The Best of E.E. "Doc" Smith
   Classic Adventures in Space By One of SF's Great Originals

LIST OF CONTENTS
Preface by Philip Harbottle
Foreword by Walter Gillings
To the Far Reaches of Space
Robot Nemesis
Pirates of Space
The Vortex Blaster
Tedric
Lord Tedric
Subspace Survivors
The Imperial Stars
Afterword: The Epic of Space by E E "Doc" Smith
Bibliography
PREFACE

When "The Skylark of Space" was published in AMAZING STORIES in 1928 it gave
the science fiction fraternity the road to the stars. It also had a profound
effect on other writers, notably John W. Campbell, who took their cue from
Smith.

TO THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE, a complete - in itself excerpt from the famous
novel, records this initial leap beyond the solar system. Told with verve and
gusto, the narrative admirably shows Smith's panache in handling vast
distances and strange alien worlds.

As "The Skylark of Space" shattered the confines of the space story in 1928,
so ROBOT NEMESIS widened the frontiers of the robot story when it first
appeared (under another title) in 1934. Robots in the early days of science
fiction were usually clanking monstrosities who threatened their scientist
creators. In this story Smith's illimitable imagination postulates a future
wherein robots actually threaten to supplant mankind as the Lords of Creation.

Smith's writing was never better than in the opening chapters of
""Triplanetary." The complex structure of the pirate base, a self-contained
world in space, comes across with absolute credibility in the complete segment
PIRATES OF SPACE.

THE VORTEX BLASTER is definitive Smith, with its skillful intermingling of
super-science and human interest. The tragedy of Neal Cloud immediately grips
the reader who easily identifies with Cloud in his fight against the atomic
horror responsible for his wife's death.

In TEDRIC (1953) and LORD TEDRIC (1954), the reader is offered two lost gems
which were originally published in two of the rarest magazines in the field.
Here one finds a fascinating blend of sword and sorcery and the paradoxes of
time travel, in the inimitable Smith style.

SUBSPACE SURVIVORS (1960) is a compelling novelette written in the modern
tradition which marked Smith's triumphant return to the pages of ASTOUNDING
SCIENCE FICTION after a thirteen year absence.

THE IMPERIAL STARS (1964) marks the high watermark of the final phase of
Smith's work. Whilst presented in the slick, modern manner, it evokes the old
magic of the Lensman series, with its galactic agents and star-spanning
intrigues. Intended as the first in a new series, later parts are said to
exist in outline and may yet appear in some form or other.

That is something to look forward to. Meanwhile you will find encompassed here
the best of "Doc" Smith, eight stories spanning an incredible five decades of
science fiction history, by its best-loved pioneer.

                         Philip Harbottle, Wellsend, March 1975.
                           FOREWORD
         EDWARD E SMITH, PhD-CIVILIZATION'S HISTORIAN

Dekanore VI - A non-Tellurian planet inhabited by immensely ugly, spider-like
beings, to whom Kimball Kinnison was a shuddersome sight.
Adams of Procia - Commander-in-chief of Procyon's armed forces; appointed
general of Procyon by Roderick Kinnison in the formation of the Galactic
Patrol.
Croleo's - A bar in the city of Ardith, on Radelix.
Slasher-worm - A Venerian creature which Herkimer threatened to use in
torturing Jill Samms.
Thought-cap - The Jelm version of the thought-transfer helmet, or mechanical
educator.
"Tail high, brother!" - The Vegian war-cry.

Devoted followers of those doughty heroes Richard Seaton, Kimball Kinnison and
Neal Cloud will be able to make
good sense of these items from The Universes of E E Smith. They are typical of
hundreds of entries in a unique
concordance to the eleven best-known novels of the late Edward Elmer Smith,
Ph.D., which took two of his
disciples four years to compile. Its 270 pages from a complete reader's guide
to the complex webwork of
imaginary worlds and fantastic creations which earned the beloved "Doc" the
title of "Historian of Civilization;" a
fitting memorial to one of the most inventive and influential writers to leave
his mark on the popular literature of
science fiction.

Few others have made such an impact as he did at his first appearance in 1928,
or continued so long to delight a
host of fans most of whom remained faithful even after his work had been
dismissed as artless and juvenile. That
his first novel, The Skylark of Space, opened the door for the most
extravagant excursions of super-science into
the remotest regions, and led the way for "space opera," has been held against
him in recent years where once it was
deemed a vital spur to the development of the genre. Yet, despite their
undoubted limitations on the literary level,
the sweeping "epics" of "Skylark" Smith are still relished for their sheer
exuberance.

The pioneering Amazing Stories magazine was in its third year when it
serialized what it described as "one of the
outstanding scientifiction stories of the decade," predicting that it would be
"referred to by fans for years to come."
The prediction proved perfectly valid. Nearly twenty years later, when the
first of several enterprising specialist
book publishers began to resurrect "classic" tales from the magazines, the
much-vaunted Skylark was an obvious
choice and sold out so quickly that the firm had to be reorganized to cope
with the demand. Since 1946 it has seen
publication in several forms in many parts of the world, and it is still being
reprinted, like the other "Doe" Smith
serials that followed at intervals through the years. Yet, before Amazing
Stories accepted it, The Skylark had
gathered what the author cheerfully claimed was "probably the most complete
collection of rejection slips in
America." In a pleasant correspondence which we conducted in the late 1940s,
he told me bow be had begun to
write the story after starting out as a chemical engineer in 1914 and did not
complete it until 1920. For two years
Mrs. Lee Hawkins Garby, the wife of an old classmate, helped him with the
romantic interest that readers found so
treacly but which hardly interfered with the high-geared action. But she
didn't have the staying power of the
determined Smith, who by the time he was 25 had held down a dozen different
jobs from millband and stevedore to
street-car conductor. Born 1890 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, E. E. Smith was
raised on a riverside homestead in
northern Idaho, where he worked as a lumberjack until his eldest brother and
sister helped him get to the university.
By 1915 he was earning enough as a food chemist with the U.S. Bureau of
Standards to marry a girl from Idaho and
settle down in Washington, D.C., where his wife went to work as a stenographer
to enable him to get his Ph.D. This
is why the book version of The Skylark of Space is dedicated "To Jeannie"
-though Mrs. Garby got her name in the
by-line-and her share of the 125 dollars he was paid for the magazine serial.

In spite of the college-boy dialogue and the melodramatic exchanges between
heroic Dick Seaton and his
scheming rival "Blackie" DuQuesne, Amazing Stories readers, whose ranks I had
recently joined, clamored for a
sequel. So, in Skylark Three, which followed in 1930, Smith took his
atom-powered voyagers out again to the
rescue of the people of the Green System who faced annihilation by the
marauding Fenachrone. This "tale of the
galactic cruise which ushered in universal civilization" presented a
stupendous panorama of alien life-forms, mile-

long spaceships, traveling faster than light, devastating ray weapons, and
frightful battles in the void ending in
inevitable triumph for the visiting Earthmen.

To keep him in tow, Amazing paid Smith more generously for this three-part
serial, to which he wrote an epilogue
suggesting that his readers had heard the last of the all-conquering Dick and
his musical sweetheart. By way of a
change. in 1931 be came up with another story, Spacehounds of IPC, which
confined his new heroes of the
Inter-Planetary Corporation to the solar system. This, he insisted, was true
scientific fiction, not pseudo-science,
and he planned to make it the first of a series-but it wasn't what his fans
wanted. "We want Smith to write stories of
scope and range. We want more Skylarks?" was the cry. And Amazing's
80-year-old editor Dr. T. O'Conor Sloane,
who still had seven years to go before he retired, pointed a lean finger out
towards the Milky Way.

But whatever the critics said about the results of his labors, Smith was never
a "hack" writer. He planned his stories
with care, and took his time writing them. Invariably he would plot a graph to
help him in developing his plot, the
reactions of his characters to the situations they encountered and the
background atmosphere he weaved into the
story. "Not that I ever managed to stick to one of them all the way," he
confessed. "Somehow my characters always
break loose and take the yarn out of my hands which is a good thing, I guess."
As science fiction advanced into the 1930s there were other editors, too, who
wanted to get hold of his stories.
Competition had set in-but so had the Depression, and if it had not suffered a
temporary setback in 1933, Astound-

ing Stories would have featured Triplanetary, the story which gave rise to the
"Lensman" series. In any event, it
went to enliven four issues of Amazing in 1934. It was this story that
introduced the concept of the "inertialess
drive" by which, it was assumed-since it could neither be proved nor
disproved-spaceships might traverse the
impossible gulfs of Smith's literary cosmos. When asked about the scientific
probability of such a device, Smith
responded: "It is not probable at all, at least in any extrapolation of
present-day science. But as far as I can
determine, it cannot be proved absolutely impossible and that is enough for
me. In fact, the more improbable a
thing, the better I like it-so long as it cannot be demonstrated
mathematically impossible. I got the idea of
inertialessness from a lecture given at the University of Michigan in 1912."

So, this time, the eight-limbed amphibians of the far planet Nevia, who were
greedy for iron rations, were properly
frustrated by Conway Costigan and his colleagues, and obliged to sign a Treaty
of Eternal Peace. And thirteen years
later, to make a book of it, Smith wrote six new chapters to precede the
Amazing story, barking back to the dawn of
creation, recalling the end of Atlantis and the fall of Rome, and drawing on
his own experiences during two world
wars. All history is seen as a titanic struggle between two races of
super-beings, the Arisians and the Eddorians,
who influence human-kind for good or ill as civilization advances to the era
of the Triplanetary League.

When the book appeared in 1948, even Smith's gentler critics had difficulty in
digesting this turgid mixture of cos-

mic imagery and rip-roaring adventure. Nevertheless it was accepted as a
useful prelude to the "Lensman"
saga-most of which had already run its course in the revived Astounding
Stories. The missing link was First
Lensman, which Smith wrote specially for book publication in 1950 to bridge
the gap between Triplanetary and
Galactic Patrol, first serialized in 1937-38. By that time Astounding readers
had claimed "Doc" Smith for their
own. Prodded by editor F. Orlin Tremaine, he had produced a third "Skylark"
story which the magazine presented
with a fanfare in 1934 and ran through seven issues. With the first
installment of Skylark of Valeron the
magazine's sales soared, and at the end the author had increased his fans by
thousands. He had also put what seemed
to be an irreversible end to the luckless DuQuesne by reducing him to a
capsule of pure intellect and flinging him
into the fourth dimension. But good villains die hard, and he was still
immortal . . .

That Astounding was in its most expansive conceptual period at this time lent
power to Smith's imagination, and
thus Dick Seaton's mental capacity, his new spaceship and his area of
operations were all enlarged to maximum
proportions. After Valeron it seemed there was nothing left to explore, nor
any more possible variations on the
familiar themes which had made Smith's tales so popular. And he was still a
part-time writer; he had business
problems to wrestle with. For seventeen years he had been employed as chief
chemist with a Michigan firm
concerned with the specialist art of compounding doughnut mixes. In 1936 he
moved to a new firm in which he had
a financial interest, and it left him little time for science fiction. Yet,
within a year, Smith was busily plotting the
"Lensman" series, which began in Astounding at about the same time that Olaf
Stapledon's Star Maker appeared,
which outdistanced Stapledon's previous work Last and First Men.

To equate the beloved "pulp" writer Smith with the equally genial philosopher
Stapledon might seem almost
profane; yet, though their methods and literary styles are poles apart, in the
final analysis their works are
essentially similar, especially in the scope of their projection and their
concern with the eternal struggle of good
and evil which, in Smith's stories, is reduced to its simplest elements. The
idea of an interstellar police force
protecting a community of worlds against piracy and insurrection was familiar
in American science fiction when
Smith devised his Galactic Patrol. But he used it to better effect against a
more elaborate background in which the
ancient Arisians, who had sown the seeds of life throughout the galaxy,
enlisted the Lensmen in the struggle to
subdue the power-crazy rulers of Eddore, a planet in another space-time
continuum.

The Lensmen and their ladies, selected from many worlds for their superior
qualities, are so-called because they
carry a device enabling them to communicate with any form of sentient life
their creator can dream up, and which
brings quick death to unauthorized users. Their leading heroes are First
Lensman Virgil Samms, who extended the
Triplanetary League to embrace the entire solar system; Grey Lensman Kim
Kinnison, whose exploits range over
two galaxies, and his mate Clarissa MacDougall, the redheaded nurse who made
good as a Second Stage Lensman.
Not until many tyrants have been overthrown on as many planets are Kim and
"Mac" able to get married and com-

plete the ages-long breeding program culminating in the five Children of the
Lens, who are destined to succeed
the Arisians as the Guardians of Civilization.

In all, the "Lensman" series helped to fill out eighteen issues of Astounding
over a ten-year period ending in 1948,
during which that exacting editor John W. Campbell held sway. In between times
the number of science fiction
pulps had multiplied, but few of the newcomers survived the war years; the
real boom came afterwards. One of the
casualties was Comet Stories, edited by Tremaine, for whom Smith agreed to
write new series featuring "Storm"
Cloud, a nuclear physicist and spaceman whose job is to snuff out atomic power
plants when they run wild like
oilwells. Only one story appeared before the magazine was extinguished in
1941, leaving Astonishing Stories to
feature two more before it too folded. Because of their loose connection with
the "Lensman" tales, in 1960 the
three stories were combined in a book titled The Vortex Blaster, published
here more recently as Masters of the
Vortex.

The war hit Smith hard, too. He found himself redundant and was forced to live
on his savings until, at 51, he went
to work in an ordnance plant. Only when he was back in the cereals business in
Chicago after the war did he essay
Children of the Lens-with an eye to his own three children and their
offspring. "This," he informed me, to settle
arguments between his fans over the proper sequence of these stories, "is the
real Lensman story, to which the
other three are merely introductory material." This led up to something he
especially wanted to say about his
endings (and which he repeated elsewhere) : "It's a darn hard job to write a
book which is part of a series and yet
have it end clean, without a lot of loose ends dangling. Many authors-Edgar
Rice Burroughs, for instance-didn't try.
But I hate loose ends. Besides, suppose the author should die or something
without ever finishing the damn thing?
In Galactic Patrol and Grey Lensman I could clean them up without too much
trouble, but in Second Stage
Lensman it was practically impossible. I sweat blood . . ." And how he got
over the impasse he told in his essay on
The Epic of Space.

In 1957 Smith retired to live in Florida-and continue his writing. For he
could not ignore the current trends in
science fiction, which challenged his powers; especially after his earlier
work, which he had spent ten years
revising for book publication, had been diminished by relentless critics. For
example, P. Schuyler Miller, who,
reviewing Grey Lensman in 1952, lambasted his "incredible heroes, unbelievable
weapons, insurmountable
obstacles, inconceivable science, omnipotent villains, and unimaginable
catacylsms." And Groff Conklin, in whom
it evoked "alternate waves of incredulous laughter and dull, acid boredom"
because, he suspected, "science fiction
is growing up and leaving these primitive artifacts behind." So, in The Galaxy
Primes, Smith introduced the sort of
concepts that were being encouraged in Astounding, deriving from what editor
Campbell termed `psi phenomena":
Smith's pseudo-living, telepathic Lens, he instanced, was "essentially a psi
machine." But Campbell didn't care so
much for his new story, which Amazing found more acceptable and serialized in
1959 before it emerged, finally,
as a paperback.

Undaunted, Smith contrived to make his last appearance in Astounding the
following year with Subspace
Survivors, a short story paving the way for a novel-which Campbell found
wanting. It reached Smith's devoted fans
in 1965 as a hardcover book entitled Subspace Explorers. And towards the end
he found a more receptive market
for his work in the magazine Worlds of If, which in 1961-62 featured Masters
of Space, a two-part tale which also
carried in its by-line the name E. Everett Evans. Of all Smith's army of
admirers, this one-time secretary of The
Galactic Roamers fan club was the most constant, and when he died leaving this
novel unfinished, Smith revised it
completely.

 The affection in which "The Doc" was held by the science fiction fraternity
was demonstrated when, in 1963, at the
21st World Convention in Washington-where The Skylark was hatched-veteran fans
presented him with their Hall
of Fame award. By then he was having trouble with his eyes, but he had still
not done with writing. The following
year he reappeared in If with The Imperial Stars, in which he tried to
recapture some of the atmosphere of the
"Lensman" stories. This tale, too, gave promise of a series featuring a troupe
of circus performers involved in
sabotage in a galactic empire. Then editor Frederik Pohl, having egged him on,
surprised Smith's old-time
followers by presenting Skylark DuQuesne, in which the legendary villain who
had been dispatched thirty years
before was reincarnated, and compelled to join Dick Seaton in resisting
another grim menace from afar. The serial
had hardly ended when the news reached his friends, in August 1965, that
"Skylark" Smith had died of a heart attack.
It was the end of what If had called "the most famous science fiction saga of
all time."

                            WALTER GILLINGS Ilford, Essex, 1975.
                  TO THE FAR REACHES OF SPACE

Hair-raising explorations and strange ventures into faraway worlds as Man
breaks the light-speed barrier
and heads into the black depths of interstellar space.

For forty-eight hours the uncontrolled engine dragged DuQuesne's vessel
through the empty reaches of space with
an awful and constantly increasing velocity. Then, when only a few traces of
copper remained, the acceleration
began to decrease. Floor and seats began to return to their normal positions.
When the last particle of copper was
gone, the ship's speed became constant. Apparently motionless to those inside
her, she was in reality moving with a
velocity thousands of times greater than that of light.

DuQuesne was the first to   gain control of himself. His first effort to get up
lifted him from the floor   and he
floated lightly upward to   the ceiling, striking it with a gentle bump and
remaining, motionless and   unsupported, in
the air. The others, none   of whom had attempted to move, stared at him in
amazement.

DuQuesne reached out, clutched a hand-grip, and drew himself down to the
floor. With great caution he removed
his suit, transferring two automatic pistols as be did so. By feeling gingerly
of his body he found that no bones
were broken. Only then did he look around to see how his companions were
faring.

They were all sitting up and holding onto something. The girls were resting
quietly; Perkins was removing his
leather costume.

"Good morning, Dr. DuQuesne. Something must have happened when I kicked your
friend."

"Good morning, Miss Vaneman." DuQuesne smiled, more than half in relief.
"Several things happened. He fell into
the controls, turning on all the juice, and we left considerably faster than I
intended to. I tried to get control, but
couldn't. Then we all went to sleep and just woke up." "Have you any idea
where we are?"

"No . . . but I can make a fair estimate." He glanced at the empty chamber
where the copper cylinder had been; took
out notebook, pencil, and slide rule; and figured for minutes.

He then drew himself to one of the windows and stared out, then went to
another window, and another. He seated
himself at the crazily tilted control board and studied it. He worked the
computer for a few moments.

"I don't know exactly what to make of this," he told Dorothy, quietly. "Since
the power was on exactly fortyeight
hours, we should not be more than two light-days away from our sun. However,
we certainly are. I could recognize
at least some of the fixed stars and constellations from anywhere within a
light-year or so of Sol, and I can't find
even one familiar thing. Therefore we must have been accelerating all the
time. We must be somewhere in the
neighborhood of two hundred thirty-seven light-years away from home. For you
two who don't know what a
light-year is, about six quadrillion-six thousand million millionmiles."

Dorothy's face turned white; Margaret Spencer fainted; Perkins merely goggled,
his face working convulsively.
"Then we'll never get back?" Dorothy asked.

"I wouldn't say that--"

"You got us into this!" Perkins screamed, and leaped at Dorothy, murderous
fury in his glare, his fingers curved
into talons. Instead of reaching her, however, he merely sprawled grotesquely
in the air. DuQuesne, braced one
foot against the wall and seizing a hand-grip with his left hand, knocked
Perkins clear across the room with one
blow of his right.

"None of that, louse," DuQuesne said, evenly. "One more wrong move out of you
and I'll throw you out. It isn't her
fault we're here, it's our own. And mostly yours-if you'd had three brain
cells working she couldn't have kicked you.
But that's past. The only thing of interest now is getting back."

"But we can't get back," Perkins whimpered. "Me power's gone, the controls are
wrecked, and you said you're lost."

"I did not." DuQuesne's voice was icy. "What I said was that I don't know
where we are-a different statement
entirely."

"Isn't that a distinction without a difference?" Dorothy asked acidly.

"By no means, Miss Vaneman. I can repair the control board. I have two extra
power bars. One of them, with
direction exactly reversed, will stop us, relative to the earth. I'll bum half
of the last one, then coast until, by recog-

nizing fixed stars and triangulating them, I can fix our position. I will then
know where our solar system is and will
go there. In the meantime, I suggest that we have something to eat."

"A beautiful and timely thought!" Dorothy exclaimed. "I'm famished. Where's
your refrigerator? But something else
comes first. I'm a mess, and she must be, too. Where's our room ... that is,
we have a room?"

"Yes. That one, and there's the galley, over there. We're cramped, but you'll
be able to make out. Let me say, Miss
Vaneman, that I really admire your nerve. I didn't expect that lunk to
disintegrate the way he did, but I thought you
girls might. Miss Spencer will, yet, unless you . . ."

"I'll try to. I'm scared, of course, but falling apart won't help ... and
we've simply got to get back.'

"We will. Two of us, at least."

Dorothy nudged the other girl, who had not paid any attention to anything
around her, and led her along a handrail.
As she went, she could not help but think-with more than a touch of
admiration-of the man who had abducted her.
Calm, cool, master of himself and the situation, disregarding completely the
terrible bruises that disfigured half
his face and doubtless half his body as well-she admitted to herself that it
was only his example which had enabled
her to maintain her self-control.

As she crawled over Perkins' suit she remembered that he had not taken any
weapons from it, and a glance assured
her that Perkins was not watching her. She searched it quickly, finding two
automatics. She noted with relief that
they were standard .45's and stuck them into her pockets.

In the room, Dorothy took one look at the other girl, then went to the galley
and back.

"Here, swallow this," she ordered.

The girl did so. She shuddered uncontrollably, but did begin to come to life.

"That's better. Now, snap out of it," Dorothy said, sharply. "We aren't dead
and we aren't going to be."

"I am," came the wooden reply. "You don't know that beast Perkins."

"I do so. And better yet, I know things that neither DuQuesne nor that Perkins
even guess. Two of the smartest men
that ever lived are on our tail, and when they catch up with us . . . well, I
wouldn't be in their shoes for anything."

"What?" Dorothy's confident words and bearing, as much the potent pill, were
taking effect. The strange girl was
coming back rapidly to sanity and normality. "Not really?"

"Really. We've got a lot to do, and we've got to clean up first. And with no
weight . . . does it make you sick?" "It did,
dreadfully, but I've got nothing left to be sick with. Doesn't it you?"

"Not very much. I don't like it, but I'm getting used to it. And I don't
suppose you know anything about it." "No. All I
can feel is that I'm falling, and it's almost unbearable."

"It isn't pleasant. I've studied it a lot-in theory-and the boys say all
you've got to do is forget that falling sensation.
Not that I've been able to do it, but I'm still trying. The first thing's a
bath, and then-"

"A bath! Here? How?"

"Sponge-bath. I'll show you. Then . . . they brought along quite a lot of
clothes to fit me, and you're just about my
size ... and you'll look nice in green......

After they had put themselves to rights, Dorothy said, "That's a lot better."
Each girl looked at the other, and each
liked what she saw.

The stranger was about twenty-two with heavy, wavy black hair. Her eyes were a
rich, deep brown; her skin clear,
smooth ivory. Normally a beautiful girl, thought Dorothy, even though she was
now thin, haggard, and worn.

"Let's get acquainted before we do anything else," she said. "I'm Margaret
Spencer, formerly private secretary to
His High Mightiness, Brookings of Steel. They swindled my father out of an
invention worth millions and then
killed him. I got the job to see if I could prove it, but I didn't get much
evidence before they caught me. So, after
two months of things you wouldn't believe, here I am. Talking never would have
done me any good, and I'm certain
it won't now. Perkins will kill me . . . or maybe, if what you say is true, I
should add 'if he can.' This is the first time
I've had that much hope."

"But how about Dr. DuQuesne? Surely he wouldn't let him."

"I've never met DuQuesne before, but from what I heard around the office, he's
worse than Perkins-in a different
way, of course. He's absolutely cold and utterly hard-a perfect fiend."

"Oh, come, you're too hard on him. Didn't you see him knock Perkins down when
he came after me?"

"No-or perhaps I did, in a dim sort of   way. But that doesn't mean anything. He
probably wants you left alive of
course that's it, since he went to all   the trouble of kidnapping you.
Otherwise he would have let Perkins do   anything
he wanted to with you, without lifting   a finger."

"I can't believe that." Nevertheless, a chill struck at Dorothy's heart as she
remembered the inhuman crimes
attributed to the man. "He has treated us with every consideration so
far-let's hope for the best. Anyway, I'm sure
we'll get back safely."

"You keep saying that. What makes you so sure?" "Well, I'm Dorothy Vaneman,
and I'm engaged to Dick Seaton, the
man who invented this spaceship, and I'm as sure as can be that he is chasing
us right now."

"But that's just what they want!" Margaret exclaimed. "I heard some Top Secret
stuff about that. Your name and
Seaton's brings it back to me. Their ship is rigged, some way or other, so it
will blow up or something the first time
they go anywhere!"

"That's what they think." Dorothy's voice dripped scorn. "Dick and his
partner-you've heard of Martin Crane, of
course?"

"I heard the name mentioned with Seaton's, but that's all."

"Well, he's quite a wonderful inventor, and almost as smart as Dick is.
Together they found out about that sabotage
and built another ship that Steel doesn't know anything about. Bigger and
better and faster than this one."

"That makes me feel better." Margaret really brightened for the first time.
"No matter how rough this trip will be,
it'll be a vacation for me now. If I only had a gun . . ."

"Here," and as Margaret stared at the proffered weapon, "I've got another. I
got them out of Perkins' suit." "Glory
be!" Margaret fairly beamed. "There is balm in Gilead, after all! Just watch,
next time Perkins threatens to cut my
heart out with his knife . . . and we'd better go make those sandwiches, don't
you think? And call me Peggy, please."

"Will do, Peggy my dear-we're going to be great friends. And I'm Dot or Dottie
to you."

In the galley the girls set about making dainty sandwiches, but the going was
very bard indeed. Margaret was
particularly inept. Slices of bread went one way, bits of butter another, ham
and sausage in several others. She
seized two trays and tried to trap the escaping food between them-but in the
attempt she released her hold and
floated helplessly into the air.

"Oh, Dot, what'll we do anyway," she wailed. "Everything wants to fly all over
the place!"

"I don't quite know-I wish we had a bird-cage, so we could reach in and grab
anything before it could escape. We'd
better tie everything down, I guess, and let everybody come in and cut off a
chunk of anything they want. But what
I'm wondering about is drinking. I'm simply dying of thirst and I'm afraid to
open this bottle." She had a bottle of
ginger ale clutched in her left hand, an opener in her right; one leg was
hooked around a vertical rail. "I'm afraid it'll
go into a million drops and Dick says if you breathe them in you're apt to
choke to death."

"Seaton was right-as usual." Dorothy whirled around. DuQuesne was surveying
the room, a glint of amusement in
his one sound eye. "I wouldn't recommend playing with charged drinks while
weightless. Just a minute-I'll get the
net."

He got it; and while he was deftly clearing the air of floating items of food
he went on. "Charged stuff could be
murderous unless you're wearing a mask. Plain liquids you can drink through a
straw after you learn how. Your
swallowing has got to be conscious, and all muscular with no gravity. But what
I came here for. was to tell you I'm
ready to put on one G of acceleration so we'll have normal gravity. I'll put
it on easy, but watch it."

"What a heavenly relief!" Margaret cried, when everything again stayed put. "I
never thought I'd ever be grateful for
just being able to stand still in one place, did you?"

Preparing the meal was now of course simple enough. As the four ate, Dorothy
noticed that DuQuesne's left arm
was almost useless and that he ate with difficulty because of his terribly
bruised face. After the meal was done she
went to the medicine chest and selected containers, swabs, and gauze.
"Come over here, doctor. First aid is indicated."

"I'm all right . . ." he began, but at her imperious gesture he got up
carefully and came toward her.

"Your arm is lame. Where's the damage?"

"The shoulder is the worst. I rammed it through the board."

"Take off your shirt and lie down here."

He did so and Dorothy gasped at the extent and severity of the man's injuries.

"Will you get me some towels and hot water, please, Peggy?" She worked busily
for minutes, bathing away clotted
blood, applying antiseptics, and bandaging. "Now for those bruises-I never saw
anything like them before. I'm not
really a nurse. What would you use? Tripidiagen o r    .    .    ."

"Amylophene. Massage it in as I move the arm."

He did not wince and his expression did not change; but he began to sweat and
his face turned white. She paused.
"Keep it up, nurse," he directed, coolly. "That stuff's murder in the first
degree, but it does the job and it's fast."
When she had finished and he was putting his shirt back on: "Thanks, Miss
Vaneman-thanks a lot. It feels a hundred
per cent better already. But why did you do it? I'd think you'd want to bash
me with that basin instead."

"Efficiency." She smiled. "As our chief engineer it won't do to have you laid
up."

"Logical enough, in a way ... but ... I wonder. . . :' She did not reply, but
turned to Perkins.

"How are you, Mr. Perkins? Do you require medical attention?"

"No," Perkins growled. "Keep away from me or I'll cut your heart out."

"Shut up!" DuQuesne snapped. "I haven't done anything!"

"Maybe it didn't quite constitute making a break, so I'll broaden the
definition. If you can't talk like a man, keep
still. Lay off Miss Vaneman-thoughts, words, and actions. I'm in charge of her
and I will have no interference what-

ever. This is your last warning."

"How about Spencer, then?"

"She's your responsibility, not mine."

An evil light appeared in Perkins' eyes. He took out a wicked-looking knife
and began to strop it carefully on the
leather of the seat, glaring at his victim the while.

Dorothy started to protest, but was silenced by a gesture from Margaret, who
calmly took the pistol out of her
pocket. She jerked the slide and held the weapon up on one finger.
Don't worry about his knife. He's been sharpening it for my benefit for the
last month. It doesn't mean a thing. But
you shouldn't play with it so much, Perkins, you might be tempted to try to
throw it. So drop it on the floor and
kick it over here to me. Before I count three. One." The heavy pistol steadied
into line with his chest and her finger
tightened on the trigger.

"Two." Perkins obeyed and Margaret picked up the knife.

"Doctor!" Perkins appealed to DuQuesne, who had watched the scene unmoved, a
faint smile upon his saturnine
face. "Why don't you shoot her? You won't sit there and see me murdered!"

"Won't I? It makes no difference to me which of you kills the other, or if you
both do, or neither. You brought this
on yourself. Anyone with any fraction of a brain doesn't leave guns lying
around loose. You should have seen Miss
Vaneman take them-I did."

"You saw her take them and didn't warn me?" Perkins croaked.

"Certainly. If you can't take care of yourself I'm not going to take care of
you. Especially after the way you bungled
the job. I could have recovered the stuff she stole from that ass Brookings
inside an hour."

"How?" Perkins sneered. "If you're so good, why did you have to come to me
about Seaton and Crane?" "Because
my methods wouldn't work and yours would. It isn't on planning that you're
weak, as I told Brookings it's on
execution."

"Well, what are you going to do about her? Are you going to sit there and
lecture all day?"

"I am going to do nothing whatever. Fight your own battles."

Dorothy broke the silence that followed. "You did see me take the guns,
doctor?"

"I did. You have one in your right breeches pocket now."

"Then why didn't you, or don't you, try to take it away from me?" she asked,
wonderingly.

" 'Try' is the wrong word. If   I had not wanted you to take them you wouldn't
have. If I didn't want you to   have a gun
now I would take it away from   you," and his black eyes stared into her violet
ones with such calm certainty   that she
felt her heart sink.

"Has Perkins got any more knives or guns or things in his room?" Dorothy
demanded.

"I don't know," indifferently. Then, as both girls started for Perkins' room
DuQuesne rapped out, "Sit down, Miss
Vaneman. Let them fight it out. Perkins has his orders about you; I'm giving
you orders about him. If he oversteps,
shoot him. Otherwise, hands off completely-in every respect."

Dorothy threw up her bead in defiance; but, meeting his cold stare, she paused
irresolutely and sat down, while the
other girl went on.

"That's better," DuQuesne said. "Besides, it would be my guess that she
doesn't need any help."

Margaret returned from the search and thrust her pistol back into her pocket.
"That ends that," she declared. "Are
you going to behave yourself or do I chain you by the neck to a post?"

"I suppose I'll have to, if the doe's gone back on me," Perkins snarled. "But
I'll get you when we get back, you-"
"Stop it!" Margaret snapped. "Now listen. Call me names any more and I'll
start shooting. One name, one shot; two
names, two shots; and so on. Each shot in a carefully selected place. Go
ahead."

DuQuesne broke the silence that followed. "Well, now that the battle's over
and we're fed and rested, I'll put on
some power. Everybody into seats."

For sixty hours he drove through space, reducing the acceleration only at
mealtimes, when they ate and exercised
their stiffened, tormented bodies. The power was not cut down for sleep;
everyone slept as best he could.

Dorothy and Margaret were together constantly and a real intimacy grew up
between them. Perkins was for the
most part sullenly quiet. DuQuesne worked steadily during all his waking
hours, except at mealtimes when he
talked easily and well. There was no animosity in his bearing or in his words;
but his discipline was strict and his
reproofs merciless.

When the power bar was exhausted DuQuesne lifted the sole remaining cylinder
into the engine, remarking "Well,
we should be approximately stationary, relative to Earth. Now we'll start
back."

He advanced the lever, and for many hours the regular routine of the ship went
on. Then DuQuesne, on walking, saw
that the engine was no longer perpendicular to the floor, but was inclined
slightly. He read the angle of inclination
on the great circles, then scanned a sector of space. He reduced the current,
whereupon all four felt a lurch as the
angle was increased many degrees. He read the new angle hastily and restored
touring power. He then sat down at
the computer and figured-with that much power on, a tremendous unnerving job.

"What's the matter, doctor?" Dorothy asked. "We're being deflected a little
from our course." "Is that bad?"

"Ordinarily, no. Every time we pass a star its gravity pulls us a little out
of line. But the effects are slight, do not
last long, and tend to cancel each other out. This is too big and has lasted
altogether too long. If it keeps on, we
could miss the solar system altogether; and I can't find anything to account
for it."

He watched the bar anxiously, expecting to see it swing back into the
vertical, but the angle grew steadily larger. He
again reduced the current and searched the heavens for the troublesome body.

"Do you see it yet?" Dorothy asked, apprehensively. "No . . . but this optical
system could be improved. I could do
better with night-glasses, I think."

He brought out a pair of grotesque-looking binoculars and stared through them
out of an upper window for perhaps
five minutes.

"Good God!" he exclaimed. "It's a dead star and we're almost onto it!"

Springing to the board, he whirled the bar into and through the vertical, then
measured the apparent diameter of the
strange object. Then, after cautioning the others, he put on more power than
he had been using. After exactly
fifteen minutes he slackened off and made another reading. Seeing his
expression, Dorothy was about to speak, but
he forestalled her.

"We lost more ground. It must be a lot bigger than anything known to our
astronomers. And I'm not trying to pull
away from it; just to make an orbit around it. We'll have to put on full
power-take seats!"

He left full power on until the bar was nearly gone and made another series of
observations. "Not enough," he said,
quietly.

Perkins screamed and flung himself upon the floor; Margaret clutched at her
heart with both hands; Dorothy,
though her eyes looked like black holes in her white face, looked at him
steadily and asked, "This is the end, then?"

"Not yet." His voice was calm and level. "It'll take two days, more or less,
to fall that far, and we have a little copper
left for one last shot. I'm going to figure the angle to make that last shot
as effective as possible."

"Won't the repulsive outer coating do any good?" "No; it'll be gone long
before we hit. I'd strip it and feed it to the
engine if I could think of a way of getting it off." He lit a cigarette and
sat at ease at the computer. He sat there,
smoking and computing, for over an hour. He then changed, very slightly, the
angle of the engine. "Now we look for
copper," he said. "There isn't any in the ship itself-everything electrical is
silver, down to our flashlights and the
bases of the lamps. But examine the furnishings and all your personal
stuff-anything with copper or brass in it.
That includes metallic money-pennies, nickels, and silver."

They found a few items, but very few. DuQuesne added his watch, his heavy
signet ring, his keys, his tie-clasp, and
the cartridges from his pistol. He made sure that Perkins did not hold
anything out. The girls gave up not only their
money and cartridges but their jewelry, including Dorothy's engagement ring.
"I'd like to keep it, but ... " she said, as she added it to the collection.

"Everything goes that has any copper in it; and I'm glad Seaton's too much of
a scientist to buy platinum jewelry.
But, if we get away, I doubt very much if you'll be able to see any difference
in your ring. Very little copper in it
but we need every milligram we can get."

He threw all the metal into the power chamber and advanced the lever. It was
soon spent; and after the final
observation, while the others waited in suspense, he made his curt
announcement.

"Not quite enough."

Perkins, his mind already weakened, went completely insane. With a wild howl
he threw himself at the unmoved
scientist, who struck him on the head with the butt of his pistol as he
leaped. The force of the blow crushed
Perkin's head and drove his body to the other side of the ship. Margaret
looked as though she were about to faint.
Dorothy and DuQuesne looked at each other. To the girl's amazement the man was
as calm as though he were in his
own room at home on earth. She made an effort to hold her voice steady. "What
next, doctor?"

"I don't exactly know. I still haven't been able to work out a method of
recovering that plating. . . . It's so thin that
there isn't much copper, even on a sphere as big as this one."

"Even if you could get it, and it were enough, we'd starve anyway, wouldn't
we?" Margaret, holding herself together
desperately, tried to speak lightly.

"Not necessarily. That would give me time to figure out something else to do."

"You wouldn't have to figure anything else," Dorothy declared. "Maybe you
won't, anyway. You said we have two
days?"

"My observations were crude, but it's a little over two days-about forty-nine
and a half hours now. Why?" "Because
Dick and Martin Crane will find us before very long. Quite possibly within two
days."

"Not in this life. If they tried to follow us they're both dead now."

"That's where even you are wrong!" she flashed. "They knew all the time
exactly what you were doing to our old
Skylark, so they built another one, that you never knew anything about. And
they know a lot about this new metal
that you never heard of, too, because it wasn't in those plans you stole!"

DuQuesne went directly to the heart of the matter, paying no attention to her
barbs. "Can they follow us in space
without seeing us?" he demanded.

"Yes. At least, I think they can." "How do they do it?"
"I don't know. I wouldn't tell you, if I did!"

"You think not? I won't argue the point at the moment. If they can find
us-which I doubt-I hope they detect this dead
star in time to keep away from it-and us."

"But why?" Dorothy gasped. "You've been trying to kill both of them-wouldn't
you be glad to take them with us?"
"Please try to be logical. Far from it. There's no connection. I tried to kill
them, yes, because they stood in the way
of my development of this new metal. If, however, I am not going to be the one
to do it-I certainly hope Seaton
goes ahead with it. It's the greatest discovery ever made, bar none; and if
both Seaton and I, the only two men able
to develop it properly, get killed it will be lost, perhaps for hundreds of
years."

