but, if he got through, the squandered time would have been worth it.

An English speaking steward took up Hank’s bag at the gangplank and hustled him through to his quarters. His cabin was forward and four flights down into the bowels of the ship. There were four berths in all, two of them already had bags on them. Hank put his hand in his pocket for a shilling.

The steward grinned and said, “No tipping. This is a Soviet ship.”

Hank looked after him.

A newcomer entered the cabin, still drying his hands on a towel. “Greetings,” he said. “Evidently we’re fellow passengers for the duration.” He hung the towel on a rack, reached out a hand. “Rodriquez,” he said. “You can call me Paco, if you want. Did you ever meet an Argentine that wasn’t named Paco?”

Hank shook the hand. “I don’t know if I ever met an Argentine before. You speak English well.”

“Harvard,” Paco said. He stretched widely. “Did you spot those Russian girls in the crew? Blond, every one blond.” He grinned. “Not much time to operate with them—but enough.”

A voice behind them, heavy with British accent said, “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

He was as ebony as a negro can get and as nattily dressed as only Savile Row can turn out a man. He said, “My name is Loo Motlamelle.” He looked at them expressionlessly for a moment.

Paco put out his hand briskly for a shake. “Rodriquez,” he said. “Call me Paco. I suppose we’re all Moscow bound.”

Loo Motlamelle seemed relieved at his acceptance, clasped Paco’s hand, then Hank’s.

Hank shook his head as the three of them began to unpack to the extent it was desirable for the short trip. “The classless society. I wonder what First Class cabins look like. Here we are, jammed three in a telephone booth sized room.”

Paco chucked, “My friend, you don’t know the half of it. There are five classes on this ship. Needless to say, this is Tourist B, the last.”

“And we’ll probably be fed borsht and black bread the whole trip,” Hank growled.

Loo Motlamelle said mildly, “I hear the food is very good.”

Paco stood up from his luggage, put his hands on his hips, “Gentlemen, do you realize there is no lock on the door of this cabin?”

“The crime rate is said to be negligible in the Soviet countries,” Loo said.

Paco put up his hands in despair. “That isn’t the point. Suppose one of us wishes to bring a lady friend into the cabin for … a drink. How can he lock the door so as not to be interrupted?”

Hank was chuckling. “What did you take this trip for, Paco? An investigation into the mores of the Soviets—female flavor?”

Paco went back to his bag. “Actually, I suppose I am one of the many. Going to the new world to see whether or not it is worth switching alliances from the old.”

A distant finger of cold traced designs in Henry Kuran’s belly. He had never heard the United States referred to as the Old World before. It had a strange, disturbing quality.

Loo, who was now reclined on his bunk, said, “That’s approximately the same reason I visit the Soviet Union.”

Hank said quietly, “Who’s sending you, Paco? Or are you on your own?”

“No, my North American friend. My lips are sealed but I represent a rather influencial group. All is not jest, even though I find life the easier if one laughs often and with joy.”

Hank closed his bag and slid it under his bunk. “Well, you should have had this influencial group pony up a little more money so you could have gone deluxe class.”

Paco looked at him strangely. “That is the point. We are not interested in a red-carpet tour during which the very best would be trotted our for propaganda purposes. I choose to see the New World as humbly as is possible.”

“And me,” Loo said. “We evidently are in much the same position.”

Hank brought himself into character. “Well, lesson number one. Did you notice the teeth in that steward’s face? Steel. Bright, gleaming steel, instead of gold.”

Loo shrugged hugely. “This is the day of science. Iron rusts, it’s true, but I assume that the Soviet dentists utilize some method of preventing corrosion.”

“Otherwise,” Paco murmured reasonably, “I imagine the Russians expectorate a good deal of rusty spittal.”

“I don’t know why I keep getting into these arguments,” Hank said. “I’m just going for a look-see myself. But frankly, I don’t trust a Russian any farther than I can throw one.”

“How many Russians have you met?” Loo said mildly. “Or are your opinions formed solely by what you have read in American publications?”

Hank frowned at him. “You seem to be a little on the anti-American side.”

“I’m not,” Loo said. “But not pro-American either. I find much that is ridiculous in the propaganda of both the Soviets and the West.”

“Gentlemen,” Paco said, “the conversation is fascinating, but I must leave you. The ladies, crowding the decks above, know not that my presence graces this ship. It shall be necessary that I enlighten them. Adios amigos!”

The Baltika displaced eight thousand four hundred ninety-six tons and had accommodations for three hundred thirty passengers. Of these, Hank Kuran estimated, approximately half were Scandinavians or British being transported between London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki on the small liner’s way to Leningrad.

Of the tourists, some seventy-five or so, Hank estimated that all but half a dozen were convinced that Russian skunks didn’t stink, in spite of the fact that thus far they’d never been there to have a whiff. The few such as Loo Motlamelle, who was evidently the son of some African paramount chief, and Paco Rodriquez, had also never been to Russia but at least had open minds.

Far from black bread and borscht, he found the food excellent. The first morning they found caviar by the pound nestled in bowls of ice, as part of breakfast. He said across the table to Paco, “Propaganda. I wonder how many people in Russia eat caviar.”

Paco spooned a heavy dip of it onto his bread and grinned back. “This type of propaganda I can appreciate. You Yankees should try it.”

Char was also eating at the other side of the community type table. She said, “How many Americans eat as well as the passengers on United States Lines ships?”

It was as good an opportunity as any for Hank to place his character in the eyes of his fellow Progressive Tours pilgrims. His need was to establish himself as a moderately square tourist on his way to take a look-see at highly publicized Russia. Originally, the C.I.A. men had wanted him to be slightly pro-Soviet, but he hadn’t been sure he could handle that convincingly enough. More comfortable would be a role as an averagely anti-Russian tourist—not fanatically so, but averagely. If there were any K.G.B. men aboard, he wanted to dissolve into mediocrity so far as they were concerned.

Hank said now, mild indignation in his voice. “Do you contend that the average Russian eats as well as the average American?”

Char took a long moment to finish the bite she had in her mouth. She shrugged prettily. “How would I know? I’ve never been to the Soviet Union.” She paused for a moment before adding, “However, I’ve done a certain amount of traveling and I can truthfully say that the worst slums I have ever seen in any country that can be considered civilized were in the Harlem district and the lower East Side of New York.”

All eyes were turned to him now, so Hank said, “It’s a big country and there are exceptions. But on the average the United States has the highest standard of living in the world.”

Paco said interestedly, “What do you use for a basis of measurement, my friend? Such things as the number of television sets and movie theaters? To balance such statistics, I understand that per capita your country has the fewest number of legitimate theaters of any of—I use Miss Moore’s term—the civilized countries.”

A Londoner, two down from Hank, laughed nastily. “Maybe schooling is the way he measures. I read in the Express the other day that even after Yankees get out of college they can’t read proper. All they learn is driving cars and dancing and togetherness—wotever that it.”

Hank grinned inwardly and thought, You don’t sound as though you read any too well yourself, my friend. Aloud he said, “Very well, in a couple of days we’ll be in the promised land, I contend that free enterprise performs the greatest good for the greatest number.”

“Free enterprise,” somebody down the table snorted. “That means the freedom for the capitalists to pry somebody else out of the greatest part of what he produces.”

By the time they’d reached Leningrad aside from Paco and Loo, his cabinmates, Hank had built an Iron Curtain all of his own between himself and the other members of the Progressive Tours trip. Which was the way he wanted it. He could foresee a period when having friends might be a handicap when and if he needed to drift away from the main body for any length of time.

Actually, the discussions he ran into were on the juvenile side. Hank Kuran hadn’t spent eight years of his life as a field man working against the Soviet countries in the economic sphere without running into every argument both pro and con in the continuing battle between Capitalism and Communism. Now he chuckled to himself at getting into tiffs over the virtues of Russian black bread versus American white, or whether Soviet jets were faster than those of the United States.

With Char Moore, though she tolerated Hank’s company, in fact, seemed to prefer it to that of whatever other males were aboard, it was continually a matter of rubbing fur the wrong way. She was ready to battle it out on any phase of politics, international affairs or West versus East.

But it was the visitors from space that actually dominated the conversation of the ship—crew, tourists, business travelers, or whoever. Information was still limited, and Tass the sole source. Daily there were multilingual radio broadcasts tuned in by the Baltika but largely they added little to the actual information on the extraterrestrials. It was mostly Soviet back-patting on the significance of the fact that the Galactic Confederation emissaries had landed in the Soviet complex rather than among the Western countries.

Hank learned little that he hadn’t already known. The Kremlin had all but laughingly declined a suggestion on the part of Switzerland that the extraterrestrials be referred to that all but defunct United Nations. The delegates from the Galactic Confederation had chose to land in Moscow. In Moscow they should remain until they desired to go elsewhere. The Soviet implication was that the alien emissaries had no desire, intention nor reason to visit other sections of Earth. They had contacted the dominant world power and could complete their business within the Kremlin walls.

Leningrad came as only a mild surprise to Henry Kuran. With his knowledge of Russian and his position in Morton Twombly’s department, he had kept up with the Soviet progress though the years.

As early as the middle 1950s unbiased travelers to the U.S.S.R. had commented in detail upon the explosion of production in the country. By the end of the decade such books as Gunther’s Inside Russia Today had dwelt upon the ultra-cleanliness of the cities, the mushrooming of apartment houses, the easing of the restrictions of Stalin’s day—or at least the beginning of it.

He actually hadn’t expected peasant clad, half-starved Russians furtively shooting glances at their neighbors for fear of the secret police. Nor a black bread and cabbage diet. Nor long lines of the politically suspect being hauled off to Siberia. But on the other hand he was unprepared for the prosperity he did find.

Not that this was any paradise, worker’s or otherwise. But it still came as a mild surprise. Henry Kuran couldn’t remember so far back that he hadn’t had his daily dose of anti-Russianism. Not unless it was for the brief respite during the Second World War when for a couple of years the Red Army had been composed of heroes and Stalin had overnight become benevolent old Uncle Joe.

There weren’t as many cars on the streets as in American cities, but there were more than he had expected nor were they 1955 model Packards. So far as he could see, they were approximately the same cars as were being turned out in Western Europe.

Public transportation, he admitted, was superior to that found in the Western capitals. Obviously, it would have to be, without automobiles, buses, streetcars and subways would have to carry the brunt of traffic. However, it was the spotless efficiency of public transportation that set him back.

The shops were still short of the pinnacles touched by Western capitals. They weren’t empty of goods, luxury goods as well as necessities, but they weren’t overflowing with the endless quantities, the hundred-shadings of quality and fashion that you expected in the States.

But what struck nearest to him was the fact that the people in the streets were not broken-spirited depressed, humorless drudges. In fact, why not admit it, they looked about the same as people in the streets anywhere else. Some laughed, some looked troubled. Children ran and played. Lovers held hands and looked into each other’s eyes. Some reeled under an overload of vodka. Some hurried along, business bent. Some dawdled, window-shopped, or strolled along for the air. Some read books or newspapers as they shuffled, radar directed, and unconscious of the world about them.

They were only a day and half in Leningrad. They saw the Hermitage, comparable to the Louvre and far and above any art museum in America. They saw the famous subway—which deserved its fame. They were ushered through a couple of square miles of the Elektrosile electrical equipment works, claimed ostentatiously by them guide to be the largest in the world. They ate in restaurants as good as any Hank Kuran had been able to afford at home and stayed one night at the Astoria Hotel.

At least, Hank had the satisfaction of grumbling about the plumbing.

Paco and Loo, the only single bachelors on the tour besides himself, were again quartered with him at the Astoria.

Paco said, “My friend, there I agree with you completely. America has the best plumbing in the world. And the most.”

Hank was pulling off his shoes after an arch-breaking day of sightseeing. “Well, I’m glad I’ve finally found some field where it’s agreeable that the West is superior to the Russkies.”

Loo was stretched out on his bed, in stocking feet, gazing at the ceiling which towered at least fifteen feet above him. He said “In the town where I was born, there were three bathrooms, one in the home of the missionary, one in the home of the commissioner, and one in my father’s palace.” He looked up at Hank. “Or is my country considered part of the Western World?”

Paco laughed. “Come to think of it, I doubt if one third the rural homes of Argentina have bathrooms. Hank, my friend, I am afraid Loo is right. You use the word West too broadly. All the capitalist world is not so advanced as the United States. You have been very lucky, you Yankees.”

Hank sank into one of the huge, Victorian era armchairs. “Luck has nothing to do with it. America is rich because private enterprise works.”

“Of course,” Paco pursued humorously, “the fact that your country floats on a sea of oil, has some of the richest forest land in the world, is blessed with some of the greatest mineral deposits anywhere and millions of acres of unbelievably fertile land has nothing to do with it.”

“I get your point,” Hank said. “The United States was handed the wealth of the world on a platter. But that’s only part of it.”

“Yes,” Loo agreed. “Also to be considered is the fact that for more than a hundred years you have never had a serious war, serious, that is, in that your land was not invaded, your industries destroyed.”

“That’s to our credit. We’re a peace loving people.”

Loo laughed abruptly. “You should tell that to the American Indians.”

Hank scowled over at him. “What’d you mean by that Loo? That has all the elements of a nasty crack.”

“Or tell it to the Mexicans. Isn’t that where you got your whole Southwest?”

Hank looked from Loo to Paco and back.

Paco brought out cigarettes and tossed one to each of the others. “Aren’t these long Russian cigarettes the end? I heard somebody say that by the time the smoke got through all the filter, you’d lost the habit.” He looked over at Hank. “Easy my friend, easy. On a trip like this it would be impossible not to continually be comparing East and West, dwelling continually on politics, the pros and cons of both sides. All of us are continually assimilating what we hear and see. Among other things, I note that on the newsstands there are no publications from western lands. Why? Because still, after fifty years, our Communist bureaucracy dare not allow its people to read what they will. I note, too, that the shops on 25th October Avenue are not all directed toward the Russian man on the street, unless he is paid unbelievably more than we have heard. Sable coats? Jewelery? Luxurious furniture? I begin to suspect that our Soviet friends are not quite so classless as Mr. Marx had in mind when he and Mr. Engels worked out the rough framework of the society of the future.”

Loo said seriously, “Oh, there are a great many things of that type to notice here in the Soviet Union.”

Hank had to grin. “Well, I’m glad you jokers still have open minds.”

Paco waggled a finger negatively at him. “We’ve had open minds all along, my friend. It is yours that seems closed. In spite of the fact that I spent four years in your country I sometimes confess I don’t understand you Americans. I think you are too immersed in your TV programs, your movies and your light fiction.”

“I can feel myself being saddled up again,” Hank complained. “All set for another riding.”

Loo laughed softly, his perfect white teeth gleaming in his black face.

Paco said, “You seem to have the fictional good guys and bad guys outlook. And, in this world of controversy, you assume that you are the good guys, the heroes, and since that is so then the Soviets must be the bad guys. And, as in the movies, everything the good guys do is fine and everything the bad guys do, is evil. I sometimes think that if the Russians had developed a cure for cancer first you Americans would have refused to use it.”

Hank had had enough. He said, “Look, Paco, there are two hundred million Americans. For you, or anyone else, to come along and try to lump that many people neatly together is pure silliness. You’ll find every type of person that exists in the world in any country. The very tops of intelligence, and submorons living in institutions; the most highly educated of scientists, and men who didn’t finish grammar school; you’ll find saints, and gangsters; infant prodigies and juvenile delinquents; and millions upon millions of just plain ordinary people much like the people of Argentina, or England, or France or whatever. True enough, among all our two hundred million there are some mighty prejudiced people, some mighty backward ones, and some downright foolish ones. But if you think the United States got to the position she’s in today through the efforts of a whole people who are foolish, then you’re obviously pretty far off the beam yourself.”

Paco was looking at him narrowly. “Accepted, friend Hank, and I apologize. That’s quite the most effective outburst I’ve heard from you in this week we’ve known each other. It occurs to me that perhaps you are other than I first thought.”

Oh, oh. Hank backtracked. He said, “Good grief, let’s drop it.”

Paco said, “Well, just to change the subject, gentlemen, there is one thing above all that I noted here in Leningrad.”

“What was that?” Loo said.

“It’s the only town I’ve ever seen where I felt an urge to kiss a cop,” Paco said soulfully. “Did you notice? Half the traffic police in town are cute little blondes.”

Loo rolled over. “A fascinating observation, but personally I am going to take a nap. Tonight it’s the Red Arrow Express to Moscow and rest might be in order, particularly if the train has square wheels, burns wood and stops and repairs bridges all along the way, as I’m sure Hank believes.”

Hank reached down, got hold of one of his shoes and heaved it.

“Missed!” Loo grinned.

The Red Arrow Express had round wheels, burned diesel fuel and made the trip between Leningrad and Moscow overnight. In one respect, it was the most unique train ride Hank Kuran had ever had. The track contained not a single curve from the one city to the other. Its engineers must have laid the roadbed out with a ruler.

The cars like the rest of public transportation, were as comfortable as any Hank knew. Traveling second class, as the Progressive Tours pilgrims did, involved four people in a compartment for the night, with one exception. At the end of the car was a smaller compartment containing two bunks only.

The Intourist guide who had shepherded them around Leningrad took them to the train, saw them all safely aboard, told them another Intourist employee would pick them up at the station in Moscow.

It was late. Hank was assigned the two-bunk compartment. He put his glasses on the tiny window table, sat on the edge of the lower and began to pull off his shoes. He didn’t look up when the door opened until a voice said, icebergs dominating the tone, “Just what are you doing in here?”

Hank blinked up at her. “Hello, Char. What?”

Char Moore snapped, “I said, what are you doing in my compartment?”

“Yours? Sorry, the conductor just assigned me here. Evidently there’s been some mistake.”

“I suggest you rectify it, Mr. Stevenson.”

Out in the corridor a voice, heavy with Britishisms, complained plaintively, “Did you ever hear the loik? They put men and women into the same compartment. Oim expected to sleep with a loidy in the bunk under me.”

Hank cleared his throat, didn’t allow himself the luxury of a smile. He said, “I’ll see what I can do, Char. Seems to me I did read somewhere that the Russkies see nothing wrong in putting strangers in the same sleeping compartment.”

Char Moore stood there, saying nothing but breathing deeply enough to express American womanhood insulted.

“All right, all right,” he said, retying his shoes and retrieving his glasses. “I didn’t engineer this.” He went looking for the conductor.

He was back, yawning by this time, fifteen minutes later. Char Moore was sitting on the side of the bottom bunk, sipping a glass of tea that she’d bought for a few kopecks from the portress. She looked up coolly as he entered, but her voice was more pleasant. “Get everything fixed?”

Hank said, “What bunk do you want, upper or lower?”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s not supposed to be.” Hank pulled his bag from under the bunk and from it drew pajamas and his dressing gown. “Check with the rest of the tour if you want. The conductor couldn’t care less. We were evidently assigned compartments by Intourist and where we were assigned we’ll sleep. Either that or you can stand in the corridor all night. I’ll be damned if I will.”

“You don’t have to swear,” Char bit out testily. “What are we going to do about it?”

“I just told you what I was going to do.” Taking up his things he opened the door. “I’ll change in the men’s dressing room.”

“I’ll lock the door,” Char Moore snapped.

Hank grinned at her. “I’ll bet that if you do the conductor either has a passkey or will break it down for me.”

When he returned in slippers, nightrobe and pajamas, Char was in the upper berth, staring angrily at the compartment ceiling. There were no hooks or other facilities for hanging or storing clothes. She must have put all of her things back into her bag. Hank grinned inwardly, carefully folded his own pants and jacket over his suitcase before climbing into the bunk.

“Don’t snore, do you?” he said conversationally.

No answer.

“Or walk in your sleep?”

“You’re not funny, Mr. Stevenson.”

“That’s what I like about this country,” Hank said. “Progressive. Way ahead of the West. Shucks, modesty is a reactionary capitalistic anachronism. Shove ’em all into bed together, that’s what I always say.” He laughed.

“Oh, shut up,” Char said. But then she laughed, too. “Actually, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with it. We are rather Victorian about such things in the States.”

Hank groaned. “There you are. If a railroad company at home suggested you spend the night in a compartment with a strange man, you’d sue them. But here in the promised land it’s OK.”

After a short silence Char said, “Hank, why do you dislike the Soviet Union so much?”

“Why? Because I’m an American!”

She said so softly as to be almost inaudible, “I’ve known you for a week now. Somehow you don’t really seem to be the type who would make that inadequate a statement.”

Hank said “Look, Char. There’s a cold war going on between the United States and her allies and the Soviet complex. I’m on our side. It’s going to be one or the other.”

“No it isn’t, Hank. If it ever breaks out into hot war, it’s going to be both. That is, unless the extraterrestrials add some new elements to the whole disgusting situation.”

“Let’s put it another way. Why are you so pro-Soviet?”

She raised herself on one elbow and scowled down over the edge of her bunk at him. Inside, Hank turned over twice to see the unbound red hair, the serious green eyes. Imagine looking at that face over the breakfast table for the rest of your life. The hell with South American señoritas.

Char said earnestly, “I’m not. Confound it, Hank, can’t the world get any further than this cowboys and Indians relationship between nations? Our science and industry has finally developed to the point where the world could be a paradise. We’ve solved all the problems of production. We’ve conquered all the major diseases. We have the wonders of eternity before us—and look at us.”

“Tell that to the Russkies and their pals. They’re out for the works.”

“Well, haven’t we been?”

“The United States isn’t trying to take over the world.”

“No? Possibly not in the old sense of the word, but aren’t we trying desperately to sponsor our type of government and social system everywhere? Frankly, I’m neither pro-West nor pro-Soviet. I think they’re both wrong.”

“Fine,” Hank said. “What is your answer?”

She remained silent for a long time. Finally, “I don’t claim to have an answer. But the world is changing like crazy. Science, technology, industrial production, education, population all are mushrooming. For us to claim that sweeping and basic changes aren’t taking place in the Western nations is just nonsense. Our own country’s institutions barely resemble the ones we had when you and I were children. And certainly the Soviet Union has changed and is changing from what it was thirty or forty years ago.”

“Listen, Char,” Hank said in irritation, “you still haven’t come up with any sort of an answer to the cold war.”

“I told you I hadn’t any. All I say is that I’m sick of it. I can’t remember so far back that there wasn’t a cold war. And the more I consider it the sillier it looks. Currently the United States and her allies spend between a third and a half of their gross national product on the military—ha! the military!—and in fighting the Soviet complex in international trade.”

“Well,” Hank said, “I’m sick of it, too, and I haven’t any answer either, but I’ll be darned if I’ve heard the Russkies propose one. And just between you and me, if I had to choose between living Soviet style and our style, I’d choose ours any day.”

Char said nothing.

Hank added flatly, “Who knows, maybe the coming of these Galactic Confederation characters will bring it all to a head.”

She said nothing further and in ten minutes the soft sounds of her breathing had deepened to the point that Hank Kuran knew she slept. He lay there another half hour in the full knowledge that probably the most desirable woman he’d ever met was sleeping less than three feet away from him.

Leningrad had cushioned the first impression of Moscow for Henry Kuran. Although, if anything, living standards and civic beauty were even higher here in the capital city of world Communism.

They pulled into the Leningradsky Station on Komsomolskaya Square in the early morning to be met by Intourist guides and buses.

Hank sat next to Char Moore still feeling on the argumentative side after their discussion of the night before. He motioned with his head at some excavation work going on next to the station. “There you are. Women doing manual labor.”

Char said, “I’m from the Western states, it doesn’t impress me. Have you ever seen fruit pickers, potato diggers, or just about any type of itinerant harvest workers? There is no harder work and women, and children for that matter, do half of it at home.”

He looked at the husky, rawboned women laborers working shoulder to shoulder with the men. “I still don’t like it.”

Char shrugged. “Who does? The sooner we devise machines to do all the drudgery the better off the world will be.”

To his surprise, Hank found Moscow one of the most beautiful cities he had ever observed. Certainly the downtown area in the vicinity of the Kremlin compared favorably with any.

The buses whisked them down through Lermontovskaya Square, down Kirov Street to Novaya and then turned right. The Intourist guide made with a running commentary. There was the famous Bolshoi Theater and there Sverdlova Square, a Soviet cultural center.

Hank didn’t know it then but they were avoiding Red Square. They circled it, one block away, and pulled onto Gorky Street and before a Victorian period building.

“The Grand Hotel,” the guide announced, “where you will stay during your Moscow visit.”

Half a dozen porters began manhandling their bags from the top of the bus. They were ushered into the lobby and assigned rooms. Russian hotel lobbies were a thing apart. No souvenir stands, no bellhops, no signs saying To the Bar, To the Barber Shop or to anything else. A hotel was a hotel, period.

Hank trailed Loo and Paco and three porters to the second floor and to the room they were assigned in common. Like the Astoria’s rooms, in Leningrad, it was king-sized. In fact, it could easily have been divided into three chambers. There were four full sized beds, six arm chairs, two sofas, two vanity tables, a monstrous desk—and one wash bowl which gurgled when you ran water.

Paco, hands on hips, stared around. “A dance hall,” he said. “Gentlemen, this room hasn’t changed since some Grand Duke stayed in it before the revolution.”

Loo, who had assumed his usual prone position on one of the beds, said, “From what I’ve heard about Moscow housing, you could get an average family in this amount of space.”

Hank was stuffing clothes into a dresser drawer. “Now who’s making with anti-Soviet comments?”

Paco laughed at him. “Have you ever seen some of the housing in the Harlem district in New York? You can rent a bed in a room that has possibly ten beds, for an eight-hour period. When your eight hours are up you roll out and somebody else rolls in. The beds are kept warm, three shifts every twenty-four hours.”

Hank shook his head and muttered, “They call me Dobbin, I’ve been ridden so much.”

Paco laughed and rubbed his hands together happily. “It’s still early. We have nothing to do until lunch time. I suggest we sally forth and take a look at Russian womanhood. One never knows.”

Loo said, “As an alternative, I suggest we rest until lunch.”

Paco snorted. “A rightest-Trotskyite wrecker, and an imperialist warmonger to boot.”

Loo said, dead panned, “Smile when you say that stranger.”

Hank said, “Hey, wait a minute.”

He went down the room to the far window and bug-eyed. One block away, at the end of Gorky Street, was Red Square. St. Basil’s Cathedral at the far end, and unbelievable candy-cane construction of fanciful spirals, and every-colored turrets; the red marble mausoleum, Mecca of world Communism, housing the prophet Lenin and his two disciples; the long drab length of the G.U.M. department store opposite. But it wasn’t these.

There on the square, nestled in the corner between St. Basil’s and the mausoleum, squatted what Henry Kuran had never really expected to see, in spite of his assignment, in spite of news broadcasts, in spite of everything to the contrary. Boomerang shaped, resting on short stilts, six of them in all, a baby blue in color—an impossibly beautiful baby blue.

The spaceship.

Paco stood at one shoulder, Loo at the other.

For once there was no humor in Paco’s words. “There it is,” he said. “Our visitors from the stars.”

“Possibly our teachers from the stars,” Hank said huskily.

“Or our judges.” Loo’s voice was flat.

They stood there for another five minutes in silence. Loo said finally, “Undoubtedly our Intourist guides will take us nearer, if that’s allowed, later during our stay. Meanwhile, my friends, I shall rest up for the occasion.”

“Let’s take our quick look at the city,” Paco said to Hank. “Once the Intourist people take over they’ll run our feet off. Frankly, I have little interest in where the first shot of the revolution was fired, the latest tractor factory, or where Rasputin got it in the neck. There are more important things.”

“We know,” Loo said from the bed. “Women.”

“Right!”

Hank was wondering whether or not to leave the room. The Stilyagi were to contact him. Where? When? Obviously, he’d need their help. He had no idea whatsoever on how to penetrate to the Interplanetary emissaries.

He spoke Russian. Fine. So what? Could he simply march up to the spacecraft and knock on the door? Or would he make himself dangerously conspicuous by just getting any closer than he now was to the craft?

As he stood now, he felt he was comparatively safe. He was sure the Russkies had marked him down as a rather ordinary American. Heavens knows, he’d worked hard enough at the role. A simple, average tourist, a little on the square side, and not even particularly articulate.

However, he wasn’t going to accomplish much by remaining here in this room. He doubted that the Stilyagi would get in touch with him either by phone or simply knocking at the door.

“OK, Paco,” he said. “Let’s go. In search of the pin-up girl—Moscow style.”

They walked down to the lobby and started for the door.

One of the Intourist guides who had brought them from the railroad station stood to one side of the stairs. “Going for a walk, gentlemen? I suggest you stroll up Gorky Street, it’s the main shopping center.”

Paco said, “How about going over into Red Square to see the spaceship?”

The guide shrugged. “I don’t believe the guards will allow you to get too near. It would be undesirable to bother the Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union.”

That was one way of wording it, Hank thought glumly. The Galactic delegates to the Soviet Union. Not to the Earth, but to the Soviet Union. He wondered what the neutrals in such countries as India were thinking.

But at least there were no restrictions on Paco and him.

They strolled up Gorky Street, jam packed with fellow pedestrians. Shoppers, window-shoppers, men on the prowl for girls, girls on the prowl for men, Ivan and his wife taking the baby for a stroll, street cleaners at the endless job of keeping Moscow’s streets the neatest in the world.

Paco pointed out this to Hank, Hank pointed out that to Paco. Somehow it seemed more than a visit to a western European nation. This was Moscow. This was the head of the Soviet snake.

And then Hank had to laugh inwardly at himself as two youngsters, running along playing tag in a grown-up world of long legs and stolid pace, all but tripped him up. Head of a snake it might be, but Moscow’s people looked astonishingly like those of Portland, Maine or Portland, Oregon.

“How do you like those two, coming now?” Paco said.

Those two coming now consisted of two better than averagely dressed girls who would run somewhere in their early twenties. A little too much makeup by western standards, and clumsily applied.

“Blondes,” Paco said soulfully.

“They’re all blondes here,” Hank said.

“Wonderful, isn’t it?”

The girls smiled at them in passing and Paco turned to look after, but they didn’t stop. Hank and Paco went on.

It didn’t take Hank long to get onto Paco’s system. It was beautifully simple. He merely smiled widely at every girl that went by. If she smiled back, he stopped and tried to start a conversation with her.

He got quite a few rebuffs but—Hank remembered an old joke—on the other hand he got quite a bit of response.

Before they had completed a block and a half of strolling, they were standing on a corner, trying to talk with two of Moscow’s younger set—female variety. Here again, Paco was a wonder. His languages were evidently Spanish, English and French but he was in there pitching with a language the full vocabulary of which consisted of Da and Neit so far as he was concerned.

Hank stood back a little, smiling, trying to stay in character, but in amused dismay at the other’s aggressive abilities.

Paco said, “Listen, I think I can get these two to come up to the room. Which one do you like?”

Hank said, “If they’ll come up to the room, then they’re professionals.”

Paco grinned at him. “I’m a professional, too. A lawyer by trade. It’s just a matter of different professions.”

A middle-aged pedestrian, passing by, said to the girls in Russian, “Have you no shame before the foreign tourists?”

They didn’t bother to answer. Paco went back to his attempt to make a deal with the taller of the two.

The smaller, who sported astonishingly big and blue eyes, said to Hank in Russian, “You’re too good to associate with metrofanushka girls?”

Hank frowned puzzlement. “I don’t speak Russian,” he said.

She laughed lightly, almost a giggle, and, in the same low voice her partner was using on Paco, said, “I think you do, Mr. Kuran. In the afternoon, tomorrow, avoid whatever tour the Intourist people wish to take you on and wander about Sovietska Park.” She giggled some more. The worldwide epitome of a girl being picked up on the street.

Hank took her in more closely. Possibly twenty-five years of age. The skirt she was wearing was probably Russian, it looked sturdy and durable, but the sweater was one of the new American fabrics. Her shoes were probably western too, the latest flared heel effect. A typical stilyagi or metrofanushka girl, he assumed. Except for one thing—her eyes were cool and alert, intelligent beyond those of a street pickup.

Paco said, “What do you think, Hank? This one will come back to the hotel with me.”

“Romeo, Romeo,” Hank sighed, “wherefore do thou think thou art?”

Paco shrugged. “What’s the difference? Buenos Aires, New York, Moscow. Women are women.”

“And men are evidently men,” Hank said. “You do what you want.”

“OK, friend. Do you mind staying out of the room for a time?”

“Don’t worry about me, but you’ll have to get rid of Loo, and he hasn’t had his eighteen hours sleep yet today.”

Paco had his girl by the arm. “I’ll roll him into the hall. He’ll never wake up.”

Hank’s girl made a moue at him, shrugged as though laughing off the fact that she had been rejected, and disappeared into the crowds. Hank stuck his hands in his pockets and went on with his stroll.

The contact with the underground had been made.

Maintaining his front as an American tourist he wandered into several stores, picked up some amber brooches at a bargain rate, fingered through various books in English in an international bookshop. That was one thing that hit hard. The bookshops were packed. Prices were remarkably low and people were buying. In fact, he’d never seen a country so full of people reading and studying. The park benches were loaded with them, they read as the rode on streetcar and bus, they read as they walked along the street. He had an uneasy feeling that the jet-set kids were a small minority, that the juvenile delinquent problem here wasn’t a fraction what it was in the West.

He’d expected to be followed. In fact, that had puzzled him when he first was given this unwanted assignment by Sheridan Hennessey. How was he going to contact this so-called underground if he was watched the way he had been led to believe Westerners were?

But he recalled their conducted tour of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. The Intourist guide had started off with twenty-five persons and had clucked over them like a hen all afternoon. In spite of her frantic efforts to keep them together, however, she returned to the Astoria Hotel that evening with eight missing—including Hank and Loo who had wandered off to get a beer.

The idea of the K.G.B. putting tails on the tens of thousands of tourists that swarmed Moscow and Leningrad, became a little on the ridiculous side. Besides, what secret does a tourist know, or what secrets could he discover?

At any rate, Hank found no interference in his wanderings. He deliberately avoided Red Square and its spaceship, taking no chances on bringing himself to attention. Short of that locality, he wandered freely.

At noon they ate at the Grand and the Intourist guide outlined the afternoon program which involved a general sightseeing tour ranging from the University to the Park of Rest and Culture, Moscow’s equivalent of Coney Island.

Loo said, “That all sounds very tiring, do we have time for a nap before leaving?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Motlamelle,” the guide told him.

Paco shook his head. “I’ve seen a university, and I’ve seen a sport stadium and I’ve seen statues and monuments. I’ll sit this one out.”

“I think I’ll lie this one out,” Loo said. He complained plaintively to Hank. “You know what happened to me this morning, just as I was napping up in our room?”

“Yes,” Hank said, “I was with our Argentine Casanova when he picked her up.”

Hank took the conducted tour with the rest. If he was going to beg off the next day, he’d be less conspicuous tagging along on this one. Besides it gave him the lay of the land.

And he took the morning trip the next day, the automobile factories on the outskirts of town. It had been possibly fifteen years since Hank had been through Detroit but he doubted greatly that automation had developed as far in his own country as it seemed to have here. Or, perhaps, this was merely a showplace. But he drew himself up at that thought. That was one attitude the Western world couldn’t afford—deprecating Soviet progress. This was the very thing that had led to such shocks as the launching of the early Sputniks. Underestimate your adversary and sooner or later you paid for it.

The Soviets had at long last built up a productive machine as great as any. Possibly greater. In sheer tonnage they were turning out more gross national product than the West. This was no time to be underestimating them.

All this was a double interest to a field man in Morton Twombly’s department, working against the Soviets in international trade. He was beginning to understand at least one of the reasons why the Commies could sell their products at such ridiculously low prices. Automation beyond that of the West. In the Soviet complex the labor unions were in no position to block the introduction of ultra-efficient methods, and featherbedding was unheard of. If a Russian worker’s job was automated out from under him, he shifted to a new plant, a new job, and possibly even learned a new trade. The American worker’s union, to the contrary, did its best to save the job.

Hank Kuran remembered reading, a few months earlier, of a British textile company which had attempted to introduce a whole line of new automation equipment. The unions had struck, and the company had to give up the project. What happened to the machinery? It was sold to China!

Following the orders of his underground contact, he begged out of the afternoon tour, as did half a dozen of the others. Sightseeing was as hard on the feet in Moscow as anywhere else.

After lunch he looked up Sovietska Park on his tourist map of the city. It was handy enough. A few blocks up Gorky Street.

It turned out to be typical. Well done so far as fountains, monuments and gardens were concerned. Well equipped with park benches. In the early afternoon it was by no means empty, but, on the other hand not nearly so filled as he’d noticed the parks to be the evening before.

Hank stopped at one of the numerous cold drink stands where for a few kopecks you could get raspberry syrup fizzed up with soda water. While he sipped it, a teenager came up beside him and said in passable English, “Excuse me, are you a tourist? Do you speak English?”

This had happened before. Another kid practicing his school language.

“That’s right,” Hank said.

The boy said, “You aren’t a ham, are you?” He brought some cards from an inner pocket. “I’m UA3-K.G.B.”

For a moment Hank looked at him blankly, and then he recognized the amateur radio call cards the other was displaying. “Oh, a ham. Well, no, but I have a cousin who is.”

Two more youngsters came up. “What’s his call?”

Hank didn’t remember that. They all adjourned to a park bench and little though he knew about the subject, international amateur radio was discussed in detail. In fifteen minutes he was hemmed in by a dozen or so and had about decided he’d better make his excuses and circulate around making himself available to the stilyagi outfit. He was searching for an excuse to shake them when the one sitting next to him reverted to Russian.

“We’re clear now, Henry Kuran.”

Hank said, “I’ll be damned. I hadn’t any idea—”

The other brushed aside trivialities. Looking at him more closely, Hank could see he was older than first estimate. Possibly twenty-two or so. Darker than most of the others, heavyset, sharp and impatient.

“You can call me Georgi,” he said. “These others will prevent outsiders from bothering us. Now then, we’ve been told you Americans want some assistance. What? And why should we give it to you?”

Hank said, worriedly, “Haven’t you some place we could go? Where I could meet one of your higher-ups? This is important.”

“Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here,” Georgi said impatiently. “For that matter there is no higher-up. We don’t have ranks; we’re a working democracy. And I’m afraid the day of the secret room in some cellar is past. With housing what it is, if there was an empty cellar in Moscow a family would move in. And remember, all buildings are State owned and operated. I’m afraid you’ll have to tell your story here. Now, what is it you want?”

“I want an opportunity to meet the Galactic Confederation emissaries.”

“Why?”

“To give them our side, the Western side, of the … well, the controversy between us and the Soviet complex. We want an opportunity to have our say before they make any permanent treaties.”

Georgi considered that. “We thought it was probably something similar,” he muttered. “What do you think it will accomplish?”

“At least a delaying action. If the extraterrestrials throw their weight, their scientific progress, into the balance on the side of the Soviet complex, the West will have lost the cold war. Every neutral in the world will jump on the bandwagon. International trade, sources of raw materials, will be a thing of the past. Without a shot being fired, we’d become second-rate powers overnight.”

Georgi said nothing for a long moment. A new youngster had drifted up to the group but one of those on the outskirts growled something at him and he went off again. Evidently, Hank decided, all of this dozen-odd cluster of youngsters were connected with the jet-set underground.

“All right, you want us to help you in the conflict between the Soviet government and the West,” Georgi said. “Why should we?”

Hank frowned at him. “You’re the anti-government movement. You’re revolutionists and want to overthrow the Soviet government.”

The other said impatiently, “Don’t read something into our organization that isn’t here. We don’t exist for your benefit, but our own.”

“But you wish to overthrow the Soviets and establish a democratic—”

Georgi was waggling an impatient hand. “That word democratic has been so misused this past half century that it’s become all but meaningless. Look here, we wish to overthrow the present Soviet government, but that doesn’t mean we expect to establish one modeled to yours. We’re Russians. Our problems are Russian ones. Most of them you aren’t familiar with—any more than we’re familiar with your American ones.”

“However, you want to destroy the Soviets,” Hank pursued.

“Yes,” Georgi growled, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we wish you to win this cold war, as the term goes. That is, just because we’re opposed to the Soviet government doesn’t mean we like yours. But you make a point. If the Galactic Confederation gives all-out support to the Soviet bureaucracy it might strengthen it to the point where they could remain in office indefinitely.”

Hank pressed the advantage. “Right. You’d never overthrow them then.”

“On the other hand,” Georgi muttered uncomfortably, “we’re not interested in giving you Americans an opportunity that would enable you to collapse the whole fabric of this country and its allies.”

“Look here,” Hank said. “In the States we seem to know surprisingly little about your movement. Just what do you expect to accomplish?”

“To make it brief, we wish to enjoy the product of the sacrifices of the past fifty years. If you recall your Marx”—he twisted his face here in wry amusement—“the idea was that the State was to wither away once Socialism was established. Instead of withering away, it has become increasingly strong. This was explained by the early Bolsheviks in a fairly reasonable manner. Socialism presupposes a highly industrialized economy. It’s not possible in a primitive nor even a feudalistic society. So our Communist bureaucracy remained in the saddle through a period of transition. The task was to industrialize the Soviet countries in a matter of decades where it had taken the Capitalist nations a century or two.”

Georgi shrugged. “I’ve never heard of a governing class giving up its once acquired power of its own accord, no matter how incompetent they might be.”

Hank said, “I wouldn’t call the Soviet government incompetent.”

“Then you’d be wrong,” the other said. “Progress had been made but often in spite of the bureaucracy, not because of it. In the early days it wasn’t so obvious, but as we develop the rule of the political bureaucrat becomes increasingly a hindrance. Politicians can’t operate industries and they can’t supervise laboratories. To the extent our scientist and technicians are interfered with by politicians, to that extent we are held up in our progress. Surely you’ve heard of the Lysenko matter?”

“He was the one who evolved the anti-Mendelian theory of genetics, fifteen or twenty years ago.”

“Correct,” Georgi snorted. “Acquired characteristics could be handed down by heredity. It took the Academy of Agricultural Science at least a decade to dispose of him. Why? Because his theories fitted into Stalin’s political beliefs.” The underground spokesman snorted again.

Hank had the feeling they were drifting from the subject. “Then you want to overthrow the Communist bureaucracy?”

“Yes, but that is only part of the story. Overthrowing it without something to replace the bureaucracy is a negative approach. We have no interest in a return to Czarist Russia, even if that were possible, and it isn’t. We want to profit by what has happened in these years of ultra-sacrifice, not to destroy everything. The day of rule by politicians is antiquated, we look forward to the future.” He seemed to switch subjects. “Do you remember Djilas’ book which he wrote in one of Tito’s prisons, The New Class?”

“Vaguely. I read the reviews. It was a best seller in the States some time ago.”

Georgi made with his characteristic snort. “It was a best seller here—in underground circles. At any rate, that explains much. Our bureaucracy, no matter what its ideals might have been to begin with, has developed into a new class of its own. Russia sacrifices to surpass the West—but our bureaucrats don’t. In Lenin’s day the commissar was paid the same as the average worker, but today we have bureaucrats as wealthy as Western millionaires.”

Hank said, “Of course, these are your problems. I don’t pretend to have too clear a picture of them. However, it seems to me we have a mutual enemy. Right at this moment it appears that they are to receive some support that will strengthen them. I suggest you cooperate with me in hopes they’ll be thwarted.”

For the first time a near smile appeared on the young Russian’s face. “A ludicrous situation. We have here a Russian revolutionary organization devoted to withering away the Russian Communist State. To gain its ends, it cooperates with a Capitalist country’s agent.” His grin broadened. “I suspect that neither Nicolai Lenin nor Karl Marx ever pictured such contingencies.”

Hank said, “I wouldn’t know I’m not up on my Marxism. I’m afraid that when I went to school academic circles weren’t inclined in that direction.” He returned the Russian’s wry smile.

Which only set the other off again. “Academic circles!” he snorted. “Sterile in both our countries. All professors of economics in the Soviet countries are Marxists. On the other hand, no American professor would admit to this. Coincidence? Suppose an American teacher was a convinced Marxist. Would he openly and honestly teach his beliefs? Suppose a Russian wasn’t? Would he?” Georgi slapped his knee with a heavy hand and stood up. “I’ll speak to various others. We’ll let you know.”

Hank said, “Wait. How long is this going to take? And can you help me if you want to? Where are these extraterrestrials?”

Georgi looked down at him. “They’re in the Kremlin. How closely guarded we don’t know, but we can find out.”

“The Kremlin,” Hank said. “I was hoping they stayed in their own ship.”

“Rumor has it that they’re quartered in the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. We’ll contact you later—perhaps.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and strode away, in all appearance just one more pedestrian without anywhere in particular to go.

One of the younger boys, the ham who had first approached Hank, smiled and said, “Perhaps we can talk a bit more of radio?”

“Yeah,” Hank muttered, “Swell.”

The next development came sooner than Henry Kuran had expected. In fact, before the others returned from their afternoon tour of the city. Hank was sprawled in one of the king-sized easy chairs, turning what little he had to work on over in his mind. The principal decisions to make were, first, how long to wait on the assistance of the stilyagi, and, if that wasn’t forthcoming, what steps to take on his own. The second prospect stumped him. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what he could accomplish singly.

He wasn’t even sure where the space aliens were. The Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, Georgi had said. But was that correct, and, if so, where was the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets and how did you get into it? For that matter, how did you get inside the Kremlin walls?

Under his breath he cursed Sheridan Hennessey. Why had he allowed himself to be dragooned into this? By all criteria it was the desperate clutching of a drowning man for a straw. He had no way to know, for instance, if he did reach the space emissaries, that he could even communicate with them.

He caught himself wishing he was back in Peru arguing with hesitant South Americans over the relative values of American and Soviet complex commodities—and then he laughed at himself.

There was a knock at the door.

Hank came wearily to his feet, crossed and opened it.

She still wore too much makeup, the American sweater and the flared heel shoes. And her eyes were still cool and alert. She slid past him, let her eyes go around the room quickly. “You are alone?” she said in Russian, but it was more a statement than question.

Hank closed the door behind them. He scowled at her, put a finger to his lips and then went through an involved pantomime to indicate looking for a microphone. He raised his eyebrows at her.

She laughed and shook her head. “No microphones.”

“How do you know?”

“We know. We have contacts here in the hotel. If the K.G.B. had to put microphones in the rooms of every tourist in Moscow, they’d have to increase their number by ten times. In spite of your western ideas to the contrary, it just isn’t done. There are exceptions, of course, but there has to be some reason for it.”

“Perhaps I’m an exception.” Hank didn’t like this at all. The C.I.A. men had been of the opinion that the K.G.B. was once again thoroughly checking on every foreigner.

“If the K.G.B. is already onto you, Henry Kuran, then you might as well give up. Your mission is already a failure.”

“I suppose so. Will you have a chair? Can I offer you a drink? My roommate has a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka which he brought from the boat.”

There was an amused light in her eyes even as she shook her head. “Your friend Paco is quite a man—so I understand. But no, I am here for business.” She took one of the armchairs and Hank sank into another opposite her.

“The committee has decided to assist you to the point they can.”

“Fine.” Hank leaned forward.

“Tomorrow your Progressive Tours group is to have a conducted tour of the Kremlin museum, Ivan the Great’s Tower, and the Assumption Cathedral.”

“In the Kremlin?”

She was impatient. “The Kremlin is considerably larger than most Westerners seem to realize. Originally it was the whole city. The Kremlin walls are more then two kilometers long. In them are a great deal more than just government offices. Among other things, the Kremlin has one of the greatest museums and probably the largest in the world.”

“What I meant was, with the space emissaries there, will tours still be held?”

“They are being held. It would be too conspicuous to stop them even if there was any reason to.” She frowned and shook her head. “Just because you will be inside the Kremlin walls doesn’t mean that you will be sitting in the lap of the extraterrestrials. They are probably well guarded in the palace. We don’t know to what extent.”

Hank said, “Then how can you help me?”

“Only in a limited way.” She pulled a folder paper from her purse. “Here is a map of the Kremlin, and here one of the Palace. Both of these date from Czarist days but such things as the general layout of the Kremlin and the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets do not change of course.”

“Do you know where the extraterrestrials are?”

“We’re not sure. The palace was built in the Seventeenth Century and was popular with various czars. It has been a museum for some time. We suspect that the Galactic Confederation delegates are housed in the Sobstvennaya Plovina which used to be the private apartments of Nicolas the First. It is quite define that the conferences are being held in the Gheorghievskaya sala; it’s the largest and most impressive room in the Kremlin.”

Hank stared at the two maps feeling a degree of dismay.

She said impatiently, “We can help you more than this. One of the regular guide-guards at the façade which leads to the main entrance of the palace is a member of our group. Here are your instructions.”

They spent another fifteen minutes going over the details, then she shot a quick glance at her watch and came to her feet. “Is everything clear … comrade?”

Hank frowned slightly at the use of the word, then understood. “I think so, and thanks … comrade.” He, as well as she, meant the term in its original sense.

He followed her to the door but before his hand touched the knob, it opened inwardly. Paco stood there, and behind him in the corridor was Char Moore.

The girl turned to Hank quickly, reached up and kissed him on the mouth and said, in English, “Goodbye, dollink.” She winked at Paco, swept past Char and was gone.

Paco looked after her appreciatively, back at Hank and said, “Ah, ha. You are quite a dog after all, eh?”

Char Moore’s face was blank. She mumbled something to the effect of, “See you later,” directed seemingly to both of them, and went on to her room.

Hank said, “Damn!”

Paco closed the door behind him. “What’s the matter, my friend?” he grinned. “Are you attempting to play two games at once?”

The morning tour was devoted to Red Square and the Kremlin. Immediately after breakfast they formed a column with two or three other tourist parties and were marched briskly to where Gorky Street debouched into Red Square. First destination was the mausoleum, backed against the Kremlin wall, which centered that square and served as a combined Vatican, Lhasa and Mecca of the Soviet complex. Built of dark red porphyry, it was the nearest thing to a really ultramodern building Hank had seen in Moscow.

As foreign tourists they were taken to the head of the line which already stretched around the Kremlin back into Mokhovaya Street along the western wall. A line of thousands.

Once the doors opened the line moved quickly. They filed in, two by two, down some steps, along a corridor which was suddenly cool as though refrigerated. Paco, standing next to Hank, said from the side of his mouth, “Now we know the secret of the embalming. I wonder if they’re hanging on meathooks.”

The line emerged suddenly into a room in the center of which were three glass chambers. The three bodies, the prophet and his two leading disciples flanking him. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev. On their faces, Hank decided, you could read much of their character. Lenin, the idealist and scholar. Stalin, utterly ruthless organization man. Khrushchev, energetic manager of what the first two had built.

They were in the burial room no more than two minutes, filed out by an opposite door. In the light of the square again, Paco grinned at him. “Nick and Joe didn’t look so good, but Nikita is standing up pretty well.”

Trailing back and forth across Red Square had its ludicrous elements. The guide pointed out this and that. But all the time his charges had their eyes glued to the spaceship, settled there at the far end of the square near St. Basil’s. In a way it seemed no more alien than so much else here. Certainly no more alien to the world Hank knew than the fantastic St. Basil’s Cathedral.

A spaceship from the stars, though. You still had to shake your head in effort to achieve clarity; to realize the significance of it. A spaceship with emissaries from a Galactic Confederation.

How simple if it had only landed in Washington, London or even Paris or Rome, instead of here.

They avoided getting very near it, although the Russians weren’t being ostentatious about their guarding. There was a roped off area about the craft and twenty or so guards, not overly armed, drifting about within the enclosure. But the local citizenry was evidently well disciplined. There were no huge crowds hanging on the ropes waiting for a glimpse of the interplanetary celebrities.

Nevertheless, the Intourist guide went out of his way to avoid bringing his charges too near. They retraced their steps back to Manezhnaya Square from which they had originally started to see the mausoleum, and then turned left through Alexandrovski Sad, the Alexander Park which ran along the west side of the Kremlin to the Borovikski Gate, on the Moskva River side of the fortress.

Paco said, “After this tour I’m in favor of us all signing a petition that our guide be awarded a medal, Hero of Intourist. You realize that thus far he has lost only two of us today?”

Some of the others didn’t like his levity. They were about to enter the Communist shrine and wisecracking was hardly in order. Paco Rodriquez couldn’t have cared less, being Paco Rodriquez.

The stilyagi girl had been correct about the Kremlin being an overgrown museum. Government buildings it evidently contained, but above all it provided gold topped cathedrals, fabulous palaces converted to art galleries and displays of the jeweled wealth of yesteryear and the tombs of a dozen czars including that of Ivan the Terrible.

They trailed into the Orushezhnaya Palace, through the ornate entrance hall displaying its early arms and banners.

Paco encouraged the harassed guard happily. “You’re doing fine. You’ve had us out for more than two hours. We started with twenty-five in this group and still have twenty-one. Par for the course. What happens to a tourist who wanders absently around in the Kremlin and turns up in the head man’s office?”

The guide smiled wanly. “And over here we have the thrones of the Empress Elizabeth and Czar Paul.”

Unobtrusively, Hank dropped toward the tail of the group. He spent a long time peering at two silver panthers, gifts of the first Queen Elizabeth of England to Boris Godunov. The Progressive Tours assembly passed on into the next room.

A guard standing next to the case said, “Mr. Kuran?”

Without looking up, Hand nodded.

“Follow me, slowly.”

No one from the Progressive Tours group was in sight. Hank wandered after the guard, looking into display cases as he went. Finally the other turned a corner into an empty and comparatively narrow corridor. He stopped and waited for the American.

“You’re Kuran?” he asked anxiously in Russian.

“That’s right.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No. Let’s go.” Inwardly Hank growled, Of course I’m afraid. Do I look like a confounded hero? What was it Sheridan Hennessey had said? This was combat, combat cold-war style, but still combat. Of course he was afraid. Had there ever in the history of combat been a participant who had gone into it unafraid?

They walked briskly along the corridor. The guard said, “You have studied your maps?”

“Yes.”

“I can take you only so far without exposing myself. Then you are on your own. You must know your maps or you are lost. These old palaces ramble—”

“I know,” Hank said impatiently. “Brief me as we go along. Just for luck.”

“Very well. We leave Orushezhnaya Palace by this minor doorway. Across there, to our right, is the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets, the Great Kremlin Palace. It’s there the Central Executive Committee meets, and the Assembly. The same hall used to be the czar’s throne room in the old days. On the nearer side, on the ground floor, are the Sobstvennaya Plovina, the former private apartments of Nicholas First. The extraterrestrials are there.”

“You’re sure? The others weren’t sure.”

“That’s where they are.”

“How can we get to them?”

“We can’t. Possibly you can. I can take you only so far. The front entrance is strongly guarded, we are going to have to enter the Great Palace from the rear, through the Teremni Palace. You remember your maps?”

“I think so.”

They strode rapidly from the museum through a major courtyard. Hank to the right and a step behind the uniformed guard.

The other was saying, “The Teremni preceded the Great Palace. One of its walls was used to become the rear of the later structure. We can enter it fairly freely.”

They entered through another smaller doorway a hundred feet or more from the main entrance, climbed a short marble stairway and turned right down an ornate corridor, tapestry hung. They passed occasionally other uniformed guards, none of whom paid them any attention.

They passed through three joined rooms, each heavily furnished in Seventeenth Century style, each thick with icons. The guide brought them up abruptly at a small door.

He said, an air almost of defiance in his tone, “I go no further. Through this door and you are in the Great Palace, in the bathroom of the apartments of Catherine Second. You remember your maps?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

“I hope so.” The guard hesitated. “You are armed?”

“No. We were afraid that my things might be thoroughly searched. Had a gun been found on me, my mission would have been over then and there.”

The guard produced a heavy military revolver, offered it butt foremost.

But Hank shook his head. “Thanks. But if it comes to the point where I’d need a gun—I’ve already failed. I’m here to talk, not to shoot.”

The guard nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. Now, I repeat. On the other side of this door is the bathroom of the Czarina’s apartments. Beyond it is her paradnaya divannaya, her dressing room and beyond that the Ekaterininskaya sala, the throne room of Catherine Second. It is probable that there will be nobody in any of these rooms. Beyond that, I do not know.”

He ended abruptly with “Good luck,” turned and scurried away.

“Thanks,” Hank Kuran said after him. He turned and tried the doorknob. Inwardly he thought, All right Henry Kuran. Hennessey said you had a reputation for being able to think on your feet. Start thinking. Thus far all you’ve been called on to do is exchange low-level banter with a bevy of pro-commie critics of the United States. Now the chips are down.

The apartments of the long dead czarina were empty. He pushed through them and into the corridor beyond.

And came to a quick halt.

Halfway down the hall, Loo Motlamelle crouched over a uniformed, crumpled body. He looked up at Hank Kuran’s approach, startled, a fighting man at bay. His lips thinned back over his teeth. A black thumb did something to the weapon he held in his hand.

Hank said throatily, “Is he dead?”

Loo shook his head, his eyes coldly wary. “No. I slugged him.”

Hank said, “What are you doing here?”

Loo came erect. “It occurs to me that I’m evidently doing the same thing you are.”

But the dull metal gun in his hand was negligently at the ready and his eyes were cold, cold. It came to Hank that banjos on the levee were very far away.

This lithe fighting man said tightly, “You know where we are? Exactly where we are? I’m not sure.”

Hank said, “In the hall outside the Sobstvennaya Plovina of the Bolshoi Kremlevski Dvorets. The czar’s private apartments. And how did you get here?”

“The hard way,” Loo said softly. His eyes darted up and down the corridor. “I can’t figure out why there aren’t more guards. I don’t like this. You’re armed?”

“No,” Hank said.

Loo grinned down at his own weapon. “One of us is probably making a mistake but we both seem to have gotten this far. By the way, I’m Inter-Commonwealth Security. You’re C.I.A., aren’t you? Talk fast, Hank, we’re either a team from now on, or I’ve got to do something about you.”

“Special mission for the President,” Hank said. “Why didn’t we spot each other sooner?”

Loo grinned again in deprecation. “Evidently because we’re both good operatives. If I’ve got this right, the extraterrestrials are somewhere in here.”

Hank started down the corridor. There was no time to go into the whys and wherefores of Loo’s mission. It must be approximately the same as his own. “There are some private apartments in this direction,” he said over his shoulder. “They must be quartered—”

A door off the corridor opened and a tall, thin, ludicrously garbed man—

Hank pulled himself up quickly, both mentally and physically. It was no man. It was almost a man—but no.

Loo’s weapon was already at the alert.

The newcomer unhurriedly looked from one of them to the other. Then down at the Russian guard sprawled on the floor behind them.

He said in Russian, “Always violence. The sadness of violence. When faced with crisis, threaten violence if outpointed. Your race has much to learn.” He switched to English. “But this is probably your language, isn’t it?”

Loo gaped at him. The man from space was almost as dark complected as the Negro.

The extraterrestrial stepped to one side and indicated the room behind him “Please enter, I assume you’ve come looking for us.”

They entered the ornate bedroom.

The extraterrestrial said, “Is the man dead?”

Loo said, “No. Merely stunned.”

“He needs no assistance?”

“Nothing could help him for half an hour or more. Then he’ll probably have a severe headache.”

The extraterrestrial had even the ability to achieve a dry quality in his voice. “I am surprised at your forebearance.” He took a chair before a baroque desk. “Undoubtedly you have gone through a great deal to penetrate to this point. I am a member of the interplanetary delegation. What is it that you want?”

Hank looked at Loo, received a slight nod, and went into his speech. The space alien made no attempt to interrupt.

When Hank had finished, the extraterrestrial turned his eyes to Loo. “And you?”

Loo said, “I represent the British Commonwealth rather than the United States, but my purpose in contacting you was identical. Her Majesty’s government is anxious to consult with you before you make any binding agreements with the Soviet complex.”

The alien turned his eyes from one to the other. His face, Hank decided, had a Lincolnesque quality, so ugly as to be beautiful in its infinite sadness.

“You must think us incredibly naive,” he said.

Hank scowled. He had adjusted quickly to the space ambassador’s otherness, both of dress and physical qualities, but there was an irritating something—He put his finger on it. He felt as he had, some decades ago, when brought before his grammar school principal for an infraction of school discipline.

Hank said, “We haven’t had too much time to think. We’ve been desperate.”

The alien said, “You have gone to considerable trouble. I can even admire your resolution. You will be interested to know that tomorrow we take ship to Peiping.”

“Peiping?” Loo said blankly.

“Following two weeks there we proceed to Washington and following that to London. What led your governments to believe that the Soviet nations were to receive all our attention, and your own none at all?”

Hank blurted, “But you landed here. You made no contact with us.”

“The size of our expedition is limited. We could hardly do everything at once. The Soviet complex, as you call it, is the largest government and the most advanced on Earth. Obviously, this was our first stop.” His eyes went to Hank’s. “You’re an American. Do you know why you have fallen behind in the march of progress?”

“I’m not sure we have,” Hank said flatly. “Do you mean in comparison with the Soviet complex?”

“Exactly. And if you don’t realize it, then you’ve blinded yourself. You’ve fallen behind in a score of fields because a decade or so ago, in your years between 1957 and 1960, you made a disastrous decision. In alarm at Russian progress, you adopted a campaign of combating Russian science. You began educating your young people to combat Russian progress.”

“We had to!”

The alien grunted. “To the contrary, what you should have done was try to excel Russian science, technology and industry. Had you done that you might have continued to be the world’s leading nation, until, at least, some sort of world unity had been achieved. By deciding to combat Russian progress you became a retarding force, a deliberate drag on the development of your species, seeking to cripple and restrain rather than to grow and develop. The way to win a race is not to trip up your opponent, but to run faster and harder than he.”

Hank stared at him.

The space alien came to his feet. “I am busy. Your missions, I assume, have been successfully completed. You have seen one of our group. Melodramatically, you have warned us against your enemy. Your superiors should be gratified. And now I shall summon a guide to return you to your hotels.”

A great deal went out of Hank Kuran. Until now the tenseness had been greater than he had ever remembered in life. Now he was limp. In response, he nodded.

Loo sighed, returned the weapon which he had until now held in his hand to a shoulder holster. “Yes,” he said, meaninglessly. He turned and looked at Hank Kuran wryly. “I have spent the better part of my life learning to be an ultra-efficient security operative. I suspect that my job has just become obsolete.”

“I have an idea that perhaps mine is too,” Hank said.

In the morning, the Progressive Tours group was scheduled to visit a cooperative farm, specializing in poultry, on the outskirts of Moscow. While the bus was loading Hank stopped off at the Grand Hotel’s Intourist desk.

“Can I send a cable to the United States?”

The chipper Intourist girl said “But of course.” She handed him a form.

He wrote quickly:

Sheridan Hennessey
Washington, D.C.

Mission accomplished
more satisfactorily
than expected.

Henry Kuran

The girl checked it quickly. “But your name is Henry Stevenson.”

“That,” Hank said, “was back when I was a cloak and dagger man.”

She blinked and looked after him as he walked out and climbed aboard the tourist bus. He found an empty seat next to Char Moore and settled into it.

Char said evenly, “Ah, today you have time from your amorous pursuits to join the rest of us.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. Jealousy? His chances were evidently better than he had ever suspected. “I meant to tell you about that,” he said, “the first time we’re by ourselves.”

“Hm-m-m,” she said. Then, “We’ve been in Russia for several days now. What do you think of it?”

Hank said, “I think it’s pretty good. And I have a sneaking suspicion that in another ten years, when a few changes will have evolved, she’ll be better still.”

She looked at him blankly. “You do? Frankly, I’ve been somewhat disappointed.”

“Sure. But wait’ll you see our country in ten years. You know, Char, this world of ours has just got started.”

Medal of Honor

Don Mathers snapped to attention, snapped a crisp salute to his superior, said, “Sublieutenant Donal Mathers reporting, sir.”

The Commodore looked up at him, returned the salute, looked down at the report on the desk. He murmured, “Mathers, One Man Scout V-102. Sector A22-K223.”

“Yes, sir,” Don said.

The Commodore looked up at him again. “You’ve been out only five days, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir, on the third day I seemed to be developing trouble in my fuel injectors. I stuck it out for a couple of days, but then decided I’d better come in for a check.” Don Mathers added, “As per instructions, sir.”

“Ummm, of course. In a Scout you can hardly make repairs in space. If you have any doubts at all about your craft, orders are to return to base. It happens to every pilot at one time or another.”

“Yes, sir.”

“However, Lieutenant, it has happened to you four times out of your last six patrols.”

Don Mathers said nothing. His face remained expressionless.

“The mechanics report that they could find nothing wrong with your engines, Lieutenant.”

“Sometimes, sir, whatever is wrong fixes itself. Possibly a spot of bad fuel. It finally burns out and you’re back on good fuel again. But by that time you’re also back to the base.”

The Commodore said impatiently, “I don’t need a lesson in the shortcomings of the One Man Scout, Lieutenant. I piloted one for nearly five years. I know their shortcomings—and those of their pilots.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

The Commodore looked down at the ball of his thumb. “You’re out in space for anywhere from two weeks to a month. All alone. You’re looking for Kraden ships which practically never turn up. In military history the only remotely similar situation I can think of were the pilots of World War One pursuit planes, in the early years of the war, when they still flew singly, not in formation. But even they were up there alone for only a couple of hours or so.”

“Yes, sir,” Don said meaninglessly.

The Commodore said, “We, here at command, figure on you fellows getting a touch of space cafard once in a while and, ah, imagining something wrong in the engines and coming in. But,” here the Commodore cleared his throat, “four times out of six? Are you sure you don’t need a psych, Lieutenant?”

Don Mathers flushed. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”

The Commodore’s voice went militarily expressionless. “Very well, Lieutenant. You’ll have the customary three weeks leave before going out again. Dismissed.”

Don saluted snappily, wheeled and marched from the office.

Outside, in the corridor, he muttered a curse. What did that chairborne brass hat know about space cafard? About the depthless blackness, the wretchedness of free fall, the tides of primitive terror that swept you when the animal realization hit that you were away, away, away from the environment that gave you birth. That you were alone, alone, alone. A million, a million-million miles from your nearest fellow human. Space cafard, in a craft little larger than a good-sized closet! What did the Commodore know about it?

Don Mathers had conveniently forgotten the other’s claim to five years’ service in the Scouts.

He made his way from Space Command Headquarters, Third Division, to Harry’s Nuevo Mexico Bar. He found the place empty at this time of the day and climbed onto a stool.

Harry said, “Hi, Lootenant, thought you were due for a patrol. How come you’re back so soon?”

Don said coldly, “You prying into security subjects, Harry?”

“Well, gee, no Lootenant. You know me. I know all the boys. I was just making conversation.”

“Look, how about some more credit, Harry? I don’t have any pay coming up for a week.”

“Why, sure. I got a boy on the light cruiser New Taos. Any spaceman’s credit is good with me. What’ll it be?”

“Tequila.”

Tequila was the only concession the Nuevo Mexico Bar made to its name. Otherwise, it looked like every other bar has looked in every land and in every era. Harry poured, put out lemon and salt.

Harry said, “You hear the news this morning?”

“No, I just got in.”

“Colin Casey died.” Harry shook his head. “Only man in the system that held the Galactic Medal of Honor. Presidential proclamation, everybody in the system is to hold five minutes of silence for him at two o’clock, Sol Time. You know how many times that medal’s been awarded, Lootenant?” Before waiting for an answer, Harry added, “Just thirty-six times.”

Don added dryly, “Twenty-eight of them posthumously.”

“Yeah.” Harry, leaning on the bar before his sole customer, added in wonder, “But imagine. The Galactic Medal of Honor, the bearer of which can do no wrong. Imagine. You come to some town, walk into the biggest jewelry store, pick up a diamond bracelet, and walk out. And what happens?”

Don growled, “The jewelry store owner would be over-reimbursed by popular subscription. And probably the mayor of the town would write you a letter thanking you for honoring his fair city by deigning to notice one of the products of its shops. Just like that.”

“Yeah.” Harry shook his head in continued awe. “And, imagine, if you shoot somebody you don’t like, you wouldn’t spend even a single night in the Nick.”

Don said, “If you held the Medal of Honor, you wouldn’t have to shoot anybody. Look, Harry, mind if I use the phone?”

“Go right ahead, Lootenant.”

Dian Fuller was obviously in the process of packing when the screen summoned her. She looked into his face and said, surprised, “Why, Don, I thought you were on patrol.”

“Yeah, I was. However, something came up.”

She looked at him, a slight frown on her broad, fine forehead. “Again?”

He said impatiently, “Look, I called you to ask for a date. You’re leaving for Callisto tomorrow. It’s our last chance to be together. There’s something in particular I wanted to ask you, Di.”

She said, a touch irritated, “I’m packing, Don. I simply don’t have time to see you again. I thought we said our goodbyes five days ago.”

“This is important, Di.”

She tossed the two sweaters she was holding into a chair, or something, off-screen, and faced him, her hands on her hips.

“No it isn’t, Don. Not to me, at least. We’ve been all over this. Why keep torturing yourself? You’re not ready for marriage, Don. I don’t want to hurt you, but you simply aren’t. Look me up, Don, in a few years.”

“Di, just a couple of hours this afternoon.”

Dian looked him full in the face and said, “Colin Casey finally died of his wounds this morning. The President has asked for five minutes of silence at two o’clock. Don, I plan to spend that time here alone in my apartment, possibly crying a few tears for a man who died for me and the rest of the human species under such extreme conditions of gallantry that he was awarded the highest honor of which man has ever conceived. I wouldn’t want to spend that five minutes while on a date with another member of my race’s armed forces who had deserted his post of duty.”

Don Mathers turned, after the screen had gone blank, and walked stiffly to a booth. He sank onto a chair and called flatly to Harry, “Another tequila. A double tequila. And don’t bother with that lemon and salt routine.”

An hour or so later a voice said, “You Sublieutenant Donal Mathers?”

Don looked up and snarled. “So what? Go away.”

There were two of them. Twins, or could have been. Empty of expression, heavy of build. The kind of men fated to be ordered around at the pleasure of those with money, or brains, none of which they had or would ever have.

The one who had spoken said, “The boss wants to see you.”

“Who the hell is the boss?”

“Maybe he’ll tell you when he sees you,” the other said, patiently and reasonably.

“Well, go tell the boss he can go to the …”

The second of the two had been standing silently, his hands in his greatcoat pockets. Now he brought his left hand out and placed a bill before Don Mathers. “The boss said to give you this.”

It was a thousand-unit note. Don Mathers had never seen a bill of that denomination before, nor one of half that.

He pursed his lips, picked it up and looked at it carefully. Counterfeiting was a long lost art. It didn’t even occur to him that it might be false.

“All right,” Don said, coming to his feet. “Let’s go see the boss, I haven’t anything else to do and his calling card intrigues me.”

At the curb, one of them summoned a cruising cab with his wrist screen and the three of them climbed into it. The one who had given Don the large denomination bill dialed the address and they settled back.

“So what does the boss want with me?” Don said.

They didn’t bother to answer.

The Interplanetary Lines building was evidently their destination. The car whisked them up to the penthouse which topped it, and they landed on the terrace.

Seated in beach chairs, an auto-bar between them, were two men. They were both in their middle years. The impossibly corpulent one, Don Mathers vaguely recognized. From a newscast? From a magazine article? The other could have passed for a video stereotype villain, complete to the built-in sneer. Few men, in actuality, either look like or sound like the conventionalized villain. This was an exception, Don decided.

He scowled at them. “I suppose one of you is the boss,” he said.

“That’s right,” the fat one grunted. He looked at Don’s two escorts. “Scotty, you and Rogers take off.”

They got back into the car and left.

The vicious-faced one said, “This is Mr. Lawrence Demming. I am his secretary.”

Demming puffed, “Sit down, Lieutenant. What’ll you have to drink? My secretary’s name is Rostoff. Max Rostoff. Now we all know each other’s names. That is, assuming you’re Sublieutenant Donal Mathers.”

Don said, “Tequila.”

Max Rostoff dialed the drink for him and, without being asked, another cordial for his employer.

Don placed Demming now. Lawrence Demming, billionaire. Robber baron, he might have been branded in an earlier age. Transportation baron of the solar system. Had he been a pig he would have been butchered long ago; he was going unhealthily to grease.

Rostoff said, “You have identification?”

Don Mathers fingered through his wallet, brought forth his I.D. card. Rostoff handed him his tequila, took the card and examined it carefully, front and back.

Demming huffed and said, “Your collar insignia tells me you pilot a Scout. What sector do you patrol, Lieutenant?”

Don sipped at the fiery Mexican drink, looked at the fat man over the glass. “That’s military information, Mr. Demming.”

Demming made a move with his plump lips. “Did Scotty give you a thousand-unit note?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You took it. Either give it back or tell me what sector you patrol, Lieutenant.”

Don Mathers was aware of the fact that a man of Demming’s position wouldn’t have to go to overmuch effort to acquire such information, anyway. It wasn’t of particular importance.

He shrugged and said, “A22-K223. I fly the V-102.”

Max Rostoff handed back the I.D. card to Don and picked up a Solar System sector chart from the short-legged table that sat between the two of them and checked it. He said, “Your information was correct, Mr. Demming. He’s the man.”

Demming shifted his great bulk in his beach chair, sipped some of his cordial and said, “Very well. How would you like to hold the Galactic Medal of Honor, Lieutenant?”

Don Mathers laughed. “How would you?” he said.

Demming scowled. “I am not jesting, Lieutenant Mathers. I never jest. Obviously, I am not of the military. It would be quite impossible for me to gain such an award. But you are the pilot of a Scout.”

“And I’ve got just about as much chance of winning the Medal of Honor as I have of giving birth to triplets.”

The transportation magnate wiggled a disgustingly fat finger at him, “I’ll arrange for that part of it.”

Don Mathers goggled him. He blurted finally, “Like hell you will. There’s not enough money in the system to fiddle with the awarding of the Medal of Honor. There comes a point, Demming, where even your dough can’t carry the load.”

Demming settled back in his chair, closed his eyes and grunted, “Tell him.”

Max Rostoff took up the ball. “A few days ago, Mr. Demming and I flew in from Io on one of the Interplanetary Lines freighters. As you probably know, they are completely automated. We were alone in the craft.”

“So?” Without invitation, Don Mathers leaned forward and dialed himself another tequila. He made it a double this time. A feeling of excitement was growing within him, and the drinks he’d had earlier had worn away. Something very big, very, very big, was developing. He hadn’t the vaguest idea what.

“Lieutenant, how would you like to capture a Kraden light cruiser? If I’m not incorrect, probably Miro class.”

Don laughed nervously, not knowing what the other was at but still feeling the growing excitement. He said, “In all the history of the war between our species, we’ve never captured a Kraden ship intact. It’d help a lot if we could.”

“This one isn’t exactly intact, but nearly so.”

Don looked from Rostoff to Demming, and then back. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“In your sector,” Rostoff said, “we ran into a derelict Miro class cruiser. The crew—repulsive creatures—were all dead. Some thirty of them. Mr. Demming and I assumed that the craft had been hit during one of the actions between our fleet and theirs and that somehow both sides had failed to recover the wreckage. At any rate, today it is floating, abandoned of all life, in your sector.” Rostoff added softly, “One has to approach quite close before any signs of battle are evident. The ship looks intact.”

Demming opened his eyes again and said, “And you’re going to capture it.”

Don Mathers bolted his tequila, licked a final drop from the edge of his lip. “And why should that rate the most difficult decoration to achieve that we’ve ever instituted?”

“Because,” Rostoff told him, his tone grating mockery, “you’re going to radio in reporting a Miro class Kraden cruiser. We assume your superiors will order you to stand off, that help is coming, that your tiny Scout isn’t large enough to do anything more than to keep the enemy under observation until a squadron arrives. But you will radio back that they are escaping and that you plan to attack. When your reinforcements arrive, Lieutenant, you will have conquered the Kraden, single-handed, against odds of—what would you say, fifty to one?”

Don Mathers’ mouth was dry, his palms moist. He said, “A One Man Scout against a Miro class cruiser? At least fifty to one, Mr. Rostoff. At least.”

Demming grunted. “There would be little doubt of you getting the Galactic Medal of Honor, Lieutenant, especially since Colin Casey is dead and there isn’t a living bearer of the award. Max, another drink for the Lieutenant.”

Don said, “Look. Why? I think you might be right about getting the award. But why, and why me, and what’s your percentage?”

Demming muttered, “Now we get to the point.” He settled back in his chair again and closed his eyes while his secretary took over.

Max Rostoff leaned forward, his wolfish face very serious. “Lieutenant, the exploitation of the Jupiter satellites is in its earliest stages. There is every reason to believe that the new sources of radioactives on Callisto alone may mean the needed power edge that can give us the victory over the Kradens. Whether or not that is so, someone is going to make literally billions out of this new frontier.”

“I still don’t see …”

“Lieutenant Mathers,” Rostoff said patiently, “the bearer of the Galactic Medal of Honor is above law. He carries with him an unalienable prestige of such magnitude that … Well, let me use an example. Suppose a bearer of the Medal of Honor formed a stock corporation to exploit the pitchblende of Callisto. How difficult would it be for him to dispose of the stock?”

Demming grunted. “And suppose there were a few, ah, crossed wires in the manipulation of the corporation’s business?” He sighed deeply. “Believe me, Lieutenant Mathers, there are an incredible number of laws which have accumulated down through the centuries to hamper the business man. It is a continual fight to be able to carry on at all. The ability to do no legal wrong would be priceless in the development of a new frontier.” He sighed again, so deeply as to make his bulk quiver. “Priceless.”

Rostoff laid it on the line, his face a leer. “We are offering you a three-way partnership, Mathers. You, with your Medal of Honor, are our front man. Mr. Demming supplies the initial capital to get underway. And I …” He twisted his mouth with evil self-satisfaction. “I was present when the Kraden ship was discovered, so I’ll have to be cut in. I’ll supply the brains.”

Demming grunted his disgust, but added nothing.

Don Mathers said slowly, looking down at the empty glass he was twirling in his fingers, “Look, we’re up to our necks in a war to the death with the Kradens. In the long run it’s either us or them. At a time like this you’re suggesting that we fake an action that will eventually enable us to milk the new satellites to the tune of billions.”

Demming grunted meaninglessly.

Don said, “The theory is that all men, all of us, ought to have our shoulders to the wheel. This project sounds to me like throwing rocks under it.”

Demming closed his eyes.

Rostoff said, “Lieutenant, it’s a dog-eat-dog society. If we eventually lick the Kradens, one of the very reasons will be because we’re a dog-eat-dog society. Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. Our apologists dream up some beautiful gobbledygook phrases for it, such as free enterprise, but actually it’s dog-eat-dog. Surprisingly enough, it works, or at least has so far. Right now, the human race needs the radioactives of the Jupiter satellites. In acquiring them, somebody is going to make a tremendous amount of money. Why shouldn’t it be us?”

“Why not, if you—or we—can do it honestly?”

Demming’s grunt was nearer a snort this time.

Rostoff said sourly, “Don’t be naive, Lieutenant. Whoever does it, is going to need little integrity. You don’t win in a sharper’s card game by playing your cards honestly. The biggest sharper wins. We’ve just found a joker somebody dropped on the floor; if we don’t use it, we’re suckers.”

Demming opened his pig eyes and said, “All this is on the academic side. We checked your background thoroughly before approaching you, Mathers. We know your record, even before you entered the Space Service. Just between the three of us, wouldn’t you like out? There are a full billion men and women in our armed forces, you can be spared. Let’s say you’ve already done your share. Can’t you see the potentialities in spending the rest of your life with the Galactic Medal of Honor in your pocket?”

It was there all right, drifting slowly. Had he done a more thorough job of his patrol, last time, he should have stumbled upon it himself.

If he had, there was no doubt that he would have at first reported it as an active enemy cruiser. Demming and Rostoff had been right. The Kraden ship looked untouched by battle.

That is, if you approached it from the starboard and slightly abaft the beam. From that angle, in particular, it looked untouched.

It had taken several circlings of the craft to come to that conclusion. Don Mathers was playing it very safe. This thing wasn’t quite so simple as the others had thought. He wanted no slip-ups. His hand went to a food compartment and emerged with a space thermo which should have contained fruit juice, but didn’t. He took a long pull at it.

Finally he dropped back into the position he’d decided upon, and flicked the switch of his screen.

A base lieutenant’s face illuminated it. He yawned and looked questioningly at Don Mathers.

Don said, allowing a touch of excitement in his voice, “Mathers, Scout V-102, Sector A22-K223.”

“Yeah, yeah …” the other began, still yawning.

“I’ve spotted a Kraden cruiser. Miro class, I think.”

The lieutenant flashed into movement. He slapped a button before him, the screen blinked, to be lit immediately again.

A gray-haired Fleet Admiral looked up from papers on his desk.

“Yes?”

Don Mathers rapped, “Miro class Kraden in sector A22-K223, sir. I’m lying about fifty miles off. Undetected thus far—I think. He hasn’t fired on me yet, at least.”

The Admiral was already doing things with his hands. Two subalterns came within range of the screen, took orders, dashed off. The Admiral was rapidly firing orders into two other screens. After a moment, he looked up at Don Mathers again.

“Hang on, Lieutenant. Keep him under observation as long as you can. What’re your exact coordinates?”

Don gave them to him and waited.

A few minutes later the Admiral returned to him. “Let’s take a look at it, Lieutenant.”

Don Mathers adjusted the screen to relay the Kraden cruiser. His palms were moist now, but everything was going to plan. He wished that he could take another drink.

The Admiral said, “Miro class, all right. Don’t get too close, Lieutenant. They’ll blast you to hell and gone. We’ve got a task force within an hour of you. Just hang on.”

“Yes, sir,” Don said. An hour. He was glad to know that. He didn’t have much time in which to operate.

He let it go another five minutes, then he said, “Sir, they’re increasing speed.”

“Damn,” the Admiral said, then rapid fired some more into his other screens, barking one order after another.

Don said, letting his voice go very flat, “I’m going in, sir. They’re putting on speed. In another five minutes they’ll be underway to the point where I won’t be able to follow. They’ll get completely clear.”

The Admiral looked up, startled. “Don’t be a fool.”

“They’ll get away, sir.” Knowing that the other could see his every motion, Don Mathers hit the cocking lever of his flakflak gun with the heel of his right hand.

The Admiral snapped, “Let it go, you fool. You won’t last a second.” Then, his voice higher, “That’s an order, Lieutenant!”

Don Mathers flicked off his screen. He grimaced sourly and then descended on the Kraden ship, his flakflak gun beaming it. He was going to have to expend every erg of energy in his Scout to burn the other ship up to the point where his attack would look authentic, and to eliminate all signs of previous action.

The awarding of the Galactic Medal of Honor, as always, was done in the simplest of ceremonies.

Only the President and Captain Donal Mathers himself were present in the former’s office in the Presidential Palace.

However, as they both knew, every screen in the Solar System was tuned into the ceremony.

Don Mathers saluted and stood to attention.

The President read the citation. It was very short, as Medal of Honor citations were always.

… for conspicuous gallantry far and beyond the call of duty, in which you single-handedly, and against unbelievable odds, attacked and destroyed an enemy cruiser while flying a Scout armed only with a short-beam flakflak gun …

He pinned a small bit of ribbon and metal to Don Mathers’ tunic. It was an inconspicuous, inordinately ordinary medal, the Galactic Medal of Honor.

Don said hoarsely, “Thank you, sir.”

The President shook hands with him and said, “I am President of the United Solar System, Captain Mathers, supposedly the highest rank to which a man can attain.” He added simply, “I wish I were you.”

Afterwards, alone in New Washington and wanting to remain alone, Don Mathers strolled the streets for a time, bothered only occasionally when someone recognized his face and people would stop and applaud.

He grinned inwardly.

He had a suspicion already that after a time he’d get used to it and weary to death of it, but right now it was still new and fun. Who was the flyer, way back in history, the one who first flew the Atlantic in a propeller-driven aircraft? His popularity must have been something like this.

He went into O’Donnell’s at lunch time and as he entered the orchestra broke off the popular tune they were playing and struck up the Interplanetary Anthem. The manager himself escorted him to his table and made suggestions as to the specialties and the wine.

When he first sat down the other occupants of the restaurant, men and women, had stood and faced him and applauded. Don flushed. There could be too much of a good thing.

After the meal, a fantastic production, Don finished his cigar and asked the head waiter for his bill, reaching for his wallet.

The other smiled. “Captain, I am afraid your money is of no value in O’Donnell’s, not for just this luncheon but whenever you honor us.” The head waiter paused and added, “in fact, Captain, I doubt if there is a restaurant in the Solar System where your money holds value. Or that there will ever be.”

Don Mathers was taken aback. He was only beginning to realize the ramifications of his holding his Galactic Medal of Honor.

At Space Command Headquarters, Third Division, Don came to attention before the Commodore’s desk and tossed the other a salute.

The Commodore returned it snappily and leaned back in his chair. “Take a seat, Captain. Nice to see you again.” He added pleasantly, “Where in the world have you been?”

Don Mathers slumped into a chair, said wearily, “On a bust. The bust to end all busts.”

The Commodore chuckled. “Don’t blame you,” he said.

“It was quite a bust,” Don said.

“Well,” the Commodore chuckled again, “I don’t suppose we can throw you in the guardhouse for being AWOL Not in view of your recent decoration.”

There was nothing to say to that.

“By the way,” the Commodore said, “I haven’t had the opportunity to congratulate you on your Kraden. That was quite a feat, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir,” Don added, modestly, “rather foolish of me, I suppose.”

“Very much so. On such foolishness are heroic deeds based, Captain.” The Commodore looked at him questioningly. “You must have had incredible luck. The only way we’ve been able to figure it was that his detectors were on the blink. That may be what happened.”

“Yes, sir,” Don nodded quickly. “That’s the way I figure it. And my first blast must have disrupted his fire control or something.”

The Commodore said, “He didn’t get in any return fire at all?”

“A few blasts. But by that time I was in too close and moving too fast. Fact of the matter is, sir, I don’t think they ever recovered from my first beaming of them.”

“No, I suppose not,” the Commodore said musingly. “It’s a shame you had to burn them so badly. We’ve never recovered a Kraden ship in good enough shape to give our techs something to work on. It might make a basic difference in the war, particularly if there was something aboard that’d give us some indication of where they were coming from. We’ve been fighting this war in our backyard for a full century. It would help if we could get into their backyard for a change. It’s problematical how long we’ll be able to hold them off, at this rate.”

Don Mathers said uncomfortably, “Well, it’s not as bad as all that, sir. We’ve held them this far.”

His superior grunted. “We’ve held them this far because we’ve been able to keep out enough patrol ships to give us ample warning when one of their task forces come in. Do you know how much fuel that consumes, Captain?”

“Well, I know it’s a lot.”

“So much so that Earth’s industry is switching back to petroleum and coal. Every ounce of radioactives is needed by the Fleet. Even so, it’s just a matter of time.”

Don Mathers pursed his lips. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

The Commodore smiled sourly at him. “I’m afraid I’m being a wet blanket thrown over your big bust of a celebration, Captain. Tell me, how does it feel to hold the system’s highest award?”

Don shook his head, marveling. “Fantastic, sir. Of course, like any member of the services I’ve always known of the Medal of Honor, but … well, nobody ever expects to get it.” He added wryly, “Certainly not while he’s still alive and in health. Why, sir, do you realize that I haven’t been able to spend one unit of money since?” There was an element of awe in his voice. “Sir, do you realize that not even a beggar will take currency from me?”

The Commodore nodded in appreciation. “You must understand the position you occupy, Captain. Your feat was inspiring enough, but that’s not all of it. In a way you combine a popular hero with an Unknown Soldier element. Awarding you the Galactic Medal of Honor makes a symbol of you. A symbol representing all the millions of unsung heroes and heroines who have died fighting for the human species. It’s not a light burden to carry on your shoulders, Captain Mathers. I would imagine it a very humbling honor.”

“Well, yes, sir,” Don said.

The Commodore switched his tone of voice. “That brings us to the present, and what your next assignment is to be. Obviously, it wouldn’t do for you to continue in a Scout. Big brass seems to be in favor of using you for morale and …”

Don Mathers cleared his throat and interrupted. “Sir, I’ve decided to drop out of the Space Service.”

“Drop out!” The other stared at Mathers, uncomprehending. “We’re at war, Captain!”

Don nodded seriously. “Yes, sir. And what you just said is true. I couldn’t be used any longer in a Scout. I’d wind up selling bonds and giving talks to old ladies’ clubs.”

“Well, hardly that, Captain.”

“No, sir, I think I’d really be of more use out of the services. I’m tendering my resignation and making arrangements to help in the developing of Callisto and the other Jupiter satellites.”

The Commodore said nothing. His lips seemed whiter than before.

Don Mathers said doggedly, “Perhaps my prestige will help bring volunteers to work the new mines out there. If they see me, well, sacrificing, putting up with the hardships …”

The Commodore said evenly, “Mr. Mathers, I doubt if you will ever have to put up with hardships again, no matter where you make your abode. However, good luck. You deserve it.”

Outside headquarters, Don Mathers summoned a cab and dialed his hotel. On the way over, he congratulated himself. It had gone easier than he had expected, really. Although, come to think of it, there wasn’t a damn thing that the brass could do.

He had to laugh to himself.

Imagine if he’d walked in on the Commodore a month ago and announced that he was going to drop out of the Space Service. He would have been dropped all right, all right. Right into the lap of a squadron of psycho experts.

At the hotel he shucked his uniform, an action which gave him considerable gratification, and dressed in one of the score of civilian costumes that filled his closets to overflowing. He took pleasure in estimating what this clothing would have cost in terms of months of Space Service pay for a Sublieutenant or even a Captain. Years, my boy, years.

He looked at himself in the dressing-room mirror with satisfaction, then turned to the auto-bar and dialed himself a stone-age-old Metaxa. He’d lost his taste for the plebian tequila in the last few days.

He held the old Greek brandy to the light and wondered pleasurably what the stuff cost, per pony glass. Happily, he’d never have to find out.

He tossed the drink down and whistling, took his private elevator to the garages in the second level of the hotel’s basement floors. He selected a limousine and dialed the Interplanetary Lines building.

He left the car at the curb before the main entrance, ignoring all traffic regulations and entered the building, still whistling softly and happily to himself. He grinned when a small crowd gathered outside and smiled and clapped their hands. He grinned and waved to them.

A receptionist hurried to him and he told her he wanted to see either Mr. Demming or Mr. Rostoff, and then when she offered to escort him personally he noticed her pixie-like cuteness and said, “What’re you doing tonight, Miss?”

Her face went pale. “Oh, anything, sir,” she said weakly.

He grinned at her. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that if I’m not too busy.”

He had never seen anyone so taken aback. She said, all flustered, “I’m Toni. Toni Fitzgerald. You can just call this building and ask for me. Any time.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” he smiled. “But now, let’s see Old Man Demming.”

That took her back too. Aside from being asked for a date—if asked could be the term—by the system’s greatest celebrity, she was hearing for the first time the interplanetary tycoon being called Old Man Demming.

She said, “Oh, right this way, Captain Mathers.”

Don said, “Mr. Mathers now, I’m afraid. I have new duties.”

She looked up into his face. “You’ll always be Captain Mathers to me, sir.” She added, softly and irrelevantly, “My two brothers were lost on the Minerva in that action last year off Pluto.” She took a deep breath, which only stressed her figure. “I’ve applied six times for Space Service, but they won’t take me.”

They were in an elevator now. Don said, “That’s too bad, Toni. However, the Space Service isn’t as romantic as you might think.”

“Yes, sir,” Toni Fitzgerald said, her soul in her eyes. “You ought to know, sir.”

Don was somehow irritated. He said nothing further until they reached the upper stories of the gigantic office building. He thanked her after she’d turned him over to another receptionist.

Don Mathers’ spirits had been restored by the time he was brought to the door of Max Rostoff’s office. His new guide evidently hadn’t even bothered to check on the man’s availability, before ushering Mathers into the other’s presence.

Max Rostoff looked up from his desk, wolfishly aggressive-looking as ever. “Why, Captain,” he said. “How fine to see you again. Come right in. Martha, that will be all.”

Martha gave the interplanetary hero one more long look and then turned and left.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Max Rostoff turned and snarled, “Where have you been, you rummy?”

He couldn’t have shocked Don Mathers more if he’d suddenly sprouted a unicorn’s horn.

“We’ve been looking for you for a week,” Rostoff snapped. “Out of one bar, into another, our men couldn’t catch up with you. Dammit, don’t you realize we’ve got to get going? We’ve got a dozen documents for you to sign. We’ve got to get this thing underway, before somebody else does.”

Don blurted, “You can’t talk to me that way.”

It was the other’s turn to stare. Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, “No? Why can’t I?”

Don glared at him.

Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, “Let’s get this straight, Mathers. To everybody else, but Demming and me, you might be the biggest hero in the Solar System. But you know what you are to us?”

Don felt his indignation seeping from him.

“To us,” Max Rostoff said flatly, “you’re just another demi-buttocked incompetent on the make.” He added definitely, “And make no mistake, Mathers, you’ll continue to have a good thing out of this only so long as we can use you.”

A voice from behind them said, “Let me add to that, period, end of paragraph.”

It was Lawrence Demming, who’d just entered from an inner office.

He said, even his voice seemed fat, “And now that’s settled, I’m going to call in some lawyers. While they’re around, we conduct ourselves as though we’re three equal partners. On paper, we will be.”

“Wait a minute, now,” Don blurted. “What do you think you’re pulling? The agreement was we split this whole thing three ways.”

Demming’s jowls wobbled as he nodded. “That’s right. And your share of the loot is your Galactic Medal of Honor. That and the dubious privilege of having the whole thing in your name. You’ll keep your medal, and we’ll keep our share.” He growled heavily, “You don’t think you’re getting the short end of the stick, do you?”

Max Rostoff said, “Let’s knock this off and get the law boys in. We’ve got enough paper work to keep us busy the rest of the week.” He sat down again at his desk and looked up at Don. “Then we’ll all be taking off for Callisto, to get things under way. With any luck, in six months we’ll have every ounce of pitchblende left in the system sewed up.”

There was a crowd awaiting his ship at the Callisto Spaceport. A crowd modest by Earth standards but representing a large percentage of the small population of Jupiter’s moon.

On the way out, a staff of the system’s best speechwriters, and two top professional actors had been working with him.

Don Mathers gave a short preliminary talk at the spaceport, and then the important one, the one that was broadcast throughout the system, that night from his suite at the hotel. He’d been well rehearsed, and they’d kept him from the bottle except for two or three quick ones immediately before going on.

The project at hand is to extract the newly discovered deposits of pitchblende on these satellites of Jupiter.

He paused impressively before continuing.

It’s a job that cannot be done in slipshod, haphazard manner. The system’s need for radioactives cannot be overstressed.

In short, fellow humans, we must allow nothing to stand in the way of all out, unified effort to do this job quickly and efficiently. My associates and I have formed a corporation to manage this crash program. We invite all to participate by purchasing stock. I will not speak of profits, fellow humans, because in this emergency we all scorn them. However, as I say, you are invited to participate.

Some of the preliminary mining concessions are at present in the hands of individuals or small corporations. It will be necessary that these turn over their holdings to our single all-embracing organization for the sake of efficiency. Our experts will evaluate such holdings and recompense the owners.

Don Mathers paused again for emphasis.

This is no time for quibbling. All must come in. If there are those who put private gain before the needs of the system, then pressures must be found to be exerted against them.

We will need thousands and tens of thousands of trained workers to operate our mines, our mills, our refineries. In the past, skilled labor here on the satellites was used to double or even triple the wage rates on Earth and the settled planets and satellites. I need only repeat, this is no time for personal gain and quibbling. The corporation announces proudly that it will pay only prevailing Earth rates. We will not insult our employees by “bribing” them to patriotism through higher wages.

There was more, along the same lines.

It was all taken very well. Indeed, with enthusiasm.

On the third day, at an office conference, Don waited for an opening to say, “Look, somewhere here on Callisto is a young woman named Dian Fuller. After we get me established in an office, I’d like her to be my secretary.”

Demming looked up from some reports he was scanning. He grunted to Max Rostoff, “Tell him,” and went back to the papers.

Max Rostoff, settled back into his chair. He said to the two bodyguards, stationed at the door, “Scotty, Rogers, go and make the arrangements to bring that damned prospector into line.”

When they were gone, Rostoff turned back to Don Mathers. “You don’t need an office, Mathers. All you need is to go back to your bottles. Just don’t belt it so hard that you can’t sign papers every time we need a signature.”

Don flushed angrily, “Look, don’t push me, you two. You need me. Plenty. In fact, from what I can see, this corporation needs me more than it does you.” He looked scornfully at Demming. “Originally, the idea was that you put up the money. What money? We have fifty-one percent of the stock in my name, but all the credit units needed are coming from sales of stock.” He turned to Rostoff. “You were supposed to put up the brains. What brains? We’ve hired the best mining engineers, the best technicians, to do their end, the best corporation executives to handle that end. You’re not needed.”

Demming grunted amusement at the short speech, but didn’t bother to look up from his perusal.

Max Rostoff’s face had grown wolfishly thin in his anger. “Look, bottle-baby,” he sneered, “you’re the only one that’s vulnerable in this setup. There’s not a single thing that Demming and I can be held to account for. You have no beefs coming, for that matter. You’re getting everything you ever wanted. You’ve got the best suite in the best hotel on Callisto. You eat the best food the Solar System provides. And, most important of all to a rummy, you drink the best booze and as much of it as you want. What’s more, unless either Demming or I go to the bother, you’ll never be exposed. You’ll live your life out being the biggest hero in the system.”

It was Don Mathers’ turn to sneer. “What do you mean, I’m the only one vulnerable? There’s no evidence against me, Rostoff, and you know it. Who’d listen to you if you sounded off? I burned that Kraden cruiser until there wasn’t a sign to be found that would indicate it wasn’t in operational condition when I first spotted it.”

Demming grunted his amusement again.

Max Rostoff laughed sourly. “Don’t be an ass, Mathers. We took a series of photos of that derelict when we stumbled on it. Not only can we prove you didn’t knock it out, we can prove that it was in good shape before you worked it over. I imagine the Fleet technician would have loved to have seen the inner workings of that Kraden cruiser—before you loused it up.”

Demming chuckled flatly. “I wonder what kind of a court martial they give a hero who turns out to be a saboteur.”

He ran into her, finally, after he’d been on Callisto for nearly eight months. Actually, he didn’t remember the circumstances of their meeting. He was in an alcoholic daze and the fog rolled out, and there she was across the table from him.

Don shook his head, and looked about the room. They were in some sort of night spot. He didn’t recognize it.

He licked his lips, scowled at the taste of stale vomit.

He slurred, “Hello, Di.”

Dian Fuller said, “Hi, Don.”

He said, “I must’ve blanked out. Guess I’ve been hitting it too hard.”

She laughed at him. “You mean you don’t remember all the things you’ve been telling me the past two hours?” She was obviously quite sober. Dian never had been much for the sauce.

Don looked at her narrowly. “What’ve I been telling you for the past two hours?”

“Mostly about how it was when you were a little boy. About fishing, and your first .22 rifle. And the time you shot the squirrel, and then felt so sorry.”

“Oh,” Don said. He ran his right hand over his mouth.

There was a champagne bucket beside him, but the bottle in it was empty. He looked about the room for a waiter.

Dian said gently, “Do you really think you need any more, Don?”

He looked across the table at her. She was as beautiful as ever. No, that wasn’t right. She was pretty, but not beautiful. She was just a damn pretty girl, not one of these glamour items.

Don said, “Look, I can’t remember. Did we get married?”

Her laugh tinkled. “Married! I only ran into you two or three hours ago.” She hesitated before saying further, “I had assumed that you were deliberately avoiding me. Callisto isn’t that big.”

Don Mathers said slowly, “Well, if we’re not married, let me decide when I want another bottle of the grape, eh?”

Dian flushed. “Sorry, Don.”

The headwaiter approached bearing another magnum of vintage wine. He beamed at Don Mathers. “Having a good time, sir?”

“Okay,” Don said shortly. When the other was gone he downed a full glass, felt the fumes almost immediately.

He said to Dian, “I haven’t been avoiding you, Di. We just haven’t met. The way I remember, the last time we saw each other, back on Earth, you gave me quite a slap in the face. The way I remember, you didn’t think I was hero enough for you.” He poured another glass of the champagne.

Di’s face was still flushed. She said, her voice low, “I misunderstood you, Don. Even after your brilliant defeat of that Kraden cruiser, I still, I admit, think I basically misunderstood you. I told myself that it could have been done by any pilot of a Scout, given that one in a million break. It just happened to be you, who made that suicide dive attack that succeeded. A thousand other pilots might also have taken the million to one suicide chance rather than let the Kraden escape.”

“Yeah,” Don said. Even in his alcohol, he was surprised at her words. He said gruffly, “Sure anybody might’ve done it. Pure luck. But why’d you change your mind about me, then? How come the switch of heart?”

“Because of what you’ve done since, darling.”

He closed one eye, the better to focus.

“Since?”

He recognized the expression in her eyes. A touch of star gleam. That little girl back on Earth, the receptionist at the Interplanetary Lines building, she’d had it. In fact, in the past few months Don had seen it in many feminine faces. And all for him.

Dian said, “Instead of cashing in on your prestige, you’ve been devoting yourself to something even more necessary to the fight than bringing down individual Kraden cruisers.”

Don looked at her. He could feel a nervous tic beginning in his left eyebrow. Finally, he reached for the champagne again and filled his glass. He said, “You really go for this hero stuff, don’t you?”

She said nothing, but the star shine was still in her eyes.

He made his voice deliberately sour. “Look, suppose I asked you to come back to my apartment with me tonight?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“And told you to bring your overnight bag along,” he added brutally.

Dian looked into his face. “Why are you twisting yourself, your inner-self, so hard, Don? Of course I’d come—if that’s what you wanted.”

“And then,” he said flatly, “suppose I kicked you out in the morning?”

Dian winced, but she kept her eyes even with his, her own moist now. “You forget,” she whispered. “You have been awarded the Galactic Medal of Honor, the bearer of which can do no wrong.”

“Oh, God,” Don muttered. He filled his glass, still again, motioned to a nearby waiter.

“Yes, sir,” the waiter said.

Don said, “Look, in about five minutes I’m going to pass out. See that I get back to my hotel, will you? And that this young lady gets to her home. And, waiter, just send my bill to the hotel too.”

The other bowed. “The owner’s instructions, sir, are that Captain Mathers must never see a bill in this establishment.”

Dian said, “Don!”

He didn’t look at her. He raised his glass to his mouth and shortly afterward the fog rolled in again.

When it rolled out, the unfamiliar taste of black coffee was in his mouth. He shook his head for clarity.

He seemed to be in some working class restaurant. Next to him, in a booth, was a fresh-faced Sublieutenant of the—Don squinted at the collar tabs—yes, of the Space Service. A Scout pilot.

Don stuttered, “What’s … goin’ … on?”

The pilot said apologetically, “Sublieutenant Pierpont, sir. You seemed so far under the weather, I took over.”

“Oh, you did, eh?”

“Well, yes, sir. You were, well, reclining in the gutter, sir. In spite of your, well, appearance, your condition, I recognized you, sir.”

“Oh.” His stomach was an objecting turmoil.

The Lieutenant said, “Want to try some more of this coffee now, sir? Or maybe some soup or a sandwich?”

Don groaned. “No. No, thanks. Don’t think I could hold it down.”

The pilot grinned. “You must’ve thrown a classic, sir.”

“I guess so. What time is it? No, that doesn’t make any difference. What’s the date?”

Pierpont told him.

It was hard to believe. The last he could remember he’d been with Di. With Di in some nightclub. He wondered how long ago that had been.

He fumbled in his clothes for a smoke and couldn’t find one. He didn’t want it anyway.

He growled at the Lieutenant, “Well, how go the One Man Scouts?”

Pierpont grinned back at him. “Glad to be out of them, sir?”

“Usually.”

Pierpont looked at him strangely. “I don’t blame you, I suppose. But it isn’t as bad these days as it used to be while you were still in the Space Service, sir.”

Don grunted. “How come? Two weeks to a month, all by yourself, watching the symptoms of space cafard progress. Then three weeks of leave, to get drunk in, and then another stretch in space.”

The pilot snorted deprecation. “That’s the way it used to be.” He fingered the spoon of his coffee cup. “That’s the way it still should be, of course. But it isn’t. They’re spreading the duty around now and I spend less than one week out of four on patrol.”

Don hadn’t been listening too closely, but now he looked up. “What’d’ya mean?”

Pierpont said, “I mean, sir, I suppose this isn’t bridging security, seeing who you are, but fuel stocks are so low that we can’t maintain full patrols any more.”

There was a cold emptiness in Don Mathers’ stomach.

He said, “Look, I’m still woozy. Say that again, Lieutenant.”

The Lieutenant told him again.

Don Mathers rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth and tried to think.

He said finally, “Look, Lieutenant. First let’s get another cup of coffee into me, and maybe that sandwich you were talking about. Then would you help me to get back to my hotel?”

By the fourth day, his hands weren’t trembling any longer. He ate a good breakfast, dressed carefully, then took a hotel limousine down to the offices of the Mathers, Demming and Rostoff Corporation.

At the entrance to the inner sanctum the heavyset Scotty looked up at his approach. He said, “The boss has been looking for you, Mr. Mathers, but right now you ain’t got no appointment, have you? Him and Mr. Rostoff is having a big conference. He says to keep everybody out.”

“That doesn’t apply to me, Scotty,” Don snapped. “Get out of my way.”

Scotty stood up, reluctantly, but barred the way. “He said it applied to everybody, Mr. Mathers.”

Don put his full weight into a blow that started at his waist, dug deep into the other’s middle. Scotty doubled forward, his eyes bugging. Don Mathers gripped his hands together into a double fist and brought them upward in a vicious uppercut.

Scotty fell forward and to the floor.

Don stood above him momentarily, watchful for movement which didn’t develop. The hefty bodyguard must have been doing some easy living himself. He wasn’t as tough as he looked.

Don knelt and fished from under the other’s left arm a vicious-looking short-barrelled scrambler. He tucked it under his own jacket into his belt, then turned, opened the door and entered the supposedly barred office.

Demming and Rostoff looked up from their work across a double desk.

Both scowled. Rostoff opened his mouth to say something and Don Mathers rapped, “Shut up.”

Rostoff blinked at him. Demming leaned back in his swivel chair. “You’re sober for a change,” he wheezed, almost accusingly.

Don Mathers pulled up a stenographer’s chair and straddled it, leaning his arms on the back. He said coldly, “Comes a point when even the lowest worm turns. I’ve been checking on a few things.”

Demming grunted amusement.

Don said, “Space patrols have been cut far below the danger point.”

Rostoff snorted. “Is that supposed to interest us? That’s the problem of the military—and the government.”

“Oh, it interests us, all right,” Don growled. “Currently, Mathers, Demming and Rostoff control probably three-quarters of the system’s radioactives.”

Demming said in greasy satisfaction, “More like four-fifths.”

“Why?” Don said bluntly. “Why are we doing what we’re doing?”

They both scowled, but another element was present in their expressions too. They thought the question unintelligent.

Demming closed his eyes in his porcine manner and grunted, “Tell him.”

Rostoff said, “Look, Mathers, don’t be stupid. Remember when we told you, during that first interview, that we wanted your name in the corporation, among other reasons, because we could use a man who was above law? That a maze of ridiculously binding ordinances have been laid on business down through the centuries?”

“I remember,” Don said bitterly.

“Well, it goes both ways. Government today is also bound, very strongly, and even in great emergency, not to interfere in business. These complicated laws balance each other, you might say. Our whole legal system is based upon them. Right now, we’ve got government right where we want it. This is free enterprise, Mathers, at its pinnacle. Did you ever hear of Jim Fisk and his attempt to corner gold in 1869, the so-called Black Friday affair? Well, Jim Fisk was a peanut peddler compared to us.”

“What’s this got to do with the Fleet having insufficient fuel to …” Don Mathers stopped as comprehension hit him. “You’re holding our radioactives off the market, pressuring the government for a price rise which it can’t afford.”

Demming opened his eyes and said fatly, “For triple the price, Mathers. Before we’re through, we’ll corner half the wealth of the system.”

Don said, “But … but the species is … at … war.”

Rostoff sneered, “You seem to be getting noble rather late in the game, Mathers. Business is business.”

Don Mathers was shaking his head. “We immediately begin selling our radioactives at cost of production. I might remind you gentlemen that although we’re supposedly a three-way partnership, actually, everything’s in my name. You thought you had me under your thumb so securely that it was safe—and you probably didn’t trust each other. Well, I’m blowing the whistle.”

Surprisingly fast for such a fat man, Lawrence Demming’s hand flitted into a desk drawer to emerge with a twin of the scrambler tucked in Don’s belt.

Don Mathers grinned at him, even as he pushed his jacket back to reveal the butt of his own weapon. He made no attempt to draw it, however.

He said softly, “Shoot me, Demming, and you’ve killed the most popular man in the Solar System. You’d never escape the gas chamber, no matter how much money you have. On the other hand, if I shoot you …”

He put a hand into his pocket and it emerged with a small, inordinately ordinary bit of ribbon and metal. He displayed it on his palm.

The fat man’s face whitened at the ramifications and his hand relaxed to let the gun drop to the desk. “Listen, Don,” he broke out. “We’ve been unrealistic with you. We’ll reverse ourselves and split, honestly—split three ways.”

Don Mathers laughed at him. “Trying to bribe me with money, Demming? Why don’t you realize, that I’m the only man in existence who has no need for money, who can’t spend money? That my fellow men—whom I’ve done such a good job of betraying—have honored me to a point where money is meaningless?”

Rostoff snatched up the fallen gun, snarling, “I’m calling your bluff, you gutless rummy.”

Don Mathers said, “Okay, Rostoff. There’s just two other things I want to say first. One—I don’t care if I die or not. Two—you’re only twenty feet or so away, but you know what? I think you’re probably a lousy shot. I don’t think you’ve had much practice. I think I can get my scrambler out and cut you down before you can finish me.” He grinned thinly, “Wanta try?”

Max Rostoff snarled a curse and his finger whitened on the trigger.

Don Mathers fell sideward, his hand streaking for his weapon. Without thought there came back to him the long hours of training in hand weapons, in judo, in hand-to-hand combat. He went into action with cool confidence.

At the spaceport he took a cab to the Presidential Palace. It was an auto-cab, of course, and at the Palace gates he found he had no money on him. He snorted wearily. It was the first time in almost a year that he’d had to pay for anything.

Four sentries were standing at attention. He said, “Do one of you boys have some coins to feed into this slot? I’m fresh out.”

A sergeant grinned, approached, and did the necessary.

Don Mathers said wearily, “I don’t know how you go about this. I don’t have an appointment, but I want to see the President.”

“We can turn you over to one of the assistant secretaries, Captain Mathers,” the sergeant said. “We can’t go any further than that. While we’re waiting, what’s the chances of getting your autograph, sir? I gotta kid …”

It wasn’t nearly as complicated as he’d thought it was going to be. In half an hour he was seated in the office where he’d received his decoration only—how long ago was it, really less than a year?

He told the story briefly, making no effort to spare himself. At the end he stood up long enough to put a paper in front of the other, then sat down again.

“I’m turning the whole corporation over to the government. …”

The President said, “Wait a minute. My administration does not advocate State ownership of industry.”

“I know. When the State controls industry you only put the whole mess off one step, the question then becomes, who controls the State? However, I’m not arguing political economy with you, sir. You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say, I’m turning it over to the government to untangle, even while making use of the inventories of radioactives. There’s going to be a lot of untangling to do. Reimbursing the prospectors and small operators who were blackjacked out of their holdings by our super-corporation. Reimbursing of the miners and other laborers who were talked into accepting low pay in the name of patriotism.” Don Mathers cut it short. “Oh, it’s quite a mess.”

“Yes,” the President said. “And you say Max Rostoff is dead?”

“That’s right. And Demming off his rocker. I think he always was a little unbalanced and the prospect of losing all that money, the greatest fortune ever conceived of, tipped the scales.”