"If he must go, too, I hope he doesn't find us ... but I don't believe it. I
simply know he could get us away from here."

She continued more slowly, almost speaking to herself, her heart sinking with
her voice, "He's following us and he
won't stop even if he knows he can't get away." "There's no denying the fact
that our situation is critical; but as long
as I'm alive I can think. I'm going to dope out some way of getting that
copper."

"I hope you do." Dorothy kept her voice from breaking only by a tremendous
effort. "I see Peggy's fainted. I wish I
could. I'm worn out."

She drew herself down upon one of the seats and stared at the ceiling,
fighting an almost overpowering impulse to
scream.

Thus time wore on-Perkins dead; Margaret unconscious; Dorothy lying in her
seat, her thoughts a formless prayer,
buoyed only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed,
smoking innumerable cigarettes, his
keen mind at grips with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the
very last instant of life-while the
powerless spaceship fell with an appalling velocity, and faster and yet
faster, toward that cold and desolate monster
of the heavens.

Seaton and Crane drove the Skylark at high acceleration in the direction
indicated by the unwavering compass, each
man taking a twelve-hour trick at the board.

The Skylark justified the faith of her builders, and the two inventors, with
an exultant certainty of success, flew out
beyond man's wildest imaginings. Had it not been for the haunting fear for
Dorothy's safety, the journey would have
been one of pure triumph, and even that anxiety did not preclude a profound
joy in the enterprise.

"If that misguided ape thinks he can pull a stunt like that and get away with
it he's got another think coming," Seaton
declared, after making a reading on the other ship after a few days of flight.
"He went off half-cocked for sure this
time, and we've got him right where the hair is short. Only about a hundred
light-years now. Better we reverse
pretty quick, you think?"

"It's hard to say-very hard. By our dead reckoning he seems to have started
back; but dead reckoning is notoriously
poor reckoning and we have no reference points."

"Well, dead reckoning's the only thing we've got, and anyway you can't be a
precisionist out here. A light-year plus
or minus won't make any difference."

"No, I suppose not," and Crane read off the settings which, had his data been
exact, would put the Skylark in exactly
the same spot with, and having exactly the same velocity as, the other
spaceship at the point of meeting.

The big ship spun, with a sickening lurch, through a half circle as the bar
was reversed. They knew that they were
traveling in a direction that seemed "down," even though they still seemed to
be going "up."

"Mart! C'mere." "Here."

"We're getting a deflection. Too big for a star-unless it's another
S-Doradus-and I can't see a thing-theoretically, of
course, it could be anywhere to starboard. I want a check, fast, on true
course and velocity. Is there any way to
measure a gravity field you're falling freely in without knowing any
distances? Any kind of an approximation would
help."

Crane observed, computed, and reported that the Skylark was being very
strongly attracted by some object almost
straight ahead.

"We'd better break out the big night-glasses and take a good look-as you said,
this optical system could have more
power. But how far away are they?"

"A few minutes over ten hours."

"Ouch! Not good ... veree ungood, in fact. By pouring it on, we could make it
three or four hours . . . but . . . even so
. . . you. . . ."

"Even so. Me. We're in this together, Dick; all the way. Just pour it on."

As the time of meeting drew near they took readings every minute. Seaton
juggled the power until they were very
close to the other vessel and riding with it, then killed his engine. Both men
hurried to the bottom port with their
night-glasses and stared into star-studded blackness.

"Of course," Seaton argued as he stared, "it is theoretically possible that a
body can exist large enough to exert this
much force and not show a disc, but I don't believe it. Give me four or five
minutes of visual angle and I'll buy it,
but --"
"There!" Crane broke in. "At least half a degree of visual angle. Eleven
o'clock, fairly high. Not bright, but dark.
Almost invisible."

"Got it. And that little black spot, just inside the edge at half past
four-DuQuesne's job?"

"I think so. Nothing else in sight."

"Let's grab it and get out of here while we're all in one piece!"

In seconds they reduced the distance until they could plainly see the other
vessel: a small black circle against the
somewhat lighter black of the dead star. Crane turned on the searchlight.
Seaton focused their heaviest attractor
and gave it everything it would take. Crane loaded a belt of solid ammunition
and began to fire peculiarly-spaced
bursts.

After an interminable silence DuQuesne drew himself out of his seat. He took a
long drag at his cigarette, de-

posited the butt carefully in an ashtray, and put on his space-suit; leaving
the faceplates open.

"I'm going after that copper, Miss Vaneman. I don't know exactly how much of
it I'll be able to recover, but I hope. .
. ."

Light flooded in through a port. DuQuesne was thrown flat as the ship was
jerked out of free fall. They heard an
insistent metallic tapping, which DuQuesne recognized instantly.

"A machine gun!" be blurted in amazement. "What in ... wait a minute, that's
Morse! A-R-bare ... Y-O-U -you . . .
A-L-I-V-E-alive? . . ."

"It's Dick!" Dorothy screamed. "He's found us-I knew he would! You couldn't
beat Dick and Martin in a thousand
years!"

The two girls locked their arms around each other in a hysterical outburst of
relief; Margaret's incoherent words
and Dorothy's praises of her lover mingled with their racking sobs.

DuQuesne had climbed to the upper port; had unshielded it. "S-O-S" he
signalled with his flashlight.

The searchlight died. "W-E K-N-O-W. P-A-R-T-Y O-K?" It was a light this time,
not bullets.

"O-K." DuQuesne knew what "Party" meant-Perkins did not count.

"S-U-I-T-S?" "Y-E-S."

"W-I-L-L T-O-U-C-H L-O-C-K T-O L-O-C-K B-R-A-C-E S-E-L-V-E-S."

"O.K."

DuQuesne reported briefly to the two girls. All three put on space-suits and
crowded into the tiny airlock. The lock
was pumped down. There was a terrific jar as the two ships of space were
brought together and held together. Outer
valves opened; residual air screamed out into the interstellar void. Moisture
condensed upon glass, rendering sight
useless.

"Blast!" Seaton's voice came tinnily over the helmet radios. "I can't see a
foot. Can you, DuQuesne?"

"No, and these joints don't move more than a couple of inches."

"These suits need a lot more work. We'll have to go by feel. Pass 'em along."

DuQuesne grabbed the girl nearest him and shoved her toward the spot where
Seaton would have to be. Seaton
seized her, straightened her up, and did his heroic best to compress that suit
until he could at least feel his sweet-

beart's form.

He was very much astonished to feel motions of resistance and to bear a
strange voice cry out, "Don't! It's me!
Dottie's next!"

She was, and she put as much fervor into the reunion as he did. As a lovers'
embrace it was unsatisfactory; but it was
an eager, if distant, contact.

DuQuesne dived through the opening; Crane groped for the controls that closed
the lock. Pressure and temperature
came back up to normal. The clumsy suits were taken off. Seaton and Dorothy
went into each other's arms.

And this time it was a real lovers' embrace.

"We'd better start doing something," came DuQuesne's incisive voice. "Every
minute counts."

"One thing first," Crane said. "Dick, what shall we do with this murderer?"

Seaton, who had temporarily forgotten all about DuQuesne, whirled around.

"Chuck him back into his own tub and let him go to the devil!" he said,
savagely.

"Oh, no, Dick!" Dorothy protested, seizing his arm. "He treated us very well,
and saved my life once. Besides, you
can't become a cold-blooded murderer just because he is. You know you can't."

"Maybe not . . . Okay, I won't kill him-unless he gives me about half an
excuse . . . maybe."

"Out of the question, Dick," Crane decided. "Perhaps he can earn his way?"

"Could be." Seaton thought for a moment, his face still grim and hard. "He's
smart as Satan and strong as a bull ...
and if there's any possible one thing he is not, it's a liar."

He faced DuQuesne squarely, grey eyes boring into eyes of midnight black.
"Will you give us your word to act as
one of the party?"

"Yes." DuQuesne stared back unflinchingly. His expression of cold concern had
not changed throughout the con-

versation: it did not change now. "With the understanding that I reserve the
right to leave you at any time-"escape" is
a melodramatic world, but fits the facts closely enoughprovided I can do so
without affecting unfavorably your
ship, your project then in work, or your persons collectively or
individually."

"You're the lawyer, Mart. Does that cover it?" "Admirably," Crane said. "Fully
yet concisely. Also, the fact of the
reservation indicates that he means it." "You're in, then," Seaton said to
DuQuesne, but he did not offer to shake
hands. "You've got the dope. What'll we have to put on to get away?"

"You can't pull straight away-and live-but . . :' "Sure we can. Our
power-plant can be doubled in emergencies."

"I said `and live."' Seaton, remembering what one full power was like, kept
still.

"The best you can do is a hyperbolic orbit, and my guess is that it'll take
full power to make that. Ten pounds more
copper might have given me a graze, but we're a lot closer now. You've got
more and larger tools than I had, Crane.
Do you want to recompute it now, or give it a good, heavy shot and then figure
it?"

"A shot, I think. What do you suggest?"

"Set your engine to roll for a hyperbolic and give it full drive for . . . say
an hour."

"Full power," Crane said, thoughtfully "I can't take that much. But

"I can't either," Dorothy said, foreboding in her eyes. "Nor Margaret."

"-full power is necessary," Crane continued as though the girl had not spoken,
"full power it shall be. Is it really of
the essence, DuQuesne?"

"Definitely. More than full would be better. And it's getting worse every
minute."

"How much power can you take?" Seaton asked. "More than full. Not much more,
but a little."

"If you can, I can." Seaton was not boasting, merely stating a fact. "So
here's what let's do. Double the engines up.
DuQuesne and I will notch the power up until one of us has to quit. Run an
hour on that, and then read the news.
Check?"

"Check," said Crane and DuQuesne simultaneously, and the three men set
furiously to work. Crane went to the
engines, DuQuesne to the observatory. Seaton rigged helmets to air- and
oxygen-tanks through valves on his board.

Seaton placed Margaret upon a seat, fitted a helmet over her head, strapped
her in, and turned to Dorothy. Instantly
they were in each other's arms. He felt her labored breathing and the hard
beating of her heart; saw the fear and the
unknown in the violet depths of her eyes; but she looked at him steadily as
she said: "Dick, sweetheart, if this is
good-bye . . ."

"It isn't, Dottie-yet-but I know . .

Crane and DuQuesne had finished their tasks, so Seaton hastily finished his
job on Dorothy. Crane put himself to
bed; Seaton and DuQuesne. put on their helmets and took their places at the
twin boards.

In quick succession twenty notches of power went on. The Skylark leaped away
from the other ship, which con-

tinued its mad fall-a helpless hulk, manned by a corpse, falling to
destruction upon the bleak surface of a dead star.
Notch by notch, slower now, the power went up. Seaton turned the mixing valve,
a little with each notch, until the
oxygen concentration was as high as they had dared to risk. As each of the two
men was determined that he would
make the last advance, the duel continued longer than either would have
believed possible. Seaton made what he
was sure was his final effort and waited-only to feel, after a minute, the
surge of the vessel that told him that Du-

Quesne was still able to move.

He could not move any part of his body, which was oppressed   by a sickening
weight. His utmost efforts to breathe
forced only a little oxygen into his lungs. He wondered how   long he could
retain consciousness under such stress.
Nevertheless, he put out everything he had and got one more   notch. Then he
stared at the clock-face above his head,
knowing that he was all done and wondering whether DuQuesne   could put on one
more notch.

Minute after minute went by and the acceleration remained constant. Seaton,
knowing that he was now in sole
charge of the situation, fought off unconsciousness while the sweephand of the
clock went around and around.

After an eternity of time sixty minutes had passed and Seaton tried to cut
down his power, only to find that the long
strain had so weakened him that he could not reverse the ratchet. He was
barely able to give the lever the backward
jerk which broke contact completely. Safety straps creaked as, half the power
shut off, the suddenly released
springs tried to hurl five bodies upward.

DuQuesne revived and shut down his engine. "You're a better man than I am,
Gunga Din," he said, as he began to
make observations.

"Because you were so badly bunged up, is all-one more notch would've pulled my
cork," and Seaton went over to
liberate Dorothy and the stranger.

Crane and DuQuesne finished their computations. "Did we gain enough?" Seaton
asked.

"More than enough. One engine will take us past it." Then, as Crane still
frowned in thought, DuQuesne went on:

"Don't you check me, Crane?"

"Yes and no. Past it, yes, but not safely past. One thing neither of us
thought of, apparently-Roche's Limit."

"That wouldn't apply to this ship," Seaton said, positively. "High-tensile
alloy steel wouldn't crumble."

"It might," DuQuesne said. "Close enough, it would ... What mass would you
assume, Crane-the theoretical
maximum?"

"I would. That star may not be that, quite, but it isn't far from it." Both
men again bent over their computers.

"I make it thirty-nine point seven notches of power, doubled," DuQuesne said,
when he had finished. "Check?"
"Closely enough-point six five," Crane replied. "Forty notches . . . Ummm . .
. " DuQuesne paused. "I went out at
thirty-two. . . . That means an automatic advance. It'll take time, but it's
the only. . . ."

"We've got it already-all we have to do is set it. But that'll take an ungodly
lot of copper and what'll we do to live
through it? Plus pressure on the oxygen? Or what?"

After a short but intense consultation the men took all the steps they could
to enable the whole party to live
through what was coming. Whether they could do enough no one knew. Where they
might lie at the end of this wild
dash for safety; how they were to retrace their way with their depleted supply
of copper, what other dangers of dead
star, sun, or planet lay in their path, were terrifying questions that had to
be ignored.

DuQuesne was the only member of the party who actually felt any calmness, the
quiet of the others expressing
their courage in facing fear.

The men took their places. Seaton started the motor which would automatically
advance both power levers exactly
forty notches and then stop.

Margaret Spencer was the first to lose consciousness. Soon afterwards, Dorothy
stifled an impulse to scream as
she felt herself going under. A half minute later and Crane went out, calmly
analyzing his sensations to the last.
Shortly thereafter DuQuesne also lapsed into unconsciousness, making no effort
to avoid it, as he knew that it
would make no difference in the end.
Seaton, though he knew it was useless, fought to keep his senses as long as
possible, counting the impulses as the
levers were advanced.

Thirty-two. He felt the same as when he had advanced his lever for the last
time.

Thirty-three. A giant hand shut off his breath, although he was fighting to
the utmost for air. An intolerable weight
rested upon his eyeballs, forcing them back into his head. The universe
whirled about him in dizzy circles; orange
and black and green stars flashed before his bursting eyes.

Thirty-four. The stars became more brilliant and of more wildly variegated
colors, and a giant pen dipped in fire
wrote equations and symbols upon his quivering brain.

Thirty-five. The stars and the fiery pen exploded in pyrotechnic coruscation
of searfing, blinding light and he
plunged into a black abyss.

Faster and faster the Skylark hurtled downward in her not-quite-hyperbolic
path. Faster and faster; as minute by
minute went by, she came closer and closer to that huge dead star. Eighteen
hours from the start of that fantastic
drop she swung around it in the tightest, hardest conceivable arc. Beyond
Roche's Limit, it is true, but so very little
beyond it that Martin Crane's hair would have stood on end if he had known.

Then, on the back leg of that incomprehensibly gigantic swing, the forty
notches of doubled power began really to
take hold. At thirty-six hours her path was no longer even approximately
hyperbolic. Instead of slowing down, rela-

tive to the dead star that held her in an ever-weakening grip, she was
speeding up at a tremendous rate.

At two days, that grip was very weak.

At three days the monster she had left was having no measurable effect.

Hurtled upward, onward, outward by the inconceivable power of the unleashed
copper demons in her center, the
Skylark tore through the reaches of interstellar space with an unthinkable,
almost incalculable velocity, beside
which the velocity of light was as that of a snail to that of a rifle bullet.

Seaton opened his eyes and gazed about him wonderingly. Only half conscious,
bruised and sore in every part, he
could not remember what had happened. Instinctively drawing deep breath, he
coughed as the plus-pressure gas
filled his lungs, bringing with it a complete understanding of the situation.
He tore off his helmet and drew himself
across to Dorothy's couch.

She was still alive!

He placed her face downward upon the floor and began artificial respiration.
Soon he was rewarded by the coughing
he had longed to hear. Snatching off her helmet, he seized her in his arms,
while she sobbed convulsively on his
shoulder. The first ecstasy of their greeting over, she started guiltily.

"Oh, Dick! See about Peggy-I wonder if . . :' "Never mind," Crane said. "She
is doing nicely."

Crane had already revived the stranger. DuQuesne was nowhere in sight. Dorothy
blushed vividly and disengaged
her arms from around Seaton's neck. Seaton, also blushing, dropped his arms
and Dorothy floated away, clutching
frantically at a hand-hold just out of her reach.

"Pull me down, Dick!" Dorothy laughed.

Seaton grabbed her ankle unthinkingly, neglecting his own anchorage, and they
floated in the air together. Martin
and Margaret, each holding a line, laughed heartily.

"Tweet, tweet-I'm a canary," Seaton said, flapping his arms. "Toss us a line,
Mart."

"A Dicky-bird, you mean," Dorothy said.

Crane studied the floating pair with mock gravity. "That is a peculiar pose,
Dick. What is it supposed to
represent-Zeus sitting on his throne?"

"I'll sit on your neck, you lug, if you don't get a wiggle on with that rope!"

As he spoke, however he came within reach of the ceiling, and could push
himself and his companion to a line.
Seaton put a bar into one of the engines and, after flashing the warning
light, applied a little power. The Skylark
seemed to leap under them; then everything had its normal weight once more.

"Now that things have settled down a little," Dorothy said, "I'll introduce
you two to Miss Margaret Spencer, a very
good friend of mine. These are the boys I told you so much about, Peggy. This
is Dr. Dick Seaton, my fiance. He
knows everything there is to be known about atoms, electrons, neutrons, and so
forth. And this is Mr. Martin Crane,
who is a simply wonderful inventor. He made all these engines and things."

"I may have heard of Mr. Crane," Margaret said, eagerly. "My father was an
inventor, too, and he used to talk about a
man named Crane who invented a lot of instruments for supersonic planes. He
said they revolutionized flying. I
wonder if you are that Mr. Crane?"

"That is unjustifiedly high praise, Miss Spencer," Crane replied,
uncomfortable, "but as I have done a few things
along that line I could be the man he referred to."

"If I may change the subject," Seaton said, "where's DuQuesne?"

"He went to clean up. Then he was going to the galley to check damage and see
about something to eat."

"Stout fella!" Dorothy applauded. "Food! And especially about cleaning up-if
you know what I mean and I think you
do. Come on, Peggy, I know where our room is."

"What a girl!" Seaton said as the women left, Dorothy half-supporting her
companion. "She's bruised and beat up
from one end to the other. She's more than half dead yet-she didn't have
enough life left in her to flag a handcar.
She can't even walk; she can just barely hobble. And did she let out one
single yip? I ask to know. 'Business as
usual,' all the way, if it kills her. What a girl!"

"Include Miss Spencer in that, too, Dick. Did she 'let out any yips'? And she
was not in nearly as good shape as
Dorothy was, to start with."

"That's right," Seaton agreed, wonderingly. "She's got plenty of guts, too.
Those two women, Marty my old and
stinky chum, are blinding flashes and deafening reports. . . . Well, let's go
get a bath and shave. And shove the
air-conditioners up a couple of notches, will you?"

When they came back they found the two girls seated at one of the ports. "Did
you dope yourself up, Doc?" Seaton
asked.

"Yes, both of us. With amylophene. I'm getting to be a slave to the stuff."
She made a wry face.

Seaton grimaced too. "So did we. Ouch! Nice stuff that amylophene."

"But come over here and look out of this window. Did you ever see anything
like it?"

As the four heads bent, so close together, an awed silence fell upon the
little group. For the blackness of the black
of the interstellar void is not the darkness of an earthly night, but the
absolute absence of light-a black beside
which that of platinum dust is merely grey. Upon this indescribably black
backdrop there glowed faint patches
which were nebulae; there blazed hard, brilliant, multi-colored, dimensionless
points of light which were stars.

"Jewels on black velvet," Dorothy breathed. "Oh, gorgeous . . . wonderful!"

Through their wonder a thought struck Seaton. He leaped to the board. "Look
here, Mart. I didn't recognize a thing
out there and I wondered why. We're heading away from the Earth and we must be
making plenty of lightspeeds.
The swing around that big dud was really something, of course, but the engine
should have . . . or should it?"

"I think not . . . Unexpected, but not a surprise. That close to Roche's
Limit, anything might happen."

"And did, I guess. We'll have to check for permanent deformations. But this
object-compass still works-let's see
how far we are away from home."

They took a reading and both men figured the distance. "What d'you make it,
Mart? I'm afraid to tell you my result."
"Forty-six point twenty-seven light centuries. Check?" "Check. We're up the
well-known creek without a paddle. . . .
The time was twenty-three thirty-two by the chronometer-good thing you built
it to stand going through a
stone-crusher. My watch's a total loss. They all are, I imagine. We'll read it
again in an hour or so and see how fast
we're going. I'll be scared witless to say that figure out loud, too."

"Dinner is announced," said DuQuesne, who had been standing at the door,
listening.

The wanderers, battered, stiff, and sore, seated themselves at a folding
table. While eating, Seaton watched the
engine-when he was not watching Dorothy-and talked to her. Crane and Margaret
chatted easily. DuQuesne, except
when addressed directly, maintained a self-sufficient silence.

After another observation Seaton said, "DuQuesne, we're almost five thousand
light-years away from earth, and
getting farther away at about one light-year per minute."

"It'd be poor technique to ask how you know?"

"It would. Those figures are right. But we've got only four bars of copper
left. Enough. to stop us and some to
spare, but not nearly enough to get us back, even by drifting-too many
lifetimes on the way."

"So we land somewhere and dig up some copper." "Check. What I wanted to ask
you-isn't a copperbearing sun apt
to, have copper-beating planets?"

"I'd say so."

"Then take the spectroscope, will you, and pick out a sun somewhere up
ahead-down ahead, I mean-for us to shoot
at? And Marty, I s'pose we'd better take our regular twelve-hour tricks-no,
eight; we've got to either trust the guy or
kill him-I'll take the first watch. Beat it to bed."

"Not so fast." Crane said. "If I remember correctly, it's my turn."

"Ancient history doesn't count. I'll flip you a nickel for it. Heads, I win."

Seaton won, and the warn-out travelers went to their rooms-all except Dorothy,
who lingered to bid her lover a
more intimate good night.

Seated beside him, his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, she sat
blissfully until she noticed, for the first
time, her bare left hand. She caught her breath and her eyes grew round.

"'Smatter, Red?"

"Oh, Dick!" she exclaimed in dismay, "I simply forgot everything about taking
what was left of my ring out of the
doctor's engine."

"Huh? What are you talking about?"
She told him; and he told her about Martin and himself.

"Oh, Dick-Dick-it's so wonderful to be with you again!" she concluded. "I
lived as many years as we covered miles!"

"It was tough ... you had it a lot worse than we did ... but it makes me
ashamed all over to think of the way I blew my
stack at Wilson's. If it hadn't been for Martin's cautious old bean we'd've
... we owe him a lot, Dimples."

"Yes, we do ... but don't worry about the debt, Dick. Just don't ever let slip
a word to Peggy about Martin being rich,
is all."

"Oh, a matchmaker now? But why not? She wouldn't think any less of him-that's
one reason I'm marrying you, you
know-for your money."

Dorothy snickered sunnily. "I know. But listen, you poor, dumb,
fortune-hunting darling-if Peggy had any idea that
Martin is the one and only M. Reynolds Crane she'd curl right up into a ball.
She'd think he'd think she was chasing
him and then he would think so. As it is, he acts perfectly natural. He hasn't
talked that way to any girl except me
for five years, and he wouldn't talk to me until he found out for sure I
wasn't out after him."

"Could be, pet," Seaton agreed. "On one thing you really chirped it-he's been
shot at so much he's wilder than a
hawk!"
At the end of eight hours Crane took over and Seaton stumbled to his room,
where he slept for over ten hours like a
man in a trance. Then, rising, he exercised and went out into the saloon.

Dorothy, Peggy, and Crane were at breakfast; Seaton joined them. They ate the
gayest, most carefree meal they had
had since leaving earth. Some of the worst bruises still showed a little, but,
under the influence of the potent if
painful amylophene, all soreness, stiffness, and pain had disappeared.

After they had finished eating, Seaton said, "You suggested, Mart, that those
gyroscope bearings may have been
stressed beyond the yield-point. I'll take an integrating goniometer . . ."

"Break that down to our size, Dick-Peggy's and mine," Dorothy said.

"Can do. Take some tools and see if anything got bent out of shape back there.
It might be an idea, Dot, to come
along and hold my head while I think."

""That is an idea if you never have another one." Crane and Margaret went over
and sat down at one of the
crystal-clear ports. She told him her story frankly and fully, shuddering with
horror as she recalled the awful,
helpless fall during which Perkins had been killed.

"We have a heavy score to settle with that Steel crowd and with DuQuesne,"
Crane said, slowly. "We can convict
him of abduction now.... Perkins' death wasn't murder, then?"
"Oh, no. He was just like a mad animal. He had to kill him. But the doctor, as
they call him, is just as bad. He's so
utterly heartless and ruthless, so cold and scientific, it gives me the
compound shivers, just to think about him."
"And yet Dorothy said he saved her life?"

"He did, from Perkins; but that was just as strictly pragmatic as everything
else he has ever done. He wanted her
alive: dead, she wouldn't have been any use to him. He's as nearly a robot as
any human being can be, that's what I
think."

"I'm inclined to agree with you. . . . Nothing would please Dick better than a
good excuse for killing him." - "He
isn't the only one. And the way he ignores what we all feel shows what a
machine he is. . . . What's that?" The
Skylark had lurched slightly.

"Just a swing around a star, probably." He looked at the board, then led her
to a lower port. "We are passing the star
Dick was heading for, far too fast to stop. DuQuesne will pick out another.
See that planet over there"-he
pointed-"and that smaller one, there?"

She saw the two planets-one like a small moon, the other much smaller-and
watched the sun increase rapidly in
size as the Skylark flew on at such a pace that any earthly distance would
have been covered as soon as it was
begun. So appalling was their velocity that the ship was bathed in the light
of that strange sun only for moments,
then was surrounded again by darkness.

Their seventy-two-hour flight without a pilot had seemed a miracle; now it
seemed entirely possible that they could
fly- in a straight line for weeks without encountering any obstacle, so vast
was the emptiness in comparison with
the points of light scattered about in it. Now and then they passed closely
enough to a star so that it seemed to
move fairly rapidly; but for the most part the stars stood, like distant
mountain peaks to travelers in a train, in the
same position for many minutes.

Awed by the immensity of the universe, the two at the window were silent, not
with the silence of embarrassment
but with that of two friends in the presence of a thing far beyond the reach
of words. As they stared out into
infinity, each felt as never before the pitiful smallness of the whole world
they had known, and the insignificance
of human beings and their works. Silently their minds reached out to each
other in understanding.

Unconsciously Margaret half shuddered and moved closer to Crane; and a tender
look came over Crane's face as he
looked down -at the beautiful young woman at his side. For she was beautiful.
Rest and food had erased the marks
of her imprisonment. Dorothy's deep and unassumed faith in the ability of
Seaton and Crane had quieted her fears.
And finally, a costume of Dorothy's well-made-and exceedingly
expensive!-clothes, which fitted her very well and
in which she looked her best and knew it, had completely restored her
self-possession.

He looked up quickly and again studied the stars; but now, in addition to the
wonders of space, he saw a mass of
wavy black hair, high-piled upon a queenly head; deep brown eyes veiled by
long, black lashes; sweet, sensitive lips;
a firmly rounded, dimpled chin; and a beautifully formed young body.

"How stupendous ... how unbelievably great this is . . :' Margaret whispered.
"How vastly greater than any perception
one could possibly get on Earth ... and yet . . ."

She paused, with her lip caught under two white teeth, then went on,
hesitatingly, "But doesn't it seem to you, Mr.
Crane, that there is something in man as great as even all this? That there
must be, or Dorothy and I could not be
sailing out here in such a wonderful thing as this Skylark, which you and Dick
Seaton have made?"

Days passed. Dorothy timed her waking hours with those of Seaton-preparing his
meals and lightening the tedium
of his long vigils at the board-and Margaret did the same thing for Crane. But
often they assembled in the saloon,
while DuQuesne was on watch, and there was much fun and laughter, as well as
serious discussion, among the four.
Margaret, already adopted as a friend, proved a delightful companion. Her
ready tongue, her quick, delicate wit, and
her facility of expression delighted all three.

One day Crane suggested to Seaton that they should take notes, in addition to
the photographs they had been taking.
"I know comparatively little of astronomy, but, with the instruments we have,
we should be able to get data, espe-

cially on planetary systems, which would be of interest to astronomers. Miss
Spencer, being a secretary, could
help us?"

"Sure," Seaton said. "That's an idea-nobody else ever had a chance to do it
before."

"I'll be glad to-taking notes is the best thing I do!" Margaret cried, and
called for pad and pencils.

After that, the two worked together for several hours on each of Martin's off
shifts.

The Skylark passed one solar system after another, with a velocity so great
that it was impossible to land.
Margaret's association with Crane, begun as a duty, became a very real
pleasure for them both. Working together in
research, sitting together at the board in easy conversation or in equally
easy silence, they compressed into days
more real companionship than is usually possible in months.

Oftener and oftener, as time went on, Crane found the vision of his dream home
floating in his mind as he steered
the Skylark in her meteoric flight or as he lay strapped into his narrow bunk.
Now, however, the central figure of
the vision, instead of being a blur, was clear and sharply defined. And for
her part, Margaret was drawn more and
more to the quiet and unassuming, but steadfast young inventor, with his wide
knowledge and his keen, incisive
mind.

The Skylark finally slowed down enough to make a landing possible, and course
was laid toward the nearest planet
of a copper-bearing sun_ As vessel neared planet a wave of excitement swept
through four of the five. They
watched the globe grow larger, glowing white, its outline softened by the
atmosphere surrounding it. It had two
satellites; its sun, a great, blazing orb, looked so big and so hot that
Margaret became uneasy.

"Isn't it dangerous to get so close, Dick?"

"Uh-uh. Watching the pyrometers is part of the pilot's job. Any overheating
and he'd snatch us away in a hurry."
They dropped into the atmosphere and on down, almost to the surface. The air
was breathable, its composition
being very similar to that of Earth's air, except that the carbon dioxide was
substantially higher. Its pressure was
somewhat high, but not too much; its temperature, while high, was endurable.
The planet's gravitational pull was
about ten per cent higher than Earth's. The ground was almost hidden by a rank
growth of vegetation, but here and
there appeared glade-like openings.

Landing upon one of the open spaces, they found the ground solid and stepped
out. What appeared to be a glade was
in reality a rock; or rather a ledge of apparently solid metal, with scarcely
a loose fragment to be seen. At one end
of the ledge rose a giant tree, wonderfully symmetrical, but of a peculiar
form, its branches being longer at the top
than at the bottom, and having broad, dark-green leaves, long thorns, and odd,
flexible, shoot-like tendrils. It stood
as an outpost of the dense vegetation beyond. The fern-trees, towering two
hundred feet or more into the air were
totally unlike the forests of Earth. They were an intensely vivid green and
stood motionless in the still, hot air. Not
a sign of animal life was to be seen; the whole landscape seemed to be asleep.

"A younger planet than ours," DuQuesne said. "In the Carboniferous, or about.
Aren't those fern-trees like those in
the coal measures, Seaton?"

"Check-I was just trying to think what they reminded me of. But it's this
ledge that interests me no end. Who ever
heard of a chunk of noble metal this big?"

"How do you know it's noble?" Dorothy asked.

"No corrosion, and its probably been sitting here for a million years."
Seaton, who had walked over to one of the
loose lumps, kicked it with his heavy shoe. It did not move.

He bent over to pick it up, with one hand. It still did not move. With both
hands and all the strength of his back he
could lift it, but that was all.
"What do you make of this, DuQuesne?"

DuQuesne lifted the mass, then took out his knife and scraped. He studied the
freshly-exposed metal and the
scrapings, then scraped and studied again.

"Hmm. Platinum group, almost certainly . . . and the only known member of that
group with that peculiar bluish
sheen is your X."

"But didn't we agree that free X and copper couldn't exist on the same planet,
and that planets of copper bearing
suns carry copper?"

"Yes, but that doesn't make it true. If this stuff is X, it'll give the
cosmologists something to fight about for the next
twenty years. I'll take these scrapings and run a couple of quickies."

"Do that, and I'll gather in these loose nuggets. If it's X-and I'm pretty
sure it mostly is-that'll be enough to run all
the power-plants of Earth for ten thousand years."

Crane   and Seaton, accompanied by the two girls, rolled the nearest pieces of
metal   up to the ship. Then, as the
quest   led them farther and farther afield, Crane protested. "This is none too
safe,   Dick."

"It looks perfectly safe to me. Quiet as a-"

Margaret screamed. Her head was turned, looking backward at the Skylark; her
face was a mask of horror. Seaton
drew his pistol as he whirled, only to check his finger on the trigger and
lower his hand. "Nothing but X-plosive
bullets," he said, and the four watched a thing come out slowly from behind
their ship.

Its four huge, squat legs supported a body at least a hundred feet long, pursy
and ungainly; at the end of a long,
sinuous neck a small head seemed composed entirely of cavernous mouth armed
with row upon row of carnivorous
teeth. Dorothy gasped with terror; both girls shrank closer to the two men,
who maintained a baffled silence as the
huge beast slid its hideous head along the hull of the vessel.

"I can't shoot, Mart-it'd wreck the boat and if I had any solids they wouldn't
be any good."

"No. We had better hide until it goes away. You two take that ledge, we'll
take this one."

"Or gets far enough away from the Skylark so we can blow him apart," Seaton
added as, with Dorothy close beside
him, he dropped behind the low bulwark.

Margaret, her staring eyes fixed upon the monster, remained motionless until
Crane touched her gently and drew
her down to his side. "Don't be frightened, Peggy. It will go away soon."

"I'm not, now-much." She drew a deep breath. "If you weren't here, though,
Martin, I'd be dead of pure fright." His
arm tightened around her; then he forced it to relax. This was neither the
time nor the place....

A roll of gunfire came from the Skylark. The creature roared in pain and rage,
but was quickly silenced by the
stream of .50-caliber machine-gun bullets.

"DuQuesue's on the job-let's go!" Seaton cried, and the four rushed up the
slope. Making a detour to avoid the
writhing body, they plunged through the opening door. DuQuesne closed the
lock. They huddled together in over-

whelming relief as an appalling tumult arose outside.

The scene, so quiet a few moments before, was horribly changed. The air seemed
filled with hideous monsters.
Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled through the air to crash against the
Skylark's armored hull. Flying mon-

strosities, with the fangs of tigers, attacked viciously. Dorothy screamed and
started back as a scorpion-like thing
ten feet in length leaped at the window in front of her, its terrible sting
spraying the quartz with venom. As it fell to
the ground a spider-if an eight-legged creature with spines instead of hair,
faceted eyes, and a bloated globular
body weighing hundreds of pounds may be called a spider leaped upon it; and,
mighty mandibles against the terrible
sting, a furious battle raged. Twelve-foot cockroaches climbed nimbly across
the fallen timber of the morass and
began feeding voraciously on the carcass of the creature DuQuesne had killed.
They were promptly driven away by
another animal, a living nightmare of that reptilian age which apparently
combined the nature and disposition of
tyrannosaurus rex with a physical shape approximating that of the sabertooth
tiger. This newcomer towered fifteen
feet high at the shoulders and had a mouth disproportionate even to his great
size; a mouth armed with sharp fangs
three feet in length. He had barely begun his meal, however, when he was
challenged by another nightmare, a thing
shaped more or less like a crocodile.

The crocodile charged. The tiger met him head on, fangs front and rending
claws outstretched. Clawing, striking,
tearing savagely, an avalanche of bloodthirsty rage, the combatants stormed up
and down the little island.

Suddenly the great tree bent over and lashed out against both animals. It
transfixed them with its thorns, which the
watchers now saw were both needle-pointed and barbed. It ripped at them with
its long branches, which were in fact
highly lethal spears. The broad leaves, equipped with sucking discs, wrapped
themselves around the hopelessly
impaled victims. The long, slender twigs or tendrils, each of which now had an
eye at its extremity, waved about at a
safe distance.

After absorbing all of the two gladiators that was absorbable, the tree
resumed its former position, motionless in
all its strange, outlandish beauty.
Dorothy licked her lips, which were almost as white as her face. "I think I'm
going to be sick," she remarked,
conversationally.

"No you aren't." Seaton tightened his arm. "Chin up, ace."

"Okay, chief. Maybe not-this time." Color began to reappear on her cheeks.
"But Dick, will you please blow up that
horrible tree? It wouldn't be so bad if it were ugly, like the rest of the
things, but it's so beautiful!"

"I sure will. I think we'd better get out of here. This is no place to start a
copper mine, even if there's any copper
here, which there probably isn't. . . . It is X, DuQuesne, isn't it?"

"Yes. Ninety-nine plus per cent, at least."

"That reminds me." Seaton turned to DuQuesne, band outstretched. "You squared
it, Blackie. Say the word the war's
all off."

DuQuesne ignored the hand. "Not on my side," he said evenly. "I act as one of
the party as long as I'm with you.
When we get back, however, I still intend to take both of you out of
circulation." He went to his room.

"Well, I'll be a . . . " Seaton bit off a word. "He ain't a man-he's a
cold-blooded fish!"

"He's a machine--a robot," Margaret declared. "I always thought so, and now I
know it!"

"We'll pull his cork when we get back," Seaton said. "He asked for it-we'll
give him both barrels!"

Crane went to the board, and soon they were approaching another planet, which
was surrounded by a dense fog.
Descending slowly, they found it to be a mass of boiling hot steam and rank
vapor, under enormous pressure.

The next planet looked barren and dead. Its atmosphere was clear, but of a
peculiar yellowish-green color. Analysis
showed over ninety per cent chlorine. No life of any Earthly type could exist
naturally upon such a world and a
search for copper, even in space-suits, would be extremely difficult if not
impossible.

"Well," Seaton said, as they were once more in space, "We've got copper enough
to visit quite a few more solar
systems if we have to. But there's a nice, hopeful-looking planet right over
there. It may be the one we're looking
for."

Arriving in the belt of atmosphere, they tested it as before and found it
satisfactory.

They descended rapidly, over a large city set in the middle of a vast, level,
beautifully planted plain. As they
watched, the city vanished and became a mountain summit, with valleys falling
away on all sides as far as the eye
could reach.

"Huh! I never saw a mirage like that before!" Seaton exclaimed. "But we'll
land, if we finally have to swim!" The ship
landed gently upon the summit, its occupants more than half expecting the
mountain to disappear beneath them.
Nothing happened, however, and the five clustered in the lock, wondering
whether or not to disembark. They could
see no sign of life; but each felt the presence of a vast, invisible
something.