The President said, “And what about you, Donal Mathers?”

Don took a deep breath. “I wish I was back in the Space Services, frankly. Back where I was when all this started. However, I suppose that after my court martial, there won’t be …”

The President interrupted gently. “You seem to forget, Captain Mathers. You carry the Galactic Medal of Honor, the bearer of which can do no wrong.”

Don Mathers gaped at him.

The President smiled at him, albeit a bit sourly. “It would hardly do for human morale to find out our supreme symbol of heroism was a phoney, Captain. There will be no trial, and you will retain your decoration.”

“But I don’t want it!”

“I’m afraid that is the cross you’ll have to bear the rest of your life, Captain Mathers. I don’t suppose it will be an easy one.”

His eyes went to a far corner of the room, but unseeingly. He said after a long moment, “However, I am not so very sure about your not deserving your award, Captain.”

I’m a Stranger Here Myself

The Place de France is the town’s hub. It marks the end of Boulevard Pasteur, the main drag of the westernized part of the city, and the beginning of Rue de la Liberté, which leads down to the Grand Socco and the medina. In a three-minute walk from the Place de France you can go from an ultramodern, California-like resort to the Baghdad of Harun al-Rashid.

It’s quite a town, Tangier.

King-size sidewalk cafés occupy three of the strategic corners on the Place de France. The Café de Paris serves the best draft beer in town, gets all the better custom, and has three shoeshine boys attached to the establishment. You can sit of a sunny morning and read the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune while getting your shoes done up like mirrors for thirty Moroccan francs which comes to about five cents at current exchange.

You can sit there, after the paper’s read, sip your expresso and watch the people go by.

Tangier is possibly the most cosmopolitan city in the world. In native costume you’ll see Berber and Rif, Arab and Blue Man, and occasionally a Senegalese from further south. In European dress you’ll see Japs and Chinese, Hindus and Turks, Levantines and Filipinos, North Americans and South Americans, and, of course, even Europeans—from both sides of the Curtain.

In Tangier you’ll find some of the world’s poorest and some of the richest. The poorest will try to sell you anything from a shoeshine to their not very lily-white bodies, and the richest will avoid your eyes, afraid you might try to sell them something.

In spite of recent changes, the town still has its unique qualities. As a result of them the permanent population includes smugglers and black-marketeers, fugitives from justice and international con men, espionage and counterespionage agents, homosexuals, nymphomaniacs, alcoholics, drug addicts, displaced persons, ex-royalty, and subversives of every flavor. Local law limits the activities of few of these.

Like I said, it’s quite a town.

I looked up from my Herald Tribune and said, “Hello, Paul. Anything new cooking?”

He sank into the chair opposite me and looked around for the waiter. The tables were all crowded and since mine was a face he recognized, he assumed he was welcome to intrude. It was more or less standard procedure at the Café de Paris. It wasn’t a place to go if you wanted to be alone.

Paul said, “How are you, Rupert? Haven’t seen you for donkey’s years.”

The waiter came along and Paul ordered a glass of beer. Paul was an easygoing, sallow-faced little man. I vaguely remembered somebody saying he was from Liverpool and in exports.

“What’s in the newspaper?” he said, disinterestedly.

“Pogo and Albert are going to fight a duel,” I told him, “and Lil Abner is becoming a rock’n’roll singer.”

He grunted.

“Oh,” I said, “the intellectual type.” I scanned the front page. “The Russkies have put up another manned satellite.”

“They have, eh? How big?”

“Several times bigger than anything we Americans have.”

The beer came and looked good, so I ordered a glass too.

Paul said, “What ever happened to those poxy flying saucers?”

“What flying saucers?”

A French girl went by with a poodle so finely clipped as to look as though it’d been shaven. The girl was in the latest from Paris. Every pore in place. We both looked after her.

“You know, what everybody was seeing a few years ago. It’s too bad one of these bloody manned satellites wasn’t up then. Maybe they would’ve seen one.”

“That’s an idea,” I said.

We didn’t say anything else for a while and I began to wonder if I could go back to my paper without rubbing him the wrong way. I didn’t know Paul very well, but, for that matter, it’s comparatively seldom you ever get to know anybody very well in Tangier. Largely, cards are played close to the chest.

My beer came and a plate of tapas for us both. Tapas at the Café de Paris are apt to be potato salad, a few anchovies, olives, and possibly some cheese. Free lunch, they used to call it in the States.

Just to say something, I said, “Where do you think they came from?” And when he looked blank, I added, “The Flying Saucers.”

He grinned. “From Mars or Venus, or someplace.”

“Ummmm,” I said. “Too bad none of them ever crashed, or landed on the Yale football field and said Take me to your cheerleader, or something.”

Paul yawned and said, “That was always the trouble with those crackpot blokes’ explanations of them. If they were aliens from space, then why not show themselves?”

I ate one of the potato chips. It’d been cooked in rancid olive oil.

I said, “Oh, there are various answers to that one. We could probably sit around here and think of two or three that made sense.”

Paul was mildly interested. “Like what?”

“Well, hell, suppose for instance there’s this big Galactic League of civilized planets. But it’s restricted, see. You’re not eligible for membership until you, well, say until you’ve developed space flight. Then you’re invited into the club. Meanwhile, they send secret missions down from time to time to keep an eye on your progress.”

Paul grinned at me. “I see you read the same poxy stuff I do.”

A Moorish girl went by dressed in a neatly tailored gray jellaba, European style high-heeled shoes, and a pinkish silk veil so transparent that you could see she wore lipstick. Very provocative, dark eyes can be over a veil. We both looked after her.

I said, “Or, here’s another one. Suppose you have a very advanced civilization on, say, Mars.”

“Not Mars. No air, and too bloody dry to support life.”

“Don’t interrupt, please,” I said with mock severity. “This is a very old civilization and as the planet began to lose its water and air, it withdrew underground. Uses hydroponics and so forth, husbands its water and air. Isn’t that what we’d do, in a few million years, if Earth lost its water and air?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Anyway, what about them?”

“Well, they observe how man is going through a scientific boom, an industrial boom, a population boom. A boom, period. Any day now he’s going to have practical spaceships. Meanwhile, he’s also got the H-Bomb and the way he beats the drums on both sides of the Curtain, he’s not against using it, if he could get away with it.”

Paul said, “I got it. So they’re scared and are keeping an eye on us. That’s an old one. I’ve read that a dozen times, dished up different.”

I shifted my shoulders. “Well, it’s one possibility.”

“I got a better one. How’s this. There’s this alien life form that’s way ahead of us. Their civilization is so old that they don’t have any records of when it began and how it was in the early days. They’ve gone beyond things like wars and depressions and revolutions, and greed for power or any of these things giving us a bad time here on Earth. They’re all like scholars, get it? And some of them are pretty jolly well taken by Earth, especially the way we are right now, with all the problems, get it? Things developing so fast we don’t know where we’re going or how we’re going to get there.”

I finished my beer and clapped my hands for Mouley. “How do you mean, where we’re going?”

“Well, take half the countries in the world today. They’re trying to industrialize, modernize, catch up with the advanced countries. Look at Egypt, and Israel, and India and China, and Yugoslavia and Brazil, and all the rest. Trying to drag themselves up to the level of the advanced countries, and all using different methods of doing it. But look at the so-called advanced countries. Up to their bottoms in problems. Juvenile delinquents, climbing crime and suicide rates, the loony-bins full of the balmy, unemployed, threat of war, spending all their money on armaments instead of things like schools. All the bloody mess of it. Why, a man from Mars would be fascinated, like.”

Mouley came shuffling up in his babouche slippers and we both ordered another schooner of beer.

Paul said seriously, “You know, there’s only one big snag in this sort of talk. I’ve sorted the whole thing out before, and you always come up against this brick wall. Where are they, these observers, or scholars, or spies or whatever they are? Sooner or later we’d nab one of them. You know, Scotland Yard, or the F.B.I., or Russia’s secret police, or the French Sûreté, or Interpol. This world is so deep in police, counterespionage outfits and security agents that an alien would slip up in time, no matter how much he’d been trained. Sooner or later, he’d slip up, and they’d nab him.”

I shook my head. “Not necessarily. The first time I ever considered this possibility, it seemed to me that such an alien would base himself in London or New York. Somewhere where he could use the libraries for research, get the daily newspapers and the magazines. Be right in the center of things. But now I don’t think so. I think he’d be right here in Tangier.”

“Why Tangier?”

“It’s the one town in the world where anything goes. Nobody gives a damn about you or your affairs. For instance, I’ve known you a year or more now, and I haven’t the slightest idea of how you make your living.”

“That’s right,” Paul admitted. “In this town you seldom even ask a man where’s he’s from. He can be British, a White Russian, a Basque or a Sikh and nobody could care less. Where are you from, Rupert?”

“California,” I told him.

“No, you’re not,” he grinned.

I was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

“I felt your mind probe back a few minutes ago when I was talking about Scotland Yard or the F.B.I. possibly flushing an alien. Telepathy is a sense not trained by the humanoids. If they had it, your job—and mine—would be considerably more difficult. Let’s face it, in spite of these human bodies we’re disguised in, neither of us is humanoid. Where are you really from, Rupert?”

“Aldebaran,” I said. “How about you?”

“Deneb,” he told me, shaking.

We had a laugh and ordered another beer.

“What’re you doing here on Earth?” I asked him.

“Researching for one of our meat trusts. We’re protein eaters. Humanoid flesh is considered quite a delicacy. How about you?”

“Scouting the place for thrill tourists. My job is to go around to these backward cultures and help stir up inter-tribal, or international, conflicts—all according to how advanced they are. Then our tourists come in—well shielded, of course—and get their kicks watching it.”

Paul frowned. “That sort of practice could spoil an awful lot of good meat.”

Gun for Hire

Joe Prantera called softly, “Al.” The pleasurable, comfortable, warm feeling began spreading over him, the way it always did.

The older man stopped and squinted, but not suspiciously, even now.

The evening was dark, it was unlikely that the other even saw the circle of steel that was the mouth of the shotgun barrel, now resting on the car’s window ledge.

“Who’s it?” he growled.

Joe Prantera said softly, “Big Louis sent me, Al.”

And he pressed the trigger.

And at that moment, the universe caved inward upon Joseph Marie Prantera.

There was nausea and nausea upon nausea.

There was a falling through all space and through all time. There was doubling and twisting and twitching of every muscle and nerve.

There was pain, horror and tumultuous fear.

And he came out of it as quickly and completely as he’d gone in.

He was in, he thought, a hospital and his first reaction was to think, This here California. Everything different. Then his second thought was Something went wrong. Big Louis, he ain’t going to like this.

He brought his thinking to the present. So far as he could remember, he hadn’t completely pulled the trigger. That at least meant that whatever the rap was it wouldn’t be too tough. With luck, the syndicate would get him off with a couple of years at Quentin.

A door slid open in the wall in a way that Joe had never seen a door operate before. This here California.

The clothes on the newcomer were wrong, too. For the first time, Joe Prantera began to sense an alienness—a something that was awfully wrong.

The other spoke precisely and slowly, the way a highly educated man speaks a language which he reads and writes fluently but has little occasion to practice vocally. “You have recovered?”

Joe Prantera looked at the other expressionlessly. Maybe the old duck was one of these foreign doctors, like.

The newcomer said, “You have undoubtedly been through a most harrowing experience. If you have any untoward symptoms, possibly I could be of assistance.”

Joe couldn’t figure out how he stood. For one thing, there should have been some kind of police guard.

The other said, “Perhaps a bit of stimulant?”

Joe said flatly, “I wanta lawyer.”

The newcomer frowned at him. “A lawyer?”

“I’m not sayin’ nothin’. Not until I get a mouthpiece.”

The newcomer started off on another tack. “My name is Lawrence Reston-Farrell. If I am not mistaken, you are Joseph Salviati-Prantera.”

Salviati happened to be Joe’s mother’s maiden name. But it was unlikely this character could have known that. Joe had been born in Naples and his mother had died in childbirth. His father hadn’t brought him to the States until the age of five and by that time he had a stepmother.

“I wanta mouthpiece,” Joe said flatly, “or let me outta here.”

Lawrence Reston-Farrell said, “You are not being constrained. There are clothes for you in the closet there.”

Joe gingerly tried swinging his feet to the floor and sitting up, while the other stood watching him, strangely. He came to his feet. With the exception of a faint nausea, which brought back memories of that extreme condition he’d suffered during … during what? He hadn’t the vaguest idea of what had happened.

He was dressed in a hospital-type nightgown. He looked down at it and snorted and made his way over to the closet. It opened on his approach, the door sliding back into the wall in much the same manner as the room’s door had opened for Reston-Farrell.

Joe Prantera scowled and said, “These ain’t my clothes.”

“No, I am afraid not.”

“You think I’d be seen dead wearing this stuff? What is this, some religious crackpot hospital?”

Reston-Farrell said, “I am afraid, Mr. Salviati-Prantera, that these are the only garments available. I suggest you look out the window there.”

Joe gave him a long, chill look and then stepped to the window. He couldn’t figure the other. Unless he was a fruitcake. Maybe he was in some kind of pressure cooker and this was one of the fruitcakes.

He looked out, however, not on the lawns and walks of a sanitarium but upon a wide boulevard of what was obviously a populous city.

And for a moment again, Joe Prantera felt the depths of nausea.

This was not his world.

He stared for a long, long moment. The cars didn’t even have wheels, he noted dully. He turned slowly and faced the older man.

Reston-Farrell said compassionately, “Try this, it’s excellent cognac.”

Joe Prantera stared at him, said finally, flatly, “What’s it all about?”

The other put down the unaccepted glass. “We were afraid first realization would be a shock to you,” he said. “My colleague is in the adjoining room. We will be glad to explain to you if you will join us there.”

“I wanta get out of here,” Joe said.

“Where would you go?”

The fear of police, of Al Rossi’s vengeance, of the measures that might be taken by Big Louis on his failure, were now far away.

Reston-Farrell had approached the door by which he had entered and it reopened for him. He went through it without looking back.

There was nothing else to do. Joe dressed, then followed him.

In the adjoining room was a circular table that would have accommodated a dozen persons. Two were seated there now, papers, books and soiled coffee cups before them. There had evidently been a long wait.

Reston-Farrell, the one Joe had already met, was tall and drawn of face and with a chainsmoker’s nervousness. The other was heavier and more at ease. They were both, Joe estimated, somewhere in their middle fifties. They both looked like docs. He wondered, all over again, if this was some kind of pressure cooker.

But that didn’t explain the view from the window.

Reston-Farrell said, “May I present my colleague, Citizen Warren Brett-James? Warren, this is our guest from … from yesteryear, Mr. Joseph Salviati-Prantera.”

Brett-James nodded to him, friendly, so far as Joe could see. He said gently, “I think it would be Mr. Joseph Prantera, wouldn’t it? The maternal linage was almost universally ignored.” His voice too gave the impression he was speaking a language not usually on his tongue.

Joe took an empty chair, hardly bothering to note its alien qualities. His body seemed to fit into the piece of furniture, as though it had been molded to his order.

Joe said, “I think maybe I’ll take that there drink, Doc.”

Reston-Farrell said, “Of course,” and then something else Joe didn’t get. Whatever the something else was, a slot opened in the middle of the table and a glass, so clear of texture as to be all but invisible, was elevated. It contained possibly three ounces of golden fluid.

Joe didn’t allow himself to think of its means of delivery. He took up the drink and bolted it. He put the glass down and said carefully, “What’s it all about, huh?”

Warren Brett-James said soothingly, “Prepare yourself for somewhat of a shock, Mr. Prantera. You are no longer in Los Angeles—”

“Ya think I’m stupid? I can see that.”

“I was about to say, Los Angeles of 1960. Mr. Prantera, we welcome you to Nuevo Los Angeles.”

“Ta where?”

“To Nuevo Los Angeles and to the year—” Brett-James looked at his companion. “What is the date, Old Calendar?”

“2133,” Reston-Farrell said. “2133 AD they would say.”

Joe Prantera looked from one of them to the other, scowling. “What are you guys talking about?”

Warren Brett-James said softly, “Mr. Prantera, you are no longer in the year 1960, you are now in the year 2133.”

He said, uncomprehendingly, “You mean I been, like, unconscious for—” He let the sentence fall away as he realized the impossibility.

Brett-James said gently, “Hardly for one hundred and seventy years, Mr. Prantera.”

Reston-Farrell said, “I am afraid we are confusing you. Briefly, we have transported you, I suppose one might say, from your own era to ours.”

Joe Prantera had never been exposed to the concept of time travel. He had simply never associated with anyone who had ever even remotely considered such an idea. Now he said, “You mean, like, I been asleep all that time?”

“Not exactly,” Brett-James said, frowning.

Reston-Farrell said, “Suffice to say, you are now one hundred and seventy-three years after the last memory you have.”

Joe Prantera’s mind suddenly reverted to those last memories and his eyes narrowed dangerously. He felt suddenly at bay. He said, “Maybe you guys better let me in on what’s this all about.”

Reston-Farrell said, “Mr. Prantera, we have brought you from your era to perform a task for us.”

Joe stared at him, and then at the other. He couldn’t believe he was getting through to them. Or, at least, that they were to him.

Finally he said, “If I get this, you want me to do a job for you.”

“That is correct.”

Joe said, “You guys know the kind of jobs I do?”

“That is correct.”

“Like hell you do. You think I’m stupid? I never even seen you before.” Joe Prantera came abruptly to his feet. “I’m gettin’ outta here.”

For the second time, Reston-Farrell said, “Where would you go, Mr. Prantera?”

Joe glared at him. Then sat down again, as abruptly as he’d arisen.

“Let’s start all over again. I got this straight, you brought me, some screwy way, all the way … here. OK, I’ll buy that. I seen what it looks like out that window—” The real comprehension was seeping through to him even as he talked. “Everybody I know, Jessie, Tony, the Kid, Big Louis, everybody, they’re dead. Even Big Louis.”

“Yes,” Brett-James said, his voice soft. “They are all dead, Mr. Prantera. Their children are all dead, and their grandchildren.”

The two men of the future said nothing more for long minutes while Joe Prantera’s mind whirled its confusion.

Finally he said, “What’s this bit about you wanting me to give it to some guy.”

“That is why we brought you here, Mr. Prantera. You were … you are, a professional assassin.”

“Hey, wait a minute, now.”

Reston-Farrell went on, ignoring the interruption. “There is small point in denying your calling. Pray remember that at the point when we … transported you, you were about to dispose of a contemporary named Alphonso Annunziata-Rossi. A citizen, I might say, whose demise would probably have caused small dismay to society.”

They had him pegged all right. Joe said, “But why me? Why don’t you get some heavy from now? Somebody knows the ropes these days.”

Brett-James said, “Mr. Prantera, there are no professional assassins in this age, nor have there been for over a century and a half.”

“Well, then do it yourself.” Joe Prantera’s irritation over this whole complicated mess was growing. And already he was beginning to long for the things he knew—for Jessie and Tony and the others, for his favorite bar, for the lasagne down at Papa Giovanni’s. Right now he could have welcomed a calling down at the hands of Big Louis.

Reston-Farrell had come to his feet and walked to one of the large room’s windows. He looked out, as though unseeing. Then, his back turned, he said, “We have tried, but it is simply not in us, Mr. Prantera.”

“You mean you’re yella?”

“No, if by that you mean afraid. It is simply not within us to take the life of a fellow creature—not to speak of a fellow man.”

Joe snapped: “Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let’s start all over again.”

Brett-James said, “Let me do it, Lawrence.” He turned his eyes to Joe. “Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?”

Joe looked at him blankly.

“In your day you were confronted with national and international, problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a millennium ago.”

“Sure, OK, so we had problems. I know whatcha mean—like wars, and depressions and dictators and like that.”

“Yes, like that,” Brett-James nodded.

The heavyset man paused a moment. “Yes, like that,” he repeated. “That we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved. Hadn’t they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself. Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated the reasons for international conflict. For that matter,” he added musingly, “we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions? Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr. Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle never dreamed of in your own era.”

“OK, OK,” Joe Prantera growled. “So everybody’s got it made. What I wanta know is what’s all this about me giving it ta somebody? If everything’s so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?”

Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on the table. “The bacterium of hate—a new strain—has found the human race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized us.”

“What’s that suppose to mean?”

Brett-James took up the ball again. “Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?”

Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.

“Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?”

“Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin,” Joe growled. “I ain’t stupid.”

The other nodded. “Such men are unique. They have a drive … a drive to power which exceeds by far the ambitions of the average man. They are genie in their way, Mr. Prantera, genie of evil. Such a genius of evil has appeared on the current scene.”

“Now we’re getting somewheres,” Joe snorted. “So you got a guy what’s a little ambitious, like, eh? And you guys ain’t got the guts to give it to him. OK. What’s in it for me?”

The two of them frowned, exchanged glances. Reston-Farrell said, “You know, that is one aspect we had not considered.”

Brett-James said to Joe Prantera, “Had we not, ah, taken you at the time we did, do you realize what would have happened?”

“Sure,” Joe grunted. “I woulda let old Al Rossi have it right in the guts, five times. Then I woulda took the plane back to Chi.”

Brett-James was shaking his head. “No. You see, by coincidence, a police squad car was coming down the street just at that moment to arrest Mr. Rossi. You would have been apprehended. As I understand Californian law of the period, your life would have been forfeit, Mr. Prantera.”

Joe winced. It didn’t occur to him to doubt their word.

Reston-Farrell said, “As to reward, Mr. Prantera, we have already told you there is ultra-abundance in this age. Once this task has been performed, we will sponsor your entry into present day society. Competent psychiatric therapy will soon remove your present—”

“Waita minute, now. You figure on gettin’ me candled by some head shrinker, eh? No thanks, Buster. I’m going back to my own—”

Brett-James was shaking his head again. “I am afraid there is no return, Mr. Prantera. Time travel works but in one direction, with the flow of the time stream. There can be no return to your own era.”

Joe Prantera had been rocking with the mental blows he had been assimilating, but this was the final haymaker. He was stuck in this squaresville of a world.

Joe Prantera on a job was thorough.

Careful, painstaking, competent.

He spent the first three days of his life in the year 2133 getting the feel of things. Brett-James and Reston-Farrell had been appointed to work with him. Joe didn’t meet any of the others who belonged to the group which had taken the measures to bring him from the past. He didn’t want to meet them. The fewer persons involved, the better.

He stayed in the apartment of Reston-Farrell. Joe had been right, Reston-Farrell was a medical doctor. Brett-James evidently had something to do with the process that had enabled them to bring Joe from the past. Joe didn’t know how they’d done it, and he didn’t care. Joe was a realist. He was here. The thing was to adapt.

There didn’t seem to be any hurry. Once the deal was made, they left it up to him to make the decisions.

They drove him around the town, when he wished to check the traffic arteries. They flew him about the whole vicinity. From the air, Southern California looked much the same as it had in his own time. Oceans, mountains, and to a lesser extent, deserts, are fairly permanent even against man’s corroding efforts.

It was while he was flying with Brett-James on the second day that Joe said, “How about Mexico? Could I make the get to Mexico?”

The physicist looked at him questioningly. “Get?” he said.

Joe Prantera said impatiently, “The getaway. After I give it to this Howard Temple-Tracy guy, I gotta go on the run, don’t I?”

“I see.” Brett-James cleared his throat. “Mexico is no longer a separate nation, Mr. Prantera. All North America has been united into one unit. Today, there are only eight nations in the world.”

“Where’s the nearest?”

“South America.”

“That’s a helluva long way to go on a get.”

“We hadn’t thought of the matter being handled in that manner.”

Joe eyed him in scorn. “Oh, you didn’t, huh? What happens after I give it to this guy? I just sit around and wait for the cops to put the arm on me?”

Brett-James grimaced in amusement. “Mr. Prantera, this will probably be difficult for you to comprehend, but there are no police in this era.”

Joe gaped at him. “No police! What happens if you gotta throw some guy in stir?”

“If I understand your idiom correctly, you mean prison. There are no prisons in this era, Mr. Prantera.”

Joe stared. “No cops, no jails. What stops anybody? What stops anybody from just going into some bank, like, and collecting up all the bread?”

Brett-James cleared his throat. “Mr. Prantera, there are no banks.”

“No banks! You gotta have banks!”

“And no money to put in them. We found it a rather antiquated method of distribution well over a century ago.”

Joe had given up. Now he merely stared.

Brett-James said reasonably, “We found we were devoting as much time to financial matters in all their endless ramifications—including bank robberies—as we were to productive efforts. So we turned to more efficient methods of distribution.”

On the fourth day, Joe said, “OK, let’s get down to facts. Summa the things you guys say don’t stick together so good. Now, first place, where’s this guy Temple-Tracy you want knocked off?”

Reston-Farrell and Brett-James were both present. The three of them sat in the living room of the latter’s apartment, sipping a sparkling wine which seemed to be the prevailing beverage of the day. For Joe’s taste it was insipid stuff. Happily, rye was available to those who wanted it.

Reston-Farrell said, “You mean, where does he reside? Why, here in this city.”

“Well, that’s handy, eh?” Joe scratched himself thoughtfully. “You got somebody can finger him for me?”

“Finger him?”

“Look, before I can give it to this guy I gotta know some place where he’ll be at some time. Get it? Like Al Rossi. My finger, he works in Rossi’s house, see? He lets me know every Wednesday night, eight o’clock, Al leaves the house all by hisself. OK, so I can make plans, like, to give it to him.” Joe Prantera wound it up reasonably. “You gotta have a finger.”

Brett-James said, “Why not just go to Temple-Tracy’s apartment and, ah, dispose of him?”

“Jest walk in, eh? You think I’m stupid? How do I know how many witnesses hangin’ around? How do I know if the guy’s carryin’ heat?”

“Heat?”

“A gun, a gun. Ya think I’m stupid? I come to give it to him and he gives it to me instead.”

Dr. Reston-Farrell said, “Howard Temple-Tracy lives alone. He customarily receives visitors every afternoon, largely potential followers. He is attempting to recruit members to an organization he is forming. It would be quite simple for you to enter his establishment and dispose of him. I assure you, he does not possess weapons.”

Joe was indignant. “Just like that, eh?” he said sarcastically. “Then what happens? How do I get out of the building? Where’s my get car parked? Where do I hide out? Where do I dump the heat?”

“Dump the heat?”

“Get rid of the gun. You want I should get caught with the gun on me? I’d wind up in the gas chamber so quick—”

“See here, Mr. Prantera,” Brett-James said softly. “We no longer have capital punishment, you must realize.”

“OK. I still don’t wanta get caught. What is the rap these days, huh?” Joe scowled. “You said they didn’t have no jails any more.”

“This is difficult for you to understand, I imagine,” Reston-Farrell told him, “but, you see, we no longer punish people in this era.”

That took a long, unbelieving moment to sink in. “You mean, like, no matter what they do? That’s crazy. Everybody’d be running around giving it to everybody else.”

“The motivation for crime has been removed, Mr. Prantera,” Reston-Farrell attempted to explain. “A person who commits a violence against another is obviously in need of medical care. And, consequently, receives it.”

“You mean, like, if I steal a car or something, they just take me to a doctor?” Joe Prantera was unbelieving.

“Why would anybody wish to steal a car?” Reston-Farrell said easily.

“But if I give it to somebody?”

“You will be turned over to a medical institution. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is the last man you will ever kill, Mr. Prantera.”

A chillness was in the belly of Joe Prantera. He said very slowly, very dangerously, “You guys figure on me getting caught, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Brett-James said evenly.

“Well then, figure something else. You think I’m stupid?”

“Mr. Prantera,” Dr. Reston-Farrell said, “there has been as much progress in the field of psychiatry in the past two centuries as there has in any other. Your treatment would be brief and painless, believe me.”

Joe said coldly, “And what happens to you guys? How do you know I won’t rat on you?”

Brett-James said gently, “The moment after you have accomplished your mission, we plan to turn ourselves over to the nearest institution to have determined whether or not we also need therapy.”

“Now I’m beginning to wonder about you guys,” Joe said. “Look, all over again, what’d’ya wanta give it to this guy for?”

The doctor said, “We explained the other day, Mr. Prantera. Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy is a dangerous, atavistic, evil genius. We are afraid for our institutions if his plans are allowed to mature.”

“Well if you got things so good, everybody’s got it made, like, who’d listen to him?”

The doctor nodded at the validity of the question. “Mr. Prantera, Homo sapiens is a unique animal. Physically he matures at approximately the age of thirteen. However, mental maturity and adjustment is often not fully realized until thirty or even more. Indeed, it is sometimes never achieved. Before such maturity is reached, our youth are susceptible to romantic appeal. Nationalism, chauvinism, racism, the supposed glory of the military, all seem romantic to the immature. They rebel at the orderliness of present society. They seek entertainment in excitement. Citizen Temple-Tracy is aware of this and finds his recruits among the young.”

“OK, so this guy is dangerous. You want him knocked off before he screws everything up. But the way things are, there’s no way of making a get. So you’ll have to get some other patsy. Not me.”

“I am afraid you have no alternative,” Brett-James said gently. “Without us, what will you do? Mr. Prantera, you do not even speak the language.”

“What’d’ya mean? I don’t understand summa the big words you eggheads use, but I get by OK.”

Brett-James said, “Amer-English is no longer the language spoken by the man in the street, Mr. Prantera. Only students of such subjects any longer speak such tongues as Amer-English, French, Russian or the many others that once confused the race with their limitations as a means of communication.”

“You mean there’s no place in the whole world where they talk American?” Joe demanded, aghast.

Dr. Reston-Farrell controlled the car. Joe Prantera sat in the seat next to him and Warren Brett-James sat in the back. Joe had, tucked in his belt, a .45 caliber automatic, once displayed in a museum. It had been more easily procured than the ammunition to fit it, but that problem too had been solved.

The others were nervous, obviously repelled by the very conception of what they had planned.

Inwardly, Joe was amused. Now that they had got in the clutch, the others were on the verge of chickening out. He knew it wouldn’t have taken much for them to cancel the project. It wasn’t any answer though. If they allowed him to call it off today, they’d talk themselves into it again before the week was through.

Besides, already Joe was beginning to feel the comfortable, pleasurable, warm feeling that came to him on occasions like this.

He said, “You’re sure this guy talks American, eh?”

Warren Brett-James said, “Quite sure. He is a student of history.”

“And he won’t think it’s funny I talk American to him, eh?”

“He’ll undoubtedly be intrigued.”

They pulled up before a large apartment building that overlooked the area once known as Wilmington.

Joe was coolly efficient now. He pulled out the automatic, held it down below his knees and threw a shell into the barrel. He eased the hammer down, thumbed on the safety, stuck the weapon back in his belt and beneath the jacketlike garment he wore.

He said, “OK. See you guys later.” He left them and entered the building.

An elevator—he still wasn’t used to their speed in this era—whooshed him to the penthouse duplex occupied by Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy.

There were two persons in the reception room but they left on Joe’s arrival, without bothering to look at him more than glancingly.

He spotted the screen immediately and went over and stood before it.

The screen lit and revealed a heavyset, dour of countenance man seated at a desk. He looked into Joe Prantera’s face, scowled and said something.

Joe said, “Joseph Salviati-Prantera to interview Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy.”

The other’s shaggy eyebrows rose. “Indeed,” he said. “In Amer-English?”

Joe nodded.

“Enter,” the other said.

A door had slid open on the other side of the room. Joe walked through it and into what was obviously an office. Citizen Temple-Tracy sat at a desk. There was only one other chair in the room. Joe Prantera ignored it and remained standing.

Citizen Temple-Tracy said, “What can I do for you?”

Joe looked at him for a long, long moment. Then he reached down to his belt and brought forth the .45 automatic. He moistened his lips.

Joe said softly, “You know what this here is?”

Temple-Tracy stared at the weapon. “It’s a handgun, circa, I would say, about 1925 Old Calendar. What in the world are you doing with it?”

Joe said, very slowly, “Chief, in the line you’re in these days you needa heavy around with wunna these. Otherwise, Chief, you’re gunna wind up in some gutter with a lotta holes in you. What I’m doin’, I’m askin’ for a job. You need a good man knows how to handle wunna these, Chief.”

Citizen Howard Temple-Tracy eyed him appraisingly. “Perhaps,” he said, “you are right at that. In the near future, I may well need an assistant knowledgeable in the field of violence. Tell me more about yourself. You surprise me considerably.”

“Sure, Chief. It’s kinda a long story, though. First off, I better tell you you got some bad enemies, Chief. Two guys special, named Brett-James and Doc Reston-Farrell. I think one of the first jobs I’m gunna hafta do for you, Chief, is to give it to those two.”

Freedom

Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil air-cushion convertible along the edge of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil’s Cathedral, crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvocetski Bridge and debouched into the heavy, and largely automated traffic of Pyarnikskaya. At Dobryninskaya Square he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until he reached the old baroque palace which housed the Ministry.

There were no flags, no signs, nothing to indicate the present nature of the aged Czarist building.

He left the car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walking briskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition, dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothes man, idling a hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attention elsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyes straight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn’t answer the salute.

The inside of the old building was well known to him. He went along marble halls which contained antique statuary and other relics of the past which, for unknown reason, no one had ever bothered to remove. At the heavy door which entered upon the office of his destination he came to a halt and spoke briefly to the lieutenant at the desk there.

“The Minister is expecting me,” Simonov clipped.

The lieutenant did the things receptionists do everywhere and looked up in a moment to say, “Go right in, Colonel Simonov.”

Minister Kliment Blagonravov looked up from his desk at Simonov’s entrance. He was a heavyset man, heavy of face and he still affected the shaven head, now rapidly disappearing among upper-echelons of the Party. His jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair and his collar loosened; even so there was a sheen of sweat on his face.

He looked up at his most trusted field man, said in the way of greeting, “Ilya,” and twisted in his swivel chair to a portable bar. He swung open the door of the small refrigerator and emerged with a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. He plucked two three-ounce glasses from a shelf and pulled the bottle’s cork with his teeth. “Sit down, sit down, Ilya,” he grunted as he filled the glasses. “How was Magnitogorsk?”

Ilya Simonov secured his glass before seating himself in one of the room’s heavy leathern chairs. He sighed, relaxed, and said, “Terrible, I loath those ultra-industrialized cities. I wonder if the Americans do any better with Pittsburgh or the British with Birmingham.”

“I know what you mean,” the security head rumbled. “How did you make out with your assignment, Ilya?”

Colonel Simonov frowned down into the colorlessness of the vodka before dashing it back over his palate. “It’s all in my report, Kliment.” He was the only man in the organization who called Blagonravov by his first name.

His chief grunted again and reached forward to refill the glass. “I’m sure it is. Do you know how many reports go across this desk daily? And did you know that Ilya Simonov is the most long-winded, as the Americans say, of my some two hundred first-line operatives?”

The colonel shifted in his chair. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

His chief rumbled his sour version of a chuckle. “Nothing, nothing, Ilya. I was jesting. However, give me a brief of your mission.”

Ilya Simonov frowned again at his refilled vodka glass but didn’t take it up for a moment. “A routine matter,” he said. “A dozen or so engineers and technicians, two or three fairly high-ranking scientists, and three or four of the local intelligentsia had formed some sort of informal club. They were discussing national and international affairs.”

Kliment Blagonravov’s thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other to go on.

Ilya said impatiently, “It was the ordinary. They featured complete freedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. They began by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concerned with their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent a few letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club. After their ideas went further out, they didn’t dare do that, of course.”

He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give it time to lose its chill.

His chief filled in. “And they delved further and further into matters that should be discussed only within the party—if even there—until they arrived at what point?”

Colonel Simonov shrugged. “Until they finally got to the point of discussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socioeconomic system should follow it. The usual thing. I’ve run into possible two dozen such outfits in the past five years.”

His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. “My dear Ilya,” he rumbled sourly, “I’ve run into, as you say, more than two hundred.”

Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.

Blagonravov said, “What did you do about it?”

“Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev’s recent pronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it best not to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to charge individual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption or graft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others demoted. Ten or twelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backward areas in the virgin lands.”

“And the ringleaders?” the security head asked.

“There were two of them, one a research chemist of some prominence, the other a steel plane manager. They were both, ah, unfortunately killed in an automobile accident while under the influence of drink.”

“I see,” Blagonravov nodded. “So actually the whole rat’s nest was stamped out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk public is concerned.” He nodded heavily again. “You can almost always be depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren’t so confoundedly good a field man, I’d make you my deputy.”

Which was exactly what Simonov would have hated, but he said nothing.

“One thing,” his chief said. “The origin of this, ah, club which turned into a tiny underground all of its own. Did you detect the finger of the West, stirring up trouble?”

“No.” Simonov shook his head. “If such was the case, the agents involved were more clever than I’d ordinarily give either America or Common Europe credit for. I could be wrong, of course.”

“Perhaps,” the police head growled. He eyed the bottle before him but made no motion toward it. He wiped the palm of his right hand back over his bald pate, in unconscious irritation. “But there is something at work that we are not getting at.” Blagonravov seemed to change subjects. “You can speak Czech, so I understand.”

“That’s right. My mother was from Bratislava. My father met her there during the Hitler war.”

“And you know Czechoslovakia?”

“I’ve spent several vacations in the Tatras at such resorts as Tatranski Lomnica since the country’s been made such a tourist center of the satellites.” Ilya Simonov didn’t understand this trend of the conversation.

“You have some knowledge of automobiles, too?”

Simonov shrugged. “I’ve driven all my life.”

His chief rumbled thoughtfully, “Time isn’t of essence. You can take a quick course at the Moskvich plant. A week or two would give you all the background you need.”

Ilya laughed easily. “I seem to have missed something. Have my shortcomings caught up with me? Am I to be demoted to automobile mechanic?”

Kliment Blagonravov became definite. “You are being given the most important assignment of your career, Ilya. This rot, this ever growing ferment against the Party, must be cut out, liquidated. It seems to fester worse among the middle echelons of … what did that Yugoslavian Djilas call us? … the New Class. Why? That’s what we must know.”

He sat farther back in his chair and his heavy lips made a mout. “Why, Ilya?” he repeated. “After more than half a century the Party has attained all its goals. Lenin’s millennium is here; the end for which Stalin purged ten millions and more, is reached; the sacrifices demanded by Khrushchev in the Seven-Year Plans have finally paid off, as the Yankees say. Our gross national product, our per capita production, our standard of living, is the highest in the world. Sacrifices are no longer necessary.”

There had been an almost whining note in his voice. But now he broke it off. He poured them still another drink. “At any rate, Ilya, I was with Frol Zverev this morning. Number One is incensed. It seems that in the Azerbaijan Republic, for one example, that even the Komsomols were circulating among themselves various proscribed books and pamphlets. Comrade Zverev instructed me to concentrate on discovering the reason for this disease.”

Colonel Simonov scowled. “What’s this got to do with Czechoslovakia—and automobiles?”

The security head waggled a fat finger at him. “What we’ve been doing, thus far, is dashing forth upon hearing of a new conflagration and stamping it out. Obviously, that’s no answer. We must find who is behind it. How it begins. Why it begins. That’s your job?”

“Why Czechoslovakia?”

“You’re unknown as a security agent there, for one thing. You will go to Prague and become manager of the Moskvich automobile distribution agency. No one, not even the Czech unit of our ministry will be aware of your identity. You will play it by ear, as the Americans say.”

“To whom do I report?”

“Only to me, until the task is completed. When it is, you will return to Moscow and report fully.” A grimace twisted Blagonravov’s face. “If I am still here. Number One is truly incensed, Ilya.”

There had been some more. Kliment Blagonravov had evidently chosen Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia, as the seat of operations in a suspicion that the wave of unrest spreading insidiously throughout the Soviet Complex owed its origins to the West. Thus far, there had been no evidence of this but the suspicion refused to die. If not the West, then who? The Cold War was long over but the battle for men’s minds continued even in peace.

Ideally, Ilya Simonov was to infiltrate whatever Czech groups might be active in the illicit movement and then, if he discovered there was a higher organization, a center of the movement, he was to attempt to become a part of it. If possible he was to rise in the organisation to as high a point as he could.

Blagonravov, Minister of the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya, the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage, was of the opinion that if this virus of revolt was originating from the West, then it would be stronger in the satellite countries than in Russia itself. Simonov held no opinion as yet. He would wait and see. However, there was an uncomfortable feeling about the whole assignment. The group in Magnitogorsk, he was all but sure, had no connections with Western agents, nor anyone else, for that matter. Of course, it might have been an exception.

He left the Ministry, his face thoughtful as he climbed into his waiting Zil. This assignment was going to be a lengthy one. He’d have to wind up various affairs here in Moscow, personal as well as business. He might be away for a year or more.

There was a sheet of paper on the seat of his air-cushion car. He frowned at it. It couldn’t have been there before. He picked it up.

It was a mimeographed throwaway.

It was entitled, Freedom, and it began: “Comrades, more than a hundred years ago the founders of scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, explained that the State was incompatible with liberty, that the State was an instrument of repression of one class by another. They explained that for true freedom ever to exist the State must wither away.

“Under the leadership of Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev and now Zverev, the State has become ever stronger. Far from withering away, it continues to oppress us. Fellow Russians, it is time we take action! We must …”

Colonel Simonov bounced from his car again, shot his eyes up and down the street. He barely refrained from drawing the 9mm automatic which nestled under his left shoulder and which he knew how to use so well.

He curtly beckoned to the plainclothes man, still idling against the building a hundred feet or so up the street. The other approached him, touched the brim of his hat in a half salute.

Simonov snapped, “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, colonel.”

Ilya Simonov thrust the leaflet forward. “How did this get into my car?”

The other looked at it blankly. “I don’t know, Colonel Simonov.”

“You’ve been here all this time?”

“Why, yes colonel.”

“With my car in plain sight?”

That didn’t seem to call for an answer. The plainclothesman looked apprehensive but blank.

Simonov turned on his heel and approached the two guards at the gate. They were not more than thirty feet from where he was parked. They came to the salute but he growled, “At ease. Look here, did anyone approach my vehicle while I was inside?”

One of the soldiers said, “Sir, twenty or thirty people have passed since the Comrade colonel entered the Ministry.”

The other one said, “Yes, sir.”

Ilya Simonov looked from the guards to the plainclothes man and back, in frustration. Finally he spun on his heel again and reentered the car. He slapped the elevation lever, twisted the wheel sharply, hit the jets pedal with his foot and shot into the traffic.

The plainclothes man looked after him and muttered to the guards, “Blagonravov’s hatchetman. He’s killed more men than the plague. A bad one to have down on you.”

Simonov bowled down the Kaluga at excessive speed. “Driving like a young stilyagi,” he growled in irritation at himself. But, confound it, how far had things gone when subversive leaflets were placed in cars parked in front of the ministry devoted to combating counter revolution.

He’d been away from Moscow for over a month and the amenities in the smog, smoke and coke fumes blanketing industrial complex of Magnitogorsk hadn’t been particularly of the best. Ilya Simonov headed now for Gorki Street and the Baku Restaurant. He had an idea that it was going to be some time before the opportunity would be repeated for him to sit down to Zakouski, the salty, spicy Russian hors d’oeuvres, and to Siberian pilmeny and a bottle of Tsinandali.

The restaurant, as usual, was packed. In irritation, Ilya Simonov stood for a while waiting for a table, then, taking the head waiter’s advice, agreed to share one with a stranger.

The stranger, a bearded little man, who was dwaddling over his Gurievskaya kasha dessert while reading Izvestia, glanced up at him, unseemingly, bobbed his head at Simonov’s request to share his table, and returned to the newspaper.

The harried waiter took his time in turning up with a menu. Ilya Simonov attempted to relax. He had no particular reason to be upset by the leaflet found in his car. Obviously, whoever had thrown it there was distributing haphazardly. The fact that it was mimeographed, rather than printed, was an indication of lack of resources, an amateur affair. But what in the world did these people want? What did they want?

The Soviet State was turning out consumer’s goods, homes, cars as no nation in the world. Vacations were lengthy, working hours short. A four-day week, even! What did they want? What motivates a man who is living on a scale unknown to a Czarist boyar to risk his position, even his life! in a stupidly impossible revolt against the country’s government?

The man across from him snorted in contempt.

He looked over the top of his paper at Smirnov and said, “The election in Italy. Ridiculous!”

Ilya Simonov brought his mind back to the present. “How did they turn out? I understand the depression is terrible there.”

“So I understand,” the other said. “The vote turned out as was to be expected.”

Simonov’s eyebrows went up. “The Party has been voted into power?”

“Ha!” the other snorted. “The vote for the Party has fallen off by more than a third.”

The security colonel scowled at him. “That doesn’t sound reasonable, if the economic situation is as bad as has been reported.”

His table mate put down the paper. “Why not? Has there ever been a country where the Party was voted into power? Anywhere—at any time during the more than half a century since the Bolsheviks first took over here in Russia?”

Simonov looked at him.

The other was talking out opinions he’d evidently formed while reading the Izvestia account of the Italian elections, not paying particular attention to the stranger across from him.

He said, his voice irritated, “Nor will there ever be. They know better. In the early days of the revolution the workers might have had illusions about the Party and it goals. Now they’ve lost them. Everywhere, they’ve lost them.”

Ilya Simonov said tightly, “How do you mean?”

“I mean the Party has been rejected. With the exception of China and Yugoslavia, both of whom have their own varieties, the only countries that have adopted our system have done it under pressure from outside—not by their own efforts. Not by the will of the majority.”

Colonel Simonov said flatly, “You seem to think that Marxism will never dominate the world.”

“Marxism!” the other snorted. “If Marx were alive in Russia today, Frol Zverev would have him in a Siberian labor camp within twenty-four hours.”

Ilya Simonov brought forth his wallet and opened it to his police credentials. He said coldly, “Let me see your identification papers. You are under arrest.”

The other stared at him for a moment, then snorted his contempt. He brought forth his own wallet and handed it across the table.

Simonov flicked it open, his face hard. He looked at the man. “Konstantin Kasatkin.”

“Candidate member of the Academy of Sciences,” the other snapped. “And bearer of the Hero of the Soviet Union award.”

Simonov flung the wallet back to him in anger. “And as such, practically immune.”

The other grinned nastily at him. “Scientists, my police friend, cannot be bothered with politics. Where would the Soviet Complex be if you took to throwing biologists such as myself into prison for making unguarded statements in an absentminded moment?”

Simonov slapped a palm down on the table. “Confound it, Comrade,” he snapped, “how is the Party to maintain discipline in the country if high ranking persons such as yourself speak open subversion to strangers.”

The other sported his contempt. “Perhaps there’s too much discipline in Russia, Comrade policeman.”

“Rather, far from enough,” Simonov snapped back.

The waiter, at last, approached and extended a menu to the security officer. But Ilya Simonov had come to his feet. “Never mind,” he clipped in disgust. “There is an air of degenerate decay about here.”

The waiter stared at him. The biologist snorted and returned to his paper. Simonov turned and stormed out. He could find something to eat and drink in his own apartment.

The old, old town of Prague, the Golden City of a Hundred Spires was as always the beautifully stolid medieval metropolis which even a quarter of a century and more of Party rule could not change. The Old Town, nestled in a bend of the Vltava River, as no other city in Europe, breathed its centuries, its air of yesteryear.

Colonel Ilya Simonov, in spite of his profession, was not immune to beauty. He deliberately failed to notify his new office of his arrival, flew in on a Ceskoslovenskè Aerolinie Tupolev rocket liner and spent his first night at the Alcron Hotel just off Wenceslas Square. He knew that as the new manager of the local Moskvich distribution agency he’d have fairly elaborate quarters, probably in a good section of town, but this first night he wanted to himself.

He spent it wandering quietly in the old quarter, dropping in to the age-old beer halls for a half liter of Pilsen Urquell here, a foaming stein of Smichov Lager there. Czech beer, he was reminded all over again, is the best in the world. No argument, no debate, the best in the world.

He ate in the endless automated cafeterias that line the Viclavské Námesi the entertainment center of Prague. Ate an open sandwich here, some crabmeat salad there, a sausage and another glass of Pilsen somewhere else again. He was getting the feel of the town and of its people. Of recent years, some of the tension had gone out of the atmosphere in Moscow and the other Soviet centers; with the coming of economic prosperity there had also come a relaxation. The fear, so heavy in the Stalin era, had fallen off in that of Khrushchev and still more so in the present reign of Frol Zverev. In fact, Ilya Simonov was not alone in Party circles in wondering whether or not discipline had been allowed to slip too far. It is easier, the old Russian proverb goes, to hang onto the reins than to regain them once dropped.

But if Moscow had lost much of its pall of fear, Prague had certainly gone even further. In fact, in the U Pinkasu beer hall Simonov had idly picked up a magazine left by some earlier wassailer. It was a light literary publication devoted almost exclusively to humor. There were various cartoons, some of them touching political subjects. Ilya Simonov had been shocked to see a caricature of Frol Zverev himself. Zverev, Number One! Ridiculed in a second-rate magazine in a satellite country!

Ilya Simonov made a note of the name and address of the magazine and the issue.

Across the heavy wooden community table from him, a beer drinker grinned, in typically friendly Czech style. “A good magazine,” he said. “You should subscribe.”

A waiter, bearing an even dozen liter-size steins of beer hurried along, spotted the fact that Simonov’s mug was empty, slipped a full one into its place, gave the police agent’s saucer a quick mark of a pencil, and hurried on again. In the U Pinkasu, it was supposed that you wanted another beer so long as you remained sitting. When you finally staggered to your feet, the nearest waiter counted the number of pencil marks on your saucer and you paid up.

Ilya Simonov said cautiously to his neighbor, “Seems to be quite, ah, brash.” He tapped the magazine with a finger.

The other shrugged and grinned again. “Things loosen up as the years go by,” he said. “What a man wouldn’t have dared say to his own wife five years ago, they have on TV today.”

“I’m surprised the police don’t take steps,” Simonov said, trying to keep his voice expressionless.

The other took a deep swallow of his Pilsen Urquell. He pursed his lips and thought about it. “You know, I wonder if they’d dare. Such a case brought into the People’s Courts might lead to all sort of public reaction these days.”

It had been some years since Ilya Simonov had been in Prague and even then he’d only gone through on the way to the ski resorts in the mountains. He was shocked to find the Czech state’s control had fallen off to this extent. Why, here he was, a complete stranger, being openly talked to on political subjects.

His cross-the-table neighbor shook his head, obviously pleased. “If you think Prague is good, you ought to see Warsaw. It’s as free as Paris! I saw a Tri-D cinema up there about two months ago. You know what it was about? The purges in Moscow back in the 1930s.”

“A rather unique subject,” Simonov said.

“Um-m-m, made a very strong case for Bukharin, in particular.”

Simonov said, very slowly, “I don’t understand. You mean this … this film supported the, ah, Old Bolsheviks?”

“Of course. Why not? Everybody knows they weren’t guilty.” The Czech snorted deprecation. “At least not guilty of what they were charged with. They were in Stalin’s way and he liquidated them.” The Czech thought about it for a while. “I wonder if he was already insane, that far back.”

Had he taken up his mug of beer and dashed it into Simonov’s face, he couldn’t have surprised the Russian more.

Ilya Simonov had to take control of himself. His first instinct was to show his credentials, arrest the man and have him hauled up before the local agency of Simonov’s ministry.

But obviously that was out of the question. He was in Czechoslovakia and, although Moscow still dominated the Soviet Complex, there was local autonomy and the Czech police just didn’t enjoy their affairs being meddled with unless in extreme urgency.

Besides, this man was obviously only one among many. A stranger in a beer hall. Ilya Simonov suspected that if he continued his wanderings about the town, he’d meet in the process of only one evening a score of persons who would talk the same way.

Besides, still again, he was here in Prague incognito, his job to trace the sources of this dry rot, not to run down individual Czechs.

But the cinema, and TV! Surely anti-Party sentiment hadn’t been allowed to go this far!

He got up from the table shakily, paid up for his beer and forced himself to nod goodbye in friendly fashion to the subversive Czech he’d been talking to.

In the morning he strolled over to the offices of the Moskvich Agency which was located only a few blocks from his hotel on Celetna Hybernski. The Russian car agency, he knew, was having a fairly hard go of it in Prague and elsewhere in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs, long before the Party took over in 1948, had been a highly industrialized, modern nation. They consequently had their own automobile works, such as Skoda, and their models were locally more popular than the Russian Moskvich, Zim and Pobeda.

Theoretically, the reason Ilya Simonov was the newly appointed agency head was to push Moskvich sales among the Czechs. He thought, half humorously, half sourly, to himself, even under the Party we have competition and pressure for higher sales. What was it that some American economist had called them? a system of State-Capitalism.

At the Moskvich offices he found himself in command of a staff that consisted of three fellow Russians, and a dozen or so Czech assistants. His immediate subordinate was a Catherina Panova, whose dossier revealed her to be a party member, though evidently not a particularly active one, at least not since she’d been assigned here in Prague.

She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, a graduate of the University of Moscow, and although she’d been in the Czech capital only a matter of six months or so, had already adapted to the more fashionable dress that the style-conscious women of this former Western capital went in for. Besides that, Catherina Panova managed to be one of the downright prettiest girls Ilya Simonov had ever seen.

His career had largely kept him from serious involvement in the past. Certainly the dedicated women you usually found in Party ranks seldom were of the type that inspired you to romance but he wondered now, looking at this new assistant of his, if he hadn’t let too much of his youth go by without more investigation into the usually favorite pastime of youth.

He wondered also, but only briefly, if he should reveal his actual identity to her. She was, after all, a party member. But then he checked himself. Kliment Blagonravov had stressed the necessity of complete secrecy. Not even the local offices of the ministry were to be acquainted with his presence.

He let Catherina introduce him around, familiarize him with the local methods of going about their business affairs and the problems they were running into.

She ran a hand back over her forehead, placing a wisp of errant hair, and said, “I suppose, as an expert from Moscow, you’ll be installing a whole set of new methods.”

It was far from his intention to spend much time at office work. He said, “Not at all. There is no hurry. For a time, we’ll continue your present policies, just to get the feel of the situation. Then perhaps in a few months, we’ll come up with some ideas.”

She obviously liked his use of “we” rather than “I.” Evidently, the staff had been a bit nervous upon his appointment as new manager. He already felt, vaguely, that the three Russians here had no desire to return to their homeland. Evidently, there was something about Czechoslovakia that appealed to them all. The fact irritated him but somehow didn’t surprise.

Catherina said, “As a matter of fact, I have some opinions on possible changes myself. Perhaps if you’ll have dinner with me tonight, we can discuss them informally.”

Ilya Simonov was only mildly surprised at her suggesting a rendezvous with him. Party members were expected to ignore sex and be on an equal footing. She was as free to suggest a dinner date to him, as he was to her. Of course, she wasn’t speaking as a Party member now. In fact, he hadn’t even revealed to her his own membership.

As it worked out, they never got around to discussing distribution of the new Moskvich air-cushion jet car. They became far too busy enjoying food, drink, dancing—and each other.

They ate at the Budapest, in the Prava Hotel, complete with Hungarian dishes and Riesling, and they danced to the inevitable gypsy music. It occurred to Ilya Simonov that there was a certain pleasure to be derived from the fact that your feminine companion was the most beautiful woman in the establishment and one of the most attractively dressed. There was a certain lift to be enjoyed when you realized that the eyes of half the other males present were following you in envy.

One thing led to another. He insisted on introducing her to barack, the Hungarian national spirit, in the way of a digestive. The apricot brandy, distilled to the point of losing all sweetness and fruit flavor, required learning. It must be tossed back just so. By the time Catherina had the knack, neither of them were feeling strain. In fact, it became obviously necessary for him to be given a guided tour of Prague’s night spots.

It turned out that Prague offered considerably more than Moscow, which even with the new relaxation was still one of the most staid cities in the Soviet Complex.

They took in the vaudeville at the Alhambra, and the variety at the Prazské Varieté.

They took in the show at the U Sv Tomíse, the age old tavern which had been making its own smoked black beer since the fifteenth century. And here Catherina with the assistance of revelers from neighboring tables taught him the correct pronunciation of Na zdraví! the Czech toast. It seemed required to go from heavy planked table to table practicing the new salutation to the accompaniment of the pungent borovika gin.

Somewhere in here they saw the Joseph Skupa puppets, and at this stage, Ilya Simonov found only great amusement at the political innuendoes involved in half the skits. It would never had one in Moscow or Leningrad, of course, but here it was very amusing indeed. There was even a caricature of a security police minister who could only have been his superior Kliment Blagonravov.

They wound up finally at the U Kalicha, made famous by Hasek in The Good Soldier Schweik. In fact various illustrations from the original classic were framed on the walls.

They had been laughing over their early morning snack, now Ilya Simonov looked at her approvingly. “See here,” he said. “We must do this again.”

“Fine,” she laughed.

“In fact, tomorrow,” he insisted. He looked at his watch. “I mean tonight.”

She laughed at him. “Our great expert from Moscow. Far from improving our operations, there’ll be less accomplished than ever if you make a nightly practice of carrying on like we did this evening.”

He laughed too. “But tonight,” he said insistently.

She shook her head. “Sorry, but I’m already booked up for this evening.”

He scowled for the first time in hours. He’d seemingly forgotten that he hardly knew this girl. What her personal life was, he had no idea. For that matter, she might be engaged or even married. The very idea irritated him.

He said stiffly, “Ah, you have a date?”

Catherina laughed again. “My, what a dark face. If I didn’t know you to be an automobile distributor expert, I would suspect you of being a security police agent.” She shook her head. “Not a date. If by that you mean another man. There is a meeting that I would like to attend.”

“A meeting! It sounds dry as—”

She was shaking her head. “Oh, no. A group I belong to. Very interesting. We’re to be addressed by an American journalist.”

Suddenly he was all but sober.

He tried to smooth over the short space of silence his surprise had precipitated. “An American journalist? Under government auspices?”

“Hardly.” She smiled at him over her glass of Pilsen. “I forget,” she said. “If you’re from Moscow, you probably aren’t aware of how open things are here in Prague. A whiff of fresh air.”

“I don’t understand. Is this group of yours, ah, illegal?”

She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, of course not. Don’t be silly. We gather to hear various speakers, to discuss world affairs. That sort of thing. Oh, of course, theoretically it’s illegal, but for that matter even the head of the Skoda plant attended last week. It’s only for the more advanced intellectuals, of course. Very advanced. But, for that matter, I know a dozen or so Party members, both Czech and Russian, who attend.”

“But an American journalist? What’s he doing in the country? Is he accredited?”

“No, no. You misunderstand. He entered as a tourist, came across some Prague newspapermen and as an upshot he’s to give a talk on freedom of the press.”

“I see,” Simonov said.

She was impatient with him. “You don’t understand at all. See here, why don’t you come along tonight? I’m sure I can get you in.”

“It sounds like a good idea,” Ilya Simonov said. He was completely sober now.

He made a written report to Kliment Blagonravov before turning in. He mentioned the rather free discussion of matters political in the Czech capital, using the man he’d met in the beer hall as an example. He reported—although, undoubtedly, Blagonravov would already have the information—hearing of a Polish Tri-D film which had defended the Old Bolsheviks purged in the 1930s. He mentioned the literary magazine, with its caricature of Frol Zverev, and, last of all, and then after hesitation, he reported party member Catherina Panova, who evidently belonged to a group of intellectuals who were not above listening to a talk given by a foreign journalist who was not speaking under the auspices of the Czech Party nor the government.

At the office, later, Catherina grinned at him and made a face. She ticked it off on her fingers. “Riesling, barack, smoked black beer, and borovika gin—we should have know better.”

He went along with her, putting one hand to his forehead. “We should have stuck to vodka.”

“Well,” she said, “tonight we can be virtuous. An intellectual evening, rather than a carouse.”

Actually, she didn’t look at all the worse for wear. Evidently, Catherina Panova was still young enough that she could pub crawl all night, and still look fresh and alert in the morning. His own mouth felt lined with improperly tanned suede.

He was quickly fitting into the routine of the office. Actually, it worked smoothly enough that little effort was demanded of him. The Czech employees handled almost all the details. Evidently, the word of his evening on the town had somehow spread, and the fact that he was prone to a good time had relieved their fears of a martinet sent down from the central offices. They were beginning to relax in his presence.

In fact, they relaxed to the point where one of the girls didn’t even bother to hide the book she was reading during a period where there was a lull in activity. It was Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

He frowned remembering vaguely the controversy over the book a couple of decades earlier. Ilya Simonov said, “Pasternak. Do they print his works here in Czechoslovakia?”

The girl shrugged and looked at the back of the cover. “German publisher,” she said idly. “Printed in Frankfurt.”

He kept his voice from registering either surprise or disapproval. “You mean such books are imported? By whom?”

“Oh, not imported by an official agency, but we Czechs are doing a good deal more travel than we used to. Business trips, tourist trips, vacations. And, of course, we bring back books you can’t get here.” She shrugged again. “Very common.”

Simonov said blankly. “But the customs. The border police—”

She smiled in a manner that suggested he lacked sophistication. “They never bother any more. They’re human, too.”

Ilya Simonov wandered off. He was astonished at the extent to which controls were slipping in a satellite country. There seemed practically no discipline, in the old sense, at all. He began to see one reason why his superior had sent him here to Prague. For years, most of his work had been either in Moscow or in the newly opened industrial areas in Siberia. He had lost touch with developments in this part of the Soviet Complex.

It came to him that this sort of thing could work like a geometric progression. Give a man a bit of rope one day, and he expects, and takes, twice as much the next, and twice that the next. And as with individuals, so with whole populations.

This was going to have to be stopped soon, or Party control would disappear. Ilya Simonov felt an edge of uncertainty. Nikita Khrushchev should never have made those first motions of liberalization following Stalin’s death. Not if they eventually culminated in this sort of thing.

He and Catherina drove to her meeting place that evening after dinner.

She explained as they went that the group was quite informal, usually meeting at the homes of group members who had fairly large places in the country. She didn’t seem to know how it had originally begun. The meetings had been going on for a year of more before she arrived in Prague. A Czech friend had taken her along one night, and she’d been attending ever since. There were other, similar groups, in town.

“But what’s the purpose of the organization?” Simonov asked her.

She was driving her little air-cushion Moskvich. They crossed over the Vltava River by the Cechuv Bridge and turned right. On the hill above them loomed the fantastically large statue of Stalin which had been raised immediately following the Second War. She grimaced at it, muttered, “I wonder if he was insane from the first.”

He hadn’t understood her change of subject. “How do you mean?” he said.

“Stalin. I wonder how early it was in his career that he went insane.”

This was the second time in the past few days that Ilya Simonov had run into this matter of the former dictator’s mental condition. He said now, “I’ve heard the opinion before. Where did you pick it up?”

“Oh, it’s quite commonly believed in the Western countries.”

“But, have you ever been, ah, West?”

“Oh, from time to time! Berlin, Vienna, Geneva. Even Paris twice, on vacation, you know, and to various conferences. But that’s not what I mean. In the western magazines and newspapers. You can get them here in Prague now. But to get back to your question. There is no particular purpose of the organization.”

She turned the car left on Budenská and sped up into the Holesovice section of town.

The nonchalance of it all was what stopped Ilya Simonov. Here was a Party member calmly discussing whether or not the greatest Russian of them all, after Lenin, had been mad. The implications were, of course, that many of the purges, certainly the latter ones, were the result of the whims of a mental case, that the Soviet Complex had for long years been ruled by a man as unbalanced as Czar Peter the Great.

They pulled up before a rather large house that would have been called a dacha back in Moscow. Evidently, Ilya Simonov decided, whoever was sponsoring this night’s get together, was a man of prominence. He grimaced inwardly. A lot of high placed heads were going to roll before he was through.

It turned out that the host was Leos Dvorak, the internationally famed cinema director and quite an idol of Ilya Simonov in his earlier days when he’d found more time for entertainment. It was a shock to meet the man under these circumstances.

Catherina Panova was obviously quite popular among this gathering. Their host gave her an affectionate squeeze in way of greeting, then shook hands with Simonov when Catherina introduced him.

“Newly from Moscow, eh?” the film director said, squinting at the security agent. He had a sharp glance, almost, it seemed to Simonov, as though he detected the real nature of the newcomer. “It’s been several years since I’ve been to Moscow. Are things loosening up there?”

“Loosening up?” Simonov said.

Leos Dvorak laughed and said to Catherina, “Probably not. I’ve always been of the opinion that the Party’s influence would shrivel away first at its extremities. Membership would fall off abroad, in the neutral countries and in Common Europe and the Americas. Then in the so-called satellite countries. Last of all in Russia herself. But, very last, Moscow—the dullest, stodgiest, most backward intellectually, capital city in the world.” The director laughed again and turned away to greet a new guest.

This was open treason. Ilya Simonov had been lucky. Within the first few days of being in the Czech capital he’d contacted one of the groups which he’d been sent to unmask.

Now he said mildly to Catherina Panova, “He seems rather outspoken.”

She chuckled. “Leos is quite strongly opinionated. His theory is that the more successful the Party is in attaining the goals it set half a century ago, the less necessary it becomes. He’s of the opinion that it will eventually atrophy, shrivel away to the point that all that will be needed will be the slightest of pushes to end its domination.”

Ilya Simonov said, “And the rest of the group here, do they agree?”

Catherina shrugged. “Some do, some don’t. Some of them are of the opinion that it will take another blood bath. That the party will attempt to hang onto its power and will have to be destroyed.”

Simonov said evenly, “And you? What do you think?”

She frowned, prettily. “I’m not sure. I suppose I’m still in the process of forming an opinion.”

Their host was calling them together and leading the way to the garden where chairs had been set up. There seemed to be about twenty-five persons present in all. Ilya Simonov had been introduced to no more than half of them. His memory was good and already he was composing a report to Kliment Blagonravov, listing those names he recalled. Some were Czechs, some citizens of other satellite countries, several, including Catherina, were actually Russians.

The American, a newspaperman named Dickson, had an open-faced freshness, hardly plausible in an agent from the West trying to subvert Party leadership. Ilya Simonov couldn’t quite figure him out.

Dickson was introduced by Leos Dvorak who informed his guests that the American had been reluctant but had finally agreed to give them his opinion on the press on both sides of what had once been called the Iron Curtain.

Dickson grinned boyishly and said, “I’m not a public speaker, and, for that matter, I haven’t had time to put together a talk for you. I think what I’ll do is read a little clipping I’ve got here—sort of a text—and then, well, throw the meeting open to questions. I’ll try to answer anything you have to ask.”

He brought forth a piece of paper. “This is from the British writer, Huxley. I think it’s pretty good.” He cleared his voice and began to read.

Mass communication … is simply a force and like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used one way, the press, the radio and the cinema are indispensible to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory. In the field of mass communications as in almost every other field of enterprise, technological progress has hurt the Little Man and helped the Big Man. As lately as fifty years ago, every democratic country could boast of a great number of small journals and local newspapers. Thousands of country editors expressed thousands of independent opinions. Somewhere or other almost anybody could get almost anything printed. Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communications are controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication-power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State Ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something to which a Jeffersonian democrat could approve.

Ilya Simonov looked blankly at Catherina and whispered, “Why, what he’s reading is as much an attack on the West as it is on us.”

She looked at him and whispered back, “Well, why not? This gathering is to discuss freedom of the press.”

He said blankly, “But as an agent of the West—”

She frowned at him. “Mr. Dickson isn’t an agent of the West. He’s an American journalist.”

“Surely you can’t believe he has no connections with the imperialist governments.”

“Certainly, he hasn’t. What sort of meeting do you think this is? We’re not interested in Western propaganda. We’re a group of intellectuals searching for freedom of ideas.”

Ilya Simonov was taken back once again.

Colonel Ilya Simonov dismissed his cab in front of the Ministry and walked toward the gate. Down the street the same plainclothes man, who had been lounging there the last time he’d reported, once again took him in, then looked away. The two guards snapped to attention, and the security agent strode by them unnoticing.

At the lieutenant’s desk, before the offices of Kliment Blagonravov, he stopped and said, “Colonel Simonov. I have no appointment but I think the Minister will see me.”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel,” the lieutenant said. He spoke into an inter-office communicator, then looked up. “Minister Blagonravov will be able to see you in a few minutes, sir.”

Ilya Simonov stared nervously and unseeingly out a window while he waited. Gorki Park lay across the way. It, like Moscow in general, had changed a good deal in Simonov’s memory. Everything in Russia had changed a good deal, he realized. And was changing. And what was the end to be? Or was there ever an end? Of course not. There is no end, ever. Only new changes to come.

The lieutenant said, “The Minister is free now, Comrade Colonel.”

Ilya Simonov muttered something to him and pushed his way through the heavy door.

Blagonravov looked up from his desk and rumbled affectionately, “Ilya! It’s good to see you. Have a drink! You’ve lost weight, Ilya!”

His top field man sank into the same chair he’d occupied nine months before, and accepted the ice-cold vodka.

Blagonravov poured another drink for himself, then scowled at the other. “Where have you been? When you first went off to Prague, I got reports from you almost every day. These last few months I’ve hardly heard from you.” He rumbled his version of a chuckle. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d think there was a woman.”

Ilya Simonov looked at him wanly. “That too, Kliment.”

“You are jesting!”

“No. Not really. I had hoped to become engaged—soon.”

“A party member? I never thought of you as the marrying type, Ilya.”

Simonov said slowly, “Yes, a Party member. Catherina Panova, my assistant in the automobile agency in Prague.”

Blagonravov scowled heavily at him, put forth his fat lips in a thoughtful pout. He came to his feet, approached a file cabinet, fishing from his pocket a key ring. He unlocked the cabinet, brought forth a sheaf of papers with which he returned to his desk. He fumbled though them for a moment, found the paper he wanted and read it. He scowled again and looked up at his agent.

“Your first report,” he said. “Catherina Panova. From what you say here, a dangerous reactionary. Certainly she has no place in Party ranks.”

Ilya Simonov said, “Is that the complete file of my assignment?”

“Yes. I’ve kept it here in my own office. I’ve wanted this to be ultra-undercover. No one except you and me. I had hopes of you working your way up into the enemy’s organization, and I wanted no possible chance of you being betrayed. You don’t seem to have been too successful.”

“I was as successful as it’s possible to be.”

The security minister leaned forward. “Ah ha! I knew I could trust you to bring back results, Ilya. This will take Frol Zverev’s pressure off me. Number One has been riding me hard.” Blagonravov poured them both another drink. “You were able to insert yourself into their higher circles?”

Simonov said, “Kliment, there are no higher circles.”

His chief glared at him. “Nonsense!” He tapped the file with a pudgy finger. “In your early reports you described several groups, small organizations, illegal meetings. There must be an upper organization, some movement supported from the West most likely.”

Ilya Simonov was shaking his head. “No. They’re all spontaneous.”

His chief growled, “I tell you there are literally thousands of these little groups. That hardly sounds like a spontaneous phenomenon.”

“Nevertheless, that is what my investigations have led me to believe.”

Blagonravov glowered at him, uncertainly. Finally, he said, “Well, confound it, you’ve spent the better part of a year among them. What’s it all about? What do they want?”

Ilya Simonov said flatly, “They want freedom, Kliment.”

“Freedom! What do you mean, freedom? The Soviet Complex is the most highly industrialized area of the world. Our people have the highest standard of living anywhere. Don’t they understand? We’ve met all the promises we ever made. We’ve reached far and beyond the point ever dreamed of by Utopians. The people, all of the people, have it made as the Americans say.”

“Except for freedom,” Simonov said doggedly. “These groups are springing up everywhere, spontaneously. Thus far, perhaps, our ministry has been able to suppress some of them. But the pace is accelerating. They aren’t inter-organized now. But how soon they’ll start to be, I don’t know. Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a unifying idea. A new socio-political system to advocate a way of guaranteeing the basic liberties. Then, of course, the fat will be in the fire.”

“Ilya! You’ve been working too hard. I’ve pushed you too much, relied on you too much. You need a good lengthy vacation.”

Simonov shrugged. “Perhaps. But what I’ve just said is the truth.”

His chief snorted heavily. “You half sound as though you agree with them.”

“I do, Kliment.”

“I am in no mood for gags, as the Yankees say.”

Ilya Simonov looked at him wearily. He said slowly, “You sent me to investigate an epidemic, a spreading disease. Very well, I report that it’s highly contagious.”

Blagonravov poured himself more vodka angrily. “Explain yourself. What’s this all about?”

His former best field man said, “Kliment—”

“I want no familiarities from you, colonel!”

“Yes, sir.” Ilya Simonov went on doggedly. “Man never achieves complete freedom. It’s a goal never reached, but one continually striven for. The moment as small a group as two or three gather together, all of them must give up some of the individual’s freedom. When man associates with millions of his fellow men, he gives up a good many freedoms for the sake of the community. But always he works to retain as much liberty as possible, and to gain more. It’s the nature of our species, I suppose.”

“You sound as though you’ve become corrupted by Western ideas,” the security head muttered dangerously.

Simonov shook his head. “No. The same thing applies over there. Even in countries such as Sweden and Switzerland, where institutions are as free as anywhere in the world, the people are continually striving for more. Governments and socioeconomic systems seem continually to whittle away at individual liberty. But always man fights back and tries to achieve new heights for himself.

“In the name of developing our country, the Party all but eliminated freedom in the Soviet Complex, but now the goals have been reached and the people will no longer put up with us, sir.”

“Us!” Kliment Blagonravov growled bitterly. “You are hardly to be considered in the Party’s ranks any longer, Simonov. Why in the world did you ever return here?” He sneered fatly. “Your best bet would have been to escape over the border into the West.”

Simonov looked at the file on the other’s desk. “I wanted to regain those reports I made in the early days of my assignment. I’ve listed in them some fifty names, names of men and women who are now my friends.”

The fat lips worked in and out. “It must be that woman. You’ve become soft in the head, Simonov.” Blagonravov tapped the file beneath his heavy fingers. “Never fear, before the week is out these fifty persons will be either in prison or in their graves.”

With a fluid motion, Ilya Simonov produced a small caliber gun, a special model designed for security agents. An unusual snout proclaimed its quiet virtues as guns go.

“No, Kliment,” Ilya Simonov said.

“Are you mad!”

“No, Kliment, but I must have those reports.” Ilya Simonov came to his feet and reached for them.

With a roar of rage, Kliment Blagonravov slammed open a drawer and dove a beefy paw into it. With shocking speed for so heavy a man, he scooped up a heavy military revolver.

And Colonel Ilya Simonov shot him neatly and accurately in the head. The silenced gun made no more sound than a pop.

Blagonravov, his dying eyes registering unbelieving shock, fell back into his heavy swivel chair.

Simonov worked quickly. He gathered up his reports, checked quickly to see they were all there. Struck a match, lit one of the reports and dropped it into the large ashtray on the desk. One by one he lit them all and when all were consumed, stirred the ashes until they were completely pulverized.

He poured himself another vodka, downed it, stiff wristed, then without turning to look at the dead man again, made his way to the door.

He slipped out and said to the lieutenant, “The Minister says that he is under no circumstances to be disturbed for the next hour.”

The lieutenant frowned at him. “But he has an appointment.”

Colonel Ilya Simonov shrugged. “Those were his instructions. Not to be bothered under any circumstances.”

“But it was an appointment with Number One!”

That was bad. And unforeseen. Ilya Simonov said, “It’s probably been canceled. All I’m saying is that Minister Blagonravov instructs you not to bother him under any circumstances for the next hour.”

He left the other and strode down the corridor, keeping himself from too obvious, a quickened pace.

At the entrance to the Ministry, he shot his glance up and down the street. He was in the clutch now, and knew it. He had few illusions.

Not a cab in sight. He began to cross the road toward the park. In a matter of moments there, he’d be lost in the trees and shrubbery. He had rather vague plans. Actually, he was playing things as they came. There was a close friend in whose apartment he could hide, a man who owed him his life. He could disguise himself. Possibly buy or borrow a car. If he could get back to Prague, he was safe. Perhaps he and Catherina could defect to the West.

Somebody was screaming something from a window in the Ministry.

Ilya Simonov quickened his pace. He was nearly across the street now. He thought, foolishly, Whoever that is shouting is so excited he sounds more like a woman than a man.

Another voice took up the shout. It was the plainclothes man. Feet began pounding.

There were two more shouts. The guards. But he was across now. The shrubs were only a foot away.

The shattering blackness hit him in the back of the head. It was over immediately.

Afterwards, the plainclothes man and the two guards stood over him. Men began pouring from the Ministry in their direction.

Colonel Ilya Simonov was a meaningless, bloody heap on the edge of the park’s grass.

The guard who had shot said, “He killed the Minister. He must have been crazy to think he could get away with it. What did he want?”

“Well, we’ll never know now,” the plainclothesman grunted.

Ultima Thule

At least he’d got far enough to wind up with a personal interview. It’s one thing doing up an application and seeing it go onto an endless tape and be fed into the maw of a machine and then to receive, in a matter of moments, a neatly printed rejection. It’s another thing to receive an appointment to be interviewed by a placement officer in the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, Department of Personnel. Ronny Bronston was under no illusions. Nine out of ten men of his age annually made the same application. Almost all were annually rejected. Statistically speaking practically nobody ever got an interplanetary position. But he’d made step one along the path of a lifetime ambition.

He stood at easy attention immediately inside the door. At the desk at the far side of the room the placement officer was going through a sheaf of papers. He looked up and said, “Ronald Bronston? Sit down. You’d like an interplanetary assignment, eh? So would I.”

Ronny took the chair. For a moment he tried to appear alert, earnest, ambitious but not too ambitious, fearless, devoted to the cause, and indispensable. For a moment. Then he gave it up and looked like Ronny Bronston.

The other looked up and took him in. The personnel official saw a man of averages. In the late twenties. Average height, weight and breadth. Pleasant of face in an average sort of way, but not handsome. Less than sharp in dress, hair inclined to be on the undisciplined side. Brown of hair, dark of eye. In a crowd, inconspicuous. In short, Ronny Bronston.

The personnel officer grunted. He pushed a button, said something into his order box. A card slid into the slot and he took it out and stared gloomily at it.

“What’re your politics?” he said.

“Politics?” Ronny Bronston said. “I haven’t any politics. My father and grandfather before me have been citizens of United Planets. There hasn’t been any politics in our family for three generations.”

“Family?”

“None.”

The other grunted and marked the card. “Racial prejudices?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have any racial prejudices? Any at all.”

“No.”

The personnel officer said, “Most people answer that way at first, these days, but some don’t at second. For instance, suppose you had to have a blood transfusion. Would you have any objection to it being blood donated by, say, a Negro, a Chinese, or, say, a Jew?”

Ronny ticked it off on his fingers. “One of my greatgrandfathers was a French colon who married a Moroccan girl. The Moors are a blend of Berber, Arab, Jew and Negro. Another of my greatgrandfathers was a Hawaiian. They’re largely a blend of Polynesians, Japanese, Chinese and Caucasians especially Portuguese. Another of my greatgrandfathers was Irish, English and Scotch. He married a girl who was half Latvian, half Russian.” Ronny wound it up. “Believe me, if I had a blood transfusion from just anybody at all, the blood would feel right at home.”

The interviewer snorted, even as he marked the card. “That accounts for three greatgrandfathers,” he said lightly. “You seem to have made a study of your family tree. What was the other one?”

Rocky said expressionlessly, “A Texan.”

The secretary shrugged and looked at the card again. “Religion?”

“Reformed Agnostic,” Ronny said. This one was possibly where he ran into a brick wall. Many of the planets had strong religious beliefs of one sort or another. Some of them had state religions and you either belonged or else.

“Is there any such church?” the personnel officer frowned.

“No. I’m a one-man member. I’m of the opinion that if there are any greater-powers-that-be They’re keeping the fact from us. And if that’s the way They want it, it’s Their business. If and when They want to contact me—one of Their puppets dangling from a string—then I suppose They’ll do it. Meanwhile, I’ll wait.”

The other said interestedly, “You think that if there is a Higher Power and if It ever wants to get in touch with you, It will?”

“Um-m-m. In Its own good time. Sort of a don’t call Me, thing, I’ll call you.”

The personnel officer said, “There have been a few revealed religions, you know.”

“So they said, so they said. None of them have made much sense to me. If a Superpower wanted to contact man, it seems unlikely to me that it’d be all wrapped up in a lot of complicated gobbledegook. It would all be very clear indeed.”

The personnel officer sighed. He marked the card, stuck it back into the slot in his order box and it disappeared.

He looked up at Ronny Bronston. “All right, that’s all.”

Ronny came to his feet. “Well, what happened?”

The other grinned at him sourly. “Darned if I know,” he said. “By the time you get to the outer office, you’ll probably find out.” He scratched the end of his nose and said, “I sometimes wonder what I’m doing here.”

Ronny thanked him, told him goodbye, and left.

In the outer office a girl looked up from a card she’d just pulled from her own order box. “Ronald Bronston?”

“That’s right.”

She handed the card to him. “You’re to go to the office of Ross Metaxa in the Octagon, Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs, Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, Section G.”

In a lifetime spent in first preparing for United Planets employment and then in working for the organization, Ronny Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He’d seen photographs, Tri-Di broadcasts and he’d heard several thousand jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around in the building, but he’d never been there. For that matter, he’d never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main offices in New Copenhagen.

His card was evidently all that he needed for entry.

At the sixth gate he dismissed his car and let it shoot back into the traffic mess. He went up to one of the guard-guides and presented the card.

The guide inspected it. “Section G of the Bureau of Investigation,” he muttered. “Every day, something new. I never heard of it.”

“It’s probably some outfit in charge of cleaning the heads on space liners.” Ronny said unhappily. He’d never heard of it either.

“Well, it’s no problem,” the guard-guide said. He summoned a three-wheel, fed the coordinates into it from Ronny’s card, handed the card back and flipped an easy salute. “You’ll soon know.”

The scooter slid into the Octagon’s hall traffic and proceeded up one corridor, down another, twice taking to ascending ramps. Ronny had read somewhere the total miles of corridors in the Octagon. He hadn’t believed the figures at the time. Now he believed them. He must have traversed several miles before they got to the Department of Justice alone. It was another quarter mile to the Bureau of Investigation.

The scooter eventually came to a halt, waited long enough for Ronny to dismount and then hurried back into the traffic.

He entered the office. A neatly uniformed reception girl with a harassed and cynical eye looked up from her desk. “Ronald Bronston?” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Where’ve you been?” She had a snappy cuteness. “The commissioner has been awaiting you. Go through that door and to your left.”

Ronny went through that door and to the left. There was another door, inconspicuously lettered Ross Metaxa, Commissioner, Section G. Ronny knocked and the door opened.

Ross Metaxa was going through a wad of papers. He looked up; a man in the middle years, sour of expression, moist of eye as though he either drank too much or slept too little.

“Sit down,” he said. “You’re Ronald Bronston, eh? What do they call you, Ronny? It says here you’ve got a sense of humor. That’s one of the first requirements in this lunatic department.”

Ronny sat down and tried to form some opinions of the other by his appearance. He was reminded of nothing so much as the stereotype city editor you saw in the historical romance Tri-Ds. All that was needed was for Metaxa to start banging on buttons and yelling something about tearing down the front page, whatever that meant.

Metaxa said, “It also says you have some queer hobbies. Judo, small weapons target shooting, mountain climbing—” He looked up from the reports. “Why does anybody climb mountains?”

Ronny said, “Nobody’s ever figured out.” That didn’t seem to be enough, especially since Ross Metaxa was staring at him, so he added, “Possibly we devotees keep doing it in hopes that someday somebody’ll find out.”

Ross Metaxa said sourly, “Not too much humor, please. You don’t act as though getting this position means much to you.”

Ronny said slowly, “I figured out some time ago that every young man on Earth yearns for a job that will send him shuttling from one planet to another. To achieve it they study, they sweat, they make all out efforts to meet and suck up to anybody they think might help. Finally, when and if they get an interview for one of the few openings, they spruce up in their best clothes, put on their best party manners, present themselves as the sincere, high I.Q., ambitious young men that they are—and then flunk their chance. I decided I might as well be what I am.”

Ross Metaxa looked at him. “OK,” he said finally. “We’ll give you a try.”

Ronny said blankly, “You mean I’ve got the job?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Probably,” Metaxa said. He yawned. “Do you know what Section G handles?”

“Well no, but as for me, just so I get off Earth and see some of the galaxy.”

Metaxa had been sitting with his heels on his desk. Now he put them down and reached a hand into a drawer to emerge with a brown bottle and two glasses. “Do you drink?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Even during working hours?” Metaxa scowled.

“When occasion calls.”

“Good,” Metaxa said. He poured two drinks. “You’ll get your fill of seeing the galaxy,” he said. “Not that there’s much to see. Man can settle only Earth-type planets and after you’ve seen a couple of hundred you’ve seen them all.”

Ronny sipped at his drink, then blinked reproachfully down into the glass.

Metaxa said, “Good, eh? A kind of tequila they make on Deneb Eight. Bunch of Mexicans settled there.”

“What,” said Ronny hoarsely, “do they make it out of?”

“Lord only knows,” Metaxa said. “To get back to Section G. We’re Interplanetary Security. In short, Department Cloak and Dagger. Would you be willing to die for the United Planets, Bronston?”

That curve had come too fast. Ronny blinked again. “Only in emergency,” he said. “Who’d want to kill me?”

Metaxa poured another drink. “Many of the people you’ll be working with,” he said.

“Well, why? What will I be doing?”

“You’ll be representing United Planets,” Metaxa explained. “Representing United Planets in cases where the local situation is such that the folks you’re working among will be teed off at the organization.”

“Well, why are they members if they don’t like the U.P.?”

“That’s a good question,” Metaxa said. He yawned. “I guess I’ll have to go into my speech.” He finished his drink. “Now, shut up till I give you some background. You’re probably full of a lot of nonsense you picked up in school.”

Ronny shut up. He’d expected more of an air of dedication in the Octagon and in such ethereal departments as that of Interplanetary Justice, however, he was in now and not adverse to picking up some sophistication beyond the ken of the Earthbound employees of U.P.

The other’s voice took on a far away, albeit bored tone. “It seems that most of the times man gets a really big idea, he goes off half cocked. Just one example. Remember when the ancient Hellenes exploded into the Mediterranean? A score of different City-States began sending out colonies, which in turn sprouted colonies of their own. Take Syracuse, on Sicily. Hardly was she established than, bingo, she sent off colonists to Southern Italy, and they in turn to Southern France, Corsica, the Balearics. Greeks were exploding all over the place, largely without adequate plans, without rhyme or reason. Take Alexander. Roamed off all the way to India, founding cities and colonies of Greeks all along the way.”

The older man shifted in his chair. “You wonder what I’m getting at, eh? Well, much the same thing is happening in man’s explosion into space, now that he has the ability to leave the solar system behind. Dashing off half cocked, in all directions, he’s flowing out over this section of the galaxy without plan, without rhyme or reason. I take that last back, he has reasons all right—some of the screwiest. Religious reasons, racial reasons, idealistic reasons, political reasons, altruistic reasons and mercenary reasons.

“Inadequate ships, manned by small numbers of inadequate people, setting out to find their own planets, to establish themselves on one of the numberless uninhabited worlds that offer themselves to colonization and exploitation.”

Ronny cleared his throat. “Well, isn’t that a good thing, sir?”

Ross Metaxa looked at him and grunted. “What difference does it make if it’s good or not? It’s happening. We’re spreading our race out over tens of hundreds of new worlds in the most haphazard fashion. As a result, we of United Planets now have a chaotic mishmash on our hands. How we manage to keep as many planets in the organization as we do, sometimes baffles me. I suppose most of them are afraid to drop out, conscious of the protection U.P. gives against each other.”

He picked up a report. “Here’s Monet, originally colonized by a bunch of painters, writers, musicians and such. They had dreams of starting a new race”—Metaxa snorted—“with everybody artists. They were all so impractical that they even managed to crash their ship on landing. For three hundred years they were uncontacted. What did they have in the way of government by that time? A military theocracy, something like the Aztecs of Pre-Conquest Mexico. A matriarchy, at that. And what’s their religion based on? That of ancient Phoenicia including plenty of human sacrifice to good old Moloch. What can United Planets do about it, now that they’ve become a member? Work away very delicately, trying to get them to at least eliminate the child sacrifice phase of their culture. Will they do it? Hell no, not if they can help it. The Head Priestess and her clique are afraid that if they don’t have the threat of sacrifice to hold over the people, they’ll be overthrown.”

Ronny was surprised. “I’d never heard of a member planet like that. Monet?”

Metaxa sighed. “No, of course not. You’ve got a lot to learn, Ronny, my lad. First of all, what’re Articles One and Two of the United Planets Charter?”

That was easy. Ronny recited. “Article One: The United Planets organization shall take no steps to interfere with the internal political, socioeconomic, or religious institutions of its member planets. Article Two: No member planets of United Planets shall interfere with the internal political, socioeconomic or religious institutions of any other member planet.” He looked at the department head. “But what’s that got to do with the fact that I was unfamiliar with even the existence of Monet?”

“Suppose one of the advanced planets, or even Earth itself,” Metaxa growled, “openly discussed in magazines, on newscasts, or wherever, the religious system of Monet. A howl would go up among the liberals, the progressives, the do-gooders. And the howl would be heard on the other advanced planets. Eventually, the citizen in the street on Monet would hear about it and be affected. And before you knew it, a howl would go up from Monet’s government. Why? Because the other planets would be interfering with her internal affairs, simply by discussing them.”

“So what you mean is,” Ronny said, “part of our job is to keep information about Monet’s government and religion from being discussed at all on other member planets.”

“That’s right,” Metaxa nodded. “And that’s just one of our dirty little jobs. One of many. Section G, believe me, gets them all. Which brings us to your first assignment.”

Ronny inched forward in his chair. “It takes me into space?”

“It takes you into space all right,” Metaxa snorted. “At least it will after a few months of indoctrination. I’m sending you out after a legend, Ronny. You’re fresh, possibly you’ll get some ideas older men in the game haven’t thought of.”

“A legend?”

“I’m sending you to look for Tommy Paine. Some members of the department don’t think he exists. I do.”

“Tommy Paine?”

“A pseudonym that somebody hung on him way back before even my memory in this Section. Did you ever hear of Thomas Paine in American history?”

“He wrote a pamphlet during the Revolutionary War, didn’t he?”

“Common Sense,” Metaxa nodded. “But he was more than that. He was born in England but went to America as a young man and his writings probably did as much as anything to put over the revolt against the British. But that wasn’t enough. When that revolution was successful he went back to England and tried to start one there. The government almost caught him, but he escaped and got to France where he participated in the French Revolution.”

“He seemed to get around,” Ronny Bronston said.

“And so does this namesake of his. We’ve been trying to catch up with him for some twenty years. How long before that he was active, we have no way of knowing. It was some time before we became aware of the fact that half the revolts, rebellions, revolutions and such that occur in the United Planets have his dirty finger stirring around in them.”

“But you said some department members don’t believe in his existence.”

Metaxa grunted. “They’re working on the theory that no one man could do all that Tommy Paine has laid to him. Possibly it’s true that he sometimes gets the blame for accomplishments not his. Or, for that matter, possibly he’s more than one person. I don’t know.”

“Well,” Ronny said hesitantly, “what’s an example of his activity?”

Metaxa picked up another report from the confusion of his desk. “Here’s one only a month old. Dictator on the planet Megas. Kidnapped and forced to resign. There’s still confusion but it looks as though a new type of government will be formed now.”

“But how do they know it wasn’t just some dissatisfied citizens of Megas?”

“It seems as though the kidnap vehicle was an old fashioned Earth-type helicopter. There were no such on Megas. So Section G suspects it’s a possible Tommy Paine case. We could be wrong, of course. That’s why I say the man’s in the way of being a legend. Perhaps the others are right and he doesn’t even exist. I think he does, and if so, it’s our job to get him and put him out of circulation.”

Ronny said slowly, “But why would that come under our jurisdiction? It seems to me that it would be up to the police of whatever planet he was on.”

Ross Metaxa looked thoughtfully at his brown bottle, shook his head and returned it to its drawer. He looked at a desk watch. “Don’t read into the United Planets organization more than there is. It’s a fragile institution with practically no independent powers to wield. Every member planet is jealous of its prerogatives, which is understandable. It’s no mistake that Articles One and Two are the basic foundation of the Charter. No member planet wants to be interfered with by any other or by United Planets as an organization. They want to be left alone.

“Within our ranks we have planets with every religion known to man throughout the ages. Everything ranging from primitive animism to the most advanced philosophic ethic. We have every political system ever dreamed of, and every socioeconomic system. It can all be blamed on the crackpot manner in which we’re colonizing. Any minority, no matter how small—religious, political, racial, or whatever—if it can collect the funds to buy or rent a spacecraft, can dash off on its own, find a new Earth-type planet and set up in business.

“Fine. One of the prime jobs of Section G is to carry out, to enforce, Articles One and Two of the Charter. A planet with Buddhism as its state religion, doesn’t want some diehard Baptist missionary stirring up controversy. A planet with a feudalistic socioeconomic systems doesn’t want some hotshot interplanetary businessman coming in with some big deal that would eventually cause the feudalistic nobility to be tossed onto the ash heap. A planet with a dictatorship doesn’t want subversives from some democracy trying to undermine their institutions—and vice versa.”

“And its our job to enforce all this, eh?” Ronny said.

“That’s right,” Metaxa told him sourly. “It’s not always the nicest job in the system. However, if you believe in United Planets, an organization attempting to coordinate in such manner as it can, the efforts of its member planets, for the betterment of all, then you must accept Section G and Interplanetary Security.”

Ronny Bronston thought about it.

Metaxa added, “That’s why one of the requirements of this job is that you yourself be a citizen of United Planets, rather than of any individual planet, have no religious affiliations, no political beliefs, and no racial prejudices. You’ve got to be able to stand aloof.”

“Yeah,” Ronny said thoughtfully.

Ross Metaxa looked at his watch again and sighed wearily. “I’ll turn you over to one of my assistants,” he said. “I’ll see you again, though, before you leave.”

“Before I leave?” Ronny said, coming to his feet. “But where do I start looking for this Tommy Paine?”

“How the hell would I know?” Ross Metaxa growled.

In the outer office, Ronny said to the receptionist, “Commissioner Metaxa said for me to get in touch with Sid Jakes.”

She said, “I’m Irene Kasansky. Are you with us?”

Ronny said, “I beg your pardon?”

She said impatiently, “Are you going to be with the Section? If you are, I’ve got to clear you with your old job. You were in statistics over in New Copenhagen, weren’t you?”

Somehow it seemed far away now, the job he’d held for more than five years. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, Commissioner Metaxa has given me an appointment.”

She looked up at him. “Probably to look for Tommy Paine.”

He was taken aback. “That’s right. How did you know?”

“There was talk. This Section is pretty well integrated.” She grimaced, but on her it looked good. “One big happy family. High interdepartmental morale. That sort of jetsam.” She flicked some switches. “You’ll find Supervisor Jakes through that door, one to your left, two to your right.”

He could have asked one what to his left and two what to his right, but evidently Irene Kasansky thought he had enough information to get him to his destination. She’d gone back to her work.

It was one turn to his left and two turns to his right. The door was lettered simply Sidney Jakes. He knocked and a voice shouted happily, “It’s open. It’s always open.”

Supervisor Jakes was as informal as his superior. His attire was on the happy-go-lucky side, more suited for sports wear than a fairly high ranking job in the ultra-staid Octagon.

He couldn’t have been much older than Ronny Bronston but he had a nervous vitality about him that would have worn out the other in a few hours. He jumped up and shook hands. “You must be Bronston. Call me Sid.” He waved a hand at a typed report he’d been reading. “Now I’ve seen them all. They’ve just applied for entry to United Planets. Republic. What a name, eh?”

“What?” Ronny said.

“Sit down, sit down.” He rushed Ronny to a chair, saw him seated, returned to the desk and flicked an order box switch. “Irene,” he said, “do up a badge for Ronny, will you? You’ve got his code, haven’t you? Good. Send it over. Bronze, of course.”

Sid Jakes turned back to Ronny and grinned at him. He motioned to the report again. “What a name for a planet. Republic. Bunch of screwballs, again. Out in the vicinity of Sirius. Based their system on Plato’s Republic. Have to go the whole way. Don’t even speak Basic. Certainly not. They speak Ancient Greek. That’s going to be a neat trick, finding interpreters. How’d you like the Old Man?”

Ronny said, dazed at the conversational barrage, “Old Man? Oh, you mean Commissioner Metaxa.”

“Sure, sure,” Sid grinned, perching himself on the edge of the desk. “Did he give you that drink of tequila during working hours routine? He’d like to poison every new agent we get. What a character.”

The grin was infectious. Ronny said carefully, “Well, I did think his method of hiring a new man was a little—cavalier.”

“Cavalier, yet,” Sid Jakes chortled. “Look, don’t get the Old Man wrong. He knows what he’s doing. He always knows what he’s doing.”

“But he took me on after only two or three minutes conversation.”

Jakes cocked his head to one side. “Oh? You think so? When did you first apply for interplanetary assignment, Ronny?”

“I don’t know, about three years ago.”

Jakes nodded. “Well, depend on it, you’ve been under observation for that length of time. At any one period, Section G is investigating possibly a thousand potential agents. We need men but qualifications are high.”

He hopped down from his position, sped around to the other side of the desk and lowered himself into his chair. “Don’t get the wrong idea, though. You’re not in. You’re on probation. Whatever the assignment the Old Man gave you, you’ve got to carry it out successfully before you’re full fledged.” He flicked the order-box switch and said, “Irene, where the devil’s Ronny’s badge?”

Ronny Bronston heard the office girl’s voice answer snappishly.

“All right, all right,” Jakes said. “I love you, too. Send it in when it comes.” He turned to Ronny. “What is your assignment?”

“He wants me to go looking for some firebrand nicknamed Tommy Paine. I’m supposed to arrest him. The commissioner said you’d give me details.”

Sid Jakes’ face went serious. He puckered up his lips. “Wow, that’ll be a neat trick to pull off,” he said. He flicked the order-box switch again. Irene’s voice snapped something before he could say anything and Sid Jakes grinned and said, “OK, OK, darling, but if this is the way you’re going to be I won’t marry you. Then what will the children say? Besides, that’s not what I called about. Have ballistics do up a model H gun for Ronny, will you? Be sure it’s adjusted to his code.”

He flicked off the order box and turned back to Ronny. “I understand you’re familiar with handguns. It’s in this report on you.”

Ronny nodded. He was just beginning to adjust to this freewheeling character. “What will I need a gun for?”

Jakes laughed. “Heavens to Betsy, you babe in the woods. Do you realize this Tommy Paine character has supposedly stirred up a couple of score wars, revolutions and revolts? Not to speak of having laid in his lap two or three dozen assassinations. He’s a quick lad with a gun. A regular Nihilist.”

“Nihilist?”

Jakes chuckled. “When you’ve been in this Section for a while, you’ll be familiar with every screwball outfit man has ever dreamed up. The Nihilists were a European group, mostly Russian, back in the Nineteenth Century. They believed that by bumping off a few Grand Dukes and a Czar or so they could force the ruling class to grant reforms. Sometimes they were pretty ingenious. Blew up trains, that sort of thing.”

“Look here,” Ronny said, “what motivates this Paine fellow? What’s he get out of all this trouble he stirs up?”

“Search me. Nobody seems to know. Some think he’s a mental case. For one thing, he’s not consistent.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, he’ll go to one planet and break his back trying to overthrow, say, feudalism. Then, possibly after being successful, he goes to another planet and devotes his energies to establishing the same socioeconomic system.”

Ronny assimilated that. “You’re one of those who believes he exists?”

“Oh, he exists all right, all right,” Sid Jakes said happily. “Matter of fact, I almost ran into him a few years ago.”

Ronny leaned forward. “I guess I ought to know about it. The more information I have, the better.”

“Sure, sure,” Jakes said. “This deal of mine was on one of the Aldebaran planets. A bunch of nature boys had settled there.”

“Nature boys?”

“Um-m-m. Back to nature. The trouble with the human race is that it’s got too far away from nature. So a whole flock of them landed on this planet. They call it Mother, of all things. They landed and set up a primitive society. Absolute stone age. No metals. Lived by the chase and by picking berries, wild fruit, that sort of thing. Not even any agriculture. Wore skins. Bows and arrows were the nearest thing they allowed themselves in the way of mechanical devices.”

“Good grief,” Ronny said.

“It was a laugh,” Jakes told him. “I was assigned there as Section G representative with the U.P. organization. Picture it. We had to wear skins for clothes. We had to confine ourselves to two or three long houses. Something like the American Iroquois lived in before Columbus. Their society on Mother was based on primitive communism. The clan, the phratry, the tribe. Their religion was mostly a matter of knocking into everybody’s head that any progress was taboo. Oh, it was great.”

“Well, were they happy?”

“What’s happiness? I suppose they were as happy as anybody ever averages. Frankly, I didn’t mind the assignment. Lots of fishing, lots of hunting.”

Ronny said, “Well, where does Tommy Paine come in?”

“He snuck up on us. Started way back in the boondocks away from any of the larger primitive settlements. Went around putting himself over as a holy man. Cured people of various things from gangrene to eye diseases. Given antibiotics and such, you can imagine how successful he was.”

“Well, what harm did he do?”

“I didn’t say he did any harm. But in that manner he made himself awfully popular. Then he’d pull some trick like showing them how to smelt iron, and distribute some corn and wheat seed around and plant the idea of agriculture. The local witch doctors would try to give him a hard time, but the people figured he was a holy man.”

“Well, what happened finally?” Ronny wasn’t following too well.

“Communications being what they were, before he’d been discovered by the central organization—they had a kind of Council of Tribes which met once a year—he’d planted so many ideas that they couldn’t be stopped. The young people’d never go back to flint knives, once introduced to iron. We went looking for friend Tommy Paine, but he got wind of it and took off. We even found where he’d hidden his little space cruiser. Oh, it was Paine, all right, all right.”

“But what harm did he do? I don’t understand,” Ronny scowled.

“He threw the whole shebang on its ear. Last I heard, the planet had broken up into three main camps. They were whaling away at each other like the Assyrians and Egyptians. Iron weapons, chariots, domesticated horses. Agriculture was sweeping the planet. Population was exploding. Men were making slaves out of each other, to put them to work. Oh, it was a mess from the viewpoint of the original nature boys.”

A red light flickered on his desk and Sid Jakes opened a delivery drawer and dipped his hand into it. It emerged with a flat wallet. He tossed it to Ronny Bronston.

“Here you are. Your badge.”

Ronny opened the wallet and examined it. He’d never seen one before, but for that matter he’d never heard of Section G before that morning. It was a simple enough bronze badge. It said on it, merely, Ronald Bronston, Section G, Bureau of Investigation, United Planets.

Sid Jakes explained. “You’ll get cooperation with that through the Justice Department anywhere you go. We’ll brief you further on procedure during indoctrination. You in turn, of course, are to cooperate with any other agent of Section G. You’re under orders of anyone with”—his hand snaked into a pocket and emerged with a wallet similar to Ronny’s—“a silver badge, carried by a First Grade Agent, or a gold one of Supervisor rank.”

Ronny noted that his badge wasn’t really bronze. It had a certain sheen, a brightness.

Jakes said, “Here, look at this.” He tossed his own badge to the new man. Ronny looked down at it in surprise. The gold had gone dull.

Jakes laughed. “Now give me yours.”

Ronny got up and walked over to him and handed it over. As soon as the other man’s hand touched it, the bronze lost its sheen.

Jakes handed it back. “See, it’s tuned to you alone,” he said. “And mine is tuned to my code. Nobody can swipe a Section G badge and impersonate an agent. If anybody ever shows you a badge that doesn’t have its sheen, you know he’s a fake. Neat trick, eh?”

“Very neat,” Ronny admitted. He returned the other’s gold badge. “Look, to get back to this Tommy Paine.”

But the red light flickered again and Jakes brought forth from the delivery drawer a handgun complete with shoulder harness. “Nasty weapon,” he said. “But we’d better go on down to the armory and show you its workings.”

He stood up. “Oh, yes, don’t let me forget to give you a communicator. A real gizmo. About as big as a woman’s vanity case. Puts you in immediate contact with the nearest Section G office, no matter how near or far away it is. Or, if you wish, in contact with our offices here in the Octagon. Very neat trick.”

He led Ronny from his office and down the corridors beyond to an elevator. He said happily, “This is a crazy outfit, this Section G. You’ll probably love it. Everybody does.”

Ronny learned to love Section G—in moderation.

He was initially taken aback by the existence of the organization at all. He’d known, of course, of the Department of Justice and even of the Bureau of Investigation, but Section G was hush-hush and not even United Planets publications ever mentioned it.

The problems involved in remaining hush-hush weren’t as great as all that. The very magnitude of the U.P. which involved more than two thousand member planets, allowed of departments and bureaus hidden away in the endless stretches of red tape.

In fact, although Ronny Bronston had spent the better part of his life, thus far, in studying for a place in the organization, and then working in the Population Statistics Department for some years, he was only now beginning to get the overall picture of the workings of the mushrooming, chaotic United Planets organization.

It was Earth’s largest industry by far. In fact, for all practical purposes it was her only major industry. Tourism, yes, but even that, in a way, was related to the United Planets organization. Millions of visitors whose ancestors had once emigrated from the mother planet, streamed back in racial nostalgia. Streamed back to see the continents and oceans, the Arctic and the Antarctic, the Amazon River and Mount Everest, the Sahara and New York City, the ruins of Rome and Athens, the Vatican, the Louvre and the Hermitage.

But the populace of Earth, in its hundreds of millions were largely citizens of United Planets and worked in the organization and with its auxiliaries such as the Space Forces.

Section G? To his surprise, Ronny found that Ross Metaxa’s small section of the Bureau of Investigation seemed almost as great a secret within the Bureau as it was to the man in the street. At one period, Ronny wondered if it were possible that this was a department which had been lost in the wilderness of boondoggling that goes on in any great bureaucracy. Had Section G been set up a century or so ago and then forgotten by those who had originally thought there was a need for it? In the same way that it is usually more difficult to get a statute off the lawbooks than it was originally to pass it, in the same manner eliminating an office, with its employees can prove more difficult than originally establishing it.

But that wasn’t it. In spite of the informality, the unconventional brashness of its personnel on all levels, and the seeming chaos in which its tasks were done, Section G was no make-work project set up to provide juicy jobs for the relatives of high ranking officials. To the contrary, it didn’t take long in the Section before anybody with open eyes could see that Ross Metaxa was privy to the decisions made by the upper echelons of U.P.

Ronny Bronston came to the conclusion that the appointment he’d received was putting him in a higher bracket of the U.P. hierarchy than he’d at first imagined.

His indoctrination course was a strain such as he’d never known in school years. Ross Metaxa was evidently of the opinion that a man could assimilate concentrated information at a rate several times faster than any professional educator ever dreamed possible. No threats were made, but Ronny realized that he could be dropped even more quickly than he’d seemed to have been taken on. There were no classes, to either push or retard the rate of study. He worked with a series of tutors, and pushed himself. The tutors were almost invariably Section G agents, temporarily in Greater Washington between assignments, or for briefing on this phase or that of their work.

Even as he studied, Ronny Bronston kept the eventual assignment, at which he was to prove himself, in mind. He made a point of inquiring of each agent he met, about Tommy Paine.

The name was known to all, but no two reacted in the same manner. Several of them even brushed the whole matter aside as pure legend. Nobody could accomplish all the trouble that Tommy Paine had supposedly stirred up.

To one of these, Ronny said plaintively, “See here, the Old Man believes in him, Sid Jakes believes in him. My final appointment depends on arresting him. How can I ever secure this job, if I’m chasing a myth?”

The other shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I’ve got my own problems. OK, now, let’s run over this question of Napoleonic law. There are at least two hundred planets that base their legal system on it.”

But the majority of his fellow employees in Section G had strong enough opinions on the interplanetary firebrand. Three or four even claimed to have seen him fleetingly, although no two descriptions jibed. That, of course, could be explained. The man could resort to plastic surgery and other disguise.

Theories there were in plenty, some of them going back long years, and some of them pure fable.

“Look,” Ronny said in disgust one day after a particularly unbelievable siege with two agents recently returned from a trouble spot in a planetary system that involved three aggressive worlds which revolved about the same sun. “Look, it’s impossible for one man to accomplish all this. He’s blamed for half the coups d’état, revolts and upheavals that have taken place for the past quarter century. It’s obvious nonsense. Why, a revolutionist usually spends the greater part of his life toppling a government. Then, once it’s toppled, he spends the rest of his life trying to set up a new government—and he’s usually unsuccessful.”

One of the others was shaking his head negatively. “You don’t understand this Tommy Paine’s system, Bronston.”

“You sure don’t,” the other agent, a Nigerian, grinned widely. “I’ve been on planets where he’d operated.”

Ronny leaned forward. The three of them were having a beer in a part of the city once called Baltimore. “You have?” he said. “Tell me about it, eh? The more background I get on this guy, the better.”

“Sure. And this’ll give you an idea of how he operates, how he can get so much trouble done. Well, I was on this planet Goshen, understand? It had kind of a strange history. A bunch of colonists went out there, oh, four or five centuries ago. Pretty healthy expedition, as such outfits go. Bright young people, lots of equipment, lots of know-how and books. Well, through sheer bad luck everything went wrong from the beginning. Everything. Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all their communications technicians. They lost contact with the outside. OK. Within a couple of centuries they’d gotten into a state of chattel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They were at this stage when a scout ship from the U.P. Space Forces discovered them and, of course, they joined up.”

“Where does Tommy Paine come in?” Ronny said. He signaled to a waiter for more beer.

“He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on Goshen, understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and Two of the U.P. Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that if their people ever came to know about more advanced socioeconomic systems it’d be the end of Goshen’s Golden Age. So they allowed practically no intercourse. No contact whatsoever between U.P. personnel and anyone outside the upper class, understand? All right. That’s where Tommy Paine came in. It couldn’t have taken him more than a couple of months at most.”

Ronny Bronston was fascinated. “What’d he do?”

“He introduced the steam engine, and then left.”

Ronny was looking at him blankly. “Steam engine?”

“That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny,” the Nigerian said. “That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them.”

Ronny was still blank. The waiter came up with the steins of beer, and Ronny took one and drained half of it without taking his eyes from the storyteller.

The other agent took it up. “Don’t you see? Their system was based on chattel slavery, hand labor. Given machinery and it collapses. Chattel slavery isn’t practical in a mechanized society. Too expensive a labor force, for one thing. Besides, you need an educated man and one with some initiative—qualities that few slaves possess—to run an industrial society.”

Ronny finished his beer. “Smart cooky, isn’t he?”

“He’s smart all right. But I’ve got a still better example of his fouling up a whole planetary socioeconomic system in a matter of weeks. A friend of mine was working on a planet with a highly-developed feudalism. Barons, lords, dukes, counts and no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles and fortresses up on the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the work in the fields, provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the continual fighting that the aristocracy carried on. Very similar to Europe back in the Dark Ages.”

“So?” Ronny said. “I’d think that’d be a deal that would take centuries to change.”

The Section G agent laughed. “Tommy Paine stayed just long enough to introduce gunpowder. That was the end of those impregnable castles up on the hills.”

“What gets me,” Ronny said slowly, “is his motivation.”

The other two both grunted agreement to that.

Toward the end of his indoctrination studies, Ronny appeared one morning at the Octagon Section G offices and before Irene Kasansky. Watching her fingers fly, listening to her voice rapping and snapping, OK-ing and rejecting, he came to the conclusion that automation could go just so far in office work and then you were thrown back on the hands of the efficient secretary. Irene was a one-woman office staff.

She looked up at him. “Hello, Ronny. Thought you’d be off on your assignment by now. Got any clues on Tommy Paine?”

“No,” he said. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to see the commissioner.”

“About what?” She flicked a switch. When a light flickered on one of her order boxes, she said into it, “No,” emphatically, and turned back to him.

“He said he wanted to see me again before I took off.”

She fiddled some more, finally said, “All right, Ronny. Tell him he’s got time for five minutes with you.”

“Five minutes!”

“Then he’s got an appointment with the Commissioner of Interplanetary Culture,” she said. “You’d better hurry along.”