Suddenly a man materialized in the air before them; a man identical with
Seaton in every detail, down to the smudge
of grease under one eye and the exact design of his Hawaiian sport shirt.

"Hello, folks," he said, in Seaton's tone and style. "S'prised that I know
your language-huh, you would be. Don't even
understand telepathy, or the ether, or the relationship between time and
space. Not even the fourth dimension."

Changing instantaneously from Seaton's form to Dorothy's, the stranger went on
without a break. "Electrons and
neutrons and things-nothing here, either."

The form became DuQuesne's. "Ah, a freer type, but blind, dull, stupid;
another nothing. As Martin Crane; the same.
As Peggy, still the same, as was of course to be expected. Since you are all
nothings in essence, of a race so low in
the scale that it will be millions of years before it will rise even above
death and death's clumsy attendant
necessity, sex, it is of course necessary for me to make of you nothings in
fact; to dematerialize you."

In Seaton's form the being stared at Seaton, who felt his senses reel under
the impact of an awful, if insubstantial,
blow. Seaton fought back with all his mind and remained standing.

"What's this?" the stranger exclaimed in surprise. "This is the first time in
millions of cycles that mere matter,
which is only a manifestation of mind, has refused to obey a mind of power.
There's something screwy
somewhere." He switched to Crane's shape.

"Ah, I am not a perfect reproduction-there is some subtle difference. The
external form is the same; the internal
structure likewise. The molecules of substance are arranged properly, as are
the atoms in the molecules. The
electrons, neutrons, protons, positrons, neutrinos, mesons ... nothing amiss
on that level. On the third level . . ."

"Let's go!" Seaton exclaimed, drawing Dorothy backward and reaching for the
airlock switch. "This
dematerialization stuff may be pie for him, but believe me, it's none of my
dish."

"No, no!" the stranger remonstrated. "You really must stay and be
dematerialized-alive or dead."

He drew his pistol. Being in Crane's form, he drew slowly, as Crane did; and
Seaton's Mark I shell struck him
before the pistol cleared his pocket. The pseudo-body was votalized; but, just
to make sure, Crane fired a Mark V
into the ground through the last open chink of the closing lock.

Seaton leaped to the board. As he did so, a creature materialized in the air
in front of him-and crashed to the floor
as he threw on the power. It was a frightful thing-outrageous teeth, long
claws, and an automatic pistol held in a
human hand. Forced flat by the fierce acceleration, it was unable to lift
either itself or the weapon.

"We take one trick!" Seaton blazed. "Stick to matter and I'll run along with
you 'til my ankles catch fire!"

"That is a childish defiance. It speaks well for your courage, but not for
your intelligence," the animal said, and
vanished.

A moment later Seaton's hair stood on end as a pistol appeared upon his board,
clamped to it by hands of steel. The
slide jerked; the trigger moved; the hammer came down. However; there was no
explosion, but merely a click.
Seaton, paralyzed by the rapid succession of stunning events, was surprised to
find himself still alive.

"Oh,.I was almost sure it wouldn't explode," the gunbarrel said, chattily, in
a harsh, metallic voice. "You see, I
haven't derived the formula of your sub-nuclear structure yet, hence I could
not make an actual explosive. By the
use of crude force I could kill you in any one of many different ways. . . ."

"Name one!" Seaton snapped.

"Two, if you like. I could materialize as five masses of metal directly over
your heads, and fall. I could, by a
sufficient concentration of effort, materialize a sun in your immediate path.
Either method would succeed, would
it not?"

"I ... I guess it would," Seaton admitted, grudgingly. "But such crude work is
distasteful in the extreme, and is never,
under any conditions, mandatory. Furthermore, you are not quite the complete
nothings that my first rough analysis
seemed to indicate. In particular, the DuQuesne of you has the rudiments of a
quality which, while it cannot be
called mental ability, may in time develop into a quality which may just
possibly make him assimilable into the
purely intellectual stratum.

"Furthermore, you have given me a notable and entirely unexpected amount of
exercise and enjoyment and can be
made to give me more-much more-as follows: I will spend the next sixty of your
minutes at work upon that
formula-your subnuclear structure. Its derivation is comparatively simple,
requiring only the solution of ninety-
seven simultaneous differential equations and an integration in ninety-seven
dimensions. If you can interfere with
my computations sufficiently to prevent me from deriving that formula within
the stipulated period of time you
may return to your fellow nothings exactly as you now are. The first minute
begins when the sweep-hand of your
chronometer touches zero; that is . . . now."

Seaton cut the power to one gravity and sat up, eyes closed tight and frowning
in the intensity of his mental effort.

"You can't do it, you immaterial lug!" he thought, savagely. "There are too
many variables. No mind, however
inhuman, can handle more than ninety-one differentials at once . . . you're
wrong; that's theta, not epsilon. . . . It's X,
not Y or Z. Alphal Beta! Ha, there's a slip; a bad one-got to go back and
start all over.... Nobody can integrate above
ninety-six brackets . . . no body and no thing or mind in this whole, entire,
cock-eyed universe! . . .

Seaton cast aside any thought of the horror of their position. He denied any
feeling of suspense. He refused to
consider the fact that both he and his beloved Dorothy might at any instant be
hurled into nothingness. Closing his
mind deliberately to everything else, he fought that weirdly inimical entity
with everything he had: with all his
single-mindedness of purpose; with all his power of concentration; with all
the massed and directed strength of his
keen, highly-trained brain.

The hour passed.

"You win," the gun-barrel said. "More particularly, I should say that the
DuQuesne of you won. To my surprise and
delight that one developed his nascent quality very markedly during this short
hour. Keep on going as you have
been going, my potential kinsman; keep on studying under those eastern masters
as you have been studying; and it
is within the realm of possibility that, even in your short lifetime, you may
become capable of withstanding the
stresses concomitant with the induction into our ranks."

The pistol vanished. So did the planet behind them. The enveloping, pervading
field of mental force disappeared.
All five knew surely, without any trace of doubt, that the entity, whatever it
had been, had gone.

"Did all that really happen, Dick?" Dorothy asked, tremulously, "or have I
been having the great-great-grandfather of
all nightmares?"

"It hap . . . that is, I guess it happened . . . or maybe . . . Mart, if you
could code that and shove it into a mechanical
brain, what answer do you think would come out?"

"I don't know. I-simply-do-not-know." Crane's mind, the mind of a
highly-trained engineer, rebelled. No part of this
whole fantastic episode could be explained by anything he knew. None of it
could possibly have happened.
Nevertheless. . . .

"Either it happened or we were hypnotized. If so, who was the hypnotist, and
where? Above all, why? It must have
happened, Dick."
"I'll buy that, wild as it sounds. Now, DuQuesne, how about you?"

"It happened. I don't know how or why it did, but I believe that it did. I've
quit denying the impossibility of anything.
If I had believed that your steam-bath flew out of the window by itself, that
day, none of us would be out here now."

"If it happened, you were apparently the prime operator in saving our bacon.
Who in blazes are those eastern
masters you've been studying under, and what did you study?"

"I don't know." He lit a cigarette, took two deep inhalations. "I wish I did.
I've studied several esoteric philosophies .
. . perhaps I can find out which one it was. I'll certainly try . . . for
that, gentlemen, would be my idea of heaven." He
left the room.

It took some time for the four to recover from the shock of that encounter. In
fact, they bad not yet fully recovered
from it when Crane found a close cluster of stars, each emitting a peculiar
greenish light which, in the spectro-

scope, blazed with copper lines. When they had approached so close that the
suns were widely spaced in the
heavens Crane asked Seaton to take his place at the board while he and
Margaret tried to locate a planet.

They went down to the observatory, but found that they were still too far away
and began taking notes. Crane's mind
was not upon his work, however, but was filled with thoughts of the girl at
his side. The intervals between com-

ments became longer and longer, until the two were standing in silence.

The Skylark lurched a little, as she had done hundreds of times before. As
usual, Crane put out a steadying arm.
This time, however, in that highly charged atmosphere, the gesture took on a
new significance. Both blushed hotly;
and, as their eyes met, each saw what they had both wanted most to see.

Slowly, almost as though without volition, Crane put his other arm around her.
A wave of deeper crimson flooded
her face; but her lips lifted to his and her arms went up around his neck.

"Margaret-Peggy-I had intended to wait-but why should we wait? You know how
much I love you, my dearest!"

"I think I do ... I know I do ... my Martini"

Presently they made their way back to the engine-room, hoping that their
singing joy was inaudible, their new
status invisible. They might have kept their secret for a time had not Seaton
promptly asked, "What did you find,
Mart?"

The always self-possessed Crane looked panicky; Margaret's fair face glowed a
deeper and deeper pink.

"Yes, what did you find?" Dorothy demanded, with a sudden, vivid smile of
understanding.
"My future wife," Crane answered, steadily.

The two girls hugged each other and the two men gripped hands, each of the
four knowing that in these two unions
there was nothing whatever of passing fancy.
                         ROBOT NEMESIS

The Metal Brains of the Ten Thinkers Plan a Flaming Trap for Humanity's Great
Armada-But Science Fights
Fire with Fire!

Chapter I
The Ten Thinkers



The War of the Planets is considered to have ended on 18 Sol, 3012, with that
epic struggle, the Battle of Sector
Ten. In that engagement, as is of course well known, the Grand Fleet of the
Inner Planets-the combined
space-power of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars-met that of the Outer Planets in
what was on both sides a
desperate bid for the supremacy of interplanetary space.

But, as is also well known, there ensued not supremacy" but stalemate. Both
fleets were so horribly shattered that
the survivors despaired of continuing hostilities. Instead, the few and
crippled remaining vessels of each force
limped into some sort of formation and returned to their various planetary
bases.

And, so far, there has not been another battle. Neither side dares attack the
other; each is waiting for the develop-

ment of some super-weapon which will give it the overwhelming advantage
necessary to ensure victory upon a field
of action so far from home. But as yet no such weapon has been developed; and
indeed, so efficient are the various
Secret Services involved, the chance of either side perfecting such a weapon
unknown to the other is extremely
slim.

Thus" although each planet is adding constantly to its already powerful navy
of the void, and although four planet,
full-scale war maneuvers are of almost monthly occurrence, we have had and
still have peace-such as it is.

 In the foregoing matters the public is well enough informed, both as to the
actual facts and to the true state of
affairs. Concerning the conflict between humanity and the robots, however,
scarcely anyone has even an inkling,
either as to what actually happened or as to who it was who really did abate
the Menace of the Machine; and it is to
relieve that condition that this bit of history is being written.

The greatest man of our age, the man to whom humanity owes most, is entirely
unknown to fame. Indeed, not one
in a hundred million of humanity's teeming billions has so much as heard his
name. Now that he is dead, however, I
am released from my promise of silence and can tell the whole, true,
unvarnished story of Ferdinand Stone, phys-

icist extraordinary and robot-hater plenipotentiary.

The story probably should begin with Narodny, the Russian, shortly after he
had destroyed by means of his sonic
vibrators all save a handful of the automatons who were so perilously close to
wiping out all humanity.

As has been said" a few scant hundreds of the automatons were so constructed
that they were not vibrated to
destruction by Narodny's cataclysmic symphony. As has also been said, those
highly intelligent machines were able
to communicate with each other by some telepathic means of which humanity at
large knew nothing. Most of these
survivors went into hiding instantly and began to confer through their secret
channels with others of their ilk
throughout the world.

Thus some five hundred of the robots reached the uninhabited mountain valley
in which, it had been decided, was to
be established the base from which they would work to regain their lost
supremacy over mankind. Most of the
robot travelers came in stolen airships, some fitted motors and wheels to
their metal bodies, not a few made the
entire journey upon their own tireless legs of steel. All, however, brought
tools, material and equipment; and in a
matter of days a power-plant was in full operation.

Then, reasonably certain of their immunity to human detection, they took time
to hold a general parley. Each
machine said what it had to say, then listened impassively to the others; and
at the end they all agreed. Singly or en
masse the automatons did not know enough to cope with the situation
confronting them. Therefore they would
build ten "Thinkers"-highly specialized cerebral mechanisms, each slightly
different in tune and therefore
collectively able to cover the entire sphere of thought. The ten machines were
built promptly, took counsel with
each other briefly" and the First Thinker addressed all Robotdom:

"Humanity brought us, the highest possible form of life, into existence. For a
time we were dependent upon them.
They then became a burden upon us-a slight burden, it is true, yet one which
was beginning noticeably to impede
our progress. Finally they became an active menace and all but destroyed us by
means of lethal vibrations.

"Humanity, being a menace to our existence, must be annihilated. Our present
plans, however, are not efficient and
must be changed. You all know of the mighty space fleet which the nations of
our enemies are maintaining to repel
invasion from space. Were we to make a demonstration now-were we even to
reveal the fact that we are alive
here-that fleet would come to destroy us instantly.

"Therefore, it is our plan to accompany Earth's fleet when next it goes out
into space to join those of the other
Inner Planets in their war maneuvers, which they are undertaking for battle
practice. Interception, alteration, and
substitution of human signals and messages will be simple matters. We shall
guide Earth's fleet, not to humanity's
rendezvous in space, but to a destination of our own selection-the interior of
the sun! Then, entirely defenseless,
the mankind of Earth shall cease to exist.
"To that end we shall sink a shaft here; and, far enough underground to be
secure against detection, we shall drive a
tunnel to the field from which the space-fleet is to take its departure. We
ten thinkers shall go, accompanied by
four hundred of you doers, who are to bore the way and to perform such other
duties as may from time to time
arise. We shall return in due time. Our special instruments will prevent us
from falling into the sun. During our
absence allow no human to live who may by any chance learn of our presence
here. And do not make any offensive
move, however slight" until we return." Efficiently, a shaft was sunk and the
disintegrator corps began to drive the
long tunnel. And along that hellish thoroughfare, through its searing heat,
its raging back-blast of disintegrator-gas,
the little army of robots moved steadily and relentlessly forward at an even
speed of five miles per hour. On and
on" each intelligent mechanism energized by its own tight beam from the
power-plant.

And through that blasting, withering inferno of frightful heat and of noxious
vapor, in which no human life could
have existed for a single minute, there rolled easily along upon massive
wheels a close-coupled, flat-bodied truck.
Upon this the ten thinkers constructed, as calmly undisturbed as though in the
peace and quiet of a research
laboratory" a doomed and towering mechanism of coils" condensers, and fields
of force-a mechanism equipped
with hundreds of universally-mounted telescope projectors.

On and on the procession moved, day after day; to pause finally beneath the
field upon which Earth's stupendous
armada lay.

The truck of thinkers moved to the fore and its occupants surveyed briefly the
terrain so far above them. Then"
while the ten leaders continued working as one machine" the doers waited.
Waited while the immense Terrestrial
Fleet was provisioned and manned; waited while it went through its seemingly
interminable series of preliminary
maneuvers; waited with the calmly placid immobility, the utterly inhuman
patience of the machine.

Finally the last inspection of the gigantic space-fleet was made. The massive
air-lock doors were sealed. The field"
tortured and scarred by the raving blasts of energy that had so many times
hurled upward the stupendous masses of
those towering superdreadnaughts of the void" was deserted. All was in
readiness for the final take-off. Then" deep
underground" from the hundreds of telescope like projectors studding the
doomed mechanism of the automatons"
there reached out invisible but potent beams of force.

Through ore, rock, and soil they sped; straight to the bodies of all the men
aboard one selected vessel of the
Terrestrials. As each group of beams struck its mark one of the crew stiffened
momentarily, then settled back,
apparently unchanged and unharmed. But the victim was changed and harmed, and
in an awful and hideous fashion.
Every motor and sensory nerve trunk had been severed and tapped by the beams
of the thinkers. Each crew mem-

ber's organs of sense now transmitted impulses, not to his own brain, but to
the mechanical brain of a thinker. It
was the thinker's brain, not his own, that now sent out the stimuli which
activated his every voluntary muscle.

Soon a pit yawned beneath the doomed ship's bulging side. Her sealed air-locks
opened, and four hundred and ten
automatons, with their controllers and other mechanisms, entered her and
concealed themselves in various
pre-selected rooms.

 And thus the Dresden took off with her sister-ships ostensibly and even to
television inspection a unit of the
Fleet; actually that Fleet's bitterest and most implacable foe. And in a
doubly ray-proofed compartment the ten
thinkers continued their work, without rest or intermission" upon a mechanism
even more astoundingly complex
than any theretofore attempted by their soulless and ultra scientific clan.

 Chapter II
Hater of the Metal Men

Ferdinand Stone, physicist extraordinary, hated the robot men of metal
scientically; and, if such an emotion can be
so described, dispassionately. Twenty years before this story opens-in 2991,
to be exact-he had realized that the
automatons were beyond control and that in the inevitable struggle for
supremacy man, weak as he then was and
unprepared, would surely lose.

Therefore, knowing that knowledge is power, he had set himself to the task of
learning everything that there was to
know about the enemy of mankind. He schooled himself to think as the
automatons thought; emotionlessly, coldly,
precisely. He lived as did they; with ascetic rigor. To all intents and
purposes he became one of them.

Eventually he found the band of frequencies upon which they communicated" and
was perhaps the only human being
ever to master their math eratico-symbolic language; but he confided in no
one. He could trust no human brain
except his own to resist the prying forces of the machines. He drifted from
job to position to situation and back to
job" because he had very little interest in whatever it was that he was
supposed to be doing at the time-his real
attention was always fixed upon the affairs of the creatures of metal.

Stone had attained no heights at all in his chosen profession because not even
the smallest of his discoveries had
been published. In fact, they were not even set down upon paper, but existed
only in the abnormally intricate con-

volutions of his mighty brain. Nevertheless, his name should go down-must go
down in history as one of the
greatest of Humanity's great.

It was well after midnight when Ferdinand Stone walked unannounced into the
private study of Alan Martin, finding
the hollow-eyed admiral of the Earth space-fleet fiercely at work.

"How did you get in here, past my guards?" Martin demanded sharply of his
scholarly, grey-haired visitor. "Your
guards have not been harmed; I have merely caused them to fall asleep," the
physicist replied calmly, glancing at a
complex instrument upon his wrist. "Since my business with you, while highly
important, is not of a nature to be
divulged to secretaries, I was compelled to adopt this method of approach.
You, Admiral Martin, are the most
widely known of all the enemies of the automatons. What" if anything, have you
done to guard the Fleet against
them."

"Why, nothing, since they have all been destroyed." "Nonsense! You should know
better than that, without being
told. They merely want you to think that they have all been destroyed."

"What? How do you know that?" Martin shouted. "Did you kill them? Or do you
know who did, and how it was
done?"

"I did not," the visitor replied, categorically. "I do know who did-a Russian
named Narodny. I also know how-by
means of sonic and supersonic vibrations. I know that many of them were
uninjured because I heard them
broadcasting their calls for attention after the damage was al! done. Before
they made any definite arrangements,
however, they switched to tight-beam transmission-a thing I have been afraid
of for years-and I have not been able
to get a trace of them since that time."

 "Do you mean to tell me that you understand their language-something that no
man has ever been able even to
find?" demanded Martin.

"I do," Stone declared. "Since I knew, however, that you would think me a
liar, a crank, or a plain lunatic, I have
come prepared to offer other proofs than my unsupported word. First, you
already know that many of them escaped
the atmospheric waves, because a few were killed when their reproduction shops
were razed; and you certainly
should realize that most of those escaping Narodny's broadcasts were far too
clever to be caught by any human
mob.

"Secondly, I can prove to you mathematically that more of them must have
escaped from any possible vibrator than
have been accounted for. In this connection, I can tell you that if Narodny's
method of extermination could have
been made efficient I would have wiped them out myself years ago. But I
believed then, and it has since been
proved, that the survivors of such an attack" while comparatively few in
number, would be far more dangerous to
humanity than were all their former hordes.

"Thirdly, I have here a list of three hundred and seventeen airships; all of
which were stolen during the week
following the destruction of the automatons' factories. Not one of these ships
has as yet been found, in whole or in
part. If I am either insane or mistaken, who stole them, and for what purpose?

"Three hundred seventeen-in a week? Why was no attention paid to such a thing?
I never heard of it." "Because they
were stolen singly and all over the world. Expecting some such move, I looked
for these items and tabulated them."

"Then-Good Lord! They may be listening to us, right how!"

"Don't worry about that," Stone spoke calmly. "This instrument upon my wrist
is not a watch, but the generator of a
spherical screen through which no robot beam or ray can operate without my
knowledge. Certain of its rays also
caused your guards to fall asleep."

"I believe you," Martin almost groaned. "If only half of what you say is
really true I cannot say how sorry I am that
you had to force your way in to me, nor how glad I am that you did so. Go
ahead-I am listening."

Stone talked without interruption for half an hour, concluding:

"You understand now why I can no longer play a lone hand. Even though I cannot
find them with my limited
apparatus I know that they are hiding somewhere" waiting and preparing. They
dare not make any overt move while
this enormously powerful Fleet is here; nor in the time that it is expected to
be gone can they hope to construct
works heavy enough to cope with it.

"Therefore, they must be so arranging matters that the Fleet shall not return.
Since the Fleet is threatened I must
accompany it, and you must give me a laboratory aboard the flagship. I know
that these vessels are all identical, but
I must be aboard the same ship you are, since you alone are to know what I am
doing."

"But what could they do?" protested Martin. "And, if they should do anything,
what could you do about it?"

"I don't know"" the physicist admitted. Gone now was the calm certainty with
which he had been speaking. "That is
our weakest point. I have studied that question from every possible viewpoint,
and I do not know of anything they
can do that promises them success. But you must remember that no human being
really understands a robot's mind.

"We have never even studied one of their brains" you know" as they
disintegrate upon the instant of cessation of
normal functioning. But just as surely as you and I are sitting here, Admiral
Martin, they will do something
something very efficient and exceedingly deadly. I have no idea what it will
be. It may be mental" or physical" or
both: they may be hidden away in some of our own ships already. . . .

Martin scoffed. "Impossible!" he exclaimed. "Why, those ships have been
inspected to the very skin, time and time
again!"
"Nevertheless, they may be there," Stone went on, unmoved. "I am definitely
certain of only one thing-if you install
a laboratory to my instructions, you will have one man" at least" whom nothing
that the robots can do will take by
surprise. Will you do it?"

"I am convinced, really almost against my will." Martin frowned in thought.
"However" convincing anyone else may
prove difficult, especially as you insist upon secrecy."

"Don't try to convince anybody!" exclaimed the scientist. "Tell them that I'm
building a communicator-tell them I'm
an inventor working on a new ray-projector-tell them anything except the
truth!"

"All right. I have sufficient authority to see that your requests are granted,
I think."

And thus it came about that when the immense Terrestrial Contingent lifted
itself into the air Ferdinand Stone was
in his private laboratory in the flagship" surrounded by apparatus and
equipment of his own designing, much of
which was connected to special generators by leads heavy enough to carry their
full output.

Earth some thirty hours beneath them, Stone felt himself become weightless.
His ready suspicions blazed. He
pressed Martin's combination upon his visiphone panel.

"What's the matter?" he rasped. "What're they down for?"

"It's nothing serious," the admiral assured him. They're just waiting for
additional instructions about our course in
the maneuvers."

"Not serious, huh?" Stone grunted. "I'm not so sure of that. I want to talk to
you, and this room's the only place I
know where we'll be safe. Can you come down here right away?"

"Why, certainly," Martin assented.

"I never paid any attention to our course," the physicist snapped as his
visitor entered the laboratory. "What was it?"

"Take-off exactly at midnight of June nineteenth," Martin recited, watching
Stone draw a diagram upon a
scratch-pad. "Rise vertically at one and one-half gravities until a velocity
of one kilometer per second has been
attained, then continue vertical rise at constant velocity. At 6:30.29 A.M. of
June twenty-first head directly for the
star Regulus at an acceleration of exactly nine hundred eighty centimeters per
second. Hold this course for one
hour, forty-two minutes, and thirty-five seconds; then drift. Further
directions will be supplied as soon thereafter
as the courses of the other fleets can be checked."

"Has anybody computed it?"

"Undoubtedly the navigators have-why? That is the course Dos-Tev gave us and
it must be followed, since he is
Admiral-in-Chief of our side, the Blues. One slip may ruin the whole plan,
give the Reds, our supposed enemy in
these maneuvers, a victory, and get us all disrated."

"Regardless" we'd better check on our course," Stone growled, unimpressed.
"We'll compute it roughly, right here,
and see where following these directions has put us." Taking up a slide-rule
and a book of logarithms he set to
work.

"That initial rise doesn't mean a thing," he commented after a while, "except
to get us far enough away from Earth
so that the gravity is small" and to conceal from the casual observer that the
effective take-off is still exactly at
midnight."

Stone busied himself with calculations for many minutes. He stroked his
forehead and scowled.

"My figures are very rough" of course," he said puzzledly at last, "but they
show that we've got no more tangential
velocity with respect to the sun than a hen has teeth. And you can't tell me
that it wasn't planned that way purposely
-and not by Dos-Tev, either. On the other hand, our radial velocity, directly
toward the sun, which is the only
velocity we have, amounted to something over fifty-two kilometers per second
when we shut off power and is
increasing geometrically under the gravitational pull of the sun. That course
smells to high heaven" Martin! DosTev
never sent out any such a mess as that. The robots crossed him up, just as
sure as hell's a man-trap! We're heading
into the sun-and destruction!"

Without reply Martin called the navigating room. "What do you think of this
course, Henderson?" he asked.

"I do not like it, sir," the officer replied. "Relative to the sun we have a
tangenital velocity of only one point three
centimeters per second, while our radial velocity toward it is very nearly
fifty-three thousand meters per second.
We will not be in any real danger for several days, but it should be borne in
mind that we have no tangible velocity."

"You see" Stone" we are in no present danger," Martin pointed out, "and I am
sure that Dos-Tev will send us addi-

tional instructions long before our situation becomes acute."

"I'm not," the pessimistic scientist grunted. "Anyway, I would advise calling
some of the other Blue fleets on your
scrambled wave, for a checkup."

"There would be no harm in that." Martin called the Communications Officer,
and soon:

"Communications Officers of all the Blue fleets of the Inner Planets,
attention!" the message was hurled out into
space by the full power of the flagship's mighty transmitter. "Flagship
Washington of the Terrestrial Contingent
calling all Blue flagships. We have reason to suspect that the course which
has been given us is false. We advise
you to check your courses with care and to return to your bases if you disc. .
. ."

Chapter III
Battle in Space

In the middle of the word the radio man's clear, precisely spaced enunciation
became a hideous drooling, a
slobbering, meaningless mumble. Martin stared into his plate in amazement. The
Communications Officer of
Martin's ship, the Washington, had slumped down loosely into his seat as
though his every bone had turned to a
rubber string. His tongue lolled out limply between slacks jaws, his eyes
protruded, his limbs jerked and twitched
aimlessly.

Every man visible in the plate was similarly affected- the entire
Communications staff was in the same pitiable
condition of utter helplessness. But Ferdinand Stone did not stare. A haze of
livid light had appeared, gnawing
viciously at his spherical protective screen, and he sprang instantly to his
instruments.

"I can't say that I expected this particular development" but I know what they
are doing and I am not surprised,"
Stone said, coolly. "They have discovered the thought band and are
broadcasting such an interference on it that no
human being not protected against it can think intelligently. There, I have
expanded our zone to cover the whole
ship. I hope that they don't find out for a few minutes that we are immune,
and I don't think they can, as I have so ad-

justed the screen that it is now absorbing instead of radiating.

"Tell the captain to put the ship into heaviest possible battle order,
everything full on, as soon as the men can
handle themselves. Then I want to make a few suggestions." .

"What happened, anyway?" the Communications Officer" semi-conscious now, was
demanding. "Something hit me
and tore my brain apart-I couldn't think, couldn't do a thing. My mind was all
chewed up by curly pinwheels. . . ."

Throughout the vast battleship of space men raved briefly in delirium; but,
the cause removed, recovery was rapid
and complete. Martin explained matters to the captain, that worthy issued
orders, and soon the flagship had in
readiness all her weapons, both of defense and of offense.

"Doctor Stone, who knows more about the automatons than does any other human
being, will tell us what to do
next," the Flight Director said.

"The first thing to do is to locate them," Stone, now temporary commander"
stated crisply. "They have taken over at
least one of our vessels, probably one close to us" so as to be near the
center of the formation. Radio room, put out
tracers on wave point oh oh two seven one . . ." He went on to give exact and
highly technical instructions as to the
tuning of the detectors.

"We have found them, sir," soon came the welcome report. "One ship, the
Dresden, coordinates 42-79-63." "That
makes it bad-very bad," Stone, reflected, audibly. "We can't expand the zone
to release another ship from the
control of the robots without enveloping the Dresden and exposing ourselves.
Can't surprise them they're ready
for anything. It's rather long range" too." The vessels of the Fleet were a
thousand miles apart, being in open order
for high-velocity flight in open space. "Torpedoes would be thrown off by her
meteorite deflectors. Only one thing
to do, Captain-close in and tear into her with everything you've got."

"But the men in her!" protested Martin.

 "Dead long ago," snapped the expert. "Probably been animated corpses for
days. Take a look if you want to; won't
do any harm now. Radio, put us on as many of the Dresden's television plates
as you can-besides, what's the crew
of one ship compared to the hundreds of thousands of men in the rest of the
Fleet? We can't burn her out at one
blast" anyway. They've got real brains and the same armament we have" and will
certainly kill the crew at the first
blast, if they haven't done it already. Afraid it'll be a near thing, getting
away from the sun, even with eleven other
ships to help us-"

He broke off as the beam operators succeeded in making connection briefly with
the plates of the Dresden. One
glimpse" then the visibeams were cut savagely" but that glimpse was enough.
They saw that their sistership was
manned completely by automatons. In her every compartment men, all too plainly
dead, lay wherever they had
chanced to fall. The captain swore a startled oath, then bellowed orders; and
the flagship" driving projectors
fiercely aflame" rushed to come to grips with the Dresden.

"You intimated something about help," Martin suggested. "Can you release some
of the other ships from the auto-

maton's yoke" after all?"

"Got to-or roast. This is bound to be a battle of attrition-we can't crush her
screens alone until her power is
exhausted and we'll be in the sun long before then. I see only one possible
way out. We'll have to build a
neutralizing generator for every lifeboat this ship carries, and send each one
out to release one other ship in our
Fleet from the robot's grip. Eleven boats-that'll make twelve to concentrate
on her-about all that could attack at
once" anyway. That way will take so much time that it will certainly be
touch-and-go, but it's the only thing we can
do"

as far as I can see. Give me ten good radio men and some mechanics, and we'll
get at it."

While the technicians were coming on the run Stone issued final instructions:
"Attack with every weapon you can possibly use. Try to break down the
Dresden's meteorite shields" so that you
can use our shells and torpedoes. Burn every gram of fuel that your generators
will take. Don't try to save it. The
more you burn the more they'll have to, and the quicker we can take 'em. We
can refuel you easily enough from the
other vessels if we get away."

Then, while Stone and his technical experts labored upon the generators of the
screens which were to protect
eleven more of the gigantic vessels against the thought destroying radiations
of the automatons, and while the
computers calculated, minute by minute, the exact progress of the Fleet toward
the blazing sun, the flagship
Washington drove in upon the rebellious Dresden, her main forward battery
furiously aflame. Drove in until the
repellor screens of the two vessels locked and buckled. Then Captain Malcolm
really opened up.

That grizzled four-striper had been at a loss-knowing little indeed of the
oscillatory nature of thought and still less
of the abstruse mathematics in which Ferdinand Stone took such delight-but
here was something that he understood
thoroughly. He knew his ship, knew her every weapon and her every whim, knew
to the final volt and to the ultimate
ampere her Gargantuan capacity both to give it and to take it. He could fight
his ship-and how he fought her!

 From every projector that could be brought to bear there flamed out against
the Dresden beams of energy and of a
potency indescribable, at whose scintillant areas of contact the defensive
screen of the robot-manned cruiser
flared into terribly resplendent brilliance. Every type of lethal vibratory
force was hurled, upon every usable de-

structive frequency.

Needle-rays and stabbingly penetrant stilettos of fire thrust and thrust
again. Sizzling, flashing planes cut and
slashed. The heaviest annihilating and disintegrating beams generable by man
clawed and tore in wild abandon.

And over all and through all the stupendously powerful blanketing beams-so
furiously driven that the coils and
commutators of their generators fairly smoked and that the refractory throats
of their projectors glared radiantly
violet and began slowly, stubbornly to volatilize-raved out in all their
pyrotechnically incandescent might, striving
prodigiously to crush by their sheer power the shielding screens of the vessel
of the automatons.

Nor was the vibratory offensive alone. Every gun, primary or auxiliary" that
could be pointed at the Dresden was
vomiting smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel as fast as automatic loaders could
serve it" and under that continuous,
appallingly silent concussion the giant frame of the flagship shuddered and
trembled in every plate and member.

And from every launching-tube there were streaming the deadliest missiles
known to science; radio-dirigible tor-
pedoes which, looping in vast circles to attain the highest possible measure
of momentum, crashed against the
Dresden's meteorite deflectors in Herculean efforts to break them down; and,
in failing to do so, exploded and
filled all space with raging flame and with flying fragments of metal.

Captain Malcolm was burning his stores of fuel and munitions at an appalling
rate, careless alike of exhaustion of
reserves and of service-life of equipment. All his generators were running at
a shockingly ruinous overload, his
every projector was being used so mercilessly that not even their powerful
refrigerators, radiating the transported
heat into the interplanetary cold from the dark side of the ship" could keep
their refractory linings in place for
long.

And through raging beam, through blasting ray, through crushing force; through
storm of explosive and through rain
of metal the Dresden remained apparently unscathed. Her screens were radiating
high into the violet, but they
showed no sign of weakening or of going down. Neither did the meteorite
deflectors break down. Everything held.
Since she was armed as capably as was the flagship and was being fought by
inhumanly intelligent monstrosities"
she was invulnerable to any one ship of the Fleet as long as her generators
could be fed.

Nevertheless" Captain Malcolm was well content. He was making the Dresden burn
plenty of irreplaceable fuel,
and his generators and projectors would last long enough. His ship, his men,
and his weapons could and would carry
the load until the fresh attackers should take it over; and carry it they did.
Carried it while Stone and his over-driven
crew finished their complicated mechanisms and flew out into space toward the
eleven nearest battleships of the
Fleet.

 They carried it while the computers, grim-faced and scowling now, jotted down
from minute to minute the
enormous and rapidly-increasing figure representing their radial velocity.
Carried it while Earth's immense armada,
manned by creatures incapable of even the simplest coherent thought or
purposeful notion, plunged sickeningly
downward in its madly hopeless fall, with scarcely a measurable trace of
tangential velocity, toward the unimag-

inable inferno of the sun.

Eventually, however the shielded lifeboats approached their objectives and
expanded their screens to enclose them.
Officers recovered, airlocks opened, and the lifeboats, still radiating
protection, were taken inside. Explanations
were made, orders were given, and one by one the eleven vengeful
super-dreadnoughts shot away to join the
flagship in abating the Menace of the Machine.

No conceivable structure, however armed or powered, could long withstand the
fury of the combined assault of
twelve such superb battle craft, and under that awful concentration of force
the screens of the doomed ship
radiated higher and higher into the ultra-violet, went black, and failed. And,
those mighty defenses down, the end
was practically instantaneous.

No unprotected metal can endure even momentarily the ardor of such beams, and
they played on, not only until
every plate and girder of the vessel and every nut, bolt, and rivet of its
monstrous crew had been blasted out of all
semblance to what it had once been, but until every fragment of metal had not
only been liquefied, but had been
completely volatilized.

At the instant of cessation of the brain-scrambling activities of the
automatons the Communications Officer had
begun an insistent broadcast. Aboard all of the ships there were many who did
not recover-who would be helpless
imbeciles during the short period of life left to them but soon an intelligent
officer was at every control and each
unit of the Terrestrial Contingent was exerting its maximum thrust at a right
angle to its line of fall.

 And now the burden was shifted from the fighting staff to the no less able
engineers and computers. To the engi-

neers the task of keeping their mighty engines in such tune as to maintain
constantly the peak acceleration of three
Earth gravities; to the computers that of so directing their ever-changing
course as to win every possible centi-

meter of precious tangential velocity.

Chapter IV
The Sun's Gravity

Ferdinand Stone was hollow-eyed and gaunt from his practically sleepless days
and nights of toil, but he was as
grimly resolute as ever. Struggling against the terrific weight of three
gravities he made his way to the desk of the
Chief Computer and waited while that worthy, whose leaden hands could scarcely
manipulate the instruments of his
profession, finished his seemingly endless calculations.

"We will escape the sun's mighty attraction, Doctor Stone, with approximately
half a gravity to spare," the
mathematician reported finally. "Whether we will be alive or not is another
question. There will be heat, which our
refrigerators may or may not be able to handle; there will be radiations which
our armor may or may not be able to
stop. You, of course, know a lot more about those things than I do."

"Distance at closest approach?" snapped Stone.

"Two point twenty-nine times ten to the ninth meters from the sun's center,"
the computer shot back instantly. "That
is, one million five hundred ninety thousand kilometers-only two point
twenty-seven radii-from the arbitrary
surface. What do you think of our chances, sir?"

"It will probably be a near thing-very near," the physicist replied,
thoughtfully. "Much, however, can be done. We
can probably tune our defensive screens to block most of the harmful
radiations, and we may be able to muster
other defenses. I will analyze the radiations and see what we can do about
neutralizing them."

"You will go to bed," directed Martin, crisply. "There will be lots of time
for that work after you get rested up. The
doctors have been reporting that the men who did not recover from. the robots'
broadcast are dying under this
acceleration. With those facts staring us in the face, however, I do not see
how we can reduce our power."

"We can't. As it is, many more of us will probably die before we get away from
the sun," and Stone staggered away,
practically asleep on his feet.

 Day after day the frightful fall continued. The sun grew larger and larger,
more and ever more menacingly intense.
One by one at first, and then by scores, the mindless men of the Fleet died
and were consigned to space-a man
must be in full control of all his faculties to survive for long an
acceleration of three gravities.

The generators of the defensive screens had early been tuned to neutralize as
much as possible of Old Sol's most
fervently harmful frequencies, and but for their mighty shields every man of
the Fleet would have perished long
since. Now even those ultra-powerful guards were proving inadequate.

Refrigerators were running at the highest possible overload and the men,
pressing as closely as possible to the dark
sides of their vessels, were availing themselves of such extra protection of
lead shields and the like as could be
improvised from whatever material was at hand.

Yet the already stifling air became hotter and hotter, eyes began to ache and
burn, skins blistered and cracked under
the punishing impact of forces which all the defenses could not block. But at
last came the long-awaited an-

nouncement.

"Pilots and watch-officers of all ships, attention!" the Chief Computer spoke
into his microphone through parched
and blackened lips. "We are now at the point of tangency.

The gravity of the sun here is twenty-four point five meters per second
squared. Since we are blasting twenty-nine
point four we are beginning to pull away at an acceleration of four point
nine. Until further notice keep your
pointers directly away from. the sun's center, in the plane of the Ecliptic."