Ronny Bronston retraced the route of his first visit here. How long ago? It already seemed ages since his probationary appointment. Your life changed fast when you were in Section G.

Ross Metaxa’s brown bottle, or its twin, was sitting on his desk and he was staring at it glumly. He looked up and scowled.

“Ronald Bronston,” Ronny said. “Irene Kasansky told me to say I could have five minutes with you, then you have an appointment with the Commissioner of Interplanetary Culture.”

“I remember you,” Metaxa said. “Have a drink. Interplanetary Culture, ha! The Xanadu Folk Dance Troupe. They dance nude. They’ve been touring the whole U.P. Roaring success everywhere, obviously. Now they’re assigned to Virtue, a planet settled by a bunch of Fundamentalists. They want the troupe to wear Mother Hubbards. The Xanadu outfit is in a tizzy. They’ve been insulted. They claim they’re the most modest members of U.P., that nudity has nothing to do with modesty. The government of Virtue said that’s fine but they wear Mother Hubbards or they don’t dance. Xanadu says it’ll withdraw from United Planets.”

Ronny Bronston said painfully, “Why not let them?”

Ross Metaxa poured himself a Denebian tequila, offered his subordinate a drink again with a motion of the bottle. Ronny shook his head.

Metaxa said, “If we didn’t take steps to soothe these things over, there wouldn’t be any United Planets. In any given century every member in the organization threatens to resign at least once. Even Earth. And then what’d happen? You’d have interplanetary war before you knew it. What’d you want, Ronny?”

“I’m about set to take up my search for this Tommy Paine.”

“Ah, yes, Tommy Paine. If you catch him, there are a dozen planets where he’d be eligible for the death sentence.”

Ronny cleared his throat. “There must be. What I wanted was the file on him, sir.”

“File?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve got to the point where I want to cram up on everything we have on him. So far, all I’ve got is verbal information from individual agents and from Supervisor Jakes.”

“Don’t be silly, Ronny. There isn’t any file on Tommy Paine.”

Ronny just looked at the other.

Ross Metaxa said impatiently, “The very knowledge of the existence of the man is top secret. Isn’t that obvious? Suppose some reporter got the story and printed it. If our member planets knew there was such a man and that we haven’t been able to scotch him, why they’d drop out of U.P. so fast the computers couldn’t keep up with it. There’s not one planet in ten that feels secure enough to lay itself open to subversion. Why some of our planets are so far down the ladder of social evolution they live under primitive tribal society; their leaders, their wise men and witch-doctors, whatever you call them, are scared someone will come along and establish chattel slavery. Those planets that have a system based on slavery are scared to death of developing feudalism, and those that have feudalism are afraid of creeping capitalism. Those with an anarchistic basis—and we have several—are afraid of being subverted to statism, and those who have a highly developed government are afraid of anarchism. The socioeconomic systems based on private ownership of property hate the very idea of socialism or communism, and vice versa, and those planets with state capitalism hate them both.”

He glared at Ronny. “What do you think the purpose of this Section is, Bronston? Our job is to keep our member planets from being afraid of each other. If they found that Tommy Paine and his group, if he’s got a group, were buzzing through the system subverting everything they can foul up, they’d drop out of U.P. and set up quarantines that a space mite couldn’t get through. No sir, there is no file on Tommy Paine and there never will be. And if any news of him spreads to the outside, this Section will emphatically deny he exists. I hope that’s clear.”

“Well, yes sir,” Ronny said. The commissioner had been all but roaring toward the end.

The order box clicked on Ross Metaxa’s desk and he said loudly, “What?”

“Don’t yell at me,” Irene snapped back. “Ronny’s five minutes are up. You’ve got an appointment. I’m getting tired of this job. It’s a madhouse. I’m going to quit and get a job with Interplanetary Finance.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ross snarled back. “That’s what you think. I’ve taken measures. Top security. I’ve warned off every Commissioner in U.P. You can’t get away from me until you reach retirement age. Although I don’t know why I care. I hate nasty tempered women.”

“Huh!” she snorted and clicked off.

“There’s a woman for you,” Ross Metaxa growled at Ronny. “It’s too bad she’s indispensable. I’d love to fire her. Look, you go in and see Sid Jakes. Seems to me he said something about Tommy Paine this morning. Maybe it’s a lead.” He came to his feet. “So long and good luck, Ronny. I feel optimistic about you. I think you’ll get this Paine troublemaker.”

Which was more than Ronny Bronston thought.

Sid Jakes already had a visitor in his office, which didn’t prevent him from yelling, “It’s open,” when Ronny Bronston knocked.

He bounced from his chair, came around the desk and shook hands enthusiastically. “Ronny!” he said, his tone implying they were favorite brothers for long years parted. “You’re just in time.”

Ronny took in the office’s other occupant appreciatively. She was a small girl, almost tiny. He estimated her to be at least half Chinese, or maybe Indo-Chinese, the rest probably European or North American.

She evidently favored her Asiatic blood, her dress was traditional Chinese, slit almost to the thigh Shanghai style.

Sid Jakes said, “Tog Lee Chang Chu—Ronny Bronston. You’ll be working together. Bloodhounding old Tommy Paine. A neat trick if you can pull it off. Well, are you all set to go?”

Ronny mumbled something to the girl in the way of amenity, then looked back at the supervisor. “Working together?” he said.

“That’s right. Lucky you, eh?”

Tog Lee Chang Chu said demurely, “Possibly Mr. Bronston objects to having a female assistant.”

Sid Jakes snorted, and hurried around his desk to resume his seat. “Does he look crazy? Who’d object to having a cutey like you around day in and day out? Call him Ronny. Might as well get used to it. Two of you’ll be closer than man and wife.”

“Assistant?” Ronny said, bewildered. “What do I need an assistant for?” He turned his eyes to the girl. “No reflection on you, Miss … ah, Tog.”

Sid Jakes laughed easily. “Section G operatives always work in pairs, Ronny. Especially new agents. The advantages will come home to you as you go along. Look on Tog Lee Chang Chu as a secretary, a man Friday. This isn’t her first assignment, of course. You’ll find her invaluable.”

The supervisor plucked a card from an order box. “Now here’s the dope. Can you leave within four hours? There’s a U.P. Space Forces cruiser going to Merlini, they can drop you off at New Delos. Fastest way you could possibly get there. The cruiser takes off from Neuve Albuquerque in, let’s see, three hours and forty-five minutes.”

“New Delos?” Ronny said, taking his eyes from the girl and trying to catch up with the grasshopper-like conversation of his superior.

“New Delos it is,” Jakes said happily. “With luck, you might catch him before he can get off the planet.” He chuckled at the other’s expression. “Look alive, Ronny! The quarry is flushed and on the run. Tommy Paine’s just assassinated the Immortal God-King of New Delos. A neat trick, eh?”

The following hours were chaotic. There was no indication of how long a period he’d be gone. For all he knew, it might be years. For that matter, he might never return to Earth. This Ronny Bronston had realized before he ever applied for an interplanetary appointment. Mankind was exploding through this spiral arm of the galaxy. There was a racial enthusiasm about it all. Man’s destiny lay out in the stars, only a laggard stayed home of his own accord. It was the ambition of every youth to join the snowballing avalanche of man into the neighboring stars.

It took absolute severity by Earth authorities to prevent the depopulation of the planet. But someone had to stay to administer the ever more complicated racial destiny. Earth became a clearing house for a thousand cultures, attempting, with only moderate success, to coordinate her widely spreading children. She couldn’t afford to let her best seed depart. Few there were, any more, allowed to emigrate from Earth. New colonies drew their immigrants from older ones.

Lucky was the Earthling able to find service in interplanetary affairs, in any of the thousands of tasks that involved journey between member planets of U.P. Possibly one hundredth of the population at one time or another, and for varying lengths of time, managed it.

Ronny Bronston was lucky and knew it. The thing now was to pull off this assignment and cinch the appointment for good.

He packed in a swirl of confusion. He phoned a relative who lived in the part of town once known as Richmond, explained the situation and asked that the other store his things and dispose of the apartment he’d been occupying.

Luckily, the roof of his apartment building was a copter-cab pickup point and he was able to hustle over to the shuttleport in a matter of a few minutes.

He banged into the reservations office, hurried up to one of the windows and said into the screen, “I’ve got to get to Neuve Albuquerque immediately.”

The expressionless voice said, “The next rocket leaves at sixteen hours.”

“Sixteen hours! I’ve got to be at the spaceport by that time!”

The voice said dispassionately, “We are sorry.”

The bottom fell out of everything. Ronny said, desperately, “Look, if I miss my ship in Neuve Albuquerque, what is the next spaceliner leaving from there for New Delos?”

“A moment, citizen.” There was an agonized wait, and then the voice said, “There is a liner leaving for New Delos on the 14th of next month. It arrives in New Delos on the 31st, Basic Earth calendar.”

The 31st! Tommy Paine could be halfway across the galaxy by that time.

A gentle voice next to him said, “Could I help, Ronny?”

He looked around at her. “Evidently, nobody can,” he said disgustedly. “There’s no way of getting to Neuve Albuquerque in time to get that cruiser to New Delos.”

Tog Lee Chang Chu fished in her bag and came up with a wallet similar to the one in which Ronny carried his Section G badge. She held it up to the screen. “Bureau of Investigation, Section G,” she said calmly. “It will be necessary that Agent Bronston and myself be in Neuve Albuquerque within the hour.”

The metallic voice said, “Of course. Proceed to your right and through Corridor K to Exit Four. Your rocket will be there. Identify yourself to Lieutenant Economou who will be at the desk at Exit Four.”

Tog turned to Ronny Bronston. “Shall we go?” she said demurely.

He cleared his throat, feeling foolish. “Thanks, Tog,” he said.

“Not at all, Ronny. Why, this is my job.”

Was there the faintest of sarcasm in her voice? It hadn’t been more than a couple of hours ago that he had been hinting rather heavily to Sid Jakes that he needed no assistance.

She even knew the layout of the West Greater Washington shuttleport. Her small body swiveled through the hurrying passengers, her small feet a-twinkle, as she led him to and down Corridor K and then to the desk at Exit Four.

Ronny anticipated her here. He flashed his own badge at the chairborne Space Forces lieutenant there.

“Lieutenant Economou?” he said. “Ronald Bronston, of the Bureau of Investigation, Section G. We’ve got to get to Neuve Albuquerque soonest.”

The lieutenant, only mildly impressed, said, “We can have you in the air in ten minutes, citizen. Just a moment and I’ll guide you myself.”

In the rocket, Ronny had time to appraise her at greater length. She was a delicately pretty thing, although her expression was inclined to the over-serious. There was only a touch of the Mongolian fold at the corner of her eyes. On her it looked unusually good. Her complexion was that which only the blend of Chinese and Caucasian can give. Her figure, thanks to her European blood, was fuller than Eastern Asia usually boasts; tiny, but full.

Let’s admit it, he decided. My assistant is the cutest trick this side of a Tri-Di movie queen, and we’re going to be thrown in the closest of juxtaposition for an indefinite time. This comes under the head of work?

He said, “Look here, Tog, you were with Sid Jakes longer than I was. What’s the full story?”

She folded her slim hands in her lap, looking like a schoolgirl about to recite. “Do you know anything about the socioeconomic system on New Delos?”

“Well, no,” he admitted.

She said severely, “I’d think that they would have given you more background before an assignment of this type.”

Ronny said impatiently, “In the past three months I’ve been filled in on the economic systems, the religious beliefs, the political forms, of a thousand planets. I just happened to miss New Delos.”

Her mouth expressed disapproval by rucking down on the sides, which was all very attractive but also irritating. She said, “There are two thousand, four hundred and thirty-six member planets in the U.P., I’d think an agent of Section G would be up on the basic situation on each.”

He had her there. He said snidely, “Hate to contradict you, Tog, but the number is two thousand, four hundred and thirty-four.”

“Then,” she nodded agreeably, “membership has changed since this morning when Menalaus and Aldebaran Three were admitted. Have two planets dropped out?”

“Look,” he said, “let’s stop bickering. What’s the word on New Delos?”

“Did you ever read Frazer’s Golden Bough?” she said.

“No.”

“You should. At any rate, New Delos is a theocracy. A priesthood elite rules it. A God-King, who is immortal, holds absolute authority. The strongest of superstition plus an efficient inquisition, keeps the people under control.”

“Sounds terrible,” Ronny growled.

“Why? Possibly the government is extremely efficient and under it the planet progressing at a rate in advance of U.P. averages.”

He stared at her in surprise.

She said, “Would you rather be ruled by the personal, arbitrary whims of supremely wise men, or by laws formulated by a mob?”

It stopped him momentarily. In all his adult years, he couldn’t remember ever meeting an intelligent, educated person who had been opposed to the democratic theory.

“Wait a minute, now,” he said. “Who decides that they’re supremely wise men who are doing this arbitrary ruling? Let any group come to power, by whatever means, and they’ll soon tell you they’re an elite. But let’s get back to New Delos, from what you’ve said so far, the people are held in a condition of slavery.”

“What’s wrong with slavery?” Tog said mildly.

He all but glared at her. “Are you kidding?”

“I seldom jest,” Tog said primly. “Under the proper conditions, slavery can be the most suitable system for a people.”

“Under what conditions!”

“Have you forgotten your Earth history to the point where Egypt, Greece and Rome mean nothing to you? Man made some of his outstanding progress under slavery. And do you contend that man’s lot is necessarily miserable given slavery? As far back as Aesop we know of slaves who have reached the heights in their society. Slaves sometimes could and did become the virtual rulers in ancient countries.” She shrugged prettily. “The prejudices which you hold today, on Earth, do not necessarily apply to all time, nor to all places.”

He said, impatiently, “Look, Tog, we can go into this further, later. Let’s get back to New Delos. What happened?”

Tog said, “The very foundation of their theocracy is the belief on the part of the populace that the God-King is immortal. No man conspires against his Deity. Supervisor Jakes informed me that it is understood by U.P. Intelligence, that about once every twenty years the priesthood secretly puts in a new God-King. Plastic surgery would guarantee facial resemblance, and, of course, the rank and file citizen would probably never be allowed close enough to discover that their God-King seemed different every couple of decades. At any rate, it’s been working for some time.”

“And there’s been no revolt against this religious aristocracy?”

She shook her head. “Evidently not. It takes a brave man to revolt against both his king and his God at the same time.”

“But what happened now?” Ronny pursued.

“Evidently, right in the midst of a particularly important religious ceremony, with practically the whole planet watching on TV, the God-King was killed with a bomb. No doubt about it, definitely killed. There are going to be a lot of people on New Delos wondering how it can be that an immortal God-King can die.”

“And Sid thinks it’s Tommy Paine’s work?”

She shifted dainty shoulders in a shrug. “It’s the sort of thing he does. I suppose we’ll learn when we get there.”

Even on the fast Space Forces cruiser, the trip was going to take a week, and there was precious little Ronny Bronston could do until arrival. He spent most of his time reading up on New Delos and the several other planets in the U.P. organization which had fairly similar regimes. More than a few theocracies had come and gone during the history of man’s development into the stars.

He also spent considerable time playing Battle Chess or talking with Tog and with the ship’s officers.

These latter were a dedicated group, high in morale, enthusiastic about their work which evidently involved the combined duties of a Navy, a Coast Guard, and a Coast and Geodetic Survey system, if we use the oceangoing services of an earlier age for analogy.

They all had the dream. The enthusiasm of men participating in a race’s expansion to glory. There was the feeling, even stronger here in space than back on Earth, of man’s destiny being fulfilled, that humanity had finally emerged from its infancy, that the fledgling had finally found its wings and got off the ground.

After one of his studying binges, Ronny Bronston had spent an hour or so once with the captain of the craft, while that officer stood an easy watch on the ship’s bridge. There was little enough to do in space, practically nothing, but there was always an officer on watch.

They leaned back in the acceleration chairs before the ship’s controls and Ronny listened to the other’s space lore. Stories of far planets, as yet untouched. Stories of planets that had seemingly been suitable for colonization, but had proved disastrous for man, for this reason or that.

Ronny said, “And never in all this time have we run into a life form that has proved intelligent?”

Captain Woiski said, “No. Not that I know of. There was an animal on Shangri-La of about the mental level of the chimpanzee. So far as I know, that’s the nearest to it.”

“Shangri-La?” Ronny said. “That’s a new one.”

There was an affectionate gleam in the captain’s eye. “Yes,” he said. “If and when I retire, I think that’d be the planet of my choice, if I could get permission to leave Earth, of course.”

Ronny scowled in attempted memory. “Now that you mention it, I think I did see it listed the other day among planets with a theocratic government.”

The captain grunted protest. “If you’re comparing it to this New Delos you’re going to, you’re wrong. There can be theocracy and theocracy, I suppose. Actually, I imagine Shangri-La has the most, well gentle government in the system.”

Ronny was interested. His recent studies hadn’t led him to much respect for a priesthood in political power. “What’s the particular feature that’s seemed to have gained your regard?”

“Moderation,” Woiski chuckled. “They carry it almost to the point of immoderation. But not quite. Briefly, it works something like this. They have a limited number of monks—I suppose you’d call them—who spend their time at whatever moves them. At the arts, at scientific research, at religious contemplation—any religion will do—as students of anything and everything, and at the governing of Shangri-La. They make a point of enjoying the luxuries in moderation and aren’t a severe drain on the rank and file citizens of the planet.”

Ronny said, “I have a growing distrust of hierarchies. Who decides who is to become a monk and who remain a member of the rank and file?”

The captain said, “A series of the best tests they can devise to determine a person’s intelligence and aptitudes. From earliest youth, the whole populace is checked and rechecked. At the age of thirty, when it is considered that a person has become adult and has finished his basic education, a limited number are offered monkhood. Not all want it.”

Ronny thought about it. “Why not? What are the shortcomings?”

The captain shrugged. “Responsibility, I suppose.”

“The monks aren’t allowed sex, booze, that sort of thing, I imagine.”

“Good heavens, why not? In moderation, of course.”

“And they live on a higher scale?”

“No, no, not at all. Don’t misunderstand. The planet is a prosperous one. Exceedingly prosperous. There is everything needed for comfortable existence for everyone. Shangri-La is one planet where the pursuit of happiness is pursuable by all.” Captain Woiski chuckled again.

Ronny said, “It sounds good enough, although I’m leery of benevolent dictatorships. The trouble with them is that it’s up to the dictators to decide what’s benevolent. And almost always, nepotism rears its head, favoritism of one sort or another. How long will it be before one of your moderate monks decides he’ll moderately tinker with the tests, or whatever, just to be sure his favorite nephew makes the grade? A high I.Q. is no guarantee of integrity.”

The captain didn’t disagree. “That’s always possible, I suppose. One guard against it, in this case, is the matter of motive. The privilege of being a monk isn’t as great as all that. Materially, you aren’t particularly better off than anyone else. You have more leisure, that’s true, but actually most of them are so caught up in their studies or research that they put in more hours of endeavor than does the farmer or industrial worker on Shangri-La.”

“Well,” Ronny said, “let’s just hope that Tommy Paine never hears of this place.”

“Who?” the captain said.

Ronny Bronston reversed his engines. “Oh, nobody important. A guy I know of.”

Captain Woiski scowled. “Seems to me I’ve heard the name.”

At first Ronny leaned forward with quick interest. Perhaps the cruiser’s skipper had a lead. But, no, he sank back into his chair. That name was strictly a Section G pseudonym. No one used it outside the department, and he’d already said too much by using the term at all.

Ronny said idly, “Probably two different people. I think I’ll go on back and see how Tog is doing.”

Tog was at her communicator when he entered the tiny ship’s lounge. Ronny could see in the brilliant little screen of the compact device, the grinning face of Sid Jakes. Tog looked up at Ronny and smiled, then clicked the device off.

“What’s new?” Ronny said.

She moved graceful shoulders. “I just called Supervisor Jakes. Evidently there’s complete confusion on New Delos. Mobs are storming the temples. In the capital the priests tried to present a new God-King and he was laughed out of town.”

Ronny snorted cynically. “Sounds good to me. The more I read about New Delos and its God-King and his priesthood, the more I think the best thing that ever happened to the planet was this showing them up.”

Tog looked at him, the sides of her mouth tucking down as usual when she was going to contradict something he said. “It sounds bad to me,” she said. “Tommy Paine’s work is done. He’ll be off to some other place and we won’t get there in time to snare him.”

Ronny considered that. It was probably true. “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if it’s possible for us to get a list of all ships that have blasted off since the assassination, all ships and their destination from New Delos.”

The idea grew in him. “Look! It’s possible that a dictatorial government such as theirs would immediately quarantine every spaceport on the planet.”

Tog said, “There’s only one spaceport on New Delos. The priesthood didn’t encourage trade or even communication with the outside. Didn’t want its people contaminated.”

“Holy smokes!” Ronny blurted. “It’s possible that Tommy Paine’s on that planet and can’t get off. Look, Tog, see if you can raise the Section G representative on New Delos and—”

Tog said demurely, “I already have taken that step, Ronny, knowing that you’d want me to. Agent Mouley Hassan has promised to get the name and destination of every passenger that leaves New Delos.”

Ronny sat down at a table and dialed himself a mug of stout. “Drink?” he said to Tog. “Possibly we’ve got something to celebrate.”

She shook her head disapprovingly. “I don’t use depressants.”

There was nothing more to be discussed about New Delos, they simply would have to wait until their arrival. Ronny switched subjects. “Ever hear of the planet Shangri-La?” he asked her. He took a sip of his brew.

“Of course,” she said. “A rather small planet, Earth type within four degrees. Noted for its near perfect climate and its scenic beauty.”

“Captain was talking about it,” Ronny said. “Sounds like a regular paradise.”

Tog made a negative sound.

“Well, what’s wrong with Shangri-La?” Ronny said impatiently.

“Static,” she said briefly.

He looked at her. “It sounds to me as though it’s developed a near perfect socioeconomic system. What do you mean, static?”

“No push, no drive,” Tog said definitely. “Everyone—what is the old term?—everyone has it made. The place is stagnating. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tommy Paine show up there sooner or later.”

Ronny said, “Look, since we’ve known each other, have I ever said anything you agree with?”

Tog raised her delicate eyebrows. “Why, Ronny. You know perfectly well we both agreed that the eggs for breakfast were quite inedible.”

Ronny came to his feet again. Considering her size, she certainly was an irritating baggage. “I think I’ll go to my room and see if I can get any inspirations on tracking down our quarry.”

“Good night, Ronny,” she said demurely.

They ran into a minor difficulty upon arrival at New Delos. The captain called both Ronny Bronston and Tog Lee Chang Chu to the bridge.

He nodded in the direction of the communications screen. A bald headed, robed character—obviously a priest—scowled at them.

Captain Woiski said, “The Sub-Bishop informs me that the provisional government has ruled that any spacecraft landing on New Delos cannot take off again without permission and that every individual who lands, even United Planets personnel, will need an exit visa before being allowed to depart.”

Ronny said, “Then you can’t land?”

The captain said reasonably, “My destination is Merlini. I’ve gone out of my way slightly to drop you off here. But I can’t afford to take the chance of having my ship tied up for what might be an indefinite period. Evidently, there’s considerably civil disorder down there.”

From the screen the priest snapped, “That is an inaccurate manner of describing the situation.”

“Sorry,” the captain said dryly.

Ronny Bronston said desperately, “But, captain, Miss Tog and I simply have to land.” He reached for his badge. “High priority, Bureau of Investigation.”

The captain shrugged his hefty shoulders. “Sorry, I have no instructions that allow me to risk tying up my ship. Here’s a possibility. Can you pilot a landing craft? I could spare you one, then you and your assistant would be the only ones involved. You could turn it over to whatever Space Forces base we have here.”

Ronny said miserably, “No. I’m not a space pilot.”

“I am,” Tog said softly. “The idea sounds excellent.”

“We shall expect you,” the Sub-Bishop said. The screen went blank.

Tog Lee Chang Chu piloted a landing craft with the same verve that she seemed to be able to handle any other responsibility. As he sat in the seat next to her, Ronny Bronston took in her practiced flicking of the controls from the side of his eyes. He wondered vaguely at the efficiency of such Section G officials as Metaxa and Jakes that they would assign an unknown quality such as himself to a task as important as running down Tommy Paine, and then as an assistant provide him with an experienced operative such as Tog. The bureaucratic mind can be a dilly, he decided. Was the fact that she was a rather delicately constructed girl a factor? He felt the weight of the Model-H gun nestled under his left armpit. Perhaps in the clutch Section G preferred men as agents.

They swooped into a landing that brought them as close to the control tower as was practical. In a matter of moments there was a guard of twenty or more sloppily uniformed men about their small craft.

Tog made a move. “Welcoming committee,” she said.

They climbed out the circular port, and flashed their United Planets Bureau of Investigation badges to the youngish looking soldier who seemed in command. He was indecisive.

“United Planets?” he said. “All I know is I’m supposed to arrest anybody landing.”

Ronny snapped, “We’re to be taken immediately to United Planets headquarters.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t take orders from foreigners.”

One of his men was nervously fingering the trigger of his submachine gun.

Ronny’s mouth went dry. He had the feeling of being high, high on a rock face, inadequately belayed from above.

Tog said smoothly, “But, major, I’m sure whoever issued your orders had no expectation of a special delegation from the United Planets coming to congratulate your new authorities on their success. Of course, it’s unknown to arrest a delegation from United Planets.”

“It is?” he frowned at her. “I mean, you are?”

“Yes,” Tog said sweetly.

Ronny took the hint. “Where can we find a vehicle, major, to get us to the capital and to United Planets headquarters? Evidently we arrived before we were expected. There should have been a big welcoming committee here.”

“Oh,” the obviously recently promoted lad said hesitantly. “Well, I suppose we can make arrangements. This way please.” He grinned at Tog as they walked toward the administration building. “Do all girls dress like you on Earth?”

“Well, no,” she said demurely.

“That’s too bad,” he said gallantly.

“Why, major!” Tog said, keeping her eyes on the tarmac.

At the administration building there was little of order, but eventually they managed to arrange for their transportation. Luckily, they were supplied with a chauffeur driven helio-car.

Luckily, because without the chauffeur to help them run the gauntlet they would have been held up by parades, demonstrations and monstrous street meetings a dozen times before they ever reached their destination. Twice, Ronny stopped short of drawing his gun only by a fraction when half drunken demonstrators stopped them.

The driver, a wispy, sad looking type, shook his head. “There’s no going back now,” he told them over his shoulder. “No going back. Last week I was all with the rest, I never did believe David the One was really Immortal. But you was just used to the idea, see? It’d always been that way, with the priests running everything and we was used to it. Now I wish we was still that way. At least you knew how you stood, see? Now, what’s going to happen?”

“That’s an interesting question,” Tog said politely.

Ronny said, “Possibly you’ll have the chance to build a better world, now.”

The driver shot a contemptuous look over his shoulder. “Better world? What do I want with a better world? I just don’t want to be bothered. I’ve been getting my three squares a day, got a nice little flat for my family. How do I know it’s not going to be a worse world?”

“That’s always a possibility,” Tog told him. “Do most people seem to feel the same?”

“Practically everybody I know does,” he said glumly. “But the fat’s in the fire now. The priests are trying to hold on but their government is falling apart all over the place.”

“Well,” Ronny said, “at least you can figure just about anything in the way of a new government will be better than one based on superstition and inquisition. It couldn’t get worse.”

“Things can always get worse,” the other contradicted him sadly.

They left the cab before an impressively tall, many windowed building in city center. As they mounted the steps, Ronny frowned at her. “You seemed to be encouraging that man in his pessimism. So far as I can see, the best thing that ever happened to this planet was toppling that phony priesthood.”

“Perhaps,” she said agreeably. “However, the man’s mind was an ossified one. A surprisingly large percentage of people have them, especially when it comes to institutions such as religion and government. We weren’t going to be able to teach him anything, but it was possible to learn from him.”

Ronny grunted his disgust. “What could we possibly learn from him?”

Tog said mildly, “We could learn what people of the street were thinking. It might give us some ideas about what direction the new government will take.”

They approached the portals of the building and were halted by an armed Space Forces guard of half a dozen men. Their sergeant saluted, taking in their obvious other-planet clothing.

“Identifications, please,” he said briskly.

They showed their badges and were passed on through. Ronny said to him, “Much trouble, sergeant?”

The other shrugged. “No. Just precautions, sir. We’ve been here only three or four weeks. Civil disturbance. We’re used to it. Were over on Montezuma two basic months ago. Now there was real trouble. Had to shoot our way out.”

Tog called, “Coming Ronny? I have this elevator waiting.”

He followed her, scowling. An idea was trying to work its way through. Somehow he missed getting it.

Headquarters of the Department of Justice were on the eighth floor. A receptionist clerk led them through three or four doors to the single office which housed Section G.

A red eyed, exhausted agent looked up from the sole desk and snarled a question at them. Ronny didn’t get it, but Tog said mildly, “Probationary Agent Ronald Bronston and Tog Lee Chang Chu. On special assignment.” She flicked open her badge so that the other could see it.

His manner changed. “Sorry,” he said, getting up to shake hands. “I’m Mouley Hassan, in charge of Section G on New Delos. We’ve just had a crisis here, as you can imagine. The worst of it’s now over.” He added sourly, “I hope. All my assistants have already taken off for Avalon.” He was a short statured, dark complected man, his features betraying his Semitic background.

Ronny shook hands with him and said, “Sorry to bother you at a time like this.”

They found chairs and Mouley Hassan flicked a key on his order box and said to them, “How about a drink? They make a wonderful sparkling wine on this planet. Trust any theocracy to have top potables.”

Ronny accepted the offer, Tog refused it politely. She sat demurely, her hands in her lap.

Mouley Hassan ran a weary hand through already mussed hair. “What’s this special assignment you’re on?”

Ronny said, “Commissioner Metaxa has sent me looking for Tommy Paine.”

“Tommy Paine!” the other blurted. “At a time like this, when I haven’t had three nights’ sleep in the last three basic weeks, you come around looking for Tommy Paine?”

Ronny was taken aback. “Sid Jakes seemed to think this might be one of Paine’s jobs.”

Tog said mildly, “What better place to look for Tommy Paine, than in a situation like this, Agent Hassan?” Her eyebrows went up. “Or don’t you think the quest for Paine is an important one?”

The other subsided somewhat. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “I’m deathly tired. Do whatever you want. But don’t expect much from me.”

Tog said, just a trifle tartly, Ronny thought, “We’ll have to call on you, as usual, Agent Hassan. There’s probably no single job in Section G more important than the pursuit of Tommy Paine.”

“All right, all right,” Mouley Hassan admitted. “I’ll cooperate. How long have you been away from Earth?” he said to Ronny.

“About one basic week.”

“Oh,” he grunted. “This is your first stop, eh? Well, I don’t envy you your job.” He brought a cool bottle from a delivery drawer in the desk along with two glasses. “Here’s the wine.”

Ronny leaned forward to accept the glass. “This situation here,” he said, “do you think it can be laid to Paine?”

Mouley Hassan shrugged wearily. “I don’t know.”

Ronny sipped the drink, looking at the tired agent over the glass rim. “From what we understand, check has been kept on all persons leaving the planet since the bombing.”

“Check is right. There’s only one ship that took off and it carried nobody except my assistants. If you ask me, I still needed them, but some brass hat back on Earth decided they were more necessary over on Avalon.” He was disgusted.

Ronny put the glass down. “You mean only one ship’s left this planet since the God-King was killed?”

“That’s right. It was like pulling teeth to get the visas.”

“How many men aboard?”

Mouley Hassan looked at him speculatively. “Four-man crew and six Section G operatives.”

Tog said brightly, “Why, that means, then, that either Tommy Paine is still on this planet, or he’s one of the passengers or crew members of that ship.” She added, “That is, of course, unless he had a private craft, hidden away somewhere.”

Ronny slumped back into his chair as some of the ramifications came home to him. “If it was Tommy Paine at all,” he said.

Mouley Hassan nodded. “That’s always a point.” He finished his glass and looked pleadingly at Tog. “Look, I have work. If I can finish some of it, I might have time for some sleep. Couldn’t we postpone the search for Tommy Paine.”

Tog said nothing to him.

Ronny came to his feet. “We’ll get along. A couple of ideas occur to me. I’ll check with you later.”

“Fine,” the agent said. He shook hands with them again. He said, somehow more to Tog than to Ronny, “I know how important your job is. It’s just that I’ve been pushed to the point where I can’t operate efficiently.”

She smiled her understanding, gave him her small, delicate hand.

In the elevator, Ronny said to her, “Why should this sort of thing particularly affect Section G?”

Tog said, “It’s times like this that planets drop out of the U.P. Or, possibly, get into the hands of some jingoistic military group and start off halfcocked to provoke a war with some other planet, or to missionarize or propagandize it.” She thought about it a moment. “A new revolution, in government or religion, seems almost invariably to want to spread the light. An absolute compulsion to bring to others the new truths that they’ve found.” She added, her voice holding a trace of mockery, “Usually the new truths are rather hoary ones, and there are few interested in hearing them.”

They spent their first day in getting accommodations in a centrally located hotel, in making arrangements, through the Department of Justice, for the local means of exchange—it turned out to be coinage, based on gold—and getting the feel of their surroundings.

Evidently Delos, the capital city of the planet New Delos, was but slowly emerging from the chaos that had taken over on the assassination. A provisional government, composed of representatives of half a dozen different organizations which had sprung up like mushrooms following the collapse of the regime, had assumed power. Elections had been promised and were to be brought off when arrangements could be made.

Meanwhile, the actual government was still largely in the hands of the lower echelons of the priesthood. A nervous priesthood it was, seemingly desirous of getting out from under while the going was good, afraid of being held responsible for former excesses.

Ronny Bronston, high hopes still in his head, looked up the Sub-Bishop who had given them landing orders while they were still aboard the Space Forces cruiser. Tog was off making arrangements for various details involved in their being in Delos in its time of crisis.

A dozen times, on his way over to keep his appointment with the official, Ronny had to step into doorways, or in other wise make himself inconspicuous. Gangs of demonstrators roamed the street, some of them drunken, looking for trouble, and scornful of police or the military. Twice, when it looked as though he might be roughed up, Ronny drew his gun and held it in open sight, ready for use, but not threateningly. The demonstrators made off.

His throat was dry by the time he reached his destination. The life of a Section G agent, on interplanetary assignment, had its drawbacks.

The Sub-Bishop had formerly been in charge of Interplanetary Communications which involved commerce as well as intercourse with United Planets. It must have been an ultra-responsible position only a month ago. Now his offices were all but deserted.

He looked at Ronny’s badge, only vaguely interested. “Section G of the Bureau of Investigation,” he said. “I don’t believe I am aware of your responsibilities. However,” he nodded with sour courtesy, “please be seated. You must forgive my lack of ability to offer refreshment. Isn’t there an old tradition about rats deserting a sinking ship? I am afraid my former assistants had rodentlike instincts.”

Ronny said, “Section G deals with Interplanetary Security, sir—”

“I am addressed as Holiness,” the other said.

Ronny looked at him. “Sorry,” he said. “I am a citizen of the United Planets, not any one planet, even Earth. U.P. citizens have complete religious freedom. In my case I am unaffiliated with any church.”

The Sub-Bishop let it pass. He said sourly, “I am afraid that even here on New Delos, I am seldom honoured by my title any more. Go on, you say you deal with Interplanetary Security.”

“That’s correct. In cases like this we’re interested in checking to see if there is any possibility that citizens of planets other than New Delos are involved in your internal affairs.”

The other’s eyes were suddenly slits. He said, heavily, “You suspect that David the One was assassinated by an alien?”

Ronny had to tread carefully here. “I make no such suggestion. I am merely here to check on the possibility. If such was the case, my duty would be to arrest the man, or men.”

“If we got hold of him, you’d have small chance of asserting your authority,” the priest growled. “What did you want to know?”

“I understand that no interplanetary craft have left New Delos since the assassination.”

“None except a United Planets ship which was carefully inspected.”

Ronny said tightly, “But what facilities do you have to check on secret spaceports, possibly located in some remote desert or mountain area?”

The New Delian laughed sourly. “There is no other planet in all the United Planets with our degree of security. We even imported the most recent developments in artificial satellites equipped with the most delicate of detection devices. I assure you, it is utterly impossible for a spacecraft to land or take off from New Delos without our knowledge.”

Ronny Bronston’s eyes lit with excitement. “These security measures of yours. To what extent do you keep under observation all aliens on the planet?”

The priest’s chuckle had a nasty quality. “You are quite ignorant of our institutions, evidently. Every person on New Delos, in every way of life, was under constant survey from the cradle to the grave. Aliens were highly discouraged. When they appeared on New Delos at all, they were restricted in their movements to this, our capital city.”

Ronny let air whistle from his lungs. “Then,” he said triumphantly, “if any alien had anything to do with this, he is still on the planet. Can you get me a list of all aliens?”

The other laughed again, still sourly. “But there are none. None except you employees of United Planets. I’m afraid you’re on a wild-goose chase.”

Ronny stared at him blankly. “But commercial representatives, cultural exchange—”

The priest said flatly, “No. None at all. All commerce was handled through U.P. We encouraged no cultural exchanges. We wished to keep our people uncorrupted. United Planets alone had the right to land on our one spaceport.”

The Section G agent came to his feet. This was much simpler than he could ever have hoped for. He thanked the other, but avoided the necessity of shaking hands, and left.

He found a helio-cab and dialed it to the U.P. building, finding strange the necessity of slipping coins into the vehicle’s slots until the correct amount for his destination had been deposited. Coinage was no longer in use on Earth.

At the U.P. building he retraced his steps of the day before to the single office of Section G.

To his surprise, not only Mouley Hassan was there, but Tog as well. Hassan had evidently had at least a few hours of sleep. He was in better shape.

They exchanged the usual amenities and took their chairs again.

Hassan said, “We were just gossiping. It’s been years since I’ve been in Greater Washington. Lee Chang tells me that Sid Jakes is now a Supervisor. I worked with him for a while, when I first joined Section G. How about a glass of wine?”

Ronny said, “Look. If Tommy Paine was connected with this, and it’s almost positive he was, we’ve got him.”

The others looked at him.

“You’ve evidently been busy,” Tog said mildly.

He turned to her. “He’s trapped, Tog! He can’t get off the planet.”

Mouley Hassan rubbed a hand through his hair. “It’d be hard, all right. They’ve got the people under rein here such as you’ve never seen before. Or they did until this blew up.”

Ronny sketched the situation to Tog, winding up with, “The only thing that makes sense is that it’s a Tommy Paine job. The local citizens would never have been able to get their hands on such a bomb, or been able to have made the arrangements for its delivery. They’re under too much surveillance.”

Tog said thoughtfully, “but how did he escape all this surveillance?”

“Don’t you understand? He’s working here, in this building, as an employee of U.P. There is no other alternative.”

They stared at him.

“I think perhaps you’re right,” Tog said finally.

Ronny turned to Mouley Hassan. “Can you get a list of all U.P. employees?”

“Of course.” He flicked his order box, barked a command into it.

Ronny said, “It’s going to be a matter of eliminating the impossible. For instance, what is the earliest known case of Tommy Paine’s activity?”

Tog thought back. “So far as we know definitely, about twenty-two years ago.”

“Fine,” Ronny said, increasingly excited. “That will eliminate all persons less than, say, forty years of age. We can assume he was at least twenty when he began.”

Hassan said, “Can we eliminate all women employees?”

Ronny said, “I’d think so. The few times he’s been seen, all reports are of a man. And that case on the planet Mother where he put himself over as a Holy Man. He could hardly have been a woman in disguise in a Stone Age culture such as that.”

Hassan said, “And this Tommy Paine has been flitting around this part of the galaxy for years, so anyone who has been here steadily for a period of even a couple of years or so, can’t be suspect.”

Mouley Hassan thrust his hand into a delivery drawer and brought forth a handful of punched cards, possibly fifty in all.

“Surely there’s more people than that working in this building,” Ronny protested.

Mouley Hassan said, “No. I’ve eliminated already everyone who is a citizen of New Delos. Obviously, Tommy Paine is an alien. We have only forty-eight Earthlings and other United Planets citizens working here.”

He carried the cards to a small collator and worked for a moment on its controls, as Tog and Ronny watched him with mounting tension. “Let’s see,” he muttered. “We eliminate all women, all those less than forty, all who haven’t done a great deal of travel, those who have been here for several years.”

The end of it was that they eliminated everyone employed in the U.P. building.

The cards were stacked back on Mouley Hassan’s desk again, and the three of them sat around and looked glumly at them.

Ronny said, “He’s tinkered with the files. He counterfeited fake papers for himself, or something. Possibly he’s pulled his own card and it isn’t in this stack you have.”

Mouley Hassan said, “We’ll double-check all those possibilities, but you’re wrong. Possibly a few hundred years ago, but not today. Forgery and counterfeiting are things of the past. And, believe me, the Bureau of Investigation and especially Section G, may look on the slipshod side, but they aren’t. We’re not going to find anything wrong with those cards. Tommy Paine simply is not working for U.P. on New Delos.”

“Then,” Ronny said, “there’s only one alternative. He’s on this U.P. ship going to, what was the name of its destination?”

“Avalon,” Mouley Hassan said, his face thoughtful.

Tog said, “Do you have any ideas on the men aboard?”

Mouley Hassan said, “There were four crew men, and six of our agents.”

Tog said, “Unless one of them has faked papers, the six agents are eliminated. That leaves the crew members. Do you know anything about them?”

Hassan shook his head.

Ronny said, “Let’s communicate with Avalon. Tell our representatives there to be sure that none of the occupants of that ship leaves Avalon until we get there.”

Mouley Hassan said, “Good idea.” He turned to his screen and said into it, “Section G, Bureau of Investigation, on the Planet Avalon.”

In moment the screen lit up. An elderly agent, as Section G agents seemed to go, looked up at them.

Mouley Hassan held his silver badge so the other could see it and on the Avalon agent’s nod said, “I’m Hassan from New Delos. We’ve just had a crisis here and there seems to be a chance that it’s a Tommy Paine job. Agent Bronston here is on an assignment tracking him down. I’ll turn it over to Bronston.”

The Avalon agent nodded again, and looked at Ronny.

Ronny said urgently, “We haven’t the time to give you details, but every indication is that Paine is on a U.P. spacecraft with Avalon as its destination. There are only ten men aboard, and six of them are Section G operatives.”

The other pursed his lips. “I see. You think you have the old fox cornered, eh?”

“Possibly,” Ronny said. “There are various ifs. Miss Tog and I can double-check here. Then as soon as we can clear exit visas, we’ll make immediate way for Avalon.”

The Avalon Section G agent said, “I haven’t the authority to control the movements of other agents, they have as high rank as I have,” he added, expressionlessly, “and probably higher than yours.”

Ronny said, “But the four-man crew?”

The other said, “These men are coming to Avalon to work on a job that will take at least six months. We’ll make a routine check, and I’ll try and make sure the whole ten will still be on Avalon when and if you arrive.”

They had to be satisfied with that. They checked all ways from the middle, nor did it take long. There was no doubt. If this was a Tommy Paine job, and it almost surely was, then there was only one way in which he could have escaped from the planet and that was by the single spacecraft that had left, destination Avalon. He was not on the planet, that was definite Ronny felt. A stranger on New Delos was as conspicuous as a walrus in a goldfish bowl. There simply were no such.

They spent most of their time checking and rechecking United Planets personnel, but there was no question there either.

Mouley Hassan and others of U.P. personnel helped cut the red tape involved in getting exit visas from New Delos. It wasn’t as complicated as it might have been a week or two before. No one seemed to be so confident of his authority in the new provisional government that he dared veto a United Planets request.

Mouley Hassan was able to arrange for a small space yacht, slower than a military craft, but capable of getting them to Avalon in a few days time. A one-man crew was sufficient, Ronny, and especially Tog, could spell him on the watches.

Time aboard was spent largely in studying up on Avalon, going over and over again anything known about the elusive Tommy Paine, and playing Battle Chess and bickering with Tog Lee Chang Chu.

If it hadn’t been for this ability to argue against just about anything Ronny managed to say, he could have been attracted to her to the detriment of the job. She was a good traveler, few people are; she was an ultra-efficient assistant; she was a joy to look at; and she never intruded. But, Great Guns, the woman could bicker.

The two of them were studying in the ship’s luxurious lounge when Ronny looked up and said, “Do you have any idea why those six agents were sent to Avalon?”

“No,” she said.

He indicated the booklet he was reading. “From what I can see here, it sounds like one of the most advanced planets in the U.P. They’ve made some of the most useful advances in industrial techniques of the past century.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Tog mused. “I haven’t much regard for Industrial Feudalism myself. It starts off with a bang, but tends to go sterile.”

“Industrial feudalism,” he said indignantly. “What do you mean? The government is a constitutional monarchy with the king merely a powerless symbol. The standard of living is high. Elections are honest and democratic. They’ve got a three-party system. …”

“Which is largely phony,” Tog interrupted. “You’ve got to do some reading between the lines, especially when the books you’re reading are turned out by the industrial feudalistic publishing companies in Avalon.”

“What’s this industrial feudalism, you keep talking about? Avalon has a system of free enterprise.”

“A gobbledygook term,” Tog said, irritatingly. “Industrial feudalism is a socioeconomic system that develops when industrial wealth is concentrated into the hands of a comparatively few families. It finally gets to the point of a closed circle all but impossible to break into. These industrial feudalistic families become so powerful that only in rare instances can anyone lift himself into their society. They dominate every field, including the so-called labor unions, which amount to one of the biggest businesses of all. With their unlimited resources they even own every means of dispensing information.”

“You mean,” Ronny argued, “that on Avalon you can’t start up a newspaper of your own and say whatever you wish?”

“Certainly you can, theoretically. If you have the resources. Unfortunately, such enterprises become increasingly expensive to start. Or you could start a radio, TV or Tri-Di station—if you had the resources. However, even if you overcame all your handicaps and your newspaper or broadcasting station became a success, the industrial feudalistic families in control of Avalon’s publishing and broadcasting fields have the endless resources to buy you out, or squeeze you out, by one nasty means or another.”

Ronny snorted. “Well, the people must be satisfied or they’d vote some fundamental changes.”

Tog nodded. “They’re satisfied, and no wonder. Since childhood every means of forming their opinions have been in the hands of industrial feudalistic families—including the schools.”

“You mean the schools are private?”

“No, they don’t have to be. The government is completely dominated by the fifty or so families which for all practical purposes own Avalon. That includes the schools. Some of the higher institutions of learning are private, but they, too, are largely dependent upon grants from the families.”

Ronny was irritated by her know-all air. He tapped the book he’d been reading with a finger. “They don’t control the government. Avalon’s got a three-party system. Any time the people don’t like the government, they can vote in an alternative.”

“That’s an optical illusion. There are three parties, but each is dominated by the fifty families, and election laws are such that for all practical purposes it’s impossible to start another party. Theoretically it’s possible, actually it isn’t. The voters can vary back and forth between the three political parties but it doesn’t make any difference which one they elect. They all stand for the same thing—a continuation of the status quo.”

“Then you claim it isn’t democracy at all?”

Tog sighed. “That’s a much abused word. Actually, pure democracy is seldom seen. They pretty well had it in primitive society where government was based on the family. You voted for one of your relatives in your clan to represent you in the tribal councils. Everyone in the tribe was equal so far as apportionments of the necessities of life were concerned. No one, even the tribal chiefs, ate better than anyone else, no one had a better home.”

Ronny said, snappishly, “And if man had remained at that level, we’d never have gotten anywhere.”

“That’s right,” she said. “For progress, man needed a leisure class. Somebody with the time to study, to experiment, to work things out.”

He said, “We’re getting away from the point. You said in spite of appearances they don’t have democracy on Avalon.”

“They have a pretense of it. But only free men can practice democracy. So long as your food, clothing and shelter are controlled by someone else, you aren’t free. Wait until I think of an example.” She put her right forefinger to her chin, thoughtfully.

Holy smokes, she was a cute trick. If only she wasn’t so confounded irritating.

Tog said, “Do you remember the State of California in Earth history?”

“I think so. On the west coast of North America.”

“That’s right. Well, back in the Twentieth Century, Christian calendar, they had an economic depression. During it a crackpot organization called Thirty Dollars Every Thursday managed to get itself on the ballot. Times were bad enough but had this particular bunch got into power it would have become chaotic. At first no thinking person took them seriously, however a majority of people in California at that time had little to lose and in the final week or so of the election campaign the polls showed that Thirty Dollars Every Thursday was going to win. So, a few days before voting many of the larger industries and businesses in the State ran full page ads in the newspapers. They said substantially the same thing. If Thirty Dollars Every Thursday wins this election, our concern will close its doors. Do not bother to come back to work Monday.”

Ronny was scowling at her. “What’s your point?”

She shrugged delicate shoulders. “The crackpots were defeated, of course, which was actually good for California. But my point is that the voters of California were not actually free since their livelihoods were controlled by others. This is an extreme case, of course, but the fact always applies.”

A thought suddenly hit Ronny Bronston. “Look,” he said. “Tommy Paine. Do you think he’s merely escaping from New Delos, or is it possible that Avalon is his next destination? Is he going to try and overthrow the government there?”

She was shaking her head, but frowning. “I don’t think so. Things are quite stable on Avalon.”

“Stable?” he scowled at her. “From what you’ve been saying, they’re pretty bad.”

She continued to shake her head. “Don’t misunderstand, Ronny. On an assignment like this, it’s easy to get the impression that all the United Planets are in a state of socio-political confusion, but it isn’t so. A small minority of planets are ripe for the sort of trouble Tommy Paine stirs up. Most are working away, developing, making progress, slowly evolving. Avalon is one of these. The way things are there, Tommy Paine couldn’t make a dent on changing things, even if he wanted to, and there’s no particular reason to believe he does.”

Ronny growled. “From what I can learn of the guy he’s anxious to stir up trouble wherever he goes.”

“I don’t know. If there’s any pattern at all in his activities, it seems to be that he picks spots where things are ripe to boil over on their own. He acts as a catalyst. In a place like Avalon he wouldn’t get to first base. Possibly fifty years from now, things will have developed on Avalon to the point where there is dissatisfaction. By that time,” she said dryly, “we’ll assume Tommy Paine will no longer be a problem to the Commissariat of Interplanetary Affairs for one reason or the other.”

Ronny took up his book again. He growled, “I can’t figure out his motivation. If I could just put my finger on that.”

For once she agreed with him. “I’ve got an idea, Ronny, that once you have that, you’ll have Tommy Paine.”

They drew blank on Avalon.

Or, at least, it was drawn for them before they ever arrived.

The Section G agent permanently assigned to that planet had already checked and double-checked the possibilities. None of the four-man crew of the U.P. spacecraft had been on New Delos at the time of the assassination of the God-King. They, and their craft, had been light-years away on another job.

Ronny Bronston couldn’t believe it. He simply couldn’t believe it.

The older agent, his name was Jheru Bulchand, was definite. He went over it with Ronny and Tog in a bar adjoining U.P. headquarters. He had dossiers on each of the ten men, detailed dossiers. On the face of it, none of them could be Paine.

“But one of them has to be,” Ronny pleaded. He explained their method of eliminating the forty-eight employees of U.P. on New Delos.

Bulchand shrugged. “You’ve got holes in that method of elimination. You’re assuming Tommy Paine is an individual, and you have no reason to. My own theory is that it’s an organization.”

Ronny said unhappily, “Then you’re of the opinion that there is a Tommy Paine?”

The older agent was puffing comfortably on an old style briar pipe. He nodded definitely. “I believe Tommy Paine exists as an organization. Possibly once, originally, it was a single person, but now it’s a group. How large, I wouldn’t know. Probably not too large or by this time somebody would have betrayed it, or somebody would have cracked and we would have caught them. Catch one and you’ve got the whole organization what with our modern means of interrogation.”

Tog said, “I’ve heard the opinion before.”

Jheru Bulchand pointed at Ronny with his pipe stem. “If it’s an organization, then none of that eliminating you did is valid. Your assassin could have been one of the women. He could have been one of the men you eliminated as too young—someone recently admitted to the Tommy Paine organization.”

Ronny checked the last of his theories. “Why did Section G send six of its agents here?”

“Nothing to do with Tommy Paine,” Bulchand said. “It’s a different sort of crisis.”

“Just for my own satisfaction, what kind of crisis?”

Bulchand sketched it quickly. “There are two Earth type planets in this solar system. Avalon was the first to be colonized and developed rapidly. After a couple of centuries, Avalonians went over and settled on Catalina. They eventually set up a government of their own. Now Avalon has a surplus of industrial products. Her economic system is such that she produces more than she can sell back to her own people. There’s a glut.”

Tog said demurely, “So, of course, they want to dump it in Catalina.”

Bulchand nodded. “In fact, they’re willing to give it away. They’ve offered to build railroads, turn over ships and aircraft, donate whole factories to Catalina’s slowly developing economy.”

Ronny said, “Well, how does that call for Section G agents?”

“Catalina has evoked Article Two of the U.P. Charter. No member planet of U.P. is to interfere with the internal political, socioeconomic or religious affairs of another member planet. Avalon claims the Charter doesn’t apply since Catalina belongs to the same solar system and since she’s a former colony. We’re trying to smooth the whole thing over, before Avalon dreams up some excuse for military action.”

Ronny stared at him. “I get the feeling every other sentence is being left out of your explanation. It just doesn’t make sense. In the first place, why is Avalon as anxious as all that to give away what sounds like a fantastic amount of goods?”

“I told you, they have a glut. They’ve overproduced and, as a result, they’ve got a king-size depression on their hands, or will have unless they find markets.”

“Well, why not trade with some of the planets that want her products?”

Tog said as though reasoning with a youngster, “Planets outside her own solar system are too far away for it to be practical even if she had commodities they didn’t. She needs a nearby planet more backward than herself, a planet like Catalina.”

“Well, that brings us to the more fantastic question. Why in the world doesn’t Catalina accept? It sounds to me like pure philanthropy on the part of Avalon.”

Bulchand was wagging his pipe stem in a negative gesture. “Bronston, governments are never motivated by idealistic reasons. Individuals might be, and even small groups, but governments never. Governments, including that of Avalon, exist for the benefit of the class or classes that control them. The only things that motivate them are the interests of that class.”

“Well, this sounds like an exception,” Ronny said argumentatively. “How can Catalina lose if the Avalonians grant them railroads, factories and all the rest of it?”

Tog said, “Don’t you see, Ronny? It gives Avalon a foothold in the Catalina economy. When the locomotives wear out on the railroad, new engines, new parts, must be purchased. They won’t be available on Catalina because there will be no railroad industry because none will have ever grown up. Catalina manufacturers couldn’t compete with that initial free gift. They’ll be dependent on Avalon for future equipment. In the factories, when machines wear out, they will be replaceable only with the products of Avalon’s industry.”

Bulchand said, “There’s an analogy in the early history of the United States. When its fledgling steel industry began, they set up a high tariff to protect it against British competition. The British were amazed and indignant, pointing out that they could sell American steel products at one third the local prices, if only allowed to do so. The United States said no thanks, it didn’t want to be tied, industrially, to Great Britain’s apron strings. And in a couple of decades American steel production passed England’s. In a couple of more decades American steel production was many times that of England’s and she was taking British markets away from her all over the globe.”

“At any rate,” Ronny said, “it’s not a Tommy Paine matter.”

Just for luck, though, Ronny and Tog double-checked all over again on Bulchand’s efforts. They interviewed all six of the Section G agents. Each of them carried a silver badge that gleamed only for the individual who possessed it. All of which eliminated the possibility that Paine had assumed the identity of a Section G operative. So that was out.

They checked the four crew members, but there was no doubt there, either. The craft had been far away at the time of the assassination on New Delos.

On the third day, Ronny Bronston, disgusted, knocked on the door of Tog’s hotel room. The door screen lit up and Tog, looking out at him said, “Oh, come on in, Ronny, I was just talking to Earth.”

He entered.

Tog had set up her Section G communicator on a desk top and Sid Jakes’ grinning face was in the tiny, brilliant screen. Ronny approached close enough for the other to take him in.

Jakes said happily, “Hi, Ronny, no luck, eh?”

Ronny shook his head, trying not to let his face portray his feelings of defeat. This after all was a probationary assignment, and the supervisor had the power to send Ronny Bronston back to the drudgery of his office job at Population Statistics.

“Still working on it. I suppose it’s a matter of returning to New Delos and grinding away at the forty-eight employees of the U.P. there.”

Sid Jakes pursed his lips. “I don’t know. Possibly this whole thing was a false alarm. At any rate, there seems to be a hotter case on the fire. If our local agents have it straight, Paine is about to pull one of his coups on Kropotkin. This is a top-top-secret, of course, one of the few times we’ve ever detected him before the act.”

Ronny was suddenly alert, his fatigue of disgust of but a moment ago, completely forgotten. “Where?” he said.

“Kropotkin,” Jakes said. “One of the most backward planets in U.P. and seemingly a setup for Paine’s sort of troublemaking. The authorities, if you can use the term applied to Kropotkin, are already complaining, threatening to invoke Article One of the Charter, or to resign from U.P.” Jake looked at Tog again. “Do you know Kropotkin, Lee Chang?”

She shook her head. “I’ve heard of it, rather vaguely. Named after some old anarchist, I believe.”

“That’s the place. One of the few anarchist societies in U.P. You don’t hear much from them.” He turned to Ronny again. “I think that’s your bet. Hop to it, boy. We’re going to catch this Tommy Paine guy, or organization, or whatever, soon or United Planets is going to know it. We can’t keep the lid on indefinitely. If word gets around of his activities, then we’ll lose member planets like Christmas trees shedding needles after New Year’s.” He grinned widely. “That’s sounds like a neat trick, eh?”

Ronny Bronston had got to the point where he avoided controversial subjects with Tog even when provoked and she had a sneaky little way of provoking arguments. They had only one really knock down and drag-out verbal battle on the way to Kropotkin.

It had started innocently enough after dinner on the space liner on which they had taken passage for the first part of the trip. To kill time they were playing Battle Chess with its larger board and added contingents of pawns and castles.

Ronny said idly, “You know, in spite of the fact that I’m a third generation United Planets citizen and employee, I’m just beginning to realize how far out some of our member planets are. I had no idea before.”

She frowned in concentration, before moving. She was advancing her men in echelon attack, taking losses in exchange for territory and trying to pen him up in such small space that he couldn’t maneuver.

She said, “How do you mean?”

Ronny lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Well, New Delos and its theocracy, for instance, and Shangri-La and Mother and some of the other planets with extremes in government of socioeconomic system. I hadn’t the vaguest idea about such places.”

She made a deprecating sound. “You should see Amazonia, or, for that matter, the Orwellian State.”

“Amazonia,” he said, “does that mean what it sounds like it does?”

She made her move and settled back in satisfaction. Her pawns were in such position that his bishops were both unusable. He’d tried to play a phalanx game in the early stages of her attack, but she’d broken through, rolling up his left flank after sacrificing a castle and a knight.

“Certainly does,” she said. “A fairly recently colonized planet. A few thousand feminists no men at all—moved onto it a few centuries ago. And it’s still an out and out matriarchy.”

Ronny cleared his throat delicately. “Without men … ah, how did they continue several centuries?”

Tog suppressed her amusement. “Artificial insemination, at first, so I understand. They brought their, ah, supply with them. But then there were boys among the first generation on the new planet and even the Amazonians weren’t up to cold bloodedly butchering their children. So they merely enslaved them. Nice girls.”

Ronny stared at her. “You mean all men are automatically slaves on this planet?”

“That’s right.”

Ronny made an improperly thought out move, trying to bring up a castle to reinforce his collapsing flank. He said, “U.P. allows anybody to join evidently,” and there was disgust in his voice.

“Why not?” she said mildly.

“Well, there should be some standards.”

Tog moved quickly, dominating with a knight several squares he couldn’t afford to lose. She looked up at him, her dark eyes sparking. “The point of U.P. is to include all the planets. That way at least conflict can be avoided and some exchange of science, industrial techniques and cultural gains take place. And you must remember that while in power practically no socioeconomic system will admit to the fact that it could possibly change for the better. But actually there is nothing less stable. Socioeconomic systems are almost always in a condition of flux. Planets such as Amazonia might for a time seem so brutal in their methods as to exclude their right to civilized intercourse with the rest. However, one of these days there’ll be a change—or one of these centuries. They all change, sooner or later.” She added softly, “Even Han.”

“Han?” Ronny said.

Her voice was quiet. “Where I was born, Ronny. Colonized from China in the very early days. In fact, I spent my childhood in a commune.” She said musingly, “The party bureaucrats thought their system an impregnable, unchangeable one. Your move.”

Ronny was fascinated. “And what happened?” He was in full retreat now, and with nowhere to go, his pieces pinned up for the slaughter. He moved a pawn to try and open up his queen.

“Why don’t you concede?” she said. “Tommy Paine happened.”

“Paine!”

“Uh-huh. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it some time.” She pressed closer with her own queen.

He stared disgustedly at the board. “Well, that’s what I mean,” he muttered. “I had no idea there were so many varieties of crackpot politico-economic systems among the U.P. membership.”

“They’re not necessarily crackpot,” she protested mildly. “Just at different stages of development.”

“Not crackpot!” he said. “Here we are heading for a planet named Kropotkin which evidently practices anarchy.”

“Your move,” she said. “What’s wrong with anarchism?”

He glowered at her, in outraged disgust. Was it absolutely impossible for him to say anything without her disagreement?

Tog said mildly, “The anarchistic ethic is one of the highest man has ever developed.” She added, after a moment of pretty consideration. “Unfortunately, admittedly, it hasn’t been practical to put to practice. It will be interesting to see how they have done on Kropotkin.”

“Anarchist ethic, yes,” Ronny snapped. “I’m no student of the movement but the way I understand it, there isn’t any.”

Tog smiled sweetly. “The belief upon which they base their teachings is that no man is capable of judging another.”

Ronny cast his eyes ceilingward. “OK, I give up!”

She began rapidly resetting the pieces. “Another game?” she said brightly.

“Hey! I didn’t mean the game! I was just about to counterattack.”

“Ha!” she said.

The Section G agent on Kropotkin was named Hideka Yamamoto, but he was on a field tour and wouldn’t be back for several days. However, there wasn’t especially any great hurry so far as Ronny Bronston and Tog Lee Chang Chu knew. They got themselves organized in the rather rustic equivalent of a hotel, which was located fairly near U.P. headquarters, and took up the usual problems of arranging for local exchange, meals, means of transportation and such necessities.

It was a greater problem than usual. In fact, hadn’t it been for the presence of the U.P. organization, which had already gone through all this the hard way, some of the difficulties would have been all but insurmountable.

For instance, there was no local exchange. There was no medium of exchange at all. Evidently simple barter was the rule.

In the hotel—if it could be called a hotel—lobby, Ronny Bronston looked at Tog. “Anarchism!” he said. “Oh, great. The highest ethic of all. And what’s the means of transportation on this wonderful planet? The horse. And how are we going to get a couple of horses with no means of exchange?”

She tinkled laughter.

“All right,” he said. “You’re the Man Friday. You find out the details and handle them. I’m going out to take a look around the town—if you can call this a town.”

“It’s the capital of Kropotkin,” Tog said placatingly, though with a mocking background in her tone. “Name of Bakunin. And very pleasant, too, from what little I’ve seen. Not a bit of smog, industrial fumes, street dirt, street noises—”

“How could there be?” he injected disgustedly. “There isn’t any industry, there aren’t any cars, and for all practical purposes, no streets. The houses are a quarter of a mile or so apart.”

She laughed at him again. “City boy,” she said. “Go on out there and enjoy nature a little. It’ll do you good. Anybody who has cooped himself up in that one big city, Earth, all his life ought to enjoy seeing what the great outdoors looks like.”

He looked at her and grinned. She was cute as a pixie, and there were no two ways about that. He wondered for a moment what kind of a wife she’d make. And then shuddered inwardly. Life would be one big contradiction of anything he’d managed to get out of his trap.

He strolled idly along what was little more than a country path and it came to him that there were probably few worlds in the whole U.P. where he’d have been prone to do this within the first few hours he’d been on the planet. He would have been afraid, elsewhere, of anything from footpads to police, from unknown vehicles to unknown traffic laws. There was something bewildering about being an Earthling and being set down suddenly in New Delos or on Avalon.

Here, somehow, he already had a feeling of peace.

Evidently, although Bakunin was supposedly a city, its populace tilled their fields and provided themselves with their own food. He could see no signs of stores or warehouses. And the U.P. building, which was no great edifice itself, was the only thing in town which looked even remotely like a governmental building.

Bakunin was neat. Clean as a pin, as the expression went. Ronny was vaguely reminded of a historical Tri-Di romance he’d once seen. It had been laid in ancient times in a community of the Amish in old Pennsylvania.

He approached one of the wooden houses. The things would have been priceless on Earth as an antique to be erected as a museum in some crowded park. For that matter it would have been priceless for the wood it contained. Evidently, the planet Kropotkin still had considerable virgin forest.

An old-timer smoking a pipe, sat on the cottage’s front step. He nodded politely.

Ronny stopped. He might as well try to get a little of the feel of the place. He said courteously, “A pleasant evening.”

The old-timer nodded. “As evenings should be after a fruitful day’s toil. Sit down, comrade. You must be from the United Planets. Have you ever seen Earth?”

Ronny accepted the invitation and felt a soothing calm descend upon him almost immediately. An almost disturbingly pleasant calm. He said, “I was born on Earth.”

“Ai?” the old man said. “Tell me. The books say that Kropotkin is an Earth type planet within what they call a few degrees. But is it? Is Kropotkin truly like the mother planet?”

Ronny looked about him. He’d seen some of this world as the shuttle rocket had brought them down from the passing liner. The forests, the lakes, the rivers, and the great sections untouched by man’s hands. Now he saw the areas between homes, the neat fields, the signs of human toil—the toil of hands, not machines.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m afraid not. This is how Earth must once have been. But no longer.”

The other nodded. “Our total population is but a few million,” he said. Then, “I would like to see the mother planet, but I suppose I never shall.”

Ronny said diplomatically, “I have seen little of Kropotkin thus far but I am not so sure but that I might not be happy to stay here, rather than ever return to Earth.”

The old man knocked the ashes from his pipe by striking it against the heel of a work-gnarled hand. He looked about him thoughtfully and said, “Yes, perhaps you’re right. I am an old man and life has been good. I suppose I should be glad that I’ll unlikely live to see Kropotkin change.”

“Change? You plan changes?”

The old man looked at him and there seemed to be a very faint bitterness, politely suppressed. “I wouldn’t say we planned them, comrade. Certainly not we of the older generation. But the trend toward change is already to be seen by anyone who wishes to look, and our institutions won’t long be able to stand. But, of course, if you’re from United Planets you would know more of this than I.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are new indeed on Kropotkin,” the old man said. “Just a moment.” He went into his house and emerged with a small power pack. He indicated it to Ronny Bronston. “This is our destruction,” he said.

The Section G agent shook his head, bewildered.

The old-timer sat down again. “My son,” he said, “runs the farm now. Six months ago, he traded one of our colts for a small pump, powered by one of these. It was little use on my part to argue against the step. The pump eliminates considerable work at the well and in irrigation.”

Ronny still didn’t understand.

“The power pack is dead now,” the old man said, “and my son needs a new one.”

“They’re extremely cheap,” Ronny said. “An industrialized planet turns them out in multi-million amounts at practically no cost.”

“We have little with which to trade. A few handicrafts, at most.”

Ronny said, “But, good heavens, man, build yourselves a plant to manufacture power packs. With a population this small, a factory employing no more than half a dozen men could turn out all you need.”

The old man was shaking his head. He held up the battery. “This comes from the planet Archimedes,” he said, “one of the most highly industrialized in the U.P., so I understand. On Archimedes do you know how many persons it takes to manufacture this power pack?”

“A handful to operate the whole factory, Archimedes is fully automated.”

The old man was still moving his head negatively. “No. It takes the total working population of the planet. How many different metals do you think are contained in it, in all? I can immediately see what must be lead and copper.”

Ronny said uncomfortably, “Probably at least a dozen, some in microscopic amounts.”

“That’s right. So we need a highly developed metallurgical industry before we can even begin. Then a developed transportation industry to take metals to the factory. We need power to run the factory, hydroelectric, solar, or possibly atomic power. We need a tool-making industry to equip the factory, the transport industry and the power industry. And while the men are employed in these, we need farmers to produce food for them, educators to teach them the sciences and techniques involved, and an entertainment industry to amuse them in their hours of rest. As their lives become more complicated with all this, we need a developed medical industry to keep them in health.”

The old man hesitated for a moment, then said, “And, above all, we need a highly complicated government to keep all this accumulation of wealth in check and balance. No. You see, my friend, it takes social labor to produce products such as this, and thus far we have avoided that on Kropotkin. In fact, it was for such avoidance that my ancestors originally came to this planet.”

Ronny said, scowling, “This gets ridiculous. You show me this basically simple power pack and say it will ruin your socioeconomic system. On the face of it, it’s ridiculous.”

The old man sighed and looked out over the village unseeingly. “It’s not just that single item, of course. The other day one of my neighbors turned up with a light bulb with built-in power for a year’s time. It is the envy of the unthinking persons of the neighborhood most of whom would give a great deal for such a source of light. A nephew of mine has somehow even acquired a powered bicycle, I think you call them, from somewhere or other. One by one, item by item, these products of advanced technology turn up—from whence, we don’t seem to be able to find out.”

Under his breath, Ronny muttered, “Paine!”

“I beg your pardon,” the old man said.

“Nothing,” the Section G agent said. He leaned forward and, a worried frown working its way over his face, began to question the other more closely.

Afterwards, Ronny Bronston strode slowly toward the U.P. headquarters. There was only a small contingent of United Planets personnel on this little populated member planet but, as always, there seemed to be an office for Section G.

Ronny stood outside it for a moment. There were voices from within, but he didn’t knock.

In fact, he cast his eyes up and down the short corridor. At the far end was a desk with a girl in the Interplanetary Cultural Exchange Department working away in concentration. She wasn’t looking in his direction.

Ronny Bronston put his ear to the door. The building was primitive enough, rustic enough in its construction, to permit his hearing.

Tog Lee Chang Chu was saying seriously, “Oh, it was chaotic all right, but no, I don’t really believe it could have been a Tommy Paine case. Actually I’d suggest to you that you run over to Catalina. When I was on Avalon I heard rumors that Tommy Paine’s finger seemed to be stirring around in the mess there. Yes, I’d recommend that you take off for Catalina immediately. If Paine is anywhere in this vicinity at all, it would be Catalina.”

For a moment, Ronny Bronston froze. Then in automatic reflex his hand went inside his jacket to rest over the butt of the Model H automatic there.

No, that wasn’t the answer. His hand dropped away from the gun.

He listened, further.

Another voice was saying, “We thought we were on the trail for a while on Hector, but it turned out it wasn’t Paine. Just a group of local agitators fed up with the communist regime there. There’s going to be a blood bath on Hector, before they’re through, but it doesn’t seem to be Paine’s work this time.”

Tog’s voice was musing. “Well, you never know, it sounds like the sort of muck he likes to play in.”

The strange voice said argumentatively, “Well, Hector needs a few fundamental changes.”

“It could be,” Tog said, “but that’s their internal affairs, of course. Our job in Section G is to prevent troubles between the differing socioeconomic and religious features of member planets. Whatever we think of some of the things Paine does, our task is to get him.”

Ronny Bronston pushed the door open and went through. Tog Lee Chang Chu was sitting at a desk, nonchalant and petitely beautiful as usual, comfortably seated in easy-chairs were two young men by their attire probably citizens of United Planets and possibly even Earthlings.

“Hello, Ronny,” Tog said softly. “Meet Frederic Lippman and Pedro Nazaré, both Section G operatives. This is my colleague, Ronald Bronston, gentlemen. Fredric and Pedro were just leaving, Ronny.”

The two agents got up to shake hands.

Ronny said, “You can’t be in that much of a hurry. What’s your assignment, boys?”

Lippman, an earnest type, and by his appearance not more than twenty-five or so years of age, began to answer, but Nazaré said hurriedly, “Actually, it’s a confidential assignment. We’re working directly out of the Octagon.”

Lippman said, frowning, “It’s not that confidential, Tog. Bronston’s an agent, too. What’s your assignment, Ronny?”

Ronny said very slowly, “I’m beginning to suspect that it’s the same as yours and various pieces are beginning to fall into place.”

Lippman was taken aback. “You mean you’re looking for Tommy Paine?” His eyes went to his associate. “How could that be, Tog? I didn’t know more than one of us were on this job. Why, that means if Bronston here finds him first, I won’t get my permanent appointment.”

Ronny looked at Tog Lee Chang Chu who was sitting demurely, hands in lap, and a resigned expression on her face. He said, “Nor if you find him first, will I. Look here, Tog, how many men does Sid Jakes have out on this assignment?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said mildly.

He snapped, “A few dozen or so? Or possibly a few hundred?”

“It seems unlikely there could be that many,” she said mildly. She looked at the other two agents. “I think you two had better run along. Take my suggestion I made earlier.”

“Wait a minute,” Ronny snapped. “You mean that they go to Catalina? That’s ridiculous.”

Tog Lee Chang Chu looked at Pedro Nazaré and he turned and started for the door followed by Fredric Lippman who was still scowling his puzzlement.

“Wait a minute!” Ronny snapped. “I tell you it’s ridiculous. And why follow her suggestions? She’s just my assistant.”

Pedro Nazaré said, “Come on, Fred, let’s get going, we’ll have to pack.” But Lippman wasn’t having any.

“His assistant?” he said to Tog Lee Chang Chu.

Tog Lee Chang Chu’s face changed expression in sudden decision. She opened her bag and brought forth a Section G identification wallet and flicked it open. The badge was gold. “I suggest you hurry,” she said to the two agents.

They left, and Tog turned back to Ronny, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

Ronny sank down into one of the chairs recently occupied by the other two agents and tried to unravel thoughts. He said finally, “I suppose my question should be, why do Ross Metaxa and Sid Jakes send an agent of supervisor rank to act as assistant to a probationary agent? But that’s not what I’m asking yet. First, Lippman just called his buddy Tog. How come?”

Tog took her seat again, rueful resignation on her face. “You should be figuring it out on your own by this time, Ronny.”

He looked at her belligerently. “I’m too stupid, eh?” The anger was growing within him.

“Tog,” she said. “It’s a nickname, or possibly you might call it a title. Tog. T-O-G. The Other Guy. My name is Lee Chang Chu, and I’m of supervisor grade presently working at developing new Section G operatives. Considering the continuing rapid growth of U.P., and the continuing crises that come up in U.P. activities, developing new operatives is one of the department’s most pressing jobs. Each new agent, on his first assignment, is always paired with an experienced old-timer.”

“I see,” he said flatly. “Your principal job being to needle the fledging, eh?”

She lowered her eyes. “I wouldn’t exactly word it that way,” she said. She was obviously unrepentant.

He said, “You must get a lot of laughs out of it. If I say, it seems to me democracy is a good thing, you give me an argument about the superiority of rule by an elite. If I say anarchism is ridiculous, you dredge up an opinion that it’s man’s highest ethic. You must laugh yourself to sleep at nights. You and Metaxa and Jakes and every other agent in Section G. Everybody is in on the Tog gag but the sucker.”

“Sometimes there are amusing elements to the work,” Lee Chang conceded, demurely.

“Just one more thing I’d like to ask,” Ronny rapped. “This first assignment, agents are given. Is it always to look for Tommy Paine?”

She looked up at him, said nothing, but her eyes were questioning.

“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “I’ve already found out who Paine is.”

“Ah?” She was suddenly interested. “Then I’m glad I ordered that other probationary agent to leave. Evidently, he hasn’t. Obviously, I didn’t want the two of you comparing notes.”

“No, that would never do,” he said bitterly. “Well, this is the end of the assignment so far as you and I are concerned. I’m heading back for Earth.”

“Of course,” she said.

He had time on the way to think it all over, and over and over again, and a great deal of it simply didn’t make sense. He had enough information to be disillusioned, sick at heart. To have crumbled an idealistic edifice that had taken a lifetime to build. A lifetime? At least three. His father and his grandfather before him had had the dream. He’d been weaned on the idealistic purposes of the United Planets and man’s fated growth into the stars.

He was a third-generation dreamer of participating in the glory. His grandfather had been a citizen of Earth and gave up a commercial position to take a job that amounted to little more than a janitor in an obscure department of Interplanetary Financial Clearing. He wanted to get into the big job, into space, but never made it. Ronny’s father managed to work up to the point where he was a supervisor in Interplanetary Medical Exchange, in the tabulating department. He, too, had wanted into space, and never made it. Ronny had loved them both. In a way fulfilling his own dreams had been a debt he owed them, because at the same time he was fulfilling theirs.

And now this. All that had been gold, was suddenly gilted lead. The dream had become contemptuous nightmare.

Finally back in Greater Washington, he went immediately from the shuttleport to the Octagon. His Bureau of Investigation badge was enough to see him through the guide-guards and all the way through to the office of Irene Kasansky.

She looked up at him quickly. “Hi,” she said. “Ronny Bronston, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. I want to see Commissioner Metaxa.”

She scowled. “I can’t work you in now. How about Sid Jakes?”

He said, “Jakes is in charge of the Tommy Paine routine, isn’t he?”

She shot a sharper look up at him. “That’s right,” she said warily.

“All right,” Ronny said. “I’ll see Jakes.”

Her deft right hand slipped open a drawer in her desk. “You’d better leave your gun here,” she said. “I’ve known probationary agents to get excited, in my time.”

He looked at her.

And she looked back, her gaze level.

Ronny Bronston shrugged, slipped the Model H from under his armpit and tossed it into the drawer.

Irene Kasansky went back to her work. “You know the way,” she said.

This time Ronny Bronston pushed open the door to Sid Jakes’ office without knocking. The Section G supervisor was poring over reports on his desk. He looked up and grinned his Sid Jakes’ grin.

“Ronny!” he said. “Welcome back. You know, you’re one of the quickest men ever to return from a Tommy Paine assignment. I was talking to Lee Chang only a day or so ago. She said you were on your way.”

Ronny grunted, his anger growing within him. He lowered himself into one of the room’s heavy chairs, and glared at the other.

Sid Jakes chuckled and leaned back in his chair. “Before we go any further, just to check, who is Tommy Paine?”

Ronny snapped, “You are.”

The supervisor’s eyebrows went up.

Ronny said, “You and Ross Metaxa and Lee Chang Chu—and all the rest of Section G. Section G is Tommy Paine.”

“Good man!” Sid Jakes chortled. He flicked a switch on his order box. “Irene,” he said, “how about clearing me through to the commissioner? I want to take Ronny in for his finals.”

Irene snapped back something and Sid Jakes switched off and turned to Ronny happily. “Let’s go,” he said. “Ross is free for a time.”

Ronny Bronston said nothing. He followed the other. The rage within him was still mounting.

In the months that had elapsed since Ronny Bronston had seen Ross Metaxa the latter had changed not at all. His clothing was still sloppy, his eyes bleary with lack of sleep or abundance of alcohol—or both. His expression was still sour and skeptical.

He looked up at their entry and scowled, and made no effort to rise and shake hands. He said to Ronny sourly, “OK, sound off and get it over with. I haven’t too much time this afternoon.”

Ronny Bronston was just beginning to feel tentacles of cold doubt, but he suppressed them. The boiling anger was uppermost. He said flatly, “All my life I’ve been a dedicated United Planets man. All my life I’ve considered its efforts the most praiseworthy and greatest endeavor man has ever attempted.”

“Of course, old chap,” Jakes told him cheerfully. “We know all that, or you wouldn’t ever have been chosen as an agent for Section G.”

Ronny looked at him in disgust. “I’ve resigned that position, Jakes.”

Jakes grinned back at him. “To the contrary, you’re now in the process of receiving permanent appointment.”

Ronny snorted his disgust and turned back to Metaxa. “Section G is a secret department of the Bureau of Investigation devoted to subverting Article One of the United Planets Charter.”

Metaxa nodded.

“You don’t deny it?”

Metaxa shook his head.

“Article One,” Ronny snapped, “is the basic foundation of the Charter which every member of U.P. and particularly every citizen of United Planets, such as ourselves, has sworn to uphold. But the very reason for the existence of this Section G is to interfere with the internal affairs of member planets, to subvert their governments, their economic systems, their religions, their ideals, their very way of life.”

Metaxa yawned and reached into a desk drawer for his bottle. “That’s right,” he said. “Anybody like a drink?”

Ronny ignored him. “I’m surprised I didn’t catch on even sooner,” he said. “On New Delos Mouley Hassan, the local agent, knew the God-King was going to be assassinated. He brought in extra agents and even a detail of Space Forces guards for the emergency. He probably engineered the assassination himself.”

“Nope,” Jakes said. “We seldom go that far. Local rebels did the actual work, but, admittedly, we knew what they were planning. In fact, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Mouley Hassan provided them with the bomb. That lad’s a bit too dedicated.”

“But why,” Ronny blurted. “That’s deliberately interfering with internal affairs. If the word got out, every planet in U.P. would resign.”

“Probably no planet in the system that needed a change so badly,” Metaxa growled. “If they were ever going to swing into real progress, that hierarchy of priests had to go.” He snorted. “An immortal God-King, yet.”

Ronny pressed on. “That was bad enough, but how about this planet Mother, where the colonists had attempted to return to nature and live in the manner man did in earliest times.”

“Most backward planet in the U.P.,” Metaxa said sourly. “They just had to be roused.”

“And Kropotkin!” Ronny blurted. “Don’t you understand, those people were happy there. Their lives were simple, uncomplicated, and they had achieved a happiness that—”

Metaxa came to his feet. He scowled at Ronny Bronston and growled, “Unfortunately, the human race can’t take the time out for happiness. Come along, I want to show you something.”

He swung around the corner of his desk and made his way toward a ceiling-high bookcase.

Ronny stared after him, taken off guard, but Sid Jakes was grinning his amusement.

Ross Metaxa pushed a concealed button and the bookcase slid away to one side to reveal an elevator beyond.

“Come along,” Metaxa repeated over his shoulder. He entered the elevator, followed by Jakes.

There was nothing else to do. Ronny Bronston followed them, his face still flushed with the angered argument.

The elevator dropped, how far, Ronny had no idea. It stopped and they emerged into a plain, sparsely furnished vault. Against one wall was a boxlike affair that reminded Ronny of nothing so much as a deepfreeze.

For all practical purposes, that’s what it was. Ross Metaxa led him over and they stared down into its glass-covered interior.

Ronny’s eyes bugged. The box contained the partly charred body of an animal approximately the size of a rabbit. No, not an animal. It had obviously once been clothed, and its limbs were obviously those of a tool using life form.

Metaxa and Jakes were staring down at it solemnly, for once no inane grin on the supervisor’s face. And that of Ross Metaxa was more weary than ever.

Ronny said finally, “What is it?” But he knew.

“You tell us,” Metaxa growled sourly.

“It’s an intelligent life form,” Ronny blurted. “Why has it been kept secret?”

“Let’s go on back upstairs,” Metaxa sighed.

Back in his office he said, “Now I go into my speech. Shut up for a while.” He poured himself a drink, not offering one to the other two. “Ronny,” he said, “man isn’t alone in the galaxy. There’s other intelligent life. Dangerously intelligent.”

In spite of himself Ronny reacted in amusement. “That little creature down there? The size of a small monkey?” As soon as he said it, he realized the ridiculousness of his statement.

Metaxa grunted. “Obviously, size means nothing. That little fellow down there was picked up by one of our Space Forces scouts over a century ago. How long he’d been drifting through space, we don’t know. Possibly only months, but possibly hundreds of centuries. But however long he’s proof that man is not alone in the galaxy. And we have no way of knowing when the expanding human race will come up against this other intelligence—and whoever it was fighting.”

“But,” Ronny protested, “you’re assuming they’re aggressive. Perhaps coming in contact with these aliens will be the best thing that ever happened to man. Possibly that little fellow down there is the most benevolent creature ever evolved.”

Metaxa looked at him strangely. “Let’s hope so,” he said. “However, when found he was in what must have been a one-man scout. He was dead and his craft was blasted and torn—obviously from some sort of weapons’ fire. His scout was obviously a military craft, highly equipped with what could only be weapons, most of them so damaged our engineers haven’t been able to figure them out. To the extent they have been able to reconstruct them, they’re scared silly. No, there’s no two ways about it, our little rabbit sized intelligence down in the vault was killed in an interplanetary conflict. And sooner or later, Ronny, man in his explosion into the stars is going to run into either or both of the opponents in that conflict.”

Ronny Bronston slumped back into his chair, his brain running out a dozen leads at once.

Metaxa and Jakes remained quiet, looking at him speculatively.

Ronny said slowly, “Then the purpose of Section G is to push the member planets of U.P. along the fastest path of progress, to get them ready for the eventual, inevitable meeting.”

“Not just Section G,” Metaxa growled, “but all of the United Planets organization, although most of the rank and file don’t even know our basic purpose. Section G? We do the dirty work, and are proud to do it, by every method we can devise.”

Ronny leaned forward. “But look,” he said. “Why not simply inform all member planets of this common danger? They’d all unite in the effort to meet the common potential foe. Anything standing in the way would be brushed aside.”

Metaxa shook his head wearily. “Would they? Is a common danger enough for man to change his institutions, particularly those pertaining to property, power and religion? History doesn’t show it. Delve back into early times and you’ll recall, for an example, that in man’s early discovery of nuclear weapons he almost destroyed himself. Three or four different socioeconomic systems coexisted at that time and all would have preferred destruction rather than changes in their social forms.”

Jakes said, in an unwonted quiet tone, “No, until someone comes up with a better answer it looks as though Section G is going to have to continue the job of advancing man’s institutions, in spite of himself.”

The commissioner made it clearer. “It’s not as though we deal with all our member planets. It isn’t necessary. But you see, Ronny, the best colonists are usually made up of the, well, crackpot element. Those who are satisfied, stay at home. America, for instance, was settled by the adventurers, the malcontents, the nonconformists, the religious cultists, and even fugitives and criminals of Europe. So it is in the stars. A group of colonists go out with their dreams, their schemes, their far-out ideas. In a few centuries they’ve populated their new planet, and often do very well indeed. But often not and a nudge, a push, from Section G can start them up another rung or so of the ladder of social evolution. Most of them don’t want the push. Few cultures, if any, realize they are mortal; like Hitler’s Reich, they expect to last at least a thousand years. They resist any change—even change for the better.”

Ronny’s defenses were crumbling, but he threw one last punch. “How do you know the changes you make are for the better?”

Metaxa shrugged heavy shoulders. “It’s sometimes difficult to decide, but we aim for changes that will mean an increased scientific progress, a more advanced industrial technology, more and better education, the opening of opportunity for every member of the culture to exert himself to the full of his abilities. The last is particularly important. Too many cultures, even those that think of themselves as particularly advanced, suppress the individual by one means or another.”

Ronny was still mentally reeling with the magnitude of it all. “But how can you account for the fact that these alien intelligences haven’t already come in contact with us?”

Metaxa shrugged again. “The Solar System, our sun, is way out in a sparsely populated spiral arm of our galaxy. Undoubtedly, these others are further in toward the center. We have no way of knowing how far away they are, or how many sun systems they dominate, or even how many other empires of intelligent life forms there are. All we know is that there are other intelligences in the galaxy, that they are near enough like us to live on the same type planets. The more opportunity man has to develop before the initial contact takes place, the stronger bargaining position, or military position, as the case may be, he’ll be in.”

Sid Jakes summed up the Tommy Paine business for Ronny’s sake. “We need capable agents badly, but we need dedicated and efficient ones. We can’t afford anything less. So when we come upon potential Section G operatives we send them out with a trusted Tog to get a picture of these United Planets of ours. It’s the quickest method of indoctrination we’ve hit upon; the agent literally teaches himself by observation and participation. Usually, it takes four or five stops, on this planet and that, before the probationary agent begins sympathizing with the efforts of this elusive Tommy Paine. Especially since every Section G agent he runs into, including the Tog, of course, fills him full of stories of Tommy Paine’s activities.

“You were one of the quickest to stumble on the true nature of our Section G. After calling at only three planets you saw that we ourselves are Tommy Paine.”

“But … but what’s the end?” Ronny said plaintively. “You say our job is advancing man, even in spite of himself when it comes to that. We start at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder in a condition of savagery, clan communism in government, simple animism in religion, and slowly we progress through barbarism to civilization, through paganism to the higher ethical codes, through chattel slavery and then feudalism and beyond. What is the final end, the Ultima Thule?”

Metaxa was shaking his head again. He poured himself another drink, offered the bottle this time to the others. “We don’t know,” he said wearily, “perhaps there is none. Perhaps there is always another rung on this evolutionary ladder.” He punched at his order box and said, “Irene, have them do up a silver badge for Ronny.”

Ronny Bronston took a deep breath and reached for the brown bottle. “Well,” he said. “I suppose I’m ready to ask for my first assignment.” He thought for a moment. “By the way, if there’s any way to swing it, I wouldn’t mind working with Supervisor Lee Chang Chu.”

Farmer

I

One of the auto-copters swooped in and landed. Johnny McCord emptied his pipe into the wastebasket, came to his feet and strolled toward the open door. He automatically took up a sun helmet before emerging into the Saharan sun.

He was dressed in khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, wool socks and yellow Moroccan babouche slippers.

The slippers were strictly out of uniform and would have been frowned upon by Johnny’s immediate superiors. However, the Arabs had been making footwear suitable for sandy terrain for centuries before there had ever been a Sahara Reforestation Commission. Johnny was in favor of taking advantage of their know-how. Especially since the top brass made a point of staying in the swank air-conditioned buildings of Colomb-Béchar, Tamanrasset and Timbuktu, from whence they issued lengthy bulletins on the necessity of never allowing a Malian to see a Commission employee in less than the correct dress and in less than commanding dignity. While they were busily at work composing such directives, field men such as Johnny McCord went about the Commission’s real tasks.

It was auto-copter 4, which Johnny hadn’t expected for another half hour. He extracted the reports and then peered into the cockpit to check. There were two red lights flickering on the panel. Work for Reuben. This damned sand was a perpetual hazard to equipment. Number 4 had just had an overhaul a few weeks before and here it was throwing red lights already.

He took the reports back into the office and dumped them into the card-punch. While they were being set up, Johnny went over to the office refrigerator and got out a can of Tuborg beer. Theoretically, it was as taboo to drink iced beer in this climate, and particularly at this time of day, as it was to go out into the sun without a hat. But this was one place where the Commission’s medics could go blow.

By the time he’d finished the Danish brew, the card-punch had stopped clattering so he took the cards from the hopper and crossed to the sorter. He gave them a quick joggling—cards held up well in this dry climate, though they were a terror further south—and sorted them through four code numbers, enough for this small an amount. He carried them over to the collator and merged them into the proper file.

He was still running off a report on the Alphabetyper when Derek Mason came in.

Johnny drawled in a horrible caricature of a New England accent, “I say, Si, did the cyclone hurt your barn any?”

Derek’s voice took on the same twang. “Don’t know, Hiram, we ain’t found it yet.”

Johnny said, “You get all your chores done, Si?”

Derek dropped the pseudo-twang and his voice expressed disgust. “I got a chore for you Johnny, that you’re going to love. Rounding up some livestock.”

Johnny looked up from the report he was running off and shot an impatient glance at him. “Livestock? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Goats.”

Johnny McCord flicked the stop button on the Alphabetyper. “Where’ve you been? There isn’t a goat within five hundred miles of here.”

Derek went over to the refrigerator for beer. He said over his shoulder, “I was just making a routine patrol over toward Amérene El Kasbach. I’d estimate there were a hundred Tuareg in camp there. Camels, a few sheep, a few horses and donkeys. Mostly goats. Thousands of them. By the looks of the transplants, they’ve been there possibly a week or so.”

Johnny said in agony, “Oh, Lord. What clan were they?”

Derek punched a hole in his beer can with the opener that hung from the refrigerator by a string. “I didn’t go low enough to check. You can never tell with a Tuareg. They can’t resist as beautiful a target as a helicopter, and one of these days one of them is going to make a hole in me, instead of in the fuselage or rotors.”

Johnny McCord, furious, plunked himself down before the telephone and dialed Tessalit, 275 kilometers to the south. The girl on the desk there grinned at him and said, “Hello, Johnny.”

Johnny McCord was in no mood for pleasantries. He snapped, “Who’s supposed to be on Bedouin patrol down there?”

She blinked at him. “Why, Mohammed is in command of patrolling this area, Mr. McCord.”

“Mohammed? Mohammed who? Eighty percent of these Malians are named Mohammed.”

“Captain Mohammed Mohmoud ould Cheikh.” She added, unnecessarily, “The Qadi’s son.”

Johnny grunted. He’d always suspected that the captain had got his ideas of what a qadi’s son should be like from seeing Hollywood movies. “Look, Kate,” he said. “Let me talk to Mellor, will you?”

Her face faded to be replaced by that of a highly tanned, middle-aged executive type. He scowled at Johnny McCord with a this-better-be-important expression, not helping Johnny’s disposition.

He snapped, “Somebody’s let several thousand goats into my eucalyptus transplants in my western four hundred.”

Mellor was taken aback.

Johnny said, “I can have Derek back-trail them, if you want to be sure, but it’s almost positive they came from the south, this time of year.”

Mellor sputtered, “They might have come from the direction of Timmissao. Who are they, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Tuareg. I thought we’d supposedly settled with all the Tuareg. Good Lord, man, do you know how many transplants a thousand goats can go through in a week’s time?”

“A week’s time!” Mellor rasped. “You mean you’ve taken a whole week to detect them?”

Johnny McCord glared at him. “A whole week! We’re lucky they didn’t spend the whole season before we found them. How big a staff do you think we have here, Mellor? There’s just three of us. Only one can be spared for patrol.”

“You have natives,” the older man growled.

“They can’t fly helicopters. Most of them can’t even drive a Land Rover or a jeep. Besides that, they’re scared to death of Tuaregs. They wouldn’t dare report them. What I want to know is, why didn’t you stop them coming through?”

Mellor was on the defensive. He ranked Johnny McCord, but that was beside the point right now. He said finally, “I’ll check this all the way through, McCord. Meanwhile, I’ll send young Mohammed Mohmoud up with a group of his men.”

“To do what?” Johnny demanded.

“To shoot the goats, what else?”

Johnny growled, “One of these days a bunch of these Tuareg are going to decide that a lynching bee is in order, and that’s going to be the end of this little base at Bidon Cinq.”

Mellor said, “If they’re Tuareg nomads then they have no legal right to be within several hundred miles of Bidon Cinq. And if they’ve got goats, they shouldn’t have. The Commission has bought up every goat in this part of the world.”

Johnny growled, “Sure, bought them up and then left it to the honor of the Tuareg to destroy them. The honor of the Tuareg! Ha!”

The other said pompously, “Are you criticizing the upper echelons, McCord?”

Johnny McCord snapped, “You’re damned right I am.” He slammed off the telephone and turned on Derek Mason. “What are you grinning about?”

Derek drawled, “I say, Hiram, I got a sneaky suspicion you ain’t never gonna graduate off’n this here farm if you don’t learn how to cotton up to the city slickers better.”

“Oh, shut up,” Johnny growled. “Let’s have another beer.”

Before Derek could bring it to him, the telephone screen lit up again and Paul Peterson, of the Poste Weygand base, was there. He said, “Hi. You guys look like you’re having a crisis.”

“Hello, Paul,” Johnny McCord said. “Crisis is right. Those jerks down south let a clan of Tuareg, complete with a few thousand goats, camels and sheep through. They’ve been grazing a week or more in my west four hundred.”

“Good grief.” Paul grimaced. “At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. They never get this far up. How’d it happen?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I haven’t seen the mess yet, but it’s certain to wreck that whole four hundred. Have you ever seen just one goat at work on the bark of three-year transplants?”

Paul shuddered sympathetically. “Look, Johnny,” he said. “The reason I called you. There’s an air-cushion Land Rover coming through. She just left.”

Derek Mason looked over Johnny’s shoulder into the screen. “What d’ya mean, she?”

Paul grinned. “Just that, and, Buster, she’s stacked. A Mademoiselle Hélène Desage of Paris Match.”

Johnny said, “The French magazine? What’s she doing in a road car? Why doesn’t she have an aircraft? There hasn’t been a road car through here this whole year.”

Paul shrugged. “She claims she’s getting it from the viewpoint of how things must’ve been twenty years ago. So, anyway, we’ve notified you. If she doesn’t turn up in eight or ten hours, you better send somebody to look for her.”

“Yeah,” Johnny McCord said. “Well, so long, Paul.”

The other’s face faded from the screen and Johnny McCord turned to his colleague. “One more extraneous something to foul up our schedule.”

Derek said mildly, “I say, Hiram, what’re you complaining about? Didn’t you hear tell what Paul just said? She’s stacked. Be just like a traveling saleswoman visitin’ the farm.”

“Yeah,” Johnny growled. “And I can see just how much work I’ll be getting out of you as long as she’s here.”

II

Poste Maurice Cortier, better known in the Sahara as Bidon Cinq, is as remote a spot on earth in which man has ever lived. Some 750 kilometers to the south is Bourem on the Niger river. If you go west of Bourem another 363 kilometers, you reach Timbuktu, the nearest thing to a city in that part of the Sudan. If you travel north from Bidon Cinq 1,229 kilometers you reach Colomb-Béchar, the nearest thing to a city in southern Algeria. There are no railroads, no highways. The track through the desert is marked by oil drums filled with gravel so the wind won’t blow them away. There is an oil drum every quarter of a mile or so. You go from one to the next, carrying your own fuel and water. If you get lost, the authorities come looking for you in aircraft. Sometimes they find you.

In the latter decades of the Twentieth Century, Bidon Cinq became an outpost of the Sahara Reforestation Commission which was working north from the Niger, and south from Algeria as well as east from the Atlantic. The water table in the vicinity of Bidon Cinq was considerably higher than had once been thought. Even artesian wells were possible in some localities. More practical still were springs and wells exploited by the new solar-powered pumps that in their tens of thousands were driving back the sands of the world’s largest desert.

Johnny McCord and Derek Mason ate in the officer’s mess, divorced from the forty or fifty Arabs and Songhai who composed their work force. It wasn’t snobbery, simply a matter of being able to eat in leisure and discuss the day’s activities free of the chatter of the larger mess hall.

Derek looked down into his plate. “Hiram,” he drawled, “who ever invented this here couscous?”

Johnny looked over at the tall, easygoing Canadian who was his second in command and scowled dourly. He was in no humor for their usual banter. “What’s the matter with couscous?” Johnny growled.

“I don’t know,” Derek said. “I’m a meat and potatoes man at heart.”

Johnny shrugged. “Couscous serves the same purpose as potatoes do. Or rice, or spaghetti, or bread, or any of the other bland basic foods. It’s what you put on it that counts.”

Derek stared gloomily into his dish. “Well, I wish they’d get something more interesting than ten-year-old mutton to put on this.”

Johnny said, “Where in the devil is Pierre? It’s nearly dark.”

“Reuben?” Derek drawled. “Why Reuben went out to check the crops up in the northeast forty. Took the horse and buggy.”

That didn’t help Johnny’s irritation. “He took an air-cushion jeep, instead of a copter? Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“He wanted to check quite a few of the pumps. Said landing and taking off was more trouble than the extra speed helped. He’ll be back shortly.”

“He’s back now,” a voice from the door said.

Pierre Marimbert, brushing sand from his clothes, pushed into the room and made his way to the mess hall refrigerator. He said nothing further until he had a can of beer open.

Johnny said, “Damn it, Pierre, you shouldn’t stay out this late in a jeep. If you got stuck out there, we’d have one hell of a time finding you. In a copter you’ve at least got the radio.”

Pierre had washed the dust from his throat. Now he said quietly, “I wanted to check on as many pumps as I could.”

“You could have gone back tomorrow. The things are supposed to be self-sufficient, no checking necessary more than once every three months. There’s practically nothing that can go wrong with them.”

Pierre finished off the can of beer, reached into the refrigerator for another. “Dynamite can go wrong with them,” he said.

The other two looked at him, shocked silent.

Pierre said, “I don’t know how many altogether. I found twenty-two of the pumps in the vicinity of In Ziza had been blown to smithereens—out of forty I checked.”

Johnny rapped, “How long ago? How many trees … ?”

Pierre laughed sourly. “I don’t know how long ago. The transplants, especially the slash pine, are going to be just so much kindling before I get new pumps in.”

Derek said, shocked, “That’s our oldest stand.”

Pierre Marimbert, a forty-year-old, sun-beaten Algerian colon, eldest man on the team, sank into his place at the table. He poured the balance of his can of beer into a glass.

Johnny said, “What … what can we do? How many spare pumps can you get into there, and how soon?”

Pierre looked up at him wearily. “You didn’t quite hear what I said, Johnny. I only checked forty. Forty out of nearly a thousand in that vicinity. Twenty-two of them were destroyed, better than fifty percent. For all I know, that percentage applies throughout the whole In Ziza area. If so, there’s damn few of your trees going to be left alive. We have a few spare pumps on hand here, but we’d have to get a really large number all the way from Dakar.”

Derek said softly, “That took a lot of men and a lot of dynamite. Which means a lot of transport—and a lot of money. We’ve had trouble before, but usually it was disgruntled nomads, getting revenge for losing their grazing land.”

Johnny snorted, “Damn little grazing this far north.”

Derek nodded. “I’m simply saying that even if we could blame our minor sabotage on the Tuareg in the past, we can’t do it this time. There’s money behind anything this big.”

Johnny McCord said wearily, “Let’s eat. In the morning we’ll go out and take a look. I’d better call Timbuktu on this. If nothing else, the Mali Federation can send troops out to protect us.”

Derek grunted. “With a standing army of about 25,000 men, they’re going to patrol a million and a half square miles of desert?”

“Can you think of anything else to do?”

“No.”

Pierre Marimbert began dishing couscous into a soup plate, then poured himself a glass of vin ordinaire. He said, “I can’t think of a better place for saboteurs. Twenty men could do millions of dollars of destruction and never be found.”

Johnny growled, “It’s not as bad as all that. They’ve got to eat and drink, and so do their animals. There are damned few places where they can.”

From the door a voice said, “I am intruding?”

They hadn’t heard her car come up. The three men scrambled to their feet.

“Good evening,” Johnny McCord blurted.

“Hell … o!” Derek breathed.

Pierre Marimbert was across the room, taking her in hand. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle. Que puis-je faire pour vous? Voulez-vous une biere bien fraiche ou un apéritif? Il fait très chaud dans le desert.” He led her toward the table.

“Easy, easy there, Reuben,” Derek grumbled. “The young lady speaks English. Give a man a chance.”

Johnny was placing a chair for her. “Paul Peterson, from Poste Weygand, radioed that you were coming. You’re a little late, Mademoiselle Desage.”

She was perhaps thirty, slim, long-legged, Parisian style. Even at Bidon Cinq, half a world away from the Champs Élysées, she maintained her chic.

She made a moue at Johnny, while taking the chair he held. “I had hoped to surprise you, catch you off guard.” She took in the sun-dried, dour-faced American wood technologist appraisingly, then turned her eyes in turn to Derek and Pierre.

“You three are out here all alone?” she said demurely.

“Desperately,” Derek said.

Johnny McCord said, “Mademoiselle Hélène Desage, I am John McCord, and these are my associates, Monsieur Pierre Marimbert and Mr. Derek Mason. Gentlemen, Mademoiselle Desage is with Paris Match, the French equivalent of Life, so I understand. In short, she is undoubtedly here for a story. So ixnay on the ump-pays.”

“I would love cold beer,” Hélène Desage said to Pierre, and to Johnny McCord, “These days a traveling reporter for Paris Match must be quite a linguist. My English, Spanish and Italian are excellent. My German passable. And while I am not fluent in Pig-Latin, I can follow it. What is this you are saying about the pumps?”

“Oh, Lord,” Johnny said. “Perhaps I’ll tell you in the morning. But for now, would you like to clean up before supper? You must be exhausted after that 260 kilometers from Poste Weygand.”

Pierre said hurriedly, “I’ll take Mademoiselle Desage over to one of the guest bungalows.”

“Zut!” she said. “The sand! It is even worse than between Reggan and Poste Weygand. Do you realize that until I began coming across your new forests I saw no life at all between these two posts?”

The three forestry experts bowed in unison, as though rehearsed. “Mademoiselle,” Derek, from the heart, “calling our transplant forests is the kindest thing you could have said in these parts.”

They all laughed and Pierre led her from the room.

Derek looked at Johnny McCord. “Wow, that was a slip mentioning the pumps.”

Johnny was looking through the door after her. “I suppose so,” he said sourly. “I’ll have to radio the brass and find out the line we’re supposed to take with her. That’s the biggest magazine in the French-speaking world and you don’t get a job on it without knowing the journalistic ropes. That girl can probably smell a story as far as a Tuareg can smell water.”

“Well, then undoubtedly she’s already sniffing. Because, between that clan of Tuareg with its flocks and the pump saboteurs, we’ve got more stories around here than I ever expected!”

III

In the morning Hélène Desage managed to look the last word in what desert fashion should be, when she strolled into Johnny McCord’s office. Although she came complete with a sun helmet that must have been the product of a top Parisian shop, she would have been more at place on the beaches at Miami, Honolulu or Cannes. Her shorts were short and fitting, her blouse silken, her walking shoes dainty.

He considered for a moment and then decided against informing her that Muslims, particularly in this part of the world, were little used to seeing semi-nude women strolling about. He’d leave the job of explanation to Pierre, as a fellow Frenchman and the oldest man present to boot.

“Bonjour,” she said. “What a lovely day. I have been strolling about your little oasis. But you have made it a garden!”

“Thanks,” Johnny said. “We’ve got to have something to do after working hours. Entertainment is on the scarce side. But it’s more than a garden. We’ve been experimenting to see just what trees will take to this country—given water and care through the early years. Besides, we use it as a showplace.”

“Showplace?”

“For skeptical politicians who come through,” Johnny said, seating her in a chair near his desk. “We give them the idea that the whole Sahara could eventually be like this square mile or so at Bidon Cinq. Palm trees, fruit trees, pines, shade trees. The works.”

“And could it?”

Johnny grinned sourly. “Well, not exactly. Not all in one spot, at least. You’ve got to remember, the Sahara covers an area of some three and a half million square miles. In that area you find almost everything.”

“Everything except water, eh?” She was tapping a cigarette on a polish-reddened thumbnail. As he lit it for her, Johnny McCord realized that he hadn’t seen fingernail polish for a year. He decided it was too long.

“Even water, in some parts,” he said. “There’s more water than most people realize. For instance, the Niger, which runs right through a considerable part of the Sahara, is the eleventh largest river in the world. But until our commission went to work on it, it dumped itself into the Gulf of Guinea, unused.”

“The Niger is a long way from here,” she said through her smoke.

He nodded. “For that matter, though, we have a certain amount of rain, particularly in the highland regions of the central massif. In the past, with no watershed at all, it ran off, buried itself in the sands, or evaporated.”

“Mr. McCord,” she said, “you are amazingly optimistic. Formerly, I must admit I had little knowledge of the Sahara Reforestation Commission. And I deliberately avoided studying up on the subject after receiving this assignment, because I wanted first impression to be received on the spot. However, I’ve just driven across the Sahara. My impression is that your Commission is one great—Comment dit-on?—boondoggling project, a super-W.P.A. into which to plow your American resources and manpower. It is a fake, a delusion. This part of the world has never been anything but wasteland, and never will be.”

Johnny McCord heard her out without change in expression.

He’d been through this before. In fact, almost every time a junketing congressman came through. There was danger in the viewpoint, of course. If the fantastic sums of money which were being spent were cut off, such pessimistic views would become automatically correct.

He took the paperweight from a stack of the correspondence on his desk and handed it to her.

She looked at it and scowled—very prettily, but still a scowl. “What is this? It’s a beautiful piece of stone.”

“I picked it up myself,” Johnny said. “Near Reggan. It’s a chunk of petrified wood, Miss Desage. From a tree that must have originally had a diameter of some ten feet. Not quite a redwood, of course, but big.”

“Yes,” she said, turning it over in her hand. “I can see this part, which must have once been bark. But why do you show it to me?”

“The Sahara was once a semitropical, moist area, highly wooded. It can become so again.”

She put the piece of fossil back on his desk. “How long ago?” she said bluntly.

“A very long time ago, admittedly. During the last Ice Age and immediately afterwards. But, given man’s direction, it can be done again. And it must be.”

She raised pencilled eyebrows at him. “Must be?”

Johnny McCord shifted in his chair. “You must be aware of the world’s population explosion, Miss Desage. The human race can’t allow three and a half million square miles of land to be valueless.” He grunted in deprecation. “And at the rate it was going, it would have been four million before long.”

She didn’t understand.

Johnny spelled it out for her. “A desert can be man-made. Have you ever been in the Middle East?” At her nod, he went on. “Visitors there usually wonder how in the world the ancient Jews could ever have thought of that area as a land of milk and honey. On the face of it, it’s nothing but badlands. What was once the Fertile Crescent now looks like Arizona.”

Hélène Desage was frowning at him. “And you suggest man did this—not nature?”

“The goat did it. The goat, and the use of charcoal as fuel. Along with ignorance of soil erosion and the destruction of the wonderful watershed based on the Cedars of Lebanon. Same thing applies to large areas of Libya and Tunisia, and to Morocco and Spain. Those countries used to be some of the richest agricultural areas of the Roman Empire. But you can’t graze goats, probably the most destructive animal domesticated, and you can’t depend on charcoal for fuel, unless you want to create desert.”

“Those things happened a long time ago.”

Johnny snorted. “When we first began operations, the Sahara was going south at the rate of two miles a year. Goats prefer twigs and bark even to grass. They strip a country.”

“Well,” the reporter said, shrugging shapely shoulders, “at any rate, the task is one of such magnitude as to be fantastic. Yesterday, I drove for nearly eight hours without seeing even a clump of cactus.”

“The route you traveled is comparatively untouched by our efforts, thus far,” Johnny nodded agreeably. “However, we’re slowly coming down from Algeria, up from the Niger, and, using the new chemical methods of freshening sea water, east from Mauretania.”

He came to his feet and pointed out spots on the large wall map. “Our territory, of course, is only this area which once was called French West Africa, plus Algeria. The battle is being fought elsewhere by others. The Egyptians and Sudanese are doing a fairly good job in their country, with Soviet Complex help. The Tunisians are doing a wonderful job with the assistance of Common Europe, especially Italy.”

She stood beside him and tried to understand. “What is this area, here, shaded green?”

He said proudly, “That’s how far we’ve got so far, heading north from the Niger. In the past, the desert actually came down to the side of the river in many places. The water was completely wasted. Now we’ve diverted it and are reforesting anywhere up to three miles a year.”

“Three miles a year,” she scoffed. “You’ll take five centuries.”

He shook his head and grinned. “It’s a progressive thing. Water is admittedly the big problem. But as our forests grow, they themselves bring up the moisture content of the climate. Down in this area—” he made a sweeping gesture over the map which took in large sections north of the Niger—“we’ve put in hundreds of millions of slash pine, which is particularly good for sandy soil and fast growing. In ten years you’ve gone from two-year-old seedlings to a respectable forest.”

Johnny pointed out Bidon Cinq on the map. “At the same time we found what amounts to a subterranean sea in this area. Not a real sea, of course, but a water-bearing formation or aquifer, deep down under the surface of the earth—layers of rock and gravel in which large quantities of water are lying. The hydro-geological technicians who surveyed it estimate that it holds reserves of several billion tons of water. Utilizing it, we’ve put in several hundred square miles of seedlings and transplants of various varieties. Where there are natural oases, of course, we stress a lot of date palm. In rocky areas it’s Acacia tortila. In the mountains we sometimes use varieties of the piñon—they’ll take quite a beating but are a little on the slow-growing side.”

She was looking at him from the sides of her eyes. “You’re all taken up by this, aren’t you Mr. McCord?”