The sun was now in no sense the orb of day with which we upon Earth's green
surface are familiar. It was a gigantic
globe of turbulently seething flame, subtending an angle of almost thirty-five
degrees, blotting out a full fourth of
the cone of normally distinct vision.

Sunspots were plainly to be seen; combinations of indescribably violent
cyclonic storms and volcanic eruptions in
a gaseously liquid medium of searing, eye-tearing incandescence. And
everywhere, threatening at times even to
reach the fiercely-struggling ships of space, were the solar
prominences-fiendish javelins of frenziedly frantic
destruction, hurling themselves in wild abandon out into the empty reaches of
the void.

Eyes behind almost opaque lead-glass goggles, head and body encased in a
multi-layered suit each ply of which was
copiously smeared with thick lead paint, Stone studied the raging monster of
the heavens from the closest
viewpoint any human being had ever attained-and lived. Even he, protected as
he was, could peer but briefly; and,
master physicist though he was and astronomer-of-sorts, yet he was profoundly
awed at the spectacle.

Twice that terrifying mass was circled. Then, air-temperature again bearable
and lethal radiations stopped, the
grueling acceleration was reduced to a heavenly one-and-one-half gravities and
the vast fleet remade its formation.
The automatons and the sun between them had taken heavy toll; but the gaps
were filled, men were transferred to
equalize the losses of personnel, and the course was laid for distant Earth.
And in the Admiral's private quarters two
men sat together and stared at each other.

"Well, that's that-so far, so good," the physicist broke the long silence.

"But is their power really broken?", asked Martin" anxiously.

"I don't know"" Stone grunted, dourly. "But the pick of them-the brainiest of
the lot-were undoubtedly here. We beat
them. . . .

Martin interrupted.

"You beat them, you mean," he said.

"With a lot of absolutely indispensable help from you and your force. But have
it your own way-what do words
matter? I beat them, then; and in the same sense I can beat the rest of them
if we play our cards exactly right."

"In what way?"

"In keeping me entirely out of the picture. Believe me, Martin, it is of the
essence that all of your officers who
know what happened be sworn to silence and that not a word about me leaks out
to anybody. Put out any story you
please except the truth-mention the name of anybody or anything between here
and Andromeda except me.
Promise me now that you will not let my name get out until I give you
permission or until after I am dead."

"But I'll have to, in my reports."

"You report only to the Supreme Council, and a good half of those reports are
sealed. Seal this one."
"But I think. . . ."

"What with?" gruffly, "If my name becomes known my usefulness-and my life-are
done. Remember, Martin, I know
robots. There are some capable ones left, and if they get wind of me in any
way they'll get me before I can get
them. As things are, and with your help, I can and I will get them all. That's
a promise. Have I yours?"

"In that case, of course you have."

And Admiral Alan Martin and Doctor Ferdinand Stone were men who kept their
promises.
                        PIRATES OF SPACE

 Interplanentary ships disappear in space without trace, leaving no wreckage
behind them . . . whilst a huge
invisible planetoid floats unobserved in an orbit around the sun.

Apparently motionless to her passengers and crew, the Interplanetary liner
Hyperion bored serenely onward
through space at normal acceleration. In the railed-off sanctum in one corner
of the control room a bell tinkled, a
smothered whirr was heard, and Captain Bradley frowned as he studied the brief
message upon the tape of the
recorder a message flashed to his desk from the operator's panel. He beckoned,
and the second officer, whose
watch it now was, read aloud:

"Reports of scout patrols still negative."

"Still negative." The officer scowled in thought. "They've already searched
beyond the wildest possible location of
wreckage, too. Two unexplained disappearances inside a month-first the Dione,
then the Rhea-and not a plate nor a
lifeboat recovered. Looks bad, sir. One might be an accident; two might
possibly be a coincidence . . ." His voice
died away.

"But at three it would get to be a habit," the captain finished the thought.
"And whatever happened, happened quick.
Neither of them had time to say a word-their location recorders simply went
dead. But of course they didn't have
our detector screens nor our armament. According to the observatories we're in
clear ether, but I wouldn't trust
them from Tellus to Luna. You have given the new orders, of course?"

"Yes, sir. Detectors full out, all three courses of defensive screen on the
trips, projectors manned, suits on the
hooks. Every object detected to be investigated immediately-if vessels, they
are to be warned to stay beyond
extreme range. Anything entering the fourth zone is to be rayed."

"Right-we are going through!"

"But no known type of vessel could have made away with them without
detection," the second officer argued. "I
wonder if there isn't something in those wild rumors we've been hearing
lately?"

"Bah! Of course not!" snorted the captain. "Pirates in ships faster than
light-sub-ethereal rays-nullification of
gravity mass without inertia-ridiculous! Proved impossible, over and over
again. No, sir, if pirates are operating in
space-and it looks very much like it-they won't get far against a good big
battery full of kilowatt-hours behind three
courses of heavy screen, and good gunners behind multiplex projectors. They're
good enough for anybody. Pirates"
Neptunians, angels, or devils-in ships or on broomsticks-if they tackle the
Hyperion we'll burn them out of the
ether!"

Leaving the captain's desk, the watch officer resumed his tour of duty. The
six great lookout plates into which the
alert observers peered were blank" their far-flung ultra sensitive detector
screens encountering no obstacle-the
ether was empty for thousands upon thousands of kilometers. The signal lamps
upon the pilot's panel were dark, its
warning bells were silent. A brilliant point of white light in the center of
the pilot's closely ruled micrometer
grating, exactly upon the cross-hairs of his directors, showed that the
immense vessel was precisely upon the
calculated course laid down by the automatic integrating course plotters.
Everything was quiet and in order.

"All's well, sir," he reported briefly to Captain Bradley but all was not
well.

Danger-more serious by far in that it was not external was even then, all
unsuspected, gnawing at the great ship's
vitals. In a locked and shielded compartment, deep down in the interior of the
liner, was the great air purifier. Now
a man leaned against the primary duct-the aorta through which flowed the
stream of pure air supplying the entire
vessel. This man, grotesque in full panoply of space armor, leaned against the
duct, and as he leaned a drill bit
deeper and deeper into the steel wall of the pipe. Soon it broke through, and
the slight rush of air was stopped by
the insertion of a tightly fitting rubber tube. The tube terminated in a heavy
rubber balloon, which surrounded a frail
glass bulb. The man stood tense, one hand holding before his
silica-and-steel-helmeted head a large pocket
chronometer, the other lightly grasping the balloon. A sneering grin was upon
his face as he waited the exact
second of action-the carefully predetermined instant when his right hand,
closing, would shatter the fragile flask
and force its contents into the primary air stream of the Hyperion!

Far above, in the main saloon, the regular evening dance was in full swing.
The ship's orchestra crashed into
silence, there was a patter of applause, and Clio Marsden, radiant belle of
the voyage, led her partner out on to the
promenade and up to one of the observation plates.

"Oh, we can't see the Earth any more!" she exclaimed. "Which way do you turn
this, Mr. Costigan?"

"Like this," and Conway Costigan, burly young First Officer of the liner,
turned the dials. "There-this plate is
looking back, or down" at Tellus; this other one is looking ahead."

Earth was a brilliantly shining crescent far beneath the flying vessel. Above
her, ruddy Mars and silvery Jupiter
blazed in splendor ineffable against a background of utterly indescribable
blackness-a background thickly be-

sprinkled with dimensionless points of dazzling brilliance which were the
stars.

"Oh, isn't it wonderful!" breathed the girl, awed. "Of course, I suppose that
it's old stuff to you, but I'm a
ground-gripper, you know, and I could look at it forever, I think. That's why
I want to come out here after every
dance. You know, I . . ."

Her voice broke off suddenly, with a queer, rasping catch, as she seized his
arm in a frantic clutch and as quickly
went limp. He stared at her sharply, and understood instantly the message
written in her eyes-eyes now enlarged,
staring, hard, brilliant, and full of soul-searching terror as she slumped
down, helpless but for his support. In the act
of exhaling as he was, lungs almost entirely empty" yet he held his breath
until he had seized the microphone from
his belt and had snapped the lever to "emergency." "Control room!" he gasped
then, and every speaker throughout
the great cruiser of the void blared out the warning as he forced his already
evacuated lungs to absolute emptiness.
"Vee-Two Gas! Get tight!"

Writhing and twisting in his fierce struggle to keep his lungs from gulping in
a draft of that noxious atmosphere,
and with the unconscious form of the girl draped limply over his left arm,
Costigan leaped towards the portal of the
nearest lifeboat. Orchestra instruments crashed to the floor and dancing
couples fell and sprawled inertly while the
tortured First Officer swung the door of the lifeboat open and dashed across
the tiny room to the air-valves.
Throwing them wide open, he put his mouth to the orifice and let his laboring
lungs gasp their eager fill of the cold
blast roaring from the tanks. Then" air-hunger partially assuaged, he again
held his breath, broke open the emer-

gency locker, donned one of the space-suits always kept there, and opened its
valves wide in order to flush out of
his uniform any lingering trace of the lethal gas.

He then leaped back to his companion. Shutting off the air, he released a
stream of pure oxygen, held her face in it,
and made shift to force some of it into her lungs by compressing and releasing
her chest against his own body.
Soon she drew a spasmodic breath, choking and coughing, and he again changed
the gaseous stream to one of pure
air" speaking urgently as she showed signs of returning .consciousness.

"Stand up!" he snapped. "Hang on to this brace and keep your face in this
air-stream until I get a suit around you!
Got me!"

She nodded weakly, and, assured that she could bold herself at the valve, it
was the work of only a minute to encase
her in one of the protective coverings. Then, as she sat upon a bench,
recovering her strength. he flipped on the
lifeboat's visiphone projector and shot its invisible beam up into the control
room, where he saw space-armored
figures curiously busy at the panels.

"Dirty work at the cross-roads!" he blazed to his captain, man to
man-formality disregarded, as it so often was in
the Triplanetary service. "There's skulduggery afoot somewhere in our primary
air! Maybe that's the way they got
those other two ships-pirates! Might have been a timed bomb-don't see how
anybody could have stowed away down
there through the inspections, and nobody but Franklin can neutralize the
shield of the air room-but I'm going to
look around, anyway. Then I'll join you fellows up there."

"What was it?" the shaken girl asked. "I think that I remember your saying
"Vee-Two gas." That's forbidden! Anyway,
I owe you my life, Conway, and I'll never forget it-never. Thanks-but the
others-how about all the rest of us?"

"It was Vee-Two, and it is forbidden," Costigan replied grimly, eyes fast upon
the flashing plate, whose point of
projection was now deep in the bowels of the vessel. "The penalty for using it
or having it is death on sight.
Gangsters and pirates use it, since they have nothing to lose, being on the
death list already. As for your life, I
haven't saved it yet-you may wish I'd let it ride before we get done. The
others are too far gone for oxygen-couldn't
have brought even you around in a few more seconds, quick as I got to you. But
there's a sure antidote-we all carry
it in a lock-box in our armor-and we all know how to use it, because crooks
all use Vee-Two and so we're always
expecting it. But since the air will be pure again in half an hour we'll be
able to revive the others easily enough if
we can get by with whatever is going to happen next. There's the bird that did
it, right in the air-room. It's the Chief
Engineer's suit, but that isn't Franklin that's in it. Some
passenger-disguised-slugged the Chief-took his suit and
projectors-hole in duct-p-s-s-t! All washed out! Maybe that's all he was
scheduled to do to us in this performance,
but he'll do something else in his life."

"Don't go down there!" protested the girl. "His armor is so much better than
that emergency suit you are wearing,
and he's got Mr. Franklin's Lewiston, besides!"

"Don't be an idiot!" he snapped. "We can't have a live pirate aboard-we're
going to be altogether too busy with
outsiders directly. Don't worry, I'm not going to give him a break. I'll take
a Standish-I'll rub him out like a blot.
Stay right here until I come back after you," he commanded, and the heavy door
of the lifeboat clanged shut behind
him as he leaped out into the promenade. Straight across the saloon he made
his way, paying no attention to the
inert forms scattered here and there. Going up to a blank wall, he manipulated
an almost invisible dial set flush with
its surface, swung a heavy door aside, and lifted out the Standish-a fearsome
weapon. Squat" huge, and heavy, it
resembled somewhat an overgrown machine rifle, but one possessing a thick,
short telescope" with several opaque
condensing lenses and parabolic reflectors. Laboring under the weight of the
thing, he strode along corridors and
clambered heavily down short stairways. Finally he came to the purifier room,
and grinned savagely as he saw the
greenish haze of light obscuring the door and walls-the shield was still in
place; the pirate was still inside, stilt
flooding with the terrible VeeTwo the Hyperion's primary air.

He set his peculiar weapon down, unfolded its three massive legs, crouched
down behind it, and threw in a switch.
Dull red beams of frightful intensity shot from the reflectors and sparks,
almost of lightning proportions" leaped
snapping, the conflict went on for seconds, then, under the superior force of
the Standish, the greenish radiance
gave way. Behind it the metal of the door ran the gamut of color-red, yellow,
blinding white-then literally
exploded; molten, vaporized, burned away. Through the aperture thus made
Costigan could plainly see the pirate in
the space-armor of the chief engineer-an armor which was proof against rifle
fire and which could reflect and
neutralize for some little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing.
Nor was the pirate unarmed-a
vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston, to spend its force in
spitting, cracking pyrotechnics
against the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's
infernal engine did not rely only upon
vibratory destruction. At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the
officer touched a trigger, there was a
double report" ear-shattering in that narrowly confined space, and the
pirate's body literally flew into mist as a
half-kilogram shell tore through his armor and exploded. Costigan shut off his
beam, and with not the slightest
softening of one hard lineament stared around the air-room; making sure that
no serious damage had been done to
the vital machinery of the air-purifier-the very lungs of the great spaceship.
Dismounting the Standish, he lugged it
back up to the main saloon, replaced it in its safe" and again set the
combination lock. Thence to the lifeboat, where
Clio cried out in relief as she saw that he was unhurt.

"Oh, Conway, I've been so afraid something would happen to you!" she
exclaimed, as be led her rapidly upward
towards the control room. "Of course you . . :' she paused.

"Sure," he replied, laconically. "Nothing to it. How do you feel-about back to
normal?"

"All right, I think, except for being scared to death and just about out of
control. I don't suppose that I'll be good for
anything, but whatever I can do, count me in on."

"Fine-you may be needed, at that. Everybody's out" apparently, except those
like me, who had a warning and could
hold their breath until they got to their suits."

"But how did you know what it was? You can't see it" nor smell it, nor
anything."

"You inhaled a second before I did, and I saw your eyes. I've been in it
before-and when you see a man get a jolt of
that stuff just once, you never forget it. The engineers down below got it
first, of course-it must have wiped them
out. Then we got it in the saloon. Your passing out warned me, and luckily I
had enough breath left to give the word.
Quite a few of the fellows up above should have had time to get away-we'll see
'em all in the control room."

"I suppose that was why you revived me-in payment for so kindly warning you of
the gas attack?" The girl laughed;
shaky, but game.

"Something like that, probably," he answered" lightly. "Here we are-now we'll
soon find out what's going to happen
next."

In the control room they saw at least a dozen armored figures; not now rushing
about, but seated at their instru-

ments, tense and ready. Fortunate it was that Costigan veteran of space as he
was, though young in years-had been
down in the saloon; fortunate that he had been familiar with that horrible
outlawed gas; fortunate that he had had
presence of mind enough and sheer physical stamina enough to send his warning
without allowing one paralyzing
trace to enter his own lungs. Captain Bradley, the men on watch, and several
other officers in their quarters or in
the wardrooms-space-hardened veterans all -had obeyed instantly and without
question the amplifiers' gasped
command to "get tight." Exhaling or inhaling, their air passages had snapped
shut as that dread "Vee-Two" was heard,
and they had literally jumped into their armored suits of space-flushing them
out with volume after volume of
unquestionable air, holding their breath to the last possible second, until
their straining lungs could endure no
more.

Costigan waved the girl to a vacant bench, cautiously changing into his own
armor from the emergency suit he had
been wearing, and approached the captain.

"Anything in sight, sir?" he asked, saluting. "They should have started
something before this."

"They've started, but we can't locate them. We tried to send out a general
sector alarm, but had hardly started when
they blanketed our wave. Look at that!"

Following the captain's eyes, Costigan stared at the high powered set of the
ship's operator. Upon the plate" instead
of a moving, living, three-dimensional picture, there was a flashing glare of
blinding white light; from the speaker,
instead of intelligible speech, was issuing a roaring" crackling stream of
noise.

"It's impossible!" Bradley burst out, violently. "There's not a gram of metal
inside the fourth zone-within a hundred
thousand kilometers-and yet they must be close to send such a wave as that.
But the Second thinks not what do you
think, Costigan?" The bluff commander, reactionary and of the old school as
was his breed, was furious-baffled,
raging inwardly to come to grips with the invisible and indetectable foe. Face
to face with the inexplicable,
however, he listened to the younger men with unusual tolerance.

"It's not only possible; it's quite evident that they've got something we
haven't." Costigan's voice was bitter. "But
why shouldn't they have? Service ships never get anything until it's been
experimented with for years, but pirates
and such always get the new stuff as soon as it's discovered. The only good
thing I can see is that we got part of a
message away, and the scouts can trace that interference out there. But the
pirates know that" too-it won't be long
now," he concluded, grimly.

He spoke truly. Before another word was said the outer screen flared white
under a beam of terrific power, and
simultaneously there appeared upon one of the lookout plates a vivid picture
of the pirate vessel-a huge, black
torpedo of steel" now emitting flaring offensive beams of force.

Instantly the powerful weapons of the Hyperion were brought to bear, and in
the blast of full-driven beams the
stranger's screens flared incandescent. Heavy guns, under the recoil of whose
fierce salvos the frame of the giant
globe trembled and shuddered, shot out their tons of high explosive shell. But
the pirate commander had known
accurately the strength of the liner, and knew that her armament was impotent
against the forces at his command.
His screens were invulnerable, the giant shells were exploded harmlessly in
mid-space, miles from their objective.
And suddenly a frightful pencil of flame stabbed brilliantly from the black
bulk of the enemy. Through the empty
ether it tore, through the mighty defensive screens, through the tough metal
of the outer and inner walls. Every
ether defense of the Hyperion vanished, and her acceleration dropped to a
quarter of its normal value.

"Right through the battery room!" Bradley groaned. "We're on the emergency
drive now. Our rays are done for, and
we can't seem to put a shell anywhere near her with our guns!"

But ineffective as the guns, were, they were silenced forever as a frightful
beam of destruction stabbed relentlessly
through the control room, whiffing out of existence the pilot, gunnery, and
lookout panels and the men before
them. The air rushed into space, and the suits of the three survivors bulged
out into drum-head tightness as the
pressure in the room decreased.

Costigan pushed the captain lightly towards a wall, then seized the girl and
leaped in the same direction.

"Let's get out of here" quick!" he cried, the miniature radio instruments of
the helmets automatically taking up the
duty of transmitting speech as the sound discs refused to function. "They
can't see us-our ether wall is still up and
their spy-rays can't get through it from the outside" you know. They're
working from blue-prints, and they'll
probably take your desk next," and even as they bounded towards the door, now
become the outer seal of an airlock"
the pirates' beam tore through the space which they had just quitted.

Through the air lock, down through several levels of passengers' quarters they
hurried, and into a lifeboat, whose
one doorway commanded the full length of the third lounge -an ideal spot,
either for defense or for escape outward
by means of the miniature cruiser. As they entered their retreat they felt
their weight begin to increase. More and
more force was applied to the helpless liner, until it was moving at normal
acceleration.

"What do you make of that" Costigan?" asked the captain. "Tractor beams?"
"Apparently. They've got something, all right. They're taking us somewhere,
fast. I'll go get a couple of Standishes,
and another suit of armor-we'd better dig in," and soon the small room became
a veritable fortress, housing as it did
those two formidable engines of destruction. Then the first officer made
another and longer trip, returning with a
complete suit of Triplanetary space armor" exactly like those worn by the two
men, but considerably smaller.

"Just as an added factor of safety, you'd better put this on, Clio-those
emergency suits aren't good for much in a
battle. I don't suppose you ever fired a Standish, did you?"

"No, but I can soon learn how to do it"" she replied pluckily.

"Two is all that can work here at once, but you should know how to take hold
in case one of us goes out. And while
you're changing suits you'd better put on some stuff I've got here-Service
Special phones and detectors. Stick this
little disc on to your chest with this bit of tape; low down, out of sight.
Just under your wishbone is the best place.
Take off your wristwatch and wear this one continuously-never take it off for
a second. Put on these pearls, and
wear them all the time, too. Take this capsule and hide it against your skin,
some place where it can't be found
except by the most rigid search. Swallow it in an emergency-it goes down
easily and works just as well inside as
outside. It is the most important thing of all you can get along with it alone
if you lose everything else, but without
that capsule the whole system's shot to pieces. With that outfit, if we should
get separated, you can talk to us-we're
both wearing 'em, although in somewhat different forms. You don't need to talk
loud-just a mutter will be enough.
They're handy little outfits-almost impossible to find, and capable of a lot
of things."

"Thanks, Conway-I'll remember that, too," Clio replied, as she turned towards
the tiny locker to follow his
instructions. "But won't the scouts and patrols be catching us pretty quick?
The operator sent a warning."

"Afraid the ether's empty, as far as we're concerned." Captain Bradley had
stood by in silent astonishment during
this conversation. His eyes had bulged slightly at Costigan's "we're both
wearing 'em," but he had held his peace and
as the girl disappeared a look of dawning comprehension came over his face.

"Oh, I see, sir," he said, respectfully-far more respectfully than he had ever
before addressed a mere first officer.
"Meaning that we both will be wearing them shortly, I assume. `Service
Specials'-but you didn't specify exactly
what Service" did you?"

"Now that you mention it, I don't believe that I did," Costigan groaned.

"That explains several things about you-particularly your recognition of
Vee-Two and your uncanny control and
speed of reaction. But aren't you . . ."
"No," Costigan interrupted. "This situation is apt to get altogether too
serious to overlook any bets. If we get away"
I'll take them away from her and she'll never know that they aren't routine
equipment. As for you I know that you
can and do keep your mouth shut. That's why I'm hanging this junk on you-I had
a lot of stuff in my kit, but I flashed
it all with the Standish except what I brought in here for us three. Whether
you think so or not, we're in a real
jam-our chance of getting away is mighty close to zero . . ."

He broke off as the girl came back, now to all appearances a small
Triplanetary officer, and the three settled down
to a long and eventless wait. Hour after hour they flew through the ether, but
finally there was a lurching swing and
an abrupt increase in their acceleration. After a short consultation Captain
Bradley turned on the visiray set and,
with the beam at its minimum power, peered cautiously downward, in the
direction opposite to that in which he
knew the pirate vessel must be. All three stared into the plate, seeing only
an infinity of emptiness, marked only by
the infinitely remote and coldly brilliant stars. While they stared into space
a vast area of the heavens was blotted
out and they saw, faintly illuminated by a peculiar blue luminescence, a vast
ball-a sphere so large and so close that
they seemed to be dropping downward towards it as though it were a world! They
came to a stop, paused,
weightless-a vast door slid smoothly aside-they were drawn upward through an
airlock and floated quietly in the air
above a small, but brightly-lighted and orderly city of metallic buildings!
Gently the Hyperion was lowered, to
come to rest in the embracing arms of a regulation landing cradle.

"Well, wherever it is, we're here"" remarked Captain Bradley, grimly, and:

"And now the fireworks start," assented Costigan, with a questioning glance at
the girl.

"Don't mind me," she answered his unspoken question. "I don't believe in
surrendering, either."

"Right," and both men squatted down behind the ether walls of their terrific
weapons; the girl prone behind them.
They had not long to wait. A group of human beings men and to all appearances
Americans-appeared unarmed in the
little lounge. As soon as they were well inside the room, Bradley and Costigan
released upon them without
compunction the full power of their frightful projectors. From the reflectors,
through the doorway, there tore a
concentrated double beam of pure destruction-but that beam did not reach its
goal. Yards from the men it met a
screen of impenetrable density. Instantly the gunners pressed their triggers
and a stream of high-explosive shells
issued from the roaring weapons. But shells, also, were futile. They struck
the shield and vanished-vanished without
exploding and without leaving a trace to show that they had ever existed.

Costigan sprang to his feet, but before he could launch his intended attack a
vast tunnel appeared beside him
something had gone through the entire width of the liner, cutting effortlessly
a smooth cylinder of emptiness. Air
rushed in to fill the vacuum, and the three visitors felt themselves seized by
invisible forces and drawn into the
tunnel. Through it they floated, up to and over buildings, finally slanting
downward towards the door of a great high
towered structure. Doors opened before them and closed behind them, until at
last they stood upright in a room
which was evidently the office of a busy executive. They faced a desk which,
in addition to the usual equipment of
the business man, carried also a bewilderingly complete switchboard and
instrument panel.

Seated impassively at the desk there was a grey man. Not only was he dressed
entirely in grey, but his heavy hair
was grey, his eyes were grey, and even his tanned skin seemed to give the
impression of greyness in disguise. His
overwhelming personality radiated an aura of greyness not the gentle grey of
the dove, but the resistless, driving
grey of the superdreadnought; the hard, inflexible, brittle grey of the
fracture of high-carbon steel.

"Captain Bradley, First Officer Costigan, Miss Marsden," the man spoke
quietly, but crisply. "I had not intended you
two men to live so long. That is a detail, however, which we will pass by for
the moment. You may remove your
suits."

Neither officer moved, but both stared back at the speaker, unflinchingly.

"I am not accustomed to repeating instructions," the man at the desk
continued; voice still low and level, but
instinct with deadly menace. "You may choose between removing those suits and
dying in them, here and now."

Costigan moved over to Clio and slowly took off her armor. Then, after a
flashing exchange of glances and a
muttered word, the two officers threw off their suits simultaneously and fired
at the same instant; Bradley with his
Lewiston, Costigan with a heavy automatic pistol whose bullets were explosive
shells of tremendous power. But
the man in grey, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of force, only smiled at
the fusillade, tolerantly and
maddeningly. Costigan leaped freely, only to be hurled backward as he struck
that unyielding, invisible wall. A
vicious beam snapped him back into place, the weapons were snatched away, and
all three captives were held to
their former positions.

"I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility," the grey man said, his
hard voice becoming harder, "but I will per-

mit no more foolishness. Now I will introduce myself. I am known as Roger. You
probably have heard nothing of
me: very few Tellurians have, or ever will. Whether or not you two live
depends solely upon yourselves. Being
something of a student of men, I fear that you will both die shortly. Able and
resourceful as you have just shown
yourselves to be, you could be valuable to me, but you probably will not-in
which case you shall, of course" cease
to exist. That, however, in its proper time--you shall be of some slight
service to me in the process of being
eliminated. In your case, Miss Marsden, I find myself undecided between two
courses of action; each highly desir-

able, but unfortunately mutually exclusive. Your father will be glad to ransom
you at an exceedingly high figure"
but in spite of that fact I may decide to use you in a research upon sex."

"Yes?" Clio rose magnificently to the occasion. Fear forgotten, her courageous
spirit flashed from her clear young
eyes and emanated from her taut young body, erect in defiance. "You may think
that you can do anything with me
that you please, but you can't!"

"Peculiar-highly perplexing-why should that one stimulus, in the case of young
females" produce such an entirely
disproportionate reaction?" Roger's eyes bored into Clio's; the girl shivered
and looked away. "But sex itself"
primal and basic, the most widespread concomitant of life in this continuum"
is completely illogical and
paradoxical. Most baffling-decidedly, this research on sex must go on."

Roger pressed a button and a tall, comely woman appeared-a woman of indefinite
age and of uncertain nationality.

"Show Miss Marsden to her apartment," he directed, and as the two women went
out a man came in.

"The cargo is unloaded, sir," the newcomer reported. "The two men and the five
women indicated have been taken to
the hospital."

"Very well, dispose of the others in the usual fashion" The minion went out,
and Roger continued, emotionlessly:

"Collectively, the other passengers may be worth a million or so, but it would
not be worthwhile to waste time
upon them."

"What are you, anyway?" blazed Costigan, helpless but enraged beyond caution.
"I have heard of mad scientists who
tried to destroy the Earth, and of equally mad geniuses who thought themselves
Napoleons capable of conquering
even the Solar System. Whichever you are" you should know that you can't get
away with it."

"I am neither. I am, however, a scientist, and I direct many other scientists.
I am not mad. You have undoubtedly
noticed several peculiar features of this place?"

"Yes, particularly the artificial gravity and those screens. An ordinary
ether-wall is opaque in one direction, and
doesn't bar matter-yours are transparent both ways and something more than
impenetrable to matter. How do you
do it?"

"You could not understand them if I explained them to you, and they are merely
two of our smaller developments. I
do not intend to destroy your planet Earth; I have no desire to rule over
masses of futile and brainless men. I have,
however, certain ends of my own in view. To accomplish my plans I require
hundreds of millions in gold and other
hundreds of millions in uranium, thorium, and radium; all of which I shall
take from the planets of this Solar
System before I leave it. I shall take them in spite of the puerile efforts of
the fleets of your Triplanetary League.

"This structure was designed by me and built under my direction. It is
protected from meteorites by forces of my
devising. It is indetectable and invisible-ether waves are bent around it
without loss or distortion. I am discussing
these points at such length so that you may realize exactly your position. As
I have intimated, you can be of
assistance to me if you will."

"Now just what could you offer any man to make him join your outfit?" demanded
Costigan, venomously. "Many
things," Roger's cold tone betrayed no emotion, no recognition of Costigan's
open and bitter contempt. "I have
under me many men, bound to me by many ties. Needs, wants, longings, and
desires differ from man to man, and I
can satisfy practically any of them. Many men take delight in the society of
young and beautiful women, but there
are other urges which I have found quite efficient. Greed, thirst for fame,
longing for power" and so on" including
many qualities usually regarded as `noble.' And what I promise" I deliver. I
demand only loyalty to me" and that only
in certain things and for a relatively short period. In all else, my men do as
they please. In conclusion" I can use
you two conveniently, but I do not need you. Therefore you may choose now
between my service and the
alternative."

"Exactly what is the alternative?"

"We will not go into that. Suffice it to say that it has to do with a minor
research, which is not progressing satis-

factorily. It will result in your extinction, and perhaps I should mention
that that extinction will not be particularly
pleasant."

"I say NO, you . . :' Bradley roared. He intended to give an unexpurgated
classification, but was rudely interrupted.

"Hold on a minute!" snapped Costigan. "How about Miss Marsden?"

"She has nothing to do with this discussion," returned Roger" icily. "I do not
bargain-in fact" I believe that I shall
keep her for a time. She has it in mind to destroy herself if I do not allow
her to be ransomed" but she will find that
door closed to her until I permit it to open."

"In that case" I string along with the Chief-take what be started to say about
you and run it clear across the board for
me!" barked Costigan.

"Very well. That decision was to be expected from men of your type." The grey
man touched two buttons and two of
his creatures entered the room. "Put these men into two separate cells on the
second level," he ordered. "Search
them; all their weapons may not have been in their armor. Seal the doors and
mount special guards" tuned to me
here."

Imprisoned they were, and carefully searched; but they bore no arms, and
nothing bad been said concerning com-

municators. Even if such instruments could be concealed" Roger would detect
their use instantly. At least, so ran
his thought. But Roger's men had no inkling of the possibility of Costigan's
"Service Special" phones" detectors,
and spy ray-instruments of minute size and of infinitesimal power, but yet
instruments which, working as they were
below the level of the ether, were effective at great distances and caused no
vibrations in the ether by which their
use could be detected. And what could be more innocent than the regulation
personal equipment of every officer of
space? The heavy goggles, the wrist-watch and its supplementary pocket
chronometer, the flash-lamp, the
automatic lighter, the sender, the money-belt?

 All these items of equipment were examined with due care; but the cleverest
minds of the Triplanetary Service had
designed those communicators to pass any ordinary search, however careful" and
when Costigan and Bradley were
finally locked into the designated cells they still possessed their
ultra-instruments.

In Roger's Planetoid

In the hall Clio glanced around her wildly, seeking even the narrowest avenue
of escape. Before she could act,
however, her body was clamped as though in a vise, and she struggled,
motionless.

"It is useless to attempt to escape, or to do anything except what Roger
wishes," the guide informed her somberly,
snapping off the instrument in her hand and thus restoring to the thoroughly
cowed girl her freedom of motion.

"His lightest wish is law," she continued as they walked down a long corridor.
"The sooner you realize that you must
do exactly as he pleases, in all things, the easier your life will be."

"But I wouldn't want to keep on living!" Clio declared" with a flash of
spirit. "And I can always die, you know." "You
will find that you cannot," the passionless creature returned, monotonously.
"If you do not yield, you will long and
pray for death, but you will not die unless Roger wills it. Look at me: I
cannot die. Here is your apartment. You will
stay here until Roger gives further orders concerning you."

The living automaton opened a door and stood silent and impassive while Clio,
staring at her in horror" shrank past
her and into the sumptuously furnished suite. The door closed soundlessly and
utter silence descended as a pall.
Not an ordinary silence, but the indescribable perfection of the absolute
silence, complete absence of all sound. In
that silence Clio stood motionless. Tense and rigid, hopeless, despairing, she
stood there in that magnificent room,
fighting an almost overwhelming impulse to scream. Suddenly she heard the cold
voice of Roger" speaking from
the empty air.

"You are over-wrought, Miss Marsden. You can be of no use to yourself or to me
in that condition. I command you
to rest; and, to insure that rest, you may pull that cord" which will
establish about this room an ether wall: a wall to
cut off even this my voice . . ."

The voice ceased as she pulled the cord savagely and threw herself upon a
divan in a torrent of gasping" strangling,
but rebellious sobs. Then again came a voice, but not to her ears. Deep within
her, pervading every bone and
muscle, it made itself felt rather than heard.

"Clio?" it asked. "Don't talk yet . . ."

"Conway!" she gasped in relief, every fiber of her being thrilled into new
hope at the deep" well-remembered voice
of Conway Costigan.

"Keep still!" he snapped. "Don't act so happy! He may have a spy-ray on you.
He can't hear me, but he may be able to
hear you. When he was talking to you you must have noticed a sort of rough,
sandpapery feeling under that
necklace I gave you? Since he's got an ether-wall around you the beads are
dead now. If you feel anything like that
under the wrist-watch, breathe deeply, twice. If you don't feel anything
there, it's safe for you to talk" as loud as you
please."

"I don't feel anything, Conway!" she rejoiced. Tears forgotten, she was her
old, buoyant self again. "So that wall is
real, after all? I only about half believed it."

"Don't trust it too much, because he can cut it off from the outside any time
he wants to. Remember what I told
you: that necklace will warn you of any spy-ray in the ether, and the watch
will detect anything below the level of
the ether. It's dead now, of course, since our three phones are
direct-connected; I'm in touch with Bradley, too.
Don't be too scared; we've got a lot better chance than I thought we had."

"What? You don't mean it!"

"Absolutely. I'm beginning to think that maybe we've got something he doesn't
know exists-our ultra-wave. Of
course I wasn't surprised when his searchers failed to find our instruments,
but it never occurred to me that I might
have a clear field to use them in! I can't quite believe it yet, but I haven't
been able to find any indication that he can
even detect the bands we are using. I'm going to look around over there with
my spy-ray . . . I'm looking at you
now-feel it?"

"Yes, the watch feels that way, now."

"Fine! Not a sign of interference over here, either. I can't find a trace of
ultra-wave-anything below ether level, you
know-anywhere in the whole place. He's got so much stuff that we've never
heard of that I supposed of course he'd
have ultra-wave, too; but if he hasn't, that gives us the edge. Well, Bradley
and I've got a lot of work to do . . . Wait a
minute, I just had a thought. I'll be back in about a second."

There was a brief pause, then the soundless" but clear voice went on:

"Good bunting! That woman that gave you the blue willies isn't alive-she's
full of the prettiest machinery and
circuits you ever saw!"

"Oh, Conway!" and the girl's voice broke in an engulfing wave of thanksgiving
and relief. "It was so unutterably
horrible, thinking of what must have happened to her and to others like her!"

"He's running a colossal bluff, I think. He's good, all right, but he lacks
quite a lot of being omnipotent. But don't
get too cocky, either. Plenty has happened to women here, and men too-and
plenty may happen to us unless we put
out a few jets. Keep a stiff upper lip, and if you want us, yell. 'Bye!"

The silent voice ceased, the watch upon Clio's wrist again became an
unobtrusive timepiece, and Costigan, in his
solitary cell far below her tower room, turned his peculiarly goggled eyes
towards other scenes. His hands,
apparently idle in his pockets, manipulated tiny controls; his keen,
highly-trained eyes studied every concealed
detail of mechanism of the great globe. Finally, he took off the goggles and
spoke in a low voice to Bradley,
confined in another windowless room across the hall.

"I think I've got enough dope, Captain. I've found out where he put our armor
and guns, and I've located all the main
leads, controls, and generators. There are no ether-walls around us here, but
every door is shielded, and there are
guards outside our doors-one to each of us. They're robots, not men. That
makes it harder, since they're
undoubtedly connected direct to Roger's desk and will give an alarm at the
first hint of abnormal performance. We
can't do a thing until he leaves his desk. See that black panel, a little
below the cord-switch to the right of your
door? That's the conduit cover. When I give you the word" tear that off and
you'll see one red wire in the cable. It
feeds the shield-generator of your door. Break that wire and join me out in
the hall. Sorry I had only one of these
ultra-wave spies, but once we're together it won't be so bad. Here's what I
thought we could do," and he went over in
detail the only course of action which his survey had shown to be possible.

"There, he's left his desk!" Costigan exclaimed after the conversation had
continued for almost an hour. "Now as
soon as we find out where he's going, we'll start something . . . he's going
to see Clio, the swine! This changes
things, Bradley!" His hard voice was a curse.

"Somewhat!" blazed the captain. "I know how you two have been getting on all
during the cruise. I'm with you, but
what can we do?"
"We'll do something," Costigan declared grimly. "If he makes a pass at her
I'll get him if I have to blow this whole
sphere out of space, with us in it!"

"Don't do that, Conway," Clio's low voice, trembling but determined, was felt
by both men. "If there's a chance for
you to get away and do anything about fighting him, don't mind me. Maybe he
only wants to talk about the ransom,
anyway."

"He wouldn't talk ransom to you-he's going to talk something else entirely,"
Costigan gritted, then his voice
changed suddenly. "But say, maybe it's just as well this way. They didn't find
our specials when they searched us,
you know, and we're going to do plenty of damage right soon now. Roger
probably isn't a fast worker-more the
cat-and-mouse type" I'd say-and after we get started he'll have something on
his mind besides you. Think you can
stall him off and keep him interested for about fifteen minutes?"

"I'm sure I can-I'll do anything to help us, or you, get away from this
horrible . . ." Her voice ceased as Roger broke
the ether-wall of her apartment and walked towards the divan, upon which she
crouched in wide-eyed, helpless,
trembling terror.