Johnny said, surprise in his voice. “Why, it’s my work.”

Derek came sauntering in and scaled his sun helmet onto his own desk. “Good morning, Mademoiselle,” he said. And to Johnny, “Hiram, that city slicker from Timbuktu just came up with his posse.”

Hélène said, “What is this Si, Hiram and Reuben which you call each other?”

Johnny smiled sourly, “In a way, Miss Desage, this is just one great tree farm. And all of us are farmers. So we make jokes about it.” He thought for a moment. “Derek, possibly you better take over with Mohammed. I want to get over to In Ziza with Reuben.”

“To see about the pumps?” Hélène said innocently.

Johnny frowned but was saved from an answer by the entrance of Mohammed Mohmoud. He was dark as a Saharan becomes dark, his original Berber blood to be seen only in his facial characteristics. He wore the rather flamboyant Mali Federation desert uniform with an air.

When he saw the girl, his eyebrows rose and he made the Muslim salaam with a sweeping flourish.

Johnny said, “Mademoiselle Desage, may I present Captain Mohammed Mohmoud ould Cheikh, of the Mali desert patrol.” He added sourly, “The officer in charge of preventing nomads from filtering up from the south into our infant forests.”

The Muslim scowled at him. “They could have come from the east, from Timmissao,” he said in quite passable English. “Or even from Mauritania.” He turned his eyes to Hélène Desage. “Enchanté, Mademoiselle. Très heureux de faire ta connaissance.”

She gave him the full benefit of her eyes. “Moi aussi, Monsieur.”

Johnny wasn’t through with the Malian officer. “There’s a hundred of them,” he snapped, “with several thousand head of goats and other livestock. It would have been impossible to push that number across from Mauritania or even from the east, and you know it.”

A lighter complexion would have shown a flush. Mohammed Mohmoud’s displeasure was limited in expression to a flashing of desert eyes. He said, “Wherever their origin, the task would seem to be immediately to destroy the animals. That is why my men and I are here.”

Pierre Marimbert had entered while the conversation was going on. He said, “Johnny, weren’t you going over to In Ziza with me?”

Hélène Desage said, the tip of her right forefinger to her chin as she portrayed thought, “I can’t decide where to go. To this crisis of the Tuareg, or to the crisis of the pumps—whatever that is.”

Johnny said flatly, “Sorry, but you’d just be in the way at either place.”

Mohammed Mohmoud was shrugging. “Why not let her come with me? I can guarantee her protection. I have brought fifty men with me, more than a match for a few bedouin.”

“Gracious,” she said. “Evidently I was unaware of the magnitude of this matter. I absolutely must go.”

Johnny said, “No.”

She looked at him appraisingly. “Mr. McCord,” she said, “I am here for a story. Has it occurred to you that preventing a Paris Match reporter from seeing your methods of operation is probably a bigger story than anything else I could find here?” She struck a mock pose. “I can see the headlines. Sahara Reforestation Authorities Prevent Journalists from Observing Operations.”

“Oh, Good Lord,” Johnny growled. “This should happen to me, yet! Go on with Derek and the captain, if you wish.”

Pierre Marimbert and Johnny McCord took one of the faster helicopters, Pierre piloting. With French élan he immediately raised the craft a few feet and then like a nervous horse it backed up, wheeled about and dashed forward in full flight.

Spread below them were the several dozen buildings which comprised Bidon Cinq; surrounding the buildings, the acres of palm and pine, eucalyptus and black locust. Quick-growing, dry-climate trees predominated, but there were even such as balsam fir, chestnut and elm. It made an attractive sight from the air.

The reforestation projects based on Bidon Cinq were not all in the immediate vicinity of the home oasis. By air, In Ziza was almost 125 kilometers to the northeast. By far the greater part of the land lying in between was still lacking in vegetation of any sort. The hydro-geological engineers who had originally surveyed the area for water had selected only the best sections for immediate sinking of wells, placement of solar power pumps, and eventually the importation of two-year seedlings and three- and four-year-old transplants. The heavy auto-planters, brought in by air transport, had ground their way across the desert sands in their hundreds, six feet between machines. Stop, dig the hole, set the seedling, splash in water, artfully tamp down the soil, move on another six feet, stop—and begin the operation all over again. Fifty trees an hour, per machine.

In less than two months, the planters had moved on to a new base further north. The mob of scientists, engineers, water and forest technicians, mechanics and laborers melted away, leaving Johnny McCord, his two assistants, his half dozen punch-card machines, his automated equipment and his forty or fifty native workers. It was one of a hundred such centers. It would eventually be one of thousands. The Sahara covered an area almost the size of Europe.

Johnny McCord growled, “Friend Mohammed seems quite taken with our reporter.”

Pierre grinned and tried to imitate a New England twang. “Why not, Hiram? She’s the first, eh, women folks seen in these parts for many a day.” He looked down at the endless stretches of sand dunes, gravel and rock outcroppings. “Mighty dry farmland you’ve got around here, Hiram.”

Johnny McCord grunted. “Derek said the other day it’s so dry even the mirages are only mud holes.” He pointed with his forefinger. “There’s the first of our trees. Now, what pumps did you check?”

Pierre directed the copter lower, skimmed not much higher than the young tree tops. Some of them had already reached an impressive height. But Johnny McCord realized that the time was not too distant when they’d have to replant. Casualties were considerably higher than in forest planting at home. Considerably so. And replanting wasn’t nearly so highly automated as the original work. More manpower was required.

“These pumps here seem all right,” he said to Pierre.

“A little further north,” Pierre said. “I came in over the track there, from the road that comes off the main route to Poste Weygand. Yes, there we are. Look! Completely destroyed.”

Johnny swore. The trees that had depended on that particular pump wouldn’t last a month, in spite of the fact that they were among the first set in this area.

He said, “Go higher. We should be able to spot the complete damage with glasses. You saw twenty-two, you say?”

“Yes, I don’t know how many more there might be.”

There were twenty-five destroyed pumps in all. And all of them were practically together.

It was sheer luck that Pierre Marimbert had located them so soon. Had his routine check taken place in some other section of the vast tree development, he would have found nothing untoward.

“This isn’t nearly so bad as I had expected,” Johnny growled. He was scowling thoughtfully.

“What’s the matter?” Pierre said.

“I just don’t get it,” Johnny said. “Number one, nomads don’t carry dynamite, unless it’s been deliberately given them. Two, if it was given them by someone with a purpose, why only enough to blow twenty-five pumps? That isn’t a drop in the bucket. A few thousand trees are all we’ll lose. Three, where did they come from? Where are their tracks? And where have they gone? This job wasn’t done so very long ago, probably within a week or two at most.”

“How do you know that?”

“Otherwise those trees affected would already be dying. At their age, they couldn’t stand the sun long without water.”

Pierre said, his face registering disbelief, “Do you think it could be simple vandalism on the part of a small band of Tuareg?”

“Sure, if the pumps had been destroyed by hand. But with explosives? Even if your band of Tuareg did have explosives they wouldn’t waste them on a few Sahara Reforestation Commission pumps.”

“This whole thing just doesn’t make sense,” Pierre Marimbert decided.

“Let’s land and take a look at one of those pumps,” Johnny said. “You know, if you get the whole crew to work on this you might be able to replace them before we lose any of these transplants. It’s all according to how long ago they were destroyed.”

IV

Back at Bidon Cinq again that afternoon, Johnny McCord was greeted by the native office assistant he’d left in charge while all three of the officers were gone. Mellor, at the Tissalit base, had made several attempts to get in touch with him.

“Mellor!” Pierre grunted. “How do you Americans say it? Stuffed shirt!”

“Yeah,” Johnny McCord said, sitting down to the telephone. “But my boss.”

While Pierre was fishing two cans of beer from the refrigerator, Johnny dialed Tissalit. Kate’s face lit up the screen. Johnny said, “Hi. I understand the old man wants to talk to me.”

“That’s right,” the girl said, and moved a switch. “Just a minute, Johnny.”

Her face faded to be replaced by that of Mellor. Johnny noted that as usual the other wore a business suit, complete with white shirt and tie—in the middle of the Sahara!

Mellor was scowling. “Where’ve you been, McCord?”

“Checking some pumps near In Ziza,” Johnny said evenly.

“Leaving no one at all at camp?” the other said.

Johnny said, “There were at least a score of men here, Mr. Mellor.”

“No officers. Suppose an emergency came up?”

Johnny felt like saying, An emergency did come up, two of them in fact. That’s why we were all gone at once. But for some reason he decided against explaining current happenings at Bidon Cinq until he had a clearer picture. He said, “There are only three of us here, Mr. Mellor. We have to stretch our manpower. Derek Mason had to go over to Amérene el Kasbach with Mohammed Mohmoud and his men to clear out those nomads and their livestock.”

“What did they find? Where were the Tuareg from?”

“They haven’t returned yet.” Automatically, Johnny took up his can of beer and took a swallow from it.

Mellor’s eyebrows went up. “Drinking this early in the day, McCord?”

Johnny sighed deeply, “Look, Mr. Mellor, Pierre Marimbert and I just returned from several hours in the desert, inspecting pumps. We’re dehydrated, so we’re drinking cold beer. It tastes wonderful. I doubt if it will lead either of us to a drunkard’s grave.”

Mellor scowled pompously. He said finally, “See here, McCord—the reason I called—you can be expecting a reporter from one of the French publications—”

“She’s here.”

“Oh,” Mellor said. “I just received notice this morning. Orders are to give her the utmost cooperation. Things are on the touchy side right now. Very touchy.”

“How do you mean?” Johnny said.

“There are pressures on the highest levels,” Mellor said, managing to put over the impression that these matters were above and beyond such as Johnny McCord but that he, Mellor, was privy to them.

“What pressures?” Johnny said wearily. “If you want me to handle this woman with kid gloves, then I’ve got to know what I’m protecting her against, or hiding from her, or whatever the hell I’m supposed to do.”

Mellor glared at him. “I’m not sure I always appreciate your flippancy, McCord,” he said. “However, back home the opposition is in an uproar over our expenditures. Things are very delicate. A handful of votes could sway the continuance of the whole project.”

Johnny McCord closed his eyes in pain. This came up every year or so.

Mellor said, “That isn’t all. The Russkies are putting up a howl in the Reunited Nations. They claim the West plans to eventually take over all northwest Africa. That this reforestation is just preliminary to make the area worth assimilating.”

Johnny chuckled sourly, “Let’s face it. They’re right.”

Mellor was shocked. “Mr. McCord! The West has never admitted to any such scheme.”

Johnny sighed. “However, we aren’t plowing billions into the Sahara out of kindness of heart. The Mali Federation alone has almost two million square miles in it, and less than twenty million population. Already, there’s fewer people than are needed to exploit the new lands we’ve opened up.”

“Well, that brings up another point,” Mellor said. “The Southeast Asia Bloc is putting up a howl too. They claim they should be the ones allowed to reclaim this area and that it should go into farmland instead of forest.”

“They’re putting the cart before the horse,” Johnny said. “At this stage of the game, the only land they could use really profitably for farming would be along the Niger. We’re going to have to forest this whole area first, and in doing so, change the whole climate. Then it’ll …”

Mellor interrupted him. “I’m as familiar with the program of the Sahara Reforestation Commission as you are, I am sure, McCord. I need no lecture. See that Miss Desage gets as sympathetic a picture of our work as possible. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t let anything happen that might influence her toward writing something that would change opinions either at home or in the Reunited Nations.”

“I’ll do my best,” Johnny said sourly.

The other clicked off.

Pierre was handy with another can of beer, already opened. “So Mademoiselle Desage is to be handled with loving care.”

Johnny groaned, “And from what we’ve seen so far of Mademoiselle Desage, she’s going to take quite a bit of loving care to handle.”

Outside, they could hear the beating of rotors coming in. Two helicopters, from the sound of it. Beer cans in hand they went over to the window and watched them approach.

“Derek and the girl in one, Mohammed in the other,” Pierre said. “Evidently our good captain left the messy work of butchering goats to his men, while he remains on the scene to be as available to our girl Hélène as she will allow.”

The copters swooped in, landed, the rotors came to a halt and the occupants stepped from the cockpits. The Arab ground crew came running up to take over.

Preceded by Hélène Desage, the two men made their way toward the main office. Even at this distance there seemed to be an aggressive lift to the girl’s walk.

“Oh, oh, my friend,” Pierre said. “I am afraid Mademoiselle Desage is unhappy about something.”

Johnny groaned. “I think you’re right. But smile, Reuben, smile. You heard the city slicker’s orders. Handle her with all the care of a newborn heifer.”

Hélène Desage stormed through the door and glared at Johnny McCord. “Do you realize what your men are doing?”

“I thought I did,” Johnny said placatingly.

Derek and Mohammed Mohmoud entered behind her. Derek winked at Johnny McCord and made a beeline for the refrigerator. “Beer, everybody?” he said.

Mohammed Mohmoud said, “A soft drink for me, if you please, Mr. Mason.”

Derek said, “Sorry, I forgot. Beer, Miss Desage?”

She turned and glared at him. “You did nothing whatsoever to prevent them!”

Derek shrugged. “That’s why we went out there, honey. Did you notice how much damage those goats had done to the trees? Thousands of dollars worth.”

Johnny said wearily, “What happened?” He sank into the chair behind his desk.

The reporter turned to him again. “Your men are shooting the livestock of those poverty-stricken people.”

Mohammed Mohmoud said, “We are keeping an accurate count of every beast destroyed, Mr. McCord.” His dark face was expressionless.

Johnny McCord attempted to explain to the girl. “As I told you, Miss Desage, goats are the curse of the desert. They prefer leaves, twigs and even the bark of young trees to grass. The Commission before ever taking on this tremendous project arranged through the Mali Federation government to buy up and have destroyed every grazing animal north of the Niger. It cost millions upon millions. But our work couldn’t even begin until it was accomplished.”

“But why slaughter the livelihood of those poor people? You could quite easily insist that they return with their flocks to whatever areas are still available to them.”

Derek offered her a can of beer. She seemed to be going to reject it, but a desert-born thirst changed her mind. She took it without thanking him.

The lanky Canadian said mildly, “I tried to explain to her that the Tuareg aren’t exactly innocent children of the desert. They’re known as the Apaches of the Sahara. For a couple of thousand years they’ve terrified the other nomads. They were slave raiders, bandits. When the Commission started its work the other tribes were glad to sell their animals and take up jobs in the new oases. Send their kids to the new schools we’ve been building in the towns. Begin fitting into the reality of modern life.”

Her eyes were flashing now. “The Apaches of the Sahara, eh? Bien sur! If I remember correctly, the American Apaches were the last of the Indian tribes which you Americans destroyed. The last to resist. Now you export your methods to Africa!”

Johnny McCord said mildly, “Miss Desage, it seems to be the thing these days to bleed over the fate of the redman. Actually, there are a greater number of them in the United States today than there were when Columbus landed. But even if you do carry a torch for the noble Indian, picking the Apaches as an example is poor choice. They were bandit tribes, largely living off what they could steal and raid from the Pueblo and other harder working but less warlike Indians. The Tuareg are the North African equivalent.”

“Who are you to judge?” she snapped back. “Those tribesmen out there are the last defenders of their ancient desert culture. Their flocks are their way of life. You mercilessly butcher them, rob their women and children of their sole source of food and clothing.”

Johnny McCord ran his hand over his face in an unhappy gesture. “Look,” he said plaintively. “Those goats and sheep have already been bought and paid for by the Commission. The Tuareg should have destroyed them, or sold them as food to be immediately butchered, several years ago. Where they’ve been hiding is a mystery. But they simply have no right to be in possession of those animals, no right to be in this part of the country, and, above all, no right to be grazing in our transplants.”

“It’s their country! What right have you to order them away?”

Johnny McCord held up his hands, palms upward. “This country is part of the Mali Federation, Miss Desage. It used to be called French Sudan and South Algeria. The government of the Federation gladly accepted the project of reforestating the Sahara. Why not? We’ve already succeeded in making one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the world a prosperous one. Far from there being unemployment here, we have a labor shortage. Schools have opened, even universities. Hospitals have sprung up. Highways have been laid out through country that hadn’t even trails before. The Federation is booming. If there are a few Tuareg who can’t adapt to the new world, it’s too bad. Their children will be glad for the change.”

She seated herself stiffly. “I am not impressed by your excuses,” she said.

Johnny shrugged and turned to Mohammed Mohmoud who had been standing silently through all this, almost as though at attention.

Johnny said, “Did you learn where this band comes from? Where they had kept that many animals for so long without detection?”

The Muslim officer shook his head. “They wouldn’t reveal that.”

Johnny looked at Derek Mason. The Canadian shook his head. “None of them spoke French, Johnny. Or if they did, they wouldn’t admit it. When we first came up they looked as though they were going to fight. Happily, the size of the captain’s command made them decide otherwise. At any rate, they’re putting up no resistance. I let them know through the captain, here, that when they got back to Tissalit, or Timbuktu, they could put in a demand for reimbursement for their animals—if the animals were legally theirs.”

Johnny looked at the Malian officer again. “How come you’ve returned to camp? Shouldn’t you be out there with your men?”

“There were a few things to be discussed,” the Muslim said. He looked significantly at the French reporter.

Hélène Desage said, “Let me warn you, I will not tolerate being sent away. I want to hear this. If I don’t, I demand you let me communicate immediately with my magazine and with the Transatlantic Newspaper Alliance for whom I am also doing a series of articles on the Sahara Reforestation scheme.”

Johnny McCord winced. He said, “There is nothing going on around here, Miss Desage, that is secret. You won’t be ordered away.” He turned to Mohammed Mohmoud. “What did you wish to discuss, Captain?”

“First, what about the camels, asses and horses?”

“Shoot them. Practically the only graze between here and Tissalit are our trees.”

“And how will they get themselves and their property out of this country?” the reporter snapped.

Johnny said wearily, “We’ll truck them out, Miss Desage. They and all their property. And while we’re doing it, we’ll feed them. I imagine, before it’s all over it will cost the Commission several thousand dollars.” He turned back to the desert patrol captain. “What else?”

From a tunic pocket Mohammed Mohmoud brought a handgun and handed it to Johnny McCord. “I thought you might like to see this. They were quite well armed. At first I thought there might be resistance.”

Johnny turned the automatic over in his hands, scowling at it. “What’s there to see that’s special? I don’t know much about guns.”

Mohammed Mohmoud said, “It was made in Pilsen.”

Johnny looked up at him. “Czechoslovakia, eh?”

The other said, “So were most of their rifles.”

Hélène Desage snorted in deprecation. “So, we’ll drag in that old wheeze. The red menace. Blame it on la Russie.”

Johnny McCord said mildly, “We haven’t blamed anything on the Russkies, Miss Desage. The Tuareg have a right to bear arms, there are still dangerous animals in the Mali Federation. And they are free to purchase Czech weapons if they find them better or cheaper than western ones. Don’t find an exciting story where there is none. Things are tranquil here.”

Hélène Desage stared at him. So did Mohammed Mohmoud and Derek Mason for that matter.

Only Pierre Marimbert realized Johnny McCord’s position, and he chuckled and went for more beer.

V

Johnny McCord was a man who didn’t like to be thrown out of routine. He resented the interference with his schedule of the past few days. By nature he was methodical, not given to inspiration.

All of which was probably the reason that he spent a sleepless night trying to find rhyme and reason where seemingly there was none.

At dawn, he stepped from the door of his Quonset hut quarters and looked for a moment into the gigantic red ball which was the Saharan sun. Neither dawn nor sunset at Bidon Cinq were spectacular, nor would they become so until the Sahara Reforestation Commission began to return moisture to desert skies. Johnny wondered if he would live to see it.

He made his way over to the huge steel shed which doubled as garage and aircraft hanger. As yet, none of the native mechanics were stirring, although he could hear sounds of activity in the community kitchen.

Derek Mason looked up from his inspection of Hélène Desage’s air-cushion Land Rover.

Johnny McCord scowled at him. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

The lanky Canadian came erect and looked for a long moment at his superior. He said finally, soberly, “It occurs to me that I’m probably doing the same thing you came to do.”

“What have you found?”

“That a small bomb has been attached to the starter.”

Johnny didn’t change expression. It fitted in. “What else?” he said.

Derek handed him a steel ring.

Johnny McCord looked at it, recognized it for what it was and stuck it in his pocket. “Let’s go back to the office. Yell in to the cook to send some coffee over, and call Pierre. We’ve got some notes to check.”

Mademoiselle Desage was a late riser. When she entered the office, the three Sahara Reforestation Commission officers were already at work.

She said snappishly to Johnny McCord, “Today I would like to see these destroyed pumps.”

Johnny said, his eyebrows questioning, “How did you know they were destroyed?”

“It doesn’t seem to be much of a secret. The story is all about the camp.”

“Oh?” Johnny sighed, then drawled to Derek, “I say, Si, you better go get the hired hand, we might as well finish this up so we can get back to work.”

Derek nodded and left.

Johnny McCord left the collator he’d been working with, went around behind his desk and sat down. “Take a chair, Miss Desage. I want to say a few things in the way of background to you.”

She sat, but said defiantly, “I have no need of a lengthy lecture on the glories of the Sahara Reforestation Commission.”

“Coffee?” Pierre Marimbert said politely.

“No, thank you.”

Johnny said, his voice thoughtful, “I imagine the real starting point was back about 1957 when the Chinese discovered that a nation’s greatest natural resource is its manpower.”

She frowned at him. “What in the world are you talking about?”

He ignored her and went on. “Originally, appalled by the job of feeding over half a billion mouths, they had initiated a birth control plan. But after a year or two they saw it was the wrong approach. They were going to succeed, if they succeeded, in their Great Leaps Forward by utilizing the labor of every man, woman and child in the country. And that’s what they proceeded to do. The lesson was brought home to the rest of the world in less than ten years, when such other countries as India and Indonesia failed to do the same.”

Johnny leaned back in his chair, and his eyes were thoughtful but unseeing. “Even we of the west learned the lesson. The most important factor in our leadership was our wonderful trained labor force. As far back as 1960 we had more than 65 million Americans working daily in industry and distribution. Even the Russkies, with their larger population, didn’t begin to equal that number.”

“What are you driveling about?” the reporter demanded.

“To sum it up,” Johnny said mildly, “the battle for men’s minds continues and each of the world’s great powers has discovered that it can’t afford to limit its population—its greatest resource. So population continues to explode and the world is currently frantically seeking sources of food for its new billions. The Amazon basin is being made into a tropical garden; the Japanese, landless, are devising a hundred methods of farming the sea; Australia is debouching into its long unpopulated interior, doing much the same things we are here in the Sahara. The Chinese are overflowing into Sinkiang, Mongolia and Tibet; the Russkies into Siberia. We of the west, with the large underdeveloped areas of the western hemisphere have not been so greatly pushed as some others. However, there is always tomorrow.”

Derek entered with Captain Mohammed Mohmoud. The latter day Rudolph Valentino had a puzzled expression on his dark face.

“Here’s the hired man, Hiram,” Derek drawled.

The desert patrol officer nodded questioningly to the men and said, “Bonjour,” to Hélène Desage.

Johnny went on. “Yes, there’s tomorrow. And by the time we run out of Lebensraum in Brazil and Alaska, in Central America and the Argentine, in Texas and Saskatchewan, we’re going to need the three million square miles of the Sahara.”

She said in ridicule, “It will take you a century at least to reforest the desert.”

“At least.” Johnny nodded agreeably. “And we’re willing and able to look that far ahead. Possibly by that time our opponents will also be looking for new lands for their expanding peoples. And where will they find them? The advantage will be ours, Miss Desage.”

Mohammed Mohmoud looked from one to the other, frowning. “What are we discussing?” he said. “I should be getting back to my men.”

Derek yawned and said, “Forget about it, pal. You’re never going to be getting back to your men again.”

The desert patrol officer’s eyes widened. He turned his glare on Johnny McCord, “What is all this?”

Johnny said, “I’ll tell it, Derek.”

Hélène Desage was as surprised as the Malian. “What is going on? Are you trying to whitewash yourselves by casting blame on this gentleman?”

“Let me go on,” Johnny said. “Needless to say, there are conflicting interests. The Soviet Complex obviously would as soon we didn’t succeed. However, wars are impractical today, and the Russkies and Chinese are taken up with their own development. The Southeast Asia bloc wouldn’t mind taking over here themselves, they desperately need land already. But they aren’t our biggest opponents. There’s another group even more involved—the colons of Algeria and Morocco and those of even such Mali cities as Dakar. I suppose it is this last element that you represent, Miss Desage.”

She was staring unbelievingly at him now.

“Their interest is to get the Sahara Reforestation Commission out of the way so that they can immediately exploit the area. They are interested in the now, not the potentialities of the future. They resent the use of the Niger for reforestation, when they could use it for immediate irrigation projects. They would devote the full resources of the Mali Federation and Algeria to seeking oil and minerals and in the various other ways the country might be exploited. Finally, they rather hate to see the western schools, hospitals, and other means used to raise the local living standards. They liked the low wage rates that formerly applied.”

Johnny nodded. “Yes, I imagine that’s your angle.”

Hélène Desage stormed to her feet. “I don’t have to listen to this!”

Derek said, “Honey, we sure aren’t holding you. You’re free to go any time you want. And you can take this pal of yours along with you.” He jerked his head contemptuously at Mohammed Mohmoud.

Pierre Marimbert said, “Mademoiselle, we have no idea of where you two met originally, nor how close your relationship, but the captain should have remembered that I too am French. A gentleman, on first meeting a lady, would never, never address her as tu in our language.”

Johnny sighed again and looked at his watch. “Other things pile up too, Miss Desage. You let slip a few moments ago that you knew about the pumps being destroyed. You said the rumor was all around camp. But it couldn’t be. The only persons who knew about it were myself, Pierre and Derek. On top of that, there were no signs of bedouin or animals near the exploded pumps; the person who did the job must have come in an aircraft or air-cushion car. And, besides, we found the pin of a hand grenade in your land rover this morning. We had thought at first that dynamite had been used, but evidently you smuggled your much more compact bombs across the desert with you. Obviously, no one would have dreamed of searching your vehicle.

“No, Miss Desage, it’s obvious that you detoured from the track on the way down from Poste Weygand, went over to In Ziza, a comparatively short distance, and blew up twenty-five of our pumps.”

Johnny turned to the Malian officer now. “At the same time you were coordinating with her, you and whatever gang is hiring you. Someone supplied those Tuareg with the livestock and paid them to trek up here. You, of course, turned your back and let them through. The same someone who supplied the livestock also supplied Czech weapons.”

Hélène Desage was still sputtering indignation. “Ridiculous! Why? What would motivate me to such nonsense?”

Johnny grimaced. “The whole thing makes a beautiful story at a time when the American government is debating the practicality of the whole project. You could do quite a sob story on the poor, poverty-stricken Tuareg having their livestock destroyed. Then, quite a tale about the bedouin raiding our pumping stations and blowing them up. And quite a tale about the Tuareg being armed with Czech weapons. Oh, I imagine before it was through you’d have drawn a picture of civil war going on here between the nomads and the Commission. Blowing up your own car with a small bomb attached to the starter was just one more item. By the way, were you going to do it yourself? Or did you intend to allow one of our mechanics to kill himself?”

She flushed. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one would have been hurt. The bomb is a very small one. More smoke and flash than anything else.”

“Well, thanks for small favors,” Derek said sarcastically.

She gave up. “Very well,” she snapped. “There is nothing you can do. This whole project, as I said before, is nothing but American boondoggling, a way of plowing endless resources into a hole. Your real motivation is an attempt to prevent depression and unemployment in your country.”

Pierre Marimbert said softly, “So you admit to this whole scheme to discredit us?”

“Why not?” She turned to the door. “I will still write my articles. It’s my word or yours.”

Derek grinned at her. “I think I could fall in love with you, honey,” he said. “Life would provide few dull moments. However, you didn’t notice how nice and automated this office is. Card machines, electric typewriters, all the latest—including tape recorders for office conversations. You talked too much, honey.”

“Cochon!” she shrilled at him. She whirled and was through the door.

Johnny turned to Mohammed Mohmoud. “I guess the best thing for you would be to turn in your commission, Captain.”

Dark eyes snapped. “And if I say no?”

Johnny shook his head. “The Mali Federation passed some awfully strict laws when it was drawing up its constitution. Among them was one involving capital punishment for anyone destroying a source of water in the desert. Miss Desage did the actual work but you were hand in glove with her. I’d hate to have to report that to your superiors.”

Derek jumped forward quickly. His hand snaked out and chopped the other’s forearm. The heavy military pistol fell to the floor, and the Canadian kicked it to one side. “Shucks,” he drawled, “the hired hand sure is tricky, ain’t he?”

“Good Lord,” Johnny McCord said disgustedly, “I didn’t say I was going to report you. Just threatened to if you didn’t resign. Now get out of here, we’ve got work to do. I’m three days behind on my reports!”

Status Quo

In his income bracket and in the suburb in which he lived, government employees in the twenty-five to thirty-five age group were currently wearing tweeds. Tweeds were in. Not to wear tweeds was Non-U.

Lawrence Woolford wore tweeds. His suit, this morning, had first seen the light of day on a hand loom in Donegal. It had been cut by a Swede widely patronized by serious young career men in Lawrence Woolford’s status group; English tailors were out currently and Italians unheard of.

Woolford sauntered down the walk before his auto-bungalow, scowling at the sportscar at the curb—wrong year, wrong make. He’d have to trade it in on a new model. Which was a shame in a way, he liked the car. However, he had no desire to get a reputation as a weird among colleagues and friends. What was it Senator Carey MacArthur had said the other day? Show me a weird and I’ll show you a person who has taken the first step toward being a Commie.

Woolford slid under the wheel, dropped the lift lever, depressed gently the thrust pedal and took off for downtown Greater Washington. Theoretically, he had another four days of vacation coming to him. He wondered what the Boss wanted. That was the trouble in being one of the Boss’ favorite troubleshooters, when trouble arose you wound up in the middle of it. Lawrence Woolford was to the point where he was thinking in terms of graduating out of field work and taking on a desk job which meant promotion in status and pay.

He turned over his car to a parker at the departmental parking lot and made his way through the entrance utilized by second-grade departmental officials. In another year, he told himself, he’d be using that other door.

The Boss’ reception secretary looked up when Lawrence Woolford entered the anteroom where she presided. “Hello, Larry,” she said. “Hear they called your vacation short. Darn shame.”

LaVerne Polk was a cute little whizz of efficiency. Like Napoleon and his army, she knew the name of every member of the department and was on a first-name basis with all. However, she was definitely a weird. For instance, styles might come and styles might go, but LaVerne dressed for comfort, did her hair the way she thought it looked best, and wore low-heeled walking shoes on the job. In fact, she was ready and willing to snarl at anyone, no matter how kindly intentioned, who even hinted that her nonconformity didn’t help her promotion prospects.

Woolford said, “Hi, LaVerne. I think the Boss is expecting me.”

“That he is. Go right in, Larry.”

She looked after him when he turned and left her desk. Lawrence Woolford cut a pleasant figure as thirty year old bachelors go.

The Boss looked up from some report on his desk which he’d been frowning at, nodded to his field man and said, “Sit down, Lawrence. I’ll be with you in a minute. Please take a look at this while you’re waiting.” He handed over a banknote.

Larry Woolford took it and found himself a comfortable chair. He examined the bill, front and back. It was a fifty dollar note, almost new.

Finally the Boss, a stocky but impeccable career bureaucrat of the ultra-latest school, scribbled his initials on the report and tossed it into an Out chute. He said to Woolford, “I am sorry to cut short your vacation, Lawrence. I considered giving Walter Foster the assignment, but I think you’re the better choice.”

Larry decided the faint praise routine was the best tactic, said earnestly about his closest rival. “Walt’s a good man, sir.” And then, “What’s the crisis?”

“What do you think of that fifty?”

His troubleshooter looked down at it. “What is there to think about it?”

The Boss grunted, slid open a desk drawer and brought forth another bill. “Here, look at this, please.”

It was another fifty. Larry Woolford frowned at it, not getting whatever was going on.

“Observe the serial numbers,” the Boss said impatiently.

They were identical.

Woolford looked up. “Counterfeit. Which one is the bad one?”

“That is exactly what we would like to know,” the Boss said.

Larry Woolford stared at his superior, blinked and then examined the bills again. “A beautiful job,” he said, “but what’s it got to do with us, sir? This is Secret Service jurisdiction, counterfeiting.”

“They called us in on it. They think it might have international ramifications.”

Now they were getting somewhere. Larry Woolford put the two bills on the Boss’ desk and leaned back in his chair, waiting.

His superior said, “Remember the Nazis turning out American and British banknotes during the Second War?”

“I was just a kid.”

“I thought you might have read about it. At any rate, obviously a government—with all its resources—could counterfeit perfectly any currency in the world. It would have the skills, the equipment, the funds to accomplish the task. The Germans turned out hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds with the idea of confounding the Allied financial basics.”

“And why didn’t it work?”

“The difficulty of getting it into circulation, for one thing. However, they did actually use a quantity. For a time our people were so alarmed that they wouldn’t allow any bills to come into this country from Mexico except two-dollar denomination—the one denomination the Germans hadn’t bothered to duplicate. Oh, they had the Secret Service in a dither for a time.”

Woolford was frowning. “What’s this got to do with our current situation?”

The Boss said, “It is only a conjecture. One of those bills is counterfeit but such an excellent reproduction that the skill involved is beyond the resources of any known counterfeiter. Secret Service wants to know if it might be coming from abroad, and, if so, from where. If it’s a governmental project, particularly a Soviet Complex one, then it comes into the ken of our particular cloak-and-dagger department.”

“Yes, sir.” Woolford said. He got up and examined the two bills again. “How’d they ever detect that one was bad?”

“Pure fortune. A bank clerk with an all but eidetic memory was going through a batch of fifties. It’s not too commonly used a denomination, you know. Coincidence was involved since in that same sheaf the serial number was duplicated.”

“And then?”

“The reproduction was so perfect that Secret Service was in an immediate uproar. Short of the Nazi effort, there has never been anything like it. A perfect duplication of engraving and paper identically the same. The counterfeiters have even evidently gone to the extent of putting a certain amount of artificial wear on the bills before putting them into circulation.”

Larry Woolford said, “This is out of my line. How were they able to check further, and how many more did they turn up?”

“The new I.B.M. sorters help. Secret Service checked every fifty dollar bill in every institution in town both banking and governmental. Thus far, they have located ten bills in all.”

“And other cities?”

“None. They’ve all been passed in Greater Washington, which is suspicious in itself. The amount of expense that has gone into the manufacture of these bills does not allow for only a handful of them being passed. They should be turning up in number. Lawrence, this reproduction is such that a pusher could walk into a bank and have his false currency changed by any clerk.”

“Wow,” Larry whistled.

“Indeed.”

“So you want me to work with Secret Service on this on the off chance that the Soviet Complex is doing us deliberate dirt.”

“That is exactly the idea, Lawrence. Get to work, please, and keep in touch with me. If you need support, I can assign Walter Foster or some of the other operatives to assist you. This might have endless ramifications.”

Back in the anteroom, Woolford said to the Boss’ receptionist, “I’m on a local job, LaVerne, how about assigning me a girl?”

“Can do,” she said.

“And, look, tell her to get hold of every available work on counterfeiting and pile it on my desk.”

“Right. Thinking of going into business, Larry?”

He grinned down at her. “That’s the idea. Keeping up with the Jones clan in this man’s town costs roughly twice my income.”

LaVerne said disapprovingly, “Then why not give it up? With the classification you’ve got a single man ought to be able to save half his pay.” She added, more quietly, “Or get married and support a family.”

“Save half my pay?” Larry snorted. “And get a far out reputation, eh? No thanks, you can’t afford to be a weird these days.”

She flushed—and damn prettily, Larry Woolford decided. She could be an attractive item if it wasn’t for obviously getting her kicks out of being individualistic.

Larry said suddenly, “Look, promise like a good girl not to make us conspicuous and I’ll take you to the Swank Room for dinner tonight.”

“Is that where all the bright young men currently have to be seen once or twice a week?” she snapped back at him. “Get lost, Larry. Being a healthy, normal woman I’m interested in men, but not necessarily in walking status-symbols.”

It was his turn to flush, and, he decided wryly, he probably didn’t do it as prettily as she did.

On his way to his office, he wondered why the Boss kept her on. Classically, a secretary-receptionist should have every pore in place, but in her time LaVerne Polk must have caused more than one bureaucratic eyebrow to raise. Efficiency was probably the answer; the Boss couldn’t afford to let her go.

Larry Woolford’s office wasn’t much more than a cubicle. He sat down at the desk and banged a drawer or two open and closed. He liked the work, liked the department, but theoretically he still had several days of vacation and hated to get back into routine.

Had he known it, this was hardly going to be routine.

He flicked the phone finally and asked for an outline. He dialed three numbers before getting his subject. The phone screen remained blank.

“Hans?” he said. “Lawrence Woolford.”

The Teutonic accent was heavy, the voice bluff. “Ah, Larry! you need some assistance to make your vacation? Perhaps a sinister, exotic young lady, complete with long cigarette holder?”

Larry Woolford growled, “How’d you know I was on vacation?”

The other laughed. “You know better than to ask that, my friend.”

Larry said, “The vacation is over, Hans. I need some information.”

The voice was more guarded now. “I owe you a favor or two.”

“Don’t you though? Look, Hans, what’s new in the Russkie camp?”

The heartiness was gone. “How do you mean?”

“Is there anything big stirring? Is there anyone new in this country from the Soviet Complex?”

“Well now—” the other’s voice drifted away.

Larry Woolford said impatiently, “Look, Hans, let’s don’t waste time fencing. You run a clearing agency for, ah, information. You’re strictly a businessman, nonpartisan, so to speak. Fine, thus far our department has tolerated you. Perhaps we’ll continue to. Perhaps the reason is that we figure we get more out of your existence than we lose. The Russkies evidently figure the same way, the proof being that you’re alive and have branches in the capitals of every power on Earth.”

“All right, all right,” the German said. “Let me think a moment. Can you give me an idea of what you’re looking for?” There was an undernote of interest in the voice now.

“No. I just want to know if you’ve heard anything new anti-my-side, from the other side. Or if you know of any fresh personnel recently from there.”

“Frankly, I haven’t. If you could give me a hint.”

“I can’t,” Larry said. “Look, Hans, like you say, you owe me a favor or two. If something comes up, let me know. Then I’ll owe you one.”

The voice was jovial again. “It’s a bargain, my friend.”

After Woolford had hung up, he scowled at the phone. He wondered if Hans Distelmayer was lying. The German commanded the largest professional spy ring in the world. It was possible, but difficult, for anything in espionage to develop without his having an inkling.

The phone rang back. It was Steve Hackett of Secret Service on the screen.

Hackett said, “Woolford, you coming over? I understand you’ve been assigned to get in our hair on this job.”

“Huh,” Larry grunted. “The way I hear it, your whole department has given up, so I’m assigned to help you out of your usual fumble-fingered confusion.”

Hackett snorted. “At any rate, can you drop over? I’m to work in liaison with you.”

“Coming,” Larry said. He hung up, got to his feet and headed for the door. If they could crack this thing the first day, he’d take up that vacation where it’d been interrupted and possibly be able to wangle a few more days out of the Boss to boot.

At this time of day, parking would have been a problem, in spite of automation of the streets. He left his car in the departmental lot and took a cab.

The Counterfeit Division of the Secret Service occupied an impressive section of an impressive governmental building. Larry Woolford flashed his credentials here and there, explained to guards and receptionists here and there, and finally wound up in Steve Hackett’s office which was all but a duplicate of his own in size and decor.

Steve Hackett himself was a fairly accurate carbon copy of Woolford, barring facial resemblance alone. The fact was, Steve was almost Lincolnesque in his ugliness. Career man, about thirty, good university, crew cut, six foot, one hundred and seventy, earnest of eye. He wore Harris tweed. Larry Woolford made a note of that; possibly herringbone was coming back in. He winced at the thought of a major change in his wardrobe; it’d cost a fortune.

They’d worked on a few cases together before when Steve Hackett had been assigned to the presidential bodyguard and cooperated well.

Steve came to his feet and shook hands. “Thought that you were going to be down in Florida bass fishing this month. You like your work so well you can’t stay away, or is it a matter of trying to impress your chief?”

Larry growled, “Fine thing. Secret Service bogs down and they’ve got to call me in to clean up the mess.”

Steve motioned him to a chair and immediately went serious. “Do you know anything about pushing queer, Woolford?”

“That means passing counterfeit money, doesn’t it? All I know is what’s in the Tri-D crime shows.”

“I can see you’re going to be a lot of help. Have you got anywhere at all on the possibility that the stuff might be coming from abroad?”

“Nothing positive,” Larry said. “Are you people accomplishing anything?”

“We’re just getting underway. There’s something off-trail about this deal, Woolford. It doesn’t fit into routine.”

Larry Woolford said, “I wouldn’t think so if the stuff is so good not even a bank clerk can tell the difference.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about now. Let me give you a run down on standard counterfeiting.” The Secret Service agent pushed back in his swivel chair, lit a cigarette, and propped his feet onto the edge of a partly open desk drawer. “Briefly, it goes like this. Some smart lad gets himself a set of plates and a platen press and—”

Larry interrupted, “Where does he get the plates?”

“That doesn’t matter now,” Steve said. “Various ways. Maybe he makes them himself, sometimes he buys them from a crooked engraver. But I’m talking about pushing green goods once it’s printed. Anyway, our friend runs off, say, a million dollars worth of fives. But he doesn’t try to pass them himself. He wholesales them around netting, say, fifty thousand dollars. In other words, he sells twenty dollars in counterfeit for one good dollar.”

Larry pursed his lips. “Quite a discount.”

“Um-m-m. But that’s safest from his angle. The half dozen or so distributors he sold it to don’t try to pass it either. They also are playing it carefully. They peddle it, at say ten to one, to the next rung down the ladder.”

“And these are the fellows that pass it, eh?”

“Not even then, usually. These small timers take it and pass it on at five to one to the suckers in the trade, who take the biggest risks. Most of these are professional pushers of the queer, as the term goes. Some, however, are comparative amateurs. Sailors for instance, who buy with the idea of passing it in some foreign port where seamen’s money flows fast.”

Larry Woolford shifted in his chair. “So what are you building up to?”

Steve Hackett rubbed the end of his pug nose with a forefinger in quick irritation. “Like I say, that’s standard counterfeit procedure. We’re all set up to meet it, and do a pretty good job. Where we have our difficulties is with amateurs.”

Woolford scowled at him.

Hackett said, “Some guy who makes and passes it himself, for instance. He’s unknown to the stool pigeons, has no criminal record, does up comparatively small amounts and dribbles his product onto the market over a period of time. We had one old devil up in New York once who actually drew one dollar bills. He was a tremendous artist. It took us years to get him.”

Larry Woolford said, “Well, why go into all this? We’re hardly dealing with amateurs now.”

Steve looked at him. “That’s the trouble. We are.”

“Are you batty? Not even your own experts can tell this product from real money.”

“I didn’t say it was being made by amateurs. It’s being pushed by amateurs—or maybe amateur is the better word.”

“How do you know?”

“For one thing, most professionals won’t touch anything bigger than a twenty. Tens are better, fives better still. When you pass a fifty, the person you give it to is apt to remember where he got it.” Steve Hackett said slowly, “Particularly if you give one as a tip to the maître d’hôtel in a first-class restaurant. A maître d’ holds his job on the strength of his ability to remember faces and names.”

“What else makes you think your pushers are amateurs?”

“Amateur,” Hackett corrected. “Ideally, a pusher is an inconspicuous type. The kind of person whose face you’d never remember. It’s never a teenage girl who’s blowing money.”

It was time to stare now, and Larry Woolford obliged. “A teenager!”

“We’ve had four descriptions of her, one of them excellent. Fredrick, the maître d’ over at La Calvados, is the one that counts, but the others jibe. She’s bought perfume and gloves at Michel Swiss, the swankiest shop in town, a dress at Chez Marie—she passed three fifties there—and a hat at Paulette’s over on Monroe Street.

“That’s another sign of the amateur, by the way. A competent pusher buys a small item and gets change from his counterfeit bill. Our girl’s been buying expensive items, obviously more interested in the product than in her change.”

“This doesn’t seem to make much sense,” Larry Woolford protested. “You have any ideas at all?”

“The question is,” Hackett said, “where did she get it? Is she connected with one of the embassies and acquired the stuff overseas? If so, that puts it in your lap again possibly—”

The phone rang and Steve flicked the switch and grumbled, “Yeah? Steven Hackett speaking.”

He listened for a moment then banged the phone off and jumped to his feet. “Come on, Larry,” he snapped. “This is it.”

Larry stood, too. “Who was that?”

“Fredrick, over at La Calvados. The girl has come in for lunch. Let’s go!”

La Calvados was the swankiest French restaurant in Greater Washington, a city not devoid of swank restaurants. Only the upper-echelons in governmental circles could afford its tariffs; the clientele was more apt to consist of business mucky-mucks and lobbyists on the make. Larry Woolford had eaten here exactly twice. You could get a reputation spending money far beyond your obvious pay status.

Fredrick, the maître d’hôtel, however, was able to greet them both by name. “Monsieur Hackett, Monsieur Woolford,” he bowed. He obviously didn’t approve of La Calvados being used as a hangout where counterfeiters were picked up the authorities.

“Where is she?” Steve said, looking out over the public dining room.

Fredrick said, unprofessionally agitated, “See here, Monsieur Hackett, you didn’t expect to, ah, arrest the young lady here during our lunch hour?”

Steve looked at him impatiently. “We don’t exactly beat them over the head with blackjacks, slip the bracelets on and drag them screaming to the paddywagon.”

“Of course not, monsieur, but—”

Larry Woolford’s chief dined here several times a week and was probably on the best of terms with Fredrick whose decisions on tables and whose degree of servility had a good deal of influence on a man’s status in Greater Washington. Larry said wearily, “We can wait until she leaves. Where is she?”

Fredrick had taken them to one side.

“Do you see the young lady over near the window on the park? The rather gauche appearing type?”

It was a teenager, all right. A youngster up to her eyebrows in the attempt to project sophistication.

Steve said, “Do you know who she is?”

“No,” Fredrick said. “Hardly our usual clientele.”

“Oh?” Larry said. “She looks like money.”

Fredrick said, “The dress appears as though it is of Chez Marie, but she wears it as though it came from Klein’s. Her perfume is Chanel, but she has used approximately three times the quantity one would expect.”

“That’s our girl, all right,” Steve murmured. “Where can we keep an eye on her until she leaves?”

“Why not at the bar here, Messieurs?”

“Why not?” Larry said. “I could use a drink.”

Fredrick cleared his throat. “Ah, Messieurs, that fifty I turned over you. I suppose it turned out to be spurious?”

Steve grinned at him. “Afraid so, Fredrick. The department is holding it.”

Larry took out his wallet. “However, we have a certain leeway on expenses on this assignment and appreciate your cooperation.” He handed two twenties and a ten to the maître d’. Fredrick bowed low, the money disappearing into his clothes magically. “Merci bien, monsieur.”

At the bar, Steve scowled at his colleague. “Ha!” he said. “Why didn’t I think of that first? He’ll get down on his knees and bump his head each time he sees you in the joint from now on.”

Larry Woolford waggled a finger at the other. “This is a status conscious town, my boy. Prestige means everything. When I take over my Boss’ job, maybe we can swing a transfer and I’ll give you a position suitable to your attainments.” He pursed his lips judiciously. “Although, come to think of it, that might mean a demotion from the job you’re holding now.”

“Vodka martini,” Steve told the bartender. “Polish vodka, of course.”

“Of course, sir.”

Larry said, “Same for me.”

The bartender left and Steve muttered, “I hate vodka.”

“Yeah,” Larry said, “But what’re you going to do in a place like this, order some weird drink?”

Steve dug into his pocket for money. “We’re not going to have to drink them. Here she comes.”

She walked with her head held high, hauteur in every step. Ignoring the peasants at the tables she passed.

“Holy smokes,” Steve grunted. “It’s a wonder Fredrick let her in.”

She hesitated momentarily before the doorway of the prestige restaurant allowing the passersby to realize she’d just emerged, and then turned to her right to promenade along the shopping street.

Fifty feet below La Calvados, Steve said, “Let’s go, Woolford.”

One stepped to one elbow, the other to the other. Steve said quietly, “I wonder if we could ask you a few questions?”

Her eyebrows went up, “I beg your pardon!”

Steve sighed and displayed the badge pinned to his wallet, keeping it inconspicuous. “Secret Service, Miss,” he murmured.

“Oh, devil,” she said. She looked up at Larry Woolford, and then back at Steve.

Steve said, “Among other things, we’re in charge of counterfeit money.”

She was about five foot four in her heels, had obviously been on a round of beauty shops and had obviously instructed them to glamorize her. It hadn’t come off. She still looked as though she’d be more at home as cheerleader of the junior class in small town high school. She was honey blond, green-blue of eye, and had that complexion they seldom carry even into the twenties.

“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her chin began to tremble.

Larry said gently, “Don’t worry. We just want to ask you some questions.”

“Well … like what?” She was going to be blinking back tears in a moment. At least Larry hoped she’d blink them back. He’d hate to have her start howling here in public.

Larry said, “We think you can be of assistance to the government, and we’d like your help.”

Steve rolled his eyes upward, but turned and waved for a street level cab.

In the cab, Larry said, “Suppose we go over to my office, Steve?”

“OK with me,” Steve muttered, “but by the looks of the young lady here, I think it’s a false alarm from your angle. She’s obviously an American. What’s your name, Miss?”

“It’s Zusanette. Well, really, Susan.”

“Susan what?”

“I … I’m not sure I want to tell you. I … I want a lawyer.”

“A lawyer!” Steve snorted. “You mean you want the juvenile authorities, don’t you?”

“Oh, what a mean thing to say,” she sputtered.

In the corridor outside the Boss’ suite of offices, Larry said to Steve, “You take Miss … ah, Zusanette to my office, will you Steve. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He opened the door to the anteroom and said, “LaVerne, we’ve got a girl in my office—”

“Why, Larry!”

He glowered at her. “A suspect. I want a complete tape of everything said. As soon as we’re through, have copies made, at least three or four.”

“And, who, Mr. Woolford, was your girl Friday last year?”

“This is important, honey. I suppose you’ve supplied me with a secretary but I haven’t even met her yet. Take care of it, will you?”

“Sure enough, Larry.”

He followed Steve and the girl to his office.

Once seated, the girl and Steve in the only two extra chairs the cubicle boasted and Larry behind his desk, he looked at her in what he hoped was reassurance. “Just tell us where you got the money, Zusanette.”

Steve reached out a hand suddenly and took her bag from her lap. She gasped and snatched at it, but he eluded her and she sat back, her chin trembling again.

Steve came up with a thick sheaf of bills, the top ones, at least, all fifties and tossed them to Larry’s desk. He took out a school pass and read, “Susan Self, Elwood Avenue.” He looked up at Larry and said, “That’s right off Eastern, near Paterson Park in the Baltimore section of town, isn’t it?”

Larry said to her, “Zusanette, I think you’d better tell us where you got all this money.”

“I found it,” she said defiantly. “You can’t do anything to me if I simply found it. Anybody can find money. Finders keepers—”

“But if it’s counterfeit,” Steve interrupted dryly, “it might also be, finders weepers.”

“Where did you find it, Zusanette?” Larry said gently.

She tightened her lips, and the trembling of her chin disappeared. “I … I can’t tell you that. But it’s not counterfeit. Daddy … my father said it was as good as any money the government prints.”

“That it is,” Steve said sourly. “But it’s still counterfeit, which makes it very illegal indeed to spend, Miss Self.”

She looked from one of them to the other, not clear about her position. She said to Larry, “You mean it’s not real money?”

He kept his tone disarming, but shook his head, “I’m afraid not, Zusanette. Now, tell us, where did you find it?”

“I can’t. I promised.”

“I see. Then you don’t know to whom it originally belonged?”

“It didn’t belong to anybody.”

Steve Hackett made with a disbelieving whistle. He was taking the part of the tough, suspicious cop; Larry the part of the understanding, sympathetic officer, trying to give the suspect a break.

Susan Self turned quickly on Steve. “Well, it didn’t. You don’t even know.”

Larry said, “I think she’s telling the truth, Steve. Give her a chance. She’s playing fair.” He looked back at the girl, and frowned his puzzlement. “All money belongs to somebody doesn’t it?”

She had them now. She said superiorly. “Not necessarily to somebody. It can belong to, like, an organization.”

Steve grunted skepticism. “I think we ought to arrest her,” he said.

Larry held up a hand, his face registering opposition. “I’ll handle this,” he said sharply. “Zusanette is doing everything she can to cooperate.” He turned back to the girl. “Now, the question is, what organization did this money belong to?”

She looked triumphantly at Steve Hackett. “It belonged to the Movement.”

They both looked at her.

Steve said finally, “What movement?”

She pouted in thought. “That’s the only name they call it.”

“Who’s they?” Steve snapped nastily.

“I … I don’t know.”

Larry said, “Well, you already told us your father was a member, Zusanette.”

Her eyes went wide. “I did? I shouldn’t have said that.” But she evidently took him at his word.

Larry said encouragingly, “Well, we might as well go on. Who else is a member of this Movement besides your father?”

She shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “I don’t know any of their names.”

Steve looked down at the school pass in his hands. He said to Larry, “I’d better make a phone call.”

He left.

Larry said, “Don’t worry about him, Zusanette. Now then, this movement. That’s kind of a funny name, isn’t it? What does it mean?”

She was evidently glad that the less than handsome Steve Hackett had left the room. Her words flowed more freely. “Well, Daddy says that they call it the Movement rather than a revolution. …”

An ice cube manifested itself in the stomach of Lawrence Woolford.

“… Because people get conditioned, like, to words. Like revolution. Everybody is against the word because they all think of killing and everything, and, Daddy says, there doesn’t have to be any shooting or killing or anything like that at all. It just means a fundamental change in society. And, Daddy says, take the word propaganda. Everybody’s got to thinking that it automatically means lies, but it doesn’t at all. It just means, like, the arguments you use to convince people that what you stand for is right and it might be lies or it might not. And, Daddy says, take the word socialism. So many people have the wrong idea of what it means that the socialists ought to scrap the word and start using something else to mean what they stand for.”

Larry said gently, “Your father is a socialist?”

“Oh, no.”

He nodded in understanding. “Oh, a Communist, eh?”

Susan Self was indignant. “Daddy thinks the Communists are strictly awful, really weird.”

Steve Hackett came back into the office. He said to Larry, “I sent a couple of the boys out to pick him up.”

Susan was on her feet, a hand to mouth. “You mean my father! You’re going to arrest him!”

Larry said soothingly, “Sit down, Zusanette. There’s a lot of things about this that I’m sure your father can explain.” He said to Steve, “She tells me that the money belonged to a movement. A revolutionary movement which doesn’t use the term revolutionary because people react unfavorably to that word. It’s not Commie.”

Susan said indignantly, “It’s American, not anything foreign!”

Steve growled, “Let’s get back to the money. What’s this movement doing with a lot of counterfeit bills and where did you find them?”

She evidently figured she’d gone too far now to take a stand. “It’s not Daddy’s fault,” she said. “He took me to headquarters twice.”

“Where’s headquarters?” Larry said trying to keep his voice soothing.

“Well … I don’t know. Daddy was awfully silly about it. He tied his handkerchief around my eyes near the end. But the others complained about me anyway, and Daddy got awfully mad and said something about the young people of the country participating in their emancipation and all, but the others got mad too, and said there wasn’t any kind of help I could do around headquarters anyway, and I’d be better off in school. Everybody got awfully mad, but after the second time Daddy promised not to take me to headquarters any more.”

“But where did you find the money, Zusannette?” Larry said.

“At headquarters. There’s tons and tons of it there.”

Larry cleared his throat and said, “When you say tons and tons, you mean a great deal of it, eh?”

She was proudly definite. “I mean tons and tons. A ton is two thousand pounds.”

“Look, Zusanette,” Larry said reasonably. “I don’t know how much money weighs, exactly, but let’s say a pound would be, say, a thousand bills.” He took up a pencil and scribbled on a pad before him. “A pound of fifties would be $50,000. Then if you multiply that by 2,000 pounds to make a ton, you’d have $100,000,000. And you say there’s tons and tons?”

“And that’s just the fifties,” Susan said triumphantly. “So you can see the two little packages I picked up aren’t really important at all. It’s just like I found them.”

“I don’t think there’s quite a thousand bills in a pound,” Steve said weakly.

Larry said, “How much other money is there?”

“Oh, piles. Whole rooms. Rooms after rooms. And hundred dollar bills, and twenties, and fives, and tens—”

Larry said, “Look, Zusanette, I don’t think you’re in any position to be telling us whoppers. This whole story doesn’t make much sense, does it?”

Her mouth tightened. “I’m not going to say anything more until Daddy gets here, anyway,” she said.

Which was when the phone rang.

“I have an idea that’s for me,” Steve said.

The screen lit up and LaVerne Polk said, “Call for Steve Hackett, Larry.”

Larry pushed the phone around so Steve could look into it. LaVerne flicked off and was replaced by a stranger in uniform. Steve said, “Yeah?”

The cop said, “He’s flown the coop, sir. Must have got out just minutes before we arrived. Couldn’t have taken more than a suitcase. Few papers scattered around the room he used for an office.”

Susan gasped, “You mean Daddy?”

Steve Hackett rubbed a hand over his flattened nose. “Holy Smokes,” he said. He thanked the cop and flicked off.

Larry said, “Look Zusanette, everything’s going to be all right. Nothing will happen to you. You say you managed to pick up two packets of all this money they have at headquarters. OK. So you thought it wouldn’t be missed and you’ve always wanted to spend money the way you see the stars do on Tri-D and in the movies.”

She looked at him, taken back. “How did you know?”

Larry said dryly, “I’ve always wanted to myself. But I would like to know one more thing. The Movement. What was it going to do with all this money?”

That evidently puzzled her. “The Professor said they were going to spend it on chorus girls. I guess … I guess he was joking or something. But Daddy and I’d just been up to New York and we saw those famous precision dancers at the New Roxy Theatre and all and then when we got back the Professor and Daddy were talking and I heard him say it.”

Steve said, carefully, “Professor who?”

Susan said, “Just the Professor. That’s all we ever call him.” Her chin went to trembling still again.

Larry summed it up for the Boss later.

His chief scoffed his disbelief. “The child is full of dreams, Lawrence. It comes from seeing an overabundance of these Tri-D shows. I have a girl the same age. I don’t know what is happening to the country. They have no sense of reality.”

Larry Woolford said mildly, “Well, she might be full of nonsense, but she did have the fifties, and she’s our only connection with whoever printed them whether it’s a movement to overthrow the government, or what.”

The Boss said tolerantly, “Movement, indeed. Obviously, her father produced them and she purloined a quantity before he was ready to attempt to pass them. Have you a run down on him yet?”

“Susan Self says her father, Ernest Self, is an inventor. Steve Hackett is working on locating him.”

“He’s an inventor indeed. Evidently, he has invented a perfect counterfeiting device. However, that is the Secret Service’s headache, not ours. Do you wish to resume that vacation of yours, Lawrence?”

His operative twisted his face in a grimace. “Sure, I do, but I’m not happy about this, sir. What happens if there really is an organization, a Movement, like she said? That brings it back under our jurisdiction, anti-subversion.”

The other shook his head tolerantly. “See here, Lawrence, when you begin scheming a social revolution you can’t plan on an organization composed of a small number of persons who keep their existence secret. In spite of what a good many persons seem to believe, revolutions are not accomplished by handfuls of conspirators hiding in cellars and eventually overthrowing society by dramatically shooting the President, or King, or Czar, or whoever. Revolutions are precipitated by masses of people. People who have ample cause to be against whatever the current government happens to be. Usually, they are on the point of actual starvation. Have you ever read Machiavelli?”

Niccolo Machiavelli was currently the thing to read. Larry said with a certain dignity, “I’ve gone through The Prince, the Discourses and currently I’m amusing myself with his History of Florence.”

“Anybody who can amuse himself reading Machiavelli,” the Boss said dryly, “has a macabre sense of humor. At any rate, what I was alluding to was where he stated that the Prince cannot rule indefinitely in the face of the active opposition of his people. Therefore, the people always get a government that lies within the limits of their tolerance. It may be on one edge or the other of their limits of tolerance—but it’s always within their tolerance zone.”

Larry frowned and said, “Well, what’s your point, sir?”

The Boss said patiently, “I’m just observing that cultures aren’t overthrown by little handfuls of secret conspirators. You might eliminate a few individuals in that manner, in other words change the personnel of the government, but you aren’t going to alter a socioeconomic system. That can’t be done until your people have been pushed outside their limits of tolerance. Very well then. A revolutionary organization must get out and propagandize. It has got to convince the people that they are being pushed beyond endurance. You have got to get the masses to moving. You have to give speeches, print newspapers, books, pamphlets, you have got to send your organizers out to intensify interest in your program.”

Larry said, “I see what you mean. If this so-called Movement actually existed it couldn’t expect to get anywhere as long as remained secret.”

The Boss nodded. “That is correct. The leaders of a revolutionary movement might be intellectuals, social scientists, scholars—in fact they usually are—take our own American Revolution with Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Washington. Or the French Revolution with Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Engels and Lenin. All were well educated intellectuals from the middle class. But the revolution itself, once it starts, comes from below, from the mass of people pushed beyond tolerance.”

It came to Lawrence Woolford that his superior had achieved to his prominent office not through any fluke. He knew what he was talking about.

The Boss wound it up. “If there was such an organization as this Movement, then this department would know about it. You don’t keep a revolutionary movement secret. It doesn’t make sense to even try. Even if it is forced underground, it makes as much noise as it can.”

His troubleshooter cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re right, sir.” He added hesitantly. “We could always give Susan Self a few drops of Scop-Serum, sir.”

The Boss scowled disapprovingly. “You know how the Supreme Court ruled on that, Lawrence. And particularly since the medics revealed its effect on reducing sexual inhibitions. No, Mr. Hackett and Secret Service will have to get the truth out of the girl by some other means. At any rate, it is out of our hands.”

Larry came to his feet. “Well, then, I’ll resume my vacation, eh?”

His chief took up a report from his desk and frowned at it, his attention already passing to other matters. He grunted, “Clear it with LaVerne, please. Tell her I said to take another week to make up for our intruding on you in this manner.”

In the back of his head, Larry Woolford had misgivings. For one thing, where had the kid, who on the face of her performance was no great brain even as sixteen or seventeen old’s go, picked up such ideas as the fact that people developed prejudices against words like revolution and propaganda?

However, he was clear of it now. Let Steve Hackett and his people take over. He, Lawrence Woolford, was due for a quick return to Astor, Florida and the bass fishing on the St. John’s River.

He stopped at LaVerne’s desk and gave her his address to be, now that his vacation was resumed.

She said, smiling up at him. “Right. The boss already told me to get in touch with Secret Service and let them know we’re pulling out. What happened to Susan Self?”

Larry looked at her. “How’d you know about Susan?”

Her tone was deprecating. “Remember? You had me cut some tapes on you and that hulking Steve Hackett grilling the poor kid.”

Larry snorted. “Poor kid, yet. With her tastes for living-it-up, and that father she has, she’ll probably spend the rest of her life getting in Steve’s hair as a counterfeit pusher.”

“What are they going to do with her? She’s just a child.”

The agent shrugged. “I feel sorry for her, too, LaVerne. Steve’s got her in a suite at the Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don’t want the newspapers to get wind of this until they’ve got that inventor father of hers and whatever he’s cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam’s money. Look, I won’t be leaving until tomorrow. What’d you say we go out on the town tonight?”

“Why, Larry Woolford! How nice of you to ask me. Poor Little, Non-U me. What do you have in mind? I understand Mort Lenny’s at one of the night clubs.”

Larry winced. “You know what he’s been saying about the administration.”

She smiled sweetly at him.

Larry said, “Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then—”

“Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to, something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember ‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ and ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight.’ ”

Larry winced again. He said, “Look, I admit, I don’t go for concerts either but it doesn’t hurt you to—”

“I know,” she said sweetly. “It doesn’t hurt for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”

“How about Dixieland?” he said. “It’s all the thing now.”

“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London, and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of weeks ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn’t want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”

“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.” He thought about it. “Look, you must have something you could wear.”

“Get out of here, you vacant minded conformist! I like Mort Lenny, he makes me laugh; I hate vodka martinis, they give me sour stomach; I don’t like the current women’s styles, nor the men’s either.” LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.

Larry glared down at her. “All right. OK. What do you like?”

She snapped back irrationally, “I like what I like.”

He laughed at her in ridicule.

This time she glared at him. “That makes more sense than you’re capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren’t dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I’ll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”

He turned on his heel angrily. “OK, OK, it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”

“One more label to hang on people,” she snarled after him. “Everything’s labels. Be sure and never come to any judgments of your own!”

What a woman! He wondered why he’d ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them, and here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn’t do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the Boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.

He got his car from the parking lot and drove home at a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.

Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small second cellar den. He didn’t really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he’d sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Florida. Besides, in that respect he agreed with the irritating wench. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back.

In his den, he shucked off his jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his current reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His culture status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a western, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his chair, and then went over to the bar.

Up above in his living room, he had one of the new autobars. You could dial any one of more than thirty drinks. Autobars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers or flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn’t like autobars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaken or stirred to a mathematical formula.

Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.

He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.

He sat down in the chair, picked up the book and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli’s, especially if the Boss had got to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the heck with it, he was on vacation. He didn’t think much of the Italian diplomat of the Renaissance anyway; how could you be that far back without being dated?

He couldn’t get beyond the first page or two.

And when you can’t concentrate on a Western, you just can’t concentrate.

He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialed Department of Records and then Information. When the bright young thing answered, he said, “I’d like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don’t know his code number.”

She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought a sheet from a delivery chute. “Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”

“No, I’ll scan it,” Larry said.

Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.

It was astonishingly short. Records seemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurrence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead he dialed the number of the Sun-Post and asked for its science columnist.

Sam Sokolski’s puffy face eventually faded in.

Larry said to him sourly, “You drink too much. You can begin to see the veins breaking in your nose.”

Sam looked at him patiently.

Larry said, “How’d you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”

“I’m working. I thought you were on vacation.”

Larry sighed. “I am,” he said. “OK, so you can’t take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”

“That’s right. Anything else, Larry?”

“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”

“Sure I’ve heard of him. Covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”

“I’ll bet,” Larry said. “What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”

“Printing presses? Don’t you remember the story about him?”

“Brief me,” Larry said.

“Well—briefly does it—it got out a couple of years ago that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle’s change for it. So Self sued.”

Larry said, “You’re being too brief. What d’ya mean, he sued? Why?”

“Because he claimed he’d submitted the same formula to the same agency a full eighteen months earlier and they’d turned him down.”

“Had he?”

“Probably.”

Larry didn’t get it. “Then why’d they turn him down?”

Sam said, “Oh, the government boys had a good alibi. Crackpots turn up all over the place and you have to brush them off. Every cellar scientist who comes along and says he’s got a new super-fuel developed from old coffee grounds can’t be given the welcome mat. Something was wrong with his math or something and they didn’t pay much attention to him. Wouldn’t even let him demonstrate it. But it was the same formula, all right.”

Larry Woolford was scowling. “Something wrong with his math? What kind of a degree does he have?”

Sam grinned in memory. “I got a good quote on that. He doesn’t have any degree. He said he’d learned to read by the time he’d reached high school and since then he figured spending time in classrooms was a matter of interfering with his education.”

“No wonder they turned him down. No degree at all. You can’t get anywhere in science like that.”

Sam said, “The courts rejected his suit but he got a certain amount of support here and there. Peter Voss, over at the university, claims he’s one of the great intuitive scientists, whatever that is, of our generation.”

“Who said that?”

“Professor Voss. Not that it makes any difference what he says. Another crackpot.”

After Sam’s less than handsome face was gone from the phone, Larry walked over to the bar with his empty glass and stared at the mixer for several minutes. He began to make himself another flip, but cut it short in the middle, put down the ingredients and went back to the phone to dial Records again.

He went through first the brief and then the full dossier on Professor Peter Luther Voss. Aside from his academic accomplishments, particularly in the fields of political economy and international law, and the dozen or so books accredited to him, there wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy. A bachelor in his fifties. No criminal record of any kind, of course, and no military career. No known political affiliations. Evidently a strong predilection for Thorstein Veblen’s theories. And he’d been a friend of Henry Mencken back when that old nonconformist was tearing down contemporary society seemingly largely for the fun involved in the tearing.

On the face of it, the man was no radical, and the term “crackpot” which Sam had applied was hardly called for.

Larry Woolford went back to the bar and resumed the job of mixing his own version of a rum flip.

But his heart wasn’t in it. The Professor, Susan had said.

Before he’d gone to bed the night before, Larry Woolford had ordered a seat on the shuttle jet for Jacksonville and a hover-cab there to take him to Astor, on the St. Johns River. And he’d requested to be wakened in ample time to get to the shuttleport.

But it wasn’t the saccharine pleasant face of the Personal Service operator which confronted him when he grumpily answered the phone in the morning. In fact, the screen remained blank.

Larry decided that sweet long drinks were fine, but that anyone who took several of them in a row needed to be candied. He grumbled into the phone, “All right, who is it?”

A Teutonic voice chuckled and said, “You’re going to have to decide whether or not you’re on vacation, my friend. At this time of day, why aren’t you at work?”

Larry Woolford was waking up. He said, “What can I do for you, Distelmayer?” The German merchant-of-espionage wasn’t the type to make personal calls.

“Have you forgotten so soon, my friend?” the other chuckled. “It was I who was going to do you a favor.” He hesitated momentarily, before adding, “In possible return for future—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Larry said. He was fully awake now.

The German said slowly, “You asked if any of your friends from, ah, abroad were newly in the country. Frol Eivazov has recently appeared on the scene.”

Eivazov! In various respects, Larry Woolford’s counterpart. Hatchetman for the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya. Woolford had met him on occasion when they’d both been present at international summit meetings, busily working at counterespionage for their respective superiors. Blandly shaking hands with each other, blandly drinking toasts to peace and international coexistence, blandly sizing each other up and wondering if it’d ever come to the point where one would blandly treat the other to a hole in the head, possibly in some dark alley in Havana or Singapore, Leopoldville or Saigon.

Larry said sharply, “Where is he? How’d he get in the country?”

“My friend, my friend,” the German grunted good-humoredly. “You know better than to ask the first question. As for the second, Frol’s command of American-English is at least as good as your own. Do you think his Komissiya less capable than your own department and unable to do him up suitable papers so that he could be, perhaps, a ‘returning tourist’ from Europe?”

Larry Woolford was impatient with himself for asking. He said now, “It’s not important. If we want to locate Frol and pick him up, we’ll probably not have too much trouble doing it.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” the other said humorously. “Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a United States government agency.”

Larry was in no frame of mind for the other’s heavy humor. “Look, Hans,” he said, “what I want to know is what Frol is over here for.”

“Of course you do,” Hans Distelmayer said, unable evidently to keep note of puzzlement from his voice. “Larry,” he said, “I assume your people know of the new American underground.”

“What underground?” Larry snapped.

The professional spy chief said, his voice strange, “The Soviets seem to have picked up an idea somewhere, possibly through their membership in this country, that something is abrewing in the States. That a change is being engineered.”

Larry stared at the blank phone screen.

“What kind of a change?” he said finally. “You mean a change to the Soviet system?” Surely not even the self-deluding Russkies could think it possible to overthrow the American socioeconomic system in favor of the Soviet brand.

“No, no, no,” the German chuckled. “Of course not. It’s not of their working at all.”

“Then what’s Frol Eivazov’s interest, if they aren’t engineering it?”

Distelmayer rumbled his characteristic chuckle with humor. “My dear friend, don’t be naive. Anything that happens in America is of interest to the Soviets. There is delicate peace between you now that they have changed their direction and are occupying themselves largely with the economic and agricultural development of Asia and such portions of the world as have come under their hegemony, and while you put all efforts into modernizing the more backward countries among your satellites.”

Larry said automatically, “Our allies aren’t satellites.”

The spymaster went on without contesting the statement. “There is immediate peace but surely governmental officials on both sides keep careful watch on the internal developments of the other. True, the current heads of the Soviet Complex would like to see the governments of all the Western powers changed—but only if they are changed in the direction of communism. They are hardly interested in seeing changes made which would strengthen the West in the, ah, Battle For Men’s Minds.”

Larry snorted his disgust. “What sort of change in government would strengthen the United States in—”

The German interrupted smoothly, “Evidently, that’s what Frol seems to be here for, Larry. To find out more about this movement and—”

“This what?” Larry blurted.

“The term seems to be movement.”

Larry Woolford held a long silence before saying, “And Frol is actually here in this country to buck this … this movement.”

“Not necessarily,” the other said impatiently. “He is here to find out more about it. Evidently Peking and Moscow have heard just enough to make them nervous.”

Larry said, “You have anything more, Hans?”

“I’m afraid that’s about it.”

“All right,” Larry said. He added absently, “Thanks, Hans.”

“Thank me some day with deeds, not with words,” the German chuckled.

Larry Woolford looked at his watch and grimaced. He was either going to get going now or forget about doing any fishing in Florida this afternoon.

Grudgingly, he dialed the phone company’s Personal Service and said to the impossibly cheerful blonde who answered, “Where can I find Professor Peter Voss who teaches over at the University in Baltimore? I don’t want to talk with him, just want to know where he’ll be an hour from now.”

While waiting for his information, he dressed, deciding inwardly that he hated his job, the department in which he was employed, the Boss and Greater Washington. On top of that, he hated himself. He’d already been taken off this assignment, why couldn’t he leave it lay?

The blonde rang him back. Professor Peter Voss was at home. He had no classes today. She gave him the address.

Larry Woolford raised his car from his auto-bungalow in the Brandywine suburb and headed northwest at a high level for the old Baltimore section of the city.

The Professor’s house, he noted, was of an earlier day and located on the opposite side of Paterson Park from Elwood Avenue, the street on which Susan Self and her father had resided. That didn’t necessarily hold significance, the park was a large one and the Professor’s section a well-to-do neighborhood, while Self’s was just short of a slum these days.

He brought his car down to street level, and parked before the scholar’s three-story, brick house. Baltimore-like, it was identical to every other house in the block; Larry wondered vaguely how anybody ever managed to find his own place when it was very dark out.

There was an old-fashioned bell at the side of the entrance and Larry Woolford pushed it. There was no identification screen in the door, evidently the inhabitants had to open up to see who was calling, a tiring chore if you were on the far side of the house and the caller nothing more than a salesman.

It was obviously the Professor himself who answered.

He was in shirtsleeves, tieless and with age-old slippers on his stockingless feet. He evidently hadn’t bothered to shave this morning and he held a dog-earred pamphlet in his right hand, his forefinger tucked in it to mark his place. He wore thick-lensed, gold-rimmed glasses through which he blinked at Larry Woolford questioningly, without speaking. Professor Peter Voss was a man in his mid fifties, and, on the face of it, couldn’t care less right now about his physical appearance.

A weird, Larry decided immediately. He wondered at the University, one of the nation’s best, keeping on such a figure.

“Professor Voss?” he said. “Lawrence Woolford.” He brought forth his identification.

The Professor blinked down at it. “I see,” he said. “Won’t you come in?”

The house was old, all right. From the outside, quite acceptable, but the interior boasted few of the latest amenities which made all the difference in modern existence. Larry was taken back by the fact that the phone which he spotted in the entrada hadn’t even a screen—an old model for speaking only.

The Professor noticed his glance and said dryly, “The advantages of combining television and telephone have never seemed valid to me. In my own home, I feel free to relax, as you can observe. Had I a screen on my phone, it would be necessary for me to maintain the same appearance as I must on the streets or before my classes.”

Larry cleared his throat without saying anything. This was a weird one, all right.

The living room was comfortable in a blatantly primitive way. Three or four paintings on the walls which were probably originals, Larry decided, and should have been in museums. Not an abstract among them. A Grant Wood, a Marin, and that over there could only be a Grandma Moses. The sort of things you might keep in your private den, but hardly to be seen as culture symbols.

The chairs were large, of leather, and comfortable and probably belonged to the period before the Second War. Peter Voss, evidently, was little short of an exhibitionist.

The Professor took up a battered humidor. “Cigar?” he said. “Manila. Hard to get these days.”

A cigar? Good grief, the man would be offering him a chaw of tobacco next.

“Thanks, no,” Larry said. “I smoke a pipe.”

“I see,” the Professor said, lighting his stogie. “Do you really like a pipe? Personally, I’ve always thought the cigar by far the most satisfactory method of taking tobacco.”

What can you say to a question like that? Larry ignored it, as though it was rhetorical. Actually, he smoked cigarettes in the privacy of his den. A habit which was on the proletarian side and not consistent with his status level.

He said, to get things under way, “Professor Voss, what is an intuitive scientist?”

The Professor exhaled blue smoke, shook out the old-time kitchen match with which he’d lit it, and tossed the matchstick into an ashtray. “Intuitive scientist?”

“You once called Ernest Self a great intuitive scientist.”

“Oh, Self. Yes, indeed. What is he doing these days?”

Larry said wryly, “That’s what I came to ask you about.”

The Professor was puzzled. “I’m afraid you came to the wrong place, Mr. Woolford. I haven’t seen Ernest for quite a time. Why?”

“Some of his researches seem to have taken him rather far afield. Actually, I know practically nothing about him. I wonder if you could fill me in a bit.”

Peter Voss looked at the ash on the end of his cigar. “I really don’t know the man that well. He lives across the park. Why don’t—”

“He’s disappeared,” Larry said.

The Professor blinked. “I see,” he said. “And in view of the fact that you are a security officer, I assume under strange circumstances.” Larry Woolford said nothing and the Professor sank back into his chair and pursed his lips. “I can’t really tell you much. I became interested in Self two or three years ago when gathering materials for a paper on the inadequate manner in which our country rewards its inventors.”

Larry said, “I’ve heard about his suit against the government.”

The Professor became more animated. “Ha!” he snorted. “One example among many. Self is not alone. Our culture is such that the genius is smothered. The great contributors to our society are ignored, or worse.”

Larry Woolford was feeling his way. Now he said mildly, “I was under the impression that American free enterprise gave the individual the best opportunity to prove himself and that if he had it on the ball he’d get to the top.”

“Were you really?” the Professor said snappishly. “And did you know that Edison died a comparatively poor man with an estate somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred thousand dollars? An amount that might sound like a good deal to you or me, but, when you consider his contributions, shockingly little. Did you know that Eli Whitney realized little, if anything, from the cotton gin? Or that McCormick didn’t invent the reaper but gained it in a dubious court victory? Or take Robert Goddard, one of the best examples of modern times. He developed the basics of rocket technology—gyroscopic stabilizers, fuel pumps, self-cooling motors, landing devices. He died in 1945 leaving behind twenty-two volumes of records that proved priceless. What did he get out of his researches? Nothing. It was fifteen years later that his widow won her suit against the government for patent infringements!”

Larry held up a hand. “Really,” he said. “My interest is in Ernest Self.”

The Professor relaxed. “Sorry. I’m afraid I get carried away. Self, to get back to your original question, is a great intuitive scientist. Unfortunately for him, society being what it is today, he fits into few grooves. Our educational system was little more than an irritation to him and consequently he holds no degrees. Needless to say, this interfered with his gaining employment with the universities and the large corporations which dominate our country’s research, not to mention governmental agencies.

“Ernest Self holds none of the status labels that count. The fact that he is a genius means nothing. He is supposedly qualified no more than to hold a janitor’s position in laboratories where his inferiors conduct experiments in fields where he is a dozenfold more capable than they. No one is interested in his genius, they want to know what status labels are pinned to him. Ernest has no respect for labels.”

Larry Woolford figured he was picking up background and didn’t force a change of subject. “Just what do you mean by intuitive scientist?”

“It’s a term I have used loosely,” the Professor admitted. “Possibly a scientist who makes a breakthrough in his field, destroying formerly held positions—in Self’s case, without the math, without the accepted theories to back him. He finds something that works, possibly without knowing why or how and by using unorthodox analytical techniques. An intuitive scientist, if I may use the term, is a thorn in the side of our theoretical physicists laden down with their burden of a status label but who are themselves short of the makings of a Leonardo, a Newton, a Galileo, or even a Nicholas Christofilos.”

“I’m afraid that last name escapes me,” Larry said.

“Similar to Self’s case and Robert Goddard’s,” Voss said, his voice bitter. “Although his story has a better ending. Christofilos invented the strong-focusing principle that made possible the multi-billion-volt particle accelerators currently so widely used in nuclear physics experimentation. However, he was nothing but a Greek elevator electrical system engineer and the supposed experts turned him down on the grounds that his math was faulty. It seems that he submitted the idea in straight-algebra terms instead of differential equations. He finally won through after patenting the discovery and rubbing their noses in it. Previously, none of the physics journals would publish his paper—he didn’t have the right status labels to impress them.”

Larry said, almost with amusement, “You seem to have quite a phobia against the status label, as you call it. However, I don’t see how as complicated a world as ours could get along without it.”

The Professor snorted his contempt. “Tell me,” he said, “to which class do you consider yourself to belong?”

Larry Woolford shrugged. “I suppose individuals in my bracket are usually thought of as being middle-middle class.”

“And you have no feeling of revolt in having such a label hung on you? Consider this system for a moment. You have lower-lower, middle-lower, and upper-lower; then you have lower-middle, middle-middle, upper-middle; then you have lower-upper, middle-upper, and finally we achieve to upper-upper class. Now tell me, when we get to that rarified category, who do we find? Do we find an Einstein, a Schweitzer, a Picasso; outstanding scientists, humanitarians, the great writers, artists and musicians of our day? Certainly not. We find ultra-wealthy playboys and girls, a former king and his duchess who eke out their income by accepting fees to attend parties, the international born set, bearers of meaningless feudalistic titles. These are your upper-upper class!”

Larry laughed.

The Professor snapped, “You think it funny? Let me give you another example of our status label culture. I have a friend whom I have known since childhood. I would estimate that Charles has an I.Q. of approximately 90, certainly no more. His family, however, took such necessary steps as were needed to get Charles through public school. No great matter these days, you’ll admit, although on occasion he needed a bit of tutoring. On graduation, they recognized that the really better schools might be a bit difficult for Charles so he was entered in a university with a good name but without—shall we say?—the highest of scholastic ratings. Charles plodded along, had some more tutoring, probably had his thesis ghosted, and eventually graduated. At that point an uncle died and left Charles an indefinite amount to be used in furthering his education to any extent he wished to go. Charles, motivated probably by the desire to avoid obtaining a job and competing with his fellow man, managed to wrangle himself into a medical school and eventually even graduated. Since funds were still available, he continued his studies abroad, largely in Vienna.”

The Professor wound it up. “Eventually, he ran out of schools, or his uncle’s estate ran out—I don’t know which came first. At any rate, my friend Charles, laden down with status labels, is today practicing as a psychiatrist in this fair city of ours.”

Larry stared at him blankly.

The Professor said snappishly, “So any time you feel you need to have your brains unscrambled, you can go to his office and expend twenty-five dollars an hour or so. His reputation is of the highest.” The Professor grunted his contempt. “He doesn’t know the difference between an aspirin tablet and a Rorschach test.”

Larry Woolford stirred in his chair. “We seem to have gotten far off the subject. What has this got to do with Self?”

The Professor seemed angry. “I repeat, I’m afraid I get carried away on this subject. I’m in revolt against a culture based on the status label. It eliminates the need to judge a man on his merits. To judge a person by the clothes he wears, the amount of money he possesses, the car he drives, the neighborhood in which he lives, the society he keeps, or even his ancestry, is out of the question in a vital, growing society. You wind up with nonentities as the leaders of your nation. In these days, we can’t afford it.”

He smiled suddenly, rather elfishly, at the security agent. “But admittedly, this deals with Self only as one of many victims of a culture based on status labels. Just what is it you wanted to know about Ernest?”

“When you knew him, evidently he was working on rocket fuels. Have you any idea whether he later developed a method of producing perfect counterfeit?”

The Professor said, “Ernest Self? Surely you are jesting.”

Larry said unhappily, “Then here’s another question. Have you ever heard him mention belonging to a movement, or, I think, he might word it The Movement.”

“Movement?” the Professor said emptily.

“Evidently a revolutionary group interested in the overthrow of the government.”

“Good heavens,” the Professor said. “Just a moment, Mr. Woolford. You interrupted me just as I was having my second cup of coffee. Do you mind if I—”

“Certainly not,” Woolford shook his head.

“I simply can’t get along until after my third cup,” the Professor said. “You just wait a moment and I’ll bring the pot in here.”

He left Larry to sit in the combined study and living room while he shuffled off in his slippers to the kitchen. Larry Woolford decided that in his school days he’d had some far out professors himself, but it would really be something to study under this one. Not that the old boy didn’t have some points, of course. Almost all nonconformists base their particular peeves on some actuality, but in this case, what was the percentage? How could you buck the system? Particularly when, largely, it worked.

The Professor returned with an old-fashioned coffeepot, two cups, and sugar and cream on a tray. He put them on a side table and said to Larry, “You’ll join me? How do you take it?”

Larry still had the slightest of hangovers from his solitary drinking of the night before. “Thanks. Make it black,” he said.

The Professor poured, served, then did up a cup for himself. He sat back in his chair and said, “Now, where were we? Something about a revolutionary group. What has that to do with counterfeiting?”

Larry sipped the strong coffee. “It seems there might be a connection.”

The Professor shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine Ernest Self being connected with a criminal pursuit.”

Larry said carefully, “Susan seemed to be of the opinion that you knew about a large amount of counterfeit currency that this Movement had on hand and that you were in favor of spending it upon chorus girls.”

The Professor gaped at him.

Larry chuckled uncomfortably.

Professor Voss said finally, his voice very even, “My dear sir, I am afraid that I evidently can be of little assistance to you.”

“Admittedly, it doesn’t seem to make much sense.”

“Susan—you mean that little sixteen year old?—said I was in favor of spending counterfeit money on chorus girls?”

Larry said unhappily, “She used the term the Professor.”

“And why did you assume that the title must necessarily allude to me? Even if any of the rest of the fantastic story was true.”

Larry said, “In my profession, Professor Voss, we track down every possible clue. Thus far, you are the only professor of whom we know who was connected with Ernest Self.”

Voss said stiffly, “I can only say, sir, that in my estimation Mr. Self is a man of the highest integrity. And, in addition, that I have never spent a penny on a chorus girl in my life and have no intention of beginning, counterfeit or otherwise.”

Larry Woolford decided that he wasn’t doing too well and that he’d need more ammunition if he was going to return to this particular attack. He was surprised that the old boy hadn’t already ordered him from the house.

He finished the coffee preparatory to coming to his feet. “Then you think it’s out of the question, Ernest Self belonging to a revolutionary organization?”

The Professor protested. “I didn’t say that at all. Mr. Self is a man of ideals. I can well see him belonging to such an organization.”

Larry Woolford decided he’d better hang on for at least a few more words. “You don’t seem to think, yourself, that a subversive organization is undesirable in this country.”

The Professor’s voice was reasonable. “Isn’t that according to what it means to subvert?”

“You know what I mean,” Woolford said in irritation. “I don’t usually think of revolutionists, even when they call themselves simply members of a movement, as exactly idealists.”

“Then you’re wrong,” the Professor said definitely, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “History bears out that almost invariably revolutionists are men of idealism. The fact that they might be either right or wrong in their revolutionary program is beside the point.”

Larry Woolford began to say, “Are you sure that you aren’t interested in this move—”

But it was then that the knockout drops hit him.

He came out of the fog feeling nausea and with his head splitting. He groaned and opened one eye experimentally.

Steve Hackett, far away, said, “He’s snapping out of it.”

Larry groaned again, opened the other eye and attempted to focus.

“What happened?” he muttered.

“Now that’s an original question,” Steve said.

Larry Woolford struggled up into a sitting position. He’d been stretched out on a couch in the Professor’s combined living room and study.

Steve Hackett, his hands on his hips, was looking down at him sarcastically. There were two or three others, one of whom Larry vaguely remembered as being a Secret Service colleague of Steve’s, going about and in and out of the room.

Larry said, his fingers pressing into his forehead, “My head’s killing me. Damn it, what’s going on?”

Steve said sarcastically, “You’ve been slipped a mickey, my cloak and dagger friend, and the bird has flown.”

“You mean the Professor? He’s a bird all right.”

“Humor we get, yet,” Hackett said, his ugly face scowling. “Listen, I thought you people had pulled out of this case.”

Larry sat up and swung his two feet around to the floor. “So did I,” he moaned, “but there were two or three things that bothered me and I thought I’d tidy them up before leaving.”

“You tidied them up all right,” Steve grumbled. “This Professor Voss was practically the only lead I’ve been able to discover. An old friend of Self’s. And you allowed him to get away before we even got here.”

One of Hackett’s men came up and said, “Not a sign of him, Steve. He evidently burned a few papers, packed a suitcase, and took off. His things look suspiciously as though he was ready to go into hiding at a moment’s notice.”

Steve growled to him, “Give the place the works. He’s probably left some clues around that’ll give us a line.”

The other went off and Steve Hackett sat down in one of the leather chairs and glowered at Larry Woolford. “Listen,” he said, “what did you people want with Susan Self?”

Larry shook his head for clarity and looked at him. “Susan? What are you talking about? You don’t have any aspirin, do you?”

“No. What’d you mean, what am I talking about? You called Betsy Hughes and then sent a couple of men over to pick the Self kid up.”

“Who’s Betsy Hughes?”

Steve shook his head. “I don’t know what kind of knockout drops the old boy gave you, but they sure worked. Betsy’s the operative we had minding Susan Self over in the Greater Washington Hilton. About an hour ago you got her on the phone, said your department wanted to question Susan, and that you were sending two men over to pick her up. The two men turned up with an order from you, and took the girl.”

Larry stared at him. Finally he said, “What time is it?”

“About two o’clock.”

Larry said, “I came into this house in the morning, talked to the Professor for about half an hour and then was silly enough to let him give me some loaded coffee. He was such a weird old buzzard that it never occurred to me he might be dangerous. At any rate, I’ve been unconscious for several hours. I couldn’t’ve called this Betsy Hughes operative of yours.”

It was Steve Hackett’s turn to stare.

“You mean your department doesn’t have Susan Self?”

“Not so far as I know. The Boss told me yesterday that we were pulling out, that it was all in your hands. What would we want with Susan?”

“Oh, great,” Steve snarled. “There goes our last contact. Ernest Self, Professor Voss, and now Susan Self; they’ve all disappeared.”

“Look,” Larry said unhappily, “let’s get me some aspirin and then let’s go and see my chief. I have a sneaking suspicion our department is back on this case.”

Steve snorted sarcastically. “If you can foul things up this well when you’re off the case, God only knows what you’ll accomplish using your facilities on an all-out basis.”

The Boss said slowly, “Whoever we are working against evidently isn’t short of resources. Abducting that young lady was no simple matter.” The career diplomat worked his lips in and out, in all but a pout.

Larry Woolford, who’d taken time out to go home, shower, change clothes and medicate himself out of his dope induced hangover, sat across the desk from him, flanked by Steve Hackett.

The Boss said sourly, “It would seem that I was in error. That our young Susan Self was not spouting fantasy. There evidently actually is an underground movement interested in changing our institutions.” He stirred in his chair and his scowl went deeper. “And evidently working on a basis never conceived of by subversive organizations of the past. The fact that they have successfully remained secret even to this department is the prime indication that they are attempting to make their revolutionary changes in a unique manner.”

Larry said, “The trouble is, we don’t even know what it is they want.”

“However,” his superior said slowly, “we are beginning to get inklings.”

Steve Hackett said, “What inklings, sir? This sort of thing might be routine for you people, but my field is counterfeit. I, frankly, don’t know what it’s all about.”

The Boss looked at him. “We have a clue or two, Mr. Hackett. For one thing, we know that this Movement of ours has no affiliations with the Soviet Complex, nor, so far as we know, any foreign element whatsoever. If we take Miss Self’s word, it is strictly an American phenomenon. From what little we know of Ernest Self and Peter Voss they might be in revolt against some of our current institutions but there is no reason to believe them, ah, un-American in the usually accepted sense of the word.”

The two younger men looked at him as though he was joking.

He shook his heavy head negatively. “Actually, what do we have on this so-called Movement thus far? Aside from treating Lawrence, here, to some knockout drops—and let us remember that Lawrence was present in the Professor’s home without a warrant—all we have is the suspicion that they have manufactured a quantity of counterfeit.”

“A quantity is right,” Steve Hackett blurted. “If we’re to accept what that Self kid told us, they have a few billion dollars worth of perfect bills on hand.”

“A strange amount for counterfeiters to produce,” The Boss said uncomfortably. “That is what puzzles me. Any revolutionary movement needs funds. Remember Stalin as a young man? He used to be in charge of the Bolshevik gang which robbed banks to raise funds for their underground newspapers. But a billion dollars? What in the world can they expect to need that amount for?”

Larry said, “Sir, you keep talking as though these characters were a bunch of idealistic do-gooders bleeding for the sake of the country. Actually, from what we know, they’re nothing but a bunch of revolutionists.”

The Boss was shaking his head. “You’re not thinking clearly, Lawrence. Revolution, per se, is not illegal in the United States. Our Constitution was probably the first document of its kind which allowed for its own amendment. The men who wrote it provided for changing it either slightly or in toto. Whenever the majority of the American people decide completely to abandon the Constitution and govern themselves by new laws, they have the right to do it.”

“Then what’s the whole purpose of this department, sir?” Larry argued. “Why’ve we been formed to combat foreign and domestic subversion?”

His chief sighed. “You shouldn’t have to ask that, Lawrence. The present government cannot oppose the will of the majority if it votes, by constitutional methods, to make any changes it wishes. But we can, and do, unmask the activities of anyone trying to overthrow the government by force and violence. Any culture protects itself against that.”

“What are we getting at, sir?” Steve Hackett said, impatiently.

The Boss shrugged. “I’m trying to point out that so far as my department is concerned, thus far we have little against this Movement. Secret Service may have, what with this wholesale counterfeiting, even though thus far they seem to have made no attempt to pass the currency they have allegedly manufactured. We wouldn’t even know of it, weren’t it for our young Susan pilfering an amount.”

Larry said, desperately, “Sir, you just pointed out a few minutes ago that this Movement is a secret organization trying to make changes in some unique manner. In short, they don’t figure on using the ballot to put over their revolution. That makes them as illegal as the Commies, doesn’t it?”

The Boss said, “That’s the difficulty; we don’t know what they want. From your conversations with Susan Self and especially Professor Voss, evidently they think the country needs some basic changes. What these changes are, and how they expect to accomplish them, we don’t know. Unless a foreign government is involved, or unless they plan to alter our institutions by violence, this department just doesn’t have much jurisdiction.”

Steve Hackett snorted, “Secret Service does! If those bales of money the Self kid told us about are ever put into circulation, there’ll be hell to pay.”

The Boss sighed. “Well,” he said, “Lawrence can continue on the assignment. If it develops in such manner as to indicate that this department is justified in further investigation, we’ll put more men on it. Meanwhile, it is obviously more a Secret Service matter. I am sorry to intrude upon your vacation again, Lawrence.”

On awakening in the morning, Larry Woolford stared glumly at the ceiling for long moments before dragging himself from bed. This was, he decided, the strangest assignment he’d ever been on. In his day he’d trekked through South America, Common Europe, a dozen African states, and even areas of Southern Asia, combatting Commie pressures here, fellow-traveler organizations there, disrupting plots hatched in the Soviet Complex in the other place. On his home grounds in the United States he’d covered everything from out and out Soviet espionage, to exposing Communist activities of complexions from the faintest of pinks to the rosiest Trotskyite red. But, he decided he’d never expected to wind up after a bunch of weirds whose sole actionable activity to date seemed to be the counterfeiting of a fantastic amount of legal tender which thus far they were making no attempt to pass.

He got out of bed and went through the rituals of showering, shaving and clothing, of coffee, sausage, and eggs, toast and more coffee.

What amazed Larry Woolford was the shrug-it-off manner in which the Boss seemed to accept this underground Movement and its admitted subversive goals—whatever they were. Carry the Boss’ reasoning to its ultimate and subversion was perfectly all right, just as it didn’t involve force and violence. If he was in his chief’s position, he would have thrown the full resources of the department into tracking down these crackpots. As it was, he, Larry Woolford was the only operative on the job.

He needed a new angle on which to work. Steve Hackett was undoubtedly handling the tracing down of the counterfeit with all the resources of the Secret Service. Possibly there was some way of detecting the source of the paper they’d used.

He finished his final cup of coffee in the living room and took up the pipe he was currently breaking in. He loaded it automatically from a humidor and lit it with his pocket lighter. Three drags, and he tossed it back to the table, fumbled in a drawer and located a pack of cigarettes. Possibly his status group was currently smoking British briars in public, but, let’s face it, he hated the confounded things.

He sat down before the phone and dialed the offices of the Sun-Post and eventually got Sam Sokolski who this time beat him to the punch.

Sam said, “You shouldn’t drink alone. Listen, Larry, why don’t you get in touch with Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s a great outfit.”

“You ought to know,” Larry growled. “Look, Sam, as science columnist for that rag you work for you probably come in touch with a lot of eggheads.”

“Laddy-buck, you have said it,” Sam said.

“Fine. Now look, what I want to know is have you ever heard—even the slightest of rumors—about an organization called the Movement?”

“What’d’ya mean, slightest of rumors? Half the weirds I run into are interested in the outfit. Get two or three intellectuals, scientists, technicians, or what have you, together and they start knocking themselves out on the pros and cons of the Movement.”

Larry Woolford stared at him. “Are you kidding, Sam?”

The other was mystified. “Why should I kid you? As a matter of fact, I was thinking of doing a column one of these days on Voss and this Movement of his.”

“Voss and this movement of his!”

“Sure,” Sam said, “he’s the top leader.”

“Oh, great,” Larry growled. “Look, Sam, eventually there is probably a story in this for you. Right now, though, we’re trying to keep the lid on it. Could you brief me a little on this Movement? What are they trying to put over?”

“I seem to spend half my time briefing you in information any semi-moron ought to be up on,” Sam said nastily. “However, briefly, they’re in revolt against social-label judgments. They think it’s fouling up the country and that eventually it’ll result in the Russkies passing us in all the fields that really count.”

“I keep running into this term,” Larry complained. “What do you mean, social-label judgments, and how can they possibly louse up the country?”

Sam said, “I was present a month or so ago when Voss gave an informal lecture to a group of twenty or so. Here’s one of the examples he used.

“Everybody today wants to be rated on a (1) personal, or, (2) social-label basis, depending on which basis is to his greatest advantage. The Negro who is a no-good, lazy, obnoxious person demands to be accepted because Negroes should not be discriminated against. The highly competent, hard working, honest and productive Negro wants to be accepted because he is hardworking, honest and productive—and should be so accepted.

“See what I mean? This social-label system is intended to relieve the individual of the necessity of judging, and the consequences of being judged. If you have poor judgment, and are forced to rely on your own judgment, you’re almost sure to go under. So persons of poor judgment support our social-label system. If you’re a louse, and are correctly judged as being a louse, you’d prefer that the social dictum ‘Human beings are never lice’ should apply.”

Larry said, “What in the devil’s this got to do with the race between this country and the Russkies?”

Sam said patiently, “Voss and the Movement he leads contend that a social-label system winds up with incompetents running the country in all fields. Often incompetent scientists are in charge of our research; incompetent doctors, in charge of our health; incompetent politicians run our government; incompetent teachers, laden with social-labels, teach our youth. Our young people are going to college to secure a degree, not an education. It’s the label that counts, not the reality.

“Voss contends that it’s getting progressively worse. That we’re sinking into an equivalent of a ritual-taboo, tribal social-like situation. This is the system the low-level human being wants, yearns for and seeks. A situation in which no one’s judgment is of any use. Then his lack of judgment is no handicap.

“According to members of the Movement, today the tribesman type is seeking to reduce civilization back to ritual-taboo tribalism wherein no one man’s judgment is of any value. The union wants advancement based on seniority, not on ability and judgment. The persons with whom you associate socially judge you by the amount of money you possess, the family from which you come, the degrees you hold, by social-labels—not by your proven abilities. Down with judgment! is the cry.”

“It sounds awfully weird to me,” Larry grumbled in deprecation.

Sam shrugged. “There’s a lot of sense in it. What the Movement wants is to develop a socioeconomic system in which judgment produces a maximum advantage.”

Larry said, “What gets me is that you talk as though half the country was all caught up in debating this Movement. But I haven’t even heard of it, neither has my department chief, nor any of my colleagues, so far as I know. Why isn’t anything about it in the papers or on the Tri-D?”

Sam said mildly, “As a matter of fact, I took in Mort Lenny’s show the other night and he made some cracks about it. But it’s not the sort of thing that’s even meant to become popular with the man in the street. To put it bluntly, Voss and his people aren’t particularly keen about the present conception of the democratic ideal. According to him, true democracy can only be exercised by peers and society today isn’t composed of peers. If you have one hundred people, twenty of them competent, intelligent persons, eighty of them untrained, incompetent and less than intelligent, then it’s ridiculous to have the eighty dictate to the twenty.”

Larry looked accusingly at his longtime friend. “You know, Sam, you sound as though you approve of all this.”

Sam said patiently, “I listen to it all, Larry my boy. I think Voss makes a lot of sense. There’s only one drawback.”

“And that is?”

“How’s he going to put it over? This social-label system the Movement complains about was bad enough ten years ago. But look how much worse it is today. It’s a progressive thing. And, remember, it’s to the benefit of the incompetent. Since the incompetent predominates, you’re going to have a hard time starting up a system based on judgment and ability.”

Larry thought about it for a moment.

Sam said, “Look, I’m working, Larry. Was there anything else?”

Larry said, “You wouldn’t know where I could get hold of Voss, would you?”

“At his home, I imagine, or at the University.”

“He’s disappeared. We’re looking for him.”

Sam laughed. “Gone underground, eh? The old boy is getting romantic.”

“Does he have any particular friends who might be putting him up?”

Sam thought about it. “There’s Frank Nostrand. You know, that rocket expert who was fired when he got in the big hassle with Senator McCord.”

When Sam Sokolski had flicked off, Larry stared at the vacant phone screen for a long moment, assimilating what the other had told him. He was astonished that an organization such as the Movement could have spread to the extent it evidently had through the country’s intellectual circles, through the scientifically and technically trained, without his department being keenly aware of it.

One result, he decided glumly, of labeling everything contrary to the status quo as weird and dismissing it with contempt. Admittedly, that would have been his own reaction only a week ago.

Suppose that he’d been at a cocktail party, and had drifted up to a group who were arguing about social-label judgments and the need to develop a movement to change society’s use of them. The discussion would have gone in one ear, out the other, and he would have muttered inwardly, “Weirds,” and have drifted on to get himself another vodka martini.

Larry snorted and dialed the Department of Records. He’d never heard of Frank Nostrand before, so he got Information.

The bright young thing who answered seemed to have a harried expression untypical of Records employees. Larry said to her, “I’d like the brief on a Mr. Frank Nostrand who is evidently an expert on rockets. The only other thing I know about him is that he recently got in the news as the result of a controversy with Senator McCord.”

“Just a moment, sir,” the bright young thing said.

She touched buttons and reached into a delivery chute. When her eyes came up to meet his again, they were more than ever harried. They were absolutely confused.

“Mr. Franklin Howard Nostrand,” she said, “currently employed by Madison Air as a rocket research technician.”

“That must be him,” Larry said. “I’m in a hurry, Miss. What’s his background?”

Her eyes rounded. “It says … it says he’s an Archbishop of the Anglican Church.”

Larry Woolford looked at her.

She looked back, pleadingly.

Larry scowled and said, “His university degrees, please.”

Her eyes darted to the report and she swallowed. “A bachelor in Home Economics, sir.”

“Look here, Miss, how could a Home Economics degree result in his becoming either an Archbishop or a rocket technician?”

“I’m sorry, sir. That’s what it says.”

Larry was fuming but there was no point in taking it out on this junior employee of the Department of Records. He snapped, “Just give me his address, please.”

She said agonizingly, “Sir, it says, Lhasa, Tibet.”

A red light flicked at the side of his phone and he said to her, “I’ll call you back. I’m getting a priority call.”

He flicked her off, and flicked the incoming call in. It was LaVerne Polk. She seemed to be on the harried side, too.

“Larry,” she said, “you better get over here right away.”

“What’s up, LaVerne?”

“This Movement,” she said, “it seems to have started moving! The Boss says to get over here soonest.”

The top of his car was retracted. Larry Woolford slammed down the walk of his auto-bungalow and vaulted over the side and into the seat. He banged the start button, dropped the lift lever, depressed the thrust pedal and took off at maximum acceleration.

He took the police level for maximum speed and was in downtown Greater Washington in flat minutes.

So the Movement had started moving. That could mean almost anything. It was just enough to keep him stewing until he got to the Boss and found out what was going on.

He turned his car over to a parker and made his way to the entrance utilized by the second-grade department officials. In another year, or at most two, he told himself all over again, he’d be using that other door. He had an intuitive feeling that if he licked this current assignment it’d be the opening wedge he needed and he’d wind up in a status bracket unique for his age.

LaVerne looked up when he hurried into her anteroom. She evidently had two or three calls going on at once, taking orders from one phone, giving them in another. Something was obviously erupting. She didn’t speak to him, merely nodded her head at the inner office.

In the Boss’ office were six or eight others besides Larry’s superior. Their expressions and attitudes ran from bewilderment to shock. They weren’t the men you’d expect to have such reactions. At least not those that Larry Woolford recognized. Three of them, Ben Ruthenberg, Bill Fraina and Dave Moskowitz were F.B.I. men with whom Larry had worked on occasion. One of the others he recognized as being a supervisor with the C.I.A. Walt Foster, Larry’s rival in the Boss’ affections, was also present.

The Boss growled at him, “Where in the heavens have you been, Lawrence?”

“Following our leads on this so-called Movement, sir,” Larry told him. “What’s going on?”

Ruthenberg, the Department of Justice man, grunted sour amusement. “So-called Movement, isn’t exactly the correct phrase. It’s a Movement, all right.”

The Boss said, “Please dial Records and get your dossier, Lawrence. That’ll be the quickest way to bring you up on developments.”

Mystified, but already with a growing premonition, Larry dialed Records. Knowing his own classification code, he had no need of Information this time. He got the hundred-word brief and stared at it as it filled the screen. The only items really correct were his name and present occupation. Otherwise his education was listed as grammar school only. His military career had him ending the war as a General of the Armies, and his criminal career record included four years on Alcatraz for molesting small children.

Blankly, he faded the brief and dialed his full dossier. It failed to duplicate the brief, but that was no advantage. This time he had an M.D. degree from Johns Hopkins, but his military career listed him as a dishonorable discharge from the navy where he’d served in the steward department. His criminal record was happily nil, but his religion was listed as Holy Roller. Political affiliations had him down as a member of the Dixiecrats.

The others were looking at him, most of them blankly, although there were grins on the faces of Moskowitz and the C.I.A. man.

Moskowitz said, “With a name like mine, yet, they have me a Bishop of the Orthodox Greek Catholic Church.”

Larry said, “What’s it all about?”

Ruthenberg said unhappily, “It started early this morning. We don’t know exactly when as yet.” Which didn’t seem to answer the question.

Larry said, “I don’t get it. Obviously, the Records department is fouled up in some manner. How, and why?”

“How, we know,” the Boss rumbled disgustedly. “Why is another matter. You’ve spent more time than anyone else on this assignment, Lawrence. Perhaps you can tell us.” He grabbed up a pipe from his desk, tried to light it noisily, noticed finally that it held no tobacco and threw it to the desk again. “Evidently, a large group of these Movement individuals either already worked in Records or wriggled themselves into key positions in the technical end of the department. Now they’ve sabotaged the files.”

“We’ve caught most of them already,” one of the F.B.I. men growled, “but damn little good that does us at this point.”

The C.I.A. supervisor made a gesture indicating that he gave it all up. “Not only here but in Chicago and San Francisco as well. All at once. Evidently perfectly rehearsed. Personnel records from coast to coast are bollixed. Why?”

Larry said slowly, “I think I know that now. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have but I’ve been picking up odds and ends.”

They all looked at him.

Larry sat down and ran a hand back through his hair. “The general idea is to change the country’s reliance on social-label judgments.”

“On what,” the Boss barked.

“On one person judging another according to social-labels. Voss and the others—”

“Who did you say?” Ruthenberg snapped.

“Voss. Professor Peter Voss from the University over in Baltimore section. He’s the ring leader.”

Ruthenberg snapped to Fraina, “Get on the phone and send out a pickup order for him.”

Fraina was on his feet. “What charge, Ben?”

Ben Ruthenberg snorted. “Rape, or something. Get moving, we’ll figure out a charge later. The guy’s a fruitcake.”

Larry said wearily, “He’s evidently gone into hiding. I’ve been trying to locate him. He managed to slip me some knockout drops and got away yesterday.”

The Boss looked at him in disgust.

Ruthenberg said evenly, “We’ve had men go into hiding before. Get going, Fraina.”

Fraina left the office and the others looked back to Larry.

The Boss said, “About this social-label nonsense—”

Larry said, “They think the country is going to pot because of it. People hold high office or places of responsibility not because of superior intelligence, or even acquired skill, but because of the social-labels they’ve accumulated, and these can be based on something as flimsy—from the Movement’s viewpoint—as who your grandparents were, what school you attended, how much seniority you have on the job, what part of town you live in, or what tailor cuts your clothes.”

Their expressions ran from scowls and frowns to complete puzzlement.

Walt Foster grumbled, “What’s all this got to do with sabotaging the country’s Records tapes?”

Larry shrugged. “I don’t have the complete picture, but one thing is sure. It’s going to be harder for a while to base your opinions on a quick hundred-word brief on a man. Yesterday, an employer, considering hiring somebody, could dial the man’s dossier, check it, and form his opinions by the status labels the would-be employee could produce. Today, he’s damn well going to have to exercise his own judgment.”

LaVerne’s face lit up the screen on the Boss’ desk and she said, “Those two members of the Movement who were picked up in Alexandria are here, sir.”

“Send them in,” the Boss rumbled. He looked at Larry. “The F.B.I. managed to arrest almost everyone directly involved in the sabotage.”

The two prisoners seemed more amused than otherwise. They were young men, in their early thirties—well dressed and obviously intelligent. The Boss had them seated side by side and glared at them for a long moment before speaking. Larry and the others took chairs in various parts of the room and added their own stares to the barrage.

The Boss said, “Your situation is an unhappy one, gentlemen.”

One of the two shrugged.

The Boss said, “You can, ah, hedge your bets, by cooperating with us. It might make the difference between a year or two in prison—and life.”

One of them grinned and then yawned. “I doubt it,” he said.

The Boss tried a slightly different tack. “You have no reason to maintain a feeling of obligation to Voss and the others. You have obviously been abandoned. Had they any feeling for you there would have been more efficacious arrangements for your escape.”

The more articulate of the two shrugged again. “We were expendable,” he said. “However, it won’t be long before we’re free again.”

“You think so?” Ruthenberg grunted.

The revolutionist looked at him. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Six months from now and we’ll be heroes since by that time the Movement will have been a success.”

The Boss snorted. “Just because you deranged the Records? Why that’s but temporary.”

“Not so temporary as you think,” the technician replied. “This country has allowed itself to get deeply enmeshed in punch-card and tape records. Oh, it made sense enough. With the population we have, and the endless files that result from our ultra-complicated society, it was simply a matter finally of developing a standardized system of records for the nation as a whole. Now, for all practical purposes, all of our records these days are kept with the Department of Records, confidential as well as public records. Why should a university, for instance, keep literally tons of files, with all the expense and space and time involved, when it can merely file the same records with the governmental department and have them safe and easily available at any time? Now, the Movement has completely and irrevocably destroyed almost all files that deal with the social-labels to which we object. An excellent first step, in forcing our country back into judgment based on ability and intelligence.”