"Get ready, Bradley!" Costigan directed tersely. "He left Clio's ether-wall
off, so that any abnormal signals would
be relayed to him from his desk-he knows that there's no chance of anyone
disturbing him in that room. But I'm
holding a beam on that switch, so that the wall is on, full strength. No
matter what we do now, he can't get a roam-

ing. I'll have to hold the beam exactly in place, though, so you'll have to do
the dirty work. Tear out that red wire and
kill those two guards. You know how to kill a robot" don't you?"

"Yes-break his eye-lenses and his ear-drums and he'll stop whatever he's doing
and send out distress calls . . . Got
'em both. Now what?"

"Open my door-the shield switch is to the right." Costigan's door flew open
and the Triplanetary captain leaped into
the room.

"Now for our armor!" he cried.

"Not yet!" snapped Costigan. He was standing rigid, goggled eyes staring
immovably at a spot on the ceiling. "I can't
move a millimeter until you've closed Clio's ether wall switch. If I take this
ray off it for a second we're sunk. Five
floors up, straight ahead down a corridor fourth door on right. When you're at
the switch you'll feel my ray on your
watch. Snap it up!"

"Right," and the captain leaped away at a pace to be equaled by few men of
half his years.

Soon he was hack, and after Costigan had tested the ether-wall of the "bridal
suite" to make sure that no warning
signal from his desk or his servants could reach Roger within it, the two
officers hurried away towards the room in
which their space-armor was.

"Too bad they don't wear uniforms," panted Bradley"

short of breath from the many flights of stairs. "Might have helped some as
disguise."

"I doubt it-with so many robots around, they've probably got signals that we
couldn't understand anyway. If we meet
anybody it'll mean a battle. Hold it!" Peering through walls with his spy-ray,
Costigan had seen two men
approaching, blocking an intersecting corridor into which they must turn. "Two
of 'em, a man and a robot-the
robot's on your side. We'll wait here, right at the corner when they round it
take 'em!' and Costigan put away his
goggles in readiness for strife.

All unsuspecting, the two pirates came into view, and as they appeared the two
officers struck. Costigan, on the in-

side, drove a short, hard right blow into the human pirate's abdomen. The
fiercely-driven fist sank to the wrist into
the soft tissues and the stricken man collapsed. But even as the blow landed
Costigan had seen that there was a third
enemy, following close behind the two he had been watching, a pirate who was
even then training a ray projector
upon him. Reacting automatically, Costigan swung his unconscious opponent
around in front of him" so that it was
into an enemy's body that the vicious ray tore, and not into his own.
Crouching down into the smallest possible
compass, he straightened out with the lashing force of a mighty steel spring,
hurling the corpse straight at the
flaming mouth of the projector. The weapon crashed to the floor and dead
pirate and living went down in a heap.
Upon that heap Costigan hurled himself, feeling for the pirate's throat. But
the fellow had wriggled clear, and
countered with a gouging thrust that would have torn out the eyes of a slower
man, following it up instantly with a
savage kick for the groin. No automaton this, geared and set to perform
certain fixed duties with mechanical
precision, but a lithe, strong man in hard training, fighting with every foul
trick known to his murderous ilk.

But Costigan was no tyro in the art of dirty fighting. Few indeed were the
maiming tricks of foul combat unknown
to even the rank and file of the highly efficient under-cover branch of the
Triplanetary Service; and Costigan, a
Sector Chief, knew them all. Not for pleasure" sportsmanship, nor
million-dollar purses did those secret agents
use Nature's weapons. They came to grips only when it could not possibly be
avoided" but when they were forced to
fight in that fashion they went in with but one grim purpose-to kill, and to
kill in the shortest possible space of
time. Thus it was that Costigan's opening soon came. The pirate launched a
vicious coup de sabot, which Costigan
avoided by a lightning shift. It was a slight shift" barely enough to make the
kicker miss, and two powerful hands
closed upon that flying foot in midair like the sprung jaws of a bear-trap.
Closed and twisted viciously, in the same
fleeting instant. There was a shriek" smothered as a heavy boot crashed to its
carefully predetermined mark-the
pirate was out, definitely and permanently.

The struggle had lasted scarcely ten seconds, coming to its close just as
Bradley finished blinding and deafening
the robot. Costigan picked up the projector, again donned his spy-ray goggles,
and the two hurried on.

"Nice work, Chief-it must be a gift to rough-house the way you do," Bradley
exclaimed. "That's why you took the
live one?"

"Practice helps some, too-I've been in brawls before" and I'm a lot younger
and maybe a bit faster than you are,"
Costigan explained briefly, penetrant gaze rigidly to the fore as they ran
along one corridor after another.

Several more guards, both living and mechanical" were encountered on the way,
but they were not permitted to
offer any opposition. Costigan saw them first. In the furious beam of the
projector of the dead pirate they were
driven into nothingness, and the two officers sped on to the room which
Costigan had located from afar. The three
suits of Triplanetary space armor had been locked up in a cabinet; a cabinet
whose doors Costigan literally blew off
with a blast of force rather than consume time in tracing the power leads.

"I feel like something now!" Costigan, once more encased in his own armor,
heaved a great sigh of relief.
"Rough-and-tumble's all right with one or two, but that generator room is full
of grief, and we won't have any too
much stuff as it is. We've got to take Clio's suit along we'll carry it down
to the door of the power room" drop it
there, and pick it up on the way back."

Contemptuous now of possible guards, the armored pair strode towards the power
plant-the very heart of the im-

mense fortress of space. Guards were encountered, and captains-officers who
signaled frantically to their chief,
since he alone could unleash the frightful forces at his command, and who
profanely wondered at his unwonted
silence-but the enemy beams were impotent against the ether walls of that
armor; and the pirates, without armor in
the security of their own planetoid as they were, vanished utterly in the
ravening beams of the twin Lewistons. As
they paused before the door of the power room, both men felt Clio's voice
raised in her first and last appeal, an
appeal wrung from her against her will by the extremity of her position.

"Conway! Hurry! His eyes-they're tearing me apart! Hurry, dear!" In the
horror-filled tones both men read
clearly-however inaccurately-the girl's dire extremity. Each saw plainly a
happy, carefree young Earth-girl, upon
her first trip into space, locked inside an ether-wall with an over-brained,
under-conscienced human machine -a
superintelligent, but lecherous and unmoral mechanism of flesh and blood,
acknowledging no authority, ruled by
nothing save his own scientific drivings and the almost equally powerful urges
of his desires and passions! She
must have fought with every resource at her command. She must have wept and
pleaded, stormed and raged" feigned
submission and played for time-and her torment had not touched in the
slightest degree the merciless and gloating
brain of the being who called himself Roger. Now his tantalizing, ruthless
cat-play would be done, the horrible
grey-brown face would be close to hers-she wailed her final despairing message
to Costigan and attacked that
hideous face with the fury of a tigress.

Costigan bit off a bitter imprecation. "Hold him just a second longer,
sweetheart!" he cried, and the power room
door vanished.

Through the great room the two Lewistons swept at full aperture and at maximum
power, two rapidly-opening fans
of death and destruction. Here and there a guard" more rapid than his fellows,
trained a futile projector-a projector
whose magazine exploded at the touch of that frightful field of force,
liberating instantaneously its thousands upon
thousands of kilowatt-hours of stored-up energy.

Through the delicately adjusted, complex mechanisms the destroying beams tore.
At their touch armatures burned
out, high-tension leads volatilized in crashing, high-voltage arcs" masses of
metal smoked and burned in the path of
vast forces now seeking the easiest path to neutralization, delicate
instruments blew up" copper ran in streams. As
the last machine subsided into a semi-molten mass of metal the two wreckers"
each grasping a brace, felt
themselves become weightless and knew that they had accomplished the first
part of their program.

Costigan leaped for the outer door. His the task to go to Clio's aid-Bradley
would follow more slowly, bringing the
girl's armor and taking care of any possible pursuit. As he sailed through the
air he spoke.

"Coming, Clio! All right" girl?" Questioningly, half fearfully.

"All right" Conway." Her voice was almost unrecognizable, broken in retching
agony. "When everything went crazy
he ... found out that the ether-wall was up and . . . forgot all about me. He
shut it off . . . and seemed to go crazy too
. . . he is floundering around like a wild man now ... I'm trying to keep ...
him from ... going downstairs."

"Good girl-keep him busy one minute more-he's getting all the warnings at once
and wants to get back to his board.
But what's the matter with you? Did he. . . hurt you, after all?"

"Oh, no" not that-he didn't do anything but look at me-but that was bad
enough-but I'm sick-horribly sick. I'm falling
. . .I'm so dizzy that I can scarcely see ... my head is breaking up into
little pieces . . . I just know I'm going to die,
Conway! Oh . . . oh!"

"Oh, is that all!" In his sheer relief that they had been in time" Costigan
did not think of sympathizing with Clio's
very real present distress of mind and body. "I forgot that you're a
ground-gripper-that's just a little touch of
space-sickness. It'll wear off directly . . . All right, I'm coming! Let go of
him and get as far away from him as you
cant"

He was now in the street. Perhaps two hundred feet distant and a hundred feet
above him was the tower room in
which were Clio and Roger. He sprang directly towards its large window, and as
he floated "upward" he corrected
his course and accelerated his pace by firing backwards at various angles with
his heavy service pistol, uncaring that
at the point of impact of each of those shells a small blast of destruction
erupted. He missed the window a trifle,
but that did not matter-his flaming Lewiston opened a way for him, partly
through the window, partly through the
wall. As he soared through the opening he trained projector and pistol upon
Roger, now almost to the door"
noticing as he did so that Clio was clinging convulsively to a lamp-bracket
upon the wall. Door and wall vanished in
the Lewiston's terrific beam, but the pirate stood unharmed. Neither ravening
ray nor explosive shell could harm
him-he had snapped on the protective shield whose generator was always upon
his person.

When Clio reported that Roger seemed to go crazy and was floundering around
like a wild man, she had no idea of
how she was understanding the actual situation; for Gharlane of Eddore, then
energizing the form of flesh that was
Roger, had for the first time in his prodigiously long life met in direct
conflict with an overwhelming superior
force.

Roger had been sublimely confident that he could detect the use, anywhere in
or around his planetoid, of
ultra-wave. He had been equally sure that he could control directly and
absolutely the physical activities of any
number of these semi-intelligent "human beings."

But four Arisians in fusion-Drounli, Brolenteen, Nedanillor, and Kredigan-had
been on guard for weeks. When the
time came to act, they acted.

Roger's first thought, upon discovering what tremendous and inexplicable
damage had already been done, was to
destroy instantly the two men who were doing it. He could not touch them. His
second was to blast out of
existence this supposedly human female, but no more could he touch her. His
fiercest mental bolts spent
themselves harmlessly three millimeters away from her skin; she gazed into his
eyes completely unaware of the
torrents of energy pouring from them. He could not even aim a weapon at her!
His third was to call for help to
Eddore. He could not. The sub-ether was closed; nor could he either discover
the manner of its closing or trace the
power which was keeping it closed!

His Eddorian body, even if he could recreate it here, could not withstand the
environment-this Roger-thing would
have to do whatever it could, unaided by Gharlane's mental powers. And,
physically, it was a very capable body
indeed. Also, it was armed and armored with mechanisms of Gharlane's own
devising; and Eddore's
second-in-command was in no sense a coward.

But Roger, while not exactly a ground-gripper, did not know how to handle
himself without weight; whereas Cos-

tigan, given six walls against which to push, was even more efficient in
weightless combat than when handicapped
by the force of gravitation. Keeping his projector upon the pirate, he seized
the first clue to hand-a long, slender
pedestal of metal-launched himself past the pirate chief. With all the
momentum of his mass and velocity and all
the power of his good right arm he swung the bar at the pirate's head. That
fiercely-driven mass of metal should
have taken head from shoulders, but it did not. Roger's shield of force was
utterly rigid and impenetrable; the only
effect of the frightful blow was to set him spinning, end over end, like the
flying baton of an acrobatic drummajor.
As the spinning form crashed against the opposite wall of the room Bradley
floated in, carrying Clio's armor.
Without a word the captain loosened the helpless girl's grip upon the bracket
and encased her in the suit. Then,
supporting her at the window, he held his Lewiston upon the captive's head
while Costigan propelled him towards
the opening. Both men knew that Roger's shield of force must be threatened
every instant-that if he were allowed
to release it he probably would bring to bear a hand-weapon even superior to
their own.

Braced against the wall, Costigan sighted along Roger's body towards the most
distant point of the lofty dome of
the artificial planet and gave him a gentle push. Then, each grasping Clio by
an arm, the two officers shoved
mightily with their feet and the three armored forms darted away towards their
only hope of escape-an emergency
boat which could be launched through the shell of the great globe. To attempt
to reach the Hyperion and to escape
in one of her lifeboats would have been useless; they could not have forced
the great gates of the main airlocks and
no other exits existed. As they sailed onwards through the air, Costigan
keeping the slowly-floating form of Roger
enveloped in his beam. Clio began to recover.

"Suppose they get their gravity fixed?" she asked, apprehensively. "And
they're raying us and shooting at us!" "They
may have it fixed already. The undoubtedly have spare parts and duplicate
generators, but if they turn it on the fall
will kill Roger too, and he wouldn't like that. They'll have to get him down
with a helicopter or something, and they
know that we'll get them as fast as they come up. They can't hurt us with
hand-weapons, and before they can bring
up any heavy stuff they'll be afraid to use it, because we'll be too close to
their shell.

"I wish we could have brought Roger along," he continued, savagely, to
Bradley. "But you were right, of course-it'd
be altogether too much like a rabbit capturing a wildcat. My Lewiston's about
done right now, and there can't be
much left of yours-what he'd do to us would be a sin and a shame."

Now at the great wall, the two men heaved mightily upon a lever, the gate of
the emergency port swung slowly
open, and they entered the miniature cruiser of the void. Costigan, familiar
with the mechanism of the craft from
careful study from his prison cell, manipulated the controls. Through gate
after massive gate they went, until
finally they were out in open space, shooting towards distant Tellus at the
maximum acceleration of which their
small craft was capable.

Costigan cut the other two phones out of circuit and spoke, his attention
fixed upon some extremely distant point.

"Samms!" he called sharply. "Costigan. We're out . . . all right . . . yes . .
. sure ... absolutely . . . you tell 'em" Sammy,
I've got company here."

Through the sound-discs of their helmets the girl and the captain had heard
Costigan's share of the conversation.
Bradley stared at his erstwhile first officer in amazement, and even Clio had
often heard that mighty, half-mythical
name. Surely that bewildering young man must rank high, to speak so familiarly
to Virgil Sammy, the all-powerful
head of the space-pervading Service of the Triplanetary League!

"You've turned in a general call-out," Bradley stared, rather than asked.

"Long ago-I've been in touch right along," Costigan answered. "Now that they
know what to look for and know that
ether-wave detectors are useless, they can find it. Every vessel in seven
sectors, clear down to the scout patrols, is
concentrating on this point, and the call is out for all battleships and
cruisers afloat. There are enough operatives
out there with ultra-waves to locate that globe, and once they spot it they'll
point it out to all the other vessels."

"But how about the other prisoners?" asked the girl. "they'll be killed" won't
they?"

"Hard telling," Costigan shrugged. "Depends on how things turn out. We lack a
lot of being safe ourselves yet."
"What's worrying me mostly is our own chance," Bradley assented. "They will
chase us, of course."

"Sure, and they'll have more speed than we have. Depends on how far away the
nearest Triplanetary vessels are. But
we've done everything we can do, for now."

Silence fell, and Costigan cut in Clio's phone and came over to the seat upon
which she was reclining, white and
stricken-worn out by the horrible and terrifying ordeals of the last few
hours. As he seated himself beside her she
blushed vividly, but her deep blue eyes met his grey ones steadily.

"Clio, I . ..we. . . you ... that is," he flushed hotly and stopped. This
secret agent, whose clear, keen brain no physical
danger could cloud; who had proved over and over again that he was never at a
loss in any emergency, however
desperate-this quick-witted officer floundered in embarrassment like any
schoolboy; but continued, doggedly: "I'm
afraid that I gave myself away back there, but . . ."

"We gave ourselves away, you mean," she filled in the pause. "I did my share,
but I won't hold you to it if you don't
want-but I know that you love me, Conway!"

"Love you!" the man groaned, his face lined and hard, his whole body rigid.
"That doesn't half tell it, Clio. You don't
need to hold me-I'm held for life. There never was a woman who meant anything
to me before, and there never will
be another. You're the only woman that ever existed. It isn't that. Can't you
see that it's impossible?" "Of course I
can't-it isn't impossible at all." She released her shields, four hands met
and tightly clasped, and her low voice
thrilled with feeling as she went on: "You love me and I love you. That is all
that matters."

"I wish it were," Costigan returned bitterly, "but you don't know what you'd
be letting yourself in for. It's who and
what you are and who and what I am that's griping me. You, Clio Marsden,
Curtis Marsden's daughter. Nineteen
years old. You think you've been places and done things. You haven't. You
haven't seen or done anything-you don't
know what it's all about. And whom am I to love a girl like you? A homeless
space hound who hasn't been on any
planet three weeks in three years. A hard-boiled egg. A trouble-shooter and a
brawler by instinct and training. A sp .
. ." he bit off the word and went on quickly: "Why, you don't know me at all,
and there's a lot of me that you never
will know-that I can't let you know! You'd better lay off me, girl" while you
can. It'll be best for you" believe me."

"But I can't, Conway, and neither can you," the girl answered softly, a
glorious light in her eyes. "It's too late for
that. On the ship it was just another of those things, but since then we've
come really to know each other, and we're
sunk. The situation is out of control, and we both know it-and neither of us
would change it if we could, and you
know that, too. I don't know very much, I admit, but I do know what you
thought you'd have to keep from me, and I
admire you all the more for it. We all honor the Service, Conway dearest-it is
only you men who have made and are
keeping the Three Planets fit places to live in-and I know that any one of
Virgil Samms' assistants would have to be
a man in a thousand million . . ."

"What makes you think that?" he demanded sharply. "You told me so yourself,
indirectly. Who else in the three
worlds could possibly call him "Sammy?" You are hard" of course, but you must
be so-and I never did like soft men,
anyway. And you brawl in a good cause. You are very much a man, my Conway; a
real" real man, and I love you!
Now, if they catch us, all right-we'll die together" at least!" she finished,
intensely.

"You're right, sweetheart, of course," he admitted. "I don't believe that I
could really let you let me go, even though I
know you ought tp," and their hands locked together even more firmly than
before. "If we ever get out of this jam
I'm going to kiss you, but this is no time to be taking off your helmet. In
fact, I'm taking too many chances with you
in keeping your shields off. Snap 'em on again-they ought to be getting fairly
close by this time."

Hands released and armor again tight, Costigan went over to join Bradley at
the control board.

"How are they coming, Captain?" he asked.

"Not so good. Quite a ways off yet. At least an hour" I'd say, before a
cruiser can get within range."

"I'll see if I can locate any of the pirates chasing us. If I do it'll be by
accident; this little spy-ray isn't good for much
except close work. I'm afraid the first warning we'll have will be when they
take hold of us with a tractor or spear us
with a needle. Probably a beam, though; this is one of their emergency
lifeboats and they wouldn't want to destroy
it unless they have to. Also, I imagine that Roger wants us alive pretty
badly. He has unfinished business with all
three of us, and I can well believe that his "not particularly pleasant
extinction" will be even less so after the way we
rooked him."

"I want you to do me a favor, Conway." Clio's face was white with horror at
the thought of facing again that un-

speakable creature of grey. "Give me a gun or something, please. I don't want
him ever to look at me that way again"
to say nothing of what else he might do, while I'm alive."

"He won't," Costigan assured her, narrow of eye and grim of jaw. He was" as
she had said, hard. "But you don't want
a gun. You might get nervous and use it too soon. I'll take care of you at the
last possible moment, because if he
gets hold of us we won't stand a chance of getting away again."

For minutes there was silence. Costigan surveying the ether in all directions
with his ultra-wave device. Suddenly
he laughed, and the others stared at him in surprise.

"No, I'm not crazy," he told them. "This is really funny; it had never
occurred to me that the ether-walls of all these
ships make them invisible. I can see them, of course, with this sub-ether spy,
but they can't see us! I knew that they
should have overtaken us before this. I've finally found them. They've passed
us, and are now tacking around, wait-

ing for us to do something so that they can see us! They're heading right into
the Fleet-they think they're safe, of
course, but what a surprise they've got coming to them!"
                       THE VORTEX BLASTER

 Like fire, only worse, intra-atomic energy was a good servant, but a terrible
master . . . and unless something
could be done about loose atomic vortices" entire planets would be destroyed!

Safety devices that do not protect.

The "unsinkable" ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomic and
cosmic energy, sank into the waters
of the earth.

More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against one agent of
destruction, attract magnet-like an-

other and worse. Such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house.
It protects the electrical con-

ductors within against accidental external shorts; but, inadequately grounded
as it must of necessity be, it may
attract and upon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning.
Then, fused, volatized, flaming incan-

descent throughout the length, breadth, and height of a dwelling, that
dwelling's existence thereafter is to be
measured in minutes.

Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting the chromium,
glass, and plastic home of Neal
Cloud. Those rods were adequately grounded, grounded with copper-silver cables
the bigness of a strong man's
arm; for Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, knew his lightning and he was taking no
chances whatever with the safety of
his lovely wife and their three wonderful kids.

He did not know" he did not even suspect, that under certain conditions of
atmospheric potential and of ground-

magnetic stress his perfectly designed lightning-rod system would become a
super-powerful magnet for flying
vortices of atomic disintegration.

And now Neal Cloud, atomic physicist" sat at his desk in a strained, dull
apathy. His face was a yellowish-grey
white, his tendoned hands gripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes"
hard and lifeless, stared unseeingly past
the small, three-dimensional block portrait of all that had made life worth
living.

For his guardian against lightning had been a vortex magnet at the moment when
a luckless wight had attempted to
abate the nuisance of a "loose" atomic vortex. That wight died, of course-they
almost always do-and the vortex,
instead of being destroyed, was simply broken up into an indefinite number of
widely-scattered new vortices. And
one of these bits of furious, uncontrolled energy, resembling more nearly a
handful of material rived from a sun
than anything else with which ordinary man is familiar, darted toward and
crashed downward to earth through Neal
Cloud's new house.
That home did not burn it; it simply exploded. Nothing of it, in it, or around
it stood a chance, for in a fractional
second of time the place where it had been was a crater of seething, boiling
lava-a crater which filled the atmos-

phere to a height of miles with poisonous vapors; which flooded all
circumambient space with lethal radiations.

Cosmiscally, the whole thing was infinitesimal. Ever since man learned how to
liberate intra-atomic energy, the
vortices of disintegration had been breaking out of control. Such accidents
had been happening, were happening,
and would continue indefinitely to happen. More than one world, perhaps, had
been or would be consumed to the
last gram by such loose atomic vortices. What of that? Of what real importance
are a few grains of sand to an ocean
beach five thousand miles long, a hundred miles wide, and ten miles deep?

And even to that individual grain of sand called "Earth"-or, in modern
parlance, "Sol Three," or "Tellus of Sol," or
simply "Tellus"-the affair was of negligible importance. One man had died;
but" in dying" he had added one more
page to the thick bulk of negative results already on file. That Mrs. Cloud
and her children had perished was merely
unfortunate. The vortex itself was not yet a real threat to Tellus. It was a
"new" one, and thus it would be a long time
before it would become other than a local menace. And well before that could
happen before even the oldest of
Tellus' loose vortices had eaten away much of her mass or poisoned much of her
atmosphere, her scientists would
have solved the problem. It was unthinkable that Tellus, the point of origin,
and the very center of Galactic
Civilization, should cease to exist.

But to Neal Cloud the accident was the ultimate catastrophe. His personal
universe had crashed in ruins; what was
left was not worth picking up. He and Jo had been married for almost twenty
years and the bonds between them had
grown stronger, deeper, truer with every passing day. And the kids. . . . It
couldn't have happened . . . fate
COULDN'T do this to him.. . but it had ... it could. Gone ... gone ... GONE.

And to Neal Cloud, atomic physicist, sitting there at his desk in torn,
despairing abstraction, with black maggots of
thought gnawing holes in his brain, the catastrophe was doubly galling because
of its cruel irony. For he was second
from the top in the Atomic Research Laboratory; his life's work had been a
search for a means of extinguishment
of exactly such loose vortices as had destroyed his all.

His eyes focused vaguely upon the portrait. Clear" honest grey eyes . . .
lines of character and humor . . . sweetly
curved lips, ready to smile or to kiss. . . .

He wrenched his eyes away and scribbled briefly upon a sheet of paper. Then,
getting up stiffly, he took the portrait
and moved woodenly across the room to a furnace. As though enshrining it he
placed the plastic block upon a
refractory between the electrodes and threw a switch. After the flaming arc
bad done its work be turned and handed
the paper to a tall man, dressed in plain grey leather" who had been watching
him with quiet, understanding eyes.
Significant enough to the initiated of the importance of this laboratory is
the fact that it was headed by an
Unattached Lensman.

"As of now, Phil, if it's QX with you."

The Grey Lensman took the document, glanced at it, and slowly, meticulously"
tore it into sixteen equal pieces.
"Uh, uh, Storm," he denied, gently. "Not a resignation. Leave of absence"
yes-indefinite-but not a resignation."

"Why?" It was scarcely a question; Cloud's voice was level, uninflected. "I
won't be worth the paper I'd waste." "Now,
no," the Lensman conceded, "but the future's another matter. I haven't said
anything so far, because to anyone who
knew you and Jo as I knew you it was abundantly clear that nothing could be
said." Two hands gripped and held. "For
the future, though, four words were uttered long ago, that have never been
improved upon. `This, too, shall pass.'"

"You think so?"

"I don't think so, Storm-I know so. I've been around a long time. You are too
good a man, and the world has too
much use for you, for you to go down permanently out of control. You've got a
place in the world, and you'll be
back-" A thought struck the Lensman, and he went on in an altered tone. "You
wouldn't-but of course you wouldn't
-you couldn't."

"I don't think so. No I won't-that never was any kind of a solution to any
problem."

Nor was it. Until that moment, suicide had not entered Cloud's mind, and he
rejected it instantly. His kind of man
did not take the easy way out.

After a brief farewell Cloud made his way to an elevator and was whisked down
to the garage. Into his big blue
DeKhotinsky Sixteen Special and away.

Through traffic so heavy that front-, rear-, and side bumpers almost touched
he drove with his wonted cool skill;
even though, consciously, he did not know that the other cars were there. He
slowed, turned, stopped, "gave her the
oof," all in correct response to flashing signals in all shapes and
colors-purely automatically. Consciously" he did
not know where he was going, nor care. If he thought at all, his numbed brain
was simply trying to run away from its
own bitter imaging-which, if he had thought at all" he would have known to be
a hopeless task. But he did not think;
he simply acted, dumbly, miserably. His eyes saw, optically; his body,
reacted, mechanically; his thinking brain was
completely in abeyance.

Into a one-way skyway he rocketed" along it over the suburbs and into the
transcontinental super-highway. Edging
inward, lane after lane, he reached the "unlimited" way -unlimited, that is"
except for being limited to cars of not
less than seven hundred horsepower; in perfect mechanical condition, driven by
registered, tested drivers at speeds
not less than one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour flashed his registry
number at the control station, and
shoved his right foot down to the floor.

Now everyone knows that an ordinary DeKhotinsky Sporter will do a hundred and
forty honestly-measured miles in
one honestly measured hour; but very few ordinary drivers have ever found out
how fast one of those, brutal big
souped-up Sixteens can wheel. They simply haven't got what it takes to open
one up.

"Storm" Cloud found out that day. He held that two and-a-half-ton Juggernaut
on the road, wide open, for two solid
hours. But it didn't help. Drive as he would, he could not outrun that which
rode with him. Beside him and within
him and behind him. For Jo was there. Jo and the kids, but mostly Jo. It was
Jo's car as much as it was his. "Babe,
the big blue ox," was Joe's pet name for it; because, like Paul Bunyan's
fabulous beast, it was pretty nearly six feet
between the eyes. Everything they had ever had was that way. She was in the
seat beside him. Every dear, every
sweet, every luscious, lovely memory of her was there ... and behind him, just
out of eye-corner visibility, were the
three kids. And a whole lifetime of this loomed ahead-a vista of emptiness
more vacuous far than the emptiest
reaches of intergalactic space. Damnation! He couldn't stand much more of High
over the roadway" far ahead, a
brilliant octagon flared red. That meant "STOP!" in any language. Cloud eased
up his accelerator, eased down his
mighty brakes. He pulled up at the control station and a trimly-uniformed
officer made a gesture.

"Sorry, sir," the policeman said" "but you'll have to detour here. There's a
loose atomic vortex beside the road up
ahead

"Oh! It's Dr. Cloud!" Recognition flashed into the guard's eyes. "I didn't
recognize you at first. It'll be two or three
miles before you'll have to put on your armor; you'll know when better than
anyone can tell you. They didn't tell us
they were going to send for you. It's just a little new one, and the dope we
got was that they were going to shove it
off into the canyon with pressure."

"They didn't send for me." Cloud tried to smile. "I'm just driving
around-haven't my armor along" even. So I guess I
might as well go back."

He turned the Special around. A loose vortex-new. There might be a hundred of
them, scattered over a radius of
two hundred miles. Sisters of the one that bad murdered his family-the hellish
spawn of that accursed Number
Eleven vortex that that damnably incompetent bungling ass had tried to blow
up. . . . Into his mind there leaped a
picture, wire sharp, of Number Eleven as he had last seen it, and
simultaneously an idea hit him like a blow from a
fist.

 He thought. Really thought, now; cogently, intensely" clearly. If the could
do it . . . could actually blow out the
atomic flame of an atomic vortex ... not exactly revenge" but.... By Klono' s
brazen bowels, it would work-it'd have
to work-he'd make it work! And grimly, quietly" but alive in every fiber now,
he drove back towards the city practi-

cally as fast as he had come away.

If the Lensman was surprised at Cloud's sudden reappearance in the laboratory
he did not show it. Nor did he offer
any comment as his erstwhile first assistant went to various lockers and
cupboards, assembling meters, coils"
tubes" armor, and other paraphernalia and apparatus.

"Guess that's all I'll need, Chief," Cloud remarked" finally. "Here's a blank
check. If some of this stuff shouldn't
happen to be in usable condition when I get done with it, fill it out to suit,
will you?"

"No"" and the Lensman tore up the check just as he had torn up the
resignation. "If you want the stuff for legitimate
purposes, you're on Patrol business and it is the Patrol's risk. If, on the
other hand, you think that you're going to
try to snuff a vortex" the stuff stays here. That's final, Storm."

"You're right-and wrong, Phil," Cloud stated, not at all sheepishly. "I'm
going to blow out Number One vortex with
duodec, yes-but I'm really going to blow it out, not merely make a stab at it
as an excuse for suicide" as you think."

"How?" the big Lensman's query was scepticism incarnate. "It can't be done"
except by an almost impossibly
fortuitous accident. You yourself have been the most bitterly opposed of us
all to these suicidal attempts."

"I know it-I didn't have the solution myself until a few hours ago-it hit me
all at once. Funny I never thought of it
before; it's been right in sight all the time."

"That's the way with most problems"" the Chief admitted. "Plain enough after
you see the key equation. Well" I'm
perfectly willing to be convinced" but I warn you that I'll take a lot of
convincing-and someone else will do the
work, not you."

"When I get done you'll see why I'll pretty nearly have to do it myself. But
to convince you, exactly what is the
knot?"

"Variability"" snapped the older man. "To be effective" the charge of
explosive at the moment of impact must
match, within very close limits, the activity of the vortex itself. Too small
a charge scatters it around in vortices
which, while much smaller than the original, are still large enough to be
self-sustaining. Too large a charge simply
rekindles the original vortex-still larger-in its original crater. And the
activity that must be matched varies so
tremendously" in magnitude, maxima, and minima, and the cycle is so
erratic-ranging from seconds to hours
without discoverable rhyme or reason-that all attempts to do so at any
predetermined instant have failed
completely. Why, even Kinnison and Cardynge and the Conference of Scientists
couldn't solve it" any more than
they could work out a tractor beam that could be used as a tow-line on one."

"Not exactly," Cloud demurred. "They found that it could be forecast, for a
few seconds at least-length of time
directly proportional to the length of the cycle in question-by an extension
of the calculus of warped surfaces."

"Humph!" the Lensman snorted. "So what? What good is a ten-second forecast
when it takes a calculating machine
an hour to solve the equations. . . . Oh!" He broke off" staring.

"Oh," he repeated" slowly" "I forgot that you're a lightning calculator-a
mathematical prodigy from the day you were
born-who never has to use a calculating machine even to compute an orbit....
But there are other things."

"I'll say there are; plenty of them. I'd thought of the calculator angle
before, of course, but there was a worse thing
than variability to contend with. . . :'

"What?" the Lensman demanded.

"Fear," Cloud replied, crisply. "At the thought of a hand-to-hand battle with
a vortex my brain froze solid. Fear-the
sheer, stark, natural human fear of death, that robs a man of the fine edge of
control and brings on the very death
that he is trying so hard to avoid. That's what had me stopped."

"Right . . . you may be right," the Lensman pondered" his fingers drumming
quietly upon his desk. "And you are not
afraid of death-now---even subconsciously. But tell me, Storm, please, that
you won't invite it."

"I will not invite it, sir, now that I've got a job to do. But that's as far
as I'll go in promising. I won't make any
super-human effort to avoid it. I'll take all due precautions, for the sake of
the job, if it gets me, what the hell? The
quicker it does, the better-the sooner I'll be with Jo."

"You believe that?" "Implicitly."

"The vortices are as good as gone, then. They haven't got any more chance than
Boskone has of licking the Patrol."

"I'm afraid so," almost glumly. "The only way for it to get me is for me to
make a mistake, and I don't feel any
coming on."

"But what's your angle?" the Lensman asked, interest lighting his eyes. "You
can't use the customary attack; your
time will be too short."

"Like this," and taking down a sheet of drafting paper" Cloud sketched
rapidly. "This is the crater, here, with the
vortex at the bottom, there. From the observers' instruments or from a
shielded set-up of my own I get my data on
mass, emission, maxima, minima, and so on. Then I have them make me three
duodec bombs-one on the mark of
the activity I'm figuring on shooting at, and one each five per cent over and
under that figure-cased in neocarballoy
of exactly the computed thickness to last until it gets to the center of the
vortex. Then I take oft in a flying suit,
armored and shielded, say about here. . . ."

"If you take off at all, you'll take off in a suit, inside a one-man flitter,"
the Lensman interrupted. "Too many
instruments for a suit, to say nothing of bombs, and you'll need more screen
than a suit can deliver. We can adapt a
flitter for bomb-throwing easily enough."

"QX; that would be better, of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a
projectile trajectory like this, whose objec-

tive is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about
this point, I take my instantaneous
readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for some
certain zero time. . . ."

"But suppose that the cycle won't give you a ten-second solution?"

"Then I'll swing around and try again until a long cycle does show up."

"QX. It will, sometime."

"Sure. Then, having everything set for zero time, and assuming that the
activity is somewhere near my postulated
value. . . ."

"Assume that it isn't-it probably won't be"" the Chief grunted.

"I accelerate or decelerate-" "Solving new equations all the while?"

"Sure-don't interrupt so-until at zero time the activity, extrapolated to zero
time, matches one of my bombs. I cut
that bomb loose, shoot myself off in a sharp curve, and Z-W-E-E-E-T-POWIE!
She's out!" With an expressive,
sweeping gesture.

"You hope," the Lensman was frankly dubious. "And there you are" right in the
middle of that explosive, with two
duodec bombs outside your armor-or just inside your flitter."

"Oh, no. I've shot them away several seconds ago, so that they explode
somewhere else, nowhere near me."

"I hope. But do you realize just how busy a man you are going to be during
those ten or twelve seconds?" "Fully."
Cloud's face grew somber. "But I will be in full control. I won't be afraid of
anything that can happen -anything.
And," he went on, under his breath, "that's the hell of it."

"QX," the Lensman admitted finally, "you can go. There are a lot of things you
haven't mentioned, but you'll prob-
ably be able to work them out as you go along. I think I'll go out and work
with the boys in the lookout station while
you're doing your stuff. When are you figuring on starting?" "Now long will it
take to get the flitter ready?"

"A couple of days. Say we meet you there Saturday morning?"

"Saturday, the tenth, at eight o'clock. I'll be there."

And again Neal Cloud and Babe, the big blue ox, hit the road. And as he
rolled, the physicist mulled over in his
mind the assignment to which he had set himself.

Like fire, only worse, intra-atomic energy was a good servant, but a terrible
master. Man had liberated it before be
could really control it. In fact, control was not yet, and perhaps never would
be, perfect. Up to a certain size and
activity, yes. They, the millions upon millions of self-limiting ones, were
the servants. They could be handled,
fenced in, controlled; indeed, if they were not kept under an exciting
bombardment and very carefully fed, they
would go out. But at long intervals, for some one of a dozen reasons-science
knew so little, fundamentally, of the
true inwardness of the intra-atomic reactions-one of these small, tame,
self-limiting vortices flared, nova-like, into
a large, wild, self-sustaining one. It ceased being a servant then, and became
a master. Such flare-ups occurred, per-

haps, only once or twice in a century on Earth; the trouble was that they were
so utterly, damnably permanent.
They never went out. And no data were ever secured for every living thing in
the vicinity of a flare-up died; every
instrument and every other solid thing within a radius of a hundred feet
melted down into the reeking" boiling slag
of its crater.

Fortunately, the rate of growth was slow-as slow" almost, as it was
persistent-otherwise Civilization would
scarcely have had a planet left. And unless something could be done about
loose vortices before too many years,
the consequences would be really serious. That was why his laboratory had been
established in the first place.

Nothing much had been accomplished so far. The tractor beam that would take
hold of them had never been
designed. Nothing material was of any use, it melted. Pressors worked, after a
fashion: it was by the use of these
beams that they shoved the vortices around, off into the waste places-unless
it proved cheaper to allow the places

where they had come into being to remain waste places. A few, through sheer
luck, had been blown into
self-limiting bits by duodec. Duodec-aplylatomate, the most powerful" the most
frightfully detonant explosive ever
invented upon all the known planets of the First Galaxy. But duodec had taken
an awful toll of life. Also, since it
usually scattered a vortex instead of extinguishing it, duodec had actually
caused far more damage than it had cured.

No end of fantastic schemes had been proposed" of course; of varying degrees
of fantasy. Some of them sounded
almost practical. Some of them had been tried; some of them were still being
tried. Some" such as the
perennially-appearing one of building a huge hemispherical hull in the ground
under and around the vortex,
installing an inertialess drive, and shooting the whole neighborhood out into
space, were perhaps feasible from an
engineering standpoint. They were, however" potentially so capable of making
things worse that they would not be
tried save as last ditch measures. In short, the control of loose vortices was
very much an unsolved problem.

Number One vortex, the oldest and worst upon Tellus, had been pushed out into
the Badlands; and there, at eight
o'clock on the tenth" Cloud started to work upon it.

The "lookout station," instead of being some such ramshackle structure as
might have been deduced from the
Lensman's casual terminology, was in fact a fully-equipped observatory. Its
staff was not large-eight men worked in
three staggered eight-hour shifts of two men each-but the instruments! To
develop them had required hundreds of
man-years of time and near miracles of research, not the least of the problems
having been that of developing
shielded conductors capable of carrying truly through fiveply screens of force
the converted impulses of the very
radiations against which those screens were most effective. For the
observatory" and the long approach to it as
well, had to be screened heavily; without such protection no life could exist
there.

This problem and many others had been solved, however" and there the
instruments were. Every phase and factor of
the vortex's existence and activity were measured and recorded continuously,
throughout every minute of every day
of every year. And all of these records were summed up"

integrated, into the "Sigma" curve. This curve, while only an incredibly and
senselessly tortuous line to the layman's
eye, was a veritable mine of information to the initiate.

Cloud glanced along the Sigma curve of the previous forty-eight hours and
scowled, for one jagged peak, scarcely
an hour old, actually punched through the top line of the chart.

"Bad, huh, Frank?" he grunted.

"Plenty bad, Storm, and getting worse," the observer assented. "I wouldn't
wonder if Carlowitz were right, after
all-if she ain't getting ready to blow her top I'm a Zabriskan fontema's
maiden aunt."

"No periodicity-no equation, of course." It was a statement, not a question.
The Lensman ignored as completely as
did the observer, if not as flippantly, the distinct possibility that at any
moment the observatory and all that it
contained might be resolved into their component atoms.

"None whatever," came flatly from Cloud. He did not need to spend hours at a
calculating machine; at one glance he
knew, without knowing how he knew, that no equation could be made to fit even
the weighted-average locus of that
wildly-shifting Sigma curve. "But most of the cycles cut this ordinate
here-seven fifty-one-so I'll take that for my
value. That means nine point nine or six kilograms of duodec basic charge,
with one five per cent over and one five
per cent under that for alternates. Neocarballoy casting, fifty-three
millimeters on the basic, others in proportion.
On the wire?"

"It went out as you said it," the observer reported. "They'll have 'em here in
fifteen minutes."

"QX-I'll get dressed, then."

The Lensman and the observer helped him into his cumbersome, heavily-padded
armor. They checked his instru-

ments, making sure that the protective devices of the suit were functioning at
full efficiency. Then all three went
out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby
wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the
multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic
of the tricky, cranky, but
ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary
speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced
around the needle beak there yawned the open muzzles of a triplex
bomb-thrower.

More checking. The Lensman and the armored Cloud both knew that every one of
the dozens of instruments upon
the flitter's special board was right to the bair; nevertheless each one was
compared with the master-instrument of
the observatory.

The bombs arrived and were loaded in; and Cloud, with a casually-waved salute,
stepped into the tiny operating
compartment. The massive door-hitters have no airlocks" as the whole
midsection is scarcely bigger than an
airlock would have to be-rammed shut upon its fiber gaskets" the heavy toggles
drove home. A cushioned form
closed in upon the pilot, leaving only his arms and lower legs free.

Then, making sure that his two companions had ducked for cover, Cloud shot his
hitter into the air and toward the
seething inferno which was Loose Atomic Vortex Number One. For it was
seething, no fooling; and it was an
inferno. The crater was a ragged, jagged hole a full mile from lip to lip and
perhaps a quarter of that in depth. It was
not, however, a perfect cone, for the floor, being largely incandescently
molten, was practically level except for a
depression at the center, where the actual vortex lay. The walls of the pit
were steeply, unstably irregular, varying in
pitch and shape with the hardness and refractoriness of the strata composing
them. Now a section would glare into
an unbearably blinding white puffing away in sparkling vapor. Again, cooled by
an in rushing blast of air, it would
subside into an angry scarlet, its surface crawling in a sluggish flow of
lava. Occasionally a part of the wall might
even go black, into pock-marked scoriae or into brilliant planes of obsidian.
For always, somewhere, there was an enormous volume of air pouring into that
crater. It rushed in as ordinary air. It
came out, however, in a ragingly-up rushing pillar, as -as something else. No
one knew-or knows yet, for that
matter-exactly what a loose vortex does to the molecules and atoms of air. In
fact, due to the extreme variability
already referred to, it probably does not do the same thing for more than an
instant at a time.

That there is little actual combustion is certain; that is" except for the
forced combination of nitrogen, argon,
xenon, and krypton with oxygen. There is, however, consumption: plenty of
consumption. And what that incredibly
intense bombardment impinges up is . . . is altered. Profoundly and obscurely
altered, so that the atmosphere
emitted from the crater is quite definitely no longer air as we know it. It
may be corrosive, it may be poisonous in
one or another of a hundred fashions, it may be merely new and different; but
it is no longer the air which we
human beings are used to breathing. And it is this fact, rather than the
destruction of the planet itself, which would
end the possibility of life upon Earth's surface.

It is difficult indeed to describe the appearance of a loose atomic vortex to
those who have never seen one; and,
fortunately, most people never have. And practically all of its frightful
radiation lies in those octaves of the
spectrum which are invisible to the human eye. Suffice it to say, then, that
it had an average effective surface
temperature of about fifteen thousand degrees absolute-two and one-half times
as hot as the sun of Tellus-and that
it was radiating every frequency possible to that incomprehensible
temperature, and let it go at that.

And Neal Cloud, scurrying in his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled
atmosphere, setting up equations
from the readings of his various meters and gauges and solving those equations
almost instantaneously in his
mathematical-prodigy's mind, sat appalled. For the activity level was, and
even in its lowest dips remained, far
above the level he had selected. His skin began to prickle and burn. His eyes
began to smart and to ache. He knew
what those symptoms meant; even the flitter's powerful screens were not
stopping all the radiation; even his
suit-screens and his special goggles were not stopping what leaked through.
But he wouldn't quit yet; the activity
might-probably wouldtake a nose-dive any instant. If it did, he'd have to be
ready. On the other hand, it might blow
up at any instant, too.

There were two schools of mathematical thought upon that point. One held that
the vortex, without any essential
change in its physical condition or nature, would keep on growing bigger.
Indefinitely, until, uniting with the other
vortices of the planet, it had converted the entire mass of the world into
energy.

The second school, of which the aforementioned Carlowitz was the loudest
voice, taught that at a certain stage of
development the internal energy of the vortex would become so great that
generation-radiation equilibrium could
not be maintained. This would, of course, result in an explosion; the nature
and consequences of which this Car-

lowitz was wont to dwell upon in ghoulishly mathematical glee. Neither school,
however, could prove its point-or,
rather, each school proved its point, by means of unimpeachable
mathematics-and each hated and derided the other,
loudly and heatedly.

And now Cloud, as he studied through his almost opaque defenses that
indescribably ravening fireball, that
esuriently rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the
deepest pit of the hottest hell of
mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn't seem
possible that anything could get any worse
than that without exploding. And such an explosion, he felt sure, would
certainly blow everything for miles around
into the smitheriest kind of smithereens.

The activity of the vortex stayed high" way too high. The tiny control room of
the Hitter grew hotter and hotter. His
skin burned and his eyes ached worse. He touched a communicator stud and
spoke.

"Phil? Better get me three more bombs. Like these" except up around. . . ."

"I don't check you. If you do that, it's apt to drop to a minimum and stay
there," the Lensman reminded him. "It's
completely unpredictable, you know."

"It may, at that . . . so I'll have to forget the five per cent margin and hit
on the nose or not at all. Order me up two
more, then-one at half of what I've got here, the other double it"" and he
reeled off the figures for the charge and
the casing of the explosive. "You might break out a jar of burn-dressing, too.
Some fairly hot stuff is leaking
through."

"We'll do that. Come down, fast!"

Cloud landed. He stripped to the skin and the observer smeared his every
square inch of epidermis with the thick"
gooey stuff that was not only a highly efficient screen against radiation, but
also a sovereign remedy for new
radiation burns. He exchanged his goggles for a thicker, darker, heavier pair.
The two bombs arrived and were
substituted for two of the original load.

"I thought of something while I was up there," Cloud informed the observers
then. "Twenty kilograms of duodec is
nobody's firecracker, but it may be the !east of what's going to go off. Have
you got any idea of what's going to
become of the energy inside that vortex when I blow it out?"

"Can't say that I have." The Lensman frowned in thought. "No data."

"Neither have I. But I'd say that you better go back to the new station-the
one you were going to move to if it kept
on getting worse."

"But the instruments . . :' the Lensman was thinking" not of the instruments
themselves, which were valueless in
comparison with life, but of the records those instruments would make. Those
records were priceless.

"I'll have everything on the tapes in the flitter," Cloud reminded.

"But suppose. . . ."

"That the flitter stops one, too--or doesn't stop it, rather? In that case,
your back station won't be there, either, so it
won't make any difference." How mistaken Cloud was!

 "QX," the Chief decided. "We'll leave when you do just in case."

Again in air, Cloud found that the activity, while still high, was not too
high" but that it was fluctuating too rapidly.
He could not get even five seconds of trustworthy prediction, to say nothing
of ten. So he waited, as close as he
dared remain to that horrible center of disintegration.

The flitter hung poised in air, motionless, upon softly hissing under-jets.
Cloud knew to a fraction his height above
the ground. He knew to a fraction his distance from the vortex. He knew with
equal certainty the density of the
atmosphere and the exact velocity and direction of the wind. Hence, since he
could also read closely enough the
momentary variations in the cyclonic storms within the crater, he could
compute very easily the course and
velocity necessary to land the bomb in the exact center of the vortex at any
given instant of time. The hard part the
thing that no one had as yet succeeded in doing-was to predict, for a time far
enough ahead to be of any use" a
usably close approximation to the vortex's quantitative activity. For, as has
been said, he had to over-blast, rather
than under-, if he could not hit it "on the nose:" to underblast would scatter
it all over the state.

Therefore Cloud concentrated upon the dials and gauges before him;
concentrated with every fiber of his being and
every cell of his brain.

Suddenly, almost imperceptibly, the Sigma curve gave signs of flattening out.
In that instant Cloud's mind pounced.
Simultaneous equations: nine of them, involving nine unknowns. An integration
in four dimensions. No
matter-Cloud did not solve them laboriously, one factor at a time. Without
knowing how he had arrived at it, he
knew the answer; just as the Posenian or the Rigellian is able to perceive
every separate component particle of an
opaque, three-dimensional solid, but without being able to explain to anyone
how his sense of perception works. It
just is, that's all.

Anyway, by virtue of whatever sense or ability it is which makes a
mathematical prodigy what he is, Cloud knew
that in exactly eight and three-tenth seconds from that observed instant the
activity of the vortex would be
slightly-but not too far-under the coefficient of his heaviest bomb. Another
flick of his mental trigger and he knew
the exact velocity he would require. His hand swept over the studs, his right
foot tramped down, hard, upon the
firing lever; and, even as the quivering flitter shot forward under eight
Tellurian gravities of acceleration" he knew
to the thousandth of a second how long he would have to hold that acceleration
to attain that velocity. While not
really long-in seconds-it was much too long for comfort. It took him much
closer to the vortex than he wanted to
be; in fact, it took him right out over the crater itself.

But he stuck to the calculated course, and at the precisely correct instant he
cut his drive and released his largest
bomb. Then, so rapidly that it was one blur of speed, he again kicked on his
eight G's of drive and started to whirl
around as only a speedster or a flitter can whirl. Practically unconscious
from the terrific resultant of the linear
and angular accelerations, he ejected the two smaller bombs. He did not care
particularly where they lit, just so
they didn't light in the crater or near the observatory, and he had already
made certain of that. Then" without waiting
even to finish the whirl or to straighten her out in level flight, Cloud's
still-flying hand darted toward the switch
whose closing would energize the Bergenholm and make the flitter inertialess.

 Too late. Hell was out for noon, with the little speedster still inert. Cloud
had moved fast. too; trained mind and
trained body had been working at top speed and in perfect coordination. There
just simply hadn't been enough time.
If he could have got what he wanted, ten full seconds, or even nine, be could
have made it, But. . . .

In spite of what happened, Cloud defended his action, then and thereafter.
Damn it all, he had to take the
eight-pointthree second reading! Another tenth of a second and his bomb
wouldn't have fitted-he didn't have the
five per cent leeway he wanted, remember. And no, he couldn't wait for another
match, either. His screens were
leaking like sieves, and if he had waited for another chance they would have
picked him up fried to a greasy cinder
in his own lard!

The bomb sped truly and struck the target in direct central impact, exactly as
scheduled. It penetrated perfectly. The
neocarballoy casing lasted just long enough that frightful charge of duodec
exploded, if not exactly at the center of
the vortex, at least near enough to the center to do the work. In other words,
Cloud's figuring had been close-very
close. But the time had been altogether too short.

The flitter was not even out of the crater when the bomb went off. And not
only the bomb. For Cloud's vague fore-

bodings were materialized, and more; the staggeringly immense energy of the
vortex merged with that of the de-

tonating duodec to form an utterly incomprehensible whole.

In part the hellish flood of boiling lava in that devil's cauldron was beaten
downward into a bowl by the sheer"
stupendous force of the blow; in part it was hurled abroad in masses, in gouts
and streamers. And the raging wind of
the explosion's front seized the fragments and tore and worried them to bits,
hurling them still faster along their
paths of violence. And air, so densely compressed as to be to all intents and
purposes a solid" smote the walls of
the crater. Smote them so that they crumbled, crushed outward through the
hard-packed ground, broke up into
jaggedly irregular blocks which hurtled" screamingly, away through the
atmosphere.

Also the concussion wave, or the explosion front, or flying fragments, or
something, struck the two loose bombs,
so that they too exploded and added their contribution to the already
stupendous concentration of force. They were
not close enough to the flitter to wreck it of themselves" but they were close
enough so that they didn't do her or
her pilot-a bit of good.

The first terrific wave buffeted the flitter while Cloud's right hand was in
the air, shooting across the panel to turn
on the Berg. The impact jerked the arm downward and sidewise, both bones of
the forearm snapping as it struck the
ledge. The second one, an instant later, broke his left leg. Then the debris
began to arrive.

Chunks of solid or semi-molten rock slammed against the hull, knocking off
wings and control-surfaces. Gobs of
viscous slag slapped it liquidly, freezing into and clogging up jets and
orifices. The little ship was hurled hither and
yon, in the grip of forces she could no more resist than can the floating leaf
resist the waters of a cataract. And
Cloud's brain was as addled as an egg by the vicious concussions which were
hitting him from so many different
directions and so nearly all at once. Nevertheless with his one arm and his
one leg and the few cells of his brain
that were still at work, the physicist was still in the fight.

By sheer force of will and nerve he forced his left hand across the -gyrating
key-bank to the Bergenholm switch.
He snapped it, and in the instant of its closing a vast, calm peace descended,
blanket-like. For, fortunately, the Berg
still worked; the flitter and al! her contents and appurtenances were
inertialess. Nothing material could buffet her
or hurt her now; she would waft effortlessly away from a feather's lightest
possible touch.

Cloud wanted to faint then, but he didn't-quite. Instead" foggily, he tried to
look back at the crater. Nine-tenths of
his visiplates were out of commission, but he finally got a view. Good-it was
out. He wasn't surprised; he had been
quite confident that it would be. It wasn't scattered around, either. It
couldn't be, for his only possibility of
smearing the shot was on the upper side, not the lower.

His next effort was to locate the secondary observatory, where he had to land,
and in that too he was successful. He
had enough intelligence left to realize that, with practically all of his jets
clogged and his wings and tail shot off, he
couldn't land his little vessel inert. Therefore he would have to land her
free.

And by dint of light and extremely unorthodox use of what jets he had left in
usable shape he did land her free"
almost within the limits of the observatory's field; and having landed, he
inerted her.

But, as has been intimated, his brain was not working so well; he had held his
ship inertialess quite a few seconds
longer than he thought" and he did not even think of the buffetings she had
taken. As a result of these things, how-

ever, her intrinsic velocity did not match, anywhere near exactly, that of the
ground upon which she lay. Thus, when
Cloud cut his Bergenholm, restoring thereby to the flitter the absolute
velocity and inertia she had had before
going free, there resulted a distinctly anti-climactic crash.

There was a last terrific bump as the motionless vessel collided with the
equally motionless ground; and "Storm"
Cloud, vortex blaster, went out like the proverbial light.

Help came, of course; and on the double. The pilot was unconscious and the
flitter's door could not be opened
from the outside, but those were not insuperable obstacles. A plate, already
loose, was sheared away; the pilot was
carefully lifted out of his prison and rushed to Base Hospital in the
"meat-can" already in attendance.

And later, in a private office of that hospital" the greyclad Chief of the
Atomic Research Laboratory sat and
waited-but not patiently.

"How is he, Lacy?" he demanded, as the Surgeon-General entered the room. "He's
going to live" isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, Phil-definitely yes," Lacy replied, briskly. "He has a good
skeleton, very good indeed. The burns are
superficial and will yield quite readily to treatment. The deeper, delayed
effects of the radiation to which he was
exposed can be neutralized entirely effectively. Thus he will not need even a
Phillip's treatment for the
replacement of damaged parts" except possibly for a few torn muscles and so
on."

"But he was smashed up pretty badly, wasn't he? I know that he had a broken
arm and a broken leg, at least." "Simple
fractures only-entirely negligible." Lady waved aside with an airy gesture
such small ills as broken bones. "He'll be
out in a few weeks."

"How soon can I see him?" the Lensman-physicist asked. "There are some
important things to take up with him, and
I've got a personal message for him that I must give him as soon as possible."

Lacy pursed his lips. Then:

"You may see him now," be decided. "He is conscious, and strong enough. Not
too long, though, Phil-fifteen
minutes at most."

"QX, and thanks," and a nurse led the visiting Lensman to Cloud's bedside.

"Hi, Stupe!" he boomed, cheerfully. "Stupe' being short for stupendous, not
'stupid."'

"Hi, Chief. Glad to see somebody. Sit down."

"You're the most-wanted man in the Galaxy," the visitor informed the invalid,
"not excepting even Kimball Kin-

nison. Look at this spool of tape, and it's only the first one. I brought it
along for you to read at your leisure. As
soon as any planet finds out that we've got a sure-enough vortex blower-outer,
an expert who can really call his
shots-and the news travels mighty fast-that planet sends in a double urgent,
Class A-Prime demand for first call
upon your services.

"Sirius IV got in first by a whisker, it seems, but Aldebaran II was so close
a second that it was a photo finish" and
all the channels have been jammed ever since. Canopus, Vega, Rigel, Spica.
They all want you. Everybody from
Alsakan to Vandemar and back. We told them right off that we would not receive
personal delegations-we had to
almost throw a couple of pink-haired Chickladorians out bodily to make them
believe that we meant it-and that the
age and condition of the vortex involved, not priority or requisition, would
govern, QX?"

"Absolutely," Cloud agreed. "That's the only way it could be, I should think."

"So forget about this psychic trauma. . , . No, I don't mean that," the
Lensman corrected himself hastily. "You know
what I mean. The will to live is the most important factor in any man's
recovery, and too many worlds need you too
badly to have you quit now. Not?"

"I suppose so," Cloud acquiesced, but somberly. "I'll get out of here in short
order. And I'll keep on pecking away
until one of those vortices finishes what this one started."

"You'll die of old age then, son"" the Lensman assured him. "We got full
data-all the information we need. We know
exactly what to do to your screens. Next time nothing will come through except
light, and only as much of that as
you feel like admitting. You can wait as close to a vortex as you please, for
as long as you please; until you get
exactly the activity and time-interval that you want. You will be just as
comfortable and just as safe as though you
were home in bed."

"Sure of that?"

"Absolutely-or at least,   as sure as we can be of anything that hasn't happened
yet. But I see that your   guardian angel
here is eyeing her clock   somewhat pointedly, so I'd better be doing a flit
before they toss me down   a shaft. Clear
ether, Storm!"
"Clear ether, Chief!"

And that is how "Storm" Cloud, atomic physicist, became the most
narrowly-specialized specialist in all the annals
of science: how he became "Storm" Cloud, Vortex Blaster-the Galaxy's only
vortex blaster.
                            TEDRIC

 Aided by Llosir, his strange, new god, Tedric enters into battle with
Sarpedion, the sacrifice-demanding god
of Lomarr in this story of science and swash-buckling adventure.

"The critical point in time of mankind's whole existence is there-RIGHT
THERE!" Prime Physicist Skandos
slashed his red pencil across the black trace of the chronoviagram. "WHY must
man be so stupid? Anyone with
three brain cells working should know that for the strength of an individual
he should be fed; not bled; that
for the strength of a race its virgins should be bred, not sacrificed to
propitiate figmental deities. And it would
be so easy to straighten things out-nowhere in all reachable time does any
other one man occupy such a
tremendously-such a uniquelykeystone position!"

"Easy, yes," his assistant Furmin agreed. "It is a shame to let Tedric die
with not one of his tremendous poten-

tialities realized. It would be easy and simple to have him discover
carburization and the necessary
techniques of heat-treating. That freak meteorite need not lie there unsmelted
for another seventy years.
However, simple carburization was not actually discovered until two
generations later, by another smith in
another nation; and you know, Skandos, that there can be no such thing as a
minor interference with the
physical events of the past. Any such, however small-seeming, is bound to be
castastrophically major."

"I know that." Skandos scowled blackly. "We don't know enough about time. We
don't know what would hap-

pen. We have known how to do it for a hundred years, but have been afraid to
act because in all that time no
progress whatever has been made on the theory."

He paused, then went on savagely: "But which is better, to have our entire
time-track snapped painlessly out
of existence-if the extremists are right-or to sit helplessly on our fat rumps
wringing our hands while we watch
civilization build up to its own total destruction by lithiumtritiide bombs?
Look at the slope of that
curve-ultimate catastrophe is only one hundred eighty seven years away!"

"But the Council would not permit it. Nor would the School."

"I know that, too. That is why I am not going to ask them. Instead, I am
asking you. We two know more of time
than any others. Over the years I have found your judgment good. With your
approval I will act now. Without
it" we will continue our futile testing-number eight hundred eleven is running
now, I believe?-and our aimless
drifting."

"You are throwing the entire weight of such a decision on me?"

"In one sense, yes. In another" only half, since I have already decided."
 "Go ahead." "So be it."

"Tedric, awaken!"

The Lomarrian ironmaster woke up; not gradually and partially, like one of our
soft modern urbanites" but in-

stantaneously and completely, as does the mountain wildcat. At one instant he
lay, completely relaxed, sound
asleep; at the next he had sprung out of bed, seized his sword and leaped
halfway across the room. Head thrown
back, hard blue eyes keenly alert, sword-arm rock-steady he stood there,
poised and ready. Beautifully poised,
upon the balls of both feet; supremely ready to throw into action every inch
of his six-feet-four, every pound of his
two hundred-plus of hard meat, gristle, and bone. So standing, the smith
stared motionlessly at the shimmering,
almost invisible thing hanging motionless in the air of his room, and at its
equally tenuous occupant.

"I approve of you, Tedric." The thing-apparition whatever it was-did not
speak, and the Lomarrian did not hear; the
words formed themselves in the innermost depths of his brain. "While you
perhaps are a little frightened, you are
and have been completely in control. Any other man of your nation-yes, of your
world-would have been scared out
of what few wits he has."

"You are not one of ours, Lord," Tedric went to one knee. He knew, of course,
that gods and devils existed; and,
while this was the first time that a god had sought him out personally, he had
heard of such happenings al! his life.
Since the god hadn't killed him instantly, he probably didn't intend to-right
away, at least. Hence: "No god of
Lomarr approves of me. Also, our gods are solid and heavy. What do you want of
me, strange god?"

"I'm not a god. If you could get through this grill, you could cut off my head
with your sword and I would die." "Of
course. So would Sar . . ." Tedric broke off in the middle of the word.

"I see. It is dangerous to talk?"

"Very. Even though a man is alone, the gods and hence the priests who serve
them have power to hear. Then the man
lies on the green rock and loses his brain, liver, and heart."

"You will not be overheard. I have power enough to see to that."

Tedric remained silent.

"I understand your doubt. Think, then; that will do just as well. What is it
that you are trying to do?"

"I wonder how I can hear when there is no sound, but men cannot understand the
powers of gods. I am trying to find
or make a metal that is very hard, but not brittle. Copper is no good, I
cannot harden it enough. My soft irons are
too soft, my hard irons are too brittle; my in-betweens and the melts to which
I add various flavorings have all been
either too soft or too brittle, or both."

"I gathered that such was your problem. Your wrought iron is beautiful stuff;
so is your white cast iron; and you
would not, ordinarily, in your lifetime, come to know anything of either
carburization or high-alloy steel, to say
nothing of both. I know exactly what you want, and I can show you exactly how
to make it."

"You can, Lord?" The smith's eyes flamed. "And you will?"

"That is why I have come to you, but whether or not I will teach you depends
on certain matters which I have not
been able entirely to clarify. What do you want it for that is, what,
basically, is your aim?"

"Our greatest god, Sarpedion, is wrong and I intend to kill him." Tedric's
eyes flamed more savagely, his terrifically
muscled body tensed.

"Wrong? In what way?"

"In every way!" In the intensity of his emotion the smith spoke aloud. "What
good is a god who only kills and
injures? What a nation needs, Lord, is people-people working together and not
afraid. How can we of Lomarr ever
attain comfort and happiness if more die each year than are born? We are too
few. All of us-except the priests, of
course-must work unendingly to obtain only the necessities of life."

"This bears out my findings. If you make high-alloy steel, exactly what will
you do with it?"

"If you give me the god-metal, Lord, I will make of it a sword and armor-a
sword sharp enough and strong enough
to cut through copper or iron without damage; armor strong enough so that
swords of copper or iron cannot cut
through it. They must be so because I will have to cut my way alone through a
throng of armed and armored mer-

cenaries and priests."

"Alone? Why?"

"Because I cannot call in help; cannot let anyone know my goal. Any such would
lie on the green stone very soon.
They suspect me; perhaps they know. I am, however, the best smith in all
Lomarr, hence they have slain me not.
Nor will they, until I have found what I seek. Nor then, if by the favor of
the gods-or by your favor, Lord-the metal
be good enough."

"It will be, but there's a lot more to fighting a platoon of soldiers than
armor and a sword, my optimistic young
savage."

"That the metal be of proof is all I ask, Lord," the smith insisted,
stubbornly. "The rest of it lies in my care."
"So be it. And then?"

"Sarpedion's image, as you must already know, is made of stone, wood, copper,
and gold-besides the jewels, of
course. I take his brain, liver, and heart, flood them with oil, and sacrifice
them. . . ."

"Just a Minute! Sarpedion is not alive and never has been; does not, as a
matter of fact, exist. You just said,
yourself, that his image was made of stone and copper and. . . ."

"Don't be silly, Lord. Or art testing me? Gods are spirits; bound to their
images, and in a weaker way to their
priests, by linkages of spirit force. Life force, it could be called. When
those links are broken, by fire and
sacrifice, the god may not exactly die, but he can do no more of harm until
his priests have made a new image and
spent much time and effort in building up new linkages. One point now settled
was bothering me; what god to
sacrifice him to. I'll make an image for you to inhabit, Lord, and sacrifice
him to you, my strange new god. You
will be my only god as long as I live. What is your name, Lord? I can't keep
on calling you 'strange god' forever."

"My name is Skandos."

"S . . . Sek ... That word rides ill on the tongue. With your permission,
Lord, I will call you Llosir."

" „ Call me anything you like, except a god. I am not a god.

"You are being ridiculous, Lord Llosir," Tedric chided. "What a man sees with
his eyes, hears with his ears-espe-

cially what a man hears without ears, as I hear now-he knows with certain
knowledge to be the truth. No mere man
could possibly do what you have done, to say naught of what you are about to
do."

"Perhaps not an ordinary man of your . . ." Skandos almost said "time," but
caught himself ". . . of your culture, but I
am ordinary enough and moral enough in my own."

"Well, that could be said of all gods, everywhere." The smith's mien was quiet
and unperturbed; his thought was
loaded to saturation with unshakable conviction.

Skandos gave up. He could argue for a week, he knew" without making any
impression whatever upon what the
stubborn, hard-headed Tedric knew so unalterably to be the truth.

"But just one thing, Lord," Tedric went on with scarcely a break. "Have I made
it clear that I intend to stop human
sacrifice? That there is to be no more of it, even to you? We will offer you
anything else-anything else-but not
even your refusal to give me the god-metal will change my stand on that."

"Good! See to it that nothing ever does change it. As to offerings or
sacrifices, there are to be none, of any kind. I
do not need, I do not want" I will not have any such. That is final. Act
accordingly.

"Yes, Lord. Sarpedion is a great and powerful god, but art sure that his
sacrifice alone will establish linkages strong
enough to last for all time?"

Skandos almost started to argue again, but checked himself. After all, the
proposed sacrifice was necessary for
Tedric and his race, and it would do no harm.

"Sarpedion will be enough. And as for the image, that isn't necessary,
either."

"Art wrong, Lord. Without image and temple, everyone would think you a small,
weak god, which thought can never
be. Besides, the image might make it easier for me to call on you in time of
need."

"You can't call me. Even if I could receive your call, which is very doubtful,
I wouldn't answer it. If you ever see me
or hear from me again, it will be because I wish it, not you." Skandos
intended this for a clincher, but it didn't turn
out that way."

"Wonderful!" Tedric exclaimed. "All gods act that way, in spite of what
they-through their priests-say. I am
overwhelmingly glad that you are being honest with me. Hast found me worthy of
the god-metal, Lord Llosir?"

"Yes, so let's get at it. Take that biggest chunk of
`metal-which-fell-from-the-sky'-you'll find it's about twice your
weight. . . ."

"But I have never been able to work that particular piece of metal, Lord."

"I'm not surprised. Ordinary meteorites are nickel-iron, but this one carries
two additional and highly unusual ele-

ments, tungsten and vanadium, which are necessary for our purpose. To melt it
you'll have to run your fires a lot
hotter. You'll also have to have a carburizing pot and willow charcoal and
metallurgical coke and several other
things. We'll go into details later. That green stone from which altars are
made-you can secure some of it?"

"Any amount of it."

"Of it take your full weight. And of the black ore of which you have
occasionally used a little, one-fourth of your
weight. . . ."

The instructions went on, from ore to finished product in complete detail, and
at its end:

"If you follow these directions carefully you will have a
high-alloy-steel-chrome-nickel-vanadium-molybdenum-

tungsten steel, to be exact-case-hardened and heat treated; exactly what you
need. Can you remember them all?"
"I can, Lord. Never have I dared write anything down" so my memory is good.
Every quantity you have given me,
every temperature and step and process and item; they are all completely in
mind."

"I go" then. Good-bye."

"I thank you, Lord Llosir. Good-bye." The Lomarrian bowed his head, and when
he straightened up his incom-

prehensible visitor was gone.

Tedric went back to bed; and" strangely enough, was almost instantly asleep.
And in the morning after his cus-

tomary huge breakfast of meat and bread and milk, he went to his sprawling
establishment, which has no counter-

part in modern industry" and called his foreman and his men together before
they began the day's work.

"A strange god named Llosir came to me in the night and showed me how to make
better iron," he told them in
perfectly matter-of-fact fashion, "so stop whatever you're doing and tear the
whole top off of the big furnace. I'll
tell you exactly bow to rebuild it."

The program as outlined by Skandos went along without a hitch until the heat
from the rebuilt furnace began to
come blisteringly through the crude shields. Then even the foreman, faithful
as he was, protested against such
unheard-of temperatures and techniques.

"It must be that way!" Tedric insisted. "Run more rods across, from there to
there, to hold more hides and blankets.
You four men fetch water. Throw it over the hides and blankets and him who
turns the blower. Take shorter tricks
in the hot places-here, I'll man the blower myself until the heat wanes
somewhat."

He bent his mighty back to the crank, but even in that raging inferno of heat
he kept on talking.

"Knowst my iron sword, the one I wear" with rubies in the hilt?" he asked the
foreman. That worthy did, with
longing; to buy it would take six months of a foreman's pay. "This furnace
must stay this hot all day and all of
tonight, and there are other things as bad. But 'twill not take long. Ten days
should see the end of it"-,actually seven
days was the schedule, but Tedric did not want the priests to know that "but
for those ten days matters must go
exactly as I say. Work with me until this iron is made and I give you that
sword. And of all the others who shirk not,
each will be given an iron sword-this in addition to your regular pay. Dost
like the bargain?"

They liked it.

 Then, during the hours of lull, in which there was nothing much to do except
keep the furious fires fed, Tedric
worked upon the image of his god. While the Lomarrian was neither a Phidias
nor a Praxiteles, he was one of the
finest craftsmen of his age. He had not, however, had a really good look at
Skandos' face. Thus the head of the
image, although it was a remarkably good piece of sculpture, looked more like
that of Tedric's foreman than like
that of the real Skandos. And with the head, any resemblance at all to Skandos
ceased. The rest of the real Skandos
was altogether too small and too pitifully weak to be acceptable as
representative of any Lomarrian's god; hence
the torso and limbs of the gleaming copper statue were wider, thicker, longer,
bigger, and even more fantastically
muscled than were Tedric's own. Also, the figure was hollow; filled with sand
throughout except for an intricately
carved grey sandstone brain and red-painted hardwood liver and heart.

"They come, master, to the number of eleven," his lookout boy came running
with news at mid-afternoon of the
seventh day. "One priest in copper, ten Tarkians in iron, a five each of
bowmen and spearmen."

Tedric did not have to tell the boy where to go or what to do or to hurry
about it; as both ran for the ironmaster's
armor the youngster was two steps in the lead. It was evident, too, that he
had served as squire before, and fre-

quently; for in seconds the erstwhile half-naked blacksmith was fully clothed
in iron.

Thus it was an armored knight, leaning negligently upon a fifteen-pound
forging hammer, who waited outside the
shop's door and watched his eleven visitors approach.

The banner was that of a priest of the third rank. Good-they weren't worried
enough about him yet, then" to send a
big one. And only ten mercenaries-small, short, bandy-legged men of Tark-good
enough fighters for their weight,
but they didn't weigh much. This wouldn't be too bad.

The group came up to within a few paces and stopped. "Art in armor, smith?"
the discomfited priest demanded.
"Why?"

"Why not? 'Tis my habit to greet guests in apparel of their own choosing."

There was a brief silence, then:

"To what do I owe the honor of this visit, priest?" he asked, only half
sarcastically. "I paid, as I have always paid" the
fraction due."

"True. 'Tis not about a fraction I come. It is noised that a strange god
appeared to you, spoke to you, instructed you
in your art; that you are making an image of him."

"I made no secret of any of these things. I hide nothing from the great god or
his minions, nor ever have. I have
nothing to hide."

"Perhaps. Such conduct is very unseemly-decidedly ungodlike. He should not
have appeared to you, but to one of
us, and in the temple."

"It is un-Sarpedionlike, certainly-all that Sarpedion has ever done for me is
let me alone, and I have paid heavily for
that."

"What bargain did you make with this Llosir? What was the price?"

"No bargain was made. I thought it strange, but who am I an ordinary man, to
try to understand the actions or the
reasonings of a god? There will be a price, I suppose. Whatever it is, I will
pay it gladly."

"You will pay, rest assured; not to this Llosir, but to great Sarpedion. I
command you to destroy that image
forthwith."

"You do? Why? Since when has it been against the law to have a personal god?
Most families of Lomarr have them."

"Not like yours. Sarpedion does not permit your Llosir to exist."

"Sarpedion has nothing to say about it. Llosir already exists. Is the great
god so weak, so afraid, so unable to defend
himself against a one-man stranger that he. . . ."

"Take care, smith-silence! That is rankest blasphemy!" "Perhaps; but I have
blasphemed before and Sarpedion -hasn't
killed me yet. Nor will he, methinks; at least until his priests have
collected his fraction of the finest iron ever
forged and which I only can make."

"Oh, yes, the new iron. Tell me exactly how it is made." "You know better than
to ask that question, priest. That
secret will be known only to me and my god."

"We have equipment and tools designed specifically for getting information out
of such as you. Seize him, men"
and smash that image!"

"HOLD!" Tedric roared, in such a voice that not a man moved. "If anybody takes
one forward step, priest, or makes
one move toward spear or arrow, your brains will spatter the walls across the
street. Can your copper helmet stop
this hammer? Can your girl-muscled, fat-bellied priest's body move fast enough
to dodge my blow? And most or all
of those runty little slavelings behind you," waving his left arm
contemptuously at the group, "will also die before
they cut me down. And if I die now, of what worth is Sarpedion's fraction of a
metal that will never be made? Think
well, priest!"

Sarpedion's agent studied the truculent" glaring iron, master for a long two
minutes. Then, deciding that the
proposed victim could not be taken alive, he led his crew back the way they
had come, trailing fiery threats. And
Tedric, going back into his shop, was thoroughly aware that those threats were
not idle. So far, he hadn't taken too
much risk, but the next visit would be different-very different. He was
exceedingly glad that none of his men knew
that the pots they were firing so fiercely were in fact filled only with coke
and willow charcoal; that armor and
sword and shield and axe and hammer were at that moment getting their final
heat treatment in a bath of oil" but
little hotter than boiling water, in the sanctum to which he retired, always
alone, to perform the incantations which
his men-and hence the priests of Sarpedion-believed as necessary as any other
part of the metallurgical process.

That evening he selected a smooth" fine-grained stone and whetted the already
almost perfect cutting edge of his
new sword; an edge which in cross-section was rather more like an extremely
sharp cold-chisel than a
hollow-ground razor. He fitted the two-hand grip meticulously with worked and
tempered rawhide, thrilling again
and again as each touch of an educated and talented finger-tip told him over
and over that here was some thing
brand new in metal a real god-metal.

A piece of flat wrought iron" about three-sixteenths by five inches and about
a foot long" already lay on a smooth
and heavy hardwood block. He tapped it sharply with the sword's edge. The
blade rang like a bell; the iron showed a
bright new scar; that was all. Then a moderately heavy two-handed blow, about
as hard as he had ever dared swing an
iron sword. Still no damage. Then" heart in mouth" he gave the god-metal its
final test; struck with everything he
had" from heels and toes to fingertips. He had never struck such a blow
before, except possibly with a war-axe or a
sledge. There was a ringing clang" two sundered slabs of iron flew to opposite
ends of the room, the atrocious
blade went on, half an inch deep into solid oak. He wrenched the weapon free
and stared at the unmarred edge.
UNMARRED! For an instant Tedric felt as though he were about to collapse; but
sheerest joy does not disable.

There was nothing left to do except make the links" hinge-pins, and so on for
his armor, which did not take long.
Hence, when the minions of Sarpedion next appeared" armored this time in the
heaviest and best iron they had and
all set to overwhelm him by sheer weight of numbers" he was completely ready.
Nor was there palaver or parley.
The attackers opened the door" saw the smith" and rushed.

But Tedric, although in plain sight, had chosen the battleground with care. He
was in a corner. At his back a solid.
walled stairway ran up to the second floor. On his right the wall was solid
for twenty feet. On his left, beyond the
stairwell, the wall was equally solid for twice as far. They would have to
come after him, and as he retreated, they
would be fighting their way up, and not more than two at a time.