“First step!” Larry blurted.

The two prisoners looked at him. “That’s right,” the quieter of the two said. “This is just the first step.”

“Don’t kid yourselves,” Ben Ruthenberg snapped at them. “It’s also the last!”

The two members of the Movement grinned at him.

When the others had gone, the Boss looked at Larry Woolford. He said sourly, “When this department was being formed, I doubt anyone had in mind this particular type of subversion, Lawrence.”

Larry grunted. “Give me a good old-fashioned Commie, any time. Look, sir, what are the Department of Justice boys going to do with those prisoners?”

“Hold them on any of various charges. We’ve conflicted with the F.B.I. in the past on overlapping jurisdiction, but thank heavens for them now. Their manpower is needed.”

Larry leaned forward. “Sir, we ought to take all members of the Movement we’ve already arrested, feed them a dose of Scop-Serum, and pressure them to open up on the organization’s operations.”

His superior looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

Larry said urgently, “Those two we just had in here thought the whole thing was a big joke. The first step, they called it. Sir, there’s something considerably bigger than this cooking. Uncle Sam might pride himself on the personal liberties guaranteed by this country, but unless we break this organization, and do it fast, there’s going to be trouble that will make this fouling of the records look like the minor matter those two jokers seemed to think it.”

The Boss thought about that. He said slowly, “Lawrence, the Supreme Court ruled against the use of Scop-Serum. Not that it is over efficient, anyway. Largely, these so-called truth serums don’t accomplish much more than to lower resistance, slacken natural inhibitions, weaken the will.”

“Sure,” Larry said. “But give a man a good dose of Scop-Serum and he’d betray his own mother. Not because he’s helpless to tell a lie, but because under the influence of the drug he figures it just isn’t important enough to bother about. Sir, Supreme Court or not, I think those two ought to be given Scop-Serum along with all other Movement members we’ve picked up.”

The Boss was shaking his head. “Lawrence, these men are not wide-eyed radicals picked up in a street demonstration. They’re highly respected members of our society. They’re educators, scientists, engineers, technicians. Anything done to them is going to make headlines. Those that were actually involved in the sabotage will have criminal charges brought against them, but they’re going to get a considerable amount of publicity, and we’re going to be in no position to alienate any of their constitutional rights.”

Larry stood up, approached his chief’s desk and leaned over it urgently. “Sir, that’s fine, but we’ve got to move and move fast. Something’s up and we don’t even know what! Take that counterfeit money. From Susan Self’s description, there’s actually billions of dollars worth of it.”

“Oh, come now, Lawrence. The child exaggerated. Besides, that’s a problem for Steven Hackett and the Secret Service, we have enough on our hands as it is. Forget about the counterfeit, Lawrence. I think I shall put you in complete control of field work on this, to cooperate in liaison with Ben Ruthenberg and the F.B.I. So far as we’re concerned, the counterfeit angle belongs to Secret Service, we’re working on subversion, and until the Civil Liberties Union or whoever else proves otherwise, we’ll consider this Movement an organization attempting to subvert the country by illegal means.”

Larry Woolford made a hard decision quickly. He was shaking his head. “Sir, I’d rather you gave the administrative end to someone else and let me continue in the field. I’ve got some leads—I think. If I get bogged down in interdepartmental red tape, and in paperwork here at headquarters, I’ll never get to the heart of this and I’m laying bets that we either crack this within days or there are going to be some awfully big changes in this country.”

The Boss glared at him. “You mean you’re refusing this assignment, Woolford. Confound it, don’t you realize it’s a promotion?”

Larry was worriedly dogged. “Sir, I’d rather stay in the field.”

“Very well,” the other snapped disgustedly, “I hope you deliver some results, Woolford, otherwise I am afraid I won’t feel particularly happy about your somewhat cavalier rejection of this opportunity.” He flicked on the phone and snapped to LaVerne Polk, “Miss Polk, locate Walter Foster for me. He is to take over our end of this Movement matter.”

LaVerne said, “Yes, sir,” and her face was gone.

The Boss looked up, still scowling. “What are you waiting for, Woolford?”

“Yes, sir,” Larry said. It was just coming home to him now, what he’d done. There possibly went his yearned for promotion in the department. There went his chance of an upgrading in status. And Walt Foster, of all people, in his place.

At LaVerne’s desk, Larry stopped off long enough to say, “Did you ever assign that secretary to me?”

LaVerne shook her head at him. “She’s come and gone, Larry. She sat around for a couple of days, after seeing you not even once, and then I gave her another assignment.”

“Well, bring her back again, will you? I want her to do up briefs for me on all the information we accumulate on the Movement. It’ll be coming in from all sides now. From the Press, from those members we’ve arrested, from our F.B.I. pals, now that they’re interested, and so forth.”

“I’ll give you Irene Day,” LaVerne said. “Where are you off to now, Larry?”

“Probably a wild goose chase,” Larry growled. “Which reminds me. Do me a favor, LaVerne. Call Personal Service and find out where Frank Nostrand is. He’s some kind of rocket technician at Madison Air Laboratories. I’ll be in my office.”

“Frank Nostrand,” LaVerne said briskly. “Will do, Larry.”

Back in his own cubicle, Larry stood for a moment in thought. He was increasingly aware of the uncomfortable feeling that time was running out on them. That things were coming to a dangerous head.

He stared down at the dozen or more books and pamphlets that his never seen secretary had heaped up for him. Well, he certainly didn’t have time for them now.

He sat down at the desk and dialed an inter-office number.

The harassed looking face of Walter Foster faded in. On seeing Larry Woolford he growled accusingly, “My pal. You’ve let them dump this whole thing into my lap.”

Larry grinned at him. “Better you than me, old buddy. Besides, it’s a promotion. Pull this off and you’ll be the Boss’ right-hand man.”

“That’s a laugh,” Foster said. “It’s a madhouse. This Movement gang is as weird as they come.”

“I bleed for you,” Larry said. “However, here’s a tip. Frol Eivazov, of the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya is somewhere in the country.”

“Frol Eivazov!” Foster blurted. “What’ve the Commies got to do with this? Is this something the Boss knows about?”

“Haven’t had time to go into it with him,” Larry said. “However, it seems that friend Frol is here to find out what the Movement is all about. Evidently the big boys in Peking and Moscow are nervous about any changes that might take place over here. I suggest you have him picked up, Walt.”

Walt Foster said, “OK I’ll put some people on it. Maybe the F.B.I. can help.”

Larry flicked off as he saw the red priority light on his phone shining. He pushed it and LaVerne’s face faded in.

She said, “This Franklin Nostrand you wanted to know about. He’s evidently working at the laboratories over in Newport News, Larry. He’ll be on the job until five this afternoon.”

“Fine,” he said. Larry grinned at her. “When are we going to have that date, LaVerne?”

She made a face. “Some day when the program involves having fun instead of parading around in the right places, driving the right model car, dressed in exactly the right clothes, and above all associating with the right people.”

It was his turn to grimace. “I’m beginning to think you ought to sign up with Voss and this Movement of his. You’d be right at home with his weirds.”

She stuck out her tongue at him, and flicked off.

He looked at the empty screen and chuckled. He had half a mind to get a record of their conversation, strip out just the section where she’d stuck out her tongue, and then play it back to her. She’d be taken aback by being confronted by her own image making faces at her.

As he made his way to the parking lot for his car, something in their conversation nagged at him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He considered the girl, all over again. She had almost all the qualities he looked for. She was attractive, without being overly so. He disliked women out of the ordinarily beautiful, it became too much to live up to. She was sharp, but not objectionably so. Not to the point of giving you an inferiority complex.

But, Holy Smokes, she’d never do as a career man’s wife. He could just see the Boss’ ultraconservative better half inviting them to dinner. It would happen exactly once, never again.

He obtained his car, lifted it to one of the higher levels and headed for Newport News. It was a half-hour trip and he wasn’t particularly expectant of results. The tip Sam Sokolski had given him, wasn’t much to go by. Evidently, Frank Nostrand was a friend of the Professor’s but that didn’t necessarily mean he was connected with the movement, or that he knew Voss’ whereabouts.

He might have saved himself the trip.

The bird had flown again. Not only was Frank Nostrand not at the Madison Air Laboratories, but he wasn’t at home either. Larry Woolford, mindful of his departmental chief’s words on the prestige these people carried, took a full hour in acquiring a search warrant before breaking into the Nostrand home.

Nostrand was supposedly a bachelor, but the auto-bungalow, similar to Larry Woolford’s own, showed signs of double occupancy, and there was little indication that the guest had been a woman.

Disgruntled, Larry Woolford dialed the offices, asked for Walt Foster. It took nearly ten minutes before his colleague faded in.

“I’m up to my eyebrows, Larry. What’d you want?”

Larry gave him Frank Nostrand’s address. “This guy’s disappeared, Walt.”

“So?”

“He was a close friend of Professor Voss. I got a warrant to search his house. It shows signs that he had a guest. Possibly it was the Professor. Do you want to get some of the boys down here to go through the place? Possibly there’s some clue to where they took off for. The Professor’s on the run and he’s no professional at this. If we can pick him up, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion we’ll have the so-called Movement licked.”

Walt Foster slapped a hand to his face in anguish. “You knew where the Professor was hiding, and you tried to pick him up on your own and let him get away. Why didn’t you discuss this with either the Boss or me? I’m in charge of this operation! I would have had a dozen men down there. You’ve fouled this up!”

Larry stared at him. Already Walt Foster was making sounds like an enraged superior.

He said mildly, “Sorry, Walt. I came down here on a very meager tip. I didn’t really expect it to pan out.”

“Well, in the future, clear with either me or the Boss before running off half cocked into something, Woolford. Yesterday, you had this whole assignment on your own. Today, it’s no longer a minor matter. Our department has fifty people on it. The F.B.I. must have five times as many and that’s not even counting the Secret Service’s interest. It’s no longer your individual baby.”

“Sorry,” Larry repeated mildly. Then, “I don’t imagine you’ve got hold of Frol Eivazov yet?”

The other was disgusted. “You think we’re magicians? We just put out the call for him a few hours ago. He’s no amateur. If he doesn’t want to be picked up, he’ll go to ground and we’ll have our work cut out for us finding him. I can’t see that it’s particularly important anyway.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Larry said. “But you never know. He might know things we don’t. See you later.”

Walt Foster stared at him for a moment as though about to say something, but then tightened his lips and faded off.

Larry looked at the phone screen for a moment. “Did that phony expect me to call him sir,” he muttered.

The next two days dissolved into routine.

Frustrated, Larry Woolford spent most of his time in his office digesting developments, trying to find a new line of attack.

For want of something else, he put his new secretary, a brightly efficient girl, as style and status conscious as LaVerne Polk wasn’t, to work typing up the tapes he’d had cut on Susan Self and the various phone calls he’d had with Hans Distelmayer and Sam Sokolski. From memory, he dictated to her his conversation with Professor Peter Voss.

He carefully read the typed sheets over and over again. He continually had the feeling in this case that there were loose ends dangling around. Several important points he should be able to put his finger upon.

On the morning of the third day he dialed Steve Hackett and on seeing the other’s worried, pug-ugly face fade in on the phone, decided that if nothing else the Movement was undermining the United States government by dispensing ulcers to its employees.

Steve growled, “What is it Woolford? I’m as busy as a whirling dervish in a revolving door.”

“This is just the glimmer of an idea, Steve. Look, remember that conversation with Susan, when she described her father taking her to headquarters?”

“So?” Steve said impatiently.

“Remember her description of headquarters?”

“Go on,” Steve rapped.

“What did it remind you of?”

“What are you leading to?”

“This is just a hunch,” Larry persisted, “but the way she described the manner in which her father took her to headquarters suggests they’re in the Greater Washington area.”

Steve was staring at him disgustedly. How obvious could you get?

Larry hurried on. “What’s the biggest business in this area, Steve?”

“Government.”

“Right. And the way she described headquarters of the Movement, was rooms, after rooms, after rooms into which they’d stored the money.”

“And?”

Larry said urgently, “Steve, I think in some way the Movement has taken over some governmental buildings, or storage warehouse. Possibly some older buildings no longer in use. It would be a perfect hideout. Who would expect a subversive organization to be in governmental buildings? All they’d need would be a few officials here and there who were on their side and—”

Steve said wearily, “You couldn’t have thought of this two days ago.”

Larry cut himself off sharply, “Eh?”

Steve said, “We found their headquarters. One of their members cracked. Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. found he had a morals rap against him some years ago and scared him into talking by threats of exposure. At any rate, you’re right. They had established themselves in some government buildings going back to Spanish-American War days. We’ve arrested eight or ten officials that were involved.”

“But the money?”

“The money was gone,” Steve said bitterly. “But Susan was right. There had evidently been room after room of it, stacked to the ceiling. Literally billions of dollars. They’d moved out hurriedly, but they left kicking around enough loose hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens and fives to give us an idea. Look, Woolford, I thought you’d been pulled off this case and that Walt Foster was handling it.”

Larry said sourly, “I’m beginning to think so, too. They’re evidently not even bothering to let me know about developments like this. See you later, Steve.”

The other’s face faded off.

Larry Woolford looked across the double desk at Irene Day. “Look,” he said, “when you’re offered a promotion, take it. If you don’t, someone else will and you’ll be out in the cold.”

Irene Day said brightly, “I’ve always know that, sir.”

He looked at her. The typical eager beaver. Sharp as a whip. Bright as a button. “I’ll bet you have,” he muttered.

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Woolford?”

The phone lit as LaVerne said, “The Boss wants to talk to you, Larry.” Her face faded and Larry’s superior was scowling at him.

He snapped, “Did you get anything on this medical records thing, Woolford?”

“Medical records?” Larry said blankly.

The Boss grunted in deprecation. “No, I suppose you haven’t. I wish you would snap into it, Woolford. I don’t know what has happened to you of late. I used to think that you were a good field man.” He flicked off abruptly.

Larry dialed LaVerne Polk. “What in the world was the Boss just talking about, LaVerne? About medical records?”

LaVerne said, frowning, “Didn’t you know? The Movement’s been at it again. They’ve fouled up the records of the State Medical Licensing bureaus, at the same time sabotaging the remaining records of most, if not all, of the country’s medical schools. They struck simultaneously, throughout the country.”

He looked at her, expressionlessly.

LaVerne said, “We’ve caught several hundred of those responsible. It’s the same thing. Attack of the social-label. From now on, if a man tells you he’s an Ear, Eye and Throat specialist, you’d better do some investigation before letting him amputate your tongue. You’d better use your judgment before letting any doctor you don’t really know about, work on you. It’s a madhouse, Larry.”

Larry Woolford, for long moments after LaVerne had broken the connection, stared unseeingly at his secretary across from him until she stirred.

He brought his eyes back to the present. “Another preliminary move, not the important thing, yet. Not the big explosion they’re figuring on. Where have they taken that money, and why?”

Irene Day blinked at him. “I don’t know, I’m sure, sir.”

Larry said, “Get me Mr. Foster on the phone, Irene.”

When Walt Foster’s unhappy face faded in, Larry said, “Walt did you get Frol Eivazov?”

“Eivazov?” the other said impatiently. “No. We haven’t spent much effort on it. I think this hunch of yours is like the other ones you’ve been having lately, Woolford. Frol Eivazov was last reported by our operatives as being in North Korea.”

“It wasn’t a hunch,” Larry said tightly. “He’s in this country on an assignment dealing with the Movement.”

“Well, that’s your opinion,” Foster said snappishly. “I’m busy, Woolford. See here, at present you’re under my orders on this job. In the way of something to do, instead of sitting around in that office, why don’t you follow up this Eivazov thing yourself?” He considered it a moment. “That’s an order, Woolford. Even if you don’t locate him, it’ll keep you out of our hair.”

After the other was gone, Larry Woolford leaned back in his chair, his face flushed as though the other had slapped it. In a way, he had.

Larry said slowly, “Miss Day, dial me Hans Distelmayer. His offices are over in the Belmont Building.”

As always, the screen remained blank as the German spy master spoke.

Larry said, “Hans, I want to talk to Frol Eivazov.”

“Ah?”

“I want to know where I can find him.”

The German’s voice was humorously gruff. “My friend, my friend.”

Larry said impatiently, “I’m not interested in arresting him at this time. I want to talk to him.”

The other said heavily. “This goes beyond favors, my friend. On the face of it, I am not in business for my health. And what you ask is dangerous from my viewpoint. You realize that upon occasion my organization does small tasks for the Soviets. …”

“Ha!” Larry said bitterly.

“… And,” the German continued, unruffled, “it is hardly to my interest to gain the reputation of betraying my sometimes employers. Were you on an assignment in, say, Bulgaria or Hungary, would you expect me to betray you to the Chrezvychainaya Komissiya?”

“Not unless somebody paid you enough to make it worth while,” Larry said dryly.

“Exactly,” the espionage chief said.

“Look,” Larry said. “Send your bill to this department, Hans. I’ve been given carte blanche on this matter and I want to talk to Frol. Now, where is he?”

The German chuckled heavily. “At the Soviet Embassy.”

“What! You mean they’ve got the gall to house their top spy right in—”

Distelmayer interrupted him. “Friend Eivazov is currently accredited as a military attaché and quite correctly. He holds the rank of colonel, you know. He entered this country quite legally, the only precaution taken was to use his second name, Kliment, instead of Frol, on his papers. Evidently, your people passed him by without a second look. Ah, I understand he went to the trouble of making some minor changes in his facial appearance.”

“We’ll expect your bill, Distelmayer,” Larry said. “Goodbye.”

He got up and reached for his hat, saying to Irene Day, “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.” He added, wryly, “If either Foster or the Boss try to get in touch with me, tell them I’m carrying out orders.”

He drove over to the Soviet Embassy, parked his car directly before the building.

The American plainclothesmen stationed near the entrance, gave him only a quick onceover as he passed. Inside the gates, the impassive Russian guards didn’t bother to flicker an eyelid.

At the reception desk in the immense entrada, he identified himself. “I’d like to see Colonel Frol Eivazov.”

“I am afraid—” the clerk began stiffly.

“I suppose you have him on the records as Kliment Eivazov.”

The clerk had evidently touched a concealed button. A door opened and a junior embassy official approached them.

Larry restated his desire. The other began to open his mouth in denial, then shrugged. “Just a moment,” he said.

He was gone a full twenty minutes. When he returned, he said briefly, “This way, please.”

Frol Eivazov was in an inner office, in full uniform. He came to his feet when Larry Woolford entered and said to the clerk, “That will be all, Vova.” He was a tall man, as Slavs go, but heavy of build and heavy of face.

He shook hands with Larry. “It’s been a long time,” he said in perfect English. “That conference in Warsaw, wasn’t it? Have a chair, Mr. Woolford.”

Larry took the offered chair and said, “How in the world did you expect to get by with this nonsense? We’ll have you declared persona non grata in a matter of hours.”

“It’s not important,” Eivazov shrugged. “I have found what I came to find. I was about to return to report nyway.”

“We won’t do anything to hinder you, colonel,” Larry said dryly.

Eivazov snapped his fingers. “It’s all amusing,” he said. “In our country we would quickly deal with this Movement nonsense. You Americans with your pseudo-democracy, your labels without reality, your—”

Larry said wearily, “Please, Frol, I promise not to convert you if you promise not to convert me. Needless to say, my department isn’t happy about your presence in this country. You’ll be watched from now on. We’ve been busy with other matters …”

Here the Russian laughed.

“… Or we’d already have flushed you.” He allowed his voice to go curious. “We’ve wondered about your interest in this phase of our internal affairs.”

The Russian agent let his façade slip over farther, his heavy lips sneering. “We are interested in all phases of your antiquated socioeconomic system, Mr. Woolford. In the present peaceful economic competition between East and West, we would simply loathe to see anything happen to your present culture.” He hesitated deliberately. “If you can call it a culture.”

Larry said, unprovoked, “If I understand you correctly, you are not in favor of the changes the Movement advocates.”

The Russian shrugged hugely. “I doubt if they are possible of achievement. The organization is a sloppy one. Revolutionary? Nonsense,” he scoffed. “They have no plans to change the government. No plans for overthrowing the regime. Ultimately, what this country needs is true Communism. This so-called Movement doesn’t have that as its eventual goal. It is laughable.”

Larry said, interestedly, “Then perhaps you’ll tell me what little you’ve found out about the group.”

“Why not?” The Russian pursed his lips. “They are composed of impractical idealists. Scientists, intellectuals, a few admitted scholars and even a few potential leaders. Their sabotage of your Department of Records was an amusing farce, but, frankly, I have been unable to discover the purpose of their interest in rockets. For a time I contemplated the possibility that they had a scheme to develop a nuclear bomb, and to explode it over Greater Washington in the belief that in the resulting confusion they might seize power. But, on the face of it their membership is incapable of such an effort.”

“Their interest in rockets?” Larry said softly.

“Yes, as you’ve undoubtedly discovered, half the rocket technicians of your country seem to have joined with them. We got the tip through”—the Russian cleared his throat—“several of our converts who happen to be connected with your space efforts groups.”

“Is that so?” Larry said. “I wondered what you thought about their interest in money.”

It was the other’s turn to look blank. “Money?” he said.

“That’s right. Large quantities of money.”

The Russian said, frowning, “I suppose most citizens in your capitalist countries are interested largely in money. One of your basic failings.”

Driving back to the office, Larry Woolford let it pile up on him.

Ernest Self had been a specialist in solid fuel for rockets. When Larry had questioned Professor Voss that worthy had particularly stressed his indignation at how Professor Goddard, the rocket pioneer, had been treated by his contemporaries. Franklin Nostrand had been employed as a technician on rocket research at Madison Air Laboratories. It was too darn much for coincidence.

And now something else that had been nagging away at the back of his mind suddenly came clear.

Susan Self had said that she and her father had seen the precision dancers at the New Roxy Theater in New York and later the Professor had said they were going to spend the money on chorus girls. Susan had got it wrong. The Rockettes—the precision chorus girls. The Professor had said they were going to spend the money on rockets, and Susan had misunderstood.

But billions of dollars expended on rockets? How? But, above all, to what end?

If he’d only been able to hold onto Susan, or her father; or to Voss or Nostrand, for that matter. Someone to work on. But each had slipped through his fingers.

Which brought something else up from his subconscious. Something which had been tugging at him.

At the office, Irene Day was packing her things as he entered. Packing as though she was leaving for good.

“What goes on?” Larry growled. “I’m going to be needing you. Things are coming to a head.”

She said, a bit snippishly, Larry thought, “Miss Polk, in the Boss’ office, said for you to see her as soon as you came in, Mr. Woolford.”

“Oh?”

He made his way to LaVerne’s office, his attention actually on the ideas churning in his mind.

She looked up when he entered.

Larry said, “The Boss wanted to see me?”

LaVerne ducked her head, as though embarrassed. “Not exactly, Larry.”

He gestured with his thumb in the direction of his own cubicle office. “Irene just said you wanted me.”

LaVerne looked up into his face. “The Boss and Mr. Foster, too, are boiling about your authorizing that Distelmayer man to bill this department for information he gave you. The Boss hit the roof. Something about the Senate Appropriations Committee getting down on him if it came out that we bought information from professional espionage agents.”

Larry said, “It was information we needed, and Foster gave me the go ahead on locating Frol Eivazov. Maybe I’d better see the Boss.”

LaVerne said, “I don’t think he wants to see you, Larry. They’re up to their ears in this Movement thing. It’s in the papers now and nobody knows what to do next. The President is going to make a speech on Tri-D, and the Boss has to supply the information. His orders are for you to resume your vacation. To take a month off and then see him when you get back.”

Larry sank down into a chair. “I see,” he said, “And at that time he’ll probably transfer me to janitor service.”

“Larry,” LaVerne said, almost impatiently, “why in the world didn’t you take that job Walt Foster has now when the Boss offered it to you?”

“Because I’m stupid, I suppose,” Larry said bitterly. “I thought I could do more working alone than at an administrative post tangled in red tape and bureaucratic routine.”

She said, “Sorry, Larry.” She sounded as though she meant it.

Larry stood up. “Well, tonight I’m going to hang one on, and tomorrow it’s back to Florida.” He said in a rush, “Look LaVerne, how about that date we’ve been talking about for six months or more?”

She looked up at him. “I can’t stand vodka martinis.”

“Neither can I,” he said glumly.

“And I don’t get a kick out of prancing around, a stuffed shirt among fellow stuffed shirts, at some goings-on that supposedly improves my culture status.”

Larry said “At the house I have every known brand of drinkable, and a stack of … what did you call it? … corny music. We can mix our own drinks and dance all by ourselves.”

She tucked her head to one side and looked at him suspiciously. “Are your intentions honorable?”

“We can even discuss that later,” he said sourly.

She laughed. “It’s a date, Larry.”

He picked her up after work, and they drove to his Brandywine auto-bungalow, largely quiet the whole way.

At one point she touched his hand with hers and said, “It’ll work out, Larry.”

“Yeah,” he said sourly. “I’ve put ten years into ingratiating myself with the Boss. Now, overnight, he’s got a new boy. I suppose there’s some moral involved.”

When they pulled up before his auto-bungalow, LaVerne whistled appreciatively. “Quite a neighborhood you’re in.”

He grunted. “A good address. What our friend Professor Voss would call one more status symbol, one more social-label. For it I pay about fifty percent more rent than my budget can afford.”

He ushered her inside and took her jacket. “Look,” he said, indicating his living room with a sweep of hand. “See that volume of Klee reproductions there next to my reading chair? That proves I’m not a weird. Indicates my culture status. Actually, my appreciation of modern art doesn’t go any further than the Impressionists. But don’t tell anybody. See those books up on my shelves. Same thing. You’ll find everything there that ought to be on the shelves of any ambitious young career man.”

She looked at him from the side of her eyes. “You’re really soured, Larry.”

“Come along,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He took her down the tiny elevator to his den.

“How hypocritical can you get?” he asked her. “This is where I really live. But I seldom bring anyone here. Wouldn’t want to get a reputation as a weird. Sit down, LaVerne, I’ll make a drink. How about a Sidecar?”

She sank onto the couch, kicked her shoes off and slipped her feet under her. “I’d love one,” she said.

His back to her, he brought brandy and cointreau from his liquor cabinet, lemon and ice from the tiny refrigerator.

“What?” LaVerne said mockingly. “No auto-bar?”

“Upstairs with the rest of the status symbols,” Larry grunted.

He put her drink before her and turned and went to the record player.

“In the way of corny music, how do you like that old-timer, Nat Cole?”

“King Cole? Love him,” LaVerne said.

The strains of “For All We Know” penetrated the room.

Larry sat down across from her, finished half his drink in one swallow.

“I’m beginning to wonder whether or not this Movement doesn’t have something,” he said.

She didn’t answer that. They sat in silence for a while, appreciating the drink. Nat Cole was singing “The Very Thought of You” now. Larry got up and made two more cocktails. This time he sat next to her. He leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes.

Finally he said softly, “When Steve Hackett and I were questioning Susan, there was only one other person who knew that we’d picked her up. There was only one person other than Steve and me who could have warned Ernest Self to make a getaway. Later on, there was only one person who could have warned Frank Nostrand so that he and the Professor could find a new hideout.”

She said sleepily, “How long have you known about that, darling?”

“A while,” Larry said, his own voice quiet. “I figured it out when I also decided how Susan Self was spirited out of the Greater Washington Hilton, before we had the time to question her further. Somebody who had access to tapes made of me while I was making phone calls cut out a section and dubbed in a voice so that Betsy Hughes, the Secret Service matron who was watching Susan, was fooled into believing it was I ordering the girl to be turned over to the two Movement members who came to get her.”

LaVerne stirred comfortably and let her head sink onto his shoulder. “You’re so warm and … comfortable,” she said.

Larry said softly, “What does the Movement expect to do with all that counterfeit money, LaVerne?”

She stirred against his shoulder, as though bothered by the need to talk. “Give it all away,” she said. “Distribute it all over the country and destroy the nation’s social currency.”

It took him a long moment to assimilate that.

“What have the rockets to do with it?”

She stirred once again, as though wishing he’d be silent. “That’s how it will be distributed. About twenty rockets, strategically placed, each with a warhead of a couple of tons of money. Fired to an altitude of a couple of hundred miles and then the money is spewed out. In falling, it will be distributed over cities and countryside, everywhere. Billions upon billions of dollars worth.”

Larry said, so softly as hardly to be heard, “What will that accomplish?”

“Money is the greatest social-label of them all. The Professor believes that through this step the Movement will have accomplished its purpose. That people will be forced to utilize their judgment, rather than depend upon social-labels.”

Larry didn’t follow that, but he had no time to go further now. He said, still evenly soft, “And when is the Movement going to do this?”

La Verne moved comfortably. “The trucks go out to distribute the money tonight. The rockets are waiting. The firing will take place in a few days.”

“And where is the Professor now?”

“Where the money and the trucks are hidden, darling. What difference does it make?” LaVerne said sleepily.

“And where is that?”

“At the Greater Washington Trucking Corporation. It’s owned by one of the Movement’s members.”

He said. “There’s a password. What is it?”

“Judgment.”

Larry Woolford bounced to his feet. He looked down at her, then over at the phone. In three quick steps he was over to it. He grasped its wires and yanked them from the wall, silencing it. He slipped into the tiny elevator, locking the door to the den behind him.

As the door slid closed, her voice wailed, still sleepily husky, “Larry, darling, where are you—”

He ran down the walk of the house, vaulted into the car and snapped on its key. He slammed down the lift lever, kicked the thrust pedal and was thrown back against the seat by the acceleration.

Even while he was climbing, he flicked on the radiophone, called Personal Service for the location of the Greater Washington Trucking Corporation.

Fifteen minutes later, he parked a block away from his destination, noting with satisfaction that it was still an hour or more to go until dark. His intuition, working doubletime now, told him that they’d probably wait until nightfall to start their money-laden trucks to rolling.

He hesitated momentarily before turning on the phone and dialing the Boss’ home address.

When the other’s face faded in, it failed to display pleasure when the caller’s identity was established. His superior growled, “Confound it, Woolford, you know my privacy is to be respected. This phone is to be used only in extreme emergency.”

“Yes, sir,” Larry said briskly. “It’s the Movement—”

The other’s face darkened still further. “You’re not on that assignment any longer, Woolford. Walter Foster has taken over and I’m sympathetic to his complaints that you’ve proven more a hindrance than anything else.”

Larry ignored his words, “Sir, I’ve tracked them down. Professor Voss is at the Greater Washington Trucking Corporation garages here in the Alexandria section of town. Any moment now, they’re going to start distribution of all that counterfeit money on some scatterbrain plan to disrupt the country’s exchange system.”

Suddenly alert, the department chief snapped, “Where are you, Woolford?”

“Outside the garages, sir. But I’m going in now.”

“You stay where you are,” the other snapped. “I’ll have every department man and every Secret Service man in town over there within twenty minutes. You hang on. Those people are lunatics, and probably desperate.”

Inwardly, Larry Woolford grinned. He wasn’t going to lose this opportunity to finish up the job with him on top. He said flatly, “Sir, we can’t chance it. They might escape. I’m going in!” He flicked off the set, dialed again and raised Sam Sokolski.

“Sam,” he said, his voice clipped. “I’ve cornered the Movement’s leader and am going in for the finish. Maybe some of you journalist boys better get on over here.” He gave the other the address and flicked off before there were any questions.

From the dash compartment he brought a heavy automatic, and checked the clip. He put it in his hip pocket and left the car and walked toward the garages. Time was running out now.

He strode into the only open door, without shift of pace. Two men were posted nearby, neither of them truckmen by appearance. They looked at him in surprise.

Larry clipped out, “The password is Judgment. I’ve got to see Professor Voss immediately.”

One of them frowned questioningly, but the other was taken up with the urgency in Woolford’s voice. He nodded with his head. “He’s over there in the office.”

Now ignoring them completely, Larry strode past the long rows of sealed delivery vans toward the office.

He pushed the door open, entered and closed it behind him.

Professor Peter Voss was seated at a paper-littered desk. There was a cot with an army blanket in a corner of the room, some soiled clothing and two or three dirty dishes on a tray. The room was being lived in, obviously.

At the agent’s entry, the little man looked up and blinked in distress through his heavy lenses.

Larry snapped, “You’re under arrest, Voss.”

The professor was obviously dismayed, but he said in as vigorous a voice as he could muster, “Nonsense! On what charge?”

“Counterfeiting, among many. Your whole scheme has fallen apart, Voss. You and your Movement, so-called, are finished.”

The professor’s eyes darted, left, right. To Larry Woolford’s surprise, the Movement’s leader was alone in here. Undoubtedly, he was awaiting others, drivers of the trucks, technicians involved in the rockets, other subordinates. But right now he was alone.

If Woolford correctly diagnosed the situation, Voss was playing for time, waiting for the others. Good enough, so was Larry Woolford. Had the Professor only known it, a shout would have brought at least two followers and the government agent would have had his work cut out for him.

Woodford played along. “Just what is this fantastic scheme of yours for raining down money over half the country, Voss? The very insanity of it proves your whole outfit is composed of a bunch of nonconformist weirds.”

The Professor was indignant—and stalling for time. He said, “Nonconformists is correct! He who conforms in an incompetent society is an incompetent himself.”

Larry stood, his legs apart and hands on hips. He shook his head in simulated pity at the angry little man. “What’s all this about raining money down over the country?”

“Don’t you see?” the other said. “The perfect method for disrupting our present system of social-labels. With billions of dollars, perfect counterfeit, strewing the streets, the fields, the trees, available for anyone to pick up, all social currency becomes worthless. Utterly unusable. And it’s no use to attempt to print more with another design, because we can duplicate it as well. Our experts are the world’s best, we’re not a group of sulking criminals but capable, trained, dedicated men.

“Very well! We will have made it absolutely impossible to have any form of mass-produced social currency.”

Larry stared at him. “It would completely foul the whole business system! You’d have chaos!”

“At first. Private individuals, once the value of money was seen to be zero, would have lost the amount of cash they had on hand. But banks and such institutions would lose little. They have accurate records that show the actual values they held at the time our money rains down.”

Larry was bewildered. “But what are you getting at? What do you expect to accomplish?”

The Professor, on his favorite subject, said triumphantly, “The only form of currency that can be used under these conditions is the personal check. It’s not mass produced, and mass-production can’t duplicate it. It’s immune to the attack. Business has to go on, or people will starve—so personal checks will have to replace paper money. Credit cards and traveler’s checks won’t do—we can counterfeit them, too, and will, if necessary. Realize of course that hard money will still be valid, but it can’t be utilized practically for any but small transactions. Try taking enough silver dollars to buy a refrigerator down to the store with you.”

“But what’s the purpose?” Larry demanded, flabbergasted.

“Isn’t it obvious? Our whole Movement is devoted to the destruction of social-label judgments. It’s all very well to say: You should not judge your fellow men but when it comes to accepting another man’s personal check, friend, you damn well have to! The bum check artist might have a field day to begin with—but only to begin with.”

Larry shook his head in exasperation. “You people are a bunch of anarchists,” he accused.

“No,” the Professor denied. “Absolutely not. We are the antithesis of the anarchist. The anarchist says, ‘No man is capable of judging another.’ We say, ‘Each man must judge his fellow, must demand proper evaluation of him.’ To judge a man by his clothes, the amount of money he owns, the car he drives, the neighborhood in which he lives, or the society he keeps, is out of the question in a vital culture.”

Larry said sourly, “Well, whether or not you’re right, Voss, you’ve lost. This place is surrounded. My men will be breaking in shortly.”

Voss laughed at him. “Nonsense. All you’ve done is prevent us from accomplishing this portion of our program. What will you do after my arrest? You’ll bring me to trial. Do you remember the Scopes’ Monkey Trial back in the 1920s which became a world appreciated farce and made Tennessee a laughingstock? Well, just wait until you get me into court backed by my organization’s resources. We’ll bring home to every thinking person, not only in this country, but in the world, the fantastic qualities of our existing culture. Why, Mr.-Secret-Agent-of-Anti-Subversive-Activity you aren’t doing me an injury by giving me the opportunity to have my day in court. You’re doing me a favor. Newspapers, radios, Tri-D will give me the chance to expound my program in the home of every thinking person in the world.”

There was a fiery dedication in the little man’s eyes. “This will be my victory, not my defeat!”

There were sounds now, coming from the other rooms—the garages. Some shouts and scuffling. Faintly, Larry Woolford could hear Steve Hackett’s voice.

He was staring at the Professor, his eyes narrower.

The Professor was on his feet. He said in defiant triumph, “You think that you’ll win prestige and honor as a result of tracking the Movement down, don’t you, Mr. Woolford? Well, let me tell you, you won’t! In six months from now, Mr. Woolford, you’ll be a laughingstock.”

That did it.

Larry said, “You’re under arrest. Turn around with your back to me.”

The Professor snorted his contempt, turned his back and held up his hands, obviously expecting to be searched.

In a fluid motion, Larry Woolford drew his gun and fired twice. The other with no more than a grunt of surprise and pain, stumbled forward to his knees and then to the floor, his arms and legs akimbo.

The door broke open and Steve Hackett, gun in hand, burst in.

“Woolford!” he barked. “What’s up?”

Larry indicated the body on the floor. “There you are, Steve,” he said. “The head of the counterfeit ring. He was trying to escape. I had to shoot him.”

Behind Steve Hackett crowded Ben Ruthenberg of the F.B.I. and behind him half a dozen others of various departments.

The Boss came pushing his way through.

He glared down at the Professor’s body, then up at Larry Woolford.

“Good work, Lawrence,” he said. “How did you bring it off?”

Larry replaced the gun in his holster and shrugged modestly. “The Polk girl gave me the final tip-off, sir. I gave her some Scop-Serum in a drink and she talked. Evidently, she was a member of the Movement.”

The Boss was nodding wisely. “I’ve had my eye on her, Lawrence. An obvious weird. But we will have to suppress that Scop-Serum angle.” He slapped his favorite field man on the arm jovially. “Well, boy, this means promotion, of course.”

Larry grinned. “Thanks, sir. All in a day’s work. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble with the remnants of this Movement thing. The pitch is to treat them as counterfeiters, not subversives. Try them for that. Their silly explanations of what they were going to do with the money will never be taken seriously.” He looked down at the small corpse. “Particularly now that their kingpin is gone.”

A new wave of agents, F.B.I. men and prisoners washed into the room and Steve Hackett and Larry were for a moment pushed back into a corner by themselves.

Steve looked at him strangely and said, “There’s one thing I’d like to know: Did you really have to shoot him, Woolford?”

Larry brushed it off. “What’s the difference? He was as weird as they come, wasn’t he?”

Mercenary

I

Joseph Mauser spotted the recruiting lineup from two or three blocks down the street, shortly after driving into Kingston. The local offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, undoubtedly. Baron Haer would be doing his recruiting for the fracas with Continental Hovercraft there if for no other reason than to save on rents. The Baron was watching pennies on this one and that was bad.

In fact, it was so bad that even as Joe Mauser let his sports hover-car sink to a parking level and vaulted over its side he was still questioning his decision to sign up with the Vacuum Tube outfit rather than with their opponents. Joe was an old pro and old pros do not get to be old pros in the Category Military without developing an instinct to stay away from losing sides.

Fine enough for Low-Lowers and Mid-Lowers to sign up with this outfit, as opposed to that, motivated by no other reasoning than the snappiness of the uniform and the stock shares offered, but an old pro considered carefully such matters as budget. Baron Haer was watching every expense, was, it was rumored, figuring on commanding himself and calling upon relatives and friends for his staff. Continental Hovercraft, on the other hand, was heavy with variable capital and was in a position to hire Stonewall Cogswell himself for their tactician.

However, the die was cast. You didn’t run up a caste level, not to speak of two at once, by playing it careful. Joe had planned this out; for once, old pro or not, he was taking risks.

Recruiting lineups were not for such as he. Not for many a year, many a fracas. He strode rapidly along this one, heading for the offices ahead, noting only in passing the quality of the men who were taking service with Vacuum Tube Transport. These were the soldiers he’d be commanding in the immediate future and the prospects looked grim. There were few veterans among them. Their stance, their demeanor, their … well, you could tell a veteran even though he be Rank Private. You could tell a veteran of even one fracas. It showed.

He knew the situation. The word had gone out. Baron Malcolm Haer was due for a defeat. You weren’t going to pick up any lush bonuses signing up with him, and you definitely weren’t going to jump a caste. In short, no matter what Haer’s past record, choose what was going to be the winning side—Continental Hovercraft. Continental Hovercraft and old Stonewall Cogswell who had lost so few fracases that many a Telly buff couldn’t remember a single one.

Individuals among these men showed promise, Joe Mauser estimated even as he walked, but promise means little if you don’t live long enough to cash in on it.

Take that small man up ahead. He’d obviously got himself into a hassle maintaining his place in line against two or three heftier would-be soldiers. The little fellow wasn’t backing down a step in spite of the attempts of the other Lowers to usurp his place. Joe Mauser liked to see such spirit. You could use it when you were in the dill.

As he drew abreast of the altercation, he snapped from the side of his mouth, “Easy, lads. You’ll get all the scrapping you want with Hovercraft. Wait until then.”

He’d expected his tone of authority to be enough, even though he was in mufti. He wasn’t particularly interested in the situation, beyond giving the little man a hand. A veteran would have recognized him as an old-timer and probable officer, and heeded, automatically.

These evidently weren’t veterans.

“Says who?” one of the Lowers growled back at him. “You one of Baron Haer’s kids, or something?”

Joe Mauser came to a halt and faced the other. He was irritated, largely with himself. He didn’t want to be bothered. Nevertheless, there was no alternative now.

The line of men, all Lowers so far as Joe could see, had fallen silent in an expectant hush. They were bored with their long wait. Now something would break the monotony.

By tomorrow, Joe Mauser would be in command of some of these men. In as little as a week he would go into a full-fledged fracas with them. He couldn’t afford to lose face. Not even at this point when all, including himself, were still civilian garbed. When matters pickled, in a fracas, you wanted men with complete confidence in you.

The man who had grumbled the surly response was a near physical twin of Joe Mauser which put him in his early thirties, gave him five foot eleven of altitude and about one hundred and eighty pounds. His clothes casted him Low-Lower—nothing to lose. As with many who have nothing to lose, he was willing to risk all for principle. His face now registered that ideal. Joe Mauser had no authority over him, nor his friends.

Joe’s eyes flicked to the other two who had been pestering the little fellow. They weren’t quite so aggressive and as yet had come to no conclusion about their stand. Probably the three had been unacquainted before their bullying alliance to deprive the smaller man of his place. However, a moment of hesitation and Joe would have a trio on his hands.

He went through no further verbal preliminaries. Joe Mauser stepped closer. His right hand lanced forward, not doubled in a fist but fingers close together and pointed, spear-like. He sank it into the other’s abdomen, immediately below the rib cage—the solar plexus.

He had misestimated the other two. Even as his opponent crumpled, they were upon him, coming in from each side. And at least one of them, he could see now, had been in hand-to-hand combat before. In short, another pro, like Joe himself.

He took one blow, rolling with it, and his feet automatically went into the shuffle of the trained fighter. He retreated slightly to erect defenses, plan attack. They pressed him strongly, sensing victory in his retreat.

The one mattered little to him. Joe Mauser could have polished off the oaf in a matter of seconds, had he been allotted seconds to devote. But the second, the experienced one, was the problem. He and Joe were well matched and with the oaf as an ally really he had all the best of it.

Support came from a forgotten source, the little chap who had been the reason for the whole hassle. He waded in now as big as the next man so far as spirit was concerned, but a sorry fate gave him to attack the wrong man, the veteran rather than the tyro. He took a crashing blow to the side of his head which sent him sailing back into the recruiting line, now composed of excited, shouting verbal participants of the fray.

However, the extinction of Joe Mauser’s small ally had taken a moment or two and time was what Joe needed most. For a double second he had the oaf alone on his hands and that was sufficient. He caught a flailing arm, turned his back and automatically went into the movements which result in that spectacular hold of the wrestler, the Flying Mare. Just in time he recalled that his opponent was a future comrade-in-arms and twisted the arm so that it bent at the elbow, rather than breaking. He hurled the other over his shoulder and as far as possible, to take the scrap out of him, and twirled quickly to meet the further attack of his sole remaining foe.

That phase of the combat failed to materialize.

A voice of command bit out, “Hold it, you lads!”

The original situation which had precipitated the fight was being duplicated. But while the three Lowers had failed to respond to Joe Mauser’s tone of authority, there was no similar failure now.

The owner of the voice, beautifully done up in the uniform of Vacuum Tube Transport, complete to kilts and the swagger stick of the officer of Rank Colonel or above, stood glaring at them. Age, Joe estimated, even as he came to attention, somewhere in the late twenties—an Upper in caste. Born to command. His face holding that arrogant, contemptuous expression once common to the patricians of Rome, the Prussian Junkers, the British ruling class of the Nineteenth Century. Joe knew the expression well. How well he knew it. On more than one occasion, he had dreamt of it.

Joe said, “Yes, sir.”

“What in Zen goes on here? Are you lads overtranked?”

“No, sir,” Joe’s veteran opponent grumbled, his eyes on the ground, a schoolboy before the principal.

Joe said, evenly, “A private disagreement, sir.”

“Disagreement!” the Upper snorted. His eyes went to the three fallen combatants, who were in various stages of reviving. “I’d hate to see you lads in a real scrap.”

That brought a response from the noncombatants in the recruiting line. The bon mot wasn’t that good but caste has its privileges and the laughter was just short of uproarious.

Which seemed to placate the kilted officer. He tapped his swagger stick against the side of his leg while he ran his eyes up and down Joe Mauser and the others, as though memorizing them for future reference.

“All right,” he said. “Get back into the line, and you troublemakers quiet down. We’re processing as quickly as we can.” And at that point he added insult to injury with an almost word for word repetition of what Joe had said a few moments earlier. “You’ll get all the fighting you want from Hovercraft, if you can wait until then.”

The four original participants of the rumpus resumed their places in various stages of sheepishness. The little fellow, nursing an obviously aching jaw, made a point of taking up his original position even while darting a look of thanks to Joe Mauser who still stood where he had when the fight was interrupted.

The Upper looked at Joe. “Well, lad, are you interested in signing up with Vacuum Tube Transport or not?”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said evenly. Then, “Joseph Mauser, sir. Category Military, Rank Captain.”

“Indeed.” The officer looked him up and down all over again, his nostrils high. “A Middle, I assume. And brawling with recruits.” He held a long silence. “Very well, come with me.” He turned and marched off.

Joe inwardly shrugged. This was a fine start for his pitch—a fine start. He had half a mind to give it all up, here and now, and head on up to Catskill to enlist with Continental Hovercraft. His big scheme would wait for another day. Nevertheless, he fell in behind the aristocrat and followed him to the offices which had been his original destination.

Two Rank Privates with 45–70 Springfields and wearing the Haer kilts in such wise as to indicate permanent status in Vacuum Tube Transport came to the salute as they approached. The Upper preceding Joe Mauser flicked his swagger stick in an easy nonchalance. Joe felt envious amusement. How long did it take to learn how to answer a salute with that degree of arrogant ease?

There were desks in here, and typers humming, as Vacuum Tube Transport office workers, mobilized for this special service, processed volunteers for the company forces. Harried noncoms and junior-grade officers buzzed everywhere, failing miserably to bring order to the chaos. To the right was a door with a medical cross newly painted on it. When it occasionally popped open to admit or emit a recruit, white-robed doctors, male nurses and half nude men could be glimpsed beyond.

Joe followed the other through the press and to an inner office at which door he didn’t bother to knock. He pushed his way through, waved in greeting with his swagger stick to the single occupant who looked up from the paper- and tape-strewn desk at which he sat.

Joe Mauser had seen the face before on Telly though never so tired as this and never with the element of defeat to be read in the expression. Bullet-headed, barrel-figured Baron Malcolm Haer of Vacuum Tube Transport. Category Transportation, Mid-Upper, and strong candidate for Upper-Upper upon retirement. However, there would be few who expected retirement in the immediate future. Hardly. Malcolm Haer found too obvious a lusty enjoyment in the competition between Vacuum Tube Transport and its stronger rivals.

Joe came to attention, bore the sharp scrutiny of his chosen commander-to-be. The older man’s eyes went to the kilted Upper officer who had brought Joe along. “What is it, Balt?”

The other gestured with his stick at Joe. “Claims to be Rank Captain. Looking for a commission with us, Dad. I wouldn’t know why.” The last sentence was added lazily.

The older Haer shot an irritated glance at his son. “Possibly for the same reason mercenaries usually enlist for a fracas, Balt.” His eyes came back to Joe.

Joe Mauser, still at attention even though in mufti, opened his mouth to give his name, category and rank, but the older man waved a hand negatively. “Captain Mauser, isn’t it? I caught the fracas between Carbonaceous Fuel and United Miners, down on the Panhandle Reservation. Seems to me I’ve spotted you once or twice before, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said. This was some improvement in the way things were going.

The older Haer was scowling at him. “Confound it, what are you doing with no more rank than captain? On the face of it, you’re an old hand, a highly experienced veteran.”

An old pro, we call ourselves, Joe said to himself. Old pros, we call ourselves, among ourselves.

Aloud, he said, “I was born a Mid-Lower, sir.”

There was understanding in the old man’s face, but Balt Haer said loftily, “What’s that got to do with it? Promotion is quick and based on merit in Category Military.”

At a certain point, if you are good combat officer material, you speak your mind no matter the rank of the man you are addressing. On this occasion, Joe Mauser needed few words. He let his eyes go up and down Balt Haer’s immaculate uniform, taking in the swagger stick of the Rank Colonel or above. Joe said evenly, “Yes, sir.”

Balt Haer flushed quick temper. “What do you mean by—”

But his father was chuckling. “You have spirit, captain. I need spirit now. You are quite correct. My son, though a capable officer, I assure you, has probably not participated in a fraction of the fracases you have to your credit. However, there is something to be said for the training available to we Uppers in the academies. For instance, captain, have you ever commanded a body of lads larger than, well, a company?”

Joe said flatly, “In the Douglas-Boeing versus Lockheed-Cessna fracas we took a high loss of officers when the Douglas-Boeing outfit rang in some fast-firing French mitrailleuse we didn’t know they had. As my superiors took casualties I was field promoted to acting battalion commander, to acting regimental commander, to acting brigadier. For three days I held the rank of acting commander of brigade. We won.”

Balt Haer snapped his fingers. “I remember that. Read quite a paper on it.” He eyed Joe Mauser, almost respectfully. “Stonewall Cogswell got the credit for the victory and received his marshal’s baton as a result.”

“He was one of the few other officers that survived,” Joe said dryly.

“But, Zen! You mean you got no promotion at all?”

Joe said, “I was upped to Low-Middle from High-Lower, sir. At my age, at the time, quite a promotion.”

Baron Haer was remembering, too. “That was the fracas that brought on the howl from the Sovs. They claimed those mitrailleuse were post-1900 and violated the Universal Disarmament Pact. Yes, I recall that. Douglas-Boeing was able to prove that the weapon was used by the French as far back as the Franco-Prussian War.” He eyed Joe with new interest now. “Sit down, captain. You too, Balt. Do you realize that Captain Mauser is the only recruit of officer rank we’ve had today?”

“Yes,” the younger Haer said dryly. “However, it’s too late to call the fracas off now. Hovercraft wouldn’t stand for it, and the Category Military Department would back them. Our only alternative is unconditional surrender, and you know what that means.”

“It means our family would probably be forced from control of the firm,” the older man growled. “But nobody has suggested surrender on any terms. Nobody, thus far.” He glared at his officer son who took it with an easy shrug and swung a leg over the edge of his father’s desk in the way of a seat.

Joe Mauser found a chair and lowered himself into it. Evidently, the foppish Balt Haer had no illusions about the spot his father had got the family corporation into. And the younger man was right, of course.

But the Baron wasn’t blind to reality any more than he was a coward. He dismissed Balt Haer’s defeatism from his mind and came back to Joe Mauser. “As I say, you’re the only officer recruit today. Why?”

Joe said evenly, “I wouldn’t know, sir. Perhaps freelance Category Military men are occupied elsewhere. There’s always a shortage of trained officers.”

Baron Haer was waggling a finger negatively. “That’s not what I mean, captain. You are an old hand. This is your category and you must know it well. Then why are you signing up with Vacuum Tube Transport rather than Hovercraft?”

Joe Mauser looked at him for a moment without speaking.

“Come, come, captain. I am an old hand too, in my category, and not a fool. I realize there is scarcely a soul in the West-world that expects anything but disaster for my colors. Pay rates have been widely posted. I can offer only five common shares of Vacuum Tube for a Rank Captain, win or lose. Hovercraft is doubling that, and can pick and choose among the best officers in the hemisphere.”

Joe said softly, “I have all the shares I need.”

Balt Haer had been looking back and forth between his father and the newcomer and becoming obviously more puzzled. He put in, “Well, what in Zen motivates you if it isn’t the stock we offer?”

Joe glanced at the younger Haer to acknowledge the question but he spoke to the Baron. “Sir, like you said, you’re no fool. However, you’ve been sucked in, this time. When you took on Hovercraft, you were thinking in terms of a regional dispute. You wanted to run one of your vacuum tube deals up to Fairbanks from Edmonton. You were expecting a minor fracas, involving possibly five thousand men. You never expected Hovercraft to parlay it up, through their connections in the Category Military Department, to a divisional magnitude fracas which you simply aren’t large enough to afford. But Hovercraft was getting sick of your corporation. You’ve been nicking away at them too long. So they decided to do you in. They’ve hired Marshal Cogswell and the best combat officers in North America, and they’re hiring the most competent veterans they can find. Every fracas buff who watches Telly, figures you’ve had it. They’ve been watching you come up the aggressive way, the hard way, for a long time, but now they’re all going to be sitting on the edges of their sofas waiting for you to get it.”

Baron Haer’s heavy face had hardened as Joe Mauser went on relentlessly. He growled, “Is this what everyone thinks?”

“Yes. Everyone intelligent enough to have an opinion.” Joe made a motion of his head to the outer offices where the recruiting was proceeding. “Those men out there are rejects from Catskill, where old Baron Zwerdling is recruiting. Either that or they’re inexperienced Low-Lowers, too stupid to realize they’re sticking their necks out. Not one man in ten is a veteran. And when things begin to pickle, you want veterans.”

Baron Malcolm Haer sat back in his chair and stared coldly at Captain Joe Mauser. He said, “At first I was moderately surprised that an old time mercenary like yourself should choose my uniform, rather than Zwerdling’s. Now I am increasingly mystified about motivation. So all over again I ask you, captain: Why are you requesting a commission in my forces which you seem convinced will meet disaster?”

Joe wet his lips carefully. “I think I know a way you can win.”

II

His permanent military rank the Haers had no way to alter, but they were short enough of competent officers that they gave him an acting rating and pay scale of major and command of a squadron of cavalry. Joe Mauser wasn’t interested in a cavalry command this fracas, but he said nothing. Immediately, he had to size up the situation; it wasn’t time as yet to reveal the big scheme. And, meanwhile, they could use him to whip the Rank Privates into shape.

He had left the offices of Baron Haer to go through the red tape involved in being signed up on a temporary basis in the Vacuum Tube Transport forces, and reentered the confusion of the outer offices where the Lowers were being processed and given medicals. He reentered in time to run into a Telly team which was doing a live broadcast.

Joe Mauser remembered the news reporter who headed the team. He’d run into him two or three times in fracases. As a matter of fact, although Joe held the standard Military Category prejudices against Telly, he had a basic respect for this particular newsman. On the occasions he’d seen him before, the fellow was hot in the midst of the action even when things were in the dill. He took as many chances as did the average combatant, and you can’t ask for more than that.

The other knew him, too, of course. It was part of his job to be able to spot the celebrities and near celebrities. He zeroed in on Joe now, making flicks of his hand to direct the cameras. Joe, of course, was fully aware of the value of Telly and was glad to cooperate.

“Captain! Captain Mauser, isn’t it? Joe Mauser who held out for four days in the swamps of Louisiana with a single company while his ranking officers reformed behind him.”

That was one way of putting it, but both Joe and the newscaster who had covered the debacle knew the reality of the situation. When the front had collapsed, his commanders—of Upper caste, of course—had hauled out, leaving him to fight a delaying action while they mended their fences with the enemy, coming to the best terms possible. Yes, that had been the United Oil versus Allied Petroleum fracas, and Joe had emerged with little either in glory or pelf.

The average fracas fan wasn’t on an intellectual level to appreciate anything other than victory. The good guys win, the bad guys lose—that’s obvious, isn’t it? Not one out of ten Telly followers of the fracases was interested in a well-conducted retreat or holding action. They wanted blood, lots of it, and they identified with the winning side.

Joe Mauser wasn’t particularly bitter about this aspect. It was part of his way of life. In fact, his pet peeve was the real buff. The type, man or woman, who could remember every fracas you’d ever been in, every time you’d copped one, and how long you’d been in the hospital. Fans who could remember, even better than you could, every time the situation had pickled on you and you’d had to fight your way out as best you could. They’d tell you about it, their eyes gleaming, sometimes a slightest trickle of spittle at the sides of their mouths. They usually wanted an autograph, or a souvenir such as a uniform button.

Now Joe said to the Telly reporter, “That’s right, Captain Mauser. Acting major, in this fracas, ah—”

“Freddy. Freddy Soligen. You remember me, captain—”

“Of course I do, Freddy. We’ve been in the dill, side by side, more than once, and even when I was too scared to use my sidearm, you’d be scanning away with your camera.”

“Ha ha, listen to the captain, folks. I hope my boss is tuned in. But seriously, Captain Mauser, what do you think the chances of Vacuum Tube Transport are in this fracas?”

Joe looked into the camera lens, earnestly. “The best, of course, or I wouldn’t have signed up with Baron Haer, Freddy. Justice triumphs, and anybody who is familiar with the issues in this fracas, knows that Baron Haer is on the side of true right.”

Freddy said, holding any sarcasm he must have felt, “What would you say the issues were, captain?”

“The basic North American free enterprise right to compete. Hovercraft has held a near monopoly in transport to Fairbanks. Vacuum Tube Transport wishes to lower costs and bring the consumers of Fairbanks better service through running a vacuum tube to that area. What could be more in the traditions of the West-world? Continental Hovercraft stands in the way and it is they who have demanded of the Category Military Department a trial by arms. On the face of it, justice is on the side of Baron Haer.”

Freddy Soligen said into the camera, “Well, all you good people of the Telly world, that’s an able summation the captain has made, but it certainly doesn’t jibe with the words of Baron Zwerdling we heard this morning, does it? However, justice triumphs and we’ll see what the field of combat will have to offer. Thank you, thank you very much, Captain Mauser. All of us, all of us tuned in today, hope that you personally will run into no dill in this fracas.”

“Thanks, Freddy. Thanks all,” Joe said into the camera, before turning away. He wasn’t particularly keen about this part of the job, but you couldn’t underrate the importance of pleasing the buffs. In the long run it was your career, your chances for promotion both in military rank and ultimately in caste. It was the way the fans took you up, boosted you, idolized you, worshipped you if you really made it. He, Joe Mauser, was only a minor celebrity, he appreciated every chance he had to be interviewed by such a popular reporter as Freddy Soligen.

Even as he turned, he spotted the four men with whom he’d had his spat earlier. The little fellow was still to the fore. Evidently, the others had decided the one place extra that he represented wasn’t worth the trouble he’d put in their way defending it.

On an impulse he stepped up to the small man who began a grin of recognition, a grin that transformed his feisty face. A revelation of an inner warmth beyond average in a world which had lost much of its human warmth.

Joe said, “Like a job, soldier?”

“Name’s Max. Max Mainz. Sure I want a job. That’s why I’m in this everlasting line.”

Joe said, “First fracas for you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but I had basic training in school.”

“What do you weigh, Max?”

Max’s face soured. “About one twenty.”

“Did you check out on semaphore in school?”

“Well, sure. I’m Category Food, Subdivision Cooking, Branch Chef, but, like I say, I took basic military training, like most everybody else.”

“I’m Captain Joe Mauser. How’d you like to be my batman?”

Max screwed up his already not overly handsome face. “Gee, I don’t know. I kinda joined up to see some action. Get into the dill. You know what I mean.”

Joe said dryly, “See here, Mainz, you’ll probably find more pickled situations next to me than you’ll want—and you’ll come out alive.”

The recruiting sergeant looked up from the desk. It was Max Mainz’s turn to be processed. The sergeant said, “Lad, take a good opportunity when it drops in your lap. The captain is one of the best in the field. You’ll learn more, get better chances for promotion, if you stick with him.”

Joe couldn’t remember ever having run into the sergeant before, but he said, “Thanks, sergeant.”

The other said, evidently realizing Joe didn’t recognize him, “We were together on the Chihuahua Reservation, on the jurisdictional fracas between the United Miners and the Teamsters, sir.”

It had been almost fifteen years ago. About all that Joe Mauser remembered of that fracas was the abnormal number of casualties they’d taken. His side had lost, but from this distance in time Joe couldn’t even remember what force he’d been with. But now he said, “That’s right. I thought I recognized you, sergeant.”

“It was my first fracas, sir.” The sergeant went businesslike. “If you want I should hustle this lad through, captain—”

“Please do, sergeant.” Joe added to Max, “I’m not sure where my billet will be. When you’re through all this, locate the officer’s mess and wait there for me.”

“Well, OK,” Max said doubtfully, still scowling but evidently a servant of an officer, if he wanted to be or not.

“Sir,” the sergeant added ominously. “If you’ve had basic, you know enough how to address an officer.”

“Well, yessir,” Max said hurriedly.

Joe began to turn away, but then spotted the man immediately behind Max Mainz. He was one of the three with whom Joe had tangled earlier, the one who’d obviously had previous combat experience. He pointed the man out to the sergeant. “You’d better give this lad at least temporary rank of corporal. He’s a veteran and we’re short of veterans.”

The sergeant said, “Yes, sir. We sure are.” Joe’s former foe looked properly thankful.

Joe Mauser finished off his own red tape and headed for the street to locate a military tailor who could do him up a set of the Haer kilts and fill his other dress requirements. As he went, he wondered vaguely just how many different uniforms he had worn in his time.

In a career as long as his own from time to time you took semipermanent positions in bodyguards, company police, or possibly the permanent combat troops of this corporation or that. But largely, if you were ambitious, you signed up for the fracases and that meant into a uniform and out of it again in as short a period as a couple of weeks.

At the door he tried to move aside but was too slow for the quick moving young woman who caromed off him. He caught her arm to prevent her from stumbling. She looked at him with less than thanks.

Joe took the blame for the collision. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I didn’t see you, Miss.”

“Obviously,” she said coldly. Her eyes went up and down him, and for a moment he wondered where he had seen her before. Somewhere, he was sure.

She was dressed as they dress who have never considered cost and she had an elusive beauty which would have been even the more hadn’t her face projected quite such a serious outlook. Her features were more delicate than those to which he was usually attracted. Her lips were less full, but still—He was reminded of the classic ideal of the British Romantic Period, the women sung of by Byron and Keats, Shelly and Moore.

She said, “Is there any particular reason why you should be staring at me, Mr.—”

“Captain Mauser,” Joe said hurriedly. “I’m afraid I’ve been rude, Miss—Well, I thought I recognized you.”

She took in his civilian dress, typed it automatically, and came to an erroneous conclusion. She said, “Captain? You mean that with everyone else I know drawing down ranks from Lieutenant Colonel to Brigadier General, you can’t make anything better than Captain?”

Joe winced. He said carefully, “I came up from the ranks, Miss. Captain is quite an achievement, believe me.”

“Up from the ranks!” She took in his clothes again. “You mean you’re a Middle? You neither talk nor look like a Middle, captain.” She used the caste rating as though it was not quite a derogatory term.

Not that she meant to be deliberately insulting, Joe knew, wearily. How well he knew. It was simply born in her. As once a well-educated aristocracy had, not necessarily unkindly, named their status inferiors niggers; or other aristocrats, in another area of the country, had named theirs greasers. Yes, how well he knew.

He said very evenly, “Mid-Middle now, Miss. However, I was born in the Lower castes.”

An eyebrow went up. “Zen! You must have put in many an hour studying. You talk like an Upper, captain.” She dropped all interest in him and turned to resume her journey.

“Just a moment,” Joe said. “You can’t go in there, Miss—”

Her eyebrows went up again. “The name is Haer,” she said. “Why can’t I go in here, captain?”

Now it came to him why he had thought he recognized her. She had basic features similar to those of that overbred poppycock, Balt Haer.

“Sorry,” Joe said. “I suppose under the circumstances, you can. I was about to tell you that they’re recruiting with lads running around half clothed. Medical inspections, that sort of thing.”

She made a noise through her nose and said over her shoulder, even as she sailed on. “Besides being a Haer, I’m an M.D., captain. At the ludicrous sight of a man shuffling about in his shorts, I seldom blush.”

She was gone.

Joe Mauser looked after her. “I’ll bet you don’t,” he muttered.

Had she waited a few minutes he could have explained his Upper accent and his unlikely education. When you’d copped one you had plenty of opportunity in hospital beds to read, to study, to contemplate—and to fester away in your own schemes of rebellion against fate. And Joe had copped many in his time.

III

By the time Joe Mauser called it a day and retired to his quarters he was exhausted to the point where his basic dissatisfaction with the trade he followed was heavily upon him.

He had met his immediate senior officers, largely dilettante Uppers with precious little field experience, and was unimpressed. And he’d met his own junior officers and was shocked. By the looks of things at this stage, Captain Mauser’s squadron would be going into this fracas both undermanned with Rank Privates and with junior officers composed largely of temporarily promoted noncoms. If this was typical of Baron Haer’s total force, then Balt Haer had been correct; unconditional surrender was to be considered, no matter how disastrous to Haer family fortunes.

Joe had been able to take immediate delivery of one kilted uniform. Now, inside his quarters, he began stripping out of his jacket. Somewhat to his surprise, the small man he had selected earlier in the day to be his batman entered from an inner room, also resplendent in the Haer uniform and obviously happily so.

He helped his superior out of the jacket with an ease that held no subservience but at the same time was correctly respectful. You’d have thought him a batman specially trained.

Joe grunted, “Max, isn’t it? I’d forgotten about you. Glad you found our billet all right.”

Max said, “Yes, sir. Would the captain like a drink? I picked up a bottle of applejack. Applejack’s the drink around here, sir. Makes a topnotch highball with ginger ale and a twist of lemon.”

Joe Mauser looked at him. Evidently his tapping this man for orderly had been sheer fortune. Well, Joe Mauser could use some good luck on this job. He hoped it didn’t end with selecting a batman.

Joe said, “An applejack highball sounds wonderful, Max. Got ice?”

“Of course, sir.” Max left the small room.

Joe Mauser and his officers were billeted in what had once been a motel on the old road between Kingston and Woodstock. There was a shower and a tiny kitchenette in each cottage. That was one advantage in a fracas held in an area where there were plenty of facilities. Such military reservations as that of the Little Big Horn in Montana and particularly some of those in the South West and Mexico, were another thing.

Joe lowered himself into the room’s easy chair and bent down to untie his laces. He kicked his shoes off. He could use that drink. He began wondering all over again if his scheme for winning this Vacuum Tube Transport versus Continental Hovercraft fracas would come off. The more he saw of Baron Haer’s inadequate forces, the more he wondered. He hadn’t expected Vacuum Tube to be in this bad a shape. Baron Haer had been riding high for so long that one would have thought his reputation for victory would have lured many a veteran to his colors. Evidently they hadn’t bitten. The word was out all right.

Max Mainz returned with the drink.

Joe said, “You had one yourself?”

“No, sir.”

Joe said, “Well, Zen, go get yourself one and come on back and sit down. Let’s get acquainted.”

“Well, yessir.” Max disappeared back into the kitchenette to return almost immediately. The little man slid into a chair, drink awkwardly in hand.

His superior sized him up, all over again. Not much more than a kid, really. Surprisingly aggressive for a Lower who must have been raised from childhood in a trank-bemused, Telly-entertained household. The fact that he’d broken away from that environment at all was to his credit, it was considerably easier to conform. But then it is always easier to conform, to run with the herd, as Joe well knew. His own break hadn’t been an easy one. “Relax,” he said now.

Max said, “Well, this is my first day.”

“I know. And you’ve been seeing Telly shows all your life showing how an orderly conducts himself in the presence of his superior.” Joe took another pull and yawned. “Well, forget about it. With any man who goes into a fracas with me, I like to be on close terms. When things pickle, I want him to be on my side, not nursing some peeve brought on by his officer trying to give him an inferiority complex.”

The little man was eying him in surprise.

Joe finished his highball and came to his feet to get another one. He said, “On two occasions I’ve had an orderly save my life. I’m not taking any chances but that there might be a third opportunity.”

“Well, yessir. Does the captain want me to get him—”

“I’ll get it,” Joe said.

When he’d returned to his chair, he said, “Why did you join up with Baron Haer, Max?”

The other shrugged it off. “The usual. The excitement. The idea of all those fans watching me on Telly. The share of common stock I’ll get. And, you never know, maybe a promotion in caste. I wouldn’t mind making Upper-Lower.”

Joe said sourly, “One fracas and you’ll be over that desire to have the buffs watching you on Telly while they sit around in their front rooms sucking on tranks. And you’ll probably be over the desire for the excitement, too. Of course, the share of stock is another thing.”

“You aren’t just countin’ down, captain,” Max said, an almost surly overtone in his voice. “You don’t know what it’s like being born with no more common stock shares than a Mid-Lower.”

Joe held his peace, sipping at his drink, taking this one more slowly. He let his eyebrows rise to encourage the other to go on.

Max said doggedly, “Sure, they call it People’s Capitalism and everybody gets issued enough shares to insure him a basic living all the way from the cradle to the grave, like they say. But let me tell you, you’re a Middle and you don’t realize how basic the basic living of a Lower can be.”

Joe yawned. If he hadn’t been so tired, there would have been more amusement in the situation.

Max was still dogged. “Unless you can add to those shares of stock, it’s pretty drab, captain. You wouldn’t know.”

Joe said, “Why don’t you work? A Lower can always add to his stock by working.”

Max stirred in indignity. “Work? Listen, sir, that’s just one more field that’s been automated right out of existence. Category Food Preparation, Subdivision Cooking, Branch Chef. Cooking isn’t left in the hands of slobs who might drop a cake of soap into the soup. It’s done automatic. The only new changes made in cooking are by real top experts, almost scientists like. And most of them are Uppers, mind you.”

Joe Mauser sighed inwardly. So his find in batmen wasn’t going to be as wonderful as all that, after all. The man might have been born into the food preparation category from a long line of chefs, but evidently he knew precious little about his field. Joe might have suspected. He himself had been born into Clothing Category, Subdivision Shoes, Branch Repair—Cobbler—a meaningless trade since shoes were no longer repaired but discarded upon showing signs of wear. In an economy of complete abundance, there is little reason for repair of basic commodities. It was high time the government investigated category assignment and reshuffled and reassigned half the nation’s population. But then, of course, was the question of what to do with the technologically unemployed.

Max was saying, “The only way I could figure on a promotion to a higher caste, or the only way to earn stock shares, was by crossing categories. And you know what that means. Either Category Military, or Category Religion and I sure as Zen don’t know nothing about religion.”

Joe said mildly, “Theoretically, you can cross categories into any field you want, Max.”

Max snorted. “Theoretically is right … sir. You ever heard about anybody born a Lower, or even a Middle like yourself, cross categories to, say, some Upper category like banking?”

Joe chuckled. He liked this peppery little fellow. If Max worked out as well as Joe thought he might, there was a possibility of taking him along to the next fracas.

Max was saying, “I’m not saying anything against the old time way of doing things or talking against the government, but I’ll tell you, captain, every year goes by it gets harder and harder for a man to raise his caste or to earn some additional stock shares.”

The applejack had worked enough on Joe for him to rise against one of his pet peeves. He said, “That term, the old time way, is strictly Telly talk, Max. We don’t do things the old time way. No nation in history ever has—with the possible exception of Egypt. Socio-economics are in a continual flux and here in this country we no more do things in the way they did fifty years ago, than fifty years ago they did them the way the American Revolutionists outlined back in the Eighteenth Century.”

Max was staring at him. “I don’t get that, sir.”

Joe said impatiently, “Max, the politico-economic system we have today is an outgrowth of what went earlier. The welfare state, the freezing of the status quo, the Frigid Fracas between the West-world and the Sov-world, industrial automation until useful employment is all but needless—all these things were to be found in embryo more than fifty years ago.”

“Well, maybe the captain’s right, but you gotta admit, sir, that mostly we do things the old way. We still got the Constitution and the two-party system and—”

Joe was wearying of the conversation now. You seldom ran into anyone, even in Middle caste, the traditionally professional class, interested enough in such subjects to be worth arguing with. He said, “The Constitution, Max, has got to the point of the Bible. Interpret it the way you wish, and you can find anything. If not, you can always make a new amendment. So far as the two-party system is concerned, what effect does it have when there are no differences between the two parties? That phase of pseudo-democracy was beginning as far back as the 1930s when they began passing State laws hindering the emerging of new political parties. By the time they were insured against a third party working its way through the maze of election laws, the two parties had become so similar that elections became almost as big a farce as over in the Sov-world.”

“A farce?” Max ejaculated indignantly, forgetting his servant status. “That means not so good, doesn’t it? Far as I’m concerned, election day is tops. The one day a Lower is just as good as an Upper. The one day how many shares you got makes no difference. Everybody has everything.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Joe sighed. “The modern equivalent of the Roman Bacchanalia. Election day in the West-world when no one, for just that one day, is freer than anyone else.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” The other was all but belligerent. “That’s the trouble with you Middles and Uppers, you don’t know how it is to be a Lower and—”

Joe snapped suddenly, “I was born a Mid-Lower myself, Max. Don’t give me that nonsense.”

Max gaped at him, utterly unbelieving.

Joe’s irritation fell away. He held out his glass. “Get us a couple of more drinks, Max, and I’ll tell you a story.”

By the time the fresh drink came, Joe Mauser was sorry he’d made the offer. He thought back. He hadn’t told anyone the Joe Mauser story in many a year. And, as he recalled, the last time had been when he was well into his cups, on an election day at that, and his listener had been a Low-Upper, a hereditary aristocrat, one of the one percent of the upper strata of the nation. Zen! How the man had laughed. He’d roared his amusement till the tears ran.

However, Joe said, “Max, I was born in the same caste you were—average father, mother, sisters and brothers. They subsisted on the basic income guaranteed from birth, sat and watched Telly for an unbelievable number of hours each day, took trank to keep themselves happy. And thought I was crazy because I didn’t. Dad was the sort of man who’d take his belt off to a child of his who questioned such school taught slogans as What was good enough for Daddy is good enough for me.

“They were all fracas fans, of course. As far back as I can remember the picture is there of them gathered around the Telly, screaming excitement.” Joe Mauser sneered, uncharacteristically.

“You don’t sound much like you’re in favor of your trade, captain,” Max said.

Joe came to his feet, putting down his still half-full glass. “I’ll make this epic story short, Max. As you said, the two actually valid methods of rising above the level in which you were born are in the Military and Religious Categories. Like you, even I couldn’t stomach the latter.”

Joe Mauser hesitated, then finished it off. “Max, there have been few societies that man has evolved that didn’t allow in some manner for the competent or sly, the intelligent or the opportunist, the brave or the strong, to work his way to the top. I don’t know which of these I personally fit into, but I rebel against remaining in the lower categories of a stratified society. Do I make myself clear?”

“Well, no sir, not exactly.”

Joe said flatly, “I’m going to fight my way to the top, and nothing is going to stand in the way. Is that clearer?”

“Yessir,” Max said, taken aback.

IV

After routine morning duties, Joe Mauser returned to his billet and mystified Max Mainz by not only changing into mufti himself but having Max do the same.

In fact, the new batman protested faintly. He hadn’t nearly, as yet, got over the glory of wearing his kilts and was looking forward to parading around town in them. He had a point, of course. The appointed time for the fracas was getting closer and buffs were beginning to stream into town to bask in the atmosphere of threatened death. Everybody knew what a military center, on the outskirts of a fracas reservation such as the Catskills, was like immediately preceding a clash between rival corporations. The high-strung gaiety, the drinking, the overtranking, the relaxation of mores. Even a Rank Private had it made. Admiring civilians to buy drinks and hang on your every word, and more important still, sensuous-eyed women, their faces slack in thinly suppressed passion. It was a recognized phenomenon, even Max Mainz knew—this desire on the part of women Telly fans to date a man, and then watch him later, killing or being killed.

“Time enough to wear your fancy uniform,” Joe Mauser growled at him. “In fact, tomorrow’s a local election day. Parlay that up on top of all the fracas fans gravitating into town and you’ll have a wingding the likes of nothing you’ve seen before.”

“Well yessir,” Max begrudged. “Where’re we going now, captain?”

“To the airport. Come along.”

Joe Mauser led the way to his sports hover-car and as soon as the two were settled into the bucket seats, hit the lift lever with the butt of his left hand. Air-cushion-borne, he trod down on the accelerator.

Max Mainz was impressed. “You know,” he said. “I never been in one of these swanky sports jobs before. The kinda car you can afford on the income of a Mid-Lower’s stock aren’t—”

“Knock it off,” Joe said wearily. “Carping we’ll always have with us evidently, but in spite of all the beefing in every strata from Low-Lower to Upper-Middle, I’ve yet to see any signs of organized protest against our present politico-economic system.”

“Hey,” Max said. “Don’t get me wrong. What was good enough for Dad is good enough for me. You won’t catch me talking against the government.”

“Hm-m-m,” Joe murmured. “And all the other cliches taught to us to preserve the status quo, our People’s Capitalism.” They were reaching the outskirts of town, crossing the Esopus. The airport lay only a mile or so beyond.

It was obviously too deep for Max, and since he didn’t understand, he assumed his superior didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, tolerantly, “Well, what’s wrong with People’s Capitalism? Everybody owns the corporations. Damnsight better than the Sovs have.”

Joe said sourly. “We’ve got one optical illusion, they’ve got another, Max. Over there they claim the proletariat owns the means of production. Great. But the Party members are the ones who control it, and, as a result they manage to do all right for themselves. The Party hierarchy over there are like our Uppers over here.”

“Yeah.” Max was being particularly dense. “I’ve seen a lot about it on Telly. You know, when there isn’t a good fracas on, you tune to one of them educational shows, like—”

Joe winced at the term educational, but held his peace.

“It’s pretty rugged over there. But in the West-world, the people own a corporation’s stock and they run it and get the benefit.”

“At least it makes a beautiful story,” Joe said dryly. “Look, Max. Suppose you have a corporation that has two hundred thousand shares out and they’re distributed among one hundred thousand and one persons. One hundred thousand of these own one share apiece, but the remaining stockholder owns the other hundred thousand.”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Max said.

Joe Mauser was tired of the discussion. “Briefly,” he said, “we have the illusion that this is a People’s Capitalism, with all stock in the hands of the People. Actually, as ever before, the stock is in the hands of the Uppers, all except a mere dribble. They own the country and they run it for their own benefit.”

Max shot a less than military glance at him. “Hey, you’re not one of these Sovs yourself, are you?”

They were coming into the parking area near the Administration Building of the airport. “No,” Joe said so softly that Max could hardly hear his words. “Only a Mid-Middle on the make.”

Followed by Max, he strode quickly to the Administration Building, presented his credit identification at the desk and requested a light aircraft for a period of three hours. The clerk, hardly looking up, began going through motions, speaking into telescreens.

The clerk said finally, “You might have a small wait, sir. Quite a few of the officers involved in this fracas have been renting out taxi-planes almost as fast as they’re available.”

That didn’t surprise Joe Mauser. Any competent officer made a point of an aerial survey of the battle reservation before going into a fracas. Aircraft, of course, couldn’t be used during the fray, since they postdated the turn of the century, and hence were relegated to the cemetery of military devices along with such items as nuclear weapons, tanks, and even gasoline-propelled vehicles of size to be useful.

Use an aircraft in a fracas, or even build an aircraft for military usage and you’d have a howl go up from the military attachés from the Sov-world that would be heard all the way to Budapest. Not a fracas went by but there were scores, if not hundreds, of military observers, keen-eyed to check whether or not any really modern tools of war were being illegally utilized. Joe Mauser sometimes wondered if the West-world observers, over in the Sov-world, were as hair fine in their living up to the rules of the Universal Disarmament Pact. Probably. But, for that matter, they didn’t have the same system of fighting fracases over there, as in the West.

Joe took a chair while he waited and thumbed through a fan magazine. From time to time he found his own face in such publications. He was a third-rate celebrity, really. Luck hadn’t been with him so far as the buffs were concerned. They wanted spectacular victories, murderous situations in which they could lose themselves in vicarious sadistic thrills. Joe had reached most of his peaks while in retreat, or commanding a holding action. His officers appreciated him and so did the ultra-knowledgeable fracas buffs—but he was all but an unknown to the average dimwit who spent most of his life glued to the Telly set, watching men butcher each other.

On the various occasions when matters had pickled and Joe had to fight his way out against difficult odds, using spectacular tactics in desperation, he was almost always off camera. Purely luck. On top of skill, determination, experience and courage, you had to have luck in the Military Category to get anywhere.

This time Joe was going to manufacture his own.

A voice said, “Ah, Captain Mauser.”

Joe looked up, then came to his feet quickly. In automatic reflex, he began to come to the salute but then caught himself. He said stiffly, “My compliments, Marshal Cogswell.”

The other was a smallish man, but strikingly strong of face and strongly built. His voice was clipped, clear and had the air of command as though born with it. He, like Joe, wore mufti and now extended his hand to be shaken.

“I hear you’ve signed up with Baron Haer, captain. I was rather expecting you to come in with me. Had a place for a good aide de camp. Liked your work in that last fracas we went through together.”

“Thank you, sir,” Joe said. Stonewall Cogswell was as good a tactician as freelanced and he was more than that. He was a judge of men and a stickler for detail. And right now, if Joe Mauser knew Marshal Stonewall Cogswell as well as he thought, Cogswell was smelling a rat. There was no reason why old pro Joe Mauser should sign up with a sure loser like Vacuum Tube when he could have earned more shares taking a commission with Hovercraft.

He was looking at Joe brightly, the question in his eyes. Three or four of his staff were behind a few paces, looking polite, but Cogswell didn’t bring them into the conversation. Joe knew most by sight. Good men all. Old pros all. He felt another twinge of doubt.

Joe had to cover. He said, “I was offered a particularly good contract, sir. Too good to resist.”

The other nodded, as though inwardly coming to a satisfactory conclusion. “Baron Haer’s connections, eh? He’s probably offered to back you for a bounce in caste. Is that it, Joe?”

Joe Mauser flushed. Stonewall Cogswell knew what he was talking about. He’d been born into Middle status himself and had become an Upper the hard way. His path wasn’t as long as Joe’s was going to be, but long enough and he knew how rocky the climb was. How very rocky.

Joe said, stiffly, “I’m afraid I’m in no position to discuss my commander’s military contracts, marshal. We’re in mufti, but after all—”

Cogswell’s lean face registered one of his infrequent grimaces of humor. “I understand, Joe. Well, good luck and I hope things don’t pickle for you in the coming fracas. Possibly we’ll find ourselves aligned together again at some future time.”

“Thank you, sir,” Joe said, once more having to catch himself to prevent an automatic salute.

Cogswell and his staff went off, leaving Joe looking after them. Even the marshal’s staff members were top men, any of whom could have conducted a divisional magnitude fracas. Joe felt the coldness in his stomach again. Although it must have looked like a cinch, the enemy wasn’t taking any chances whatsoever. Cogswell and his officers were undoubtedly here at the airport for the same reason as Joe. They wanted a thorough aerial reconnaissance of the battlefield-to-be, before the issue was joined.

Max was standing at his elbow. “Who was that, sir? Looks like a real tough one.”

“He is a real tough one,” Joe said sourly. “That’s Stonewall Cogswell, the best field commander in North America.”

Max pursed his lips. “I never seen him out of uniform before. Lots of times on Telly, but never out of uniform. I thought he was taller than that.”

“He fights with his brains,” Joe said, still looking after the craggy field marshal. “He doesn’t have to be any taller.”

Max scowled. “Where’d he ever get that nickname, sir?”

“Stonewall?” Joe was turning to resume his chair and magazine. “He’s supposed to be a student of a top general back in the American Civil War. Uses some of the original Stonewall’s tactics.”

Max was out of his depth. “American Civil War? Was that much of a fracas, captain? It musta been before my time.”

“It was quite a fracas,” Joe said dryly. “Lot of good lads died. A hundred years after it was fought, the reasons it was fought seemed about as valid as those we fight fracases for today. Personally I—”

He had to cut it short. They were calling him on the address system. His aircraft was ready. Joe made his way to the hangars, followed by Max Mainz. He was going to pilot the airplane himself and old Stonewall Cogswell would have been surprised at what Joe Mauser was looking for.

V

By the time they had returned to quarters, there was a message waiting for Captain Mauser. He was to report to the officer commanding reconnaissance.

Joe redressed in the Haer kilts and proceeded to headquarters.

The officer commanding reconnaissance turned out to be none other than Balt Haer, natty as ever, and, as ever, arrogantly tapping his swagger stick against his leg.

“Zen! Captain,” he complained. “Where have you been? Off on a trank kick? We’ve got to get organized.”

Joe Mauser snapped him a salute. “No, sir. I rented an aircraft to scout out the terrain over which we’ll be fighting.”

“Indeed. And what were your impressions, captain?” There was an overtone which suggested that it made little difference what impressions a captain of cavalry might have gained.

Joe shrugged. “Largely mountains, hills, woods. Good reconnaissance is going to make the difference in this one. And in the fracas itself cavalry is going to be more important than either artillery or infantry. A Nathan Forrest fracas, sir. A matter of getting there fustest with the mostest.”

Balt Haer said amusedly. “Thanks for your opinion, captain. Fortunately, our staff has already come largely to the same conclusions. Undoubtedly, they’ll be glad to hear your wide experience bears them out.”

Joe said evenly, “It’s a rather obvious conclusion, of course.” He took this as it came, having been through it before. The dilettante amateur’s dislike of the old pro. The amateur in command who knew full well he was less capable than many of those below him in rank.

“Of course, captain,” Balt Haer flicked his swagger stick against his leg. “But to the point. Your squadron is to be deployed as scouts under my overall command. You’ve had cavalry experience, I assume.”

“Yes, sir. In various fracases over the past fifteen years.”

“Very well. Now then, to get to the reason I have summoned you. Yesterday in my father’s office you intimated that you had some grandiose scheme which would bring victory to the Haer colors. But then, on some thin excuse, refused to divulge just what the scheme might be.”

Joe Mauser looked at him unblinkingly.

Balt Haer said: “Now I’d like to have your opinion on just how Vacuum Tube Transport can extract itself from what would seem a poor position at best.”

In all there were four others in the office, two women clerks fluttering away at typers, and two of Balt Haer’s junior officers. They seemed only mildly interested in the conversation between Balt and Joe.

Joe wet his lips carefully. The Haer scion was his commanding officer. He said, “Sir, what I had in mind is a new gimmick. At this stage, if I told anybody and it leaked, it’d never be effective, not even this first time.”

Haer observed him coldly. “And you think me incapable of keeping your secret, ah, gimmick, I believe is the idiomatic term you used.”

Joe Mauser’s eyes shifted around the room, taking in the other four, who were now looking at him.

Bait Haer rapped, “These members of my staff are all trusted Haer employees, Captain Mauser. They are not fly-by-night freelancers hired for a week or two.”

Joe said, “Yes, sir. But it’s been my experience that one person can hold a secret. It’s twice as hard for two, and from there on it’s a decreasing probability in a geometric ratio.”

The younger Haer’s stick rapped the side of his leg, impatiently. “Suppose I inform you that this is a command, captain? I have little confidence in a supposed gimmick that will rescue our forces from disaster and I rather dislike the idea of a captain of one of my squadrons dashing about with such a bee in his bonnet when he should be obeying my commands.”

Joe kept his voice respectful. “Then, sir, I’d request that we take the matter to the Commander in Chief, your father.”

“Indeed!”

Joe said, “Sir, I’ve been working on this a long time. I can’t afford to risk throwing the idea away.”

Bait Haer glared at him. “Very well, captain. I’ll call your bluff, come along.” He turned on his heel and headed from the room.

Joe Mauser shrugged in resignation and followed him.

The old Baron wasn’t much happier about Joe Mauser’s secrets than was his son. It had only been the day before that he had taken Joe on, but already he had seemed to have aged in appearance. Evidently, each hour that went by made it increasingly clear just how perilous a position he had assumed. Vacuum Tube Transport had elbowed, buffaloed, bluffed and edged itself up to the outskirts of the really big time. The Baron’s ability, his aggressiveness, his flair, his political pull, had all helped, but now the chips were down. He was up against one of the biggies, and this particular biggy was tired of ambitious little Vacuum Tube Transport.

He listened to his son’s words, listened to Joe’s defense.

He said, looking at Joe, “If I understand this, you have some scheme which you think will bring victory in spite of what seems a disastrous situation.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two Haers looked at him, one impatiently, the other in weariness.

Joe said, “I’m gambling everything on this, sir. I’m no Rank Private in his first fracas. I deserve to be given some leeway.”

Balt Haer snorted. “Gambling everything! What in Zen would you have to gamble, captain? The whole Haer family fortunes are tied up. Hovercraft is out for blood. They won’t be satisfied with a token victory and a negotiated compromise. They’ll devastate us. Thousands of mercenaries killed, with all that means in indemnities; millions upon million in expensive military equipment, most of which we’ve had to hire and will have to recompensate for. Can you imagine the value of our stock after Stonewall Cogswell has finished with us? Why, every two by four trucking outfit in North America will be challenging us, and we won’t have the forces to meet a minor skirmish.”

Joe reached into an inner pocket and laid a sheaf of documents on the desk of Baron Malcolm Haer. The Baron scowled down at them.

Joe said simply, “I’ve been accumulating stock since before I was eighteen and I’ve taken good care of my portfolio in spite of taxes and the various other pitfalls which make the accumulation of capital practically impossible. Yesterday, I sold all of my portfolio I was legally allowed to sell and converted to Vacuum Tube Transport.” He added, dryly, “Getting it at an excellent rate, by the way.”

Balt Haer mulled through the papers, unbelievingly. “Zen!” he ejaculated. “The fool really did it. He’s sunk a small fortune into our stock.”

Baron Haer growled at his son, “You seem considerably more convinced of our defeat than the captain, here. Perhaps I should reverse your positions of command.”

His son grunted, but said nothing.

Old Malcolm Haer’s eyes came back to Joe. “Admittedly, I thought you on the romantic side yesterday, with your hints of some scheme which would lead us out of the wilderness, so to speak. Now I wonder if you might not really have something. Very well, I respect your claimed need for secrecy. Espionage is not exactly an antiquated military field.”

“Thank you, sir.”

But the Baron was still staring at him. “However, there’s more to it than that. Why not take this great scheme to Marshal Cogswell? And yesterday you mentioned that the Telly sets of the nation would be tuned in on this fracas, and obviously you are correct. The question becomes, what of it?”

The fat was in the fire now. Joe Mauser avoided the haughty stare of young Balt Haer and addressed himself to the older man. “You have political pull, sir. Oh, I know you don’t make and break presidents. You couldn’t even pull enough wires to keep Hovercraft from making this a divisional magnitude fracas—but you have pull enough for my needs.”

Baron Haer leaned back in his chair, his barrel-like body causing that article of furniture to creak. He crossed his hands over his stomach. “And what are your needs, Captain Mauser?”

Joe said evenly, “If I can bring this off, I’ll be a fracas buff celebrity. I don’t have any illusions about the fickleness of the Telly fans, but for a day or two I’ll be on top. If at the same time I had your all out support, pulling what strings you could reach—”

“Why then, you’d be promoted to Upper, wouldn’t you, captain?” Balt Haer finished for him, amusement in his voice.

“That’s what I’m gambling on,” Joe said evenly.

The younger Haer grinned at his father superciliously. “So our captain says he will defeat Stonewall Cogswell in return for you sponsoring his becoming a member of the nation’s elite.”

“Good Heavens, is the supposed cream of the nation now selected on no higher a level than this?” There was sarcasm in the words.

The three men turned. It was the girl Joe had bumped into the day before. The Haers didn’t seem surprised at her entrance.

“Nadine,” the older man growled. “Captain Joseph Mauser who has been given a commission in our forces.”

Joe went through the routine of a Middle of officer’s rank being introduced to a lady of Upper caste. She smiled at him, somewhat mockingly, and failed to make standard response.

Nadine Haer said, “I repeat, what is this service the captain can render the house of Haer so important that pressure should be brought to raise him to Upper caste? It would seem unlikely that he is a noted scientist, an outstanding artist, a great teacher—”

Joe said, uncomfortably, “They say the military is a science, too.”

Her expression was almost as haughty as that of her brother. “Do they? I have never thought so.”

“Really, Nadine,” her father grumbled. “This is hardly your affair.”

“No? In a few days I shall be repairing the damage you have allowed, indeed sponsored, to be committed upon the bodies of possibly thousands of now healthy human beings.”

Balt said nastily, “Nobody asked you to join the medical staff, Nadine. You could have stayed in your laboratory, figuring out new methods of preventing the human race from replenishing itself.”

The girl was obviously not the type to redden, but her anger was manifest. She spun on her brother. “If the race continues its present maniac course, possibly more effective methods of birth control are the most important development we could make. Even to the ultimate discovery of preventing all future conception.”

Joe caught himself in mid-chuckle.

But not in time. She spun on him in his turn. “Look at yourself in that silly skirt. A professional soldier! A killer! In my opinion the most useless occupation ever devised by man. Parasite on the best and useful members of society. Destroyer by trade!”

Joe began to open his mouth, but she overrode him. “Yes, yes. I know. I’ve read all the nonsense that has accumulated down through the ages about the need for, the glory of, the sacrifice of the professional soldier. How they defend their country. How they give all for the common good. Zen! What nonsense.”

Balt Haer was smirking sourly at her. “The theory today is, Nadine, old thing, that professionals such as the captain are gathering experience in case a serious fracas with the Sovs ever develops. Meanwhile his training is kept at a fine edge fighting in our inter-corporation, inter-union, or union-corporation fracases that develop in our private enterprise society.”

She laughed her scorn. “And what a theory! Limited to the weapons which prevailed before 1900. If there was ever real conflict between the Sov-world and our own, does anyone really believe either would stick to such arms? Why, aircraft, armored vehicles, yes, and nuclear weapons and rockets, would be in overnight use.”

Joe was fascinated by her furious attack. He said, “Then, what would you say was the purpose of the fracases, Miss—”

“Circuses,” she snorted. “The old Roman games, all over again, and a hundred times worse. Blood and guts sadism. The quest of a frustrated person for satisfaction in another’s pain. Our Lowers of today are as useless and frustrated as the Roman proletariat and potentially they’re just as dangerous as the mob that once dominated Rome. Automation, the second industrial revolution, has eliminated for all practical purposes the need for their labor. So we give them bread and circuses. And every year that goes by the circuses must be increasingly sadistic, death on an increasing scale, or they aren’t satisfied. Once it was enough to have fictional mayhem, cowboys and Indians, gangsters, or G.I.s versus the Nazis, Japs or Commies, but that’s passed. Now we need real blood and guts.”

Baron Haer snapped finally, “All right, Nadine. We’ve heard this lecture before. I doubt if the captain is interested, particularly since you don’t seem to be able to get beyond the protesting stage and have yet to come up with an answer.”

“I have an answer!”

“Ah?” Balt Haer raised his eyebrows, mockingly.

“Yes! Overthrow this silly status society. Resume the road to progress. Put our people to useful endeavor, instead of sitting in front of their Telly sets, taking trank pills to put them in a happy daze and watching sadistic fracases to keep them in thrills, and their minds from their condition.”

Joe had figured on keeping out of the controversy with this firebrand, but now, really interested, he said, “Progress to where?”

She must have caught in his tone that he wasn’t needling. She frowned at him. “I don’t know man’s goal, if there is one. I’m not even sure it’s important. It’s the road that counts. The endeavor. The dream. The effort expended to make a world a better place than it was at the time of your birth.”

Balt Haer said mockingly, “That’s the trouble with you, Sis. Here we’ve reached Utopia and you don’t admit it.”

“Utopia!”

“Certainly. Take a poll. You’ll find nineteen people out of twenty happy with things just the way they are. They have full tummies and security, lots of leisure and trank pills to make matters seem even rosier than they are—and they’re rather rosy already.”

“Then what’s the necessity of this endless succession of bloody fracases, covered to the most minute bloody detail on the Telly?”

Baron Haer cut things short. “We’ve hashed and rehashed this before, Nadine and now we’re too busy to debate further.” He turned to Joe Mauser. “Very well, captain, you have my pledge. I wish I felt as optimistic as you seem to be about your prospects. That will be all for now, captain.”

Joe saluted and executed an about face.

In the outer offices, when he had closed the door behind him, he rolled his eyes upward in mute thanks to whatever powers might be. He had somehow gained the enmity of Balt, his immediate superior, but he’d also gained the support of Baron Haer himself, which counted considerably more.

He considered for a moment, Nadine Haer’s words. She was obviously a malcontent, but, on the other hand, her opinions of his chosen profession weren’t too different than his own. However, given this victory, this upgrading in caste, and Joe Mauser would be in a position to retire.

The door opened and shut behind him and he half turned.

Nadine Haer, evidently still caught up in the hot words between herself and her relatives, glared at him. All of which stressed the beauty he had noticed the day before. She was an almost unbelievably pretty girl, particularly when flushed with anger.

It occurred to him with a blowlike suddenness that, if his caste was raised to Upper, he would be in a position to woo such as Nadine Haer.

He looked into her furious face and said, “I was intrigued, Miss Haer, with what you had to say, and I’d like to discuss some of your points. I wonder if I could have the pleasure of your company at some nearby refreshment—”

“My, how formal an invitation, captain. I suppose you had in mind sitting and flipping back a few trank pills.”

Joe looked at her. “I don’t believe I’ve had a trank in the past twenty years, Miss Haer. Even as a boy, I didn’t particularly take to having my senses dulled with drug-induced pleasure.”

Some of her fury was abating, but she was still critical of the professional mercenary. Her eyes went up and down his uniform in scorn. “You seem to make pretenses of being cultivated, captain. Then why your chosen profession?”

He’d had the answer to that for long years. He said now, simply, “I told you I was born a Lower. Given that, little counts until I fight my way out of it. Had I been born in a feudalist society, I would have attempted to batter myself into the nobility. Under classical capitalism, I would have done my utmost to accumulate a fortune, enough to reach an effective position in society. Now, under People’s Capitalism …”

She snorted, “Industrial Feudalism would be the better term.”

“… I realize I can’t even start to fulfill myself until I am a member of the Upper caste.”

Her eyes had narrowed, and the anger was largely gone. “But you chose the military field in which to better yourself?”

“Government propaganda to the contrary, it is practically impossible to raise yourself in other fields. I didn’t build this world, possibly I don’t even approve of it, but since I’m in it I have no recourse but to follow its rules.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Why not try to change the rules?”

Joe blinked at her.

Nadine Haer said, “Let’s look up that refreshment you were talking about. In fact, there’s a small coffee bar around the corner where it’d be possible for one of Baron Haer’s brood to have a cup with one of her father’s officers of Middle caste.”

VI

The following morning, hands on the pillow beneath his head, Joe Mauser stared up at the ceiling of his room and rehashed his session with Nadine Haer. It hadn’t taken him five minutes to come to the conclusion that he was in love with the girl, but it had taken him the rest of the evening to keep himself under rein and not let the fact get through to her.

He wanted to talk about the way her mouth tucked in at the corners, but she was hot on the evolution of society. He would have liked to have kissed that impossibly perfectly shaped ear of hers, but she was all for exploring the reasons why man had reached his present impasse. Joe was for holding hands, and staring into each other’s eyes, she was for delving into the differences between the West-world and the Sov-world and the possibility of resolving them.

Of course, to keep her company at all it had been necessary to suppress his own desires and to go along. It obviously had never occurred to her that a Middle might have romantic ideas involving Nadine Haer. It had simply not occurred to her, no matter the radical teachings she advocated.

Most of their world was predictable from what had gone before. In spite of popular fable to the contrary, the division between classes had become increasingly clear. Among other things, tax systems were such that it became all but impossible for a citizen born poor to accumulate a fortune. Through ability he might rise to the point of earning fabulous sums—and wind up in debt to the tax collector. A great inventor, a great artist, had little chance of breaking into the domain of what finally became the small percentage of the population now known as Uppers. Then, too, the rising cost of a really good education became such that few other than those born into the Middle or Upper castes could afford the best of schools. Castes tended to perpetuate themselves.

Politically, the nation had fallen increasingly deeper into the two-party system, both parties of which were tightly controlled by the same group of Uppers. Elections had become a farce, a great national holiday in which stereotyped patriotic speeches, pretenses of unity between all castes, picnics, beer busts and trank binges predominated for one day.

Economically, too, the augurs had been there. Production of the basics had become so profuse that poverty in the old sense of the word had become nonsensical. There was an abundance of the necessities of life for all. Social security, socialized medicine, unending unemployment insurance, old age pensions, pensions for veterans, for widows and children, for the unfit, pensions and doles for this, that and the other, had doubled, and doubled again, until everyone had security for life. The Uppers, true enough, had opulence far beyond that known by the Middles and lived like Gods compared to the Lowers. But all had security. They had agreed, thus far, Joe and Nadine. But then had come debate.

“Then why,” Joe had asked her, “haven’t we achieved what your brother called it? Why isn’t this Utopia? Isn’t it what man has been yearning for, down through the ages? Where did the wheel come off? What happened to the dream?”

Nadine had frowned at him—beautifully, he thought. “It’s not the first time man has found abundance in a society, though never to this degree. The Incas had it, for instance.”

“I don’t know much about them,” Joe admitted. “An early form of communism with a sort of military-priesthood at the top.”

She had nodded, her face serious, as always. “And for themselves, the Romans more or less had it—at the expense of the nations they conquered, of course.”

“And—” Joe prodded.

“And in these examples the same thing developed. Society ossified. Joe,” she said, using his first name for the first time, and in a manner that set off a new countdown in his blood, “a ruling caste and a socioeconomic system perpetuates itself, just so long as it ever can. No matter what damage it may do to society as a whole, it perpetuates itself even to the point of complete destruction of everything.

“Remember Hitler? Adolf the Aryan and his Thousand Year Reich? When it became obvious he had failed, and the only thing that could result from continued resistance would be destruction of Germany’s cities and millions of her people, did he and his clique resign or surrender? Certainly not. They attempted to bring down the whole German structure in a Götterdammerung.”

Nadine Haer was deep into her theme, her eyes flashing her conviction. “A socioeconomic system reacts like a living organism. It attempts to live on, indefinitely, agonizingly, no matter how antiquated it might have become. The Roman politico-economic system continued for centuries after it should have been replaced. Such reformers as the Gracchus brothers were assassinated or thrust aside so that the entrenched elements could perpetuate themselves, and when Rome finally fell, darkness descended for a thousand years on Western progress.”

Joe had never gone this far in his thoughts. He said now, somewhat uncomfortably, “Well, what would replace what we have now? If you took power from you Uppers, who could direct the country? The Lowers? That’s not even funny. Take away their fracases and their trank pills and they’d go berserk. They don’t want anything else.”

Her mouth worked. “Admittedly, we’ve already allowed things to deteriorate much too far. We should have done something long ago. I’m not sure I know the answer. All I know is that in order to maintain the status quo, we’re not utilizing the efforts of more than a fraction of our people. Nine out of ten of us spend our lives sitting before the Telly, sucking tranks. Meanwhile, the motivation for continued progress seems to have withered away. Our Upper political circles are afraid some seemingly minor change might avalanche, so more and more we lean upon the old way of doing things.”

Joe had put up mild argument. “I’ve heard the case made that the Lowers are fools and the reason our present socioeconomic system makes it so difficult to rise from Lower to Upper is that you cannot make a fool understand he is one. You can only make him angry. If some, who are not fools, are allowed to advance from Lower to Upper, the vast mass who are fools will be angry because they are not allowed to. That’s why the Military Category is made a channel of advance. To take that road, a man gives up his security and he’ll die if he’s a fool.”

Nadine had been scornful. “That reminds me of the old contention by racial segregationalists that the Negroes smelled bad. First they put them in a position where they had insufficient bathing facilities, their diet inadequate, and their teeth uncared for, and then protested that they couldn’t be associated with because of their odor. Today, we are born within our castes. If an Upper is inadequate, he nevertheless remains an Upper. An accident of birth makes him an aristocrat; environment, family, training, education, friends, traditions and laws maintain him in that position. But a Lower who potentially has the greatest of value to society, is born handicapped and he’s hard put not to wind up before a Telly, in a mental daze from trank. Sure he’s a fool, he’s never been allowed to develop himself.”

Yes, Joe reflected now, it had been quite an evening. In a life of more than thirty years devoted to rebellion, he had never met anyone so outspoken as Nadine Haer, nor one who had thought it through as far as she had.

He grunted. His own revolt was against the level at which he had found himself in society, not the structure of society itself. His whole raison d’être was to lift himself to Upper status. It came as a shock to him to find a person he admired who had been born into Upper caste, desirous of tearing the whole system down.

His thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and the face of Max Mainz grinning in at him. Joe was mildly surprised at his orderly not knocking before opening the door. Max evidently had a lot to learn.

The little man blurted, “Come on, Joe. Let’s go out on the town!”

“Joe?” Joe Mauser raised himself to one elbow and stared at the other. “Leaving aside the merits of your suggestion for the moment, do you think you should address an officer by his first name?”

Max Mainz came fully into the bedroom, his grin still wider. “You forgot! It’s election day!”

“Oh.” Joe Mauser relaxed into his pillow. “So it is. No duty for today, eh?”

“No duty for anybody,” Max crowed. “What’d you say we go into town and have a few drinks in one of the Upper bars?”

Joe grunted, but began to arise. “What’ll that accomplish? On election day, most of the Uppers get done up in their oldest clothes and go slumming down in the Lower quarters.”

Max wasn’t to be put off so easily. “Well, wherever we go, let’s get going. Zen! I’ll bet this town is full of fracas buffs from as far as Philly. And on election day, to boot. Wouldn’t it be something if I found me a real fracas fan, some Upper-Upper dame?”

Joe laughed at him, even as he headed for the bathroom. As a matter of fact, he rather liked the idea of going into town for the show. “Max,” he said over his shoulder, “you’re in for a big disappointment. They’re all the same. Upper, Lower, or Middle.”

“Yeah?” Max grinned back at him. “Well, I’d like the pleasure of finding out if that’s true by personal experience.”

VII

In a far away past, Kingston had once been the capital of the United States. For a short time, when Washington’s men were in flight after the debacle of their defeat in New York City, the government of the United Colonies had held session in this Hudson River town. It had been its one moment of historic glory, and afterward Kingston had slipped back into being a minor city on the edge of the Catskills, approximately halfway between New York and Albany.

Of most recent years, it had become one of the two recruiting centers which bordered the Catskill Military Reservation, which in turn was one of the score or so population-cleared areas throughout the continent where rival corporations or unions could meet and settle their differences in combat—given permission of the Military Category Department of the government. And permission was becoming ever easier to acquire.

It had slowly evolved, the resorting to trial by combat to settle disputes between competing corporations, disputes between corporations and unions, disputes between unions over jurisdiction. Slowly, but predictably. Since the earliest days of the first industrial revolution, conflict between these elements had often broken into violence, sometimes on a scale comparable to minor warfare. An early example was the union organizing in Colorado when armed elements of the Western Federation of Miners shot it out with similarly armed “detectives” hired by the mine owners, and later with the troops of an unsympathetic State government.

By the middle of the Twentieth-Century, unions had become one of the biggest businesses in the country, and by this time a considerable amount of the industrial conflict had shifted to fights between them for jurisdiction over dues-paying members. Battles on the waterfront, assassination and counter-assassination by gun-toting goon squads dominated by gangsters, industrial sabotage, frays between pickets and scabs—all were common occurrences.

But it was the coming of Telly which increasingly brought such conflicts literally before the public eye. Zealous reporters made ever greater effort to bring the actual mayhem before the eyes of their viewers, and never were their efforts more highly rewarded.

A society based upon private endeavor is as jealous of a vacuum as is Mother Nature. Give a desire that can be filled profitably, and the means can somehow be found to realize it.

At one point in the nation’s history, the railroad lords had dominated the economy, later it became the petroleum princes of Texas and elsewhere, but toward the end of the Twentieth Century the communications industries slowly gained prominence. Nothing was more greatly in demand than feeding the insatiable maw of the Telly fan, nothing, ultimately, became more profitable.

And increasingly, the Telly buff endorsed the more sadistic of the fictional and nonfictional programs presented him. Even in the earliest years of the industry, producers had found that murder and mayhem, war and frontier gunfights, took precedence over less gruesome subjects. Music was drowned out by gunfire, the dance replaced by the shuffle of cowboy and rustler advancing down a dusty street toward each other, their fingertips brushing the grips of their six-shooters, the comedian’s banter fell away before the chatter of the gangster’s tommy gun.

And increasing realism was demanded. The Telly reporter on the scene of a police arrest, preferably a murder, a rumble between rival gangs of juvenile delinquents, a longshoreman’s fray in which scores of workers were hospitalized. When attempts were made to suppress such broadcasts, the howl of freedom of speech and the press went up, financed by tycoons clever enough to realize the value of the subjects they covered so adequately.

The vacuum was there, the desire, the need. Bread the populace had. Trank was available to all. But the need was for the circus, the vicious, sadistic circus, and bit by bit, over the years and decades, the way was found to circumvent the country’s laws and traditions to supply the need.

Aye, a way is always found. The final Universal Disarmament Pact which had totally banned all weapons invented since the year 1900 and provided for complete inspection, had not ended the fear of war. And thus there was excuse to give the would-be soldier, the potential defender of the country in some future inter-nation conflict, practical experience.

Slowly tolerance grew to allow union and corporation to fight it out, hiring the services of mercenaries. Slowly rules grew up to govern such fracases. Slowly a department of government evolved. The Military Category became as acceptable as the next, and the mercenary a valued, even idolized, member of society. And the field became practically the only one in which a status quo orientated socioeconomic system allowed for advancement in caste.

Joe Mauser and Max Mainz strolled the streets of Kingston in an extreme of atmosphere seldom to be enjoyed. Not only was the advent of a divisional magnitude fracas only a short period away, but the freedom of an election day as well. The carnival, the Mardi Gras, the fête, the fiesta, of an election. Election Day, when each aristocrat became only a man, and each man an aristocrat, free of all society’s artificially conceived, caste-perpetuating rituals and taboos.

Carnival! The day was young, but already the streets were thick with revelers, with dancers, with drunks. A score of bands played, youngsters in particular ran about attired in costume, there were barbeques and flowing beer kegs. On the outskirts of town were roller coasters and ferris wheels, fun houses and drive-it-yourself miniature cars. Carnival!

Max said happily, “You drink, Joe? Or maybe you like trank, better.” Obviously, he loved to roll the other’s first name over his tongue.

Joe wondered in amusement how often the little man had found occasion to call a Mid-Middle by his first name. “No trank,” he said. “Alcohol for me. Mankind’s old faithful.”

“Well,” Max debated, “get high on alcohol and bingo, a hangover in the morning. But trank? You wake up with a smile.”

“And a desire for more trank to keep the mood going,” Joe said wryly. “Get smashed on alcohol and you suffer for it eventually.”

“Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” Max argued happily. “So let’s start off with a couple of quick ones in this here Upper joint.”

Joe looked the place over. He didn’t know Kingston overly well, but by the appearance of the building and by the entry, it was probably the swankiest hotel in town. He shrugged. So far as he was concerned, he appreciated the greater comfort and the better service of his Middle caste bars, restaurants and hotels over the ones he had patronized when a Lower. However, his wasn’t an immediate desire to push into the preserves of the Uppers; not until he had won rightfully to their status.

But on this occasion the little fellow wanted to drink at an Upper bar. Very well, it was election day. “Let’s go,” he said to Max.

In the uniform of a Rank Captain of the Military Category, there was little to indicate caste level, and ordinarily given the correct air of nonchalance, Joe Mauser, in uniform, would have been able to go anywhere, without so much as a raised eyebrow—until he had presented his credit card, which indicated his caste. But Max was another thing. He was obviously a Lower, and probably a Low-Lower at that.

But space was made for them at a bar packed with election day celebrants, politicians involved in the day’s speeches and voting, higher ranking officers of the Haer forces, having a day off, and various Uppers of both sexes in town for the excitement of the fracas to come.

“Beer,” Joe said to the bartender.

“Not me,” Max crowed. “Champagne. Only the best for Max Mainz. Give me some of that champagne liquor I always been hearing about.”

Joe had the bill credited to his card, and they took their bottles and glasses to a newly abandoned table. The place was too packed to have awaited the services of a waiter, although poor Max probably would have loved such attention. Lower, and even Middle bars and restaurants were universally automated, and the waiter or waitress a thing of yesteryear.

Max looked about the room in awe. “This is living,” he announced. “I wonder what they’d say if I went to the desk and ordered a room.”

Joe Mauser wasn’t as highly impressed as his batman. In fact, he’d often stayed in the larger cities, in hostelries as sumptuous as this, though only of Middle status. Kingston’s best was on the mediocre side. He said, “They’d probably tell you they were filled up.”

Max was indignant. “Because I’m a Lower? It’s election day.”

Joe said mildly, “Because they probably are filled up. But for that matter, they might brush you off. It’s not as though an Upper went to a Middle or Lower hotel and asked for accommodations. But what do you want, justice?”

Max dropped it. He looked down into his glass. “Hey,” he complained, “what’d they give me? This stuff tastes like weak hard cider.”

Joe laughed. “What did you think it was going to taste like?”

Max took another unhappy sip. “I thought it was supposed to be the best drink you could buy. You know, really strong. It’s just bubbly wine.”

A voice said, dryly, “Your companion doesn’t seem to be a connoisseur of the French vintages, captain.”

Joe turned. Balt Haer and two others occupied the table next to them.

Joe chuckled amiably and said, “Truthfully, it was my own reaction, the first time I drank sparkling wine, sir.”

“Indeed,” Haer said. “I can imagine.” He fluttered a hand. “Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren of Marshal Cogswell’s staff, and Colonel Lajos Arpàd, of Budapest—Captain Joseph Mauser.”

Joe Mauser came to his feet and clicked his heels, bowing from the waist in approved military protocol. The other two didn’t bother to come to their feet, but did condescend to shake hands.

The Sov officer said, disinterestedly, “Ah yes, this is one of your fabulous customs, isn’t it? On an election day, everyone is quite entitled to go anywhere. Anywhere at all. And, ah”—he made a sound somewhat like a giggle—“associate with anyone at all.”

Joe Mauser resumed his seat then looked at him. “That is correct. A custom going back to the early history of the country when all men were considered equal in such matters as law and civil rights. Gentlemen, may I present Rank Private Max Mainz, my orderly.”

Balt Haer, who had obviously already had a few, looked at him dourly. “You can carry these things to the point of the ludicrous, captain. For a man with your ambitions, I’m surprised.”

The infantry officer the younger Haer had introduced as Lieutenant Colonel Warren, of Stonewall Cogswell’s staff, said idly, “Ambitions? Does the captain have ambitions? How in Zen can a Middle have ambitions, Balt?” He stared at Joe Mauser superciliously, but then scowled. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Joe said evenly, “Yes, sir. Five years ago we were both with the marshal in a fracas on the Little Big Horn reservation. Your company was pinned down on a knoll by a battery of field artillery. The Marshal sent me to your relief. We sneaked in, up an arroyo, and were able to get most of you out.”

“I was wounded,” the colonel said, the superciliousness gone and a strange element in his voice above the alcohol there earlier.

Joe Mauser said nothing to that. Max Mainz was stirring unhappily now. These officers were talking above his head, even as they ignored him. He had a vague feeling that he was being defended by Captain Mauser, but he didn’t know how, or why.

Balt Haer had been occupied in shouting fresh drinks. Now he turned back to the table. “Well, colonel, it’s all very secret, these ambitions of Captain Mauser. I understand he’s been an aide de camp to Marshal Cogswell in the past, but the marshal will be distressed to learn that on this occasion Captain Mauser has a secret by which he expects to rout your forces. Indeed, yes, the captain is quite the strategist.” Balt Haer laughed abruptly. “And what good will this do the captain? Why on my father’s word, if he succeeds, all efforts will be made to make the captain a caste equal of ours. Not just on election day, mind you, but all three hundred sixty-five days of the year.”

Joe Mauser was on his feet, his face expressionless. He said, “Shall we go, Max? Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. Colonel Arpàd, a privilege to meet you. Colonel Warren, a pleasure to renew acquaintance.” Joe Mauser turned and, trailed by his orderly, left.

Lieutenant Colonel Warren, pale, was on his feet too.

Balt Haer was chuckling. “Sit down, Paul. Sit down. Not important enough to be angry about. The man’s a clod.”

Warren looked at him bleakly. “I wasn’t angry, Balt. The last time I saw Captain Mauser I was slung over his shoulder. He carried, tugged and dragged me some two miles through enemy fire.”

Balt Haer carried it off with a shrug. “Well, that’s his profession. Category Military. A mercenary for hire. I assume he received his pay.”

“He could have left me. Common sense dictated that he leave me.”

Balt Haer was annoyed. “Well, then we see what I’ve contended all along. The ambitious captain doesn’t have common sense.”

Colonel Paul Warren shook his head. “You’re wrong there. Common sense Joseph Mauser has. Considerable ability, he has. He’s one of the best combat men in the field. But I’d hate to serve under him.”

The Hungarian was interested. “But why?”

“Because he doesn’t have luck, and in the dill you need luck.” Warren grunted in sour memory. “Had the Telly cameras been focused on Joe Mauser, there at the Little Big Horn, he would have been a month long sensation to the Telly buffs, with all that means.” He grunted again. “There wasn’t a Telly team within a mile.”

“The captain probably didn’t realize that,” Balt Haer snorted. “Otherwise his heroics would have been modified.”

Warren flushed his displeasure and sat down. He said, “Possibly we should discuss the business before us. If your father is in agreement, the fracas can begin in three days.” He turned to the representative of the Sov-world. “You have satisfied yourselves that neither force is violating the Disarmament Pact?”

Lajos Arpàd nodded. “We will wish to have observers on the field, itself, of course. But preliminary observation has been satisfactory.” He had been interested in the play between these two and the lower caste officer. He said now, “Pardon me. As you know, this is my first visit to the, uh West. I am fascinated. If I understand what just transpired, our Captain Mauser is a capable junior officer ambitious to rise in rank and status in your society.” He looked at Balt Haer. “Why are you opposed to his so rising?”

Young Haer was testy about the whole matter. “Of what purpose is an Upper caste if every Tom, Dick and Harry enters it at will?”

Warren looked at the door through which Joe and Max had exited from the cocktail lounge. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, and held his peace.

The Hungarian said, looking from one of them to the other, “In the Sov-world we seek out such ambitious persons and utilize their abilities.”

Lieutenant Colonel Warren laughed abruptly. “So do we here theoretically. We are free, whatever that means. However,” he added sarcastically, “it does help to have good schooling, good connections, relatives in positions of prominence, abundant shares of good stocks, that sort of thing. And these one is born with, in this free world of ours, Colonel Arpàd.”

The Sov military observer clucked his tongue. “An indication of a declining society.”

Balt Haer turned on him. “And is it any different in your world?” he said sneeringly. “Is it merely coincidence that the best positions in the Sov-world are held by Party members, and that it is all but impossible for anyone not born of Party member parents to become one? Are not the best schools filled with the children of Party members? Are not only Party members allowed to keep servants? And isn’t it so that—”

Lieutenant Colonel Warren said, “Gentlemen, let us not start World War Three at this spot, at this late occasion.”

VIII

Baron Malcolm Haer’s field headquarters were in the ruins of a farmhouse in a town once known as Bearsville. His forces, and those of Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, were on the march but as yet their main bodies had not come in contact. Save for skirmishes between cavalry units, there had been no action. The ruined farmhouse had been a victim of an earlier fracas in this reservation which had seen in its comparatively brief time more combat than Belgium, that cockpit of Europe.

There was a sheen of oily moisture on the Baron’s bulletlike head and his officers weren’t particularly happy about it. Malcolm Haer characteristically went into a fracas with confidence, an aggressive confidence so strong that it often carried the day. In battles past, it had become a tradition that Haer’s morale was worth a thousand men; the energy he expended was the despair of his doctors who had been warning him for a decade. But now, something was missing.

A forefinger traced over the military chart before them. “So far as we know, Marshal Cogswell has established his command here in Saugerties. Anybody have any suggestions as to why?”

A major grumbled, “It doesn’t make much sense, sir. You know the marshal. It’s probably a fake. If we have any superiority at all, it’s our artillery.”

“And the old fox wouldn’t want to join the issue on the plains, down near the river,” a colonel added. “It’s his game to keep up into the mountains with his cavalry and light infantry. He’s got Jack Alshuler’s cavalry. Most experienced veterans in the field.”

“I know who he’s got,” Haer growled in irritation. “Stop reminding me. Where in the devil is Balt?”

“Coming up, sir,” Balt Haer said. He had entered only moments ago, a sheaf of signals in his hand. “Why didn’t they make that date 1910, instead of 1900? With radio, we could speed up communications—”

His father interrupted testily. “Better still, why not make it 1945? Then we could speed up to the point where we could polish ourselves off. What have you got?”

Balt Haer said, his face in sulk, “Some of my lads based in West Hurley report concentrations of Cogswell’s infantry and artillery near Ashokan reservoir.”

“Nonsense,” somebody snapped. “We’d have him.”

The younger Haer slapped his swagger stick against his bare leg and kilt. “Possibly it’s a feint,” he admitted.

“How much were they able to observe?” his father demanded.

“Not much. They were driven off by a superior squadron. The Hovercraft forces are screening everything they do with heavy cavalry units. I told you we needed more—”

“I don’t need your advice at this point,” his father snapped. The older Haer went back to the map, scowling still. “I don’t see what he expects to do, working out of Saugerties.”

A voice behind them said, “Sir, may I have your permission—”

Half of the assembled officers turned to look at the newcomer.

Balt Haer snapped, “Captain Mauser. Why aren’t you with your lads?”

“Turned them over to my second in command, sir,” Joe Mauser said. He was standing to attention, looking at Baron Haer.

The Baron glowered at him. “What is the meaning of this cavalier intrusion, captain? Certainly, you must have your orders. Are you under the illusion that you are part of my staff?”

“No, sir,” Joe Mauser clipped. “I came to report that I am ready to put into execution—”

“The great plan!” Balt Haer ejaculated. He laughed brittlely. “The second day of the fracas, and nobody really knows where old Cogswell is, or what he plans to do. And here comes the captain with his secret plan.”

Joe looked at him. He said, evenly, “Yes, sir.”

The Baron’s face had gone dark, as much in anger at his son, as with the upstart cavalry captain. He began to growl ominously, “Captain Mauser, rejoin your command and obey your orders.”

Joe Mauser’s facial expression indicated that he had expected this. He kept his voice level however, even under the chuckling scorn of his immediate superior, Balt Haer.

He said, “Sir, I will be able to tell you where Marshal Cogswell is, and every troop at his command.”

For a moment there was silence, all but a stunned silence. Then the major who had suggested the Saugerties field command headquarters were a fake, blurted a curt laugh.

“This is no time for levity, captain,” Balt Haer clipped. “Get to your command.”

A colonel said, “Just a moment, sir. I’ve fought with Joe Mauser before. He’s a good man.”

“Not that good,” someone else huffed. “Does he claim to be clairvoyant?”

Joe Mauser said flatly. “Have a semaphore man posted here this afternoon. I’ll be back at that time.” He spun on his heel and left them.

Balt Haer rushed to the door after him, shouting, “Captain! That’s an order! Return—”

But the other was obviously gone. Enraged, the younger Haer began to shrill commands to a noncom in the way of organizing a pursuit.

His father called wearily, “That’s enough, Balt. Mauser has evidently taken leave of his senses. We made the initial mistake of encouraging this idea he had, or thought he had.”

“We?” his son snapped in return. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“All right, all right. Let’s tighten up, here. Now, what other information have your scouts come up with?”

IX

At the Kingston airport, Joe Mauser rejoined Max Mainz, his face drawn now.

“Everything go all right?” the little man said anxiously.

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I still couldn’t tell them the story. Old Cogswell is as quick as a coyote. We pull this little caper today, and he’ll be ready to meet it tomorrow.”

He looked at the two-place sailplane which sat on the tarmac. “Everything all set?”

“Far as I know,” Max said. He looked at the motorless aircraft. “You sure you been checked out on these things, captain?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “I bought this particular soaring glider more than a year ago, and I’ve put almost a thousand hours in it. Now, where’s the pilot of that light plane?”

A single-engined sports plane was attached to the glider by a fifty-foot nylon rope. Even as Joe spoke, a youngster poked his head from the plane’s window and grinned back at them. “Ready?” he yelled.

“Come on, Max,” Joe said. “Let’s pull the canopy off this thing. We don’t want it in the way while you’re semaphoring.”

A figure was approaching them from the Administration Building. A uniformed man, and somehow familiar.

“A moment, Captain Mauser!”

Joe placed him now. The Sov-world representative he’d met at Balt Haer’s table in the Upper bar a couple of days ago. What was his name? Colonel Arpàd. Lajos Arpàd.

The Hungarian approached and looked at the sailplane in interest. “As a representative of my government, a military attaché checking upon possible violations of the Universal Disarmament Pact, may I request what you are about to do, captain?”

Joe Mauser looked at him emptily. “How did you know I was here and what I was doing?”

The Sov colonel smiled gently. “It was by suggestion of Marshal Cogswell. He is a great man for detail. It disturbed him that an … what did he call it? … an old pro like yourself should join with Vacuum Tube Transport, rather than Continental Hovercraft. He didn’t think it made sense and suggested that possibly you had in mind some scheme that would utilize weapons of a post-1900 period in your efforts to bring success to Baron Haer’s forces. So I have investigated, Captain Mauser.”

“And the marshal knows about this sailplane?” Joe Mauser’s face was blank.

“I didn’t say that. So far as I know, he doesn’t.”

“Then, Colonel Arpàd, with your permission, I’ll be taking off.”

The Hungarian said, “With what end in mind, captain?”

“Using this glider as a reconnaissance aircraft.”

“Captain, I warn you! Aircraft were not in use in warfare until—”

But Joe Mauser cut him off, equally briskly. “Aircraft were first used in combat by Pancho Villa’s forces a few years previous to World War I. They were also used in the Balkan Wars of about the same period. But those were powered craft. This is a glider, invented and in use before the year 1900 and hence open to utilization.”

The Hungarian clipped, “But the Wright Brothers didn’t fly even gliders until—”

Joe looked him full in the face. “But you of the Sov-world do not admit that the Wrights were the first to fly, do you?”

The Hungarian closed his mouth, abruptly.

Joe said evenly, “But even if Ivan Ivanovitch, or whatever you claim his name was, didn’t invent flight of heavier than air craft, the glider was flown variously before 1900, including Otto Lilienthal in the 1890s, and was designed as far back as Leonardo da Vinci.”

The Sov-world colonel stared at him for a long moment, then gave an inane giggle. He stepped back and flicked Joe Mauser a salute. “Very well, captain. As a matter of routine, I shall report this use of an aircraft for reconnaissance purposes, and undoubtedly a commission will meet to investigate the propriety of the departure. Meanwhile, good luck!”

Joe returned the salute and swung a leg over the cockpit’s side. Max was already in the front seat, his semaphore flags, maps and binoculars on his lap. He had been staring in dismay at the Sov officer, now was relieved that Joe had evidently pulled it off.

Joe waved to the plane ahead. Two mechanics had come up to steady the wings for the initial ten or fifteen feet of the motorless craft’s passage over the ground behind the towing craft.

Joe said to Max, “did you explain to the pilot that under no circumstances was he to pass over the line of the military reservation, that we’d cut before we reached that point?”

“Yes, sir,” Max said nervously. He’d flown before, on the commercial lines, but he’d never been in a glider.

They began lurching across the field, slowly, then gathering speed. And as the sailplane took speed, it took grace. After it had been pulled a hundred feet or so, Joe eased back the stick and it slipped gently into the air, four or five feet off the ground. The towing airplane was still taxiing, but with its tow airborne it picked up speed quickly. Another two hundred feet and it, too, was in the air and beginning to climb. The glider behind held it to a speed of sixty miles or so.

At ten thousand feet, the plane leveled off and the pilot’s head swiveled to look back at them. Joe Mauser waved to him and dropped the release lever which ejected the nylon rope from the glider’s nose. The plane dove away, trailing the rope behind it. Joe knew that the plane pilot would later drop it over the airport where it could easily be retrieved.

In the direction of Mount Overlook he could see cumulus clouds and the dark turbulence which meant strong updraft. He headed in that direction.

Except for the whistling of wind, there is complete silence in a soaring glider. Max Mainz began to call back to his superior, was taken back by the volume, and dropped his voice. He said, “Look, captain. What keeps it up?”

Joe grinned. He liked the buoyance of glider flying, the nearest approach of man to the bird, and thus far everything was going well. He told Max, “An airplane plows through the air currents, a glider rides on top of them.”

“Yeah, but suppose the current is going down?”

“Then we avoid it. This sailplane only has a gliding angle ratio of one to twenty-five, but it’s a workhorse with a payload of some four hundred pounds. A really high performance glider can have a ratio of as much as one to forty.”

Joe had found a strong updraft where a wind ran up the side of a mountain. He banked, went into a circling turn. The gauge indicated they were climbing at the rate of eight meters per second, nearly fifteen hundred feet a minute.

Max hadn’t got the rundown on the theory of the glider. That was obvious in his expression.

Joe Mauser, even while searching the ground below keenly, went into it further. “A wind up against a mountain will give an updraft, storm clouds will, even a newly plowed field in a bright sun. So you go from one of these to the next.”

“Yeah, great, but when you’re between,” Max protested.

“Then, when you have a one to twenty-five ratio, you go twenty-five feet forward for each one you drop. If you started a mile high, you could go twenty-five miles before you touched ground.” He cut himself off quickly. “Look, what’s that, down there? Get your glasses on it.”

Max caught his excitement. His binoculars were tight to his eyes. “Sojers. Cavalry. They sure ain’t ours. They must be Hovercraft lads. And look, field artillery.”

Joe Mauser was piloting with his left hand, his right smoothing out a chart on his lap. He growled, “What are they doing there? That’s at least a full brigade of cavalry. Here, let me have those glasses.”

With his knees gripping the stick, he went into a slow circle, as he stared down at the column of men. “Jack Alshuler,” he whistled in surprise. “The marshal’s crack heavy cavalry. And several batteries of artillery.” He swung the glasses in a wider scope and the whistle turned into a hiss of comprehension. “They’re doing a complete circle of the reservation. They’re going to hit the Baron from the direction of Phoenicia.”

X

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell directed his old fashioned telescope in the direction his chief of staff indicated.

“What is it?” he grunted.

“It’s an airplane, sir.”

“Over a military reservation with a fracas in progress?”

“Yes, sir.” The other put his glasses back on the circling object. “Then what is it, sir? Certainly not a free balloon.”

“Balloons,” the marshal snorted, as though to himself. “Legal to use. The Union forces had them toward the end of the Civil War. But practically useless in a fracas of movement.”

They were standing before the former resort hotel which housed the marshal’s headquarters. Other staff members were streaming from the building, and one of the ever-present Telly reporting crews were hurriedly setting up cameras.

The marshal turned and barked, “Does anybody know what in Zen that confounded thing, circling up there, is?”

Baron Zwerdling, the aging Category Transport magnate, head of Continental Hovercraft, hobbled onto the wooden veranda and stared with the others. “An airplane,” he croaked. “Haer’s gone too far this time. Too far, too far. This will strip him. Strip him, understand.” Then he added, “Why doesn’t it make any noise?”

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren stood next to his commanding officer. “It looks like a glider, sir.”

Cogswell glowered at him. “A what?”

“A glider, sir. It’s a sport not particularly popular these days.”

“What keeps it up, confound it?”

Paul Warren looked at him. “The same thing that keeps a hawk up, an albatross, a gull—”

“A vulture, you mean,” Cogswell snarled. He watched it for another long moment, his face working. He whirled on his chief of artillery. “Jed, can you bring that thing down?”

The other had been viewing the craft through field binoculars, his face as shocked as the rest of them. Now he faced his chief, and lowered the glasses, shaking his head. “Not with the artillery of pre-1900. No, sir.”

“What can you do?” Cogswell barked.

The artillery man was shaking his head. “We could mount some Maxim guns on wagon wheels, or something. Keep him from coming low.”

“He doesn’t have to come low,” Cogswell growled unhappily. He spun on Lieutenant Colonel Warren again. “When were they invented?” He jerked his thumb upward. “Those things.”

Warren was twisting his face in memory. “Some time about the turn of the century.”

“How long can the things stay up?”

Warren took in the surrounding mountainous countryside. “Indefinitely, sir. A single pilot, as long as he is physically able to operate. If there are two pilots up there to relieve each other, they could stay until food and water ran out.”

“How much weight do they carry?”

“I’m not sure. One that size, certainly enough for two men and any equipment they’d need. Say, five hundred pounds.”

Cogswell had his telescope glued to his eyes again, he muttered under his breath, “Five hundred pounds! They could even unload dynamite over our horses. Stampede them all over the reservation.”

“What’s going on?” Baron Zwerdling shrilled. “What’s going on Marshal Cogswell?”

Cogswell ignored him. He watched the circling, circling craft for a full five minutes, breathing deeply. Then he lowered his glass and swept the assembled officers of his staff with an indignant glare. “Ten Eyck!” he grunted.

An infantry colonel came to attention. “Yes, sir.”

Cogswell said heavily, deliberately. “Under a white flag. A dispatch to Baron Haer. My compliments and request for his terms. While you’re at it, my compliments also to Captain Joseph Mauser.”

Zwerdling was bug-eyeing him. “Terms!” he rasped.

The marshal turned to him. “Yes, sir. Face reality. We’re in the dill. I suggest you sue for terms as short of complete capitulation as you can make them.”

“You call yourself a soldier—!” the transport tycoon began to shrill.

“Yes, sir,” Cogswell snapped. “A soldier, not a butcher of the lads under me.” He called to the Telly reporter who was getting as much of this as he could. “Mr. Soligen, isn’t it?”

The reporter scurried forward, flicking signals to his cameramen for proper coverage. “Yes, sir. Freddy Soligen, marshal. Could you tell the Telly fans what this is all about, Marshal Cogswell? Folks, you all know the famous marshal. Marshal Stonewall Cogswell, who hasn’t lost a fracas in nearly ten years, now commanding the forces of Continental Hovercraft.”

“I’m losing one now,” Cogswell said grimly. “Vacuum Tube Transport has pulled a gimmick out of the hat and things have pickled for us. It will be debated before the Military Category Department, of course, and undoubtedly the Sov-world military attachés will have things to say. But as it appears now, the fracas as we have known it, has been revolutionized.”

“Revolutionized?” Even the Telly reporter was flabbergasted. “You mean by that thing?” He pointed upward, and the lenses of the cameras followed his finger.

“Yes,” Cogswell growled unhappily. “Do all of you need a blueprint? Do you think I can fight a fracas with that thing dangling above me, throughout the day hours? Do you understand the importance of reconnaissance in warfare?” His eyes glowered. “Do you think Napoleon would have lost Waterloo if he’d had the advantage of perfect reconnaissance such as that thing can deliver? Do you think Lee would have lost Gettysburg? Don’t be ridiculous.” He spun on Baron Zwerdling, who was stuttering his complete confusion.

“As it stands, Baron Haer knows every troop dispensation I make. All I know of his movements are from my cavalry scouts. I repeat, I am no butcher, sir. I will gladly cross swords with Baron Haer another day, when I, too, have … what did you call the confounded things, Paul?”

“Gliders,” Lieutenant Colonel Warren said.

XI

Major Joseph Mauser, now attired in his best off-duty Category Military uniform, spoke his credentials to the receptionist. “I have no definite appointment, but I am sure the Baron will see me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” The receptionist did the things that receptionists do, then looked up at him again. “Right through that door, major.”

Joe Mauser gave the door a quick double rap and then entered before waiting an answer.

Balt Haer, in mufti, was standing at a far window, a drink in his hand, rather than his customary swagger stick. Nadine Haer sat in an easy-chair. The girl Joe Mauser loved had been crying.

Joe Mauser, suppressing his frown, made with the usual amenities.

Balt Haer without answering them, finished his drink in a gulp and stared at the newcomer. The old stare, the aloof stare, an aristocrat looking at an underling as though wondering what made the fellow tick. He said, finally, “I see you have been raised to Rank Major.”

“Yes, sir,” Joe said.

“We are obviously occupied, major. What can either my sister or I possibly do for you?”

Joe kept his voice even. He said, “I wanted to see the Baron.”

Nadine Haer looked up, a twinge of pain crossing her face.

“Indeed,” Balt Haer said flatly. “You are talking to the Baron, Major Mauser.”

Joe Mauser looked at him, then at his sister, who had taken to her handkerchief again. Consternation ebbed up and over him in a flood. He wanted to say something such as, “Oh no,” but not even that could he utter.

Haer was bitter. “I assume I know why you are here, major. You have come for your pound of flesh, undoubtedly. Even in these hours of our grief—”

“I … I didn’t know. Please believe …”

“… You are so constituted that your ambition has no decency. Well, Major Mauser, I can only say that your arrangement was with my father. Even if I thought it a reasonable one, I doubt if I would sponsor your ambitions myself.”

Nadine Haer looked up wearily. “Oh, Balt, come off it,” she said. “The fact is, the Haer fortunes contracted a debt to you, major. Unfortunately, it is a debt we cannot pay.” She looked into his face. “First, my father’s governmental connections do not apply to us. Second, six months ago, my father, worried about his health and attempting to avoid certain death taxes, transferred the family stocks into Balt’s name. And Balt saw fit, immediately before the fracas, to sell all Vacuum Tube Transport stocks, and invest in Hovercraft.”

“That’s enough, Nadine,” her brother snapped nastily.

“I see,” Joe said. He came to attention. “Dr. Haer, my apologies for intruding upon you in your time of bereavement.” He turned to the new Baron. “Baron Haer, my apologies for your bereavement.”

Balt Haer glowered at him.

Joe Mauser turned and marched for the door which he opened then closed behind him.

On the street, before the New York offices of Vacuum Tube Transport, he turned and for a moment looked up at the splendor of the building.

Well, at least the common shares of the concern had skyrocketed following the victory. His rank had been upped to Major, and old Stonewall Cogswell had offered him a permanent position on his staff in command of aerial operations, no small matter of prestige. The difficulty was, he wasn’t interested in the added money that would accrue to him, nor the higher rank—nor the prestige, for that matter.

He turned to go to his hotel.

An unbelievably beautiful girl came down the steps of the building. She said, “Joe.”

He looked at her. “Yes?”

She put a hand on his sleeve. “Let’s go somewhere and talk, Joe.”

“About what?” He was infinitely weary now.

“About goals,” she said. “As long as they exist, whether for individuals, or nations, or a whole species, life is still worth the living. Things are a bit bogged down right now, but at the risk of sounding very trite, there’s tomorrow.”

Subversive

The young man with the brown paper bag said, “Is Mrs. Coty in?”

“I’m afraid she isn’t. Is there anything I can do?”

“You’re Mr. Coty? I came about the soap.” He held up the paper bag.

“Soap?” Mr. Coty said blankly. He was the epitome of mid-aged husband complete to pipe, carpet slippers and office-slump posture.

“That’s right. I’m sure she told you about it. My name’s Dickens. Warren Dickens. I sold her—”

“Look here, you mean to tell me in this day and age you go around from door to door peddling soap? Great guns, boy, you’d do better on unemployment insurance. It’s permanent now.”

Warren Dickens registered distress. “Mr. Coty, could I come in and tell you about it? If I can make the first delivery to you instead of Mrs. Coty, shucks, it’ll save me coming back.”

Coty led him back into the living room, motioned him to a chair and settled into what was obviously his own favorite, handily placed before the telly. Coty said tolerantly, “Now then, what’s this about selling soap? What kind of soap? What brand?”

“Oh, it has no name, sir. That’s the point.”

The other looked at him.

“That’s why we can sell it for three cents a cake, instead of twenty-five.” Dickens opened the paper bag and fished out an ordinary enough looking cake of soap and handed it to the older man.

Mr. Coty took it, stared down at it, turned it over in his hands. He was still blank. “Well, what’s different about it?”

“There’s nothing different about it. It’s the same as any other soap.”

“I mean, how come you sell it for three cents a cake, and what’s the fact it has no name got to do with it?”

Warren Dickens leaned forward and went into what was obviously a strictly routine pitch. “Mr. Coty, have you ever considered what you’re buying when they nick you twenty-five cents on your credit card for a bar of soap in an ultra-market?”

There was an edge of impatience in the older man’s voice. “I buy soap!”

“No, sir. That’s your mistake. What you buy is a telly show, in fact several of them, with all their expensive comedians, singers, musicians, dancers, news commentators, network vice presidents, and all the rest. Then you buy fancy packaging. You’ll note, by the way, that our product hasn’t even a piece of tissue paper wrapped around it. Fancy packaging designed by some of the most competent commercial artists and motivational research men in the country. Then you buy distribution. From the factory all the way to the retail ultra-market where your wife shops. And every time that bar of soap goes from one wholesaler or distributor to another, the price roughly doubles. You also buy a brain trust whose full time project is to keep you using their soap and not letting their competitors talk you into switching brands. The brain trust, of course, also works on luring away the competitor’s customers to their product. Shucks, Mr. Coty, practically none of that twenty-five cents you spend to buy a cake of soap goes for soap. So small a percentage that you might as well forget about it.”

Mr. Coty was obviously taken aback. “Well, how do I know this nameless soap you’re peddling is, well, any good?”

Warren Dickens sighed deeply, and in such wise that it was obvious that he had so sighed before. “Sir, there is no difference between soaps. Oh, they might use a slightly different perfume, or tint it a slightly different color, but for all practical purposes common hand soap, common bath soap, is soap, period. All the stuff the copywriters dream up about secret ingredients and health for your skin, and cosmetic qualities, and all the rest, is Madison Avenue gobbledygook and applies as well to one brand as another. As a matter of fact, often two different soap companies, supposedly keen competitors, and using widely different advertising, have their products manufactured in the same plant.”

Mr. Coty blinked at him. Shifted in his chair. Rubbed his chin as though checking his morning shave. “Well … well, then where do you get your soap?”

“The same place. We buy in fantastically large lots from one of the gigantic automated soap plants.”

Mr. Coty had him now. “Ah, ha! Then how come you sell it for three cents a cake, instead of twenty-five?”

“I’ve been telling you. Our soap doesn’t even have a name, not to mention an advertising budget. Far from spending fortunes redesigning our packaging every few months in attempts to lure new customers, we don’t package the stuff at all. It comes to you, in the simplest possible wrapping, through the mails. A new supply every month. Three cents a cake. No middlemen, no wholesalers, distributors. No nothing except soap at three cents a cake.”

Mr. Coty leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be darned.” He thought it over. “Listen, do you sell anything besides soap?”

“Not right now, sir. But soap flakes are coming up next week and I think we’ll be going into bread in a month or two.”

“Bread?”

“Yes, sir, bread. Although we’ll have to distribute that by truck, and have to have almost hundred percent coverage in a given section before it’s practical. A nickel a loaf.”

“Five cents a loaf! You can’t make bread for that much.”

“Oh, yes we can. We can’t advertise it, package it, and pay a host of in-betweens, is all. From the bakery to you, period.”

Mr. Coty seemed fascinated. He said, “See here, what’s the address of your office?”

Warren Dickens shook his head. “Sorry, sir. That’s all part of it. We have no swanky offices with big, expensive staffs. We operate on the smallest of shoestrings. No brain trust. No complaint department. No public relations. No literature on how to beautify yourself. No nothing, except good soap at three cents a cake, plus postage. Now, if you’ll sign this contract, we’ll put you on our mailing list. Ten bars of soap a month, Mrs. Coty said. I brought this first supply so you could test it and see that the whole thing is bona fide.”

Mr. Coty had to test it, but then he had to admit he couldn’t tell any difference between the nameless soap and the product to which he was used. Eventually, he signed, made the first payment, shook hands with young Dickens and saw him to the door. He said, in parting, “I still wonder why you do this, rather than dragging down unemployment insurance like most young men fresh out of school.”

Warren Dickens screwed up his face. This was a question that wasn’t routine. “Well, I make approximately the same, if I stick to it and get enough contracts. And, shucks they’re not hard to get. And, well, I’m working, not just bumming on the rest of the country. I’m doing something, something useful.”

Coty pursed his lips and shrugged. “It’s been a long time since anybody cared about that.” He looked after the young man as he walked down the walk.

Then he turned and headed for the phone, and ten years seemed to drop away from him. He lit the screen with a flick, dialed and said crisply, “That’s him, Jerry. Going down the walk now. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

Jerry’s face was in the screen but he was obviously peering down, from the helio-jet, locating the subject. “OK, Tracy, I make him. See you later.” His face faded.

The man who had called himself Mr. Coty, dialed again, not bothering to light the screen. “All right,” he said. “Thank Mrs. Coty and let her come home now.”

Frank Tracy worked his way down an aisle of automated phono-typers and other office equipment. The handful of operators, their faces bored, periodically strolled up and down, needlessly checking that which seldom needed checking.

He entered the receptionist’s office, flicked a hand at LaVerne Sandell, one of the few employees it seemed impossible to automate out of her position, and said, “The Chief is probably expecting me.”

“That he is. Go right in, Mr. Tracy.”

“I’m expecting a call from one of the operatives. Put it through, eh LaVerne?”

“Righto.”

Even as he walked toward the door to the sanctum sanctorum, he grimaced sourly at her. “Righto, yet. Isn’t that a bit on the maize side? Doesn’t sound very authentic to me.”

“I can see you don’t put in your telly time, Mr. Tracy. Slang goes in cycles these days. They simply don’t dream up a whole new set of expressions every generation anymore because everybody gets tired of them so soon. Instead, older periods of idiom are revived. For instance, scram is coming back in.”

He stopped long enough to look at her, frowning. “Scram?”

She took him in quizzically, estimating. “Possibly dust, or get lost, was the term when you were a boy.”

Tracy chuckled wryly, “Thanks for the compliment, but I go back to the days of beat it.”

In the inner office the Chief looked up at him. “Sit down, Frank. What’s the word? Another exponent of free enterprise, prehistoric style?”

Frank Tracy found a chair and began talking even while fumbling for briar and tobacco pouch. “No,” he grumbled. “I don’t think so, not this time. I’m afraid there might be something more to it.”

His boss leaned back in the massive old-fashioned chair he affected and patted his belly, as though appreciative of a good meal just finished. “Oh? Give it all to me.”

Tracy finished lighting his pipe, flicked the match out and put it back in his pocket, noting that he’d have to get a new one one of these days. He cleared his throat and said, “Reports began coming in of house to house canvassers selling soap for three cents a bar.”

“Three cents a bar? They can’t manufacture it for that. Will the stuff pass the Health Department?”

“Evidently,” Tracy said wryly. “The salesman claimed it’s the same soap as reputable firms peddle.”

“Go on.”

“We had to go to a bit of trouble to get a line on them without raising their suspicion. One of the boys lived in a neighborhood that was being canvassed for new customers and his wife had signed up. So I took her place when the salesman arrived with her first delivery—they deliver the first batch. I let him think I was Bob Coty and questioned him, but not enough to raise his suspicions.”

“And?”

“An outfit selling soap and planning on branching into bread and heavens knows what else. No advertising. No middlemen. No nothing, as the salesman said, except standard soap at three cents a bar.”

“They can’t package it for that!”

“They don’t package it at all.”

The Chief raised his chubby right hand and wiped it over his face in a stereotype gesture of resignation. “Did you get his home office address? Maybe there’s some way of buying them out—indirectly, of course.”

“No, sir. It seemed to be somewhat of a secret.”

The other’s eyes widened. “Ridiculous. You can’t hide anything like that. There’s a hundred ways of tracking them down before the day is out.”

“Of course. I’ve got Jerome Wiseman following him in a helio-jet. No use getting rough, as yet. We’ll keep it quiet … assuming that meets with your approval.”

“You’re in the field, Frank. You make the decisions.”

The phone screen had lighted up and LaVerne’s piquant face faded in. “The call Mr. Tracy was expecting from Operative Wiseman.”

“Put him on,” the Chief said, lacing his plump fingers over his stomach.

Jerry’s face appeared in the screen. He was obviously parked on the street now. He said, “Subject has disappeared into this office building, Tracy. For the past fifteen minutes he’s kinda looked as though the day’s work was through and since this dump could hardly be anybody’s home, he must be reporting to his higher-up.”

“Let’s see the building,” Tracy said.

The portable screen was directed in such manner that a disreputable appearing building, obviously devoted to fourth-rate businesses, was centered.

“OK,” Tracy said. “I’ll be over. You can knock off, Jerry. Oh, except for one thing. Subject’s name is Warren Dickens. Just for luck, get a complete dossier on him. I doubt if he’s got a criminal or subversive record, but you never know.”

Jerry said, “Right,” and faded.

Frank Tracy came to his feet and knocked the rest of his pipe out into the gigantic ashtray on his boss’ desk. “Well, I suppose the next step’s mine.”

“Check back with me as soon as you know anything more,” the Chief said. He wheezed a sigh as though sorry the interview was over and that he’d have to go back to his desk chores, but shifted his bulk and took up a sheaf of papers.

Just as Tracy got to the door, the Chief said, “Oh, yes. Easy on the rough stuff, Tracy. I’ve been hearing some disquieting reports about some of the overenthusiastic bullyboys on your team. We wouldn’t want such material to get in the telly-casts.”

Lard bottom, Tracy growled inwardly as he left. Did the Chief think he liked violence? Did anyone in his right mind like violence?

Frank Tracy looked up at the mid-century type office building. He was somewhat surprised that the edifice still remained. Where did the owners ever find profitable tenants? What business could be so small these days that it would be based in such quarters? However, here it was.

The lobby was shabby. There was no indication on the list of tenants of the firm he was seeking, nor was there a porter. The elevator was out of repair.

He did it the hard way, going from door to door, entering, hat in hand, apologetically, and saying, “Pardon me. You’re the people who sell the soap?” They kept telling him no until he reached the third floor and a door to an office even smaller than usual. It was lettered Freer Enterprises and even as he knocked and entered, the wording rang a bell.

There was only one desk but it was efficiently equipped with the latest in office gadgetry. The room was quite choked with files and even a Mini-I.B.M. tri-unit. The man behind the desk was old-fashioned enough to wear glasses, but otherwise seemed the average aggressive executive type you expected to meet in these United States of the Americas. He was possibly in his mid-thirties and one of those alert, overeager characters irritating to those who believe in taking matters less than urgently.

He looked up and said snappily, “What can I do for you?”

Tracy dropped into an easygoing characterization. “You’re the people who sell the soap?”

“That is correct. What can I do for you?”

Tracy said easily, “Why, I’d like to ask you a few questions about the enterprise.”

“To what end, sir? You’d be surprised how busy a man I am.”

Tracy said, “Suppose I’m from the Greater New York News-Times looking for a story?”

The other tapped a finger on his desk impatiently. “Pardon me, but in that case I would be inclined to think you a liar. The News-Times knows upon which side its bread is spread. Its advertisers include all the soap companies. It does not dispense free advertising through its news columns.”

Tracy chuckled wryly, “All right. Let’s start again.” He brought forth his wallet, flicked through various identification cards until he found the one he wanted and presented it. “Frank Tracy is the name,” he said. “Department of Internal Revenue. There seems to be some question as to your corporation taxes.”

“Oh,” the other said, obviously taken aback. “Please have a chair.” He read the authentic looking, but spurious credentials. Tracy took the proffered chair and then sat and looked at the other as though it was his turn.

“My name is Flowers,” the Freer Enterprises man told him, nervously. “Frederic Flowers. Frankly, this is my first month at the job and I’m not too well acquainted with all the ramifications of the business.” He moistened his lips. “I hope there is nothing illegal—” He let the sentence fade away.

Tracy reclaimed his false identity papers and put them back into his wallet before saying easily, “I really couldn’t say, as yet. Let’s have a bit of questions and answers and I’ll go further into the matter.”

Flowers regained his confidence. “No reason why not,” he said quickly. “So far as I know, all is above board.”

Frank Tracy let his eyes go about the room. “Why are you established, almost secretly, you might say, in this business backwoods of the city?”

“No secret about it,” Flowers demurred. “Merely the cheapest rent we could find. We cut costs to the bone, and then shave the bone.”

“Um-m-m. I’ve spoken to one of your salesmen, a Warren Dickens, and I suppose he gave me the standard sales talk. I wonder if you could elaborate on your company’s policies, its goals, that sort of thing.”

“Goals?”

“You obviously expect to make money, somehow or other, though I don’t see that peddling soap at three cents a bar has much of a future. There must be some further angle.”

Flowers said, “Admittedly, soap is just a beginning. Among other things, it’s given us a mailing list of satisfied customers. Consumers who can then be approached for future purchases.”

Frank Tracy relaxed in his chair, reached for pipe and tobacco and let the other go on. But his eyes had narrowed, coldly.

Flowers wrapped himself up in his subject. “Mr. Tracy, you probably have no idea of the extent to which the citizens of Greater America are being victimized. Let me use but one example.” He came quickly to his feet, crossed to a small toilet which opened off the office and returned with a power-pack electric shaver which he handed to Tracy.

Tracy looked at it, put it back on the desk and nodded. “It’s the brand I have,” he said agreeably.

“Yes, and millions of others. What did you pay for it?”

Frank Tracy allowed himself a slight smirk. “As a matter of fact, I got mine through a discount outfit, only twenty-five dollars.”

“Only twenty-five dollars, eh, when the retail price is supposedly thirty-five?” Flowers was triumphant. “A great bargain, eh? Well, let me give you a rundown, Mr. Tracy.”

He took a quick breath. “True, they’re advertised to retail at thirty-five dollars. And stores that sell them at that rate make a profit of fifty percent. The regional supply house, before them, knocks down from forty to sixty percent, on the wholesale price. Then the trade name distributor makes at least fifty percent on the sales to the regional supply houses.”

“Trade name distributor?” Tracy said, as though ignorant of what the other was talking about. “You mean the manufacturer?”

“No, sir. That razor you just looked at bears a trade name of a company that owns no factory of its own. It buys the razors from a large electrical appliances manufacturing complex which turns out several other name brand electric razors as well. The trade name company does nothing except market the product. Its budget, by the way, calls for an expenditure of six dollars on every razor for national advertising.”

“Well, what are you getting at?” Tracy said impatiently.

Frederic Flowers had reached his punch line. “All right, we’ve traced the razor all the way back to the manufacturing complex which made it. Mr. Tracy, that razor you bought at a discount bargain for twenty-five dollars cost thirty-eight cents to produce.”

Tracy pretended to be dumbfounded. “I don’t believe it.”

“It can be proven.”

Frank Tracy thought about it for a while. “Well, even if true, so what?”

“It’s a crime, that’s so-what,” Flowers blurted indignantly. “And that’s where Freer Enterprises comes in. Very shortly, we’re going to enter the market with an electric razor retailing for exactly one dollar. No name brand, no advertising, no nothing except a razor just as good as though selling for from twenty-five to fifty dollars.”

Tracy scoffed his disbelief. “That’s where you’re wrong. No electric razor manufacturer would sell to you. They’d be cutting their own throats.”

The Freer Enterprises official shook his head, in scorn. “That’s where you’re wrong. The same electric appliance manufacturer who produced that razor there will make a similar one, slightly different in appearance, for the same price for us. They don’t care what happens to their product once they make their profit from it. Business is business. We’ll be at least as good a customer as any of the others have ever been. Eventually, better, since we’ll be getting electric razors into the hands of people who never felt they could afford one before.”

He shook a finger at Tracy. “Manufacturers have been doing this for a long time. I imagine it was the old mail-order houses that started it. They’d get in touch with a manufacturer of, say, typewriters, or outboard motors, or whatever, and order tens of thousands of these, not an iota different from the manufacturer’s standard product except for the nameplate. They’d then sell these for as little as half the ordinary retail price.”

Tracy seemed to think it over for a long moment. Eventually he said, “Even then you’re not going to break any records making money. Your distribution costs might be pared to the bone, but you still have some. There’ll be darn little profit left on each razor you sell.”

Flowers was triumphant again. “We’re not going to stop at razors, once under way. How about automobiles? Have you any idea of the disparity between the cost of production of a car and what they retail for?”

“Well, no.”

“Here’s an example. As far back as about 1930 a barge company transporting some brand-new cars across Lake Erie from Detroit had an accident and lost a couple of hundred. The auto manufacturers sued, trying to get the retail price of each car. Instead, the court awarded them the cost of manufacture. You know what it came to, labor, materials, depreciation on machinery—everything? Seventy-five dollars per car. And that was around 1930. Since then, automation has swept the industry and manufacturing costs per unit have dropped drastically.”

The Freer Enterprises executive was now in full voice. “But even that’s not the ultimate. After all, cars were selling for as cheaply as $425 then. Let’s take some items such as aspirin. You can, of course, buy small neatly packaged tins of twelve for twenty-five cents but supposedly more intelligent buyers will buy bottles for forty or fifty cents. If the druggist puts out a special for fifteen cents a bottle it will largely be refused since the advertising conditioned customer doesn’t want an inferior product. Actually, of course, aspirin is aspirin and you can buy it, in one hundred pound lots in polyethylene film bags, at about fourteen cents a pound, or in carload lots under the chemical name of acetylsalicylic acid, for eleven cents a pound. And any big chemical corporation will sell you U.S.P. grade Milk of Magnesia at about six dollars a ton. Its chemical name, of course, is magnesium hydroxide, or Mg(OH)2, and you’d have one thousand quarts in that ton. Buying it beautifully packaged and fully advertised, you’d pay up to a dollar twenty-five a pint in the druggist section of a modern ultra-market.”

Tracy had heard enough. He said crisply, “All right, Mr. Flowers, of Freer Enterprises, now let me ask you something: Do you consider this country prosperous?”

Flowers blinked. Of a sudden, the man across from him seemed to have changed character, added considerable dynamic to his makeup. He flustered, “Yes, I suppose so. But it could be considerably more prosperous if—”

Tracy was sneering. “If consumer prices were brought down drastically, eh? Mr. Flowers, you’re incredibly naive when it comes to modern economics. Do you realize that one of the most significant developments, economically speaking, took place in the 1950s; something perhaps more significant than the development of atomic power?”

Flowers blinked again, mesmerized by the other’s new domineering personality. “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The majority of employees in the United States turned from blue collars to white.”

Flowers looked pained. “I don’t—”

“No, of course you don’t or you wouldn’t be participating in a subversive attack upon our economy, which, if successful, would lead to the collapse of Western prosperity and eventually to the success of the Soviet Complex.”

Mr. Flowers gobbled a bit, then gulped.

“I’ll spell it out for you,” Tracy pursued. “In the early days of capitalism, back when Marx and Engels were writing such works as Capital, the overwhelming majority of the working class were employed directly in production. For a long time it was quite accurate when the political cartoonists depicted a working man as wearing overalls and carrying a hammer or wrench. In short, employees who got their hands dirty, outnumbered those who didn’t.

“But with the coming of increased mechanization and eventually automation and the second industrial revolution, more and more employees went into sales, the so-called service industries, advertising and entertainment which has become largely a branch of advertising, distribution, and, above all, government which in this bureaucratic age is largely a matter of regulation of business and property relationships. As automation continued, fewer and fewer of our people were needed to produce all the commodities that the country could assimilate under our present socioeconomic system. And I need only point out that the average American still enjoys more material things than any other nation, though admittedly the European countries, and I don’t exclude the Soviet Complex, are coming up fast.”

Flowers said indignantly, “But what’s this charge that I’m participating in a subversive—”

“Mr. Flowers,” Tracy overrode him, “let’s not descend to pure maize in our denials of the obvious. If this outfit of yours, Freer Enterprises, was successful in its fondest dreams, what would happen?”

“Why, the consumers would be able to buy commodities at a fraction of the present cost!”

Tracy half came to his feet and pounded the table with fierce emphasis. “What would they buy them with? They’d all be out of jobs!”

Frederic Flowers bug-eyed him.

Tracy sat down again and seemingly regained control of himself. His voice was softer now. “Our social system may have its strains and tensions, Mr. Flowers, but it works and we don’t want anybody throwing wrenches in its admittedly delicate machinery. Advertising is currently one of the biggest industries of the country. The entertainment industry, admittedly now based on advertising, is gigantic. Our magazines and newspapers, employing hundreds of thousands of employees from editors right on down to newsstand operators, are able to exist only through advertising revenue. Above all, millions of our population are employed in the service industries, and in distribution, in the stock market, in the commodity markets, in all the other branches of distribution which you Freer Enterprises people want to pull down. A third of our working force is now unemployed, but given your way, it would be at least two thirds.”

Flowers, suddenly suspicious, said, “What has all this to do with the Department of Internal Revenue, Mr. Tracy?”

Tracy came to his feet and smiled ruefully, albeit a bit grimly. “Nothing,” he admitted. “I have nothing at all to do with that department. Here is my real card, Mr. Flowers.”

The Freer Enterprises man must have felt a twinge of premonition even as he took it up, but the effect was still enough to startle him. “Bureau of Economic Subversion!” he said.

“Now then,” Tracy snapped. “I want the names of your higher ups, and the address of your central office, Flowers. Frankly, you’re in the soup. As you possibly know, our hush-hush department has unlimited emergency powers, being answerable only to the President.”

“I … I’ve never even heard of it.” Flowers stuttered. “But—”

Tracy held up a contemptuous hand. “Many people haven’t,” he said curtly.

Frank Tracy hurried through the outer office into LaVerne Sandell’s domain, and bit out to her, “Tell the Chief I’m here. Crisis. And immediately get my team together, all eight of them. Heavy equipment. Have a jet readied. Chicago. The team will rendezvous at the airport.”

LaVerne was just as crisp. “Yes, sir.” She began doing things with buttons and switches.

Tracy hurried into the Chief’s office and didn’t bother with the usual amenities. He snapped, “Worse than I thought, sir. This outfit is possibly openly subversive. Deliberately undermining the economy.”

His superior put down the report he was perusing and shifted his bulk backward. “You’re sure? We seldom run into such extremes.”

“I know, I know, but this could be it. Possibly a deliberate program. I’ve taken the initiative to have Miss Sandell summon my team.”

“Now, see here, Frank—” The bureau head looked at him anxiously.

Tracy said, impatience there, “Chief, you’re going to have to let your field men use their discretion. I tell you, this thing is a potential snowball. I’ll play it cool. Arrange things so that there’ll be no scandal for the telly-reporters. But we’ve got to chill this one quickly, or it’ll be on a coast to coast basis before the year is out. They’re even talking about going into automobiles.”

The Chief winced, then said unhappily, “All right, Tracy. However, mind what I said. Curb those roughnecks of yours.”

It proved considerably easier than Frank Tracy had hoped for. Adam Moncure’s national headquarters turned out to be in a sparsely settled area not far from Woodstock, Illinois. The house, in the passé ranch style, must have once been a millionaire’s baby, what with an artificial fishing lake in the back, a kidney shaped swimming pool, extensive gardens and an imposing approach up a corridor of trees.

“Right up to the front door,” Tracy growled to the operative driving the first hover-car of their two-vehicle expedition. “The quicker we move, the better.” He turned his head to the men in the rear seat. “We five will go in together. I don’t expect trouble, they’ll have had no advance warning. I made sure of that. Jerry has equipment in his car to blanket any radio sending. We’ll take care of phones in the house. No rough stuff, we want to talk to these people.”

One of the men growled, “Suppose they start shooting?”

Tracy snorted. “Then shoot back, of course. But just don’t you start it. I shouldn’t have to tell you these things.”

“Got it,” one of the others said. He shifted his shoulders to loosen the .38 Recoilless in its holster.

At the ornate doorway, the cars, which had been moving fast, a foot or so off the ground, came to a quick halt, settled, and the men disgorged, guns in hand.

Tracy called to the occupants of the other vehicle, “On the double. Surround the house. Don’t let anybody leave. Come on, boys.”

They scurried down the flagstone walk, banged on the door. It was opened by a houseman who stared at them uncomprehendingly.

“The occupants of this establishment are under arrest,” Tracy snapped. He flashed a gold badge. “Take me to Adam Moncure.” He turned to his men and gestured with his head. “Take over, boys. Jerry, you come with me.”

The houseman was terrified, but not to the point of being unable to lead them to a gigantic former living room, now converted to offices.

There was an older man, and four assistants. All in shirt sleeves in concession to the midwestern summer, none armed from all Tracy could see. They looked up in surprise, rather than dismay. The older man snapped, “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”

Jerry chuckled sourly.

Frank Tracy said, “You’re all under arrest. Jerry, herd these clerks, or whatever they are, into some other room. Get any other occupants of the house together, too. And watch them carefully, confound it. Don’t underestimate these people. And make a search for secret rooms, cellars, that sort of thing.”

“Right,” Jerry growled.

The older of the five Freer Enterprises men was on his feet now. He was a thin, angry faced type, gray of hair and somewhere in his sixties. “I want to know the meaning of this!” he roared.

“Adam Moncure?” Tracy said crisply.

“That is correct. And to what do I owe this cavalier intrusion into my home and place of business?”

Jerry, at pistol point, was herding the four assistants from the room, taking the houseman along with them.

Tracy looked at Moncure, speculatively, then dipped into his pockets for pipe and tobacco. He gestured to a chair with his head. “Sit down, Mr. Moncure. The jig is up.”

“The jig?” the other blurted in a fine rage. “I insist—”

“OK, OK, you’ll get your explanation.” Tracy sat down on a couch himself and sized up the older man, even as he lit his pipe.

Moncure, still breathing heavily in his indignation, took control of himself well enough to be seated. “Well, sir?” he bit out.

Tracy said curtly, “Frank Tracy, Bureau of Economic Subversion.”

“Bureau of Economic Subversion!” Moncure said indignantly. “What in the name of all that’s holy is the Bureau of Economic Subversion?”

Tracy pointed at him with the pipe stem. “I’ll ask a few questions first, please. How many branches of your nefarious outfit are presently under operation?”

The other glared at him, but Tracy merely returned the pipe to his mouth and glowered back.

Finally Moncure snapped, “There is no purpose in hiding any of our affairs. We have opened preliminary offices only in Chicago and New York. Freer Enterprises is but in its infancy.”

“Praise Allah for that,” Tracy muttered sarcastically.

“And thus far we have dealt only in soap. However, as our organization gets under way we plan to branch out into a score, and ultimately hundreds of products.”

Tracy said, “You can forget about that, Moncure. Freer Enterprises comes to a halt as of today. Do you realize that your business tactics would lead to a complete collapse of gainful employment and eventually to a depression such as this nation has never seen before?”

“Exactly!” Moncure snapped in return.

It was Tracy’s turn to react. His eyes widened, then narrowed. “Do you mean that you are deliberately attempting to undermine the economy of the United States of the Americas? Remember, Mr. Moncure, you are under arrest and anything you say may be held against you.”

“Undermine it!” Moncure said heatedly. “Bring it crashing to the ground is the better term. There has never been such an abortion developed in the history of political economy.”

He came to his feet again and began storming up and down the room. “A full three quarters of our employed working at nothing jobs, gobbledygook jobs, non-producing jobs, make-work jobs, red-tape bureaucracy jobs. At a time when the nation is supposedly in a breakneck economic competition with the Soviet Complex, we put our best brains into advertising, entertainment and sales, while they put theirs into science and industry.”

He stopped long enough to shake an indignant finger at the surprised Tracy. “But that isn’t the worst of it. Have you ever heard of planned obsolescence?”

Tracy acted as though on the defensive. “Well … sure …”

“In the Soviet Complex, and, for that matter, in Common Europe and other economic competitors of ours, they simply don’t believe in planned obsolescence and all its related nonsense. Razor blades, everywhere except in this country, don’t go dull after two or three shaves. Cars don’t fall apart after two or three years, or even become so out of style that the owner feels that he’s losing status by being seen in it, the owners expect to keep them half a lifetime. Automobile batteries don’t go to pieces after eighteen months, they last for a decade. And on and on!”

The old boy was really unwinding now. “Nor is even that the nadir of this socioeconomic hodgepodge we’ve allowed to develop, this economy of production for sale, rather than production for use.” He stabbed with his finger. “I think one of the best examples of what was to come was to be witnessed way back at the end of the Second War. The idea of the ball-bearing pen was in the air. The first one to hurry into production gave his pen a tremendous buildup. It had ink enough to last three years, it would make many carbon copies, you could use it under water. And so on and so forth. It cost fifteen dollars, and there was only one difficulty with it. It wouldn’t write. Not that that made any difference because it sold like hotcakes what with all the promotion. He wasn’t interested in whether or not it would write, but only in whether or not it would sell.” Moncure threw up his hands dramatically. “I ask you, can such an economic system be taken seriously?”

“What’s your point?” Tracy growled dangerously. He’d never met one this far out, before.

“Isn’t it obvious? Continue this ridiculous economy and we’ll lose the battle for men’s minds. You can’t have an economic system that allows such nonsense as large scale unemployment of trained employees, planned obsolescence, union featherbedding, and an overwhelming majority of those who are employed wasting their labor on unproductive employment.”

Tracy said, “Then if I understand you correctly, Freer Enterprises was deliberately organized for the purpose of undermining the economy so that it will collapse and have to be reorganized on a different basis.”

“That is exactly correct,” Moncure said defiantly. “I am devoting my whole fortune to this cause. And there is nothing in American law that prevents me from following through with my plans.”

“You’re right there,” Tracy said wryly. “There’s nothing in American law that prevents you. However, you see, I have no connection whatsoever with the American government.” He slipped the gun from its holster.

Frank Tracy made his way wearily into LaVerne’s domain. She looked up from the desk. “Everything go all right, Mr. Tracy?”

“I suppose so. Tell Comrade Zotov that I’m back from Chicago, please.”

She clicked switches, said something into an inner-office communicator, then looked up again. “He’ll see you immediately, Mr. Tracy.”

Pavel Zotov looked up from his endless paperwork and wheezed the sigh of a fat man. He correctly interpreted the expression of his field operative. “Pour us a couple of drinks, Frank, or would you rather have it Frol, today?”

His best field man grunted as he walked over to the bar. “Vodka, eh? Chort vesmiot how tired one can become of this everlasting bourbon.” He reached into the refrigerator compartment and brought forth a bottle of iced Stolichnaya. He poured two three-ounce charges and brought them back to his bureau chief’s desk.

They toasted silently, knocked back the colorless spirit. Pavel Zotov said, “Well, Frol?”

The man usually called Frank Tracy said, “The worst case yet. This one had quite a clear picture of the true situation. He saw the necessity—given their viewpoint, of course—of getting out of the fantastic rut their economy has fallen into.” He ran his hand over his mouth in a gesture of weariness. “Chief, do you have any idea of how long it would take us to catch up to them, if we ever did, if they really turned this economy on full blast, as an alternative to their present foul-up?”

“That’s why we’re here,” the Chief said heavily. “What did you do?”

The man sometimes called Tracy told him.

Zotov winced. “I thought I ordered you—”

“You did,” the man called Tracy told him curtly, “but what alternative was there? The fire will completely destroy the records. I have the names and addresses of all the others connected with Freer Enterprises. We’ll have to arrange car accidents, that sort of thing.”

The fat man’s lips worked. “We can’t get by with this indefinitely, Frol. With such blatant tactics, sooner or later their C.I.A. or F.B.I. is going to get wind of us.”

Tracy came to his feet angrily. “What alternative have we? We’ve been sent over here to do a job. We’re doing it. If we’re caught, who knows better than we that we’re expendable? If you don’t mind, I’m going on home.”

As he left the office, through the secret door that led through the innocuous looking garage, the man they called Frank Tracy was inwardly thinking, “Zotov might be my superior, and a top man in the party, but he’s too soft for this job. Perhaps I’d better send a report back to Moscow on him.”

The Common Man

Frederick Braun, M.D., Ph. D., various other D.s, pushed his slightly crooked horn-rims back on his nose and looked up at the two-story wooden house. There was a small lawn before it, moderately cared for, and one tree. There was the usual porch furniture, and the house was going to need painting in another six months or so, but not quite yet. There was a three-year-old hover car parked at the curb of a make that anywhere else in the world but America would have been thought ostentatious in view of the seeming economic status of the householder.

Frederick Braun looked down at the paper in his hand, then up at the house again. He said to his two companions, “By Caesar, I will admit it is the most average-looking dwelling I have ever seen.”

Patricia O’Gara said impatiently, “Well, do we or don’t we?” Her hair should have been in a pony tail, or bouncing on her shoulders, or at least in the new Etruscan revival style, not drawn back in its efficient bun.

Ross Wooley was unhappy. He scratched his fingers back through his reddish crew cut. “This is going to sound silly.”

Patricia said testily, “We’ve been through all that, Rossie, good heavens.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing …” Braun let the sentence dribble away as he stuffed the paper into a coat pocket, which had obviously been used as a waste receptacle for many a year, and led the way up the cement walk, his younger companions immediately behind.

He put his finger on the doorbell and cocked his head to one side. There was no sound from the depths of the house. Dr. Braun muttered, “Bell out of order.”

“It would be,” Ross chuckled sourly. “Remember? Average. Here, let me.” He rapped briskly on the wooden door jamb. They stood for a moment then he knocked again, louder, saying almost as though hopefully, “Maybe there’s nobody home.”

“All right, all right, take it easy,” a voice growled even as the door opened.

He was somewhere in his thirties, easygoing of face, brownish of hair, bluish of eye and moderately good-looking. His posture wasn’t the best and he had a slight tummy but he was a goodish masculine specimen by Midwestern standards. He stared out at them, defensive now that it was obvious they were strangers. Were they selling something, or in what other manner were they attempting to intrude on his well being? His eyes went from the older man’s thin face, to the football hero heft of the younger, then to Patricia O’Gara. His eyes went up and down her figure and became approving in spite of the straight business suit she affected.

He said, “What could I do for you?”

“Mr. Crowley?” Ross said.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Ross Wooley and my friends are Patricia O’Gara and Dr. Frederick Braun. We’d like to talk to you.”

“There’s nobody sick here.”

Patricia said impatiently, “Of course not. Dr. Braun isn’t a practicing medical doctor. We are research biochemists.”

“We’re scientists,” Ross told him, putting it on what he assumed was the man’s level. “There’s something on which you could help us.”

Crowley took his eyes from the girl and scowled at Ross. “Me? Scientists? I’m just a country boy, I don’t know anything about science.” There was a grudging self-deprecation in his tone.

Patricia took over, a miracle smile overwhelming her air of briskness. “We’d appreciate the opportunity to discuss it with you.”

Dr. Braun added the clincher. “And it might be remunerative.”

Crowley opened the door wider. “Well, just so it don’t cost me nothing.” He stepped back for them. “Don’t mind the place. Kind of mussed up. Fact is, the wife left me about a week ago and I haven’t got around to getting somebody to come in and kind of clean things up.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Patricia O’Gara had no pretensions to the housewife’s art herself, but she sniffed when she saw the condition of the living room. There was a dirty shirt drooped over the sofa back and beside the chair which faced the TV set were half a dozen empty beer cans. The ashtrays hadn’t been emptied for at least days and the floor had obviously not been swept since the domestic tragedy which had sent Mrs. Crowley packing.

Now that the three strangers were within his castle, Crowley’s instincts for hospitality asserted themselves. He said, “Make yourself comfortable. Here, wait’ll I get these things out of the way. Anybody like a drink? I got some beer in the box, or,” he smirked at Patricia, “I got some port wine you might like, not this bellywash you buy by the gallon.”

They declined the refreshments, it wasn’t quite noon.

Crowley wrestled the chair which had been before the TV set around so that he could sit facing them, and then sat himself down. He didn’t get this and his face showed it.

Frederick Braun came to the point. “Mr. Crowley,” he said, “did it ever occur to you that somewhere amidst our nearly one hundred million American males there is the average man?”

Crowley looked at him.

Braun cleared his throat and with his thumb and forefinger pushed his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose. “I suppose that isn’t exactly the technical way in which to put it.”

Ross Wooley shifted his football shoulders and leaned forward earnestly. “No, Doctor, that’s exactly the way to put it.” He said to Crowley, very seriously, “We’ve done this most efficiently. We’ve gone through absolute piles of statistics. We’ve. …”

“Done what?” Crowley all but wailed. “Take it easy, will you? What are you all talking about?”

Patricia said impatiently, “Mr. Crowley, you are the average American. The man on the street. The Common Man.”

He frowned at her. “What’d’ya mean, common? I’m as good as anybody else.”

“That’s exactly what we mean,” Ross said placatingly. “You are exactly as good as anybody else, Mr. Crowley. You’re the average man.”

“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about. Pardon my language, Miss.”

“Not at all,” Patricia sighed. “Dr. Braun, why don’t you take over? We seem to all be speaking at once.”

The little doctor began to enumerate on his fingers. “The center of population has shifted to this vicinity, so the average American lives here in the Middle West. Population is also shifting from rural to urban, so the average man lives in a city of approximately this size. Determining average age, height, weight is simple with government data as complete as they are. Also racial background. You, Mr. Crowley, are predominately English, German and Irish, but have traces of two or three other nationalities.”

Crowley was staring at him. “How in the devil did you know that?”

Ross said wearily, “We’ve gone to a lot of trouble.”

Dr. Braun hustled on. “You’ve had the average amount of education, didn’t quite finish high school. You make average wages working in a factory as a clerk. You spent some time in the army but never saw combat. You drink moderately, are married and have one child, which is average for your age. Your I.Q. is exactly average and you vote Democrat except occasionally when you switch over to Republican.”

“Now wait a minute,” Crowley protested. “You mean I’m the only man in this whole country that’s like me? I mean, you mean I’m the average guy, right in the middle?”

Patricia O’Gara said impatiently. “You are the nearest thing to it, Mr. Crowley. Actually, possibly one of a hundred persons would have served our purpose.”

“OK,” Crowley interrupted, holding up a hand. “That gets us to the point. What’s this here purpose? What’s the big idea prying, like, into my affairs till you learned all this about me? And what’s this stuff about me getting something out of it? Right now I’m between jobs.”

The doctor pushed his battered horn-rims back on his nose with his forefinger. “Yes, of course,” he said reasonably. “Now we get to the point. Mr. Crowley, how would you like to be invisible?”

The three of them looked at him. It seemed to be his turn.

Crowley got up and walked into the kitchen. He came back in a moment with an opened can of beer from which he was gulping even as he walked. He took the can away from his mouth and said carefully, “You mean like a ghost?”

“No, of course not,” Braun said in irritation. “By Caesar, man, have you no imagination? Can’t you see it was only a matter of time before someone, possibly working away on an entirely different subject of research, stumbled upon a practical method of achieving invisibility?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Crowley said, his voice belligerent. “I’m only a country boy, maybe, without any egghead background, but I’m just as good as the next man and just as smart. I don’t think I like your altitude.”

“Attitude,” Ross Wooley muttered unhappily. He shot a glance at Patricia O’Gara but she ignored him.

Patricia turned on the charm. Her face opened into smile and she said soothingly, “Don’t misunderstand, Mr. Crowley. May I call you Don? I’m sure we’re going to be associates. You see, Don, we need your assistance.”

This was more like it. Crowley sat down again and finished the can of beer. “OK, it won’t hurt to listen. What’s the pitch?”

The older man cleared his throat. “We’ll cover it quickly so that we can get to the immediate practical aspects. Are you interested in biodynamics … umah … no, of course not. Let me see. Are you at all familiar with the laws pertaining to refraction of … umah, no.” He cleared his throat again, unhappily. “Have you ever seen a medusa, Mr. Crowley? The gelatinous umbrella-shaped free swimming form of marine invertebrate related to the coral polyp and the sea anemone?”

Ross Wooley scratched his crew cut and grimaced. “Jellyfish, Doctor, jellyfish. But I think the Portuguese Man-of-War might be a better example.”

“Oh, jellyfish,” Crowley said. “Sure, I’ve seen jellyfish. I got an aunt lives near Baltimore. We used to go down there and swim in Chesapeake Bay. Sting the devil out of you. What about it?”

Patricia leaned forward, still smiling graciously. “I really don’t see a great deal of point going into theory, gentlemen.” She looked at Ross and Dr. Braun, then back at Crowley. “Don, I think that what the doctor was leading up to was an attempt to describe in layman’s language the theory of the process onto which we’ve stumbled. He was using the jellyfish as an example of a life form all but invisible. But I’m sure you aren’t interested in technical terminology, are you? A good deal of gobbledygook, really, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, that’s what I say. Let’s get to the point. You mean you think it’s possible to make a guy invisible. Nobody could see him, eh?”

“It’s not a matter of thinking,” Ross said sourly. “We’ve done it.”

Crowley stared at him. “Done it? You mean, you, personal? You got invisible?”

“Yes. All three of us. Once each.”

“And you come back all right, eh? So anybody can see you again.”

The doctor said reasonably, “Here we are, quite visible. The effect of the usual dosage lasts for approximately twelve hours.”

They let him assimilate it for a few minutes. Some of the ramifications were coming home to him. Finally he got up and went into the back again for another can of beer. By this time Ross Wooley was wishing he would renew his offer, but the other had forgotten his duties as a host.

He took the can away from his mouth and said, “You want to make me invisible. You want me to, like, kind of experiment on.” His eyes thinned. “Why pick me?”

The doctor said carefully, “Because you’re the common man, the average man, Mr. Crowley. Before we release this development, we would like to have some idea of the scope of the effects.”

The beer went down chuck-a-luck. Crowley put the can aside and licked his bottom lip, then rubbed it with a fingertip. He said slowly, “Now take it easy while I think about this.” He blinked. “Why you could just walk into a bank and. …”

The three were watching him, empty-faced.

“Exactly,” Dr. Braun said.

Frederick Braun stared gloomily from the hotel suite’s window at the street below. He peered absently at his thin wrist, looked blank for a moment, then realized all over again that his watch was being cleaned. He stared down at the street once more, his wrinkled face unhappy.

The door opened behind him and Patricia O’Gara came in briskly and said, “No sign of the guinea pig yet, eh?”

“No.”

“Where’s Rossie?”

The doctor cleared his throat. “There was an item on the newscast. A humor bit. It seems that the head waiter of the Gourmet. … Have you ever eaten at the Gourmet, Patricia?”

“Do I look like a millionaire?”

“At any rate, a half pound of the best Caspian caviar disappeared, spoonful at a time, right before his eyes.”

Patricia looked at him. “Good heavens.”

“Yes. Well, Ross has gone to pay the tab.”

Patricia looked at her watch. “The effects will be wearing off shortly. Crowley will probably be back at any time. We warned him about returning to visibility in the middle of some street, completely nude.” She sank into a seat and looked up at the doctor. “I suppose you admit I was right.” Her voice was crisp.

The other turned on her. “And just why do you say that?”

“This caviar bit. Our friend, Donald Crowley, has obviously walked into the Gourmet restaurant, having heard it was the most expensive in New York, and ate as much as he could stuff down of the most expensive item on the menu.”

The elderly little doctor pushed his battered horn-rims farther back on his nose. “Tell me, Patricia, when you made the experiment, did you do anything … umah … anything at all, that saved you some money?”

Uncharacteristically, she suddenly giggled. “I had the time of my life riding on a bus without paying the fare.”

Braun snorted. “Then Donald Crowley, in eating his caviar, did substantially the same thing. It’s probably been a life’s ambition of his to eat in an ultra-swank restaurant and then walk out without paying. To be frank,” the doctor cleared his throat apologetically, “it’s always been one of mine.”

Patricia conceded him a chuckle, but then said impatiently, “It’s one thing my saving fifteen cents on a bus ride, and his eating twenty-five dollars worth of caviar.”

“Merely a matter of degree, my dear.”

Patricia said in irritation, “Why in the world did we have to bring him to New York where he could pull such childish tricks? We could have performed the experiment right there in Far Cry, Nebraska.”

Dr. Braun abruptly ceased the pacing he had begun and found a chair. He absently stuck a hand into a coat pocket, pulled out a crumbled piece of paper, stared at it for a moment, as though he had never seen it before, grunted, and returned it to the pocket. He looked at Patricia O’Gara. “We felt that on completely unknown territory he would feel less constrained, don’t you remember? In his home town, his conscience would be more apt to restrict him.”

Something suddenly came to her. She looked at her older companion suspiciously. “That newscast. Was there anything else on it? Don’t look innocent, you know what I mean.”

“Well, there was one item.”

“Out with it,” she demanded.

“The Hotel Belefonte threatens to sue that French movie star, Brigette whatever-her-name is.”

“Brigette Loren,” Patricia said, staring. “What’s that got to do with Donald Crowley?”

The good doctor was embarrassed. “It seems that she came running out of her suite, umah, semi-dressed and screaming that the hotel was haunted.”

“Good heavens,” Patricia said with sudden vision. “That’s one aspect I hadn’t thought of.”

“Evidently Crowley did.”

Patricia O’Gara said definitely, “My point’s been proven. Our average man is a slob. Give him the opportunity to exercise unlimited freedom without danger of consequence and he becomes an undisciplined and dangerous lout.”

Ross Wooley had come in, scowling, just in time to catch most of that. He tossed his hat onto a table and fished in his pockets for pipe and tobacco. “Nuts, Pat,” he said. “In fact, just the opposite’s been proven. Don’s just on a fun binge. Like a kid in a candy shop. He hasn’t done anything serious. Went into a fancy restaurant and ate some expensive food. Sneaked into the hotel room of the world’s most famous sex-symbol and got a closeup look.” He grinned suddenly. “I wish I had thought of that.”

“Ha!” Patricia snorted. “Our engagement is off, you Peeping Tom.”

“Children, children,” Braun chuckled. “I’ll admit, though, I think Ross is correct. Don’s done little we three didn’t when first given the robe of invisibility. We experimented, largely playfully, even childishly.”

Patricia bit out, “This experiment is ridiculous, anyway, and I don’t know why I ever agreed to it. Scientific? Nonsense. Where are our controls? For it to make any sense we’d have to work with scores of subjects. Suppose we do agree that the manner in which Don Crowley has reacted is quite harmless. Does that mean we can release this discovery to the world? Certainly not.”

Ross said sullenly, “But you agreed that we’d go by the results of this. …”

“I agreed to no such thing, Rossie Wooley, you overgrown lug. All I agreed to do was consider the results. I was, and am, of the opinion that if the person our politicians so lovingly call the Common Man was released of the restrictions inhibiting him, he’d go hog wild and destroy both society and himself. What is to prevent murder, robbery, rape and a score of other crimes, given invisibility for anyone who has a couple of dollars with which to go into a drugstore and purchase our serum?”

Her fiancé sighed deeply, jamming tobacco fiercely into the bowl of his briar. He growled, “Look, you seem to think that the only thing that restricts man is the fear of being punished. There are other things, you know.”

“Good heavens,” she said sarcastically. “Name one.”

“There is the ethical code in which he was raised, based on religion or otherwise. There is the fact that man is fundamentally good, to use a trite term, given the opportunity.”

“My education has evidently been neglected,” Patricia said, still argumentatively. “I’ve never seen evidence to support your claim.”

“I’m not saying individuals don’t react negatively, given opportunity to be antisocial,” he all but snarled. “I’m just saying people in general, common, little people, trend toward decency, desire the right thing.”

“Individuals my … my neck,” Patricia snapped back. “Did you ever hear of Rome and the games? Here a whole people, millions of them, were given the opportunity to indulge in sadistic spectacles to their heart’s desire. How many of them stayed home from the games?” She laughed in ridicule.

Ross flushed. “Some of them did, confound it.”

Dr. Braun had been taking in their debate, uncomfortably. As though in spite of himself, he said now, “Very few, I am afraid.”

“Religious ethic,” Patricia pursued, relentlessly. “The greatest of the commandments is Thou Shalt Not Kill, but comes along a war in which killing becomes not only permissible but an absolute virtue and all our good Christians, Jews, Mohammedans and even Buddhists, who supposedly are not even allowed to kill mosquitoes, wade in with sheer happiness.”

“War releases abnormal passions,” Ross said grudgingly.

“You don’t need a war. Look at the Germans, supposedly one of our most highly civilized people. When the Nazi government released all restraints on persecution of the Jews, gypsies and others, you know what happened. This began in peace time, not in war.”

Dr. Braun shifted in his chair. He said, his voice low, “We needn’t look beyond our own borders. The manner in which our people conducted themselves against the Amerinds from the very beginning of the white occupation of North America was quite shocking.”

Ross said to him, “I thought you were on my side. The Indian wars were a long time ago. We’re more advanced now.”

Dr. Braun said softly, “My father fought against Geronimo in Arizona. It wasn’t so long ago as all that.”

Ross Wooley felt the argument going against him and lashed back. “We’ve been over and over this, what’s your point?”

Patricia said doggedly, “The same point I tried to make from the beginning. This discovery must not be generally released. We’ll simply have to suppress it.”

The door opened behind them. They turned. Nothing was there. Ross, scowling, lumbered to his feet to walk over and close it.

“Hey, take it easy,” a voice laughed. “Don’t walk right into a guy.”

Ross stopped, startled.

Dr. Braun and Patricia stood up and stared, too.

Crowley laughed. “You all look like you’re seeing a ghost.”

Ross rumbled a grudging chuckle. “It’d be all right if we saw the ghost, it’s not seeing you that’s disconcerting.”

The air began to shimmer, somewhat like heat on the desert’s face.

Crowley said, “Hey, the stuff’s wearing off. Where’re my clothes?”

“Where you left them. There in that bedroom,” Ross said. “We’ll wait for you.” He went back and rejoined his associates. The door to the bedroom opened, there was a shimmering, more obvious now, and then the door closed behind it.

“He rejoined us just in time,” Dr. Braun murmured. “Another ten minutes and he would have … umah … materialized down on the street.”

Ross hadn’t finished the discussion. He said, his face in all but pout, “What you don’t realize, Pat, is the world has gone beyond the point where scientific discoveries can be suppressed. If we try to keep the lid on this today, the Russians or Chinese, or somebody, will hit on it tomorrow.”

Patricia said impatiently, “Good heavens, let’s don’t bring the Cold War into it.”

Ross opened his mouth to snap something back at her, closed it again and shrugged his bulky shoulders angrily.

In a matter of less than ten minutes the bedroom door reopened and this time a grinning Crowley emerged, fully dressed. He said, “Man, that was a devil of an experience!”

They saw him to a chair and had him talk it all through. He was candid enough, bubbling over with it all.

In the some eleven and a half hours he’d been on his own, he had covered quite an area of Manhattan.

Evidently the first hour had been spent in becoming used to the startling situation. He couldn’t even see himself, which, to his surprise affected walking and even use of his hands. You had to get used to it. Then there was the fact that he was nude and felt nude and hence uncomfortable walking about in mixed pedestrian traffic. But that phase passed. Early in the game he found that there was small percentage in getting into crowds. It led to all sorts of complications, including the starting of minor rows, one person thinking another was pushing when it was simply a matter of Crowley trying to get out from underfoot.

Then he went through a period of the wonder of it all. Being able to walk anywhere and observe people who had no suspicion that they were being observed. It was during that phase that he had sought out the hotel in which he had read the chesty French movie actress Brigette Loren was in residence. Evidently, he’d hit the nail right on the head. Brigette was at her toilette when he arrived on scene. In telling about this, Crowley leered amusedly at Patricia from the side of his eyes. She ignored him.

Then he’d gone through a period when the full realization of his immunity had hit him.

At this point he turned to Braun, “Hey, Doc, you ever eaten any caviar? You know, that Russian stuff. Supposed to be the most expensive food in the world.”

The doctor cleared his throat. “Small amounts in hors d’oeuvres at cocktail parties.”

“Well, maybe I’m just a country boy but the stuff tastes like fish eggs to me. Anyway, to get back to the story. …”

He’d gone into Tiffany’s and into some of the other swank shops. And then into a bank or two, and stared at the treasures of Manhattan.

At this point he looked at Ross. “You know, just being invisible don’t mean all that. How you going to pick up a wad of thousand dollar bills and just walk out the front door with them? Everybody’d see the dough just kind of floating through the air.”

“I came to the same conclusion myself, when I experimented,” Ross said wryly.

He had ridden on the subways … free. He had eaten various food in various swank restaurants. He had even had drinks in name bars, sampling everything from Metaxa to vintage champagne. He was of the opinion that even though he remained invisible for the rest of his years, he’d still stick to bourbon and beer.

He had gone down to Wall Street and into the offices of the top brokerage firms and into the sanctum sanctorums of the wealthiest of mucky-mucks but had been too impatient to stick around long enough to possibly hear something that might be profitable. He admitted, grudgingly, that he wouldn’t have known what to listen for anyway. Frustrated there, he had gone back uptown and finally located the hangout of one of the more renown sports promoters who was rumored to have gangster connections and was currently under bail due to a boxing scandal. He had stayed about that worthy’s office for an hour, gleaning nothing more than several dirty jokes he’d never heard before.

All this activity had wearied him so he went to the Waldorf, located an empty suite in the tower and climbed into bed for a nap after coolly phoning room service to give him a call in two hours. That had almost led to disaster. Evidently, someone on room service had found the suite to be supposedly empty and had sent a boy up to investigate. However, when he had heard the door open, Crowley had merely rolled out of the bed and left, leaving a startled bellhop behind staring at rumpled bedclothes which had seemed to stir of their own accord.

The rest of the day was little different from the first hours. He had gone about gawking in places he couldn’t have had he been visible. Into the dressing room of the Roxie, into the bars of swank private clubs, into the offices of the F.B.I. He would have liked to have walked in on a poker game with some real high rollers playing, such as Nick the Greek, but he didn’t have the time nor know-how to go about finding one.

Crowley wound it all up with a gesture of both hands, palms upward. “I gotta admit, it was fun, but what the devil good is it?”

They looked at him questioningly.

Crowley said, “I mean, how’s it practical? How can you make a buck out of it, if you turn it over to the public, like? Everybody’d go around robbing everybody else and you’d all wind up equal.”

Dr. Braun chuckled in deprecation. “There would be various profitable uses, Don. One priceless one would be scientific observation of wild life. For that matter there would be valid usage in everyday life. There are often personal reasons for not wishing to be observed. Celebrities, for instance, wishing to avoid crowds.”

“Yeah,” Crowley laughed, “or a businessman out with his secretary.”

Dr. Braun frowned. “Of course, there are many other aspects. It would mean the end of such things as the Iron Curtain. And also the end of such things as American immigration control. There are many, many ramifications, Don, some of which frighten us. The world would be never quite the same.”

Crowley leaned forward confidentially. “Well, I’ll tell you. I was thinking it all out. What we got to do is turn it over to the Army and soak them plenty for it.”

The others ignored his cutting himself a piece of the cake.

Ross Wooley merely grunted bitterly.

Patricia said impatiently, “We’ve thought most of these things through, Don. However, Dr. Braun happens to be quite a follower of Lord Russell.”

Crowley looked at her blankly.

“He’s a pacifist,” she explained.

Braun pushed his glasses back more firmly on his nose and said, gently, “The military already have enough gadgets to destroy quite literally everything and I trust one set of them no more than the other. If both sides had our discovery, then, very well, each would go about attempting to find some manner of penetrating the invisibility, or taking various measures to protect their top secrets. But to give it to just one would be such an advantage that the other would have to embark immediately upon a desperate attack before the advantage could be fully realized. If we turn this over to the Pentagon, for exclusive use, the Soviets would have to begin a preventative war as soon as they learned of its existence.”

“You a red?” Crowley said, scowling.

The doctor shrugged hopelessly. “No,” he said.

Crowley turned to the other two. “If you think it’s the patriotic thing to do, why don’t one of you sell it to the government?”

Patricia said testily, “You don’t understand, Don. Even if we were so thoroughly in disagreement that we would act unilaterally, we couldn’t. You see, this is a three-way discovery. No one of us knows the complete process.”

His face twisted. “Look, maybe some of this egghead stuff doesn’t get through to me but I’m not stupid, see? You got the stuff, haven’t you? You gave me that shot this morning.”

Braun took over, saying reasonably, “Don, this discovery was hit upon by accident. The three of us are employed in the laboratories of a medical research organization. I am the department head. Patricia and Ross were doing some routine work on a minor problem when they separately stumbled upon some rather startling effects, practically at the same time. Each, separately, brought their discoveries to me, and, working you might say intuitively, I added some conclusions of my own, and … well, I repeat, the discovery was stumbled upon.”

Crowley assimilated that. “None of you knows how to do it, make those injections like, by himself?”

“That is correct. Each knows just one phase of the process. Each must combine with the other two.”

Patricia said impatiently, “And thus far we wish to keep it that way. Rossie believes the discovery should be simultaneously revealed on a worldwide basis, and let man adapt to it as best he can. I think it should be suppressed until man has grown up a little—if he ever does. The doctor vacillates between the two positions. What he would truly like to see, is the method kept only for the use of qualified scientists, but even our good doctor realizes what a dream that is.”

Crowley took them all in, one at a time. “Well, what the devil are you going to do?”

“That’s a good question,” Ross said unhappily.

“This experiment was a farce,” Patricia said irritably. “After all our trouble locating Don, our Common Man, we have found out nothing that we didn’t know before. His reactions were evidently largely similar to our own and. …” She broke it off and frowned thoughtfully. The other three looked at her questioningly.

Patricia said, “You know, we simply haven’t seen this thing through as yet.”

“What do you mean, Pat?” Ross growled.

She turned to him. “We haven’t given Don the chance to prove which one of us is right. One day is insufficient. Half the things he wished to do, such as sneaking around picking up stock tips in Wall Street and inside information on sporting events. …”

“Hey, take it easy,” Crowley protested. “I was just, like, curious.”

Ross said heatedly, “That’s not fair. I’ll admit, I, too, thought of exactly the same possibilities. But thinking about them and going through with them are different things. Haven’t you ever thought about what you’d do if given the chance to be worldwide supreme dictator? But, truly, if the job was offered, would you take it?”

“Good heavens,” Patricia said disgustedly, “remind me to break off our engagement if I haven’t already done it. I hate overpowering men. All I’m saying is that we’ll have to give Don at least a week. One day isn’t enough.”

Dr. Braun cocked his head to one side and said uncomfortably, “I’m not sure but that in a week’s time our friend Don might be able. … See here, Don, do you mind going on down to the hotel’s bar while we three talk this through?”

Crowley obviously took umbrage at that, but there was nothing to be done. Frowning peevishly, he left.

The doctor looked from one to the other of his associates. “By Caesar, do you realize the damage friend Don could accomplish in a week’s time?”

Patricia laughed at him. “That’s what I keep telling the two of you. Do you realize the damage any person could do with invisibility? Not to speak of giving it to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the world.”

Ross said, “We’ve started this, lets go through with it. I back Pat’s suggestion, that we give Don sufficient serum to give him twelve hours of invisibility a day for a full week. However, we will ration it out to him day by day, so that if things get out of hand we can cut his supply.”

“That’s an idea,” Patricia said. “And I suspect that within half the period we’ll all be convinced that the process will have to be suppressed.”

Ross leaned forward. “Good. I suggest we three keep this suite and get Don a room elsewhere, so he won’t be inhibited by our continual presence. Once a day we’ll give him enough serum for one shot and he can take it any time he wishes to.” He ran his beefy hand back through his red crew cut in a gesture of satisfaction. “If he seems to get out of hand, we’ll call it all off.”

Dr. Braun cleared his throat unhappily. “I have premonitions of disaster, but I suppose if we’ve come this far we should see the experiment through.”

Patricia said ungraciously, “At least the lout will be limited in his accomplishments by his lack of imagination. Imagine going into that French girl’s dressing room.”

“Yeah,” Ross said ludicrously trying to make his big open face look dreamy.

“You wretch,” Patricia laughed. “The wedding is off!”

But Crowley was no lout. He was full of the folk wisdom of his people.

God helps those who help themselves.

It’s each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

Not to speak of.

Never give a sucker an even break.

If I didn’t do it, somebody else would.

Had he been somewhat more of a student he might also have run into that nugget of the ancient Greek. Morals are the invention of the weak to protect themselves from the strong.

Once convinced that the three eggheads were incapable of realizing the potentialities of their discovery, he had little difficulty in arguing himself into the stand that he should. It helped considerably to realize that in all the world only four persons, including himself, were aware of the existence of the invisibility serum.

He spent the first day in what Marx called in Das Kapital the “original accumulation of capital,” although it would seem unlikely that even in the wildest accusations of the most confirmed Marxist, no great fortune was ever before begun in such wise.

It was not necessary, he found, to walk into a large bank and simply seemingly levitate the money out the front door. In fact, that would have meant disaster. However, large sums of money are to be found elsewhere on Manhattan and for eleven hours Crowley used his native ingenuity and American know-how, most of which had been gleaned from watching TV crime shows. By the end of the day he had managed to accumulate in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand dollars and was reasonably sure that the news would not get back to his sponsors. The fact was, he had cleaned out the treasuries of several numbers rackets and those of two bookies.

It was important, he well realized, that he be well under way before the three eggheads decided to lower the boom.

The second day he spent making his preliminary contacts, an operation that was helped by his activities of the day before. He was beginning already to get the feel of the underworld element with which he had decided he was going to have to work, at least in the early stages of his operations.

Any leader, be he military, political or financial, knows that true greatness lies in the ability to choose assistants. Be you a Napoleon with his marshals, a Roosevelt with his brain trust, a J. P. Morgan with his partners, the truism applies. No great leader has ever stood alone.

But Crowley also knew instinctively that he was going to have to keep the number of his immediate associates small. They were going to have to know his secret, and no man is so naive as not to realize that while one person can keep a secret, it becomes twice as hard for two and from that point on the likelihood fades in a geometric progression.

On the fifth day he knocked on the door of the suite occupied by Dr. Braun and his younger associates and pushed his way in without waiting for response.

The three were sitting around awaiting his appearance and to issue him his usual day’s supply of serum. They greeted him variously, Patricia with her usual brisk, almost condescending smile; Dr. Braun with a gentle nod and a speaking of his first name; Ross Wooley sourly. Ross obviously had some misgivings, the exact nature of which he couldn’t quite put his finger upon.

Crowley grinned and said, “Hello, everybody.”

“Sit down, Don,” Braun said gently. “We have been discussing your experiment.”

While the newcomer was finding his seat, Patricia said testily, “Actually, we are not quite happy about your reports, Don. We feel an … if you’ll pardon us … an evasive quality about them. As though you aren’t completely frank.”

“In short,” Ross snapped, “have you been pulling things you haven’t told us about?”

Crowley grinned at them. “Now you folks are downright suspicious.”

Dr. Braun indicated some notes on the coffee table before him. “It seems hardly possible that your activities would be confined largely to going to the cinema, to the swankier night clubs and eating in the more famed restaurants.”

Crowley’s grin turned into a half embarrassed smirk. Patricia thought of a small boy who had been caught in a mischief but was still somewhat proud of himself. He said, “Well, I gotta admit that there’s been a few things. Come on over to my place and I’ll show you.” He looked at Braun. “Hey, Doc, about how much is one of them Rembrandt paintings worth?”

Braun rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, “Great Caesar,” he murmured. He came to his feet and looked around at the rest of them. “Let us go over there and learn the worst,” he said.

At the curb, before the hotel, Ross Wooley looked up and down the street for a cab.

Crowley said, his voice registering self-deprecation, “Over here.”

Over here was a several toned, fantastically huge hover-limousine, a nattily dressed, sharp-looking, expressionless-faced young man behind the wheel.

The three looked at Crowley.

He opened the door. “Climb in folks. Nothing too good for you scientists, eh?”

Inside, sitting next to a window with Patricia beside him and Dr. Braun at the far window, and with Ross in a jump seat, Crowley said expansively, “This is Larry. Larry, this is Doc Braun and his friends I was telling you about, Ross Wooley and Pat O’Gara. They’re like scientists.”

Larry said, “Hi,” without inflection, and tooled the heavy car out into the traffic.

Ross spun on Crowley. “Don, where’d you get this car?”

Crowley laughed. “You’ll see. Take it easy. You’ll see a lot of things.”

They were too caught up in their own thoughts and in the barrage of demands they were leveling at Crowley to notice direction. It wasn’t until they were already on the George Washington Bridge that Patricia blurted, “Don, this isn’t the way to your hotel!”

Crowley said tolerantly, “Take it easy, Pat. We’re taking a short detour. Something I have to show you in Jersey.”

“I don’t like this,” Ross snapped. The redhead shifted his heavy shoulders in a reflexive protest against the confining tweed coat he wore.

“Relax,” Crowley told him reasonably. “I’ve been thinking things out quite a bit and I’ve got a lot to discuss with you folks.”

They were across the bridge now and Larry headed into the maze which finally unraveled itself to the point that it was obvious they were heading north. Larry hit the lift lever and they rose ten feet from the surface.

Dr. Braun said evenly, “You had no intention of taking us to your room. You used that as a ruse to get us out of our hotel and, further, across the bridge until we are now in a position where it’s quite impossible for us to summon police assistance.”

Crowley grinned. “That’s right, Doc. Didn’t I tell you these three were real eggheads, Larry? Look how quick he figured that out.”

Larry grunted in what might have been amusement.

Ross, growling low in his throat, turned suddenly in his jump seat and grabbed Crowley by the coat front. “What’s going on here?”

Crowley snapped, “Larry!”

From seemingly nowhere, the chauffeur had produced a thin black automatic and was now lazily pointing it, not so much at Ross Wooley as at Dr. Braun and Patricia. He said evenly, softly, “Easy, friend.”

Ross released his grip, “Put that thing away,” he blurted.

“Sure, sure,” Larry said, his voice all but disinterested. The gun disappeared.

Crowley, only slightly ruffled, said now, “Take it easy, Ross. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m going to need you folks and I’m going to treat you right.”

“Where are we going?” Ross growled.

“I had the boys rent me a big estate like up in the Catskills. Big place, nice and quiet. In fact, the last tenants used it for one of these rest sanitariums. You know, rich people with D.T.s or trying to get a monkey off their back.”

“The boys?” Patricia said softly.

He looked at her and grinned again. Crowley was obviously enjoying himself. “I got a few people working for me,” he explained.

Dr. Braun blurted, “You fool! You mean you’ve revealed the existence of the process Pat, Ross and I worked out to a group of ignoramuses?”

Crowley said angrily, “Now look, Doc, let’s don’t get on that bit. Maybe I’m just a country boy but I’m as smart as the next man. Just because some of you eggheads spend half your life in college don’t mean you’ve got any monopoly on good common sense. I went to the school of hard knocks, understand, and I got plenty of diplomas to prove it. Take it easy on that ignoramus talk.”

Patricia said suddenly, “Don’s right, Dr. Braun. I think you’ve badly underestimated him.”

Ross snorted sourly at that remark. “We’ve all underestimated him. Well, I think you’ll agree that our friend Don will get no more injections of the invisibility serum.”

Crowley chuckled.

They looked at him. Three sinkings of stomach taking place simultaneously.

“Now, you know I thought that might be your altitude. …”

“Attitude,” Ross muttered.

“… So I went to the trouble of coming up to your suite last night and sort of confiscating the supply. By the looks of it, I’d say there was enough for another ten shots or so.”

“See,” Patricia said to Ross. “You’re not as smart as you thought you were. Don’s one up on you.”

The estate which the “boys” had secured for Crowley was two or three miles out of Tannersville on a mountainside and quite remote. He took considerable pride in showing them about, although it was obvious that he had been here before only once himself.

He was obviously enjoying the situation thoroughly and had planned it out in some detail. Besides the empty-faced Larry, who had driven the car, they were introduced to two more of Crowley’s confederates, neither of whom gave any indication that the three were present under duress. The first was a heavyset, moist palmed southerner with a false air of the jovial. He shook hands heartily, said nothing with a good many words for a few minutes and then excused himself. The third confidant was an older man of sad mien who would have passed easily in the swankest of Washington, New York or London private clubs. He was introduced simply as Mr. Whitely, greeted them pleasantly as though all were fellow guests, had a word to say about the weather then and passed on.

Patricia was frowning. “Your southern friend, Paul Teeter, it seems to me I’ve heard his name before.”

Crowley grinned. “Oh, Paul’s been in the news from time to time.”

Ross was looking after Mr. Whitely who had disappeared into the main building. They were standing on the lawn, as part of the guided tour Crowley was giving them. He growled, “I suppose the two of them are experienced confidence men, or something.”

“Take it easy with those cracks, Ross,” Crowley said. “Whitely used to have a seat on the Stock Exchange. A real big shot. But that was before they disbarred him, or whatever they call it.”

“See here,” Dr. Braun said urgently. “We’ve had enough of all this, Don. I propose we go somewhere where it will be possible for us to bring you to your senses, and save you from disaster.”

“Kind of a powwow, eh? OK, Doc, come on in here.” He led them to the entrance, conducted them inside and into a library that led off the main entrada. He said, “By the way, Larry has a few of his boys up here just kind of like estate watchmen. Some of them aren’t much used to being out of the city and they get nervous. So. …”

Ross growled, “All right, all right, don’t try to make like a third-rate villain in a B-Movie. You have guards about and it would be dangerous to try to leave without your permission.”

“How about that?” Crowley exclaimed as though amazed. “Man, you eggheads catch on quick. Nothing like a college education.” He waved them to chairs. “I’m going to have to leave for a while. Whitely’s got some big deal brewing and we got to work it out.” He grinned suddenly. “And Larry’s got a different kind of deal. One he’s been planning for years but hasn’t been able to swing one or two details. It’s a caution how many details a little man who wasn’t there can handle in one of these king-size capers.”

He had used the pseudo-criminal term, caper, with considerable satisfaction. Crowley was obviously having the time of his life.

“Very well,” Braun said, “we’ll wait.” When the other had left the room, leaving the door open behind him, the doctor turned to his two younger associates. “What children we’ve been.”

Ross Wooley growled unhappily, “Brother, we couldn’t have picked a worse so-called Common Man, if we’d tried. That character is as nutty as a stuffed date. Do you realize what he’s in a position to do?”

Patricia twisted her mouth thoughtfully. “I wonder if any of us really realize. I am afraid even with all our speculation, we never truly thought this out.”

Dr. Braun pushed his glasses back on his nose with a forefinger. He shook his head. “You make a mistake, Ross. We didn’t make a bad choice in our selection of Don Crowley for our typical Common Man.”

Ross looked at him and snorted.

Braun said doggedly, “Remember, we attempted to find the average man, the common man, the little man, the man in the street. Well, it becomes obvious to me that we did just that.”

Patricia said thoughtfully, “I don’t know. I’m inclined to think that from the beginning you two have underestimated Don. He has certainly shown considerable ingenuity. Do you realize that he’s done all this in a matter of less than a week?”

“Done all what?” Ross said sarcastically.

She gestured. “Look at this establishment. He’s obviously acquired considerable money, and he already has an organization, or at least the beginnings of one.”

“That is beside the point,” Braun said ruefully. “I say that he is reacting as would be expected. As the average man in the street would react given the opportunity to seize almost unlimited power, and with small chance of reprisal.”

Patricia shrugged as though in disagreement.

Braun looked at Ross Wooley. “Close the door, Ross. Lord knows when we’ll have another chance to confer. Obviously, something must be done.”

Ross came quickly to his feet, crossed to the door, looked up and down the hallway which was empty and then closed the door behind him. He came back to the others and drew his chair in closer so that they could communicate in low voices.

Braun said, “One thing is definite. We must not allow him to secure further serum. For all we know, he might be planning to inject some of those gangsters he’s affiliated himself with.”

Patricia shook her head thoughtfully. “I still think you underestimate Don. He must realize he can’t trust them. At this stage, he has had to confide in at least two or three, fully to utilize his invisibility. But in the long run it isn’t to his advantage to have anybody know about it. If the authorities, such as the F.B.I., began looking for an invisible man, sooner or later they would penetrate the field of invisibility.”

“You mean you think Crowley will use these men for a time and then … destroy them?”

“He’ll have to, or sooner or later the secret will be out.”

Braun said in soft logic, “If he can’t allow anyone to know about it, then we, too, must be destroyed.”

Ross growled, “Then we’ve got to finish him first.”

Patricia said, “Now, I don’t know. Don is showing considerably more sense than you two evidently give him credit for. I think in many ways what he’s done is quite admirable. He’s seen his chance—and has grasped it. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised that Don will be the most powerful man in the country within months.”

The two men were staring at her. Ross sputtered, “Have you gone completely around the bend? Are you defending this … this. …”

A voice chuckled, “Mind your language, Buster. Just take it easy or you’ll wind up with some missing teeth.”

Ross jumped to his feet as though couched with an electric prod. Dr. Braun stiffened in his chair and his eyes darted about the room.

Patricia alone seemed collected. “Don Crowley!” she exclaimed. “You should be ashamed of yourself, listening in on private conversations.”

“Yeah,” the voice said. “However, it’s handy to know what the other side is dreaming up in the way of a bad time for you. Sit down, Buster. I’ve got a few things to say.”

Muttering, Ross resumed his place. The doctor sighed deeply and sank back onto the sofa he had been occupying. The three could see an indentation magically appear in the upholstery of an easy-chair across from them.

Crowley’s voice said confidently, “You know, from the first, I’ve kept telling you eggheads that I’m not stupid, but none of you’ve bothered to listen. You think just because you spent six or eight years of your life in some college that you’re automatically smarter than other people. But I got a theory, like, that it doesn’t make any difference if you spent your whole life going to college, you still wouldn’t wind up smart if you didn’t start that way.”

Ross began to mutter something, but Crowley snapped, “Shut up for a minute, I’m talking.” He resumed his condescending tone. “Just for example, take a couple of guys who got to the top. Edison in science and Khrushchev in politics. For all practical purposes, neither of them went to school at all. Khrushchev didn’t even learn to read until he was twenty-eight years old.

“Then take Dr. Braun here. He’s spent half his life in school, and where’s it got him? He’d make more dough if he owned the local garage and dealer franchise for one of the automobile companies in some jerkwater town. And look at Ross. He’d probably make more money playing pro football than he does messing around with all those test tubes and Bunsen burners and everything. What good has all the school done either?”

Dr. Braun said gently, “Could we get to the point?”

“Take it easy, Doc. I’m in charge here. You just sit and listen. The point is, you three with your smart-aleck egghead education started off thinking Mr. Common Man, like you call me, is stupid. Well, it just so happens I’m not. Take Pat there. She’s smarter than you two, but she had the same idea. That this here country boy isn’t as smart as she is. She’s going to fox him, see? As soon as she saw the way the cards were falling, she started buttering up to me. She even figured out that I was probably right in this room listening to you planning how to trip me up. So she pretended to take sides against you.”

“Why, Don!” Patricia protested.

“Come off it, kid. You probably hate my guts worse than the others. You were the one who thought this particular average man was a slob. That all common people were slobs.”

Patricia’s face went expressionless, but Ross, knowing her well, could sense her dismay. Crowley was right. She had been trying to play a careful game but their supposedly average man had seen through her.

Crowley’s voice went thoughtful. “I been doing a lot of thinking this week. A lot of it. And you want to know something? You know what I decided? I decided that everybody talks a lot about the Common Man but actually he’s never had a chance to, like, express himself. He’s never been able to put over the things he’s always wanted.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of democracy?” Ross said sourly. “Who do you think elects our officials?”

“Shut up, I told you. I’m talking now. Sure, every four years the lousy politicians come around and they stick coonskin caps on their heads or Indian bonnets and start saying ain’t when they make their speeches. Showing they’re just folks, see? They go out into the country, and stick a straw in their mouth and talk about crops to the farmers, all that sort of thing. But they aren’t really common folks. Most of them are lawyers or bankers or something. They run those political parties and make all the decisions themselves. The Common Man never really has anything to say about it.”

Braun said reasonably, “You have your choice. If you think one candidate is opposed to your interests you can elect the other.”

Crowley grunted his contempt. “But they’re both the same. No, there hasn’t been no common man in Washington since Lincoln, and maybe he wasn’t. Well, I’ll tell you something. The kind of talk I hear down in the corner saloon from just plain people makes a lot more sense to me than all this stuff the politicians pull.”

Dr. Braun cleared his throat and stared at the seemingly empty chair from whence came the other’s belligerent voice. “Are you thinking of entering politics, Don?”

“Maybe I am.”

“Good heavens,” Patricia ejaculated.

“Oh, I’m not smart enough, eh? Well, listen baby, the eggheads don’t seem to be so great in there. Maybe it’s time the Common Man took over.”

Dr. Braun said reasonably, “But see here, Crowley, the ability to achieve invisibility doesn’t give you any advantages in swinging elections or. …” He broke off in mid-sentence and did a mental double take.

Crowley laughed in contempt. “The biggest thing you need to win elections, Doc, is plenty of dough. And I’ll have that. But I’ll also have the way to do more muckraking than anybody in history. I’ll sit in on every important private get-together those crook politicians have. I’ll get the details of every scheme they cook up. I’ll get into any safe or safe deposit box. I’ll have the common people, you sneer so much about, screaming for their blood.”

Ross rumbled, “What do you expect to accomplish in office, Crowley?”

The voice became expansive. “Lots of things. Take this Cold War. If you drop into any neighborhood bar, you’ll hear what the common man thinks about it.”

The three of them stared at the seemingly empty chair.

“Drop the bomb first!” Crowley snapped. “Finish those reds off before they start it. In fact, I’m not even sure they’ve got the bomb. They’re not smart enough to. …”

“There was Sputnik, you know,” Ross interrupted sourly.

“Yeah, but built by those captured German scientists. We’re way ahead of those Russkies in everything. Hit ’em now. Finish ’em off. The eggheads in Washington are scared of their own shadows. Another thing I’d end is getting suckered in by those French and English politicians. What does America need with those countries? They always start up these wars and get us to bail them out. And I say stop all this foreign aid and keep the money in our own country.

“And we can do a lot of cleaning up right here, too. We got to kick all the commies out of the government. Make all the commies and socialists and these egghead liberals, illegal. In fact, I’m in favor of shooting them. When you got an enemy, finish him off. And take the Jews. I’m not antisemitic, like, understand. Some of my best friends are Jews. But you got to realize that wherever they go they cause trouble. They stick together and take over the best businesses and all. OK, you know what I say? I say kick them out of the country. And they all came over here poor and made their money here. So let them leave the way they came. We’ll, like, confiscate all their property except like personal things.”

Patricia had closed her eyes in pain long before this. She said, softly, “I imagine somewhere along in here we’ll get to the Negroes.”

“I’m not against them. Just so they stay in their place. But this integration stuff is bunk. You got to face facts. Negroes aren’t as smart as white people, neither are Chinks or Mexicans or Puerto Ricans. So, OK, give them their own schools, up to high school is all they need, and let them have jobs like waiters and janitors and like that. They shouldn’t take a white man’s job and they shouldn’t be allowed to marry white people. It deteriorates the race, like.”

Crowley was really becoming wound up now. Wound up and expansive. “There’s a lot of things I’d change, see. Take freedom of speech and press and like that. Sure I believe in that, I’m one hundred percent American. But you can’t allow people to talk against the government. Freedom of speech is OK, but you can’t let a guy jump up in the middle of a theater and yell fire.”

“Why not?” Ross growled. “Freedom of speech is more important than a few movie houses full of people. Besides, if one man is allowed to jump up and yell fire, then somebody else can yell out ‘You’re a liar, there is no fire.’ ”

“You’re not funny,” Crowley said ominously.

“I wasn’t trying to be,” Ross muttered, and then blurred into sudden action. He shot to his feet, and then, arms extended, dashed toward the source of the voice. He hit the chair without slowing, grappled crazily.

“I’ve got him!” He wrestled awkwardly, fantastically, seemingly in an insane tumbling without opponent.

Patricia was on her feet. She grasped an antique bronze candle-holder and darted toward the now fallen chair and to where Ross was wrestling desperately on the floor. Crowley was attempting to shout, but was largely smothered.

Patricia held the candlestick at the ready, trying to find an opening, trying to locate the invisible Crowley’s head.

Frederick Braun staggered to his own feet, bewildered, shaking.

A voice from the door said flatly, “OK, that’s it.” Then, sharper, “I said cut it out. You all right, Mr. Crowley?”

It was Larry. His thin black automatic was held almost negligently in his right hand. He ran his eyes up and down Patricia, taking in the candlestick weapon. His ordinarily empty face registered a flicker of amused approval.

Patricia gasped, “Oh, no,” dropped her bludgeon and sank into a chair, her head in her hands.

Ross, his face in dismay, came slowly to his feet. The redhead stared at the gunman, momentarily considering further attack. Larry, ignoring both Braun and Patricia, swung the gun to cover him exclusively. “I wouldn’t,” he said emptily.

Of a sudden, Ross’ head jerked backward. His nose flattened, crushingly, and then spurted blood. He reeled back, his head flinging this way and that, bruises and cuts appeared magically.

Crowley’s voice raged, “You asked for it, wise guy. How do you like these apples?”

The saturnine Larry chuckled sourly. “Hey, take it easy, chief. You’ll kill the guy.”

Ross had crumpled to the floor. There were still sounds of blows. Crowley raged, “You’re lucky I’m not wearing shoes, I’d break every rib in your body!”

Patricia was staring in hopeless horror. She said sharply, “Don, remember you need Ross! You need all of us! Without all of us there can be no more serum.”

The blows stopped.

“There will be no more serum anyway,” Braun said shakily. The thin little man still stood before his chair having moved not at all since the action began.

Crowley’s heavy breathing could be heard but he managed a snarl. “That’s what you think, Doc.”

Braun said, “By Caesar, I absolutely refuse to. …”

Crowley interrupted ominously. “You know, Doc, that’s where this particular common man has it all over you eggheads. You spend so much time reading, you don’t take in the action shows on TV. Now what you’re thinking is that even if we were going to twist your arm a little, you’d stick to your guns. But suppose, like, it was Pat we was working on, while you had to sit and watch.”

The elderly man’s brave front collapsed and his thin shoulders slumped.

Crowley barked a laugh.

Patricia by now, was bent over the unconscious Ross crying even as she tried to help him.

Crowley said to the silent, all but disinterested Larry, “Have these three put in separate rooms in that section they used for the violent wing when the place was a nuthouse. Have a good guard and see they don’t talk back and forth.”

“You’re the boss,” Larry said languidly.

Crowley was thorough. For that they had to give him credit. They were kept divided, each in a different room-cell and with at least two burly, efficient guards on constant watch. They were fed on army-type trays and their utensils checked carefully. There was no communication allowed—even with the guard.

The second day, Crowley took measures to see their disappearance raised no alarm at either their place of employment or at their residences. This raised few problems since all were single and all had already taken off both from the job and from their homes in order to carry out their experiment. Crowley forced them to write further notes and letters finding excuses for extending their supposed vacations. He also had Larry return to the hotel suite, pay their bill, pack their things and bring them to the Catskill estate which had become their prison.

He had them make up lists of materials and equipment they would need for further manufacture of the serum upon which they had stumbled, and sent off men to acquire the things.