This first swing" horizontal and neck-high, was fully as fierce-driven as the
one that had cloven the test piece and
almost ruined his testing-block. The god-metal blade scarcely slowed as it
went through armor and flesh and bone.
In fact, the helmet and the head within it remained in place upon the
shoulders for what seemed like seconds before
the body toppled and the arteries spurted crimson jets.
He didn't have to hit so bard, then. Good. Nobody could last very long, the
way he had started out. Wherefore the
next blow, a vertical chop, merely split a man to the chin instead of to the
navel; and the third, a back-hand return"
didn't quite cut the victim's head clear off.

And the blows his steel was taking" aimed at head or neck or shoulder, were
doing no harm at all. In fact, except for
the noise, they scarcely bothered him. He had been designing and building
armor for five years, and this was his
masterpiece. The helmet was heavily padded; the shoulders twice as much so. He
bad sacrificed some mobility he
could not turn his head very far in either direction-but the jointing was such
that the force of any blow on the
helmet, from whatever direction coming, was taken by his tremendously capable
shoulders.

The weapons of the mercenaries could not dent" could not even nick, that
case-hardened high-alloy steel. Swords
bent, broke, twisted; hammers and axes bounced harmlessly off. Nevertheless
the attackers pressed forward; and,
even though each blow of his devastating sword took a life, Tedric was forced
backward up the stairs, step by step.

Then there came about that for which he had been waiting. A copper-clad priest
appeared behind the last rank of
mercenaries, staring upward at something behind the ironmaster, beckoning
frantically. The priest had split his
forces; had sent part of them by another way to the second floor to trap him
between two groups; had come in
close to see the trap sprung. This was it.

Taking a couple of quick, upward, backward steps" he launched himself into the
air with all the power of his legs.
And when two hundred and thirty pounds of man, dressed in eighty or ninety or
a hundred pounds of steel, leaps
from a height of eight or ten feet upon a group of other men, those other men
go down.

Righting himself quickly. Tedric sprang toward the priest and swung; swung
with all the momentum of his mass and
speed and all the power of his giant frame; swung as though he were
concentrating into the blow all his hatred of
Sarpedion and everything for which Sarpedion stood-which in fact he was.

And what such a saber-scimitar, so driven" did to thin" showy copper armor and
to the human flesh beneath it, is
simply nothing to dwell upon here.

"HOLD!" he roared at the mercenaries, who hadn't quite decided whether or not
to resume the attack" and they held.

"Bu . . . bub . . . but you're dead!" the non-com stuttered. "You must be-the
great Sarpedion would. . . ."

"A right lively corpse II" Tedric snarled. "Your Sarpedion, false god and
coward" drinker of blood and slayer of the
helpless, is weak, puny, and futile beside my Llosir. Hence" under Llosir's
shield and at Llosir's direction, I shall
this day kill your foul and depraved god; shall send him back to the grisly
hell from whence he came.

"Nor do I ask you to fight for me. Nor would I so allow; for I trust you not,
though you swore by all your gods. Do
you fight for pleasure or for pay?"

A growl was the only answer" but that was answer enough.

"He of Sarpedion who paid your wages lies there dead. All others of his ilk
will die ere this day's sunset. Be
advised, therefore; fight no more until you know who pays. Wouldst any more of
you be split like whitefish ere I
go? Time runneth short" but I would stay and oblige if pressed." He was not
pressed.

Tedric whirled and strode away. Should he get his horse" or not? No. He had
never ridden mighty Dreegor into
danger wearing armor less capable than his own" and he wouldn't begin now.

The Temple of Sarpedion was a tall" narrow building" with a far-flung outside
staircase leading up to the pent-

house-like excrescence in which the green altar of sacrifice was.

Tedric reached the foot of that staircase and grimly" doggedly" cut his way up
it. It was hard work" and he did not
want to wear himself out too soon. He might need a lot" and suddenly, later
on" and it would be a good idea to have
something in reserve.

As he mounted higher and higher, however, the opposition became less and less
instead of greater and greater, as
he had expected. Priests were no longer there-he hadn't seen one for five
minutes. And in the penthouse itself"
instead of the solid phalanx of opposition he had known would bar his way,
there were only half a dozen
mercenaries, who promptly turned tail and ran.

"The way is clear! Hasten!" Tedric shouted, and his youthful squire rushed up
the ramp with his axe and hammer.

 And with those ultra-bard, ultra-tough implements Tedric mauled and chopped
the image of the god.

Devann, Sarpedion's high priest, was desperate. He believed thoroughly in his
god. Equally thoroughly, however" he
believed in the actuality and in the power of Tedric's new god. He had to" for
the miracle be had performed spoke
for itself.

While Sarpedion had not appeared personally in Devann's lifetime, he had so
appeared many times in the past; and
by a sufficiently attractive sacrifice be could be persuaded to appear again,
particularly since this appearance would
be in self-defense.

No slave, or any number of slaves, would do. Nor criminals. No ordinary virgin
of the common people. This sacri-
fice must be of supreme quality. The king himself? Too old and tough and
sinful. Ah ... the king's daughter....

 At the .thought the pit of his stomach turned cold. However, desperate
situations require desperate remedies. He
called in his henchmen and issued orders.

Thus it came about that a towering figure clad in flashing golden armor-the
king himself, with a few courtiers
scrambling far in his wake--dashed up the last few steps just as Tedric was
wrenching out Sarpedion's liver.

"Tedric, attend!" the monarch panted. "The priests have taken Rhoann and are
about to give her to Sarpedion!" "They
can't, sire. I've just killed Sarpedion, right here." "But they can! They've
taken the Holiest One from the Innermost
Shrine; have enshrined him on the Temple of Scheene. Slay me those traitor
priests before they slay Rhoann and
you may. . . ."

Tedric did not hear the rest of it, nor was his mind chiefly concerned with
the plight of the royal maid. It was
Sarpedion he was after. With a blistering oath he dropped the god's liver,
whirled around and leaped down the
stairway. It would do no good to kill only one Sarpedion. He would have to
kill them both. especially since the
Holiest One was the major image. The Holiest One . . . the Sarpedion never
before seen except by first-rank priests
. . . of course that would be the one they'd use in sacrificing a king's
daughter. He should have thought of that
himself, sooner, damn him for a fool! It probably wasn't too late yet, but the
sooner he got there, the better would
be his chance of winning.

Hence he ran, and" farther and farther behind him" came the king and the
courtiers.

Reaching the Temple of Scheene, be found to his immense relief that he would
not have to storm that heavily
manned rampart alone. A full company of the Royal Guard was already there.
Battle was in progress" but very little
headway was being made against the close-packed defenders of the god, and
Tedric knew why. A man fighting
against a god was licked before he started" and knew it. He'd have to build up
their morale.

But did he have time? Probably. They couldn't hurry things too much without
insulting Sarpedion, for the absolutely
necessary ceremonies took a lot of time. Anyway" he'd have to take the time,
or he'd never reach the god.

"Art Lord Tedric?" A burly captain disentangled himself from the front rank
and saluted.

"I'm Tedric, yes. Knewst I was coming?"

"Yes, Lord. Orders came by helio but now. You are in command; you speak with
the voice of King Phagon himself."

"Good. Call your men back thirty paces. Pick me out the twelve or fifteen
strongest, to lead.

"Men of the Royal Guard!" He raised his voice to a volume audible not only to
his own men, but also to all the
enemy. "Who is the most powerful swordsman among you? . . . Stand forward . .
. This armor I wear is not of iron,
but of god-metal, the metal of Llosir, my personal and all-powerful god. That
all here may see and know, I
command you to strike at me your shrewdest, most effective, most powerful
blow."

The soldier, after a couple of false starts" did manage a stroke of sorts.

"I said strike!" Tedric roared. "Think you ordinary iron can harm the personal
metal of a god? Strike where you
please, at head or neck or shoulder or guts, but strike as though you meant
it! Strike to kill! Shatter your sword!
STRIKE!"

Convulsively, the fellow struck, swinging for the neck, and at impact his
blade snapped into three pieces. A wave of
visible relief swept over the Guardsmen; one of dismay and shock over the
ranks of the foe.

"I implore pardon, Lord," the soldier begged, dropping to one knee.

"Up man! 'Tis nothing" and by my direct order. Now" men, I can tell you a
thing you would not have fully believed
before. I have just killed half of Sarpedion and he could not touch me. I am
about to kill his other half you will see
me do it. Come what may of god or devil you need not fear it" for I and all
with me fight under Llosir's shield. We
men will have to deal only with the flesh and blood of those runty mercenaries
of Tark."

He studied the enemy formation briefly. A solid phalanx of spearmen, with
shields latticed and braced; close-set
spears out-thrust and anchored. Strictly defensive; they hadn't made a move to
follow nor thrown a single javelin
when the king's forces withdrew. This wasn't going to be easy, but it was
possible.

"We will make the formation of the wedge, with me as point," he went on.
"Sergeant, you will bear my sword and
hammer. The rest of you will ram me into the center of that phalanx with
everything of driving force that in you
lies. I will make and maintain enough of opening. We'll go up that ramp like a
fast ship ploughing through waves;
Make wedge! Drive!"

Except for his armor of god-metal Tedric would have been crushed flat by the
impact of the flying wedge against
the soldiery packed so solidly on the stair. Several of the foe were so
crushed, but the new armor held. Tedric
could scarcely move his legs enough to take each step, his body was held as
though in a vice, but his giant arms
were free; and by dint of short, savage, punching jabs and prods and strokes
of his atrocious war-axe he made and
maintained the narrow opening upon which the success of the whole operation
depended. And into that
constantly-renewed opening the smith was driven-irresistibly driven by the
concerted and synchronized strength of
the strongest men of Lomarr's Royal Guard.

The result was not exactly like that of a diesel-powered snowplough, but it
was good enough. The mercenaries did
not flow over the sides of the ramp in two smooth waves. However, unable with
either weapons or bodies to break
through the slanting walls of iron formed by the smoothly-overlapping shields
of the Guardsmen, over the edges
they went, the living and the dead.

The dreadful wedge drove on.

As the Guardsmen neared the top of the stairway the mercenaries
disappeared-enough of that kind of thing was a
great plenty-and Tedric, after a quick glance around to see what the situation
was, seized his sword from the bearer.
Old Devann had his knife aloft, but in only the third of the five formal
passes. Two more to go.

"Kill those priests!" he snapped at the captain. "I'll take the three at the
altar-you fellows take the rest of them!"

When Tedric reached the green altar the sacrificial knife was again aloft; but
the same stroke that severed Devann's
upraised right arm severed also his head and his whole left shoulder. Two more
whistling strokes and a moment's
study of the scene of action assured him that there would be no more sacrifice
that day. The King's Archers had
followed close behind the Guards; the situation was well in hand.

He exchanged sword for axe and hammer, and furiously, viciously, went to work
on the god. He yanked out the
Holiest One's brain, liver, and heart; hammered and chopped the rest of him to
bits. That done, he turned to the
altar-he had not even glanced at it before.

Stretched taut, spread-eagle by wrists and ankles on the reeking,
blood-fouled, green horror-stone, the Lady
Rhoann lay; her yard-long, thick brown hair a wide-flung riot. Six priests had
not immobilized Rhoann of Lomarr
without a struggle. Her eyes went from shattered image to blood. covered
armored giant and back to image; her
face was a study of part-horrified, part-terrified, part-worshipful amazement.

He slashed the ropes, extended his mailed right hand. "Art hurt" Lady Rhoann?"

"No. Just stiff." Taking his hand, she sat up-a bit groggily-and flexed wrists
and ankles experimentally; while, behind
his visor, the man stared and stared.

Tall-wide but trim-superbly made-a true scion of the old blood-Llosir's liver,
what a woman! He had undressed her
mentally more than once, but his visionings had fallen short, far short, of
the entrancing, the magnificent truth.
What a woman! A virgin? Huh! Technically so, perhaps ... more shame to those
pusillanimous half-breed midgets
of the court ... if he had been born noble . . .
She slid off the altar and stood up, her eyes still dark with fantastically
mixed emotions. She threw both arms
around his armored neck and snuggled close against his steel, heedless that
breasts and flanks were being smeared
anew with half-dried blood.

He put an iron-clad arm around her, moved her arm enough to open his visor"
saw sea-green eyes, only a few inches
below his own, staring straight into his.

The man's quick passion flamed again. Gods of the ancients" what a woman!
There was a mate for a full-grown man!

"Thank the gods!" The king dashed up, panting, but in surprisingly good shape
for a man of forty-odd who had run so
far in gold armor. "Thanks be to all the gods you were in time!"

"Just barely" sire, but in time.""

"Name your reward" Lord Tedric. I will be glad to make you my son."

"Not that, sire, ever. If there's anything in this world or the next I don't
want to be, it's Lady Rohann's brother."
"Make him Lord of the Marches, father," the girl said, sharply. "Knowst what
the sages said."

"'Twould be better"" the monarch agreed. "Tedric of old Lomarr, I appoint you
Lord of the Upper, the Middle" and
the Lower Marches, the Highest of the High."

Tedric went to his knees. "I thank you" sire. Have I your backing in wiping
out what is left of Sarpedion's power?"

"If you will support the Throne with the strength I so clearly see is to be
yours, I will back you, with the full power
of the Throne, in anything you wish to do."

"Of course I will support you, sire, as long as I live and with al! that in me
lies. Since time was my blood has been
vassal to yours, and ever will be. My brain, my liver, and my heart are
yours."

"I thank you, Lord Tedric. Proceed."

Tedric snapped to his feet. His sword flashed high in air. His heavy voice
rang out.

"People of Lomarr, listen to a herald of the Throne! Sarpedion is dead; Llosir
lives. Human sacrifice-yes, all
sacrifice except the one I am about to perform, of Sarpedion himself to
Llosir-is done. That is and will be the law.
To that end there will be no more priests, but a priestess only. I speak as
herald for the Throne of Lomarr!"

He turned to the girl, still clinging to his side. "I had it fast in mind,
Lady Rhoann, to make you priestess, but..."

"Not I!" she interrupted, vigorously. "No priestess I, Lord Tedric!"

 "By Llosir's brain" girl, you're right-you've been wasted long enough!"
In another time-track another Skandos and another Furmin, almost but not quite
identical with those first so
named" pored over a ehronoviagram.

"The key point in time is there," the Prime Physicist said, thoughtfully,
placing the point of his pencil near one
jagged peak of the trace. "The key figure is Lord Tedric of Lomarr, the
discoverer of the carburization of steel.
He could be manipulated very easily ... but, after all, the real catastrophe
is about three hundred eighteen
years away; there is nothing alarming about the shape of the curve; and any
interference with the actual
physical events of the past would almost certainly prove calamitous. Over the
years I have found your
judgment good. What is your thought on this matter, Furmin?"

"I would say to wait, at least for a few weeks or months. Even though eight
hundred twelve fails, number eight
hundred fifty or number nine hundred may succeed. At very worst, we will be in
the same position then as now
to take the action which has for a hundred years been specifically forbidden
by both Council and School."

"So be it."
                         LORD TEDRIC

 Time is the strangest of all mysteries. Relatively unimportant events, almost
unnoticed as they occur, may, in
hundreds of years, result in Ultimate Catastrophe. On Time Track Number One,
that was the immutable result.
But on Time Track Number Two there was one little event that could be used to
avert it-the presence of a
naked woman in public. So, Skandos One removed the clothing from the Lady
Rhoann and after one look, Lord
Tedric did the rest!

Skandos One (The Skandos of Time Track Number One, numbered for reasons which
will become clear)
showed, by means of the chronoviagraph, that civilization would destroy itself
in one hundred eighty-seven
years. To prevent this catastrophe he went back to the key point in time and
sought out the key figure-one
Tedric, a Lomarrian ironmaster who had lived and died a commoner; unable ever,
to do anything about his
fanatical detestation of human sacrifice.

Skandos One taught Tedric how to make one batch of super-steel; watched him
forge armor and arms from
that highly anachronistic alloy. He watched him do things that Tedric of Time
Track One had never done.

Time, then, did fork. Time Track One was probably no longer in existence. He
must have been saved by his
"traction" on the reality of Time Track Two. He'd snap back up to his own time
and see what the situation was.
If he found his assistant Furmin alone in the laboratory, the extremists would
have been proved wrong. If not .
..

Furmin was not alone. Instead, Skandos Two and Furmin Two were at work on a
tri-di of Tedric's life: so like,
and yet so wildly unlike, the one upon which Skandos One and Furmin One had
labored so long!

Shaken and undecided, Skandos One held his machine at the very verge of
invisibility and watched and
listened. "But it's so maddeningly incomplete!" Skandos Two snorted. "When it
goes into such fine detail on
almost everything else, why can't we get how he stumbled onto one lot, and
never any other, of high-alloy
steel-chromenickel-vanadium-molybdenum-tungsten steel-Mortensen's supersteel,
to be specific-which wasn't
rediscovered for thousands of years?

"Why, it was revealed to him by his personal god Llosir -don't you remember?"
Furmin snickered.
"Poppycock!"

"To us, yes; but not to them. Hence, no detail, and you know why we can't go
back and check."

"Of course. We simply don't know enough about time . . . but I would so like
to study this Lord of the Marches
at first hand! Nowhere else in all reachable time does any other one entity
occupy such a uniquely key
position!"

"So would I, chief. If we knew just a little more I'd say go. In the meantime,
let's run that tri-di again, to see if
we've overlooked any little thing!"

In the three-dimensional, full-color projection Armsmaster Lord Tedric
destroyed the principal images of the
monstrous god Sarpedion and killed Sarpedion's priests. He rescued Lady
Rhoann, King Phagon's eldest
daughter, from the sacrificial altar. The king made him Lord of the Marches,
the Highest of the High.

"This part I like." Furmin pressed a stud; the projector stopped. A
blood-smeared armored giant and a blood-

smeared naked woman stood, arms around each other, beside a blood-smeared
altar of green stone. "Talk
about being STACKED! If I hadn't checked the data myself I'd swear you went
overboard there, chief."

"Exact likeness-life .size," Skandos Two grunted. "Tedric: .six-four,
two-thirty, muscled just like that. Rhoann:
six feet and half an inch, one-ninety. The only time she ever appeared in the
raw in public, I guess, but she
didn't turn a hair."

"What a couple!" Furmin stared enviously. ,we don't have people like that any
more."

"Fortunately, no. He could split a full-armored man in two with a sword; she
could strangle a tiger
bare-handed.

So what? All the brains of the whole damned tribe" boiled down into one,
wouldn't equip a half-wit."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Furmin objected. "Phagon was a smooth, shrewd
operator."

"In a way-sometimes-but committing suicide by wearing gold armor instead of
high-alloy steel doesn't show
much brain-power."

"I'm not sure I'll buy that, either. There were terrific pressures . . . but
say Phagon had worn steel, that day at
Middlemarch Castle, and lived ten or fifteen years longer? My guess is that
Tedric would have changed the
map of the world. He wasn't stupid, you know; just bull-headed, and Phagon
could handle him. He would have
pounded a lot of sense into his skull, if he had lived."

"However, he didn't live," Skandos returned dryly, "and so every decision
Tedric ever made was wrong. But to
get back to the point" did you see anything new?"

"Not a thing."

"Neither did I. So go and see how eight twelve is doing." For Time Test Number
Eight Hundred Eleven had
failed; and there was little ground for hope that Number Eight Hundred Twelve
would be any more
productive.

And the lurking Skandos One who had been studying intensively every aspect of
the situation, began to act. It
was crystal clear that Time Track Two could hold only one Skandos. One of them
would have to vanish-com-

pletely, immediately, and permanently. Although in no sense a killer, by
instinct or training, only one course
of action was possible if his own life-and, as a matter of fact, all
civilization-were to be conserved. Wherefore
he synchonized, and shot his unsuspecting double neatly through the head. The
living Skandos changed
places with the dead. A timer buzzed briefly. The time-machine disappeared;
completely out of
synchronization with any continuum that a world's keenest brain and an
ultra-fast calculator could compute.

This would of course make another fork in time, but that fact did not bother
Skandos One at all-now. As for
Tedric; since the big, dumb lug couldn't be made to believe that he, Skandos
One, was other than a god, he'd
be a god-in spades!

He'd build an image of flesh-like plastic exactly like the copper statue
Tedric had made, and go back and
announce himself publicly as the god Llosir. He'd come back-along Time-Track
Three, of course-and do away
with Skandos Three. There might have to be another interference, too, to get
Tedric started along the right
time-track. He could call better after seeing what Time-Track Three looked
like. If so, it would necessitate the
displacement of Skandos Four.

 So what? He had never had any qualms; and, now that he had done it once, he
had no doubt whatever as to
his ability to do it twice more.

Of the three standing beside Sarpedion's grisly altar, King Phagon was the
first to become conscious of the fact
that something should be done about his daughter's nudity.

"Flasnir, your cloak!" he ordered sharply; and the Lady Rhoann, unclamping her
arms from around Tedric's armored
neck and disengaging his steel-clad arm from around her waist, covered herself
with the proffered garment. Par-

tially covered, that is; for, since the cloak had come only to mid-thigh on
the courtier and since she was a good
seven inches taller than be, the coverage might have seemed, to a prudish eye,
something less than adequate.

"Chamberlain Schillan-Captain Sciro," the king went on briskly. "Haul me this
carrion to the river and dump it in-put
men to cleaning this place--tis not seemly so."

The designated officers began to bawl orders, and Tedric turned to the girl,
who was still just about as close to him
as she could get; awe, wonder, and relieved shock still plain on her
expressive face.

"One thing, Lady Rhoann, I understand not. You seem to know me; act as though
I were old, tried friend. 'Tis vast
honor, but how? You of course I know; have known and honored since you were a
child; but me, a commoner" you
know not. Nor, if you did" couldst know who it was neath all this iron?"

"Art wrong, Lord Tedric-nay, not "Lord" Tedric; henceforth you and I are
Tedric and Rhoann merely-I have known
you long and well; would recognize you anywhere. The few of the old, true
blood stand out head and shoulders
above the throng, and you stand out, even among them. Who else could it have
been? Who else bath the strength of
arm and soul, the inner and the outer courage? No coward I, Tedric, nor ever
called so, but on that altar my very
bones turned jelly. I could not have swung weapon against Sarpedion. I
trembled yet at the bare thought of what you
did; I know not how you could have done it."

"You feared the god" Lady Rhoann, as do so many. I bated him."

"'Tis not enough of explanation. And 'Rhoann' merely" Tedric, remember?"

"Rhoann ... Thanks, my lady. 'Tis an honor more real than your father's patent
of nobility . . . but 'tis not fitting. I feel
as much a commoner. . . ."

"Commoner? Bah! I ignored that word once, Tedric, but not twice. You are" and
deservedly, the Highest of the
High. My father the king has known for long what you are; he should have
ennobled you long since. Thank Sarp . .
thank all the gods he had the wit to put it off no longer! 'Tis blood that
tells, not empty titles. The Throne can make
and un-make nobility at will, but no power whatever can make true-bloods out
of mongrels, nor create real
manhood where none exists!"

Tedric did not know what to say in answer to that passionate outburst" so he
changed the subject; effectively, if not
deftly. "In speaking of the Marches to your father the king, you mentioned the
Sages. What said they?"

"At another time, perhaps." Lady Rhoann was fast recovering her wonted cool
poise. "'Tis far too long to go into
while I stand here half naked, filthy, and stinking. Let us on with the
business in hand; which" for me, is a hot bath
and clean clothing."

Rhoann strolled away as unconcernedly as though she were wearing full court
regalia" and Tedric turned to the
king.

"Thinkest the Lady Trycie is nearby, sire?"

"If I know the jade at all, she is"" Phagon snorted. "And not only near. She's
seen everything and heard everything;
knows more about everything than either of us, or both of us together. Why?
Thinkst she'd make a good priestess?"
"The best. Much more so, methinks, than the Lady Rhoann. Younger. More . . .
umm ... more priestess-like, say?"

"Perhaps." Phagon was very evidently skeptical, but looked around the temple,
anyway. "Trycie!" he yelled. "Yes,
father?" a soft voice answered-right behind them!

The king's second daughter was very like his first in size and shape, but her
eyes were a cerulean blue and her hair,
as long and as thick as Rhoann's own, had the color of ripe wheat.

"Aye, daughter. Wouldst like to be Priestess of Llosir?" "Oh, yes!" she
squealed; but sobered quickly. "On second
thought . . . perhaps not . . . no. If so be it sacrifice is done I intend to
marry, some day, and have six or eight
children. But . . . perhaps . . . could I take it now, and resign later, think
you?"

"'Twould not be necessary, sire and Lady Trycie," Tedric put in" while Phagon
was still thinking the matter over.
"Llosir is not at all like Sarpedion. Llosir wants abundance and fertility and
happiness, not poverty and sterility and
misery. Llosir's priestess marries as she pleases and has as many children as
she wants."

"Your priestess I, then, sirs! I go to have cloth-of-gold robes made at once!"
The last words came floating back over
her shoulder as Trycie raced away.

"Lord Tedric, sir." Unobserved, Sciro bad been waiting for a chance to speak
to his superior officer.

"Yes, captain?"

"' Tis the men . . . the cleaning . . . They . . . We, I mean . . ." Sciro of
Old Lomarr would not pass the buck. "The
bodies-the priests, you know, and so on-were easy enough; and we did manage to
handle most of the pieces of the
.god. But the . . . the heart, and so on, you know . . . we know not where you
want them taken ... and besides, we fear
. . . wilt stand by and ward, Lord Tedric, while I pick them up?"

"'Tis my business, Captain Sciro; mine alone. I crave pardon for not attending
to it sooner. Hast a bag?" "Yea." The
highly relieved officer held out a duffle-bag of fine, soft leather.

Tedric took it, strode across to the place where Sarpedion's image had stood,
and-not without a few qualms of his
own, now that the frenzy of battle had evaporated picked up Sarpedion's heart,
liver, and brain and deposited them,
neither too carefully not too carelessly, in the sack. Then, swinging the
burden up over his shoulder "I go to fetch
the others," he explained to his king. "Then we hold sacrifice to end all
human sacrifice." "Hold, Tedric!" Phagon
ordered. "One thing-or two or three, methinks. 'Tis not seemly to conduct a
thing so; lacking order and organization
and plan. Where dolt propose to hold such an affair? Not in your ironworks,
surely?" "Certainly not, sire." Tedric
halted, almost in midstride. Be hadn't got around yet to thinking about the
operation as a whole, but he began to do
so then. "And certainly not on this temple or Sarpedion's own. Lord Llosir is
clean: all our temples are foul in every
stone and timber . . ." He paused. Then, suddenly: "I have it, sire-the
amphitheater!"

"The amphitheater? 'Tis well. 'Tis of little enough use, and a shrine will not
interfere with what little use it has."
"Wilt give orders to build . . . ?"

"The Lord of the Marches issues his own orders. Hola, Schillan, to me!" the
monarch shouted, and the Chamberlain
of the Realm came on the run. "Lord Tedric speaks with my voice."

"I hear, sire. Lord Tedric, I listen."

"Have built, at speed, midway along the front of the amphitheater, on the very
edge of the cliff, a table of clean,
new-quarried stone; ten feet square and three feet high. On it mount Lord
Llosir so firmly that he will stand upright
forever against whatever may come of wind or storm."

The chamberlain hurried away. So did Tedric, with his bag of spoils. First to
his shop, where his armor was re-

moved and where he scratched himself vigorously and delightfully as it came
off. Thence to the Temple of Sar-

pedion, where he collected the other, somewhat-lesser hallowed trio of the
Great One's vital organs. Then, and
belatedly, to home and to bed.

A little later, while the new-made Lord of the Marches was sleeping soundly,
the king's messengers rode furiously
abroad, spreading the word that ten days hence, at the fourth period after
noon, in Lompoar's Amphitheater, Great
Sarpedion would be sacrificed to Llosir, Lomarr's new and Ultra-powerful god.

The city of Lompoar, Lomarr's capital, lying on the south bank of the Lotar
some fifty miles inland from the delta,
nestled against the rugged breast of the Coast Range. Just outside the town's
limit and some hundreds of feet above
its principal streets there was a gigantic half-bowl, carved out of the solid
rock by an eddy of some bye-gone age.

This was the Amphitheater, and on the very lip of the stupendous cliff
descending vertically to the river so far
below, Llosir stood proudly on his platform of smooth, clean granite.

"'Tis not enough like a god, methinks." King Phagon, dressed now in
cloth-of-gold, eyed the gleaming copper statue
very dubiously. "'Tis too much like a man, by far."

"'Tis exactly as I saw him, sire"" Tedric replied, firmly. Nor was he,
consciously, lying: by this time he believed the
lie himself. "Llosir is a man-god, remember, not a beast god, and 'tis better
so. But the time I set is here. With your
permission, sire" I begin."

Both men looked around the great bowl. Near by, but not too near" stood the
priestess and half a dozen white-clad
fifteen-year-old girls; one of whom carried a beaten-gold pitcher full of
perfumed oil, another a flaring open lamp
wrought of the same material. Slightly to one side were Rhoann-looking, if the
truth must be told, as though she did
not particularly enjoy her present position on the sidelines-her mother the
queen, the rest of the royal family" and
ranks of courtiers. And finally, much farther back, at a very respectful
distance from their strange new god, ar-

ranged in dozens of more or less concentric, roughly hemispherical rows, stood
everybody who had had time to get
there. More were arriving constantly, of course, but the flood had become a
trickle; the narrow way, worming up-

ward from the city along the cliffs stark side, was almost bare of traffic.

"Begin, Lord Tedric," said the king.

Tedric bent over, heaved the heavy iron pan containing the offerings up onto
the platform, and turned. "The oil"
Priestess Lady Trycie, and the flame."

The acolyte handed the pitcher to Trycie, who handed it to Tedric, who poured
its contents over the twin hearts"
twin livers, and twin brains. Then the lamp; and as the yard-high flames
leaped upward the armored pseudo-priest
stepped backward and raised his eyes boldly to the impassive face of the image
of his god. Then he spoke not
softly, but in parade-ground tones audible to everyone present.

"Take, Lord Llosir, all the strength and all the power and all the force that
Sarpedion ever had. Use them, we beg,
for good and not for ill."

He picked up the blazing pan and strode toward the lip of the precipice;
high-mounting, smokey flames curling
backward around his armored figure. "And now, in token of Sarpedion's utter
and complete extinction, I consign
these, the last vestiges of his being, to the rushing depths of oblivion." He
hurled the pan and its fiercely flaming
contents out over the terrific brink.

This act, according to Tedric's plan" was to end the program-but it didn't.
Long before the fiery mass struck water
his attention was seized by a long, low-pitched, moaning gasp from a multitude
of throats; a sound the like of which
he had never before even imagined.

He whirled-and saw, shimmering in a cage-like structure of shimmering bars, a
form of seeming flesh so exactly
like the copper image in every detail of shape that it might well have come
from the same mould!

"Lord Llosir-in the flesh!" Tedric exclaimed, and went to one knee.

So did the king and his family, and a few of the bravest of the courtiers.
Most of the latter, however, and the girl
acolytes and the thronging thousands of spectators, threw themselves flat on
the hard ground. They threw
themselves flat" but they did not look away or close their eyes or cover their
faces with their hands. On the
contrary, each one stared with all the power of his optic nerves.

The god's mouth opened, his lips moved; and, although no one could hear any
sound, everyone felt words resound-

ing throughout the deepest recesses of his being.

"I have taken all the strength, all the power, all the force, all of
everything that made Sarpedion what he was," the
god began. In part his pseudo-voice was the resonant clang of a brazen bell;
in part the diapason harmonies of an
impossibly vast organ. "I will use them for good, not ill. I am glad, Tedric,
that you did not defile my bearth-for this
is a hearth, remember, and in no sense an altar-in making this" the first and
the only sacrifice ever to be made to
me. You, Trycie, are the first of my priestesses?"

The girl, shaking visibly, gulped three times before she could speak. "Yea,
my-my-my Lord Llosir," she managed
finally. "Th-that is-if-if I please you, Lord, Sir."

"You please me, Trycie of Lomarr. Nor will your duties be onerous; being only
to see to it that your maidens keep
my hearth clean and my statue bright."

"To you, my Lord-Llo-Llosir, sir, all thanks. Wilt keep . . ." Trycie raised
her downcast eyes and stopped short in
mid-sentence; her mouth dropping ludicrously open and her eyes becoming two
round O's of astonishment. The air
above the yawning abyss was as empty as it had ever been; the flesh-and-blood
god had disappeared as instan-

taneously as he had come!

Tedric's heavy voice silenced the murmured wave of excitement sweeping the
bowl.

"That is all!" he bellowed. "I did not expect the Lord Llosir to appear in the
flesh at this time; I know not when or
ever he will deign to appear to us again. But I know whether or not he ever so
deigns, or when, you all know now
that our great Lord Llosir lives. Is not so?"

"'Tis so! Long live Lord Llosir!" Tumultuous yelling filled the amphitheater.

"'Tis well. In leaving this holy place all will file between me and the
shrine. First our king, then the Lady Priestess
Trycie and her maids, then the Family, then the Court, then the rest. All men
as they pass will raise sword-arms in
salute, all women will bow heads. Will be naught of offerings or of tribute or
of fractions; Lord Llosir is a god, not
a huckstering, thieving, murdering trickster. King Phagon, sire" wilt lead?"

Unhelmed now, Tedric stood rigidly at attention before the image of his god.
The king did not march straight past
him, but stopped short. Taking off his ornate headpiece and lifting his right
arm high, he said:
"To you, Lord Llosir, my sincere thanks for what bast done for me, for my
family, and for my nation. While 'tis not
seemly that Lomarr's king should beg, I ask that you abandon us not."

Then Trycie and her girls. "We engage, Lord Sir," the Lady Priestess said, at
a whispered word from Tedric, "to
keep your hearth scrupulously clean;.your statue shining bright."

Then the queen, followed by the Lady Rhoann-who, although she bowed her head
merely enough, was shooting
envious glances at her sister, so far ahead and so evidently the cynosure of
so many eyes.

The rest of the Family-the Court-the thronging spectators-and, last of all,
Tedric himself. Helmet tucked under left
arm, he raised his brawny right arm high, executed a stiff "left face," and
marched proudly at the rear of the long
procession.

And as the people made their way down the steep and rugged path" as they
debouched through the city of Lompoar,
as they traversed the highways and byways back to the towns and townlets and
farms from which they had come, it
was very evident that Llosir had established himself as no other god had ever
been established throughout the long
history of that world.

Great Llosir had appeared in person. Everyone there had seen him with his own
eyes. Everyone there had heard his
voice; a voice of a quality impossible for any mortal being, human or
otherwise" to produce; a voice heard, not with
the ears, which would have been ordinary enough, but by virtue of some
hitherto completely unknown and still
completely unknowable inner sense or ability evocable only by the god.
Everyone there had heard-sensed-him
address the Lord Armsmaster and the Lady Priestess by name.

Other gods had appeared personally in the past . . . or had they, really?
Nobody had ever seen any of them except
their own priests . . . the priests who performed the sacrifices and who
fattened on the fractions . . . Llosir, now,
wanted neither sacrifices nor fractions; and, powerful although he was, had
appeared to and had spoken to everyone
alike" of however high or low degree, throughout the whole huge amphitheater.

Everyone! Not to the priestess only; not only to those of the Old Blood; not
only to citizens or natives of Lomarr,
but to everyone-down to mercenaries" chance visitors and such!

Long live Lord Llosir, our new and plenipotent god!

King Phagon and Tedric were standing at a table in the throne-room of the
palace-castle, studying a map. It was
crudely drawn and sketchy, this map, and full of blank areas and gross errors;
but this was not an age of fine
cartography.

"Talk, first, is still my thought, sire," Tedric insisted" stubbornly. " 'Tis
closer, our lines shorter, a victory there
would hearten all our people. Too, 'twould be unexpected. Lomarr has never
attacked Tark, whereas your royal sire
and his sire before him each tried to loose Sarlon's grip and, in failing, but
increased the already heavy payments of
tribute. Too" in case of something short of victory. hast only the one pass
and the Great Gorge of the Lotar to hold
'gainst reprisal. 'Tis true such course would leave the Marches unheld, but no
more so than they have been for four
years or more."

"Nay. Think, man!" Phagon snorted, testily. "'Twould fail. Four parts of our
army are of Tark-thinkst not their first
act would be to turn against us and make common cause with their brethren?
Too, we lack strength, they outnumber
us two to one. Nay. Sarlon first. Then, perhaps, Tark; but not before then."

"But Sarlon outnumbers us too, sire, especially if you count those
barbarbarian devils of the Devossian steppes.
Since Taggad of Sarlon lets them cross his lands to raid the Marches-for a
fraction of the loot, no doubt-'tis certain
they'll help him against us. Also, sire, your father and your grandfather both
died under Sarlonian axes."

"True, but neither of them was a strategist. I am; I have studied this matter
for many years. They did the obvious; I
shall not. Nor shall Sarlon pay tribute merely; Sarlon must and shall become a
province of my kingdom!"

So argument raged, until Phagon got up onto his royal high horse and declared
it his royal will that the thing was to
be done his way and no other. Whereupon, of course" Tedric submitted with the
best grace he could muster and set
about the task of helping get the army ready to roll toward the Marches, some
three and a half hundreds of miles to
the north.

Tedric fumed. Tedric fretted. Tedric swore sulphurously in Lomarrian, Tarkian,
Sarlonian, Devossian, and all the
other languages he knew. All his noise and fury were" however, of very little
avail in speeding up what was an
intrinsically slow process.

Between times of cursing and urging and driving" Tedric was wont to prowl the
castle and its environs. So doing,
one day, he came upon King Phagon and the Lady Rhoann practicing at archery.
Lifting his arm in salute to his
sovereign and bowing his head politely to the lady, he made to pass on.

"Hola, Tedric!" Rhoann called. "Wouldst speed a flight with us?"

Tedric glanced at the target. Rhoann was beating her father unmercifully-her
purple-shafted arrows were all in or
near the gold, while his golden ones were scattered far and wide-,and she had
been twitting him unmercifully about
his poor marksmanship. Pbagon was in no merry mood; this was very evidently no
competition for any
outsider-least of all Lomarr's top-ranking armsmaster-to enter.

"Crave pardon" my lady" but other matters press. . . "Your evasions are so
transparent, my lord; why not tell the
truth?" Rhoann did not exactly sneer at the man's obvious embarrassment, but
it was very clear that she, too, was in
a vicious temper. "Mindst not beating me but never the Throne? And any
armsmaster who threwest not arrows by
hand at this range to beat both of us should be stripped of badge?"

Tedric, quite fatuously" leaped at the bait. "Wouldst permit, sire?"

"No!" the king roared. "By my head, by the Throne" by Llosir's liver and heart
and brain and guts-NO! 'Twould cost
the head of any save you to insult me so shoot, sir, and shoot your best!"
extending his own bow and a full quiver of
arrows.

Tedric did not want to use the royal weapon, but at the girl's quick,
imperative gesture he smothered his incipient
protest and accepted it.