And on three occasions during the following weeks he had them brought from their cells and spent an hour or so with them at lunch or dinner. Crowley evidently needed an audience beyond that of his henchmen. The release of his basic character, formerly repressed, was progressing geometrically and there seemed to be an urgency to crow, to brag, to boast.

On the third of these occasions he was already seated at the table when they were ushered into the dining room. Crowley dismissed the guards with a wave of his hand as though they were liveried servants.

All had eaten but there were liqueurs and coffee, cigars and cigarettes on the broad table.

Ross sank into a chair and growled, “Well, what hath the great man wrought by now?”

Crowley grinned at him, poured coffee and then a dollop of Napoleon brandy into it. He gestured with a hand. “Help yourselves, folks. How you feeling? You been getting all the books you wanted? You look kind of peaked, Pat.”

“Miss O’Gara to you, you ape with delusions of grandeur,” she snapped. “When are you going to let us out of those prison cells?”

Crowley wasn’t provoked. The strong can afford to laugh at the malcontented weak. “That’s one of the things you never know,” he said easily. “You sure you want out? Something the Doc said the other day had a lotta fact in it. The fewer people know about this secret of mine, the better off I’ll be and the better off I am, the better off the whole country is going to be and I gotta think about that. I got responsibilities.”

“A combination of Engine Charley and Louis XIV, eh?” Ross muttered, running his beefy hand back over his crew cut. It was a relief to get out of his room and talk with the others, but he didn’t want Crowley to see that.

“What’s that?” the other was impatient of conversation that went above his head.

Dr. Braun explained gently. “One said, I am the State, and the other, anything that’s good for my corporation is good for the United States—or something quite similar.”

Crowley sipped at his coffee royal. “Well, anyway, Pat, the day you’re ready to leave that cell, you’d better start worrying cause that’ll mean I don’t need you any more.”

Ross growled, “You didn’t answer my question. Robbed any banks lately, great man?”

The other eyed him coldly. “Take it easy, Buster. Maybe in the early stages of the Common Man Movement we hafta take some strong-arm measures, but that stage’s about finished.”

Patricia O’Gara was interested in spite of herself. She said. “You mean you already have all the money you need?”

He was expansive. Obviously there was nothing to lose with these three and he liked a sounding board. In spite of his alleged contempt for eggheads there was an element in Crowley which wished to impress them, to grant him equal status in their own estimations.

“There’s a devil of a lot to know about big finance. You need a starter, but once you get it, the stuff just rolls in automatic.” He grinned suddenly, almost boyishly. “Especially when you got a certain little advantage, like me.”

Braun said, interestedly, “How do you put your advantage to work?”

“Well, now, I gotta admit we aren’t quite out of the woods. We need more capital to work with, but after tonight we’ll have it. Remember that Brinks job up in New England a long time ago? Well, we got something lined up even bigger. I work with Larry and his boys to pull it. Then there’s another thing cooking that Whitely’s been keeping tabs on. It looks like I.B.M. is going to split its stock, three for one. I gotta attend their next secret executive meeting and find out. If they do, we buy in just before, see? We buy on margin, buy options, all that sort of jazz. Whitely knows all about it. Then we got another big deal in Washington. Looks like the government might devaluate the dollar. Whitely explained it to me, kind of. Anyway, I got to sit in on a conference the President’s gonna have. If they really decide to devalue, then Whitely and me, we go ahead and put every cent we got into Swiss gold. Then the day after devaluation, we switch it all back into dollars again. Double our money. Oh, we got all sorts of angles, Doc.”

“By Caesar,” Braun ejaculated. “You seem to have.”

Patricia had poured herself some coffee and was sipping it, black, even as she stared at him. “But, Don, what do you need all this money for? You already have more than plenty. Why not call it all off. Get out from under.”

Ross grunted, “Too late, Pat. Can’t you see? He’s got the power urge already.”

Crowley ignored him and turned to her, pouring more coffee and cognac for himself. “I’m not running up all this dough just for me. You think you’re the only one’s got ideals, like? Let me tell you, I might just be a country boy but I got ambitions to put some things right in this world.”

“Such as …” Patricia prodded, bitterness in her voice.

“Aw, we went through all that the other day. The thing is, now it’s really under way. If you was seeing the newspapers these days, you’d know about the Common Man Party.”

“Oh, oh,” Ross muttered unhappily.

“It’s just getting under way,” Crowley said modestly, “but we’re hiring two of the top Madison Avenue outfits to handle publicity and we’re recruiting some of the best practical politicians in the field.”

“Practical politicians!” Ross snorted. “Types like Huey Long, McCarthy, Pendergast, I suppose.”

The other misunderstood him. “Yeah, and even better. We’re going in big for TV time, full-page ads in the newspapers and magazines. That sort of thing. The average man’s getting tired of the same old talk from the Republicans and Democrats. Paul Teeter thinks we might have a chance in the next election, given enough dough to plow into it.”

Ross leaned back disdainfully. “What a combination. Whitely, the broker who has been barred from activity on Wall Street; Teeter, the crooked politician, but with connections from top to bottom; and Larry, whatever his name is. …”

“Morazzoni,” Crowley supplied. “You know where I first ran into his name? In one of them true crime magazines. He’s a big operator.”

“I’ll bet he is,” the redhead growled. “Probably with good Mafia connections. I’m surprised you haven’t attempted to take over that outfit.”

Crowley laughed abruptly. “We’re working on that, pal. Just take it easy and all these things will work their way out. But meanwhile I didn’t bring you jokers here to make snide remarks. I got work for you. I’m fresh out of that serum and you three are going to brew me up another batch.”

They looked at him, Dr. Braun, Ross Wooley, Patricia O’Gara, their faces registering stubbornness, revolt and dismay.

He shook his head. “Larry and some of his boys have experience. I gotta admit, I wouldn’t even want to watch.”

“I’m for standing firm,” Braun said stiffly. “There are but three of us. The most they can do is kill us. But if this man’s insanity is released on the world. …”

Crowley was shaking his head in deprecation. “Like when you say the worst we can do is kill you. Man, haven’t you heard about the Nazis and commies and all? You oughta read some of the men’s adventure magazines. How do you think Joe Stalin got all them early Bolsheviks to confess? You think they weren’t tough buzzards? Why make us go to all the trouble, when you’d just cave in eventually anyway? Save yourself the grief.”

Patricia said impatiently, “He’s right, I’m afraid. I would collapse rather quickly under physical coercion. You might last a bit longer, Ross possibly longer still. But in the end we would concede.”

Crowley said, as though in amazement, “You know, eggheads aren’t as stupid as some would reckon. OK, folks, I got a laboratory all fixed up with your things. Let’s go. Ah, Ross, old pal, I’m carrying heat, as Larry would say, so let’s don’t have any trouble, eh?”

He had been as good as his word in regards to the laboratory. It was obviously one of the rooms used by the staff when the place had been a sanitarium. Now, each of the three had all the equipment and supplies they required.

Crowley took a seat at the far end of the room, facing them. There had been a guard outside the door when they entered and a call would bring him in seconds. Even so, Crowley sat in such wise that his right hand was ready to plunge inside his coat to the gun that evidently was holstered there. He said, “OK, folks, let’s get about it.”

It took them half an hour or so to sort out those materials each needed in his own contribution to the end product.

Their captor looked at his watch impatiently. “Let’s get a move on, here. I thought this was going to take a few minutes.”

Patricia said testily, “What’s the hurry, Don?”

He grinned at her. “Tonight’s the big night. This evening, just before closing, I walk into. … Well, you don’t have to know the name. Like I said, it’ll make the Brinks job look like peanuts. They lock up the place and leave, see? OK, about two o’clock in the morning, when the city’s dead, Larry and the boys drive up into an alley, behind. I go around, one by one, and sock the four guards on the back of the head. Then I open up for Larry and they take their time and clear the place out. From then on, we got all the dough we need to start pyramiding it up on the Stock Exchange and like that.”

Patricia had drawn on rubber gloves, pulled a lab apron around her. She began reaching for test tubes, measuring devices. She murmured softly, “What keeps you from telling yourself you’re nothing but a crook, Don? When we first met you—it seems a terribly long time ago, back there in Far Cry—you didn’t seem to be such a bad egg.”

“We didn’t know, then, he was a cracked egg,” Ross muttered. He looked to where Crowley slouched, his eyes narrow as though considering his chances of rushing the other. Crowley grinned and shook his head. “Don’t try it, Buster.”

Crowley looked at Patricia. “You don’t get it, sister. It’s like somebody or other said. The ends, uh, justify the means. That means. …”

“I know what it means,” Patricia said impatiently.

Dr. Braun, who rather hopelessly was also beginning to work at the equipment their captor had provided, said reasonably, “Don, the greater number of the thinkers of the world have rejected that maxim. If you will, umah, analyze it, you will find that the end and the means are one.”

“Yeah, yeah, a lot of complicated egghead gas. What I’m saying, Pat, is that what I’m eventually heading for is good for everybody. At least it’s good for all real hundred percent Americans. Everybody’s going to go to college and guaranteed to come out with what you three got, a doctor’s degree. Everybody’s going to get a guaranteed annual wage, like, whether or not they can do any work. It’s not a guy’s fault if he gets sick or unemployed or something. Everybody. …”

“Shades of all the social-reformers who ever lived,” Ross muttered.

“By Caesar,” Braun said in despair, “I have an idea you’ll get the vote of every halfwit in the country.”

Crowley came to his feet. “I don’t like that kind of talk, Doc. Maybe I’m just a country boy, but I know what the common man wants and what I’m going to do is give it to him.”

Patricia looked up from her work long enough to frown at him. “What special are you going to get out of this, Don?”

That took him back for a moment and he scowled at her.

“Come, come,” she said. “You’ve already admitted to we three just what you think and are going to do. Now, how do you picture yourself, after all this has been accomplished?”

His face suddenly broke into its grin, a somewhat sly element in it now. “You know, when I get this all worked out, the folks are going to be pretty thankful.”

“I’ll bet,” Ross muttered. He, too, was working at his element of compounding the serum.

“Yeah, they will, Buster,” Crowley said truculently. “And they’re going to want to show it. You ever seen one of those movies like Ben Hur back in Roman days? Can you imagine everybody in the whole country thinking you were the best guy ever lived? You know, like an Emperor.”

“Like Caligula,” Dr. Braun said softly.

“I don’t know any of their names, but they really had it made. Snap your fingers and there’s a big banquet with the best floor show in the world. Snap your fingers and here comes the sexiest dames in Hollywood. Snap your fingers and some big entertainment like a chariot race, or something. Once I put this over, the Common Man Party, that’s the way people are going to feel about me and want to treat me.”

“And if they don’t, you’ll make them?” Ross said sarcastically.

“You’re too smart for your own britches, egghead,” Crowley snarled. He looked at his watch. “Let’s get this rolling. I got to get on down to the city and start this caper going.”

Ross handed a test tube to Dr. Braun and began stripping the gloves from his hands. “That’s my contribution,” he said.

Patricia had already delivered hers. Dr. Braun combined them, then heated the compound, adding a distillate of his own. He said, “When this cools. …”

Crowley crossed the room to the door and said something to the guard there. He returned in a moment with an anthropoid ape in a cage. He sat it on the table and looked at them.

“OK,” he said to Braun, his voice dangerous. “Let’s see you inject the monk with this new batch of serum.”

Braun raised his eyebrows.

The other watched him narrowly, saying nothing further.

Dr. Braun shrugged, located a hypodermic needle and prepared it. In a matter of moments, the animal was injected.

Ross Wooley said sourly, “Don’t you trust your fellow man, Don?”

“No, I don’t, and stop calling me Don. It’s Dan. Daniel Crowley.”

The three of them looked at him in bewilderment.

The ape was beginning to shimmer as though he was being seen through a window wet with driving rain.

“Don’s my goody-goody brother. Used to live in the same house with me, but ever since we were kids and I got picked up on a juvenile delinquent rap for swiping a car, he’s been snotty. Anyway, now he’s moved out to Frisco.”

Patricia blurted, “But … but you let us believe you were Donald. …”

He brushed it off with a flick of his hand. “You said you had some deal where I could make me some money. OK, I was between jobs.”

The ape was invisible now. Crowley peered in at him. “Seems to work, all right.”

Dr. Braun sighed. “I am not a Borgia, Daniel Crowley.”

“You’re not a what?”

“Never mind. I wouldn’t poison even you, if that is what you feared.”

Daniel Crowley took up the new container of serum and put a lid on it. He said, “I got to get going. The guy out in front will get you back to your rooms. No tricks with him, Buster”—he was talking directly to Ross—“he’s already beat a couple of homicide raps.”

Back in their cell-rooms, they found that there was but one guard. Evidently, the all-out robbery attempt to be held this night involved practically all of Larry Morazzoni’s forces. Beyond that, this guard did not seem particularly interested in keeping them from talking back and forth to each other through the peepholes that centered their doors.

After a couple of hours during which time they largely held silence, immersed in their own thoughts, Dr. Braun called out, “Patricia, Ross, I should tender my apologies. It was my less than brilliant idea to find the average man and use him as a guinea pig.”

“No apology necessary,” Patricia said impatiently. “We all went into it with open eyes.”

“But you were correct, Pat,” the doctor said unhappily. “Our common man turned out to be a Frankenstein monster.”

Ross growled, “That’s the trouble. It turned out he wasn’t our common man but his brother, whose petty criminal record evidently goes back to juvenile days.”

“Even that doesn’t matter,” Patricia said testily. “I’ve about come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have made any difference who we’d put in Don’s … I mean Daniel Crowley’s position. Man is too near the animal, as yet at least, to be trusted with such power. Any man.”

“Why, Pat,” Dr. Braun said doggedly, “I don’t quite believe you correct. For instance, do you feel the same about me? Would I have reacted like our friend Dan?” He chuckled in deprecation.

“That’s my point,” she said. “I think you would … ultimately. Once again look at the Caesars, they held godlike power.”

“You’re thinking of such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Commodus. …”

“I’m also thinking of such as Claudius, the scholar who was practically forced to take the Imperial mantle. And Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher who although bound up in learning himself allowed his family free rein in their vices and finally turned the Empire over to his son Commodus, one of the most vicious men of all time. But take Caligula and Nero if you will. Both of them stepped into power comparatively clean and with the best of prospects. Well approved, well loved. What happened to them when given power without restraint?”

Ross grumbled, “I admit I missed the boat, but not for the reasons Pat presents. In a sane society, our serum would be a valuable contribution. But in a dog eat dog world, where it’s each man for himself, then it becomes a criminal tool.”

Patricia said sarcastically, “And can you point out a sane society?”

Ross grunted. “No,” he said. After a moment he added, “You know, in a way Crowley was right. We three eggheads didn’t do so well up against what he called his common sense. I tried to slug him, with negative results. Dr. Braun, you tried sweet reason on him. Forgive me if I laugh. Pat, you tried your womanly wiles, but he saw through that, too.”

“The chickens have not all come home to roost,” Patricia said mysteriously. “What time is it?”

Ross told her.

She called to the guard, “See here, you.”

“Shut up. You ain’t supposed to be talking at all. Go to sleep.”

“I want to speak to Mr. Morazzoni. It’s very important and you are going to be dreadfully sorry if you don’t bring him.”

“Larry can’t be bothered. He’s getting ready to go on down to the city.”

“I know what he’s doing, but if he doesn’t listen to me, he’s going to be very unhappy and probably full of bullet holes.”

The guard came over to her door and stared at her for a long moment. He checked the lock on her door and then those of Dr. Braun and Ross Wooley. “We’ll see who’s going to be sorry,” he grunted. He turned and left.

When he returned it was with both Larry Morazzoni and Paul Teeter, Dan Crowley’s political adviser. Morazzoni growled, “What goes on? You squares looking for trouble?”

Patricia said testily, “I suggest you let us out of here, Mr. Morazzoni. If you do, we pledge not to press kidnapping charges against you. I believe you are aware of the penalty in this State.”

“You trying to be funny?”

“Definitely not, Mr. Morazzoni,” Patricia said icily. “Daniel Crowley bragged to us of your plans for tonight.”

The hoodlum muttered a contemptuous obscenity under his breath.

Paul Teeter, the heavyset southerner said jovially, “But what has this to do with releasing you, Miss O’Gara? Admittedly Dan is a bit indiscreet but. …” He let the sentence fade away.

“Yes,” Patricia said. “I realize that he is a nonprofessional in your ranks, and have little doubt that eventually you would have surmounted whatever precautions he has taken to keep you in underling positions. That’s beside the point. The point is that by this time Daniel Crowley has, ah, infiltrated the institution you expected to burglarize tonight. He is inside, and you are still outside. There are four guards also inside, whom he is expected to eliminate before you can join him.”

“He told you everything all right, the jerk,” Larry said coldly. “But so what?”

“So Dan Crowley had us make up a new amount of serum tonight and tested it on a chimpanzee in the lab. If you’ll go and check, you’ll undoubtedly find the chimp is again visible.”

The gunman looked at Paul Teeter blankly.

The other’s reactions were quicker. “The serum lasts for twelve hours,” Teeter barked.

“This batch lasts for three hours,” Patricia said definitely. “Your friend Crowley is suddenly going to become visible right before the eyes of those four guards—and long before he had expected to eliminate them.”

Teeter barked, “Larry, check that monkey.”

Doc Braun spoke up for the first time since the appearance of the two. He said dryly, “You’ll also notice that the animal is sound asleep. It seems that I added a slow-acting but rather potent sleeping compound to the serum.”

The gunman started from the room in a rush.

Ross called after him, “If you’ll look closely, you’ll also note the chimp’s skin has turned a brilliant red. There have been some basic changes in the pigment.”

“Holy smokes,” Paul Teeter protested, moping his face with a handkerchief. “Didn’t he take any precautions against you people at all?”

Ross said, “He was too busy telling us how smart a country boy he happened to be.”

Larry returned in moments, biting his lip in the first nervous manifestation any of them had ever seen in him. He took Teeter to one side.

Patricia called to them impatiently. “You have no time and no one to contact Crowley now. Don’t be fools. Mend your bridges while you can. Let us out of here, and we’ll prefer no charges.”

Larry was a man of quick decisions. He snapped to the blank-faced guard who had assimilated only a fraction of all this, “Go on back to the boys and tell them to start packing to get out of here. Tell them the fix has chilled. It’s all off. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“OK, chief.” The other had the philosophical outlook of those who were meant to take orders and knew it. He left.

Larry and Teeter opened the cell doors.

Teeter said, “How do we know we can trust you?”

Ross looked at him.

Larry said, “It’s a deal. Give us an hour to get out of here. Then use the phone if you want to call a taxi, or whatever. I ain’t stupid, this thing was too complicated to begin with.”

When Teeter and Morazzoni were gone, the three stood alone in the corridor, looking at each other.

The doctor pushed his glasses back onto his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “By Caesar,” he said.

Ross ran a hefty paw back through his red crew cut and twisted his face into a mock grimace. “Well,” he said, “I have to revise my former statement. I used brute strength against Crowley, the doctor used sweet reason, and Pat her womanly wiles. And all failed. But as biochemists, each working without the knowledge of the others, we used science—and it paid off. I suppose the thing to do now is buy three jet tickets for California.”

Braun and Patricia looked at him blankly.

Ross explained. “Didn’t you hear what Crowley said? His brother, Donald, has moved out to San Francisco. He’s our real Common Man, we’ll have to start the experiment all over again.”

Dr. Braun snorted.

Patricia O’Gara, hands on hips, snapped, “Ross Wooley, our engagement is off!”

Frigid Fracas

I

In other eras he might have been described as swacked, stewed, stoned, smashed, crocked, cockeyed, soused, shellacked, polluted, potted, tanked, lit, stinko, pie-eyed, three sheets in the wind, or simply drunk.

In his own time, Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle Caste, was drenched.

Or at least rapidly getting there.

He wasn’t happy about it. It wasn’t that kind of a binge.

He lowered one eyelid and concentrated on the list of potables offered by the auto-bar. He’d decided earlier in the game that it would be a physical impossibility to get through the whole list but he was making a strong attempt on a representative of each subdivision. He’d had a cocktail, a highball, a sour, a flip, a punch and a julep. He wagged forth a finger to dial a fizz, a Sloe Gin Fizz.

Joe Mauser occupied a small table in a corner of the Middle Caste Category Military Club in Greater Washington. His current fame, transient though it might be, would have made him welcome as a guest in the Upper Caste Club, located in the swank Baltimore section of town. Old pros in the Category Military had comparatively small sufferance for caste lines among themselves; rarified class distinctions meant little when you were in the dill, and you didn’t become an old pro without having been in spots where matters had pickled. Joe would have been welcome on the strength of his performance in the most recent fracas in which he had participated as a mercenary, that between Vacuum Tube Transport and Continental Hovercraft. But he didn’t want it that way.

You didn’t devote the greater part of your life to pulling your way up, pushing your way up, fighting your way up, the ladder of status to be satisfied to associate with your social superiors on the basis of being a nine-day-wonder, an oddity to be met at cocktail parties and spoken to for a few democratic moments.

No, Joe Mauser would stick to his own position in the scheme of things until through his own efforts he won through to that rarefied altitude in society which his ambition demanded.

A sour voice said, “Celebrating, captain? Oops, major, I mean. So you did get something out of the Catskill Reservation fracas. I’m surprised.”

A scowl, Joe decided, would be the best. Various others, in the course of the evening, had attempted to join him. Three or four comrades in arms, one journalist from some fracas buff magazine, some woman he’d never met before, and Zen knew how she’d ever got herself into the club. A snarl had driven some away, or a growl or sneer. This one, he decided, called for an angered scowl, particularly in view of the tone of voice which only brought home doubly how his planning of a full two years had come a cropper.

He looked up, beginning his grimace of discouragement. “Go away,” he muttered nastily. The other’s identity came through slowly. One of the Telly news reporters who’d covered the fracas; for the moment he couldn’t recall the name.

Joe Mauser held the common prejudices of the Category Military for Telly and all its ramifications. Not only for the drooling multitudes who sat before their sets and vicariously participated in the sadism of combat while their trank bemused brains refused contemplation of the reality of their way of life. But also for Category Communications, and particularly its Subdivision Telly, Branch Fracas News, and all connected with it. His views, perhaps, were akin to those of the matador facing the moment of truth, the crowds screaming in the arena seats for him to go in and the promoters and managers watching from the barrera and possibly wondering if he were gored if next week’s gate would improve.

The Telly cameras which watched you as, crouched almost double, you scurried into the fire area of a mitrailleuse or perhaps a Maxim; the Telly cameras which swung in your direction speedily, avidly, when a blast of fire threw you back and to the ground; the Telly cameras with their zoom lenses which focused full into your face as life leaked away. The Spanish aficionados never had it so good. The closeup expression of the dying matador had been denied them.

The other undeterred, sank into the chair opposite, his face twisted cynically. Joe placed him now. Freddy Soligen. Give the man his due, he and his team were right in there when the going got hot. More than once, in the past fifteen years, Joe had seen the little man lugging his cameras into the center of the fracas, taking chances expected only of combatants. Vaguely, he wondered why.

He demanded, “Why?”

“Eh?” Soligen said. “Major, by the looks of you, you’re going to have a beaut, comes morning. Why don’t you stick to trank?”

“Cause I’m not a slob,” Joe sneered. “Why?”

“Why, what? Listen, you want me to help you on home?”

“Got no home. Live in hotels. Military clubs. In barracks. Got nothing but my rank and caste.” He sneered again. “Such as they are.”

Soligen said, “Mid-Middle, aren’t you? And a major. Zen, most would say you haven’t much to complain about.”

Joe grunted contempt, but dropped that angle of it. However, he could have mentioned that he was well into his thirties, that he had copped many a one in his day and that now time was borrowed. When you had been in the dill as often as had Joe Mauser, the days you lived were borrowed. Borrowed from some lad who hadn’t used up all that nature had originally allotted him. He was well into the thirties and his life’s goal was still tantalizingly far before him, and he living on borrowed time.

He said, “Why’re you … exception? How come you get right into the middle of it, like that time on the Panhandle Reservation. You coulda copped one there.”

Soligen chuckled abruptly, and as though in self-deprecation. “I did cop one there. Hospitalized three months. Didn’t read any of the publicity I got? No, I guess you didn’t, it was mostly in the Category Communications trade press. Anyway, I got bounced not only in rank on the job, but up to Low-Middle in caste.” There was the faintest edge of the surly in his voice as he added, “I was born a Lower, major.”

Joe snorted. “So was I. You didn’t answer my question, Soligen. Why stick your neck out? Most of you Telly reporters, stick it out in some concrete pillbox with lots of telescopic equipment.” He added bitterly, “And usually away from what’s really going on.”

The Telly reporter looked at him oddly. “Stick my neck out?” he said with deliberation. “Possibly for the same reason you do, major. In fact, it’s kinda the reason I looked you up. Trouble is, you’re probably too drenched, right now, to listen to my fling.”

Joe Mauser’s voice attempted cold dignity. He said, “In the Category Military, Soligen, you never get so drenched you can’t operate.”

The other’s cynical grunt conveyed nothing, but he reached out and dialed the auto-bar. He growled, “OK, a Sober-Up for you, an ale for me.”

“I don’t want to sober up. I’m being bitter and enjoying it.”

“Yes, you do,” the little man said. “I have the answer to your bitterness.” He handed Joe the pill. “You see, what’s wrong with you, major, is you’ve been trying to do it alone. What you need is help.”

Joe glowered at him, even as he accepted the medication. “I make my own way, Soligen. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“That’s obvious,” the other said sourly. He waited, sipping his brew, while the Sober-Up worked its miracle. He was compassionate enough to shudder, having been through, in his time, the speeding up of a hangover so that full agony was compressed into mere minutes rather than dispensed over a period of hours.

Joe groaned, “It better be good, whatever you want to say.”

Freddy Soligen asked, at long last, tilting his head to one side and taking Joe in critically. “You know one of the big reasons you’re only a major?”

Joe Mauser looked at him.

The Telly reporter said, “You haven’t got any mustache.”

Joe Mauser stared at him.

The other laughed cynically. “You think I’m drivel-happy, eh? Well, maybe a long scar down the cheek would do even better. Or, possibly, you ought to wear a monocle, even in action.”

Joe continued to stare, as though the little man had gone completely around the bend.

Freddy Soligen had made his first impression. He finished the ale, put the glass into the chute and turned back to the professional mercenary. His voice was flat now, all expression gone from his face. “All right,” he said. “Now listen to my fling. You’ve got a lot to learn.”

Joe held his peace, if only in pure amazement. He ranked the little man opposite him in both caste and in professional attainments. Besides which, he was a combat officer and unused to being addressed with less than full respect, even from superiors. For unlucky Joe Mauser might be in his chosen field, but respected he was.

Freddy Soligen pointed a finger at him, almost mockingly. “You’re on the make, Mauser. In a world where few bother, anymore, you’re on the way up. The trouble is, you took the wrong path many years ago.”

Joe snorted his contempt of the other’s lack of knowledge. “I was born into the Clothing Category, Subdivision Shoes, Branch Repair. In the old days they called us cobblers. You think you could work your way up from Mid-Lower to Upper caste with that beginning, Soligen? Zen! we don’t even have cobblers any more, shoes are thrown away as soon as they show wear. Sure, sure, sure. Theoretically, under People’s Capitalism, you can cross categories into any field you want. But have you ever heard of anybody doing any real jumping of caste levels in any category except Military or Religion? I didn’t take the wrong path, religion is a little too strong for even my stomach, which left the Category Military the only path available.”

Freddy had heard him out, his face twisted sourly. He said now, “You misunderstand. I realize that the military’s the only quick way of getting a bounce in caste. I wish I’d figured that out sooner, before I made a trade out of the one I was born into, Communications. It’s too late now, I’m into my forties with a busted marriage but the proud papa of a kid.” He twisted his face again in another grimace. “By the way, the boy’s a novitiate in Category Religion.”

Some elements were clearing up in Joe’s mind. He said, in comprehension, “So … we’re both ambitious.”

“That’s right, major. Now, let’s get back to fundamentals. Your wrong path is the manner in which you’re trying to work your way up into the elite. You’ve got to become a celebrated hero, major. And it’s the Telly fan, the fracas-buff, who decides who the Category Military heroes are. Those are the slobs you have to toady to. In the long run, nobody else counts. I know, I know. All the old pros, even big names like Stonewall Cogswell and Jack Alshuler, think you’re a top man. Great! But how many buff-clubs you got to your name? How often do the buff magazines run articles about you? How often do you get interviewed on Telly, in between fracases? Have the movies ever done The Joe Mauser Story?”

Joe twisted uncomfortably. “All that stuff takes a lot of time. I’ve been keeping myself busy.”

“Right. Busy getting shot at.”

“I’m a mercenary. That’s my trade.”

Freddy spread his hands. “OK. If that’s all you’re interested in, shooting lads signed up on the other side, or getting shot by them, that’s fine. But you know, major,”—he cocked his head to one side, and peered knowingly at Joe—“I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you don’t particularly like combat. Some do, I know. Some love it. I don’t think you do.”

Joe looked at him.

Freddy said, “You’re in it because of the chance for promotion, nothing else counts.”

Joe remained silent.

Freddy pushed him. “Who’re the names every fracas buff knows? Jerry Sturgeon, captain at the age of twenty-one, and so damned pretty in those fancy uniforms he wears. How many times have you ever heard of him really being in the dill? He knows better! Captain Sturgeon spends his time prancing around on that famous palomino of his in front of the Telly lenses, not dodging bullets. Or Ted Sohl. Colonel Ted Sohl. The dashing Sohl with his two western style six-shooters, slung low on his hips, and that romantic limp and craggy face. My, do the female buffs go for Colonel Sohl! I wonder how many of them know he wears a special pair of boots to give him that limp. Old Jerry’s a long time drinking pal of mine, he’s never copped one in his life. What’s more, another year or so and he’ll be a general and you know what that means. Almost automatic jump to Upper caste.”

Joe’s face was working. All this was not really news to him. Like his fellow old pros, Joe Mauser was fully aware of the glory grabbers. There had always been the glory grabbers from mythological Achilles, who sulked in his tent while his best friend died before the walls of Troy, to Alexander, who conquered the world with an army conceived and precision trained by another man whose name is all but forgotten, to the swashbuckling Custer who sacrificed self and squadron rather than wait for assistance.

Freddy pushed him. “How come you’re never on lens when you’re in there going good, major? Ever thought about that? When you’re commanding a rearguard action, maybe, trying to extract your lads when the situation’s pickled, who’s in the Telly lens where all the stupid buffs can see him? One of the manufactured heroes.”

Joe scowled. “The who?”

“Come off it, major. You’ve been around long enough to know heroes are made, not born. We stopped having much regard for real heroes a long time ago. Lindbergh and Byrd were a couple of the last we turned out. After that, we left it to the Norwegians to do such things as crew the Kon-Tiki, or to the English to top Everest—whether or not the Britisher made the last hundred feet slung over the shoulder of a Sherpa. I don’t know if it was talking movies, the radio, the coming of Telly, or what. Possibly all three. But we got away from real heroes, they’re not exciting enough. Telly actors can do it better. Real heroes are apt to be on the dull side, they’re men who do things rather than being showmen. Actually, most adventure can be on the monotonous side, nine-tenths of the time. When a Stanley goes to find a Livingston, he doesn’t spend twenty-four hours a day killing rogue elephants or fighting off tribesman; most of the time he’s plodding along in the swamps, getting bitten by mosquitoes, or through the bush getting bitten by tsetse flies. So, as a people, we turned it over to the movies, and Telly, where they can do it better.”

Joe Mauser’s mind was working now, but he held silence.

Freddy Soligen went on, “Your typical fracas buff, glued to his Telly set, wants two things. First, lots of gore, lots of blood, lots of sadistic thrill. And the Lower-Lower lads, who are silly enough to get into the Military Category for the sake of glory or the few shares of common stock they might secure, provide that gore. Second, your Telly fan wants some Good Guys whose first requirement is to be easily recognized. Some heroes, easily identified with. Anybody can tell a Telly hero when he sees one. Handsome, dashing, distinctively uniformed, preferably tall, and preferably blond and blue-eyed, though we’ll eliminate those requirements in your case, if you’ll grow a mustache.” He cocked his head to one side. “Yes, sir. A very dashing mustache.”

Joe said sourly, “You think that’s all I need to hit the big time. A dashing mustache, eh?”

“No,” Freddy Soligen said, very slowly and evenly. “We’re also going to need every bit of stock you’ve accumulated, major. We’re going to have to buy your way into the columns of the fracas buff magazine. We’re going to have to bribe my colleagues, the Telly camera crews, to keep you on lens when you’re looking good, and, more important still, off it when you’re not. We’re going to have to spend every credit you’ve got.”

“I see,” Joe said. “And when it’s all been accomplished, what do you get out of this, Freddy?”

Freddy Soligen laid it on the line. “When it’s all been accomplished, you’ll be an Upper. I’m ambitious, too, Joe. Just as ambitious as you are. I need an In. You’ll be it. I’ll make you. I have the know-how. I can do it. When you’re made, you’ll make me.”

II

When Major Mauser, escorting Dr. Nadine Haer, daughter of the late Baron Haer of Vacuum Tube Transport, entered the swank Exclusive Room of the Greater Washington branch of the Ultra Hotels, the orchestra ceased the dreamy dance music it had been playing and struck up the lilting “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

As they followed the maître d’hôtel to their table, Nadine frowned in puzzled memory and after they were seated, she said, “That piece, where have I heard it before?”

Joe cleared his throat uncomfortably. “An old marching song, come down from way back. Popular during the Civil War. The seventh Cavalry rode forth to that tune on the way to their rendezvous with the Sioux at the Little Big Horn.”

She frowned at him, puzzled still, “You seem to know an inordinate amount about a simple tune, Joe.” Then she said, “Why, now I remember where I’ve heard it recently. Wednesday, when I was waiting for you at the Agora Bar. The band played it when you entered.”

He picked up the menu, hurriedly. The Exclusive Room was ostentatious to the point of menus and waiters. “What’ll you have, Nadine?” He still wasn’t quite at ease with her first name. Offhand, he could never remember having been on a first name basis with a Mid-Upper, certainly not one of the female gender.

But she was not to be put off. “Why, Joe Mauser, you’ve acquired a theme song, or whatever you call it. I didn’t know you were that well known amount the nitwits who follow the fracases. Why next they’ll be forming those ridiculous buff-clubs.” Her laughter tinkled. “The Major Joe Mauser Club.”

Joe flushed. “As a matter of fact, there are three,” he said unhappily. “One in Mexico City, one in Bogota and one in Portland. I’ve forgotten if it’s Oregon or Maine.”

She was puzzled still, and ignored the waiter who, standing there, made Joe nervous. Establishments which boasted live waiters, were rare enough in Joe Mauser’s experience that he could easily remember the number of occasions he’d attended them. Nadine Haer, to the contrary, an hereditary aristocrat born, was totally unaware of the flunky’s presence and would remain so until she required him.

She looked at Joe from the side of her eyes, suspiciously. “That new mustache which gives you such a romantic air. Your new uniform, very gallant. You look like one of those Imperial Hussars or something. And your Telly interviews. By a stretch of chance, I saw one of them the other day. That master of ceremonies seemed to think you are the most dashing soldier since Jeb Stuart.”

Joe said to the waiter, “Champagne, please.”

That worthy said apologetically, “May I see your credit card, major? The Exclusive Room is limited to Upper—”

Nadine said coldly, “The major is my guest. I am Dr. Nadine Haer.” Her voice held the patina of those to the manor born, and not to be gainsaid. The other bowed hurriedly, murmured something placatingly, and was gone.

There was a tic at the side of Joe’s mouth which usually manifested itself only in combat. He said stiffly, “I am afraid we should have gone to a Middle establishment.”

“Nonsense. What difference does it make? Besides, don’t change the subject. I am not to be fooled, Joe Mauser. Something is afoot. Now, just what?”

The tic had intensified. Joe Mauser looked at the woman he loved, realizing that it could never occur to her that he, a Mid-Middle, would presume to think in terms of wooing her. That even in her supposed scorn of rank, privilege and status, she was still, subconsciously perhaps, a noble and he a serf. Evolution there was in society, and the terms were different, but it was still a world of class distinction and she was of the ruling class, and he the ruled, she a patrician, he a pleb.

His voice went very even, very flat, almost as though he was speaking to a foe. “When we first met, Nadine, I told you that I had been born a Mid-Lower. Why, I don’t know, but from my earliest memories I revolted against the strata in which birth placed me. History—I have had lots of time to read history, in hospital beds—tells me there have been few socioeconomic systems under which the strong, intelligent, aggressive, cunning or ruthless couldn’t work their way to the top. Very well, I intend to do it under People’s Capitalism.”

“Industrial Feudalism,” she murmured.

“Call it what you will. I won’t be happy until I’m a member of that one percent on top.”

She looked into his face. “Are you sure you will be then?”

“I don’t know,” he said angrily. “But I’ve heard the argument before. It’s been used down through the ages by apologists for the privileged classes. Pity the poor rich man. While the happy slaves are sitting down on the levee, strumming their banjos, the poor plantation owner is up in his mansion drowning his sorrows in mint juleps.”

She had an edge of anger, too. “All right,” she snapped. “But I’ll tell you this, Joe Mauser. The world is out of gear, but the answer isn’t for individuals to better their material lot by jumping their caste statuses.”

The waiter brought their wine, and, both angry, both held their peace until he had served it and left.

“What is the answer?” he said, mock in his voice. “It’s easy enough for you, on top, to tell me, below, that the answer isn’t in making my way to your level.”

She was interrupted in her hot reply by a rolling of the orchestra’s drums and the voice of a domineering M.C. who managed effectively to drown all vocal opposition at the tables.

Grinning inanely, holding onto his portable, wireless mike, he babbled along about the wonderful people present tonight and the good time being had by all. The Exclusive Room being founded on pure snobbery, he made great todo about the celebrities present. This politician, that actress, this currently popular songstress, that baron of industry.

Joe and Nadine ignored most of his chatter, still glaring at each other, until he came to. …

“And those among us who are fracas buffs, and who isn’t a fracas buff these days, given the merest drop of red blood? Fracas buffs will be thrilled to know that they are spending the evening in the company of the intrepid Major Joseph Mauser. …”

Behind him, the orchestra broke into the quick strains of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

“… Whose most recent act of sheer military genius and derringdo combined resulted in his all but single-handed winning of the fracas between Continental Hovercraft and Vacuum Tube Transport, and thus inflicting defeat upon none other than Marshal Stonewall Cogswell for the first time in more than a decade.”

The M.C. babbled on, now about another present celebrity, a retired pugilist, once a champion.

Nadine looked into his face. “I think I understand now. You mentioned that in any society the … how did you put it? … the strong, intelligent, aggressive, cunning or ruthless could work their way to the top. You’ve tried strength, intelligence, and aggressiveness, haven’t you, Joe? They didn’t work. At least, not fast enough. So now you’re giving cunning a try. Will ruthlessness be next, Joe Mauser?”

He was saved an answer.

A hulking body in evening wear stood next to their table, swaying. Joe looked up into a face glazed by either trank or alcohol. He didn’t know the other man and for a moment failed to realize the other’s purpose. The man was mumbling something that didn’t come through.

Joe, irritated, said, “What in Zen do you want?”

The stranger shook his head, as though to clear it. He sneered, “The famous Joe Mauser, eh? The brave soldier-boy. Well, lemme tell you something, soldier-boy, you don’t look so tough to me with your cute little mustache and your fancy-pants uniform. You look like a molly to me.”

“That’s too bad,” Joe bit out. “And now, if you’ll just go away.” He turned his face from the other.

“Joe … !” Nadine said in an alarmed warning.

The other’s contemptuous cuff, unsuspected, nearly bowled Joe completely from his chair. As it was, he barely caught himself.

His attacker shuffled backward and Joe recognized the trained step of the professional boxer. The other’s identity now came to him, although he was no follower of pugilism, a sport largely out of favor since the rapid growth of Telly scanned fracases. Boxing at its top had never been more than an inadequate replacement of the games once held in the Roman area.

Joe was on his feet, instantly the fighting man under attack. The table that he and Nadine occupied was a ringside one, and in open view of half the room, but that meant nothing. He was under attack and for the nonce surprised, on the defensive.

“How’d you like them apples, soldier-boy?” the professional pugilist chuckled nastily. His left flicked forward and Joe barely avoided its connecting with his face.

He threw aside, for the time, any attempt to explain the other’s uncalled for aggression. Unless he did something, and quick, he was going to be a laughing stock, rather than the hero into which Freddy Soligen was trying to build him.

Nadine said, Anxiously, “Joe … please … the waiters will deal with—”

He didn’t hear her.

Joe Mauser, with all his hospital studies, had never heard of the Marquis of Queensbury. But even if he had, it would never have occurred to him to be bound by that arbiter of fisticuffs. In fact, he had no intention even of being restricted to the use of his hands as fists. The Japanese, long centuries before, had proven the fist less than the most effective manner in which to pursue hand-to-hand combat.

Joe Mauser, working coolly, fast and ruthlessly, now, a trained combat man exercising his profession, moved in for the kill, his shoulders hunched slightly forward, his hands forward and to the sides, choppers rather than sledges.

Joe stepped closer, as quick as a jungle cat. His left hand leapt forward to the other’s neck, hacked, came back into another blurring swing, hacked again. His opponent grunted agony.

But a man does not become heavyweight champion without being able to take as well as give punishment. Joe’s attacker tucked his chin into his shoulder, fighter style, and moved in throwing off the effects of the karate blows. Somehow, he seemed considerably less drunk or over-tranked than he had short moments before, and there was rage in his face, rather than glaze.

One of the blows caught Joe on a shoulder and sent him reeling back. At the same time, behind the other, Joe could see the maître d’hôtel flanked by three waiters, hurrying up. He was going to have to do something, and do it quickly, or be branded a boorish Middle who had intruded into a domain of the Uppers only to participate in a brawl and have to be expelled by the establishment’s servants.

The former champ, his eyes narrowed in confidence of victory, came boring in, on his toes, quick for all of his bulk. Joe turned sideways, his movements lithe. He lashed out with his right foot, at this angle getting double the leverage he would have otherwise, and caught the other on the kneecap. The pugilist bent forward in agony, his mouth opening as though in protest.

Joe stepped forward, quickly, efficiently. His hands were now knitted together in a huge double fist. He brought them upward, crushingly, into his opponent’s face, with all the force he could achieve, and felt bone and cartilage crush. Before even waiting for the other to fall, he turned, righted his chair, and resumed his seat facing Nadine, his breath coming only inconsiderably faster than before.

Her eyes were wide, but she hadn’t organized herself as yet to the point of either protest or praise.

The maître d’ was at their table. “Sir—” he began.

Joe said curtly, “This barroom brawler attacked me. I’m surprised you allow your patrons to get into the shape he is. Please bring our bill.”

The head waiter stuttered, his eyes going about in despair, even as his assistants were lifting the fallen champion to his feet and hustling him away.

An occupant of one of the nearby tables spoke up, collaborating Joe’s words. The action had been fast, though brief, and had won the fascinated attention of that half of the patrons of the Exclusive Room near enough to see. Somebody else called out, too. And it came to Joe cynically, that a brawl in an establishment exclusive to Uppers, differed little from one of Middle or even Lower caste.

But it was impossible that they remain. He had looked forward to this evening with Nadine Haer, had planned to lay the foundations for a future campaign, when, as a newly created Upper, he would be in the position to mention marriage. He fumed, inwardly, even as he helped her with her wrap, preparatory to leaving.

Nadine, now that she had recovered composure, said coldly, “I suppose you realize you broke that man’s nose and injured his eye to an extent I’d have to examine him to evaluate?”

Behind her, he rolled his eyes upward in mute protest. He said, “What was I supposed to do, hand him a rose from our table bouquet?”

“Violence is the resort of the incompetent.”

“You must tell that, some time, to a jungle animal being attacked by a lion.”

“Oh, you’re impossible!”

III

When Freddy Soligen entered his living room, he automatically switched off the Telly screen which was the entire north wall. The room’s lights automatically went brighter.

His perpetual air of sour cynicism was absent as he chuckled to the room’s sole inhabitant, “What! A son of mine gawking at Telly? Next I’ll be finding tranks by the bowl full, sitting on the tea table.”

His son grinned at him. Already, at the ago of sixteen, Samuel Soligen was a good three inches taller than his father, at least ten pounds heavier. The boy was bright of eye, toothy of smile, gawky as only a teenager can be gawky, and obviously the proverbial apple of his father’s eye.

Sam said, the faintest note of apology in his tone, “Just finished my assignments, Papa. Thought I’d see if there was anything worthwhile on the air.”

“An incurable optimist,” Freddy chuckled. “You take after your mother. Believe me, Sam. There’s never anything worthwhile on Telly.”

“Not even when you’re casting?”

“Especially when I’m casting, boy. What’ve you been getting at the Temple school these days? Zen! I’ve been so busy on a special project I’ve been working on, I haven’t had time to keep check on whether or not you’re even still living here.”

The boy shrugged, picked up an apple from the sideboard and began to munch. His voice was disinterested. “Aw, Comparative Religion, mostly. We gotta go way back and study about the Greeks and the Triple-Goddess, and then the Olympians, and all that curd.”

“Hey, watch your language, Sam. Remember, you’re going to wind up a priest.”

“Yeah,” the boy grumbled, “that’ll be the day. You ever heard of a Lower becoming a full priest? I’ll be lucky if I ever get to monk.”

Freddy Soligen sat down suddenly, across from his son, and his voice lost its edge of good-natured humor and became deadly serious. “Listen, son. You were born a High-Lower, just like your father. Unfortunately, I wasn’t jumped to Low-Middle until after your birth. But you’re not going to stay a High-Lower, any more than I’m going to stay a Low-Middle.”

The boy shrugged, his expression almost surly, now. “Aw, what difference does it make? High-Lower isn’t too bad. It’s sure better than Low-Lower. I got enough stock issued me for anything I’ll ever need. Or, if not, I can work a while, just like you’ve done, and earn a few more shares.”

Freddy Soligen’s face worked, in alarm. “Hey, Sam, listen here. We’ve been over this before, but may be not as thoroughly as we should’ve. Sure, this is People’s Capitalism and on top of that the Welfare State; they got all sorts of fancy names to call it. You’ve got cradle to the grave security. Instead of waiting for old age, or thirty years of service, or something, to get your pension, it starts at birth. At long last, the jerks have inherited the earth.”

The boy said plaintively, as though in objection to his father’s sneering words. “You aren’t talking against the government, or the old time way of doing things, are you Papa? What’s wrong with what we got? Everybody’s got it made. Nobody hasta—”

His father was impatiently waving a hand at him in negation. “No, everybody doesn’t have it made. Almost everybody’s bogged down. That’s the trouble Sam. The guts have been taken out of us. And ninety-nine people out of a hundred don’t care. They’ve got bread and butter security. They’ve got trank to keep them happy. And they’ve got the fracases to watch, the sadistic, gory death of others to keep them amused, and their minds off what’s really being done to them. We’re not part of that ninety-nine out of a hundred, Sam. We’re two of those who aren’t jerks. We’re on our way up out of the mob, to where life can be full. Got it, son? A full life. Doing things worth doing. Thinking things worth thinking. Associating with people who have it on the ball.”

He had come to his feet in his excitement and was pacing before the boy who sat now, mouth slightly agape at his father’s emphasis.

“Sam, listen. I’m getting along. Already in my forties, and I never did get much education back when I was your age. Maybe I’ll never make it. But you can. That’s why I insisted you switch categories. You were born into Communications, like me, but you’ve switched to Religion. Why’d you think I wanted that?”

“Aw, I don’t know, Papa. I thought maybe—”

His father snorted. “Look, son, I haven’t spent as much time with you as I should. Especially since your mother left us. She just couldn’t stand what she called my being against everything. She was one of the jerks, Sam—”

“You oughtn’ta talk about my mother that way,” Sam said sullenly.

“All right, all right. I just meant that she was willing to spend her life sucking on trank, watching Telly, and living on the pittance income from the unalienable stock shares issued her at birth. But let’s get to this religious curd. Son, whatever con man first thought up the idea of gods put practically the whole human race on the sucker list. You say they’re giving you comparative religion in your classes at the Temple now, eh? OK, have you ever heard of a major religion where the priests didn’t do just fine for themselves?”

“But Papa. … Well, shucks, there’s always been—”

“Certainly, certainly, individuals. Crackpots, usually, out of tune with the rest of the priesthood. But the rank and file do pretty well for themselves. Didn’t you point out earlier that a Lower, in our society, never makes full priest? Not to speak of bishop, or ultra-bishop. They’re Uppers, part of the ruling hierarchy.”

“Well, what’s all this got to do with me getting into Category Religion? I’d think it’d be more fun in Communications, like you. Gee, Papa, going around meeting all those famous—”

Freddy Soligen’s face worked. “Look, son. Sure, I meet lots of people on top. But the thing is, eventually you’re going to become one of those people, not just interview them.” He began pacing again in nervous irritation.

“Sam, those on top want to stay there. Like always. They freeze things so they, and their kids, will remain on top. In our case, they’ve made it all but impossible for anybody to progress from the caste they were born in. Not impossible, but almost. They’ve got to allow for the man with extraordinary ability, like, to bust out to the top, if he’s got it on the ball. Otherwise, there’d be an explosion.”

“That’s not the way they say in school.”

“It sure isn’t. The story is that anybody can make Upper-Upper if he has the ability. But the thing is, Sam, you can’t make a jerk realize he’s a jerk. If he sees somebody else rise in caste, he can’t see why he shouldn’t. That’s why real rising has been restricted to Category Military and Category Religion. In the military, a man gives up his security, obviously, and if he’s a jerk he dies.

“In Category Religion they’ve got another way to sort out the jerks and make sure they never get further than monk and beyond the caste of High-Lower. Gods always work in mysterious ways and anybody in Category Religion who doesn’t have faith in the wisdom of the God’s mysterious choices of who to ordain and who to reject, obviously shows that he’s not really got the true faith which is, of course, essential to a priest, not to speak of bishop or ultra-bishop. So obviously, the Gods were wise in rejecting him. In simpler words, the would-be priest who simply hasn’t got what it takes, can be given the heave-ho without it being necessary for him, or his family or friends, to understand why. It’s all very simple; he lacked the humility essential in a priest of the Gods, as proven by his rebellious reaction.”

Sam said, unhappily, “I don’t get all this.”

Freddy Soligen came to a pause before the boy, sat down again abruptly and patted his son’s knee. “You’re young, Sam. Too young to understand some of it. Trust your father. Stick to your studies now. You have to get the basic gobbledygook. But you’re on your way up the ladder, son. I’ve got a deal cooking that’s going to give us an in. Can’t tell you about it now, but it’s going to mean an important break for us.”

It was then that the door announced, “Major Joseph Mauser, calling on Fredric Soligen.”

IV

Joe Mauser shook hands with the Telly reporter in an abrupt, impatient manner.

Freddy said, “Major, I’d like to introduce my son, Samuel. Sam, this is Major Joe Mauser. You don’t follow the fracases, but the major’s one of the best mercenaries in the field.”

Sam scrambled to his feet and shook hands. “Gee, Joe Mauser.”

Joe looked at him questioningly. “I thought you didn’t follow the fracases.”

Sam grinned awkwardly. “Well, gee, you can’t miss picking up some stuff about the fighting. All the other guys are buffs.”

Joe said to Freddy, “Could I speak to you alone?”

“Certainly, certainly. Sam, run along the major and I have business.”

When the boy was gone, Joe sank into a chair and looked up at the Telly reporter accusingly. He said, “This fancy uniform, I stood still for. That idea of picking a song to identify me with and bribing the orchestra leaders to swing into it whenever I enter some restaurant or nightclub, might have its advantages. Getting me all sorts of Telly interviews, between fracases, and all those write-ups in the fracas buff magazines, I can see the need for, in spite of what it’s costing. But what in Zen”—his voice went dangerous—“was the idea of sticking that punch-drunk prizefighter on me in the most respectable nightclub in Greater Washington?”

Freddy grinned ruefully. “Oh, you figured that out, eh?”

“Did you think I was stupid?”

Freddy rubbed his hands together, happily. “He used to be world champion, and you flattened him. It was in every gossip column in the country, every news reporter, played it up. And hell all it cost us was five shares of your Vacuum Tube Transport stock.”

“Five shares!”

“Why not? He used to be champ. Now, he’s so broke he’s got to live on stock he isn’t allowed to sell. His basic government issue at birth. He was willing to take a dive cheap, if you ask me.”

Joe growled at him unhappily. “I’ve got news for you, Freddy. Your hired brawler started off as per instructions, evidently, but after a couple of blows had been exchanged his slaphappy brain lost the message and he tried to take me. We’re lucky he didn’t splatter me all over the dance floor of the Exclusive Club. He didn’t take a dive. I had to scuttle him.”

Freddy blinked. “Zen!”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Joe growled. “Look, next time you decide to spend five shares of my stock on some deal like this, let me know, eh?”

Freddy walked to the sideboard and got glasses. “Whiskey?” he said.

“Tequila, if you’ve got it,” Joe said. “Look, I’m beginning to have second thoughts about this campaign. Where’s it got us, so far?”

Freddy brought the fiery Mexican drink and handed it to him, and took a place in the chair opposite. His voice went persuasive. “It’s going fine. You’re on everybody’s lips. First thing you know, some of the armaments firms will be having you endorse their guns, swords, cannon, or whatever.”

“Oh, great,” Joe growled. “Already my friends are ribbing me about this fancy uniform and all the plugs I’ve been getting. The glory-grabber isn’t any more popular today among real pros than he’s ever been.”

“Who gives a damn?” Freddy sneered, cynically. “We’re not in this to please your lame-brain mercenary pals with their soldier-of-fortune codes of behavior. We’re in this for Number One, Joe Mauser, and Number Two, Freddy Soligen.”

Joe put away the greater part of his drink. “Sure, sure, sure. But where are we now? Your campaign has been in full swing for months. What’s accomplished?”

The small Telly reporter was indignant. “What’s accomplished? We’ve got three Major Joe Mauser buff clubs in full swing and five more starting up. And next month you’re going to be on the cover of the Fracas Times.”

“And I’m still a major and still Mid-Middle caste. And my stock shares available for bribery are running short.”

Freddy twisted his mouth and looked worriedly down into his glass. He said unhappily, “We need a gimmick to climax all this. Some kind of gimmick to bring you absolutely to the top.”

“A gimmick?” Joe demanded. “What do you mean, a gimmick?”

“You’re going to have to do something really spectacular. Make you the biggest Telly hero of them all. We’ll have to get you into a real fracas and pull something dramatic. I don’t know what, I don’t seem to be able to come up with an angle. But when I do, I’ll guarantee that every Telly camera covering the fracas will be zeroed in on Joe Mauser.”

“Great,” Joe growled. “I’ve got just the gimmick. It’ll wow them.”

The Telly reported looked up, hopefully.

“I’ll get killed in a burst of glory,” Joe said.

V

A servant took Joe Mauser’s cap at the door and requested that Joe follow him. Joe trailed behind on the way to the living room of the mansion, somewhat taken aback by the, to him, ostentation of the display of the luxuries of yesteryear. Among them was to be numbered the butler. Servants, other than military batmen, were simply not in Joe’s world. Only the Uppers were in position to utilize the full time of individuals. Long years past, those tasks which once called for servants had been automated, from automated elevators to automated babysitters.

The servant announced him and then seemingly disappeared in the brief moment while Joe was bowing formally over Nadine Haer’s hand. Even while murmuring the appropriate banalities, Joe wondered how one acquired the ability to seemingly disappear, once one’s services were no longer needed. Each man to his own trade, he decided.

He had a date with Nadine, but it turned out that the piquant Upper was not alone. In fact, it was obvious that she had not as yet got around to dressing for her appointment with Joe. He had promised to take her soaring in his sailplane. She was attired, as always, as those dress who have never considered the cost of clothing. And, as ever, when Joe saw her newly, after a period of a day or more away, he was taken with her intensity and her almost brittle beauty. What was it that the aristocrat seemed able to acquire after but a generation or two of what they were pleased to call breeding? That aloof quality, the exquisite gentility.

“Joe,” Nadine said, “you’ll be pleased to meet Philip Holland, Category Government, Rank Secretary. Phil, Major Joseph Mauser.”

The other, possibly forty, shook hands firmly and looked into Joe’s face. He had a crisp manner. “Good heavens, yes,” he said. “That remarkable innovation of using an engineless aircraft for reconnaissance. My old friend, Marshal Cogswell, was speaking of it the other day. I assume that in advance you purchased stock in the firms which manufacture such craft, major. They must be booming.”

Joe grimaced wryly. “No, sir. I wasn’t smart enough to think of that. Professional soldiers are traditionally stupid. What was the old expression? They can take their shirts off without unbuttoning their collars.”

Philip Holland cocked his head, even as he chuckled. “I detect a note of bitterness, major.”

Nadine said airily, “Joe is ambitious, thinking the answer to all his problems lies in jumping his caste to Upper.”

Joe looked at her impatiently to where she sat on a Mid-Twentieth Century type sofa.

Philip Holland said, “Possibly he’s right, my dear. Each of us have different needs to achieve such happiness as is possible to man.”

To Joe, he sounded just vaguely on the stuffy side, even through the crispness. By nature nervous and quick moving, Holland seemed to try and project an air of calm which didn’t quite come off. Joe wondered what his relationship to Nadine could be, a twinge of jealousy there. But that was ridiculous. Nadine must be in the vicinity of thirty. Obviously, she knew, and had known, many men as attracted to her as was Joe Mauser—And men in her own caste, at that. Somehow, though, he felt Holland was no Upper. The other simply didn’t have the air.

Joe said to him, “Nadine doesn’t get my point. I contend that in a strata divided society, it’s hard to realize yourself fully until you’re a member of the upper caste. Admittedly, perhaps you won’t even if you are such a member, but at least you haven’t the obstacles with which the lower class or classes are beset.”

“Interestingly stated,” Holland said briskly. He returned to his chair from which he had arisen to shake hands with Joe, and looked at Nadine. “You said, on introducing us, that Joe would be glad to meet me, my dear. Why, especially?”

Nadine laughed. “Because I have been practicing your arguments upon him.”

Both of the men frowned at her.

Nadine looked at Joe. “Phil Holland’s the most interesting man I know, I do believe. He’s secretary to Marlow Mannerheim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and simply couldn’t be more privy to the inner workings of government. It was Phil who convinced me that something is wrong with our socioeconomic system.”

“Oh?” Joe said. He wasn’t really interested. Let society solve its problems. He had his own. And they were sufficient unto themselves as well as the day thereof. However, conversation was to be kept moving. He needled the other. “I’ve heard it contended that any type of government is good given capable, intelligent personnel to run it, or bad if not so managed. What was the example I read somewhere? Both heaven and hell are despotisms.”

Phil Holland shrugged. “An interesting observation. However, institutions, including socio-political ones, can become outdated. When they do, no matter how intelligent, capable and honest the governmental heads, that socio-political system can be a hell. If, at such time there are capable, intelligent persons available, they will take such measures as are necessary to change the institutions.”

Nadine had come to her feet. “The subject is my favorite, but I must change. Joe is taking me a-gliding, and I’m sure this frock isn’t de rigueur. You gentlemen will excuse me?” She was off before they had time to come to their feet.

Joe Mauser settled himself again, crossing his legs. He said, idly, “And you think our basic institutions have reached the state of needing change?”

“Perhaps, although as a member of the Government Category, it should hardly be my position to advocate such.” He seemed to switch subjects. “Have you read much of the Roman ludi, the games as we call them?”

“The gladiators and such?” Joe shrugged. “I’ve read a bit about them. It’s been pointed out, in fact by Dr. Haer, among others, that basically our present day fracases serve the same purposes. That instead of bread and circuses, provided by the Roman patricians to keep the unemployed Roman mob from becoming restive, we give them trank pills and Telly violence.”

“Um-m-m,” Holland nodded, “but that isn’t the point I was making right now. What I was thinking was that at first the Roman games were athletic affairs without bloodshed. It wasn’t until 264 BC that three pairs of slaves were sent in to fight with swords. By 183 BC the number had gone up to sixty pairs. By 145 BC ninety pairs fought for three days. But that was just the beginning. They really got under way with the dictators. Sulla put a hundred lions into the arena, but Julius Caesar topped that with four hundred and Pompey that with six hundred, plus over four hundred leopards and twenty elephants. Augustus beat them all with three thousand five hundred elephants and ten thousand men killed in a series of games. But it was the emperors who really expanded the ludi. Trajan had ten thousand animals killed in the arena to celebrate his victory over the Dacians, not to mention eleven thousand people.

“Are you surprised at my memory? The subject has always fascinated me. For one thing, I am a great believer in the theory that history repeats itself. As time went on, arenas were built all over the empire, even small towns boasted their own. In Rome, the number of them grew so that eventually an avid follower could attend every day, the year around. And as they increased in quantity they also had to grow more extreme to hold the fan’s attention. The Emperor Philip, in celebrating the thousandth anniversary of the founding of Rome, had killed a thousand pair of gladiators, a rhinoceros, six hippopotami, ten hyenas, ten giraffes, twenty wild asses, ten tigers, ten zebras, thirty leopards, sixty lions, thirty-two elephants, forty wild horses. I am afraid I forgot the rest.”

Joe stirred in his chair. The other’s personality grew on him. The crisp voice had a certain magnetic quality that made what he said important, somehow. However, Joe’s interest in Roman history wasn’t exactly paramount.

Holland said, “You wonder at what I am driving, eh? Do you realize the expense involved in getting a rhinoceros to Rome in those days? Not to speak of hippopotami, tigers, lions and leopards. Few people realize the extent to which the Romans went to acquire exotic animals to be slaughtered for the edification of the mob. They penetrated as far south as Kenya, there are still the ruins of a Roman fort there; as far east as Indonesia; as far north as the Baltic, and there is even evidence that they brought polar bears from Iceland.”

Philip Holland snorted, as though in contempt. “But the mob wearied of even such spectacle as giraffes being killed by pygmies from the Iturbi forest. The games had started as fights between skilled swordsmen, being observed by knowledgeable combat soldiers of a warrior people. But as the Romans lost their warlike ardor and became a worthless mob performing no useful act for either themselves or the State, they no longer appreciated a drawn-out duel between equals. They wanted quick blood, and lots of it, and turned to mass slaughter of Christians, runaway slaves, criminals and whoever else they could find to throw to the lions, crocodiles or whatever. Even this became old hat, and they turned increasingly to more extreme sadism. Children were hung up by their heels and animals turned loose to pull them down. Men were tied face to face with rotting corpses and so remained until death. Animals were taught to rape virgins.”

Joe Mauser stirred again. What in Zen was this long monologue on the Roman games leading to?

Holland said, “By the way, contrary to some belief, the games didn’t end upon Christianity becoming the dominant faith and finally the State religion. Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD but it wasn’t until 365 that Valentinian passed a law against sacrificing humans to animals in the arena and the gladiator schools remained in operation until 399. The arenas were finally closed in 404 AD but by that time the Roman Empire was a mockery. In all they last more than half a millennium, but things move faster these days.”

The tone of voice changed abruptly and Holland snapped a question at Joe. “By your age, I would imagine you’ve participated in the present day fracases for some fifteen years. How have they changed in that time?”

Joe was taken aback. “Why …” he said, hesitated as he got the other’s point, then went on, nodding. “Yes. They used to be company size—a few hundred lads involved. After a while, a battalion size fracas became fairly commonplace, then about ten years ago a corporation of any size had to be able to put at least a regiment into the field and the biggies had brigades.”

“And now?” Holland urged.

“Now a divisional size fracas is the thing.”

“Yes, and if a corporation isn’t among the top dozen or so, a single defeat can mean bankruptcy.”

Joe nodded. He had known of such cases.

Holland leaned back in his chair, as though all his points had been made. He said, his voice less brisk, “Our People’s Capitalism, our Welfare State, took the road of bringing the equivalent of the Roman ludi to keep our people in a state of stupefied acceptance of the status quo. And as in the case of Rome, the games are bankrupting it. Our present day patrician class, our Uppers, have a tiger by the tail, Joseph Mauser, and can’t let go. We need those capable and intelligent people of whom you spoke earlier, to make some basic changes. Where are they? Nadine said that your great driving ambition is to be jumped to Upper in caste. But even though you make it, what will you have on your hands but these problems that the Uppers seem unable to solve?”

Joe said, impatiently, “Possibly you’re right. What you say about the fracases becoming bigger and more expensive is true. They’re also becoming more bloody. In the old days, a corporation or union going into a fracas was conscious of having a high casualty list among the mercenaries. Highly trained soldiers cost money. Insurance, indemnity, pensions, all the rest of it. Consequently, you’d fight a battle of movement, maneuver, brainwork on the part of the officer commanding, so that practically nobody was hurt on either side. One force or the other would surrender after being caught in an impossible situation. Not any more. These days, they want blood. Plenty of blood. And they want the Telly cameras to focus right into the middle of it.”

Joe shook his head. “But it’s not my problem to solve. I’ve got my goal. I’ll worry about other ones when I’ve achieved it.”

A voice behind him said superciliously, “I do believe it’s the status hungry captain, ah, that is, major these days. To what do I owe this unexpected visit, Major Mauser?”

Joe came to his feet and faced the newcomer, Philip Holland doing the same, somewhat more leisurely.

Baron Balt Haer, wearing a colonel’s uniform and flicking his swagger stick along his booted leg, stood in the doorway. His voice was lazily arrogant. “And Mr. Holland, I must say, the Middle caste seems to have taken over the house. Well, Major Mauser? I assume you do not labor under the illusion that you are welcome in this dwelling.”

In Category Military rank is observed whilst in uniform, even though neither individual is currently on active service. Joe had automatically come to attention. He said, stiffly, “Sir, I am calling upon your sister, Dr. Haer.”

“Indeed,” Baron Haer said, his nostrils high in that attitude once perfected by grandees of medieval Spain, landed gentry of England, Prussian Junkers. “I find that my sister, in her capacity as medical scientist, seems to go to extreme in her research. What aspect of the lower classes is she studying in your case, major?”

Joe flushed. “Baron Haer,” he said, “we seem to have got off on the wrong foot when we participated in that fracas against Continental Hovercraft under your father, the late Baron. I would appreciate an opportunity to start over again.”

“Would you indeed?” Balt Haer said loftily. He turned his eye to Philip Holland, whose mouth bore the slightest suggestions of suppressed humor. “Unless I am mistaken, the conversation at the time of my entry seemed to have a distinctly subversive element. Shouldn’t this be somewhat surprising in the secretary of the administration’s foreign minister?”

Philip Holland said crisply, “You must have intruded, um-m-m, that is, entered, at the end of a sentence, Baron Haer. We were merely discussing the various methods, down through the ages, that ruling classes have utilized to perpetuate themselves in power.”

Haer obviously disbelieved him. He said, “For example?”

“There are many examples,” Holland said, reseating himself. “For instance, the medieval feudalistic class who dominated the ignorant and highly superstitious serfdom soon found it expedient to add to their titles by grace of God, as though it was God’s wish that they be count or baron, prince or king. What serf would dare attempt the overthrow of his lord, in the face of God’s wishes?”

“I see,” Balt Haer said. “And other examples?”

Holland shrugged. “The Chinese Mandarins utilized possibly the most unique method of a governing class perpetuating itself ever known, certainly one of the most gentle.”

Haer was scowling at him, obviously out of his depth, as was Joe Mauser for that matter.

Holland said crisply, “The mandarins devised a written language so complicated that it took at least ten years to master reading and writing, thus assuring that only the very well-to-do could afford to educate their sons. When invaded, as so often China has been invaded, only the mandarins were in the position to serve the conquerors by carrying on the paperwork so vital to any advanced society. So, still in control of the machinery of government, they continued to perpetuate themselves, and shortly—as history is reckoned—we found the conquerors assimilated and the mandarins still in power.”

Balt Haer said impatiently, “I seem to be under the impression that you were speaking of more current times, when I entered, Mr. Holland.”

From the door, Nadine said, “Good heavens, Balt, are you badgering my guests again?”

The three men faced her.

Balt said nastily, “I am astonished that you persist in bringing members of the lower orders into my home, Nadine.”

“Our home, Balt. In fact, if you must bring up such matters before outsiders, you will recall that you converted your portion of the family estate into continental Hovercraft stock, shortly before father met Baron Zwerdling’s forces in the recent fracas. No wonder you dislike Major Mauser. Through his efforts, our company won, rather than losing as you had expected.”

Her brother, who could have been only slightly her senior, was obviously enraged. “Are you suggesting that I am not welcome to stay in this, our family home, simply because the property is in your name?”

“Not at all,” she sighed. “You are always at home here, Balt, I simply demand that you exercise common courtesy to my guests.”

He turned and walked stiff kneed from the room.

“Sorry,” Joe said to Nadine.

“Why?” she said simply. “The fact of the matter is that Balt and I are continually at each other. He is quite the active member of the Nathan Hale society.”

Joe frowned his ignorance and looked at Holland.

Holland chuckled. “An ultraconservative—reactionary might be the better term—organization devoted to witch hunting and such in its efforts to maintain the status quo, major. Once again, history repeats itself. Such groups invariably evolve when basic change threatens a socioeconomic system.” He looked at Nadine. “I must be going, my dear. My, how charming you look. If this is the customary garb whilst going a-gliding, I shall have to take up the sport.”

“Why Phil, inane words of flattery from serious old you?”

Joe squirmed inwardly, wondering again upon what basis was the friendship of Nadine Haer and Philip Holland.

The butler entered and said, “A call for Major Mauser, if you please.”

Only Max Mainz, his batman during his last fracas and now permanently attached to Joe, knew that he might be found at this address. Joe said to Nadine, “Would you pardon me for a moment? I assume it’s something important, or I wouldn’t be disturbed.”

She said, demurely, “Undoubtedly one of the feminine members of a Joe Mauser buff club.”

He snorted amusement and followed the butler to the library and the tele-screen.

Max Mainz’s face loomed in the viewing screen. As soon as Joe appeared, he said, “Major, sir, the marshal’s been trying to get hold of you ever since you left the hotel.”

“The marshal?” Joe scowled.

“Marshal Cogswell. That one they call Stonewall Cogswell. And when he wants somebody, he really wants ’em, and I got a feeling it’s a good idea to come on the double.”

Joe laughed. “Stonewall Cogswell’s a tough one all right, Max.”

“You ain’t just a countin’ down, major, sir. He says when I get hold of you to come on over to his headquarters soonest.”

“All right, Max, thanks.” Joe flicked the set off.

Actually, Max was right. You didn’t ignore a summons from Marshal Cogswell. Not if you were in the Category Military and ambitious. The date with Nadine was off. And just when he was beginning to detect signs of her meeting him on his own level.

VI

It was the common practice among Category Military mercenaries of highest rank to maintain skeleton staffs between those periods when they were under hire by corporations or unions. That of Marshal Stonewall Cogswell was one of the most complete, he habitually keeping upward of a hundred officers in his private uniform. It paid off, for with such a skeleton force of highly skilled professionals as a cadre, the marshal could enlist veterans for his rank and file and whip together a trained fighting force in a fantastically short period.

And nothing was so of the essence as time, in the present Category Military. For when two corporations sued for permission to meet on a military reservation for trial by combat to settle their commercial differences, the sums involved were staggering. Joe Mauser had been correct in saying that the fracas had grown, even in his memory, from skirmishes involving a company or two of men, to full fledged battles with a division or even more on either side, forty thousand men at each other’s throats.

So a commanding officer became noted not only for his abilities in the field, but also those of cutting financial corners, recruiting his force of mercenaries, whipping them into a unit and getting them into the action. In fact, corporations, these days, invariably stated the period of time to be involved when they petitioned the Category Military Department. Perhaps a month, three weeks of which would be used for recruiting and drill, the last week for the fracas itself. Nobody could excel Marshal Cogswell in using the three weeks to best advantage.

Major Joe Mauser came to attention before the desk of the lieutenant colonel of Marshal Cogswell’s staff who was acting as receptionist before the sanctum sanctorum of the field genius. He saluted and snapped, “Joseph Mauser, sir. Category Military, Rank Major. On request to see the marshal.”

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren answered the salute, but then came to his feet and grinned while extending his hand to be shaken. He said, “Good to see you again, Mauser. Hope you’re in this one with us.” His grin turned rueful. “That trick of yours with the glider cost me a pretty penny. I’d made the mistake of wagering heavily on Hovercraft. But the marshal is waiting. Right through that door, major. See you later.”

Evidently, Joe decided, the marshal was recruiting for another fracas. Which was why Joe had been summoned, although when a field officer of Cogswell’s stature was gathering officers to command a force, he seldom called upon them; they clamored for permission to serve with him. You weren’t apt to find yourself in the dill, under Cogswell, and you practically never failed to collect your victory bonus. Victory was a habit.

Marshal Cogswell looked up from the desk at which he sat scowling at a military chart stretched before him. The scowl disappeared and his strong face lit with pleasure. The craggy marshal was a small man but strongly built, clipped of voice and with a tone that would suggest he had been born to command, had always commanded.

Joe snapped to the salute which the marshal acknowledged with a flick of his baton, then stood to shake hands. “Ah, Major Mauser. Bit of trouble locating you.” His eyes narrowed momentarily. “Trust you are not at present affiliated with any company colors.” He took in Joe’s uniform and scowled vaguely, not placing it.

Joe said in self-deprecation, “This is my own devising, sir. I thought if I was going to have to present myself to be killed, for a living, that I might as well show up before the screens as distinctively as possible. I’ve been told that ultimately the fracas buffs make or break you, in our category.”

The marshal frowned, as though unhappy and possibly surprised at Joe’s words, however, he sat down again and repeated his question by merely looking at the other.

“No, sir, I’m free,” Joe said. “However, frankly, I wasn’t looking for a commission right at this time.”

Cogswell stared at him. Mauser was a good junior officer and they’d been through half a dozen fracases together over the years, not always on the same side.

“Why not?” Cogswell barked. “Are you convalescing, major? Surely you didn’t manage to cop one in that last farce?”

“Personal reasons, sir.”

“Very well,” Cogswell growled. “However, I’m going to attempt to sway you, major. Would seem that I am up against it, if I don’t, and, in a manner it’s your fault.”

Joe was bewildered. “My fault, sir?”

The older man’s voice went brisk. “This is the situation. I have been approached by the United Miners to command their forces in their trial by combat with Carbonaceous Fuel. Same old issues, of course. Contract between the union and corporation is usually for only two years. Each time it comes up again, the union officials try to get a larger cut of the pie and the hereditary heads of Carbonaceous Fuel resist. Automatically, the Category Military Department issues a permit. The fracases they’ve been fighting prove so popular that there’d be riots if the permit was refused. Frankly, I’m no great admirer of the group in control of United Miners, but—”

Joe was surprised enough to say, “Why not, sir?” Old pro mercenaries seldom concerned themselves as to the issues or principles involved in a fracas. They chose their side by more mundane considerations.

Marshal Cogswell looked at him testily. “Sit down, Joe. You’re not on my staff, as yet, at least. Zen take the formality!” When Joe had accepted the chair, he growled again. “Suppose you didn’t know I was born into Category Mining?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I was. But even as a boy this new industrial revolution was cutting the number of employees involved in the category each year that went by.”

“That’s happened in every field, sir. Including my original one.” Joe Mauser was thinking, so what?

“Of course,” Cogswell rapped. “My objection is what happened to the union. Unions were originally founded as an instinctive gathering together of employees to achieve as high a pay as they could get from the employer, with the strike as their weapon. But whatever the original purpose, and its virtue or lack of it, the union grew into something entirely different by the early and middle twentieth century. Such unions as the United Miners grew to such a size that they, themselves, became some of the largest business organizations in the country. And eventually they came to be run, like any other business, for the benefit of those who owned or controlled them. The professional labor leader evolved, motivated by his own interests and finally becoming, in his despotic control of the union, backed by goon squads and gangsters, as powerful a man as was to be found in the country. Seldom were strikes any longer held to better the condition of the individual union members. Instead, the issues were contracts which allowed for fabulous sums to go into the union coffers where they were at the disposal of the union officials.”

The marshal grunted sourly. “Now that the whole industry of mining is all but completely automated and only a few thousands employed actively, there are confounded few miners not on the unemployed list, but the union officials wax as fat as ever, what with the percentages of each ton mined going into so-called welfare funds, and such.”

He looked at Joe, evidently conscious that he had made an inordinary long speech for the supposedly taciturn Stonewall Cogswell. He cleared his throat and said, “Not that it’s my affair. I switched categories to Military, in my youth. Let us get to the point. I’ve been caught napping, Joe.”

That was an unlooked for confession to come from Stonewall Cogswell. Joe said nothing, waiting for more.

The marshal shook his baton at the younger officer. “By utilizing that confounded glider of yours as a reconnaissance craft, you revolutionized present warfare, major. Act of absolute ingenuity, and I admired it. Unfortunately, I failed to realize the speed with which every professional in our category would jump upon the bandwagon and secure gliders for himself.”

Joe saw light.

“Been caught short,” Cogswell rapped. “Short of gliders. Short of even one glider. And within a few weeks I’m committed to a divisional size fracas.” He pushed back his chair, angrily. “General McCord is in command of the Carbonaceous Fuel forces. Met him before, and always brought up victory only by the skin of my teeth. But this time he has two gliders. I have none.”

“But, sir, surely you can either buy or rent several craft on the market.”

“Confound it! It’s not the machines that are unavailable, but the trained pilots to operate them. The sport hasn’t been popular in half a century. Not overly so, even then.”

“But training a pilot—”

“Training a pilot, nonsense!” the marshal was shaking his baton at him again, in indignation. “A pilot won’t do. He must also be a trained reconnaissance man. Must be able to follow terrain from the air. Identify military forces both in nature and number. I needn’t tell you this, major. You above all know the problem.”

It hadn’t occurred to Joe, but the other was obviously right. There couldn’t be more than a few dozen men in Category Military who could hold down both the job of pilot and reconnaissance officer. In another six months, the situation would have changed. Officers would quickly be trained. But now? As Cogswell said, he was caught short.

Joe came to his feet. “Sir, I’ll have to consider the commission. Frankly, my plans were otherwise.”

Cogswell started at him grimly. “Mauser, you’ve always been one of the best. An old pro, in every sense of the word. However, there have been some rumors going around about your ambitions.”

Joe said stiffly, “Sir, my ambitions are my own business, whatever these rumors.”

“Didn’t say I believed them, major. We’ve been together too often when the situation has pickled for me to judge you without more evidence than gossip. What I was leading up to, is this. There’s nothing wrong with ambition. If you see me through in this, I’ll do what I can toward pushing your promotion.”

Joe came to the salute again. “Thank you, sir. I’ll consider the commission and let you know by tomorrow.”

Cogswell flicked the baton, in his nonchalant answer to salute. “That will be all, then, major.”

VII

Freddy Soligen wasn’t at home when Joe Mauser called. The Category Military officer was met, instead, by young Sam Soligen, clothed this day in the robes of a novitiate of the Temple. Joe remembered now that Freddy had mentioned the boy in training in Category Religion.

Sam led him back into the living room, switching off the Telly screen which had been tuned in on one of the fictionalized fracases of the past. Poor entertainment, when compared to the real thing, for any fracas buff, but better than nothing. In fact, it was even contended by some that if you got yourself properly tranked you could get almost as much emotion from a phony-fracas, as they were called, as for the genuine.

“Gee, sir,” Sam said, “Papa was supposed to be back by now. I don’t know where he is. If you wanta wait—”

Joe shrugged and picked himself a chair. He took in Sam’s robes and made conversation. “Studies tough in the Temple schools?” he asked.

The teenager realized it was a make-talk question. He said, “Aw, not much. A lot of curd about rituals and all. You hafta memorize it.”

“Curd, yet,” Joe laughed. “You don’t sound particularly pious, Sam. Come to think of it, I suppose any child of Freddy’s could hardly be.”

Sam said, his young voice urgent, “Papa said you were on your way up, Major Mauser. Just like us. Gee, how come you chose Category Military, instead of Religion?”

Joe Mauser looked at the other. It was his policy to treat young people either as children or adults. If he was to deal with a teenager as an adult, he didn’t believe in pulling punches any more than had he been dealing with a person of sixty. He said, flatly, “I’ve never had much regard for those categories in which a man makes his living battening on human sorrow or fear, Sam. That includes in my book such fields as religion, undertakers and their affiliates, and even most doctors, for that matter.” He added, to explain the last inclusion, “They profit too much from illness, for my satisfaction.”

Major Mauser was enough of a current celebrity for practically anything he said to be impressive to young Sam Soligen. That youngster blinked. He said, “Well, gee, don’t you believe in any gods at all? If you believe in any god at all, you gotta have a religious category, and that means priests.”

“Why?” Joe said. Inwardly, he was amused at himself for getting into a debate with this youngster and even a trifle ashamed of needling the boy about his chosen field. But he said, “If there are gods, I doubt if they’d entrust a priesthood to threaten their created humanity with hellfire.”

Sam was taken aback. “Well, why not?”

“Gods couldn’t be bothered with such triviality. In fact, I’d think it unlikely they could be bothered with priests. If I was a god, certainly I couldn’t.”

The boy’s face was intent, its youthfulness somewhat ludicrous in view of the dark robes he wore. He leaned forward, “Yeah, you talk about priests and undertakers and all battening on human sorrow, but how about you? How about the Category Military? How many men you killed, major?”

Joe winced. “Too many,” he said abruptly. The tic was at the side of his mouth, unbeknownst to him. He added, “But mercenaries have deliberately chosen their path. They know what they’re going into and they do it willingly, they haven’t been drafted.”

He thought a moment, and Phil Holland’s talk about the Roman ludi came back to him. He said, “It’s like the difference between throwing a bunch of Christians to some wild bulls in a Roman arena, to being a torero in Spain, a matador who has chosen his profession and enters the bullring to make money.”

Then the boy said something that gave him greater depth than Joe had expected. “Yeah,” he said, “but maybe the torero was forced into becoming a bullfighter on account of how bad he needed the money.” In the heat of the discussion, he was emboldened to add, “And these new Rank Privates that go into a fracas, not knowing what it’s all about, just filled with all the stuff we see on Telly and all. How much of a chance does one of them have if he runs into an old-timer like Joe Mauser, out there in no-man’s-land?”

Touché, Joe thought.

There was the action that sometimes came back to him in his dreams. He had been a sergeant then, but already the veteran of five years or more standing, and a double score of fracases. The force of which he was a member had been in full retreat, and Joe’s squad was part of the rearguard. The terrain had been mountainous, the High Sierra Military Reservation. Four of his men had copped one, two so badly that they had to be left behind, incapable of being moved. Joe, under the pressure of long hours of retreat under fire, had finally sent the others on back, and found himself a crevice, near the top of a sierra, which was all but impregnable.

His rifle had been a .45–70 Springfield, with its ultra-heavy slug, but slow muzzle velocity. And Joe had a telescope mounted upon it, an innovation that barely made the requirement of predating the year 1900 and thus subscribing to the Universal Disarmament Pact between the Sov-world and the West-world. It had taken the enemy forces a long time to even locate him, a long time and half a dozen casualties that Joe had coolly inflicted. The way to get to him, the only way, involved exposure. Joe could see the enemy officers, through his scope, at a distance just out of his range. They knew the situation, being old pros. He found considerable satisfaction in the rage he knew they were feeling. He was dominating a considerable section of the front, due to the terrain, and there was but one way to root him out, direct frontal attack.

They had sent in Rank Privates; Low-Lowers, most of them in their first fracas. Low-Lowers, the dregs of society, seldom employed and then at the rapidly disappearing, all but extinct, unskilled labor jobs. Low-Lowers, most of them probably in this fracas in hopes of the unlikelihood of so distinguishing themselves that they would be jumped a caste, or at least acquire an extra share or two of common stock to better the basic living guaranteed by the State. Rank Privates, most in their first fracas, unknowledgeable about taking cover and not even in the physical condition this sort of combat demanded.

They came in time and again, surprisingly courageous, Joe had to admit, and time and again he decimated them. One by one, coolly, seldom wasting a shot. Not that he had to watch his ammunition, he had the squad’s full supply. He estimated that before it was through he had inflicted approximately thirty casualties. Hits in the head, in the torso, the arms, legs. He had inflicted enough casualties to fill a field hospital. And it had all ended, finally, when a senior officer below had arrived on the scene, took in the irritating situation, and sent a dozen noncoms and junior officers, experienced men, to dig Joe out. Joe had remained only long enough for a few final shots, none of them effective, at long range, and had then hauled out and followed after his squad. He might possibly have got two or three more of his opponents, but only at his own risk. Besides, already the irritation and hate that he had built up while on the run, and while his squad mates were copping wounds, had left him and there was nausea in his belly at the slaughter he had perpetrated.

Or that time on the Louisiana Reservation in the fracas between Allied Petroleum and United Oil. Joe had been a lieutenant then and—

But he rejected this trend of thought and brought his attention back to Sam Soligen.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “Some Low-Lower jerk, impressed by what he considers high pay and adventure, doesn’t stand much of a chance against an old pro.”

The gawky tee-ager broke into a toothy smile. “Gee, I wasn’t arguing with you, major. I don’t know anything about it. How about telling me about one of your fracases, eh? You know, some time you really got in the dill.”

Joe snorted. He seldom met someone not of Category Military who didn’t want a special detailed description of some gory action in which Joe had participated. And like all veterans of combat, there was nothing he liked less to do. Combat was something which, when done, you wished to leave behind you. Were brainwashing really practicable, it was this you would wish to wash away.

But Joe, like others before him, down through the ages, had found a way out. He had a store of a dozen or so humorous episodes with which he could regale listeners. That time his horse’s cinch had loosened when he was on a scouting mission and he had galloped around and around amidst a large company of enemy skirmishers, most of them running after him and trying to drag him from the horse’s back, while he hung on for dear life.

But it occurred to him that the boy might better appreciate a tale which involved his father, the Telly reporter, and some act of daring the small man had performed the better to serve his fracas-buff audience.

He was well launched into the tale, boosting Freddy Soligen’s part beyond reality, but not impossibly so, when that worthy entered the room, breaking it off.

While Freddy was shaking hands with his visitor, Sam said, “Hey, Papa, you never told me about that time you were surrounded by all the field artillery, and only you and Major Mauser and three other men got out.”

Freddy grinned fondly at the boy and then looked his reproach at Joe. “What’re you trying to do, make the life of a Telly reporter sound romantic to the kid? Stick to the priesthood, son, there’s more chicken dinners involved.” He saw Joe was impatient to talk to him. “How about leaving us alone for a while, Sam? We’ve got some business.”

“Sure, Papa. I’ve got to memorize some Greek chants, anyway. How come they don’t have all these rituals and all in some language everybody can understand?”

“Then everybody might understand them,” Freddy said sourly. “Then what’d happen?”

His son said, “Major, maybe you can finish that story some other time, huh?”

Joe said, “Sure, sure, sure. It winds up with your father the hero and they bump him up to Upper-Upper and make him head of Category Communications.”

“On the trank again,” Freddy grumbled, but Joe sensed he wasn’t particularly amused.

When the boy was gone, Joe Mauser told the Telly reporter of his interview with Stonewall Cogswell.

Freddy shook his head. “He wants you to fly that sailplane thing of yours again, huh? No. That won’t do it. We need some gimmick, Joe. Something—”

Joe said impatiently, “You keep saying that. But, look, I’m a mercenary. A fighting man can’t drop out of participation in the fracases if he expects the buffs to continue interest in him.”

The little man tried to explain. “I’m not saying you’re going to drop out of the fracases. But we need something where we can make you shine. Somewhere where you can be on every lens for a mile around.”

Joe’s face was still impatient.

Freddy said sourly, “Listen, you tried to handle all this by yourself, last time. You dreamed up that fancy glider gimmick and sold it to old Baron Haer. But did you do yourself any good with the buffs? Like Zen you did. All you did was louse up a perfectly promising fracas so far as they were concerned. Hardly a drop of blood was shed. Stonewall Cogswell just resigned when he saw what he was up against. Oh, sure, you won the battle for Vacuum Tube Transport, practically all by yourself, but that’s not what the buff wants. He wants blood, he wants action, spectacular action. And you can’t give it to him way up there in the air. Hey—!”

Joe looked at him, scowling questioningly.

Freddy said, slowly, “Why not?”

Joe Mauser growled, “What’d you mean, why not?”

Freddy said slowly, “Why can’t you have some blood and guts combat, right up there in that glider?”

“Have you gone drivel-happy?”

But the little man was on his feet, pacing the floor quickly, irritably, but still happily. “A dogfight. A natural. Listen, you ever heard about dogfights, major?”

“You mean pitdogs, like in Wales, in the old days?”

“No, no. In the First War. All those early fighters. Baron Von Richthofen, the German, Albert Ball, the Englishman, René Fonck, the Frenchman. And all the rest. Werner Voss and Ernst Udet, and Rickenbacker and Luke Short.”

Joe nodded at last. “I remember now. They’d have a Vickers or Spandau mounted so as to fire between the propeller blades. As I recall, that German, Richthofen, had some eighty victories to his credit.”

“OK. They called them dogfights. One aircraft against another. You’re going to reintroduce the whole thing.”

Joe was staring at him. Once again the Telly reporter sounded completely around the bend.

Freddy was impatiently patient. “We’ll mount a gun on your sailplane and you’ll attack those two gliders Cogswell says General McCord has.”

Joe said, “The Sov-world observers would never stand still for it. In fact, there’s a good chance that using gliders at all will be forbidden when the International Disarmament Commission convenes next month. If the Sov-world delegates vote against use of gliders as reconnaissance craft, the Neut-world will vote with them. Those Neut-world delegates vote against everything.” Joe grunted. “It’s true enough gliders were flown before the year 1900, but not the kind of advanced sailplanes you have to utilize for them to be practical. Certainly there were no gliders in use capable of carrying a machine gun.”

Freddy demanded, “Look, what was the smallest machine gun in use in 1900?”

Joe considered. “Probably the little French Chaut-Chaut gun. It was portable by one man, the rounds were carried in a flat, circular pan. I think it goes back that far. They used them in the First War.”

“Right! OK, you had gliders. You had eight portable machine guns. All we’re doing is combining them. It’ll be spectacular. You’ll be the most famous mercenary in Category Military and it’ll be impossible for the Department not to bounce you to colonel and Low-Upper. Especially with me and every Telly reporter and fracas-buff magazine we’ve bribed yelling for it.”

Joe’s mouth manifested its tic, but he was shaking his head. “It wouldn’t go, anyway. Suppose I caught one, or both, of those other gliders, busy at their reconnaissance and shot their tails off. So what? The fans still wouldn’t have their blood and gore. We’d be so high they couldn’t see the action. All they would be able to see would be the other glider falling.”

Freddy stopped dramatically and pointed a finger at him in triumph. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’ll be in the back seat of your sailplane with a portable camera. Get it! And every reporter on the ground will have the word, and his most powerful telescopic lens at the ready. Man, it’ll be the most televized bit of fracas of this half of the century!”

VIII

When Major Joe Mauser entered the swank Agora Bar, the little afternoon dance band broke into a few bars of that tune which was beginning to pall on him.

“… I knew her heart was breaking,
And to my heart in anguish pressed,
The girl I left behind me.”

Nadine looked up from the little table she occupied and caught the wry expression on his face and laughed.

“What price glory?” she said.

He took the chair across from her and chuckled ruefully. “All right,” he said, “I surrender. However, if you think a theme song is bad, you’ll be relieved at some of the other ideas my, ah, publicity agent had which I turned down.”

She said, “Oh, did he want you to dash into some burning building and save some old lady’s canary, or something?”

“Not exactly. However, he had a nightclub singer with a list of nine or ten victories behind her—”

“Victories?”

“Husbands. And I was to be seen escorting the singer around the nightclub circuit.”

“A fate worse than death? But, truly, why did you turn him down?”

“I wanted to spend the time with you.”

She made a moue. “So as to carry on our never-ending argument over the value of status?”

“No.”

Her eyes dropped and there was a slight frown on her forehead. Joe interpreted it to mean that she took exception to one of Mid-Middle caste speaking to her in this wise. He said, flatly, “At least the tune is somewhat applicable tonight.”

She looked up quickly, having immediately caught the meaning of his words. “Oh, Joe, you haven’t taken another commission?”

“Why not? I’m a mercenary by trade, Nadine.” He was vaguely irritated by her tone.

“But you admittedly made a small fortune on the last fracas. You were one of the very few investors in the whole country who expected Vacuum Tube Transport to boom, rather than go bankrupt. You simply don’t need to risk your life further, Joe!”

He didn’t bother to tell her that already the greater part of his small fortune had been siphoned off in Freddy Soligen’s campaign to make him a celebrity. He said, instead, “The stock shares I’ll make aren’t particularly important, Nadine. But Stonewall Cogswell has pledged that if I’ll fly for him in the Carbonaceous Fuel–United Miners fracas, he’ll press my ambitions for promotion.”

She said, her voice low, “Promotion in rank, or caste, Joe?”

“You know the answer to that.”

“But, Joe, to risk your life, your life, Joe, for such a silly thing—”

He said softly, “Such a silly thing as attaining to a position which will enable me to court openly the girl I love?”

She flushed, looked into his face quickly. Her flush deepened and her eyes went to her folded hands, on the table.

He said nothing.

Nadine said finally, her voice so low as almost not to be heard, “Perhaps I would be willing to marry a man of Middle caste.”

He was taken with surprise, but even in thrilling to the meaning of her words, his head was shaking in negation. “Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Rank Doctor, Mid-Upper, married to Major Joseph Mauser, Category Military, Mid-Middle. Don’t be ridiculous, Nadine. It would be as though back in the Twentieth Century you would have married a Negro or Oriental.”

She was stirred with anger. “There is no law preventing marriage between castes!”

“Nor was there law, in most States, against marrying between races. But there were few who dared, and, of those, few who were allowed to be happy. It’s no go, Nadine. Remember in the Exclusive Room the other night when the waiter questioned my presence in an Upper establishment and you had to tell him I was your guest? I don’t desire to be your guest the rest of my life, Nadine.”

The anger welled higher in her. “And do you think that in the remote case you do jump your caste to Upper, that I would marry you and then realize the rest of my life that our marriage was only possible due to your participation in mass slaughter for the sake of the slobbering multitudes of Telly fans?”

Joe said, “I wasn’t going to bring the matter up until I had made Low-Upper caste.”

“Well, sir, the matter is up. And I reject you in advance. Oh, Joe, if you have to persist in this status-hungry ambition of yours, drop the Category Military and get into something else. You have enough of a fortune to branch into various fields where your abilities would lead to advancement.”

Again he didn’t tell her that his fortune was all but dissipated. Instead, he said bitterly, “Those who have, get. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Things are rigged, these days, so that it’s impossible to work your way to the top except in Military and Religion. The Uppers take care of their own, and at the same time make every effort to keep us of the lower orders from joining their sacred circle. I might make it in the Military, Nadine, but my chances in another field are so remote as to be laughable.”

She stood and looked down at him emptily. “No,” she said, “don’t get up. I’m leaving, Major Mauser.” He began to rise, to protest, but she said, her voice curt, “I have seen only one fracas on Telly in my entire life, and was so repelled that I vowed never to watch again. However, I am going to make an exception. I am going to follow this one, and if, as a result of your actions, even a single person meets death, I wish never to see you again. Do I make myself completely clear, Major Mauser?”

IX

Marshal Stonewall Cogswell looked impudently around at this staff officers gathered about the chart table. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I assume you are all familiar with the battle of Chancellorsville?”

No one bothered to answer and he chuckled. “I know what you are thinking, that had any of you refrained from a thorough study of the campaigns of Lee and Jackson, he would not be a member of my staff.”

The craggy marshal traced with his finger on the great military chart before them. “Then you will have noticed the similarity of today’s dispensation of forces to that of Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac and Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, on May 2, 1863.” He pointed with his baton. “Our stream, here, would be the Rappahannock, this woods, the Wilderness. Here would be Fredericksburg and here Chancellorsville.”

One of his colonels nodded. “My regiment occupies a position similar to that of Jubal Early.”

“Absolutely correct,” the marshal said crisply. “Gentlemen, I repeat, our troop dispensations, those of Lieutenant General McCord and myself, are practically identical. Now then, if McCord continues to move his forces here, across our modern day Rappahannock, he makes the initial mistake that finally led to the opening which allowed Jackson’s brilliant fifteen-mile flanking march. Any questions, thus far?”

There were some murmurs, no questions. The accumulated years of military service of this group of veterans would have totaled into the hundreds.

“Very interesting, eh?” the marshal pursued. “Jed, your artillery is massed here. It’s a shame that General Jack Altshuler has taken a commission with Carbonaceous Fuel. We could use his cavalry. He would be our J. E. B. Stuart, eh?”

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Warren cleared his throat unhappily. “Sir, Jack Altshuler is the best cavalryman in North America.”

“I would be the last to deny it, Paul.”

“Yes, sir. And he’s fought half his fracases under you, sir.”

“Your point, Paul?” the marshal said crisply.

“He knows your methods, sir. For that matter, so does Lieutenant General McCord. He’s fought you enough.”

There was silence in the staff headquarters, broken suddenly by Cogswell’s curt chuckle. “Paul, I’m going to recommend to the Category Military Department, your promotion to full colonel on the strength of that. You were the first to see what I have been getting to. Gentlemen, do you realize what General McCord and his staff are doing this very moment? I would wager my reputation that they are poring over a campaign chart of the battle of Chancellorsville.”

The craggy veteran bent back over the map again, his voice dropped all humor and he stabbed with his baton. “Here, here, and here. They expect us to duplicate the movements of Lee. Very good, we shall. But the advances of Lee and Jackson, we will make feints. And the feints made by Lee and Jackson will be our attacks in force. Gentlemen, we are going to literally reverse the battle of Chancellorsville. Major Mauser!”

Joe Mauser had been in the background as befitted his junior rank. Now he stepped to the table’s edge. “Yes, sir.”

The marshal indicated a defile. “Were we actually duplicating the Civil War battle, this would have been the right flank of Sedgwick’s two army corps. We’re not dealing in army corps these days but only regiments, however, the position is relatively as important. Jack Altshuler’s cavalry is largely concentrated here. When the action is joined, he can move in one of three ways. Through this defile, is least likely. However, if his heavy cavalry does work its way through here, I must know immediately. This is crucial, Joe. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

The marshal turned his attention to his chief of artillery. “Jed, when we need your guns, we’re going to need them badly, but I doubt if that time will develop until the second or third day of the fracas. Going to want as clever a job of camouflage done as possible.”

The other scowled. “Camouflage, sir?”

“Confound it, yes. French term, I believe. Going to want your guns so hidden that those two gliders of McCord’s will fail to spot them.” The marshal grimaced in the direction of Joe Mauser, who, having his instructions, had fallen back from the table again. “When you reintroduced aerial observation to the fracas, major, you set off a whole train of related factors. Camouflage is going to be in every field officer’s lexicon from this day on. Which reminds me.” He looked to his artilleryman.

“Yes, sir.”

“Put your mind to work on devising Maxim gun mounts to be used to keep enemy gliders at as high altitude as possible, or preferably, of course, to bring them down. We’ll need an antiaircraft squadron, in short. Better put young Wiley on it.”

“Yes, sir.”

X

The airport nearest to the Grant Memorial Military Reservation was some ten miles distance from the borders which, upon the scheduling of a fracas, were closed to all aircraft, and to all persons unconnected with the fracas, with the exception only of Telly crews and military observers from the Sov-world and the Neut-world, present to satisfy themselves that weapons of the post-1900 era were not being utilized.

The distance, however, wasn’t of particular importance. The powered aircraft which would tow Joe Mauser’s glider to a suitable altitude preliminary to his riding the air currents, as a bird rides them, could also haul him to a point just short of the military reservation’s border.

Joe Mauser turned up on the opening day of the fracas, which was scheduled for a period of one week, or less, if one or the other of the combatants was able to achieve total victory in such short order. He was accompanied by Freddy Soligen, who, for once, was without a crew to help him with his cameras and equipment. Instead, he sweated it out alone, helped only by Max Mainz who was being somewhat huffy about this Telly reporter taking over his position as observer.

They approached the sailplane, and while Joe Mauser checked it out, in careful detail, Freddy Soligen and Max began loading the equipment into the graceful craft’s second seat, immediately behind the pilot. Max growled, “How in Zen you going to be able to lift all this weight, major, sir?”

Joe said absently, testing the ailerons, “We’ll make it. Freddy isn’t any heavier than you are, Max. Besides, this sailplane is a workhorse. I sacrificed gliding angle for weight carrying potential.”

That meant absolutely nothing to Max Mainz, so he took it out by awarding the Telly reporter with a rare combination of glower and sneer.

Freddy said, “Oh, oh, here they come, Joe.” However, he kept his head low, storing away his equipment, and seemingly ignored the approach of the three distinctive uniformed officers.

Joe said from the side of his mouth, “Get that you-know-what out of sight, soonest.” He turned as the trio neared, came to attention and saluted.

The foremost of the three, his tunic so small at the waist that he could only have been wearing a girdle, answered the salute by tapping his swagger stick against the visor of his cap. “Major Mauser,” he said in acknowledgment. He made no effort to shake hands, turning instead to his two companions. He said, “Lieutenant Colonel Krishnalal Majumdur, of Bombay, Major Mohamed Kamil, of Alexandria, may I introduce the”—there was all but a giggle in his tone—“celebrated Major Joseph Mauser, who has possibly reintroduced aircraft to warfare.”

Joe saluted and bowed in proper protocol. “Gentlemen, a pleasure.” The two neutrals responded correctly, then stepped forward to shake his hand.

Colonel Lajos Arpid added, gently, “Or possibly he has not.”

Joe looked at him. The Hungarian seemed to make a practice of turning up every time Joe Mauser was about to take off. The Sov-world representative said airily, “It will be up to the International Disarmament Commission to decide upon that when it convenes shortly, will it not?”

The Arab major was staring in fascination at the sailplane. He said to Joe, “Major Mauser, you are sure such craft were in existence before 1900? It would seem—”

Joe said definitely, “Designed as far back as Leonardo and flown in various countries in the Eighteenth Century.” He looked at the Hungarian. “Including, so I understand, what was then Czarist Russia.”

The Sov-world officer ignored the obvious needling, saying merely, “It is quite true that the glider was first flown by an obscure inventor in the Ukraine, however, that is not what particularly interests us today, major. Perhaps the commission will find that the use of the glider is permitted for observation, however, it is obvious that before the year 1900 by no stretch of the imagination could it be contended that they were, or could have been, used for, say, bombing.” He turned quickly and pointed at Freddy Soligen, who, already seated in the sailplane, was watching them, his face not revealing his qualms. “What has that man been hiding within the craft?”

Joe said formally, “Gentlemen, may I introduce Frederic Soligen, Category Communications, Subdivision Telly News, Rank Senior Reporter. Mr. Soligen has been assigned to cover the fracas from the air.”

Freddy looked at the Sov-world officer and said innocently, “Hiding? You mean my portable camera, and my power pack, and my auxiliary lenses, and my—”

“All right, all right,” Arpád snapped. The Hungarian was no fool and obviously smelled something wrong in this atmosphere. He turned to Joe. “I would remind you, major, that you as an individual are responsible for any deviations from the basic Universal Disarmament Pact. You, and any of your superiors who can be proven to have had knowledge of such deviation.”

“I am familiar with the articles of war, as detailed in the pact,” Joe said dryly. “And now, gentlemen, I am afraid my duty calls me.” He bowed stiffly, saluted correctly. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance Colonel Majumdur, Major Kamil. Colonel Arpád, a pleasure to renew acquaintance.”

They answered his salute and stared after him as he climbed into the sailplane and signaled to the pilot of the lightplane which was to tow him into the air. Max Mainz ran to the tip of one wing, lifting it from the ground and steadying the glider until forward motion gave direction and buoyancy.

Freddy Soligen growled, “Zen! If they’d known I had a machine gun tucked away in this tripod case.”

Joe said unhappily, “The Sovs have obviously decided to put up a howl about the use of aircraft in the West-world.”

He shifted his hand on the stick, gently, and the glider which had been sliding along on its single wheel, lifted ever so gently into the air. Joe kept it at an altitude of about six feet until the lightplane was airborne.

Freddy growled, “How come the Hungarians have become so important in the Sov-world? I thought it was the Russians who started their whole shooting-match.”

Joe said wryly, “That’s something some of the early timers like Stalin didn’t figure out when they began moving in on their neighbors. They could have learned a lesson from Hollywood about the Hungarians. What was the old saying? If you’ve got a Hungarian for a friend, you don’t need any enemies.”

Freddy laughed, even as he looked apprehensively over the sailplane’s side. He said, “Yeah, or that other one. The Hungarians are the only people who can enter a revolving door behind you and come out in front.”

Joe said, “Well, that’s what happened to the Russians.” He pointed. “There’s the reservation. We’ll be cutting from the airplane in a moment now. Listen, were you able to find out who either of General McCord’s glider pilots are?”

“Yeah,” Freddy told him. “Both are captains. One named Bob Flaubert and the other Jimmy Hideka.”

“Bob Flaubert?” Jeb growled. “He’s an artilleryman. We’ve been in the dill together half a dozen times.” Freddy was staring below, trying to understand the terrain from this perspective. While Joe was tripping the lever which let the tow rope drop away from the glider, the Telly reporter said, “Both of them used to fly lightplanes for sport. When you started this new glider angle, they must’ve seen the possibilities and took it up immediately. But you oughta be able to fly circles around them, they just haven’t had the time for experience with planes without motors.”

“Bob, eh?” Joe said softly. “He saved my life once. Five minutes later, I saved his.”

Freddy looked at him quickly. “Zen!” he complained. “It’s no time to be thinking of that. So now you’re even with him. And you’re both hired mercenaries in a fracas.”

“But I’ve got a gun and he hasn’t,” Joe growled.

“Good!” Freddy snapped at him.

They had cut away from the lightplane and Joe headed for the area which Cogswell had ordered him particularly to keep scanned. Jack Altshuler was a fox, in combat. His heavy cavalry had more than once swung a fracas.

At the same time, he kept himself alert for the other gliders. It seemed probable, since the enemy forces had two, that they would use them in relays. Which meant, in turn, that it was unlikely Joe would find them both in the air at once. In other words, if he attacked the one, possibly shooting it down, then the other would be warned, would mount a gun of its own, and it would no longer be a matter of shooting a clay pigeon.

Joe turned to mention this over his shoulder to Freddy Soligen, just in time to catch the shadow above and behind him.

“Holy Zen!” he snapped, kicking right rudder, thrusting his stick to the right and forward.

“What the devil!” Freddy protested, looking up from adjusting a lens on his camera.

Three or four thirty-caliber slugs tore holes in their left wing, the rest of the burst missing completely.

Joe dove sharply, gained speed, winged over and reached desperately for altitude. The other—no, the others were above him. He yelled back at the cameraman, “Put that Chaut-Chaut gun together for me. Be ready to hand me pans of ammo. And if you want blood and gore on that Tellylens of yours, get going!”

It still hadn’t got through to the smaller man. “What in devil’s going on?”

Joe banked again, grabbing for a current rising along a hill slope, circled, circled, reaching for altitude before they could get over to him and make another pass. He snapped bitterly, “Did I say something about poor old Bob Flaubert not having a gun, while I did? Well, poor old Bob’s obviously got at least as much fire power as we have. Freddy, I’m afraid matters have pickled.”

The other was startled.

“Do I have to draw a picture?” Joe said. “Look.” He pointed to where the other two crafts circled, possibly a hundred meters above and five hundred to the right of them. The other two gliders bore a single passenger apiece, and were seemingly moving as quietly as were Joe and Freddy, but gliders in motion are deceptive. Joe shot a glance at his rate of climb indicator. He was doing all right at six meters per second, a thousand feet a minute, considering his weight.

Freddy had at last awakened to the fact that they were in combat and even that the enemy had drawn first blood. The wound taken in their wing was not serious, from Joe’s viewpoint, but the torn holes in the fabric were obvious. But the little man had not gained his intrepid reputation as a Telly cameraman without cause. He moved fast, both to get the small French machine gun into Joe’s hands and to get himself into action as a cameraman.

He snapped, “What’s the situation?”

Joe, circling, circling, praying the updraft wouldn’t give out on him before it did on the others, on their opposite hill, said, “We weigh too much. Altitude counts. What’ve you got back there that can be thrown out?” As he talked, he was shrugging himself out of his leather flying jacket.

“Nothing,” Freddy said in anguish. “I cut down my equipment to the barest, like you said.”

“You’ve got extra lenses and stuff, out with them.” Joe tossed his coat over the glider’s side, began unlacing his shoes. “And all your clothes. Clothes are heavy.”

“I need my equipment to get long-range shots, like when one of them crashes!” The little man was scanning the others through his viewfinder, even as he argued, and shrugging out of his own jacket.

The updraft gave out and the rate of climb meter began to register a drop. Joe swore and shot a glance at his opponents. Happily, they, too, had lost their currents, both were now heading for him.

Joe clipped out to his companion. “We’re not going to be getting shots of them crashing, unless we lose more weight. Overboard with everything you can possibly afford, Freddy. That’s an order.”

There was one thing in his favor. He had a year’s flying experience, more than six months of it in this very glider. The stick and rudderbar were as though appendages of his body. One flies by the seat of his pants, in a soaring glider, and Joe flew his as though born in it. The others, obviously, were as yet not thoroughly used to engineless craft.

He banked away from them, flying as judiciously as possible, begrudging each foot dropped. He could feel the craft jump lightly each time the cursing Telly reporter jettisoned another article of equipment, his pants, or his shoes.

The others evidently had their guns fix-mounted, to fire straight ahead. Joe wondered, even as he slid away from them, how they managed to escape detection from the Sov-world and Neut-world field observers. Well, that could be worried about later.

One of them fired at him at too great a range, and then both, realizing that they were dropping altitude too quickly and that soon Joe would be on their level, turned away and sought a new updraft. As they banked, their faces were clearly discernible. One raised a hand in mocking salute.

“Look at that curd-loving Bob,” Joe laughed grudgingly. “Here, let me have that gun.”

He steadied the small mitrailleuse on the edge of the cockpit, holding the craft’s stick between his knees, and squeezed off a burst which rattled through the other’s fuselage without apparent damage. The foe glider slid away quickly, losing precious altitude in the maneuver.

“Ah, ha,” Joe said wolfishly. “So now they know we’ve got a stinger too.”

“I got that,” Freddy crowed. “I got it perfectly. Listen, we’re too high for the boys down below. Get lower so they can get you on lens, Joe. The other Telly teams. Every fracas buff in North America is watching this.”

Joe snorted his disgust. “I hope every fracas buff in North America chokes on his trank pills,” he snarled. “We’re in the dill, Freddy. Understand? We’re too heavy, and there’s two of them and one of us. On top of that, those are Maxim guns they’ve got mounted, not peashooters like this Chaut-Chaut.”

“That’s your side of it,” Freddy said, not unhappily. “I take care of the photography. Get closer, Joe. Get closer.”

Joe had found another light updraft and gained a few hundred feet, but so had the others. They circled, circled. His experience balanced their advantage of the lesser weight. Happily, their glide ratios didn’t seem to be any better than his own. Had they high performance gliders of forty, or even thirty-five, gliding angle ratios, he would have been lost.

“Nothing else you can toss out?” he growled at Freddy.

“What the Zen!” Freddy muttered nastily. “You want me to jump?”

“That’s an idea,” Joe growled wolfishly, even as he circled, circled. “I should have realized when you were giving me your fling about reintroducing aerial warfare, that it wasn’t an idea that others couldn’t have. It was just as easy for Bob to mount a gun as it was for us. Now we’re both being kept from doing reconnaissance by the other and—”

Joe Mauser broke it off in mid-sentence and his face blanched. He shot a quick look downward. All three gliders had climbed considerably, and the terrain below was indistinct.

Joe snapped, “Hand me those glasses!”

“What glasses? What’s the matter?” Freddy complained. “Try to get closer to them and let me get a closeup of you giving them a burst.”

“My binoculars!” Joe snapped urgently. “I want to see what’s going on below.”

“Oh,” Freddy said. “I threw them out. Along with all the rest of the equipment. Glasses, semaphore flags, that sun blinker you had. All of it went overboard with my extra lenses.”

The craft was so banked as almost to have the wings perpendicular to earth. Joe shot an agonized look at the smaller man, then back again at the earth below, trying desperately to narrow his eyes for keener vision.

Freddy said, “What in Zen’s the matter with you? What difference does it make what they’re doing down below? We’re all occupied up here, thanks.”

“This is a frame-up,” Joe growled. “Bob and that other pilot. They weren’t out on reconnaissance, this morning. They were laying for me. They’re out to keep me from seeing what’s going on down there. And I know what’s going on. Jack Altshuler’s pulling a fast one. Here we go, Freddy, hang on!”

He slapped his flap brake lever with his left hand, winged over and began dropping like a shot as his gliding angle fell off from twenty-five to one to ten to one. In seconds the other two gliders were after him, riding his tail.

Freddy Soligen, his eyes bugging, shot a look of fear at the two trailing craft, both of which, periodically, showed brilliant cherries at their prows. Maxim guns, emitting their blessings.

The Telly reporter turned desperately back to Joe Mauser, pounding him on the shoulder. His physical fear was secondary to another. “Joe! You’re on lens with every Telly team down there, and you’re running!”

“Cut that out,” Joe rapped. “Duck your head. Let me train this gun over you. I’ve got to keep those jokers from shooting off our tail before I can get to the marshal.”

“The marshal!” Freddy yelled. “You can’t get to him anyway. I told you I threw away your semaphore flags, your blinker—everything. This country’s hilly. You can’t get your message to him anyway. Listen, Joe, you’ve still got time. You can stunt these things better than those two can.”

“Duck!” Joe snarled. He let loose a burst at the pursuing gliders over the smaller man’s head, and just missing his own tail section.

They sped down almost to tree level at fantastic speed for a glider. The two enemy craft were hot after them, their guns flac, flac, flacing in continuous excitement, trying to catch Joe in sights, as he kicked rudder, right, left, right, in evasive maneuver.

He guess had been correct. The swashbuckling Jack Altshuler had know his many times commander even better than Cogswell had realized. Instead of three alternative maneuvers open to the wily cavalryman, he’d ferreted out a fourth and his full force, hauling mountain guns on mule back with them, were trailing over a supposedly impossible mountain path which originally could not have been more then a deer track.

Freddy Soligen, in back, was holding his head in his hands in surrender. He could have focused on the troops below, but the desire wasn’t in him. Not one fracas buff in a hundred could comprehend the complications of combat, the need for adequate reconnaissance—the need for Joe to get through.

He made one last plea. “Joe, we’ve put everything into this. Every share of stock you’ve accumulated. All I have, too. Don’t you realize what you’re doing, so far as the buffs are concerned? Those two half-trained pilots behind have you on the run.”

Joe growled, “And twenty thousands lads down below are depending on me to report on Altshuler’s horse.”

“But you can’t win, anyway. You can’t get your message to Cogswell!”

Joe shot him a wolfish grin. “Wanta bet? Ever heard of a crash landing, Freddy? Hang on!”

XI

Stretched out on the convalescent bed in the Category Military rest home, Joe grinned up at his visitor and said ruefully, “I’d salute, sir, but my arms seem to be out of commission. And, come to think of it, I’m out of uniform.”

Cogswell looked down at him, unamused. “You’ve heard the news?”

Joe caught the other’s tone and his face straightened. “You mean the Disarmament Commission?”

Cogswell said brittlely, “They found against the use of aircraft, other than free balloons, in any military action. They threw the book, Mauser. The court ruled that you, Robert Flaubert and James Hideka be stripped of rank and forbidden the Category Military. You have also been fined all stock shares in your possession other than those unalienably yours as a West-world citizen.”

Joe’s face went empty. It was only then that he realized that the other was attired in the uniform of a brigadier general. The direction of his eyes was obvious.

Cogswell shrugged bitterly. “My Upper caste status helped me. I could pull just enough strings that the Category Military Department, in conjunction with the rulings of the International Disarmament Commission merely reduced me in rank and belted me with a stiff fine. Your friend—your former friend, I should say, Freddy Soligen, testified in my behalf. Testified that I had no knowledge of your mounting a gun.”

The former marshal cleared his throat. “His testimony was correct. I had no such knowledge and would have issued orders against it, had I known. The fact that you enabled me to rescue the situation into which I’d been sucked, helps somewhat my feelings toward you, Mauser. But only somewhat.”

Joe could imagine the other’s bitterness. He had fought his way up the hard way to that marshal’s baton. At his age, he wasn’t going to regain it.

Brigadier general Stonewall Cogswell hesitated for a moment, then said, “One other thing. United Miners has repudiated your actions even to the point of refusing the cost of your hospitalization. I told the Category Medicine authorities to put your bill on my account.”

Joe said quite stiffly, “That won’t be necessary, sir.”

“I’m afraid you’ll find it is, Mauser.” The former marshal allowed himself a grimace. “Besides, I owe you something for that spectacular scene when you came skimming over the treetops, the two enemy gliders right behind you, then stalling your craft and crashing into that tree not thirty feet from my open air headquarters. Admittedly, in forty years of fracases, I’ve never seen anything so confoundedly dramatic.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The old soldier grunted, turned and marched from the room.

XII

Freddy Soligen had been miraculously saved from the physical beating taken by Joe Mauser in the crash. The pilot, sitting so close before him, cushioned with his own body that of the Telly reporter.

For that matter, he had been saved the financial disaster as well, save for that amount he had contributed to the campaign to increase Mauser’s stature in the eyes of the buffs. His Category Communications superiors had not even charged him for the cost of the equipment he had jettisoned from the glider during the flight, nor that which had been destroyed in the crash. If anything, his reputation with his higher-ups was probably better than ever. He’d been in there pitching, as a Telly reporter, right up until the end when the situation had completely pickled.

All that he had lost was his dream. It had been so close to the grasping. He could almost have tasted the sweetness of victory. Joe Mauser, at the ultimate top of the hero-heap. Joe Mauser accepting bounces in both rank and caste. And then, Joe Mauser being properly thankful and helpful to Freddy and Sam Soligen, in their turn. So near the realization of the dream.

He entered his house wearily, finally free of all the ridiculous questioning of the commission and the courts martial of Mauser and Cogswell, and Flaubert, Hideka and their commander, General McCord. All had been found guilty, though in different degrees. Using weapons of warfare which postdated 1900. Than which there was no greater crime between nations.

He tossed the briefcase he had carried to a table, and made his way to the living room, heading for the auto-bar and some straight spirits.

A voice said, “Hi, Papa.”

He looked up, not immediately recognizing the Category Military, Rank Private, before him.

Then he said weakly, “Sam!” His legs gave way, and he sat down abruptly on the couch which faced the wall which was the Telly screen.

The boy said, awkwardly, “Surprise, Papa!”

His father said, very slowly, “What … in … Zen … are … you … doing … in … that … outfit?”

Sam grinned ruefully, albeit proudly. “Aw, it would’ve taken a century for me to make full priest, Papa. The only way to do is like Major Mauser. You didn’t know this, but, I’ve been following the fracases all along. Especially when you were the reporter. I’ve watched every fracas you’ve covered for years. I guess you know I’m pretty proud of you.”

“Sam! What are you doing in that uniform! Answer me!”

The boy flushed. “I’m old enough, Papa. I switched categories. I’ve signed up with Chrysler-Ford in their fracas with Hovercar Sports. They’re taking me on as infantryman.”

“Infantryman?” Freddy winced, and closed his eyes. “Listen, boy, where’d you get the idea that—” He started over again. “But all your life I’ve given you the inside on the Category Military, Sam. All your life. No trank in our home. No watching the Telly day in and out. You’ve gone to school. More than I ever did. You were going to be a Temple priest—”

Sam sat down too, vaguely surprised at this father’s reaction. “Aw, Papa, everybody’s a fracas buff now. Everybody. You can’t get away from it. I … well, I want to be like Major Mauser. Get so all the fans know me, want my autograph, all that. And all the excitement of being in a fracas, getting in the dill, and all. I just want to be like the other fellas, Papa.”

Freddy could only stare at him.

Sam tried to explain. “Shucks, it was really you that made me want to become a mercenary. You’re the best Telly reporter of them all. When you cover a fracas, Papa, you really do it. You can see everything.” He shook his head in admiration. “Gosh, you really feel the emotion. It’s the most exciting thing in the world.”

“Yeah, son,” Freddy Soligen said emptily. “I suppose it is.”

XIII

Joe was able to get around on auto-crutches by the time she finally arrived—a stereotype visitor. Done up brightly, a box of candy in one hand, flowers in the other. He could see her coming across the lawn, from the visitor’s offices. He wished that he had worn his other suit. His clothing was on the skimpy side when uniforms were subtracted.

She came up to him. “Well, Joe.”

He looked at the flowers and attempted a grin. “Lilies would have been more appropriate, considering the shape I’m in.”

Nadine said, “I’ve just been talking to the staff doctors. You’re not in as bad shape as all that. Some bone mending, is all.”

The grin turned wry. “I wasn’t just thinking of the physical shape.” He settled to the stone bench which stood to one side of the walk he had been exercising upon before her arrival. For a moment, she remained standing.

He looked up at her. “Well,” he said. “I didn’t break your condition,” he said. “Am I still receivable?”

She frowned.

Joe said, bitterly, “You told me that you were going to take the fracas in and if my actions resulted in any casualties, you never wanted to see me again.”

She took the place beside him. “I did watch. For a time, the rest of the battle going on below was ignored and you were full on lens for at least twenty minutes. I was never so frightened in my life.”

Joe said, “The first step toward becoming a buff. First you’re scared. Vicariously. But it’s fun to become scared, when nothing can really happen to you. It becomes increasingly exciting to see others threatened with death—and then actually to die before you. After a while, you’re hooked.”

She looked carefully at the flowers. “That’s not exactly what I meant. I was frightened for you, Joe. Not thrilled.”

He looked at her for a long moment. Finally he breathed deeply and said, “Well, you’ll never have to go through that again. I’m no longer in the Category Military, I suppose you know.”

“It was on the news, Joe.” She laughed without amusement. “In fact, I knew even before. Balt was tried, too.”

“Balt? Your brother?”

She nodded. “You first used your glider in that fracas for father and Vacuum Tube Transport. Now that the commission has ruled against gliders, Balt, now head of the family, has been both fined and expelled from Category Military for life. It hasn’t exactly improved his liking for you.”

Joe hadn’t heard of it, however, he had little sympathy for Balt Haer, nor interest in him. He said, “Why did you take so long to come?”

“I was thinking, Joe.”

“And then you finally came.”

“Yes.”

He looked away and into unseen distances. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Nadine, the first time I ever talked to you to any extent, I mentioned that I wanted to achieve the top in this status world of ours. I mentioned that I hadn’t built this world, and possibly didn’t even approve of it, but since I’m in it and have no other recourse, I must follow its rules.”

She nodded. “I remember. And I said, why not try and change the rules?”

Joe nodded. He moistened his lips carefully. “OK. Now I’m willing to listen. How do we go about changing the rules?”

XIV

Dr. Nadine Haer, Category Medicine, Mid-Upper caste, was driving and with considerable enjoyment resultant not only from her destination, long desired, now to be realized, but also from the sheer exuberance of handling the vehicle. Since prehistory, man’s pleasure in the physical control of a speedy vehicle has been superlative, particularly when that vehicle is known by the driver to be unique in its class. The Hittite charioteer, bowling across the landscape of Anatolia, a Sterling Moss carefully tooling his automobile around the multi-curves of the Upper Cornice on the Riviera, or a Nadine Haer delicately trimming the controls of a sports model Hovercar.

She shot a quick glance at Joe Mauser, formerly of Category Military, formerly Rank Major, now an unemployed Mid-Middle who slouched in the bucketseat next to her. He noticed neither speed nor direction.

Nadine called, above the wind, “Zen, Joe! Where did you ever acquire such a car? It must have been built entirely by hand, and by Swiss watchmakers.”

Joe stirred and shrugged. Newly from the hospital, he was still deep in the gloom of his recent loss of the dream, the defeat of his lifelong ambitions. He said, “A buff gave it to me.”

She slowed down, the better to frown at him in amazement. “Gave it to you? Why the thing is priceless.”

Joe sighed and told her the salient details. “Quite a few mercenaries manage to acquire a private fracas-buff.” He defined the term for her. “He makes a hobby of your career. Winds up knowing more about it than you, yourself can possibly remember. He follows every fracas you get into. Knows every time you cop one, how serious it was, how long you were in hospital. He glories each time you get a promotion, is in gloom each time your side loses a fracas. He’s got pictures of you in various poses taken from the fracas-buff magazines, and files away all articles in which your name appears.”

“Zen!” Nadine laughed in deprecation.

“That’s just the beginning. After a while he starts writing you fan letters, wanting autographed portraits, wanting a souvenir—sometimes nothing more exciting than a button off your uniform. More often they want a gun, sword or combat knife, particularly one they saw you using in some fracas or other. They usually offer to pay for such, sometimes quite fabulous amounts. Other times they want a bit of bloody uniform, your own true blood from a time when you were in the dill and managed to cop one.”

Nadine was astonished. Antagonistic as she was, herself, to the fracases, she wasn’t particularly knowledgeable about all their ramifications. She said, repelled, “But doesn’t such morbidity disgust you? This fawning, this slobbering—”

Joe grunted. “All part of the game. A mercenary without buffs to boost him, to form fracas-buff clubs and such, hasn’t much chance of promotion. So far as disgust is concerned, you’d have to see one of the really far-out ones. The gleam in an ordinarily fishlike eye when he recounts the time you killed three men in hand-to-hand combat, equipped only with an entrenching tool, when they came at you with bayonets. The trace of spittle, running down from the side of his mouth.”

“And this buff of yours. Why did he give you this perfectly marvelous car?”

“It was a she, not a he,” Joe said.

Nadine’s voice changed infinitesimally. “You mean you accepted a gift of this value from a … woman?”

Joe looked at her and grinned sourly. “I wasn’t in much of a position to refuse. The gift was in her will. She was well into her nineties when she died. She was an Upper-Upper, by the way, and the most knowledgeable fracas buff I ever met. She knew the intimate details of every fracas since Tiglath-Pileser and his Assyrians captured Babylon. She could argue for an hour on whether Parmenion or Alexander the Great should have been given the credit for the victory over the Persians at Issus.” Joe grunted. “I suppose there should be a moral somewhere about this kindly old lady who was the outstanding fracas buff of them all.”

Nadine Haer was in the process of hitting the drop lever with her left hand as they slowed and headed for the entrance to a parking area. She said brittlely, “The moral is that you can have slobs at any level in society. Being an Upper doesn’t guarantee anything.”

Joe sighed, “Here we go again.” He looked about him, scowling. “Which brings to mind. Where are we going? These are governmental buildings, aren’t they?”

They were sinking quickly, below street level, now in the power of the auto-parker. Nadine turned off the engine and released the controls. She said, cryptogrammicly, “We are going to see about doing something with your abilities other than shooting at people, or being shot at.”

When the car was parked, she led the way to an elevator.

Joe said wryly, “Oh, great. I love mysteries. When do we find out who killed the victim?”

Nadine looked at him from the side of her eyes. “I killed the victim,” she said. “Major Mauser, mercenary by trade, is now no more.”

There was bitterness in him and he found no ability to respond to what was meant as humor in her words. He followed her silently and his puzzlement grew with him. The office building through which they moved was as well done as any he could ever remember having observed, even on the Telly. Surely they couldn’t be in the Octagon or the New White House. But, if so, why?

Nadine said. “Here we are,” and indicated a door which opened at their approach.

There was a receptionist in the small office beyond, a bit of ostentation Joe Mauser seldom met with in the modern world. What in the name of Zen could anyone need with other than an auto-receptionist? Didn’t efficiency mean anything here?

The receptionist said, “Good afternoon, Dr. Haer. Mr. Holland is expecting you.”

It came to Joe now—Philip Holland, secretary to Harlow Mannerheim, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He had met the man a few months ago at Nadine’s home in that swank section of Greater Washington once known as Baltimore. But he had no idea what Nadine had in mind bringing him here. Evidently, she was well enough into the graces of the bureaucrat to barge into his office during working hours. Surprising in itself, since, although she was an Upper born, still governmental servants can’t be at the beck of every hereditary aristocrat in the land.

Holland stood up briefly at their entrance and shook hands quickly, almost abruptly, held a chair for Nadine, motioned to another one for Joe. He sat down again and said into an inter-office telly-mike, “Miss Mikhail, the dossier on Joesph Mauser, and would you request Frank Hodgson to drop in?”

What was obviously the dossier slid from the desk chute and Holland leafed through it, as though disinterested. He said, “Joseph Mauser, born Mid-Lower, Clothing Category, Subdivision Shoes, Branch Repair.” Holland looked up. “A somewhat plebian beginning, let us admit.”

A tic manifested itself at the side of Joe Mauser’s mouth, but he said nothing. If long years of the military had taught him anything, it was patience. The other man had the initiative now, let him use it.

Holland cast his eyes ceilingward, and, without referring to the dossier before him, said, “Crossed categories at the age of seventeen to Military, remaining a Rank Private for three years at which time promoted to corporal. Sergeant followed in another three years and upon reaching the rank of lieutenant, at the age of twenty-five was bounced in caste to High-Lower. After distinguishing himself in a fracas between Douglas-Boeing and Lockheed-Cessna was further raised to Low-Middle caste. By the age of thirty had reached Mid-Middle caste and Rank Captain. By thirty-three, the present, had been promoted to major, and had been under consideration for Upper-Middle caste.”

That last, Joe had not know about, however, he said now, “Also at present, expelled from participation in future fracases on any level of rank, and fined his complete resources beyond the basic common stock issued him as a Mid-Middle.” His voice was bitter.

Philip Holland said briskly, “The risks run by the ambitious.”

The office door opened and a tall stranger entered. He had a strange gait, one shoulder held considerably lower than the other, to the point that Joe would have thought it the result of a wound hadn’t the other obviously never been a soldier. The newcomer, office pallor heavily upon him, but his air of languor obviously assumed and artificial, darted his eyes around the room, to Holland, Nadine, and then to Joe where they rested for a moment.

He murmured some banality to Nadine, indicative of a long acquaintance and then approached Joe, who had automatically come to his feet, and extended a hand to be shaken. “I’m Frank Hodgson. You’re Joe Mauser. I’m not fracas buff, but I know enough about current developments to know that. Welcome aboard, Joe.”

Joe shook the hand offered, in some surprise.

“Welcome aboard?” he said.

Hodgson looked to Philip Holland, his eyebrows raised in question.

Holland said crisply, “You’re premature, Frank. Dr. Haer and Mauser have just arrived.”

“Oh.” The newcomer found himself a chair, crossed his legs and fumbled in his pocket for a pipe, leaving it to the others to resume the conversation he had interrupted.

Philip Holland said to Joe, “Frank is assistant to Wallace Pepper.” He looked at Hodgson and frowned. “I don’t believe you have any other title do you, Frank?”

“I don’t think so,” Frank yawned. “Can’t think of any.”

Joe Mauser looked from one to the other, confusion adding to confusion within him. Wallace Pepper was the long time head of the North American Bureau of Investigation, having held that position under at least four administrations.

Nadine said dryly, “Which goes to show you, Joe, just how much titles mean. Commissioner Pepper has been all but senile for the past five years. Frank, here, is the true head of the bureau.”

Frank Hodgson said mildly, “Why, Nadine, that’s a rather strong statement.”

Joe blurted, “Head of the Bureau of Investigation! I had gathered the impression I was being taken to meet some members of an underground, organized for the purpose of, as it was put, changing the present rules of government.”

Frank Hodgson grinned at Nadine and laughed softly, “That’s a gentle way of describing revolution.”

Holland looked at Joe Mauser and said briskly, “I’ll try to take you off the hook as quickly as possible, Joe. Tell me, when you hear the word revolution, what comes first to your mind?”

Joe, flustered, said, “Why, I don’t know. Fighting, riots, people running around in the streets with banners. That sort of thing.”

“Um-m-m,” Holland nodded, “The common conception. However, a social revolution isn’t, by definition, necessarily bloody. Picture a gigantic wheel, Joe. We’ll call it the wheel of history. From time to time it makes a turn, forward, we hope, but sometimes backward. Such a turn is a revolution. Whether or not there is anybody under the wheel at the time of turning, is beside the point. The revolution takes place whether or not there is bloodshed.”

He thought a moment. “Or you might compare it to childbirth. The fact that there is pain in childbirth, or, if through modern medical science, the pain is eliminated, is beside the point. Childbirth consists of a new baby coming into the world. The mother might even die, but childbirth has taken place. She might feel no pain whatsoever, under anesthetic, but childbirth has taken place.”

Joe said carefully, “I’m no authority, but it seems to me that usually if changes take place in a socioeconomic system without bloodshed, we call it evolution. Revolution is when they take place with conflict.”

Holland shook his head. “No. Poor definitions. Among other things, don’t confuse revolts, civil wars, and such with revolution. They aren’t the same thing. You can have civil war, military revolts and various civil disturbances without having a socioeconomic revolution. Let’s use this for an example. Take a fertile egg. Inside of it a chick is slowly developing, slowly evolving. But it is still an egg. The chick finally grows tiny wings, a beak, even little feathers. Fine. But so far it’s just evolution, within the shell of the egg. But one day that chick cannot develop further without breaking the shell and freeing itself of what was once its factor of defense but now threatens its very life. The shell must go. When that culminating action takes place, you have a revolutionary change and we are no longer dealing with an egg, but a chicken.”

Joe, one by one, looked at the three of them. He said, finally, to Nadine, rather than to the men, “What’s this got to do with me?”

She leaned forward in her earnestness. “All your life you’ve revolted against the status quo, Joe. You’ve beaten your head against the situation that confronted you, against a society you felt didn’t allow you to develop your potentialities. But now you admit you’ve been wrong. What is needed is to”—she shot a defiant glance at Frank Hodgson, to his amusement—“change the rules if the race is to get back onto the road to progress.” She shrugged. “Very well. You can’t expect it to be done single handed. You need an organization. Others who feel the same way you do. Here we are.”

He was truly amazed now. When he had finally admitted interest in what Nadine had hinted to be a subversive organization, he’d had in mind some secretive group, possibly making their headquarters in a hidden cellar, complete with primitive printing press, and possibly some weapons. He most certainly hadn’t expected to be introduced to the secretary of the Foreign Minister, and the working head of the North American Bureau of Investigation.

Joe blurted, “But … but you mean you Uppers are actually planning to subvert your own government?”

Holland said, “I’m not an Upper. I’m a Mid-Middle. What’re you Frank?”

“Darned if I know,” Hodgson said. “I forget. I think I was bounced up to Upper-Middle about ten years ago, for some reason or other, but I was busy at the time and didn’t pay much attention. Every once in a while one of the Uppers I work with gets all excited about it and wants to jump me to Upper, but somehow or other we’ve never got around to it. What difference does it make?”

Joe Mauser was not the type to let his mouth fall agape, but he stared at the other, unbelievingly.

“What’s the matter?” Hodgson said.

“Nothing,” Joe said.

Philip Holland said briskly, “Let’s get on with it. Nadine”—his voice had a dry quality—“is one of our most efficient talent scouts. It was no mistake I met you at her home, a few weeks back, Joe. She thought you were potentially one of us. I admit to having formed the same opinion, upon our brief meeting. I now put the question to you direct. Do you wish to join our organization, the purpose of which is admittedly, to change our present socioeconomic system and, as Nadine put it, get back on the road to progress?”

“Yes,” Joe said. “I do.”

“Very well, welcome aboard, as Frank said. Your first assignment will take you to Budapest.”

They were throwing these curves too fast for Joe. Noted among his senior officers as a quick man, thinking on his feet, he still wasn’t up to this sort of thing. “Budapest!” he ejaculated. “The capital of the Sov-world? But … but why—?”

Philip Holland looked at him patiently. “There are many ramifications to revolution, Joe. Particularly in this present day with its Frigid Fracas which has gone on for generations between the West-world and the Sov-world and with the Neut-world standing at the sidelines glaring at us both. You see, really efficient revolutions may simply not look like revolutions at all—just unusual results of historic accidents. And if we’re going to make this one peacefully, we’ve got to take every measure to assure efficiency. One of these measures involves a thorough knowledge of where the Sov-world stands, and what it might do if there were any signs of a changing in the status quo here in the West-world.”

Frank Hodgson said idly, “I believe you have met Colonel Lajos Arpád.”

Joe said, puzzled still again, “Why, yes. One of their military attachés. An observer of our fracases to see whether or not the Universal Disarmament Pact is violated.”

“But also, Colonel Arpád is probably the most competent espionage agent working out of Budapest.”

“That corseted, giggling nincompoop!”

Frank Hodgson laughed softly. “If even an old pro like yourself hasn’t spotted him, then we have one more indication of Arpád’s abilities.”

Philip Holland took up the ball again. “The presence of Colonel Arpád in Greater Washington is no coincidence. He is here for something, we’re not sure what. However, rumors have been coming out of the Sov-world, and particularly Siberia, and the more backward countries to the south, such as Sinkiang. Rumors of an underground organized to overthrow the Sovs.”

“And that religious thing,” Nadine added.

Frank Hodgson murmured, “Yes, indeed. We received two more reports of it today.”

All looked at him. He said to Joe, “Some fanatic in Siberia. A Tuvinian, one of the Turkic-speaking peoples in that area once called Tannu-Tuva, and now the Tuvinian Autonomous Oblast. He’s attracting quite a following. Destroy the machines. Go back to the old way. Till the soil by hand. Let the women spin and weave, make clothing on the hand loom once more. Ride horses, rather than hovercraft and jets. That sort of thing. And, oh yes, kill those who stand in the way of this holy mission.”

“And you mean this is catching hold in this day and age?” Joe said.

“Like wildfire,” Hodges said easily. “And I wouldn’t be too very surprised if it would do the same over here. Pressures are generating, in this world of ours. We’ll either make changes peaceably or Zen knows what will happen. The Sovs haven’t been exposed to religion for several generations, Joe. Probably the Party heads had forgotten it as a potential danger. Here in the West-world we do better. The Temple provides us with a pressure valve in that particular area, but I still wouldn’t like to see our trank and Telly bemused morons subjected to a sudden blast of revival-type religion.”

Joe looked back at Holland. “I still don’t get my going to Budapest. How, why, when?”

Holland glanced at a desk watch and became brisk. “I have an appointment with the President,” he said. “We’ll have to turn this over to some of the other members of this group. They’ll explain details, Joe. Nadine’s going, too. In her case, as a medical attaché in our Embassy, in Budapest. You’ll go as a military observer, check on potential violations of the Universal Disarmament Pact.” A sudden thought struck him. “I imagine it would add to your prestige and possibly open additional doors to you, if you carried more status.” He looked again at the telly-mike on his desk. “Miss Mikhail, in my office here is Joseph Mauser, now Mid-Middle in caste. Please take the necessary steps to raise him to Low-Upper, immediately. I’ll clear this with Tom, and he’ll authorize it as recommended through the White House. It that clear?”

In a daze, Joe could hear the receptionist’s voice. “Yes, sir. Joseph Mauser to be raised to Low-Upper caste immediately.”

XV

Budapest, basically, had changed little over half a millennium.

The Danube, seldom blue except when seen through the eyes of a twosome between whom spark has recently been struck, still wandered its way dividing the old, old town of Pest from the still older town of Buda. Where the stream widens there is room for the one hundred and twelve acres of Margitsziget, or Margaret Island to the West-world. Down through the ages, through Celts and Romans, Slavs and Hungs, Turks and Magyars, none have been so gross as to use Margitsziget for other than a park.

Buda, lying to the west of the Danube, is of rolling hills and bluffs and of ancient towers, fortresses, castles and walls which have suffered through a hundred wars, a score of revolutions. It dominates the younger, more dynamic, Pest which stretches out on the flat plains to the east so that though you stand on the Hármashatárhegy hill of Buda and strain your eyes, you are hard put to find the furtherest limits of Pest.

The jetport was on the outskirts of Pest, and the craft carrying Nadine Haer, Joseph Mauser and Max Mainz, settled in for a gentle landing, the autopilot more delicate far than human eye served by human hand.

Max, his eyes glued to the window, said, “Well, gee, it don’t look much different than a lotta the other towns we passed over.”

Nadine looked at him and laughed. She alone of the three of them had ever been outside the boundaries of the West-world having attended several international medical conventions. Over the years, the Frigid Fracas had laid its chill on tourism, so that now travel between West-world and Sov-world was all but unknown, and even visiting the Neut-world was considered a bit far out and somewhat suspect of going beyond the old time way of doing things—even among the Uppers. Securing a passport for a Middle’s trip, not to speak of a Lower’s, involved such endless bureaucratic red tape as to be nonsensical.

Nadine said to Joe’s batman, “What did you expect, Max?”

“Well, I don’t know, Miss Haer. I mean, Dr. Haer. Kind of gloomier, like. Shucks, I’ve seen this here town on Telly a dozen times.”

“And seeing is believing,” Joe muttered cynically. “It looks as though we have a reception committee.” He looked at Nadine. “Are we supposed to know each other?”

She shrugged and made a moue. “It would be somewhat strange if we didn’t, seeing that we flew over in the same aircraft, and were the only passengers to come this far.”

He nodded and as the plane came to a halt, helped her from her chair, even as the plane’s ladder slipped out and touched to the ground.

Joe grunted and said, as though to himself, “You realize that for all practical purposes there hasn’t been any improvement in aircraft for a generation?”

Nadine looked at him from the side of her eyes, even as they descended. “That’s what I keep telling you, Joe. We’ve become ossified. When a society, afraid of change, adopts a policy of maintaining the status quo at any cost, progress is arrested. Progress means change.”

He grinned at her. “Sure, sure, sure. Please, no more lectures, teacher. Let what’s already in my head stew a while.”

On the ground, Nadine was met by one contingent from the Embassy and from the Sov-world authorities, and Joe and Max by another. Joe became occupied, hardly more than noticing that she had been whisked away in a hover-limousine, ornately bedecked with official flags and stars.

Joe, no longer holding military rank, in spite of his mission, was in mufti, and restrained himself from returning the salute when greeted by two fresh young lieutenants from the Embassy and a bemedaled lieutenant colonel in Sov-world uniform, whose tight-waisted tunic reminded Joe of that worn by Colonel Lajos Arpád, the military attaché Joe had come across twice in West-world fracases, and who Frank Hodgson had branded an espionage agent. Joe swore again, inwardly, that these Hungarian officers must wear girdles under their uniforms, and wondered vaguely if they did so in combat.

The lieutenants, who could have been twins, so alike were they in size, bright smiling faces, uniform and words of welcome, saluted Joe, shook hands, and then turned to introduce him to the Sov-world officer.

One of them said, “Major Mauser, may we present you to Lieutenant Bela Kossuth of the Pink Army?”

They were, evidently using Joe’s old title of rank, as if he were retired rather than dismissed from the Category Military. It meant little to Joe Mauser. The Sov officer clicked his heels, bowed from the waist, extended his hand to be shaken. His waist might be pinched in like that of a girl of the Nineteenth Century, but his hand was dry and firm.

“The fame of Joseph Mauser has penetrated to the Proletarian Paradise,” he said, his voice conveying sincerity.

Joe shook and said, “Pink Army? I thought you called it—”

The colonel was indicating a hover-limousine with a sweeping gesture that would have seemed overly graceful, had not Joe felt the grip of the man only a moment earlier. Kossuth interrupted him politely, “The plane was a trifle late and the banquet we have prepared awaits us, major. A multitude of my fellow officers are anxious to meet the famed Joseph Mauser. Would it surprise you to know that I have replayed, a score of times, your celebrated holding action on the Louisiana Military Reservation? Zut! Unbelievable. With but a single company of men!”

Joe was looking at him blankly. Celebrated! Joe couldn’t but remember the fracas the mincing Hungarian was talking about. When the front had collapsed, Joe, then a captain, had held his position in the swamps while his superiors were supposedly reforming behind him, actually while they frantically tried to reach terms with the enemy.

One of the West-world lieutenants laughed at Joe’s expression. “You’re going to have to get used to the fact that there’re as many fracas buffs over here, sir, as there are back home.”

The Sov colonel waggled a finger at him. “But, no, you misunderstand completely, Lieutenant Andersen. We study the bloody fracases of the West. Following the campaigns of such tacticians as your Marshal Stonewall Cogswell goes far toward the training of our own Pink Army in its, ah, fracases.”

That brought up a dozen questions in Joe’s mind, but first he turned and indicated Max, who’d been standing behind, his eyes wide, and taking in the luxurious airport, the vehicles about it, the buildings, the airport workers, few in number though they be, the road leading to the city beyond.

Joe said, “Gentlemen, may I present Max Mainz?”

The faces of the lieutenants went blank, and one of them coughed as though apologetically.

The Sov colonel looked from Joe to Max, and then back again, his face assuming that expression so well known to Joe for so very long. The aristocrat looking at one of lower class as though wondering what made the fellow tick. Kossuth said, “But surely this, ah, chap, is a servant, one of your, what do you call them, a Lower.”

Max blinked unhappily and looked at Joe.

Joe Mauser said evenly, “I had heard the Sov-world was the Utopia of the proletariat. However, gentlemen, Max Mainz is my friend as well as my … assistant.”

The three officers murmured some things stiffly to Max, who, a Lower born, was not overly nonplussed by the situation. Zen, he knew the three were Upper caste, what was Major Mauser getting into a tissy about? He was given a seat in the front, where the chauffeur would have once been, and the others took places in the rear, one of the lieutenants dialing the hover-car’s destination.

Joe Mauser said, “I am afraid my background is hazy, Colonel Kossuth. You mentioned the Pink Army. You also mentioned your own fracases. I knew you maintained an army, of course, but I thought the fracas was a West development, in fact, your military attachés are usually on the scornful side.”

The two lieutenants grinned, but Kossuth said seriously, “Major, as always, nations which hold each other at arm’s length, use different terminology to say much the same thing. It need not be confusing, if one digs below to find reality. Perhaps, for a moment, we four can lower barriers enough for me to explain that whilst in the West-world you hold your fracases to,”—he began enumerating on his fingers—“One, settle disputes between business competitors, or between corporations and unions. Two, to train soldiers for your defense requirements. Three, to keep bemused a potentially dangerous lower class. …”

“I object to that, colonel,” one of the lieutenants said hotly.

The Sov officer ignored him. “Four, to dispose of the more aggressive potential rebels, by allowing them to kill each other off in the continual combat.”

“That, sir, is simply not true,” the lieutenant blurted. Joe couldn’t remember if he was Andersen or Dickson, even their names were similar.

Joe said, evenly, “And your alternative?”

The Hungarian shrugged. “The Proletarian Paradise maintains two armies, major. One of veterans, for defense against potential foreign foes, and named the Glorious Invincible Red Army—”

“Or, the Red Army, for short,” one of the lieutenants murmured dryly.

“… And the other composed of less experienced proletarians and their techno-intellectual, and sometimes even Party, officers. This is our Pink Army.”

“Wait a moment,” Joe said. “What’s a proletarian?”

The lieutenant who had protested the Sov officer’s summation of the reasons for the West-world fracases, laughed dryly.

Kossuth stared at Joe. “You are poorly founded in the background of the Sov-world, major.”

Joe said, “Deliberately, Colonel Kossuth. When I learned of my assignment, I deliberately avoided cramming unsifted information. I decided it would be more desirable to get my information at the source, uncontaminated by our own West-world propaganda.”

One of the stiff-necked twins, both of whom Joe was beginning to find a bit too stereotyped West-world adherents, said, “Sir, I must protest. The West does not utilize propaganda.”

“Of course not,” Kossuth said, taking his turn at a dry tone. He said to Joe, “I admire your decision. Obviously, a correct one. Major, a proletarian is, well, you could say, ah—”

“A Low-Lower,” Andersen or Dickson said.

“Not exactly,” the Sov protested. “Let us put it this way. Marx once wrote that when true Socialism had arrived, the formula would be from each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs. Unhappily, due to the fact that the Proletarian Paradise is surrounded by potential enemies, we have not as yet established this formula. Instead, it is now from each according to his abilities and to each according to his contribution. Consequently, the most useful members of our society are drawn into the ranks of the Party, and, contributing the most, are most highly rewarded. The Party consists of somewhat less than one percent of the population.”

“And is for all practical purposes, hereditary,” Anderson or Dickson said.

Kossuth, in indignation, parroted, unknowingly, the lieutenant’s earlier words. “That, sir, is simply not true.”

Joe said, soothing over the ruffled waters, “And the … what did you call them … techno-intellectuals?”

“They are the second most useful members of society. Our technicians, scientists—although many of these are members of the Party, of course—teachers, artists, Pink and Red Army officers, and so forth.”

Max looked around from the front seat. “Well, gee, that sounds just about like Uppers, Middles and Lowers to me.”

Joe Mauser cleared his throat and said to the Hungarian who was glaring at Max. “And the Pink Army?”

But Kossuth bit out to Max, “Don’t be silly, my man. There are no classes in the Proletarian Paradise.”

“Yeah,” Max said, “and back in the West-world we got People’s Capitalism and the people own the corporations. Yeah.”

“That’ll be all, Max,” Joe said, getting in before the two lieutenants could snap something at the fiesty little man. Joe had already decided that the lieutenants were both Uppers, and was somewhat surprised at their lowly rank.

Kossuth brought his attention back to Joe. “We’re almost to our destination, Major Mauser. However, briefly, some of the more recent additions to the Sov-world, particularly in the more backward areas of southern Asia, have not quite adjusted to the glories of the Proletarian Paradise.”

Both of the lieutenants chuckled softly.

Kossuth said, “So it is found necessary to dispatch punitive expeditions against them. A current such expedition is in the Kunlun Mountains in that area once known as Sinkiang to the north, Tibet to the south. Kirghiz and Kazakhs nomads in the region persist in rejecting the Party and its program. The Pink Army is in the process of eliminating these reactionary elements.”

Joe was puzzled. He said, “You mean, in all these years you haven’t been able to clean up such small elements of enemies?”

Kossuth said stuffily, “My dear major, please recall that we are limited to the use of weapons pre-1900 in accord with the Universal Disarmament Pact. To be blunt, it is quite evident that foreign elements smuggle weapons into Tibet and other points where rebellion flares, so that on some occasions our Pink Army is confronted with enemies better armed than themselves. These bandits, of course, are not under the jurisdiction of the International Commission and while we are limited, they are not.”

“Besides,” one of the lieutenants said, “They don’t want to clean them up. If they did, the Sov equivalent of the fracas buff wouldn’t be able to spend his time at the Telly watching the progress of the Glorious Pink Army against the reactionary foe.”

Joe, under his breath, parroted the words of the Sov officer. “That, sir, is simply not true.”

Max, who had largely been staring bug-eyed out the window at the passing scene, said, “Hey, the car’s stopping. Is this it?”

XVI

Although in actuality working on a private mission for Philip Holland, Frank Hodgson and the others high in government responsibility who were planning fundamental changes in the West-world, Joseph Mauser was ostensibly a military attaché connected with the West-world Embassy to Budapest. As such, he spent several days meeting embassy personnel, his immediate superiors and his immediate inferiors in rank. He was, as a newcomer from home, wined, dined, evaluated, found an apartment, assigned a hover-car, and in general assimilated into the community.

Not ordinarily prone to the social life, Joe was able to find interest in this due to its newness. The citizen of the West-world, when exiled by duty to a foreign land, evidently did his utmost to take his native soil with him. Even house furnishings had been brought from North America. Sov food and drink were superlative, particularly for those of Party rank, but for all practical purposes all such supplies were flown in from the West. Hungarian potables, not to mention the products of a dozen other Sov political divisions including Russia, were of the best, but the denizens of the West-world Embassy drank bourbon and Scotch, or at most the products of the vines of California. The styles of Budapest rivaled those of Paris and Rome, New York and Hollywood, but a feminine employee of the embassy wouldn’t have been caught dead in local fashions. It was a home away from home, an oasis of the West in the Sov-world.

Joe, figuring that in view of the double role, unknown even to the higher ranking officers of the embassy, he could best secure protective coloring by conforming and would have slipped into embassy routine without more than ordinary notice. But that wasn’t Nadine’s style.

From the first, she gloried in pörkölt, the veal stew with paprika sauce, in rostëlyos, the round steak potted in a still hotter paprika sauce, in halászlé, the fish soup which is Hungary’s challenge to French bouillabaisse, and threatened her lithe figure with her consumption of rétes, the Magyar strudel. All these washed down with Szamorodni or a Hungarian Riesling, the despair of a hundred generations of connoisseurs due to its inability to travel. When liqueurs were called for, barack, the highly distilled apricot brandy which was still the national tipple, was her choice, if not Tokay Aszú, the sweet nectar wine, once allowed only to be consumed by nobility so precious was it considered.

Her apartment became adorned with Hungarian, Bulgarian and Czech antiques, somewhat to the surprise even of the few Sovs with whom she and Joe associated. It had been long years since antiques were in vogue. She dressed in the latest styles from the dressing centers of Prague, Leningrad or from the local houses, ignoring the raised eyebrows of her embassy associates.

Joe, with an inner sigh, followed along in the swath she cut, Nadine being Nadine, and the woman he loved, to boot.

His being raised in caste to Upper through the easy efforts of Philip Holland, had made no observable difference in his relationship with Nadine. Of course, she was Mid-Upper, he told himself, while he was Low-Upper. Still it was far from unknown for romances to cross such comparatively little boundary. He couldn’t quite figure out why she seemed to hold him at arm’s length. Months had passed since she had told him, that day, she would marry him, even though he be a Middle. But now, when he tried to get her off by herself, for a moment of intimacy between them, she avoided the situation. When he brought their personal relationship into the conversation, she switched subjects. Joe, wedded for too long to his grim profession, inexperienced in the world of the lover, was out of his element.

His Upper caste rating also made little impression on the other embassy personnel, largely because it was the prevalent rank. In dealing with the Sovs, they came into contact almost exclusively with Party members and policy was that West-world officials never be put in the position to have to work with Sovs who ranked them. Only routine office workers were drawn from Middle caste, and largely they kept to themselves except during working hours.

Joe’s immediate superior turned out to be a General George Armstrong, with whom Joe had once served some years earlier when the general had commanded a fracas between two labor unions fighting out a jurisdictional squabble. Although Joe hadn’t particularly distinguished himself in that fray, the general remembered him well enough. Joe, recognized as the old pro he was, was taken in with open arms, somewhat to the surprise of older embassy military attachés who ranked him in caste, or seniority.

At the first, getting organized in apartment and office, getting his feeling of Budapest, its transportation system, its geographical layout, its offerings in entertainment, he came little in contact with either the Hungarians or the other officials of the Sov world, who teemed the city. In a way it was confusion upon confusion, since Budapest was the center of sovism and the languages of Indochina, Outer Mongolia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Karelia, or Albania were as apt to be heard on street or in restaurant, as was Hungarian.

But Joe Mauser was in no hurry. His instructions were to take the long view. To take his time. To feel his way. Somewhere along the line, a door would open and he would find that for which he sought.

In a way, Max Mainz seemed to acclimate himself faster than either Nadine or Joe. The little man, completely without language other than Anglo-American, the lingua franca of the West, whilst Joe had both French and Spanish, and Nadine French and German, was still of such persistent social aggressiveness that in a week’s time he knew every Hungarian of proletarian rank within a wide neighborhood of where they lived or worked. Within a month he had managed to acquire present tense, almost verbless, jargon with which he was able to conduct all necessary transactions pertaining to his household duties, and to get into surprisingly complicated arguments as well. Joe had to give up attempting to persuade him that discretion was called for in discussing the relative merits of West-world and Sov-world.

In fact, it was through Max that Joe Mauser made his breakthrough in his assignment to learn the inner workings of the Sov-world.

XVII

It was a free evening for Joe, but one that Nadine had found necessary to devote to her medical duties. Max had been gushing about a cabaret in Buda, a place named the Bécsikapu where the wine flowed as wine can flow only in the Balkans and where the gypsy music was as only gypsy music can be. Max had developed a tolerance for wine after only two or three attempts at what they locally called Sot and which he didn’t consider exactly beer.

Joe said, only half interested, “For proletarians, Party members, or what?”

Max said, “Well, gee, I guess it’s most proletarians, but in these little places, like, you can see almost anybody. Couple of nights ago when I took off I even seen a Russkie field marshal there. And was he drenched.”

Joe was at loose ends. Besides, this was a facet of Budapest life he had yet to investigate. The intimate night spots, frequented by all strata of Sov society.

He came to a quick decision. “OK, Max. Let’s give it a look. Possibly it’ll turn out to be a place I can take Nadine. She’s a bit weary of the overgrown glamour spots they have here. They’re more ostentatious than anything you find even in Greater Washington.”

Max said, in his fiesty belligerence, “Does that mean better?”

Joe grunted amusement at the little man, even as he took up his jacket. “No, it doesn’t,” he said, “and take the chip off your shoulder. When you were back home you were continually beefing about what a rugged go you had being a Mid-Lower in the West-world. Now that you’re over here the merest suggestion that all is not peaches at home and you’re ready to fight.”

Max said, his ugly face twisted in a grimace, even as he helped Joe with the jacket. “Well, all these characters over here are up to their tonsils in curd about the West. They think everybody’s starving over there because they’re unemployed. And they think the Lowers are, like, ground down, and all. And that there’s lots of race troubles, and all.”

Even as they left the apartment, Joe was realizing how much closer Max had already got to the actual people, than either he or Nadine. But he was still amused. He said, “And wasn’t that largely what you used to think about things over here, when you were back home? How many starving have you seen?”

Max grunted. “Well, you know, that’s right. They’re not as bad off as I thought. Some of those Telly shows I used to watch was kind of exaggerated, like.”

Joe said absently, “If international fracases would be won by newspapers and Telly reporters, the Sovs would have lost the Frigid Fracas as far back as when they still called it the Cold War.”

The Bécsikapu turned out to be largely what Max had reported and Joe expected. A rather small cellar cabaret, specializing in Hungarian wines and such nibbling delicacies as túrós csusza, the cheese gnocchis; but specializing as well or even more so in romantic atmosphere dominated by heartstring touching of gypsy violins, as musicians strolled about quietly, pausing at this table or that to lean so close to a feminine ear that the lady was all but caressed. It came to Joe that there was more of this in the Sov world than at home. The Sov proletarians evidently spent less time at their Telly sets than did the Lowers in the West-world.

They found a table, crowded though the nightspot was, and ordered a bottle of chilled Feteasca. It wasn’t until the waiter had recorded the order against Joe’s international credit identification, that it was realized he and Max were of the West. So many non-Hungarians, from all over the Sov-world, were about Budapest that the foreigner was an accepted large percentage of the man-in-the street.

Max said, making as usual no attempt to lower his voice. “Well, look there. There’s a sample of them not being as advanced, like, as the West-world. A waiter! Imagine using waiters in a beer joint. How come they don’t have auto-bars and all?”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Joe said dryly. “And canned music, and a big Telly screen, instead of a live show. Maybe they prefer it this way, Max. You can possibly carry automation too far.”

“Naw,” Max protested, taking a full half glass of his wine down in one gulp. “Don’t you see how this takes up people’s time? All these waiters and musicians and all could be home, relaxing, like.”

“And watching Telly and sucking on tranks,” Joe said, not really interested and largely arguing for the sake of conversation.

A voice from the next table said coldly in accented Anglo-American, “You don’t seem to appreciate our entertainment, gentlemen of the west.”

Joe looked at the source of the words. There were three officers, only one in the distinctive pinch-waisted uniform of the Hungarians, a captain. The other two wore the Sov epaulets which proclaimed them majors, but Joe didn’t place the nationality of the uniforms. There were several bottles upon the table, largely empty.

Joe said carefully. “To the contrary, we find it most enjoyable, sir.”

But Max had had two full glasses of the potent Feteasca and besides was feeling pleased and effervescent over his success in getting Joe Mauser, his idol, to spend a night on the town with him. He’d wanted to impress his superior with the extent to which he had get to know Budapest. Max said now, “We got places just as good as this in the West, and bigger too. Lots bigger. This joint wouldn’t hold more then fifty people.”

The one who had spoken, one of the majors who wore the boots of the cavalryman, said, nastily, “Indeed? I recognize now that when I addressed you both as gentlemen, I failed to realize that in the West gentlemen are not selective of their company and allow themselves to wallow in the gutter with the dregs of their society.”

The Hungarian captain said lazily, “Are you sure, Frol, that either of them are gentlemen? There seems to be a distinctive odor about the lower classes whether in the West-world or our own.”

Joe came to his feet quietly.

Max said, suddenly sobered, “Hey, major, sir … easy. It ain’t important.”

Joe had picked up his glass of wine. With a gesture so easy as almost to be slow motion, he tossed it into the face of the foppish officer.

The Hungarian, aghast, took up his napkin and began to brush the drink from his uniform, meanwhile sputtering to an extent verging on hysteria. The major who had been seated immediately to his right, fumbled in assistance, meanwhile staring at Joe as though he were a madman.

The cavalryman, though, was of sterner stuff. In the back of his mind, Joe was thinking, even as the other seized a bottle by its long neck and broke off the base on the edge of the table, Now this one’s from the Pink Army, an old pro, and a Russkie, sure as Zen made green apples.

The major came up, kicking a chair to one side. Joe hunched his shoulders forward, took up his napkin and with a quick double gesture, wrapped it twice around his left hand, which he extended slightly.

The major came in, the jagged edges of the bottle advanced much as a sword. His face was working in rage, and Joe, outwardly cool, decided in the back of his mind that he was glad he’d never have to serve under this one. This one gave way to rage and temper when things were pickling and there was no room for such luxuries in a fracas.

Max was yelling something from behind, something that didn’t come through in the bedlam that had suddenly engulfed the Bécsikapu.

At the last moment, Joe suddenly struck out with his left leg, hooked with his foot the small table at which the three Sov officers had been sitting and twisted quickly, throwing it to the side and immediately into the way of his enraged opponent.

The other swore as his shins banged the side and was thrown slightly forward, for a moment off balance.

Joe stepped forward quickly, precisely, and his right chopped down and to the side of the other’s prominent jawbone. The Russkie, if Russkie he was, went suddenly glazed of eye. His doubling forward, originally but an attempt to regain balance, continued and he fell flat on his face.

Joe spun around. “Come on, Max, let’s get out of here. I doubt if we’re welcome.” He didn’t want to give the other two time to organize themselves and decide to attack. Defeat the two, he and Max might be able to accomplish, but Joe wasn’t at all sure where the waiters would stand in the fray, nor anyone else in the small cabaret, for that matter.

Max, at the peak of excitement now, yelled, “What’d you think I been saying? Come on, follow me. There’s a rear door next to the rest room.”

Waiters and others were converging on them. Joe Mauser didn’t wait to argue, he took Max’s word for it and hurried after that small worthy, going round and about the intervening tables and chairs like an old time broken field football player.

XVIII

Joe Mauser had assumed there would be some sort of reverberations as a result of his run-in with the Sov officers, but hadn’t suspected the magnitude of them.

The next morning he had hardly arrived at the small embassy office which had been assigned him, before his desk set lit up with General Armstrong’s habitually worried face. He said, without taking time for customary amenities, “Major Mauser, could you come to my office immediately?” It wasn’t a question.

In General George Armstrong’s office, beside the general himself, were his aide, Lieutenant Anderson who Joe had at long last sorted out from Lieutenant Dickson, Lieutenant colonel Bela Kossuth and another Sov officer whom Joe hadn’t met before.

Everybody looked very stiff and formal.

The general said to Joe, “Major Mauser, Colonel Kossuth and Captain Petöfi have approached me, as your immediate superior, to request that your diplomatic immunity be waived so that you might be called upon on a matter of honor.”

Joe didn’t get it. He looked from one of the two Hungarians to the other, then back at Armstrong, scowling.

Lieutenant Anderson said, unhappily. “These officers have been named to represent Captain Sándor Rákóczi, major.”

Bela Kossuth clicked his heels, bowed, said formally, “Our principal realizes, Major Mauser, that diplomatic immunity prevents his issuing request for satisfaction. However,”—the Hungarian cleared his throat—“since honor is involved—”

At long last it got through to Joe. His own voice went coldly even. “General Armstrong, I—”

The general said quickly. “Mauser, as an official representative of the West-world, you don’t have to respond to anything as dashed silly as a challenge to a duel.”

The faces of the two Hungarians froze.

Joe finished his sentence. “… I would appreciate it if you and Lieutenant Anderson would act for me.”

Kossuth clicked his heels again. “Gentlemen, the code duello provides that the challenged choose the weapons.”

General Armstrong’s face, usually worried, was now dark with anger. “Choice of weapons, eh? Against Sándor Rákóczi? If you will excuse us now, gentlemen, Lieutenant Anderson and I will consult with you in one hour in the Embassy Club and discuss the affair further. I say frankly, I have never heard of a diplomat being subjected to such a situation, especially on the part of officers of the country to which he is accredited.”

The Hungarians were unfazed. Kossuth looked at his wrist chronometer. “One hour in the Embassy Club, gentlemen.” The two of them clicked again, bowed from the waist, and were gone.

General Armstrong glared at Joe. “Dash it, if you hadn’t been so confoundedly quick on the trigger, I could have warned you, Mauser.”

Joe Mauser wasn’t over being flabbergasted. “You mean to tell me,” he said, “that those people still conduct duels? I thought duels had gone out back in the Nineteenth Century.”

“Well, you’re mistaken,” Armstrong bit out. “It seems to be a practice that can crop up in any decadent society. Remember Hitler reviving it among the German universities? Well, it’s all the rage now among the officers of the Sov world. Limited, however, to Party members, the lowly proletariat are assumed not to have honor.”

Joe shrugged, “I’m not exactly an amateur at combat, you know.”

The general snorted his disgust and turned to his aide. “Lieutenant, go find Dr. Haer for me. Then wait in the outer office until it’s time for us to meet those heel-clicking Hungarians.”

“Yes, sir,” Andersen saluted, shot another look at Joe as though in commiseration, and left hurriedly.

“What’s wrong with him?” Joe said.

Armstrong pulled open a desk drawer, brought forth a bottle and glass, poured himself a strong one and knocked it back without offering any to his junior officer. He replaced the bottle and glass and turned his scowl back to Joe. “Haven’t you ever heard of Sándor Rákóczi?”

“No.”

“He happens to be All-Sov-world Fencing Champion and has been for six years. He also is third from the top amongst the Red Army pistol and rifle marksmen. I once saw him put on an exhibition of trick handgun shooting. Uncanny. The man has abnormal reflexes.”

The door opened and Nadine was there. “Joe,” she said. “Dick Andersen says you’ve been challenged to a frame-up duel by Sándor Rákóczi.” Her eyes hurried on to Armstrong. “George, this is ridiculous. Joe has diplomatic—”

Joe wasn’t getting part of this. He broke in. “What do you mean, frame-up, Nadine? We got into a hassle in a nightspot last night.”

Armstrong said. “Everybody simmer down, dash it!” His eyes went to Joe. “Sándor Rákóczi doesn’t get into hassles in nightspots—not unless he’s been ordered to. Captain Rákóczi is what in the old days was known as a hatchetman.” He snorted in deprecation. “The Party no longer conducts purges amongst its own. Everything is all buddy-buddy now. Purges are something from the past. However, those on the very top sometimes find this unfortunate. One manner that has been devised to remove such Party members who have become a thorn in the side of the powers that be, is to have them challenged by such as Sándor Rákóczi.”

Joe settled down into a chair, more dumbfounded than ever. “But that’s ridiculous. Why? Why should they want me eliminated?”

Nadine said hurriedly, “You don’t have to accept.”

Joe said, “If I don’t, I’ll be laughed out of town. Remember that big banquet the Pink Army gave me when I first arrived? The celebrated Major Joseph Mauser fling? What happens to West-world prestige when the celebrated Joe Mauser backs down from a duel?”

General Armstrong mused, “If Mauser refuses the duel, he’s right, he’ll be laughed out of town. If he accepts it, and is killed, he is still removed from the scene.” He looked from Joe to Nadine. “Somebody evidently doesn’t want Joe Mauser in Budapest.”

Pieces were beginning to fit in.

Joe looked at George Armstrong. “You’re one of us, aren’t you? One of the Phil Holland, Frank Hodgson group.” He looked at Nadine. “Why wasn’t I told? Am I a junior member or something, that I can’t be trusted?”

Armstrong snorted. “You should study up on revolutionary routine, Joe. The smaller the unit of organization, the better. The fewer members you know, the fewer you can betray. Here in the Sov-world, back before the Sovs came to power, the size of their cells was five members, so the most any one person could betray was four.”

The tic started at the side of Joe’s mouth.

Armstrong said hurriedly. “Don’t misunderstand. Your fortitude isn’t being questioned. Bravery no longer enters into it. There are methods today under which nobody could hold up.” He seemed to come to a sudden decision. “We can’t let this take place. You’ll have to back down, Mauser. Somehow, there’s been a leak and your real purpose in being in Budapest is known. Very well, Phil Holland and the others will simply have to send someone else to replace you.”

But Joe had had enough by now. “Look,” he said. “Everybody seems to think I can’t take care of myself with this foppish molly and his fancy swordsmanship. I’ve had fifteen years of combat.”

“Joe!” Nadine said, “don’t be silly. The man’s a professional assassin. This is his field, not yours.”

Joe said flatly, “On the other hand. I have a job to do and it doesn’t involve being run out of Budapest.”

General Armstrong said, “Dash it, don’t go drivel-happy on us, Mauser. I’ve just told you, the man’s the best swordsman in Europe and Asia combined, and the third best shot.”

“How is he with Bowie knives?” Joe said.

XIX

To Mauser’s surprise, the Sovs actually turned up two genuine Bowie knives. He had expected the duel, actually, to have to be conducted with trench knives or some other alternative. But the Sovs, ever great on museums, had located one of the weapons of the American Old West in a Prague exhibit of the American frontier, the other in Budapest itself in an extensive collection of fighting knives, down through the ages, in a military museum.

Formally correct, Lieutenant colonel Bela Kossuth appeared at Joe Mauser’s apartment three days before the duel, a case in his hands. Max, in his role as batman, conducted him to Joe, doing little to keep his scowl of dislike for the Hungarian from his face. Max was getting fed up with the airs of Sov officers; caste lines were over here, if anything, more strictly drawn than at home.

Joe came to his feet on recognizing his visitor and answered the other’s bow. “Colonel Kossuth,” he said.

Bela Kossuth clicked heels. He held the case before him, opened it. Two heavy fighting knives lay within. Joe looked at them, then into the other’s face.

Kossuth said, “Frankly, major, your somewhat unorthodox selection of weapons has been confusing. However, we have located two Bowie knives. Since it is assumed that the two gentlemen opponents are not thoroughly familiar with, ah, Bowie knives, it has been suggested that each be given his blade at this time.”

Joe got it now. Sándor Rákóczi hadn’t become the most celebrated duelist in the Sov-world by making such mistakes as underrating his opponents. The weapon was new to him. He wanted the opportunity to practice with it. It was all right with Joe.

Kossuth clicked his heels again. “Our selection, unfortunately, is limited to two weapons. Since you are the challenged, Captain Rákóczi insists you take first choice.”

Joe shrugged and took up first one, then the other. It had been some time since he had held one of the famous frontier weapons in his hands. When still a sergeant in the Category Military, he had once become close companions with an old pro whose specialty was teaching hand-to-hand combat. Over a period of years, he and Joe had been comrades, going from one fracas to another as a team. He had taught Joe considerable, including the belief that of all blade hand weapons ever devised, the knife invented by Jim Bowie, whose frontier career ended at the Alamo, was the most efficient.

Joe ran his eyes over the blades carefully. On the back of one was stamped, James Black, Washington, Arkansas. Joe had found what he was looking for, however, he pretended to examine the other knife as well, ignoring the Sheffield, England stamp of manufacture.

The Bowie knife: Blade, eleven inches long by an inch and a half wide, the heel three eighths of an inch thick at the back. The point at the exact center of the width of the blade, which curved to the point convexly from the edge, and from the back concavely, both curves being as sharp as the edge itself. The crossguard was of heavy brass, rather than steel and a further backing of brass along the heel, up to the extent where the curve toward the point began. Brass, which is softer than steel, and could catch an opponent’s blade, rather than allowing it to slip off and away.

Joe balanced the weapon he had selected, and shrugged. “This one will do,” he said.

Kossuth clicked the case with the remaining knife shut. He could see no difference between the two. The selection of weapons had been a formality.

Max saw him to the door and returned to the living room. He said worriedly, “Major, sir, you sure you’re checked out on that thing? I’ve been asking around, like, and they put these duels on Telly here, just like we got fracases back home. This here Captain Rákóczi’s got one whopper of a reputation. He’s quick as a snake. Kinda like a freak. He can move faster than most people.”

“So they’ve been telling me,” Joe mused, balancing the frontier weapon in his hand. It had a beautiful balance, this knife so big that it could be used as a hatchet or machete.

He was still contemplating the vicious looking blade when Nadine entered. He smiled up at her, put the knife aside on the table, and came to his feet.

She looked at Max, and the little man turned and left the room.

Nadine said, “Joe, a plane is leaving this afternoon. A West-world plane for London.”

Joe looked at her speculatively. “I won’t be on it.”

“Joe, listen. A year ago you were an individual, trying to fight your way up to Upper caste. You weren’t able to make it as an individual, Joe. But now you’re a member of an organization, pledged to a high ideal. Joe, the organization doesn’t need martyrs at this stage. It does need good, competent, highly trained members such as Joe Mauser.”

He said nothing.

Nadine stepped suddenly closer to him. Her perfume, he noted, vaguely, was new, some sweet scent found here in the Sov world, undoubtedly. It had a heady quality, or was that merely the close presence of Nadine herself?

She put her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to her level. He had never realized that Nadine Haer was this much shorter then he. She pressed the softness of her lips to his.

Then she held back a foot or two, and said into his face, desperately serious, “Does this make any difference, Joe?”

He licked the edges of his lips, carefully, “It makes a great deal of difference.” His voice was thick. His arms came up behind her.

“Then you’ll be on the plane?”

He shook his head.

She wrenched herself suddenly free and stood back from him, infuriated. He had never seen anyone so infuriated.

He said, “Look, darling. If I had backed out of this, the way you want, you think you’d be happy. But you wouldn’t. You want a man, not a coward.”

“I want a live man! Not a dead hero.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “You mentioned the organization. All right, they sent us to do a job here. They can’t move in the West-world until they know where the Sov-world stands. They can’t afford an attack, a sudden heating up of the Frigid Fracas, right in the middle of the confusion of a socioeconomic change. They’ve got to know how the Sov-world stands, what it will do. They’ve got to know about this so-called underground, and the religious revival stuff out there in Siberia.”

“You’ve been discovered,” she said hotly. “They can send somebody else.”

He was still stubborn. “No. There’s a leak. If they send somebody else, the same thing will happen. And the next man might not be as much of a potential opponent to such as Sándor Rákóczi as even I am. If I run now, the West loses prestige, and the movement sponsored by Holland and Hodgson and the rest of us, loses prestige, too. Somewhere in Budapest, is some kind of a group that is watching us. We don’t know who, or where, or what they stand for, but we can’t afford to lose prestige with them.”

“We’re not exactly going to gain it, when and if this official assassin kills you.” She looked down at the wicked knife, and shuddered. “Oh, Joe, your mercenary career is over. Miraculously, you stayed alive for fifteen years through it all. From the Rank Private all the way up to Rank Major. Now at long last, you’re an Upper. You’re not going to throw it all away, now.”

He could say nothing.

She stamped a foot in uncharacteristic fury. “You silly clod. Suppose you do win? Don’t you see? They’ll simply send another killer after you. They’re out to get you, Joe Mauser. Don’t you see you can’t win against the whole Sov-world? Next time, possibly they won’t be quite so formal. Possibly a few footpads in the streets. Do you think they haven’t the resources to kill a single man?”

The side of his mouth twitched. “I’m sure they have. But it will give me a few days before they come up with something else. It’d be too conspicuous if I fought their top duelist one day, and then was cut down on the streets the next.”

She spun, in a fury, and all but ran from the room and from his apartment.

Joe looked after her ruefully. He growled in sour humor, “Every time matters pickle for me, my gal goes into a tissy and runs off.”

XX

As Max had said, as one of their alternatives to the fracas of the West-world, the Sovs put on Telly such duels as were fought amongst their supposedly honor-conscious officer caste. Evidently, the lower caste of the Proletarian Paradise was well on the way to its own version of bread and circuses. In fact, Joe had already wondered what their version of trank was.

But though the Telly cameramen were highly evident, and for this inordinary affair had six cameras in all, placed strategically so that every phase of the fight could be recorded, they were not allowed to be so close as by any chance to interfere with the duel itself. Spaced well back from the action, they must needs depend upon zoom lenses.

Joe Mauser and Sándor Rákóczi stood stripped to the waist, both in tight, non-restricting trousers, both wearing tennis shoes. General Armstrong and Lieutenant Andersen, on one side, and Lieutenant colonel Kossuth and Captain Petöfi, on the other, stood at the sides of their principals.

Kossuth was saying formally, “It has been agreed, then, that the gentlemen participants shall be restricted to this ring measuring twenty feet across. Seconds will remain withdrawn to twenty feet beyond it. The conflict shall begin upon General Armstrong calling commence, and shall end upon one or the other, or both, of the gentlemen participants falling to the ground. Minor wounds shall not halt the conflict. This is understood?”

“Yes,” Joe said. He had been sizing up his enemy. The man stripped well. He was almost a duplicate of Joe’s build, perhaps slightly lighter, slightly taller. Like Joe, he bore a dozen scars about his upper torso. Sándor Rákóczi hadn’t worked his way to the top in the dueling world without taking his share of punishment.

Rákóczi said something curtly, obviously affirmative, in Hungarian.

Lieutenant Andersen, his open face drawn worriedly, tendered Joe his Bowie knife. Captain Petöfi proffered Rákóczi his. The two men stepped into the arena, which had been floored with sand, its dimensions marked with blue chalk. Though nothing had been said, it was obvious that if a combatant stepped over this line he would have lost face.

They stood at opposite sides of the arena, both with arms loose at their sides, both holding their fighting knives in their right hands.

General Armstrong said, his voice tight and worried, “Ready, Captain Rákóczi?”

The Hungarian used his affirmative word again.

“Ready, Major Mauser?”

“Ready,” Joe said. He felt like adding, as ready as I’m ever going to be. He was feeling qualms now. He’d been too long in the game not to recognize a superlative opponent when he saw one.

The four seconds drew back their twenty feet and joined the two doctors and half dozen hospital assistants who were there. Further back still, Joe knew, were emergency facilities. Two men by contemporary usage were going to be allowed to butcher each other, but moments after, all the facilities of modern medical science were going to be at their disposal. Joe felt a wry twinge of humor at the incongruity of it.

General Armstrong called, “Commence!”

Joe spread his legs, grasped the knife so that his thumb was along the side of the blade and held approximately waist high. He shuffled forward, slowly, feeling the consistency of the sand. There must be no slipping.

The Sov officer had assumed the stance of a swordsman. His smile was foxlike. For the first time, Joe noticed the scar along the other’s cheek. It was white now, which brought it into prominence. Yes, Sándor Rákóczi, in his time, had copped one more than once. At least the man wasn’t infallible.

As they came cautiously toward each other, the Hungarian grinned, fox-fashion, and said in his heavily accented Anglo-American, “Ah, our bad man from the West, you thought to choose a weapon unknown to Rákóczi, eh? But perhaps you have never heard of the Italian short sword, eh? Do you think this clumsy weapon is so different from the Italian short sword, eh?”

Joe had never heard of the Italian short sword, though now it came back to him that some of the phony-fracas films he had seen back home had depicted medieval duelists fighting with two swords, one long, one short. Obviously, his Sov opponent was thoroughly familiar with the usage. Joe swore inwardly.

They circled, warily, watching for an opening, sizing up the other. Each knew that once action was joined, events would most likely progress quickly. The Bowie knife was not built for finesse.

Like a flash, Sándor Rákóczi darted in, his blade flicked, he leapt back, instantly on guard again. There was a streak of red down Joe’s arm.

Joe blinked. Somebody, General Armstrong, or was it Max? had said there was something freakish about this Hungarian. His reflexes were unbelievably fast. Now, Joe could believe it.

He attempted a slashing blow himself, and the other danced away so quickly that Joe had not come within feet of his opponent.

Rákóczi laughed insinuatingly. “Oaf,” he said. “Is that the word? Clumsy, awkward, stumbling … oaf. It is well to rid the world of such, eh?”

He was a talker. Joe had met the type before, especially in hand-to-hand combat. They talked, usually insultingly, sometimes bringing up such matters as your legitimacy, or the virtue of your wife or sister, or your own supposed perversions. They talked, and by so doing hoped to enrage you, provoke you into foolish attack. Joe was untouched by such tactics. He circled again, his mind moving quickly.

He had, he realized, no advantages on his side. He was neither stronger nor faster than the other, and he had no reason to believe that he had greater stamina. If anything, it might be the other way.

Rákóczi was in again, through Joe’s guard, darting his blade as though it were a foil. A cut opening magically on Joe’s chest from the left nipple to navel, and bled profusely.

The Sov duelist was back a good six feet, and laughing openly. Joe had had insufficient time even to move one foot in retreat at the other’s offensive.

Joe Mauser wet his lips. The tic at the side of his mouth was in full evidence.

Rákóczi jeered, “Ah, my bad man from the West who throws wine in the face of gentlemen. You grow afraid, eh? Your mouth twitches. You feel in your stomach the fear of death, eh? No longer do you worry about locating the Sov-world underground and helping to overthrow the Party, eh? Now you worry about death.”

Joe tried rushing him, plowing through the sand. But the Hungarian danced back, still jeering. He obviously knew the feel of sand beneath foot, as Joe did not. Joe had no time to wonder over Armstrong and Andersen agreeing to a sand deep arena. They had messed up on that one. For Joe, it was like trying to operate on a sandy beach, but Rákóczi seemed in his element.

Even as Joe’s attack slowed in frustration, the other darted in, slashed once, twice, scoring on Joe’s left arm, once, twice.

He has beginning to resemble a bloody mess. None of the wounds were overly deep, but combined they were costing him blood. He got the feeling that the Hungarian could finish him off at will. That Rákóczi had his number. That it was no longer a matter of the other being careful not to underestimate the foe. Joe had been correctly estimated and found wanting. He realized that only by sinking to the sand could he throw the fight. The duel ended upon one combatant or the other falling to the sand.

And then he could see the other’s expression. There was to be no throwing in of the towel for Joe Mauser. At the first sign of such a move, the other would dart in, cobra-quick, and deal the finishing blow. The death blow. Rákóczi was fully capable of such speed. The man was a phenomenon, metabolically speaking.

Joe, his heels almost to the chalk line of the arena boundary, dashing suddenly forward again. His opponent, jeering, as before, darted backward with such speed, even through the sand, as to be unbelievable.

Joe Mauser grinned wolfishly. He tossed the Bowie knife suddenly into the air. It turned in a spin to come down blade in his hand.

He stepped forward with his left foot, threw with full might. The Bowie knife, balanced to turn once completely in thirty feet, blurred through the air and buried itself in the Hungarian’s abdomen, up to the hilt.

The Sov officer grunted in agony, stared down at the protruding hilt unbelievingly. His eyes come up in hate, glaring at Joe who stood there across from him, hands now extended forward in the stance of a karate fighter.

Joe could follow the other’s agonized thoughts in his expression. There were medics available and though the wound was a decisive one, it need not be fatal, not in this day of surgery and antibiotics. No, not fatal, the Sov Officer decided. He glared at Joe again, his teeth grinding in his pain and shock. To move across the ring at the American would be disastrous, stirring the heavy Bowie knife in his intestines.

Rákóczi knew he had only split seconds, then he must sink to the sand so that aid might come. But perhaps split seconds were sufficient. He reversed his own knife in hand, preparatory to throwing.

Joe watched him. The other’s face was a mask of pure agony, but he was no quitter. He was going to make his own throw.

It came, blurringly fast, too fast to avoid. The heavy frontier knife turned over half in the air and struck Joe along the side, glancing off, ineffectively. Sándor Rákóczi fell to the sand and the medics came on the run, both toward him and to Joe.

And then the fog began to roll in on Joe Mauser, and he noted, as though distantly, that the medical assistance that General Armstrong had provided from the West-world Embassy was headed by Dr. Nadine Haer, who seemed to be crying, which was uncalled for in a doctor with a patient, after all.

XXI

His wounds were clean, straight slashes not overly deep and which should heal readily enough. In his time, Joe Mauser had copped many a more serious one. However, after bandaging, Nadine relegated him to the small embassy hospital. The West-world diplomats would not even trust the Sov-world medical care, preferring to import their own Category Medicine personnel.

He was, so Max informed him, the lion of the West-world colony in Budapest. And the Neut-world too, for that matter. It was quite a scandal that a diplomatic representative had been challenged to a duel by a known killer of Rákóczi’s reputation. Informal protests were lodged. Joe, cynically, could imagine just how effective they would be, particularly at this late date.

A lion he might be, but Nadine was not allowing him visitors this first day of his recuperation. Max, to attend him, but no others. At least, so it was throughout the morning and early afternoon. Then, so obvious was it that his hurts were not of paramount importance, she relented to the extent of allowing General Armstrong to enter.

The general scowled down at him, as though to read just how badly Joe was feeling. He grumbled, finally, “Dash it, you looked nothing so much as an overgrown hamburger steak there for a while, Mauser.”

Joe grinned wryly, “It’s how I felt,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone move so fast.”

Armstrong said curiously, “If you wanted to use throwing knives, why didn’t you challenge him to a duel with throwing knives?”

Joe shifted his shoulders. “I figured my only chance with him was to use a weapon with which he wasn’t familiar. The Bowie knife was it. It didn’t occur to him that a knife build in that shape and as big as that, was a precisely constructed throwing knife as well as one to use hand to hand.” Joe twisted his mouth. “Besides, if the Sovs think all the Machiavellians are on their side, they’re wrong. Poor Captain Rákóczi got sucked in. I had a throwing knife, but he didn’t.”

Armstrong looked at him blankly.

Joe explained. “The knife designed by Jim Bowie was made by a smith named James Black, of Washington, Arkansas. Bowie made himself so notorious with it that the blade became world famous and Black made quite a few exact copies. Various other outfits tried to duplicate his work, but actually none succeeded in producing the perfect balance in such a large knife that made it practical for throwing. It turns over once in thirty feet, exactly. All I had to do was to get Rákóczi fifteen feet away from me, and he’d had it. And his own knife, when he tried to reciprocate, was off balance.”

Armstrong said, “Zen!”

“By the way, how is he?” Joe said.

Armstrong said, soberly, “He’s dead, Mauser.”

“Dead! With all those doctors standing around?”

The general’s face assumed its habitually worried expression “I rather doubt he died of your knife. The highest echelons of the Party do not approve of failures. You were correct when you said you would have lost prestige had you fled Rákóczi’s challenge or even insisted upon your diplomatic immunity rights. As it is, the prestige has been lost on the other side. By the way, it occurs to me that no further effort will be made to eliminate you physically. It would be too blatant.”

Joe said, “One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, general. While we were in there together, Rákóczi was sounding off in an effort to crack my nerve. Called me a lot of names, that sort of thing. But he also said, I’ll try to repeat this exactly, No longer do you worry about locating the Sov-world underground and helping overthrow the Party, eh?”

Armstrong slumped down into the bedside chair. “Dash it! That makes it definite. They’re fully aware of your mission, though they haven’t got it exactly right. Your purpose isn’t to aid the local underground but merely to size it up, get the overall picture.” He snorted his disgust. “I’ll have to get in touch with our organization in Greater Washington. One thing certain, we’re not going to be able to let you go into the field in your status as military attaché and observer.”

Joe had been scheduled to observe some of the combat taking place in Chinese Turkestan with nomad rebels. He had looked forward to the experience, in view of his own background, wondering in what manners the Sov forces of the Pink Army differed from the mercenary armies of the West-world. He said now, “Why not?”

Armstrong snorted. “You’d never come out alive. There’s be an accident, and the nomads would be given the dubious credit for having killed you.” He came to his feet again. “I’ve got to think about this. I’ll drop in later, Mauser.”

Joe thought about it too, after the other had left. Obviously, the restrictions on his movements were a growing handicap on his abilities to serve the organization headed by Holland Hodgson. He wondered if he was becoming useless.

Max stuck his head in the door and said, “Major, sir, one of these here Hungarians wants to see you.”

“Who?” Joe growled. “And why?”

“It’s that Lieutenant Colonel Kossuth one, sir. I told him Doc Haer said you couldn’t be bothered, but he don’t seem to take no for an answer.”

Kossuth, Joe Mauser knew, was assigned to the West-world Embassy military attaché department on a full time basis. It occurred to him that the Hungarian would be privy to the inner workings of the Party as they applied to Joseph Mauser and his associates.

“Show him in,” he told Max.

“But the Doc—”

“Show him in, Max.”

Lieutenant Colonel Bela Kossuth was solicitous. He clicked heels, bowed from the waist, inquired of Joe’s well being.

Joe wasn’t feeling up to military amenities after his framed-up near demise of the day before. He growled, “I’d think you’d be wishing I occupied Captain Rákóczi’s place, rather than offering me sympathy.”

The Hungarian’s eyebrows went up, and uninvited he took the chair next to the bed. “But why?”

“You were the man’s second.”

Kossuth was expansive. “When asked to act, I could hardly refuse a brother officer. Besides, my superiors suggested that I take the part. As you probably have ascertained, major, there is considerable doubt the desirability of you remaining in Budapest.”

Joe was astonished. “You mean to sit there and deliberately admit the duel was a planned attempt to eliminate me?”

The colonel coolly looked about the room. “Why not, major? There is no one here to witness our conversation.”

“And you admit that your precious Party, the ruling organ of this Proletarian Paradise of yours, actually orders what amounts of assassination?”

Kossuth examined his finger nails with studied nonchalance. “Why not admit it? The party will do literally anything to maintain itself in its position, major. Certainly, the death of a junior officer of the West-world means nothing to them.”

“But aren’t you a Party member yourself?”

“Of course. One must be, if one is to operate as freely as circumstance allows in this best of all possible worlds, this paradise of ours.”

Joe sank back on his pillow. He couldn’t get used to the idea of this man, whom he had always thought of as the arch-stereotype Sov-world officer, speaking in this manner.

Kossuth crossed his legs comfortably. “See, here, major, you are all but naive in your understanding of our society. Let me, ah, brief you, on the history of this part of the world, and the organization which governs it. Have you studied Marx and Engels?”

“No,” Joe said. “I’ve read a few short extracts, and a few criticisms, or criticisms of criticisms of short extracts. That sort of thing.”

Kossuth nodded seriously. “That’s all practically anybody does any more, even in the Sov-world where we give lip service to them. The point I was about to make is that the supposed founders of our society had nothing even remotely approaching this in mind when they did their research. It evidently never occurred to either that the first attempts to achieve the—” the Hungarian’s voice went dry—“glorious revolution, would take place in such ultra-backward countries as Russia and China. The revolution of which they wrote presupposedly a highly industrialized, technical economy. Neither Russia nor, later China had this. The, ah, excesses that occurred in both countries, in the mid-Twentieth Century, were the result of efforts to rectify this. You follow me? The Party, in power as a result of the confusion following in one case the First World War, and in the second case, the Second World War, tried to lift the nations into the industrial world by the bootstraps.”

The colonel cleared his throat. “Let us say that some elements resisted the sacrifices the Party demanded—the peasants, for instance.”

Joe said, dryly himself, “If I am correctly informed on Sov-world history, you do not exaggerate.”

“Exactly. Let us admit it. Stalin, in particular, but others too, both before and following him, were ruthless in their determination to achieve industrialization and raise the Sov-world to the level of the most advanced countries.”

Joe said, “This isn’t exactly news to me, colonel.”

“Of course not. Bear with me, I was but making background. To accomplish these things, the Party had to, and did, become a strong, ruthless, even merciless organization, with all power safely—from its viewpoint, of course—in its hands. And, in spite of all handicaps and setbacks, eventually succeeded in the task it had set itself. That is the achieving of an industrialized nation.”

The Hungarian pursed his lips. “But then comes the rub. Have you ever heard, Major Mauser, of a ruling class, caste, clique, call it what you will, which stepped down from power freely and willingly, handing over the reins of government to some other element?”

Joe vaguely remembered hearing similar words from some other source in the not too distant past, but by now he was fully taken up by the astonishing Sov officer. He shook his head, encouraging the other to continue.

Kossuth nodded. “They tell me that in ancient Greece and Rome, tyrants or dictators would assume full powers for a period long enough to meet some emergency, and would then relinquish such power. I do not know. I would think it doubtful. But whether or not such was done in ancient Greece, it has been a rare practice indeed, since.

“A ruling caste, like a socioeconomic system itself, when taken as a whole, instinctively perpetuates its life, as though a living organism. It cannot understand, will not admit, that it is ever time to die.”

The Hungarian waggled a finger at Joe. “At first, when there was insufficient even of the basics such as food, clothing and shelter, Party members soon learned to take care of their own, explaining this deviation from the original Party austerity, by various means. Nepotism reared its head, as always, almost from the very beginning. Party members wished their children to become Party members and saw to it that they secured the best of education, and the best of jobs. And … how do you Americans put it … the practice of you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, became the rule. Soon we had a self-perpetuating hierarchy, jealous of its position, and jealous of the attempts of outsiders to break into the sanctified organization. Marx and Engels wrote that following the revolution the State would wither away.” The colonel laughed acidly. “Instead, in the Sov-world it continually strengthened itself. A New Class, as the Yugoslavian Milovan Djilas called it, had been born.”

The Hungarian seemed to switch subjects slightly. “And a new development manifested itself. At first, Russia alone was of the Sov-world but as she became increasingly powerful, she exported her revolution, taking over in such advanced countries as, let us say, Czechoslovakia and East Germany. Here, supposedly, would have been the conditions under which the original ideas of Marx and his collaborator would have flourished, but the Party moved in its heavy bureaucracy and prevented any such development.”

Bela Kossuth laughed gently. “Ah, ha, but this led to one of the ironies of fate, my friend. Because as the Sov-world expanded its borders it assimilated peoples of far more, ah, sharpness, shall we say? than our somewhat dour Russkies. In time, bit by bit, inch by inch, intrigue by intrigue—”

“I know,” Joe said. “The capital of the Sov-world is now not Moscow, but Budapest.”

“Correct!” the Hungarian beamed. “At the very first, we Hungarians tried to fight them. When we found we couldn’t prevail, we joined them—to their eventual sorrow. However, the central problem has not been erased. We have finally achieved, here in the Sov-world, to the point where we have the abundant life. The affluent society. But we have also reached stagnation. The Party, like a living organism, refuses to die. Cannot even admit that its death is desirable.”

He held his hands out, palms upward, as though at an impossible impasse.

Joe said, suddenly, “What’s all this got to do with me, Colonel Kossuth?”

The Hungarian pretended surprise. “Why, nothing at all, Major Mauser. I was but making conversation. Small talk.”

Joe didn’t get it. “Well, why come here at all? Max said you were rather insistent about seeing me, in spite of doctor’s orders.”

“Ah, yes, of course.” The Sov officer came to his feet again and clicked his heels. “My superiors have requested that I deliver this into your own hands, as well as copies to the West-world Ambassador, to General Armstrong and Dr. Haer.” He handed a document to Joe.

Joe turned it over in hand, blankly. It was in Hungarian. He looked up at the other.

Lieutenant Colonel Bela Kossuth said formally, “The government of the Sov-world has found Major Joseph Mauser, Dr. Nadine Haer, and General George Armstrong, persona non grata. As soon as your health permits, Major, it is requested that you leave Budapest and all the lands of the Sov-world, never to return.”

He clicked his heels, bowed again, and started for the door. Just as he reached it, he turned and said one last thing to Joe Mauser.

XXII

In spite of Nadine Haer’s protests, Joseph Mauser insisted that they abide by the Sov government’s expulsion order on the following day. A special plane took them to London, and they there caught the regular shuttle to Greater Washington. At least, Joe, Nadine and Max did, General Armstrong remained on in London.

The flight itself was largely uneventful, Joe having retreated into his thoughts. He had a great deal to think about. Not only in regard to the immediate collapse of his mission, but both of the past and future, as well.

Max, looking out the plane’s window as they took off, bore an air of nostalgia. “Look there,” he pointed. “You can see that big statue of the Magyar warriors, there in front of the Szepmuveszeti Museum, like.” He sighed. “I had a date with a Croat girl, to meet her there tomorrow night. I was making good time with Carla. She thought it was romantic, me being from the West, and all.”

“Max, my friend,” Joe growled. “Save us the lurid details of your romances.”

But his voice hadn’t really borne irritation. Max went on, “You know, you kind of get used to these people. They aren’t much different, like, than us. Take fracases, for instances. They don’t have them like we do, but they got their Telly teams out there in Siberia, with the lads that go chasing the rebels and all. And they got their duels they cover on Telly. But I was thinking, why don’t they get modern and have real fracases, like us? And then we could have, like, international meets, and they’d send a division, and we’d send one, and have it out. Zen! That’d be really something to watch.”

Joe winced.

Nadine said, “Max, it took the human race ten thousand years to put even a temporary halt to the international war, now you want to bring it back for the sake of a sadistic Telly show.”

“Yeah, but gee—”

Joe Mauser said, “Max, go on back to the bar and have yourself a drink. I want to talk to Nadine.”

When the little man was gone, Joe said, in a conversational tone, “We can be married tomorrow, right after we’ve reported to Phil Holland and the others.”

Her eyes widened, “Well, really! Don’t you think you might ask me about it?”

He shook his head. “No, we’ve covered all the preliminaries. The trouble with me has been that I’ve continued to look up at you. I suppose the caste system is too deeply ingrained in me. But now … you’re my woman. Period. I suppose you’ve actually been wondering why I’ve been such a slow clod.”

“Do you think you’re looking down at me now?” She countered indignantly.

“No. Just evenly. We’ll be married as soon as possible.”

Her voice went strangely demure. “Yes, Joe,” she said.

They drove immediately from the airport to the office of Philip Holland, stopping only long enough for Joe to make a phone call.

They retraced the route over which Nadine had taken him that day that seemed so long ago, but actually wasn’t. Through the long corridors, and eventually to the small office with the receptionist.

Miss Mikhail said, brightly, “Dr. Haer, Major Mauser, Mr. Holland is expecting you. Go right in.”

Just before pressing through the door, Nadine put her hand on Joe’s arm and looked into his face ruefully. “Darling, you’ve had so much hard luck in your time, I’m sorry this first assignment for the organization had to be a failure.”

Joe wet his lips, carefully, “Why’d you think it was?” he said, opening the door.

Nadine could only stare as he ushered her into Phil Holland’s presence.

That crisp, efficient operator made much the same motions he had the first time Joe had met him here. Holding a chair for Nadine, shaking hands briskly with Joe and motioning to another chair for him. While they were getting settled, Frank Hodgson sauntered in, seemingly as lackadaisical and disinterested as ever. After a minimum of exchanged pleasantries, he subsided onto the couch and fished for pipe and tobacco.

Holland took in Joe’s arm, still immobilized in a sling, and the other signs of his wounds. He said crisply, “I thought that we had removed you permanently from the field of combat, Joe.”

Joe said sourly, “Some of the Sovs thought otherwise.”

Holland said, an element of irritation in his voice, “It is hard to understand how you could have revealed yourself so quickly.”

Joe pursed his lips and looked at Nadine. He said, “I think I’ve figured that out. It’s practically impossible for Nadine to dissimulate. And I’ve never seen her and her brother together but that they weren’t arguing.”

Nadine was frowning at him. “What has Balt to do with it?”

Joe said, “I have a sneaking suspicion that in the heat of one of your arguments with your brother, the Baron, you revealed your, and my, mission and its real purpose.”

Nadine’s right hand went to her mouth.

Joe finished with, “And the Baron, after all, is a member of the Nathan Hale Society. I have no doubts that the organization has some connections with their equal number in the Sov-world.”

Holland grunted. “Very possible. However, it’s done now. The thing is, what is your opinion Joe, and yours, Nadine, on the advisability of sending other operatives on the same mission?”

Joe shook his head. “Unnecessary.”

Frank Hodgson paused in lighting his pipe, to peer through the smoke.

Joe said, “In fact, it was unnecessary to send Nadine and me.”

Holland’s voice was testy. “I assure you, Joe, the particular assignment was quite important. We simply cannot afford to move, here in the West, until we know what the Sov-world will do. Your task was a delicate one, obviously. You simply couldn’t go to their government and ask. There are strong elements in not only the Upper caste, but even the Middle and Lower ones, here in this country, who would spring to the defense of present West-world society if they thought an attempt was being made to alter its structure. If the Sov government reported that it had been approached by elements of a revolutionary group, the fat would be in the fire.”

Joe nodded. “I realize all that.”

“You were expected to worm your way into their circles, to feel them out. To contact their own underground, if one exists. To ferret out definite information on how they would react if we began definite changes in the status quo here.”

Joe continued to nod.

Holland was increasingly irritated. “Then why, good heavens, do you say your mission was unnecessary?”

“Because they had already sent a mission over here to contact us,” Joe told him, evenly.

Had he suddenly got up from his chair, walked up the wall, across the ceiling, then down the other wall, they could not have stared at him the more.

The telly-mike on Phil Holland’s desk squeaked something, and he took time enough to snap, “No. I told you, Miss Mikhail, I was not to be disturbed by anyone.”

But Joe said, “If that’s Colonel Lajos Arpád, I suggest you have him in. I took the liberty of phoning him and asking that he meet us here.”

Frank Hodgson was the first to recover. “Arpád! That spy! I’ve just about gathered enough dope on him to have him declared persona non grata and ship him back to Budapest.”

“As I was shipped back to Greater Washington,” Joe said dryly. “Colonel Arpád and I seem to duplicate each other’s activities in almost everything.”

Phil Holland said crisply into the communicator, “Ask the colonel to come in, Miss Mikhail.”

Ever the correct Sov-world officer, Colonel Arpád came to attention immediately upon entering the room, clicked heels, bowed from the waist. Except for Joe Mauser, none of them had met him, but he evidently knew all, greeting them by name.

The men had come to their feet. Joe said, “Meet Colonel Lajos Arpád, high in the ranks of the Sov-world Party, and at present on secret mission from the Sov-world underground revolutionary organization.” Joe ended up wryly. “His mission being to determine what action the West-world might take if the secret group which has determined to make basic changes in the Sov-world socioeconomic system was to take action.”

It was the Hungarian who stared now. His eyes bored into Joe’s face. “I do not, of course, admit that, Major Mauser. But where in the world did you receive that strange opinion?”

Joe sat down again. The blood he had lost still bothered him, and he tired easily.

He said, “From Colonel Kossuth, in Budapest. Another high ranking member of your group.” Joe’s eyes went back to Holland and Hodgson. Quick minded these two might be, but they were being asked to assimilate some shocking information.

Joe brought it all out. “I don’t know why it didn’t occur to any of us that the problems of the West-world and those of the Sov-world, at long last have become similar, almost identical. Both, following different paths, have achieved the affluent society, so called. But in doing it, both managed to inflict upon themselves a caste system that perpetuated itself, eventually to the detriment of progress. In the past, revolutions used to be accomplished by the masses, pushed beyond the point of endurance. A starving lower class, trying to change the rules of society so as to realize a better life. But now, in neither West nor in the Sov-world are there any starving. The majority of Lowers and Proletarians are well clothed, fed and housed, and bemused by fracases and trank pills, or their equivalent over there.”

Joe shrugged, the weariness growing. Possibly Nadine had been right, he shouldn’t have traveled so soon. “The best elements in both countries have finally realized that changes must be made. These elements, the more capable, more competent, more intelligent, already are running each country though they are not necessarily Uppers or Party members. Phil Holland here, supposedly a Middle secretary to the Foreign Minister, actually has performed that worthy’s work for several administrations. Frank Hodgson is the working head of the Bureau of Investigation, though only a Middle. I assume a similar situation prevails in Budapest.”

Arpád still stood. “It does.”

Joe came to his feet, looking to Nadine. He said, “Gentlemen, I evidently have not recovered from my recent duel as much as I thought. I had better retire. Meanwhile, I suggest you exchange some notes.”

Nadine hurried to his side, worried.

Holland, Hodgson and Arpád were staring at each other, somewhat like small boys, or strange dogs.

Hodgson grumbled, his voice, for once, forgetting to express laziness, “Our records show you to be a Sov espionage agent.”

The Hungarian nodded, equally suspicious. “That is my official position. But I am also secretly a member of the executive committee of the organization of which Major Mauser speaks and have been attempting for some time to get in touch with the West-world underground, if one existed. I had about come to the conclusion that no such group was in existence, until today.”

Joe said, “Relax boys, and let down your hair. You’ve got a lot in common. It looks as though, at long last, the Frigid Fracas is beginning to fade away.”

Spaceman on a Spree

I

They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course. In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eurasia. Its quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.

They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were pseudo-elected and didn’t know much about the field of space travel nor the significance of Seymour Pond’s retirement. Si didn’t bother to remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned up at all.

In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.

The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them back. They hadn’t figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him through decently. Well, possibly he didn’t, given their standards. But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn’t have their standards. He’d had plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.

He’d had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony, boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in auto-bar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a mini-auto-apartment … not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.

No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There wasn’t anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.

They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.

The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact, Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.

That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under the Ultrawelfare State.

Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home, Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, “Any more bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to the cloddy’s patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have miserably failed.”

Girard-Perregaux said easily, “I wouldn’t call Seymour Pond a cloddy. In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has.”

“That’s nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take Pond’s place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has been trained. There aren’t two men on North America—there aren’t two men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our delving into space.” Gubelin snapped his fingers. “Like that, either of us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the road to his destiny.”

His friend said drily, “Either of us could have volunteered for pilot training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn’t.”

“At that time there wasn’t such a blistering percentage of funkers throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our ancestors did?”

Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea and tequila. He said, “Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one’s way of life in the comfort of one’s home than to be confronted with the unpleasantness of facing nature’s dangers in more adventurous pastimes.”

Gubelin, half angry at his friend’s argument, leaned forward to snap rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. “Face reality, Lofting. Don’t require or expect from Seymour Pond more than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food, clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was you yourself who talked him into taking the training … pointing out the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well. He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to our pleas for a few more trips?”

“But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for. …”

Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that, seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken man.

He said, “No, he hasn’t. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to the least dangerous path. Today we’ve reached the point where no one need face danger—ever. There are few who don’t take advantage of the fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond.”

His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. “Let’s leave this blistering jabber about Pond’s motivation and get to the point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been increasingly hard to come by—even though in our minds, Hans, we are near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated to the point that we haven’t a single pilot, then it might well be that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space Exploration.”

“So …” Girard-Perregaux said gently.

“So some way we’ve got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!”

“Now we are getting to matters.” Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement. Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. “And do not the ends justify the means?”

Gubelin blinked at him.

The other chuckled. “The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven’t you ever read of the sailor and his way of life?”

“Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to do with it?”

“You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and viewpoints, tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in jail. So back to sea he’d have to go.”

Gubelin grunted bitterly. “Unfortunately, our present-day sailor can’t be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I’d personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again.”

He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his universal credit card. “The ultimate means of exchange,” he grunted. “Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it, nobody can, ah, con you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?”

The other chuckled again. “It is simply a matter of finding more modern methods, my dear chap.”

II

Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn’t been a chance in a hundred that he’d have the bad luck to have his name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.

When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty takeoff on what should have been a routine Moon run.

Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree, a bust, a bat, a wingding, a night on the town. A commemoration of dangers met and passed.

Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented him from ever being called up for contributing to the country’s labor needs again. And he most certainly wasn’t going to volunteer.

He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn’t any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn’t want to get the reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn’t you? What else did you need?

It had come as a surprise when he’d been drafted for the labor force.

In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution. They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week. It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none of them ever really becoming efficient.

The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees were needed, a draft lottery was held.

All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be sold for a lump sum on the market.

Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was obviously called for.

He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He’d accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he wasn’t going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.

Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks, fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you’d been in the classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.

Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his yearlong trip to the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage’s profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long denied him.

Si was going to do it differently this time.

Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The works. But nothing but the best.

To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided. A bit of prestige didn’t hurt you when you went out on the town. In the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren’t needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations, titles.

Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit card was in his pocket. As an afterthought, he went over to the auto-apartment’s teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the screen and said, “Balance check, please.”

In a moment, the teevee-phone’s robot voice reported, “Ten shares of Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars.” The screen went dead.

One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he wouldn’t have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.

He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one place really made sense. The big city.

He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He might as well do it up brown.

He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his car’s dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his destination, he dialed the vehicle’s teevee-phone for information on the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry he’d read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car’s destination dial.

“Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond,” he said aloud.

The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the direction of the pressure was reversed.

Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the canopy and stepped into his hotel room.

A voice said gently, “If the quarters are satisfactory, please present your credit card within ten minutes.”

Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.

He didn’t take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining table, nor to check the endless potables on the auto-bar list. All that, he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn’t plan to dine or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.

He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped himself happily onto the bed. It wasn’t up to the degree of softness he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the mattress.

He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that registration could be completed.

For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias. This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.

He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink at the hotel’s famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a dime a dozen.

He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said, “Kudos Room.”

The auto-elevator murmured politely, “Yes, sir, the Kudos Room.”

At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a moment and looked about. He’d never been in a place like this, either. However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made his way to the bar.

There was actually a bartender.

Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an air of easy sophistication, “Slivovitz Sour.”

“Yes, sir.”

The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment. He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.

Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he’d dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to take a look at the others present.

To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.

He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked and then swallowed.

“Zo-ro-as-ter,” he breathed.

She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her eyes. Every pore, but every pore, was in place. She sat with the easy grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.

His stare couldn’t be ignored.

She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, “A Far Out Cooler, please, Fredric.” Then deliberately added, “I thought the Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive.”

There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about building the drink.

Si cleared his throat. “Hey,” he said, “how about letting this one be on me?”

Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her Oriental motif, rose. “Really!” she said, drawing it out.

The bartender said hurriedly, “I beg your pardon, sir. …”

The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, “Why, isn’t that a space pin?”

Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, “Yeah … sure.”

“Good Heavens, you’re a spaceman?”

“Sure.” He pointed at the lapel pin. “You can’t wear one unless you been on at least a Moon run.”

She was obviously both taken back and impressed. “Why,” she said, “you’re Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave you.”

Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. “Call me Si,” he said. “Everybody calls me Si.”

She said, “I’m Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that.”

“Si,” Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he’d never seen anything like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the current sex symbols, but never in person. “Call me Si,” he said again. “I’ve been called Si so long, I don’t even know who somebody’s talking to if they say Seymour.”

“I cried when they gave you that antique watch,” she said, her tone such that it was obvious she hadn’t quite adjusted as yet to having met him.

Si Pond was surprised. “Cried?” he said. “Well, why? I was kind of bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it.”

“Academician Gubelin?” she said. “You just call him Doc?”

Si was expansive. “Why, sure. In the Space Department we don’t have much time for formality. Everybody’s just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like that. But how come you cried?”

She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her, as though avoiding his face. “I … I suppose it was that speech Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the planets. …”

“Well,” Si said modestly, “two of my runs were only to the Moon.”

“… and he said all those things about man’s conquest of space. And the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring.”

Si grunted. “Yeah. That’s all part of the Doc’s scheme to get me to take on another three runs. They’re afraid the whole department’ll be dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job, it’d take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop. So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they’re both trying to pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their ships. It’s kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those spaceships costs?”

“Funny?” she said. “Why, I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

Si said, “Look, how about another drink?”

Natalie Paskov said, “Oh, I’d love to have a drink with you, Mr. …”

“Si,” Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. “How come you know so much about it? You don’t meet many people who are interested in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like. Think it’s kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of materials and all and keep the economy going.”

Natalie said earnestly, “Why, I’ve been a space fan all my life. I’ve read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you’d say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about.”

Si chuckled. “A real buff, eh? You know, it’s kind of funny. I was never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested after my first run and I found out what space cafard was.”

She frowned. “I don’t believe I know much about that.”

Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. “Old Gubelin keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper articles. Says there’s enough adverse publicity about space exploration already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship’s crammed tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there’s precious little room in the conning tower and you’re the only man aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there’s a whole flock of people aboard, there won’t be any such thing as space cafard, but. …” Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond’s mouth began to tic and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.

He cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about some other angle. Look, how about something to eat, Natalie? I’m celebrating my retirement, like. You know, out on the town. If you’re free. …”

She put the tip of a finger to her lips, looking for the moment like a small girl rather than an ultra-sophisticate. “Supposedly, I have an appointment,” she said hesitantly.

When the mists rolled out in the morning—if it was still morning—it was to the tune of an insistent hotel chime. Si rolled over on his back and growled, “Zo-ro-as-ter, cut that out. What do you want?”

The hotel communicator said softly, “Checking-out time, sir, is at two o’clock.”

Si groaned. He couldn’t place the last of the evening at all. He didn’t remember coming back to the hotel. He couldn’t recall where he had separated from, what was her name … Natalie.

He vaguely recalled having some absinthe in some fancy club she had taken him to. What was the gag she’d made? Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder. And then the club where they had the gambling machines. And the mists had rolled in on him. Mountains of the Moon! but that girl could drink. He simply wasn’t that used to the stuff. You don’t drink in Space School and you most certainly don’t drink when in space. His binges had been few and far between.

He said now, “I don’t plan on checking out today. Don’t bother me.” He turned to his pillow.

The hotel communicator said quietly, “Sorry, sir, but your credit balance does not show sufficient to pay your bill for another day.”

Si Pond shot up, upright in bed, suddenly cold sober.

His eyes darted about the room, as though he was seeing it for the first time. His clothes, he noted, were thrown over a chair haphazardly. He made his way to them, his face empty, and fished about for his credit card, finding it in a side pocket. He wavered to the teevee-phone and thrust the card against the screen. He demanded, his voice as empty as his expression, “Balance check, please.”

In less than a minute the robot-voice told him: “Ten shares of Inalienable Basic. Current cash credit, forty-two dollars and thirty cents.” The screen went dead.

He sank back into the chair which held his clothes, paying no attention to them. It couldn’t be right. Only yesterday, he’d had twelve shares of Variable Basic, immediately convertible into more than fifty thousand dollars, had he so wished to convert rather than collect dividends indefinitely. Not only had he the twelve shares of Variable Basic, but more than a thousand dollars to his credit.

He banged his fist against his mouth. Conceivably, he might have gone through his thousand dollars. It was possible, though hardly believable. The places he’d gone to with that girl in the Chinese getup were probably the most expensive in Greater Metropolis. But, however expensive, he couldn’t possibly have spent fifty thousand dollars! Not possibly.

He came to his feet again to head for the teevee screen and demand an audit of the past twenty-four hours from Central Statistics. That’d show it up. Every penny expended. Something was crazy here. Someway that girl had pulled a fast one. She didn’t seem the type. But something had happened to his twelve shares of Variable Basic, and he wasn’t standing for it. It was his security, his defense against slipping back into the ranks of the cloddies, the poor demi-buttocked ranks of the average man, the desperately dull life of those who subsisted on the bounty of the Ultrawelfare State and the proceeds of ten shares of Inalienable Basic.

He dialed Statistics and placed his card against the screen. His voice was strained now. “An audit of all expenditures for the past twenty-four hours.”

Then he sat and watched.

His vacuum-tube trip to Manhattan was the first item. Two dollars and fifty cents. Next was his hotel suite. Fifty dollars. Well, he had known it was going to be expensive. A Slivovitz Sour at the Kudos Room, he found, went for three dollars a throw, and the Far out Coolers Natalie drank, four dollars. Absinthe was worse still, going for ten dollars a drink.

He was impatient. All this didn’t account for anything like a thousand dollars, not to speak of fifty thousand.

The audit threw an item he didn’t understand. A one dollar credit. And then, immediately afterward, a hundred dollar credit. Si scowled.

And then slowly reached out and flicked the set off. For it had all come back to him.

At first he had won. Won so that the other players had crowded around him, watching. Five thousand, ten thousand. Natalie had been jubilant. The others had cheered him on. He’d bet progressively higher, smaller wagers becoming meaningless and thousands being involved on single bets. A five thousand bet on odd had lost, and then another. The kibitzers had gone silent. When he had attempted to place another five thousand bet, the teevee screen robot voice had informed him dispassionately that his current cash credit balance was insufficient to cover that amount.

Yes. He could remember now. He had needed no time to decide, had simply snapped, “Sell one share of Variable Basic at current market value.”

The other eleven shares had taken the route of the first.

When it was finally all gone and he had looked around, it was to find that Natalie Paskov was gone as well.

Academician Lofting Gubelin, seated in his office, was being pontifical. His old friend Hans Girard-Perregaux had enough other things on his mind to let him get away with it, only half following the monologue.

“I submit,” Gubelin orated, “that there is evolution in society. But it is by fits and starts, and by no means a constant thing. Whole civilizations can go dormant, so far as progress is concerned, for millennia at a time.”

Girard-Perregaux said mildly, “Isn’t that an exaggeration, Lofting?”

“No, by Zoroaster, it is not! Take the Egyptians. Their greatest monuments, such as the pyramids, were constructed in the earlier dynasties. Khufu, or Cheops, built the largest at Giza. He was the founder of the 4th Dynasty, about the year 2900 BC. Twenty-five dynasties later, and nearly three thousand years, there was no greatly discernable change in the Egyptian culture.”

Girard-Perregaux egged him on gently. “The sole example of your theory I can think of, offhand.”

“Not at all!” Gubelin glared. “The Mayans are a more recent proof. Their culture goes back to at least 500 BC. At that time their glyph-writing was already widespread and their cities, eventually to number in the hundreds, being built. By the time of Christ they had reached their peak. And they remained there until the coming of the Spaniards, neither gaining nor losing, in terms of evolution of society.”

His colleague sighed. “And your point, Lofting?”

“Isn’t it blisteringly obvious?” the other demanded. “We’re in danger of reaching a similar static condition here and now. The Ultrawelfare State!” He snorted indignation. “The Conformist State or the Status Quo State, is more like it. I tell you, Hans, all progress is being dried up. There is no will to delve into the unknown, no burning fever to explore the unexplored. And this time it isn’t a matter of a single area, such as Egypt or Yucatan, but our whole world. If man goes into intellectual coma this time, then all the race slows down, not merely a single element of it.”

He rose suddenly from the desk chair he’d been occupying to pace the room. “The race must find a new frontier, a new ocean to cross, a new enemy to fight.”

Girard-Perregaux raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t be a cloddy,” Gubelin snapped. “You know what I mean. Not a human enemy, not even an alien intelligence. But something against which we must pit our every wit, our every strength, our strongest determination. Otherwise, we go dull, we wither on the vine.”

The other at long last chuckled. “My dear Lofting, you wax absolutely lyrical.”

Gubelin suddenly stopped his pacing, returned to his desk and sank back into his chair. He seemed to add a score of years to his age, and his face sagged. “I don’t know why I take it out on you, Hans. You’re as aware of the situation as I. Man’s next frontier is space. First the planets, and then a reaching out to the stars. This is our new frontier, our new ocean to cross.”

His old friend was nodding. He brought his full attention to the discussion at last. “And we’ll succeed, Lofting. The last trip Pond made gives us ample evidence that we can actually colonize and exploit the Jupiter satellites. Two more runs, at most three, and we can release our findings in such manner that they’ll strike the imaginations of every Tom, Dick and Harry like nothing since Columbus made his highly exaggerated reports on his New World.”

“Two or three more runs,” Gubelin grunted bitterly. “You’ve heard the rumors. Appropriations is going to lower the boom on us. Unless we can get Pond back into harness, we’re sunk. The runs will never be made. I tell you, Hans. …”

But Hans Girard-Perregaux was wagging him to silence with a finger. “They’ll be made. I’ve taken steps to see friend Seymour Pond comes dragging back to us.”

“But he hates space! The funker probably won’t consent to come within a mile of the New Albuquerque Spaceport for the rest of his life, the blistering cloddy.”

A desk light flicked green, and Girard-Perregaux raised his eyebrows. “Exactly at the psychological moment. If I’m not mistaken, Lofting, that is probably our fallen woman.”

“Our what?”

But Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux had come to his feet and personally opened the door. “Ah, my dear,” he said affably.

Natalie Paskov, done today in Bulgarian peasant garb, and as faultless in appearance as she had been in the Kudos Room, walked briskly into the office.

“Assignment carried out,” she said crisply.

“Indeed,” Girard-Perregaux said approvingly. “So soon?”

Gubelin looked from one to the other. “What in the blistering name of Zoroaster is going on?”

His friend said. “Academician Gubelin, may I present Operative Natalie of Extraordinary Services Incorporated?”

“Extraordinary Services?” Gubelin blurted.

“In this case,” Natalie said smoothly, even while taking the chair held for her by Doctor Girard-Perregaux, “a particularly apt name. It was a dirty trick.”

“But for a good cause, my dear.”

She shrugged. “So I am often told, when sent on these far-out assignments.”

Girard-Perregaux, in spite of her words, was beaming at her. “Please report in full,” he said, ignoring his colleague’s obvious bewilderment.

Natalie Paskov made it brief. “I picked up the subject in the Kudos Room of the Greater Metropolis Hotel, pretending to be a devotee of the space program as an excuse. It soon developed that he had embarked upon a celebration of his retirement. He was incredibly naive, and allowed me to overindulge him in semi-narcotics as well as alcohol, so that his defensive inhibitions were low. I then took him to a gambling spot where, so dull that he hardly knew what he was doing, he lost his expendable capital.”

Gubelin had been staring at her, but now he blurted, “But suppose he had won?”

She shrugged it off. “Hardly, the way I was encouraging him to wager. Each time he won, I urged him to double up. It was only a matter of time until …” she let the sentence dribble away.

Girard-Perregaux rubbed his hands together briskly. “Then, in turn, it is but a matter of time until friend Pond comes around again.”

“That I wouldn’t know,” Natalie Paskov said disinterestedly. “My job is done. However, the poor man seems so utterly opposed to returning to your service that I wouldn’t be surprised if he remained in his retirement, living on his Inalienable Basic shares. He seems literally terrified of being subjected to space cafard again.”

But Hans Girard-Perregaux wagged a finger negatively at her. “Not after having enjoyed a better way of life for the past decade. A person is able to exist on the Inalienable Basic dividends, but it is almost impossible to bring oneself to it once a fuller life has been enjoyed. No, Seymour Pond will never go back to the dullness of life the way it is lived by nine-tenths of our population.”

Natalie came to her feet. “Well, gentlemen, you’ll get your bill—a whopping one. I hope your need justifies this bit of dirty work. Frankly, I am considering my resignation from Extraordinary Services, although I’m no more anxious to live on my Inalienable Basic than poor Si Pond is. Good day, gentlemen.”

She started toward the door.

The teevee-phone on Gubelin’s desk lit up and even as Doctor Girard-Perregaux was saying unctuously to the girl, “Believe me, my dear, the task you have performed, though odious, will serve the whole race,” the teevee-phone said:

“Sir, you asked me to keep track of Pilot Seymour Pond. There is a report on the news. He suicided this morning.”

Colophon

Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories and novellas published between 1950 and 1963 by
Mack Reynolds.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
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B. Timothy Keith,
and is based on transcriptions produced between 2007 and 2021 by
Bruce Albrecht, Stephen Blundell, David King, Mary Meehan, Geetu Melwani, Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
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Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Artillery,
a painting completed in 1911 by
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The cover and title pages feature the
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This edition was released on
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The first edition of this ebook was released on
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