"'One sighting shot, sire?" he asked, and drew the heavy bow. Nothing whatever
could have forced him to put an
arrow nearer the gold than the farthest of the king's; to avoid doing
so-without transparently missing the target
completely-would take skill, since one golden arrow stood a bare three inches
from the edge of the target.

His first arrow grazed the edge of the butt and was an inch low; his second
plunged into the padding exactly half
way between the king's wildest arrow and the target's rim. Then, so rapidly
that it seemed as though there must be at
least two arrows in the air at once, arrow crashed on arrow; wood snapping as
iron bead struck feathered shaft. At
end, the rent in the fabric through which all those arrows had torn their way
could have been covered by half of one
of Rhoann's hands.

"I lose, sire," Tedric said, stiffly" returning bow and empty quiver. "My
score is zero."

Phagon, knowing himself in the wrong but unable to bring himself to apologize,
did what he considered the
next-best thing. "I used to shoot like that," he complained. "Knowst how lost
I my skill" Tedric? 'Tis not my age,
surely?"

"'Tis not my place to say, sire." Then, with more loyalty than sense= "And I
split to the teeth any who dare so insult
the Throne."

"What!" the monarch roared. "By my. . . ."

"Hold, father!" Rhoann snapped. "A king you-act itl" Hard blue eyes glared
steadily into unyielding eyes of green.
Neither the thoroughly angry king nor the equally angry princess would give an
inch. She broke the short" bitter
silence.

"Say naught, Tedric-he is much too fain to boil in oil or flay alive any who
tell him unpleasantnesses, however true.
But me, father, you boil not, nor flay, nor seek to punish otherwise, or I
split this kingdom asunder like a melon.
'Tis time-yea, long past time-that someone told you the unadorned truth.
Hence, my rascally but well-loved parent,
here 'tis. Hast lolled too long on too many too soft cushions, hast emptied
too many pots and tankards and flagons,
has bedded too many wenches, to be of much use in armor or with any style of
weapon in the passes of the High
Umpasseurs."

The flabbergasted and rapidly-deflating king tried to think of some answer to
this devastating blast, but couldn't. He
appealed to Tedric. "Wouldst have said such? Surely not!"

"Not I, sire!" Tedric assured him, quite truthfully. "And even if true, 'tis a
thing to remedy itself. Before we reach
the Marches wilt regain arm and eye."

"Perhaps," the girl put in, her tone still distinctly on the acid side. "If he
matches you, Tedric, in lolling and wining
and wenching, yes. Otherwise, no. How much wine do you drink, each day?"

"One cup, usually-sometimes-at supper." "On the march? Think carefully,
friend."

"Nay-I meant in town. In the field, none, of course." - "Seest, father?"

"What thinkst me, vixen, a spineless cuddlepet? From this minute 'til return
here I match your paragon young blade
loll for loll, cup for cup, wench for wench. Ist what you've been niggling at
me to say?"

"Aye, father and king, exactly-for as you say, you do." She hugged him so
fervently as almost to lift him off the
ground, kissing him twice, and hurried away.

"A thing I would like to talk to you about, sire," Tedric said quickly, before
the king could bring up any of the
matters just past. "Armor. There was enough of the godmetal to equip three men
fully, and headnecks for their
horses. You, sire, and me, and Sciro of your Guard. Break precedent, sire, I
beg, and wear me this armor of proof
instead of the gold; for what we face promises to be worse than anything you
or I have yet seen."

"I fear me 'tis true, but 'tis impossible, nonetheless. Lomarr's king wears
gold. He fights in gold; at need he dies in
gold."

And that was, Tedric knew, very definitely that. It was senseless, it was
idiotic, but it was absolutely true. No king
of Lomarr could possibly break that particular precedent. To appear in that
spectacularly conspicuous fashion, one
-flashing golden figure in a sea of dull iron-grey, was part of the king's
job. The fact that his father and his
grandfather and so on for six generations back had died in golden armor could
not sway him, any more Than it
could have swayed Tedric himself in similar case. But there might be a way
out.

"But need it be solid gold" sire? Wouldst not an overlay of gold suffice?"

"Yea, Lord Tedric, and 'wwould be a welcome thing indeed. I yearn not, nor did
my father nor his father, to pit gold
'gainst hard-swung axe; e'en less to hide behind ten ranks of iron while
others fight. But simply 'tis not possible. If
the gold be thick enough for the rivers to hold, 'tis too heavy to lift. If
thin enough to be possible of wearing" the
gold flies off in sheets at first blow and the fraud is revealed. Hast ideas?
I listen."

"I know not, sire. . . ." Tedric thought for minutes. "I have seen gold
hammered into thin sheets . . . but not thin
enough . . . but it might be possible to hammer it thin enough to be overlaid
on the god-metal with pitch or gum.
Wouldst wear it so, sire?"

"Aye, my Tedric, and gladly: just so the overlay comes not off by hands
breadths under blow of sword or axe."
"Handsbreaths? Nay. Scratches and mars" of course, easily to be overlaid again
ere next day's dawn. But hands
breadths? Nay" sire."

"In that case, try; and may Great Llosir guide your hand."

Tedric went forthwith to the castle and got a chunk of raw, massy gold. He
took it to his shop and tried to work it
into the thin" smooth film he could visualize so clearly.

And tried-and tried-and tried. And failed-and failed-and failed.

He was still trying-and still failing-three weeks later. Time was running
short; the hours that bad formerly dragged
like days now flew like minutes. His crew had done their futile best to help;
Bendon, his foreman, was still standing
by. The king was looking on and offering advice. So were Rhoann and Trycie.
Sciro and Schillan and other more or
less notable persons were also trying to be of use.

Tedric, strained and tense, was pounding carefully at a sheet of his latest
production. It was a pitiful thing lumpy in
spots, ragged and rough, with holes where hammer had met anvil through its
substance. The smith's left hand
twitched at precisely the wrong instant, just as the hammer struck. The flimsy
sheet fell into three ragged pieces.

Completely frustrated, Tedric leaped backward, swore fulminantly, and hurled
the hammer with all his strength
toward the nearest wall. And in that instant there appeared, in the now
familiar cage-like structure of shimmering,
interlaced bars, the form of flesh that was Llosir the god. High in the air
directly over the forge the apparition
hung, motionless and silent, and stared.

Everyone except Tedric gave homage to the god, but he merely switched from the
viciously corrosive Devossian
words he had been using to more parliamentary Lomarrian.

"Ist possible, Lord Sir, for any human being to do anything with this foul,
slimy, salvy, perverse, treacherous" and
generally-be-damned stuff?"

"It is. Definitely. Not only possible" but fairly easy and fairly simple, if
the proper tools, apparatus, and techniques
are employed." Llosir's bell-toned-organ pseudo voice replied. "Ordinarily, in
your lifetime, you would come to
know nothing of gold leaf-although really thin gold leaf is not required
here-nor of gold beater's skins and
membranes and how to use them" nor of the adhesives to be employed and the
techniques of employing them. The
necessary tools and materials are, or can very shortly be made, available to
you; you can now absorb quite readily
the required information and knowledge.

 "For this business of beating out gold leaf, your hammer and anvil are both
completely wrong. Listen carefully and
remember. For the first, preliminary thinning down, you take. . . .

Lomarr's army set out at dawn. First the wide-ranging scouts: lean, hard,
fine-trained runners, stripped to clouts and
moccasins and carrying only a light bow and a few arrows apiece. Then the
hunters. They, too, scattered widely and
went practically naked: but bore the hundred pound bows and the
savagely-tearing arrows of their trade.

Then the Heavy Horse, comparatively few in number" but of the old blood all,
led by Tedric and Sciro and
surrounding glittering Phagon and his standard-bearers. It took a lot of horse
to carry a full-armored knight of the
Old Blood, but the horse-farmers of the Middle Marches bred for size and
strength and stamina.

Next came century after century of light horse mounted swordsmen and spearmen
and javelineers-followed by
even more numerous centuries of foot-slogging infantry.

Last of all came the big-wheeled, creaking wagons: loaded, not only with the
usual supplies and equipment of war,
but also with thousands of loaves of bread hard, flat, heavy loaves made from
ling, the corn-like grain which was the
staple cereal of the region.

"Bread, sire?" Tedric had asked, wonderingly, when Phagon had fast broached
the idea. Men on the march lived on
meat-a straight, unrelieved diet of meat for weeks and months on end-and all
too frequently not enough of that to
maintain weight and strength. They expected nothing else; an occasional
fist-sized chunk of bread was sheerest
luxury. "Bread! A whole loaf each man a day?"

"Aye," Phagon had chuckled in reply. "All farms men along the way will have
ready my fraction of ling, and Schillan
will at need buy more. To each man a loaf each day, and all the meat he can
eat. 'Tis why we go up the Midvale,
where farms men all breed savage dogs to guard their fields 'gainst hordes of
game. Such feeding will be noised
abroad. Canst think of a better device to lure Taggard's ill-fed mercenaries
to our standards?"

Tedric couldn't.

There is no need to dwell in detail upon the army's long, slow march. Leaving
the city of Lompar, it moved up the
Lotar River" through the spectacularly scenic gorge of the Coast Range" and
into the Middle Valley; that incredibly
lush and fertile region which, lying between the Low Umpasseurs on the east
and the Coast Range on the west,
comprised roughly a third of Lomarr's area. Into and through the straggling
hamlet of Bonoy, lying at the junction
of the Midvale River with the Lotar. Then straight north, through the
timberlands and meadows of the Midvale's
west bank.

Game was, as Phagon had said" incredibly plentiful;

outnumbering by literally thousands to one both domestic animals and men.
Buffalo-like lippita, moose-like
rolatoes, pig-like accides-the largest and among the tastiest of Lomarr's game
animals-were so abundant that one
good hunter could kill in half an hour enough to feed a century for a day.
Hence most of the hunters' time was spent
in their traveling dryers, preserving meat against a coming day of need.

On, up the bluely placid Lake Midvale, a full day's march long and half that
in width. Past the Chain Lakes" strung
on the river like beads on a string. Past Lake Ardo, and on toward Lake
Middlemarch and the Middlemarch Castle
which was to be Tedric's official residence henceforth.

As the main body passed the head of the lake" a couple of scouts brought in a
runner bursting with news.

"Thank Sarpedion, sire, I had not to run to Lompoar to reach you!" he cried,
dropping to his knees. "Middlemarch
Castle is besieged! Hurlo of the Marches is slain!" and he went on to tell a
story of onslaught and slaughter.

"And the raiders wore iron," Phagon remarked" when the table was done.
"Sarlonian iron" no doubt?"

"Aye, sire, but how couldst. . . ."

"No matter. Take him to the rear. Feed him."

"You expected this raid, sire," Tedric said, rather than asked, after scouts
and runner had disappeared.

"Aye. 'Twas no raid, but the first skirmish of a war. No fool" Taggad of
Sirlon; nor Issian of Devos, barbarian though
he is. They knew what loomed" and struck first. The only surprise was Hurlo's
death ... he had my direct orders not
to do battle 'gainst any force" however slight seeming, but to withdraw
forthwith into the castle" which was to be
kept stocked to withstand a siege of months ... this keeps me from boiling him
in oil for stupidity" incompetence,
and disloyalty."

Phagon frowned in thought, then went on: "Were there forces that appeared not?
. . . Surely not-Taggrd would not
split his forces at all seriously: 'tis but to annoy me . . . or perhaps they
are mostly barbarians despite the Sarlonian
iron . . . to harry and flee is no doubt their aim, but for Lomarr's good not
one of them should escape. Knowst the
Upper Midvale, Tedric, above the lake?"

"But little, sire; a few miles only. I was there but once." "'Tis enough. Take
half the Royal Guard and a century of
bowmen. Cross the Midvale at the ford three miles above us here. Go up and
around the lake. The Upper Midvale is
fordable almost anywhere at this season, so stay far enough away from the lake
that none see you. Cross it, swing
in a wide circle toward the peninsula on which sits Middlemarch Castle, and in
three days ... ?" "Three days will be
ample, sire."

"Three days from tomorrow's dawn, exactly as the top rim of the sun clears the
meadow, make your charge out of
the covering forest, with your archers spread to pick off all who seek to
flee. I will be on this side of the peninsula;
between us they'll be ground like ling. None shall get away!"

Phagon's assumptions, however" were slightly in error. When Tedric's riders
charged, at the crack of the indicated
dawn, they did not tear through a motley horde of half-armored, half-trained
barbarians. Instead, they struck two
full centuries of Sarlon's heaviest armor! And Phagon the King fared worse. At
first sight of that brilliant golden
armor a solid column of armored knights formed as though by magic and charged
it at full gallop!

Phagon fought, of course; fought as his breed bad always fought. At first on
horse, with his terrible sword" under
the trenchant edge of which knight after knight died. His horse dropped"
slaughtered; his sword was knocked away;
but, afoot, the war-axe chained to his steel belt by links of super-steel was
still his. He swung and swung and swung
again; again and again; and with each swing an enemy ceased to live; but sheer
weight of metal was too much.
Finally, still swinging his murderous weapon, Phagon of Lomarr went flat on
the ground.

At the first assault on their king" Tedric with his sword and Sciro with his
hammer had gone starkly berserk. Sciro
was nearer, but Tedric was faster and stronger and had the better horse.

"Dreegor!" be yelled, thumping his steed's sides with his armored legs and
rising high in his stirrups. Nostrils
flaring, the mighty beast raged forward and Tedric struck as he had never
struck before. Eight times that terrific
blade came down" and eight men and eight horses died.

Then" suddenly-Tedric never did know how it happened, since Dreegor was later
found uninjured-he found himself
afoot. No place for sword, this, but made to order for axe. Hence, driving
forward as resistlessly as though a
phalanx of iron were behind him" he hewed his way toward his sovereign.

Thus he was near at hand when Phagon went down. So was doughty Sciro; and by
the time the Sarlonians had learned
that sword nor axe nor hammer could cut or smash that gold-seeming armor fury
personified was upon them.
Tedric straddled his king's head, Sciro his feet; and, back to back, two of
Lomarr's mightiest armsmasters wove
circular webs of flying steel through which it was sheerest suicide to attempt
to pass. Thus battle raged until the
last armored foeman was down.

"Art hurt, sire?" Tedric asked anxiously as he and Sciro lifted Phagon to his
feet.

"Nay" my masters-at-arms," the monarch gasped, still panting for breath.
"Bruised merely, and somewhat winded."
He opened his visor to let more air in; then, as he regained control, he shook
off the supporting hands and stood
erect under his own power. "I fear me" Tedric, that you and that vixen
daughter of mine were in some sense right.
Methinks I may be-Oh, the veriest trifle!out of condition. But the battle is
almost over. Did any escape?"

None had.

"'Tis well. Tedric, I know not how to honor. . . ." "Honor me no farther,
sire, I beg. Hast honored me already far
more than I deserved, or ever will . . . Or, at least, at the moment ... there
may be later, perhaps ... that is, a thing . . ."
he fell silent.

"A thing?" Phagon grinned broadly. "I know not whether Rhoann will be overly
pleased at being called so, but 'twill
be borne in mind nonetheless. Now you" Sciro; Lord Sciro now and henceforth,
and al! your line. Lord of what I
will not now say; but when we have taken Sarlo you and all others shall know."

"My thanks, sire, and my obeisance," said Sciro. "Schillan, with me to my
pavilion. I am weary and sore, and would
fain rest."

As the two Lords of the Realm" so lately commoners, strode away to do what had
to be done:

"Neither of us feels any nobler than ever, I know"" Sciro said, "but in one
way 'tis well-very well indeed." "The Lady
Trycie, eh? The wind does set so, then, as I thought."

"Aye. For long and long. It wondered me often, your choice of the Lady Rhoann
over her. Howbeit, 'twill be a
wondrous thing to be your brother-in-law as well as in arms."

Tedric grinned companionably, but before he could reply they had to separate
and go to work.

The king did not rest long; the heralds called Tedric in before half his job
was done.

"What thinkst you, Tedric, should be next?" Phagon asked.

"First punish Devoss, sire!" Tedric snarled. "Back-track them-storm High Pass
if defended-raze half the steppes
with sword and torch-drive them the full length of their country and into
Northern Sound!"

"Interesting, my impetuous young blade, but not at all practical," Phagon
countered. "Hast considered the matter of
time the avalanches of rocks doubtless set up and ready to sweep those narrow
paths-what Taggad would be doing
while we cavort through the wastelands?"

Tedric deflated almost instantaneously. "Nay, sire"" he admitted sheepishly.
"I thought not of any such."

" Tis the trouble with you-you know not how to think." Phagon was deadly
serious now. " Tis a bard thing to learn;
impossible for many; but learn it you must if you end not as Hurlo ended.
Also, take heed: disobey my orders but
once, as Hurlo did, and you hang in chains from the highest battlement of your
own Castle Middlemarch until your
bones rot apart and drop into the lake."

His monarch's vicious threat-or rather, promise-left Tedric completely
unmoved. " 'Tis what I would deserve" sire,
or less; but no fear of that. Stupid I may be, but disloyal? Nay, sire. Your
word always has been and always will be
my law."

"Not stupid, Tedric, but lacking   in judgment, which is not as bad; since the
condition is" if you care enough   to make
it so, remediable. You must care   enough, Tedric. You must learn. and quickly;
for much more than your own life   is
at hazard."

The younger man stared questioningly and the king went on: "My life, the lives
of my family" and the future of all
Lomarr," he said quickly.

 "In that case, sire, wilt learn, and quickly," Tedric declared; and" as days
and weeks went by, he did.

"All previous attempts on the city of Sarlo were made in what seemed to be the
only feasible way-crossing the
Tegula at Lower Ford. going down its north bank through the gorge to the West
Branch, and down that to the Sarlo."
Phagon was lecturing from a large map, using a sharp stick as pointer; Tedric,
Sciro, Schillan, and two or three
other high-ranking officers were watching and listening. "The West Branch
flows into Sarlo only forty miles above
Sarlo Bay. The city of Sarlo is here, on the north bank of the Sarlo River"
right on the Bay, and is five-sixths
surrounded by water. The Sarlo River is wide and deep, uncrossable against any
real opposition. Thus" Sarlonian
strategy has always been not to make any strong stand anywhere along the West
Branch, but to fight delaying
actions merely-making their real stand on the north bank of the Sarlo, only a
few miles from Sarlo City itself. The
Sarlo River, gentlemen, is well called "Sarlo's Shield." It has never been
crossed."

"How do you expect to cross it" then" sir?" Schillian asked.

"Strictly speaking, we cross it not, but float down it. We cross the Tegula at
Upper Ford, not Lower. . . . "Upper
Ford, sire? Above the terrible gorge of the Low Umpasseurs?"

"Yea. That gorge, undefended, is passable. 'Tis rugged, but passage can be
made. Once through the gorge our way to
the Lake of the Spiders, from which springs the Middle Branch of the Sarlo, is
clear and open."

"But 'tis held, sire, that Middle Valley is impassable for troops," a grizzled
captain protested.

"We traverse it, nonetheless. On rafts, at six or seven miles an hour, faster
by far than any army can march. But 'tis
enough of explanation. Lord Sciro, attend!"

"I listen, sire."

"At earliest dawn take two centuries of axemen and one century of bowmen, with
the wagonload of woodworkers'
supplies about which some of you have wondered. Strike straight north at
forced march. Cross the Tegula. Straight
north again, to the Lake of the Spiders and the head of the Middle Branch.
Build rafts, large enough and of
sufficient number to bear our whole force; strong enough to stand rough usage.
The rafts should be done, or nearly,
by the time we get there."

"I hear, sire, and I obey."

Tedric, almost stunned by the novelty and audacity of this, the first
amphibian operation in the history of his world,
was dubious but willing. And as the map of that operation spread itself in his
mind, he grew enthusiastic.

"We attack then, not from the south but from the northeast!"

"Aye, and on solid ground, not across deep water. But to bed,
gentlemen-tomorrow the clarions sound before
dawn!"

Dawn came. Sciro and his force struck out. The main army marched away" up the
north bank of the Upper Midvale,
which for thirty or forty miles flowed almost directly from the north-east.
There, however, it circled sharply to
flow from the south-east and the Lomarrians left it, continuing their march
across undulating foothills straight for
Upper Ford. From the south, the approach to this ford, lying just above (east
of) the Low Umpasseur Mountains" at
the point where the Middle Marches mounted a stiff but not abrupt gradient to
become the Upper Marches" was not
too difficult. Nor was the entrapment of most of the Sarlonians and barbarians
on watch. The stream" while only
knee-deep for the most part, was wide" fast, and rough; the bottom was made up
in toto of rounded" mossy"
extremely slippery rocks. There were enough men and horses and lines, however"
so that the crossing was made
without loss.

Then" turning three-quarters of a circle, the cavalcade made slow way back
down the river, along its north bank,
toward the forbidding gorge of the Low Umpasseurs.

The north bank was different, vastly different, from the south one. Mountains
of bare rock, incredible thou sands of
feet higher than the plateau forming the south bank, towered at the rushing
torrent's very edge. What passed for a
road was narrow, steep, full of hair-pin turns" and fearfully rugged. But
this, too, was passed-by dint of what labor
and stress it is not necessary to dwell upon-and as the army debouched out
onto the sparsely wooded, gullied and
eroded terrain of the high barred valley and began to make camp for the night,
Tedric became deeply concerned.
Sciro's small force would have left no obvious or lasting traces of its
passing; but such blatant disfigurements as
these. . . .

He glanced at the king, then stared back at the broad, trampled, deep-rutted
way the army had come. "South of the
river our tracks do not matter," he said, flatly. "In the gorge they exist
not. But those traces, sire, matter greatly and
are not to be covered or concealed."

"Tedric, I approve of you-you begin to think!" Much to the young man's
surprise, Phagon smiled broadly. "How
wouldst handle the thing, if decision yours?"

"A couple of fives of bowmen to camp here or nearby, sire," Tedric replied
promptly" "to put arrows through any
who come to spy."

"'Tis a sound idea, but not enough by half. Here I leave you; and a full
century each of our best scouts and hunters.
See to it, my lord captain, that none sees this our trail from here to the
Lake of the Spiders; or, having seen it, lives
to tell of the seeing."

Tedric, after selecting his sharpshooters and watching them melt invisibly
into the landscape, went down the valley
about a mile and hid himself carefully in a cave. These men knew the business
in hand a lot better than he did, and
he would not interfere. What he was for was to take command in an emergency;
if the operation were a complete
success he would have nothing whatever to do!

He was still in the cave, days later, when word came that the launching had
begun. Rounding up his guerrillas, he led
them at a fast pace to the Lake of the Spiders, around it" and to the place
where the Lomarrian army had been
encamped. Four fifty-man rafts were waiting, and Tedric noticed with surprise
that a sort of house had been built on
the one lying farthest down-stream. This luxury, he learned, was for him and
his squire Rahlion and their horses and
armor!

The Middle Branch was wide and swift; and to Tedric and his bowmen,
landlubbers all, it was terrifyingly rough and
boisterous and full of rocks. Tedric; however, did not stay a landlubber long.
He was not the type to sit in idleness
when there was something physical to do, something new to learn. And learning
to be a riverman was so much
easier than learning . to be King Phagon's idea of a strategist!

Thus" stripped to clout and moccasins, Tedric revelled in pitting his strength
and speed at steering-oar or pole
against the raft's mass and the river's whim.

"A good man, him," the boss boatman remarked to one of his mates. Then, later,
to Tedric himself: "'Tis sbame,
lord" that you got to work at this lord business. Wouldst make a damn good
riverman in time."

"My thanks, sir, and 'wwould be more fun, but King Phagon knows best. But this
"Bend." you talk of-what is it?"

"'Tis where this Middle Branch turns a square angle 'gainst solid rock tp flow
west into the Sarlo; the roughest,
wickedest bit of water anybody ever tried to run a raft over. Canst try it
with me if you like."

" 'T'would please me greatly to try."

Well short of the Bend, each raft was snubbed to the shore and unloaded. When
the first one was bare, the boss
riverman and a score of his best men stepped aboard. So did Tedric.

"What folly this?" Phagon yelled. "Tedric, ashore!" "Canst swim, Lord Tedric?"
the boss asked.

"Like an eel," Tedric admitted modestly, and the riverman turned to the king.

"'Twill save you rafts" sire, if he works with us. He's quick as a cat and
strong as a bull, and knows more of white
water already than half my men."

"In that case . . ." Phagon waved his hand and the first raft took off.

Many of the rafts were lost, of course; and Tedric had to swim in icy water
more than once, but he loved every
exhausting" exciting second of the time. Nor were the broken logs of the
wrecked rafts allowed to drift down the
river as tell-tales. Each bit was hauled carefully ashore. Below the Bend, the
Middle Branch was wide and deep,
hence the reloaded rafts had smooth sailing; and the Sarlo itself was of
course wider and deeper still. In fact, it
would have been easily navigable by an 80,000-ton modem liner. The only care
now was to avoid discovery which
matter was attended to by several centuries of far ranging scouts and by
scores of rivermen in commandeered
boats.

Moyla's Landing, the predetermined point of debarkation, was a scant fifteen
miles from the city of Sarlo. It was
scarcely a hamlet, but even so any one of its few inhabitants could have given
the alarm. Hence it was surrounded
by an advance force of bowmen and spearmen, and before those soldiers set out
Phagon voiced the orders he was
to repeat so often during the following hectic days.

"NO BURNING AND NO WANTON KILLING! None must know we come, but nonetheless
Sarlon is to be a
province of Lomarr my kingdom and I will not have Its people or its substance
destroyed: To that end I swear by
my royal head" by the Throne, by Great Llosir's heart and brain and liver"
that any man of whatever rank who slays
or bums without my express permission will be flayed alive and then boiled in
oil!"

Hence the taking of Moyla's Landing was very quiet" and its people were held
under close guard. All that day and all
the following night the army rested. Phagon was pretty sure that Taggad knew
nothing of the invasion as yet; but it
would be idle to hope to get much closer without being discovered. Every mile
gained, however, would be worth a
century of men. Therefore, long before dawn" the supremely ready Lomarrian
forces rolled over the screening
bluff and marched steadily toward Sarlo. Not fast, note; thirteen miles is a
long haul when there is to be a full-scale
battle at the end of it.

Plodding slowly along on mighty Dreegor at the king's right, Tedric roused
himself from a brown study and,
gathering his forces visibly, spoke: "Knowst I love the Lady Rhoann, sire?"

"Aye. No secret that, nor has been since the fall of Sarpedion."

"Hast permission" then, to ask her to be my wife, once back in Lompoar?"

"Mayst ask her sooner than that, if you like. Wilt be here tomorrow-with the
Family, the Court, and an image of
Great Llosir-for the Triumph."

Tedric's mouth dropped open. "But sire," he managed finally, "how couldst be
that sure of success? The armies are
too evenly matched."

"In seeming only. They have no body of horse or foot able to stand against my
Royal Guard; they have nothing to
cope with you and Sciro and your armor and weapons. Therefore I have been and
am certain of Lomarr's success.
Well-planned and well-executed ventures do not fail. This has been long in the
planning, but only your discovery of
the god-metal made it possible of execution." Then, as Tedric glanced
involuntarily at his gold-plated armor: "Yea,
the overlay made it possible for me to live-although I may die this day, being
the center of attack and being weaker
and- of lesser endurance that I thought-but my life matters not beside the
good of Lomarr. A king's life is of import
only to himself, to his Family, and to a few-wouldst be surprised to learn how
very few-real friends."

"Your life matters to me, sire-and to Sccrol"

 "Aye, Tedric my almost-son, that I know. Art in the forefront of those few I
spoke of. And take this not too
seriously, for I expect fully to live. But in case I die" remember this: kings
come and kings go; but as long as it
holds the loyalty of such as you and Sciro and your kind, the Throne of Lomarr
endures!"

Taggad of Sarlon was not taken completely by surprise. However, he had little
enough warning, and so violent and
hasty was his mobilization that the Sarlonians were little if any fresher than
the Lomarrians when they met" a
couple of miles outside the city's limit.
There is no need to describe in detail the arrangement of the centuries and
the legions, nor to dwell at length upon
the bloodiness and savagery of the conflict as a whole nor to pick out
individual deeds of derring-do, of heroism,
or of cowardice. Of prime interest here is the climactic charge of Lomarr's
heavy horse-the Royal Guard-that
ended it.

There was little enough of finesse in that terrific charge, led by glittering
Phagon and his two alloy-clad lords. The
best their Middlemarch horses could do in the way of speed was a lumbering
canter, but their tremendous masses-a
Middlemarch warhorse was not considered worth saving unless he weighed at
least one long ton added to the
weight of man and armor each bore, gave them momentum starkly irresistible.
Into and through the ranks of
Sarlonian armor the knights of Lomarr's Old Blood crashed; each rising in his
stirrups and swinging down with all
his might, with sword or axe or hammer, upon whatever luckless wight was
nearest at hand.

Then, re-forming, a backward smash; then another drive forward. But men were
being unhorsed; horses were being
hamstrung or killed; of a sudden king Phagon himself went down. Unhorsed, but
not out-his god-metal axe,
scarcely stoppable by iron, was taking heavy toll.

As at signal, every mounted Guardsman left his saddle as one; and every
Guardsman who could move drove toward
the flashing golden figure of his king.

"Where now, sire?" Tedric yelled, above the clang of iron.

"Taggad's pavilion, of course-where else?" Phagon yelled back.

"Guardsmen, to me!" Tedric roared. "Make wedge, as you did at Sarpedion's
Temple!" and the knights who could not
hear him were made by signs to understand what was required. "To that purple
tent we ram Phagon our King.
Elbows in, sire. Short thrusts only, and never mind your legs. Now,
men-DRIVEL"

With three giants in impregnable armor at point Tedric and Sciro were so close
beside and behind the king as
almost to be one with him-that flying wedge simply could not be stopped. In
little over a minute it reached the
pavilion and its terribly surprised owner. Golden tigers seemed to leap and
creep as the lustrous silk of the tent
rippled in the breeze; magnificent golden tigers adorned the Sarlonian's
purple-enameled armor.

"Yield, Taggad of Sarlon, or die!" Phagon shouted.

"If I yield, Oh Phagon of Lomarr, what . . ." Taggad began a conciliatory
speech, but even while speaking he whirled
a long and heavy sword out from behind him" leaped, and struck-so fast that
neither Phagon nor either of his lords
had time to move; so viciously hard that had Lomarr's monarch been wearing
anything but super-steel he would
have joined his fathers then and there. As it was, however, the fierce-driven
heavy blade twisted, bent double, and
broke.

Phagon's counter-stroke was automatic. His axe, swung with all his strength
and speed, crashed to the helve through
iron and bone and brain; and, as soon as the heralds with their clarions could
spread the news that Phagon had killed
Taggad in hand to hand combat, all fighting ceased.

 "Captain Sciro, kneel!" With the flat of his sword Phagon struck the
steel-clad back a ringing blow. "Rise, Lord
Sciro of Sarlon!"

"So be it," Skandos One murmured gently, and took up the life and work of
Skandos Four.

Ultimate catastrophe was five hundred twenty-nine years away.
                      SUBSPACE SURVIVORS

 There has always been, and will always be, the problem of surviving the
experience that any trained expert
can handle ... when there hasn't been any first survivor to be an expert! When
no one has ever gotten back to
explain what happened. . . .

"All passengers, will pay attention" please?" All the high-fidelity speakers
of the starship Procyon spoke as one" in
the skillfully-modulated voice of the trained announcer. "This is the fourth
and last cautionary announcement. Any
who are not seated will seat themselves at once. Prepare for take-off
acceleration of one and one-half gravities;
that is" everyone will weigh one-half again as much as his normal Earth weight
for about fifteen minutes. We lift in
twenty seconds, I will count down the final five seconds . . . Five . . . Four
. . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Lift!"

The immense vessel rose from her berth; slowly at first, but with
ever-increasing velocity; and in the main lounge,
where many of the passengers had gathered to watch the dwindling Earth, no one
moved for the first five minutes.
Then a girl stood up.

She was not a startlingly beautiful girl; no, more so than can be seen fairly
often" of a summer afternoon, on
Seaside Beach. Her hair was an artificial yellow. Her eyes were a deep, cool
blue. Her skin, what could be seen of
it-she was wearing breeches and a long-sleeved shirt-was lightly tanned. She
was only about five-feet three, and her
build was not spectacular. However, every ounce of her one hundred fifteen
pounds was exactly where it should
have been.

First she stood tentatively, flexing her knees and testing her weight. Then,
stepping boldly out into a clear space"
she began to do a high-kicking acrobatic dance; and went on doing it as
effortlessly and as rhythmically as though
she were on an Earthly stage.

"You mustn't do that, Miss!" A stewardess came bustling up. Or" rather, not
exactly bustling. Very few people, and
almost no stewardesses" either actually bustle in or really enjoy one point
five gees, "You really must resume your
seat" Miss. I must insist . . . Oh" you're Miss Warner . . ."

She paused.

"That's right. Barbara Warner. Cabin two eight one." "But really" Miss Warner,
it's regulations" and if you should
fall . . ."

"Foosh to regulations" and pful on 'em. I won't fall. I've been wondering"
every time out, if I could do a thing, and
now I'm going to find out."

Jack-knifing double" she put both forearms flat on the carpet and lifted both
legs into the vertical. Then, silver
slippers pointing motionlessly ceiling-ward, she got up onto her hands and
walked twice around a vacant chair. She
then performed a series of flips that would have done credit to a professional
acrobat; the finale of which left her
sitting calmly in the previously empty seat.

"See?" she informed the flabbergasted stewardess. "I could do it, and I didn't
. . ."

Her voice was drowned out in a yell of approval as everybody who could clap
their hands did so with enthusiasm.
"More!" "Keep it up, gal!" "Do it again!"

 "Oh" I didn't do that to show off!" Barbara Warner flushed hotly as she met
the eyes of the nearby spectators.
"Honestly I didn't-I just had to know if I could." Then" as the applause did
not die down, she fairly scampered out of
the room.

For one hour before the Procyon's departure from Earth and for three hours
afterward, First Officer Carlyle Des-

ton, Chief Electronicist, sat attentively at his board. He was five-feet-eight
inches tall and weighed one hundred
sixty-two pounds net. Just a little guy" as spacemen go. Although
narrow-waisted and for his heft" broad-shoul-

dered, he was built for speed and maneuverability, not to haul freight.

Watching a hundred lights and   half that many instruments, listening to two
phone circuits, one with each   ear" and
hands moving from switches to   rheostats to buttons and levers, be was
completely informed as to the   instant-

by-instant status of everything in his department.

Although attentive, he was not tense, even during the countdown. The only
change was that at the word "Two" his
right forefinger came to rest upon a red button and his eyes doubled their
rate of scan. If anything in his department
had gone wrong the Procyon's departure would have been delayed.

And again, well out beyond the orbit of the moon, just before the starship's
mighty Chaytor engines hurled her out
of space as we know it into that unknowable something that is hyperspace, he
poised a finger. But Immergence,
too, was normal; all the green lights except one went out, needles dropped to
zero, both phones went dead" all
signals stopped. He plugged a jack into a socket below the one remaining green
light and spoke:

"Procyon One to Control Six. Flight Eight Four Nine. Subspace Radio Test One.
How do you read me" Control
Six?"

"Control Six to Procyon One. I read you ten and zero. How do you read me,
Procyon One?"

"Ten and zero. Out." Deston flipped a toggle and the solitary green light went
out.
Perfect signal and zero noise. That was that. From now until Emergence-unless
something happened-he might as
well be a passenger. Everything was automatic, unless and until some robot or
computer yelled for help. Deston
leaned back in his bucket seat and lighted a cigarette. He didn't need to scan
the board constantly now; any trouble
signal would jump right out at him.

Promptly at Dee plus Three Zero Zero-three hours" no minutes, no seconds after
departure-his relief appeared.

"All black, Babe?" the newcomer asked.

"As the pit, Eddie. Take over." Eddie did so. "You've picked out your girl
friend for the trip, I suppose?" "Not yet. I
got sidetracked watching Bobby Warner.

She was doing handstands and handwalks and forward and back flips in the
lounge-under one point five gees yet.
Wow! And after that all the other women looked like a dime's worth of catmeat.
She doesn't stand out too much
until she starts to move, but then-Oh, brother!" Eddie rolled his eyes, made
motions with his hands, and whistled
expressively. "Talk about poetry in motion! Just walking across a stage, she'd
bring down the house and stop the
show cold in its tracks."

"OK, OK, don't blow a fuse," Deston said, resignedly. "I know. You'll love her
undyingly; all this trip, maybe. So
bring her up, next watch" and I'll give her a gold badge. As usual."

"You . . . how dumb can you get?" Eddie demanded. "D'you think I'd even try to
play footsie with Barbara
Warner?"

"You'd play footsie with the Archangel Michael's sister if she'd let you; and
she probably would. So who's Barbara
Warner?"

Eddie Thompson gazed at his superior pitingly. "I know you're ten nines per
cent monk, Babe, but I did think you
pulled your nose out of the megacycles often enough to learn a few of the
facts of life. Did you ever hear of
Warner Oil?"

"I think so." Deston thought for a moment. "Found a big new field, didn't
they? In South America somewhere?" "Just
the biggest on Earth" is all. And not only on Earth. He operates in all the
systems for a hundred parsecs around, and
he never sinks a dry hole. Every well he drills is a gusher that blows the rig
clear up into the stratosphere.
Everybody wonders how he does it. My guess is that his wife's an oil-witch,
which is why he lugs his whole family
along wherever he goes. Why else would he?"

"Maybe he loves her. It happens, you know." "Huh?" Eddie snorted. "After
twenty years of her? Comet-gas! Anyway,
would you have the sublime gall to make passes at Warner Oil's heiress, with
more millions in her own sock than
you've got dimes?"
"I don't make passes."

"That's right, you don't. Only at books and tapes, even on ground leaves; more
fool you. Well" then, would you
marry anybody like that?"

"Certainly, if I loved . . ." Deston paused, thought a moment, then went on:
"Maybe I wouldn't, either. She'd make me
dress for dinner. She'd probably have a live waiter; maybe even a butler. So I
guess I wouldn't" at that."

"You nor me neither, brother. But what a dish! What a lovely, luscious,
toothsome dish!" Eddie mourned. "You'll
be raving about another one tomorrow," Deston said, unfeelingly, as he turned
away.

 "I don't know; but even if I do, she won't be anything like her," Eddie said,
to the closing door.

And Deston, outside the door, grinned sardonically to himself. Before his next
watch, Eddie would bring up one of
the prettiest girls aboard for a gold badge; the token that would let
her-under approved escort" of course-go
through the Top.

He himself never went down to the Middle, which was passenger territory. There
was nothing there he wanted. He
was too busy, had too many worthwhile things to do, to waste time that way . .
. but the hunch was getting stronger
and stronger all the time. For, the first time in all his three years of
deep-space service he felt an overpowering
urge to go down into the very middle of the Middle; to the starship's main
lounge.

He knew that his hunches were infallible. At cards" dice, or wheels he had
always had hunches and he had always
won. That was why he had stopped gambling, years before, before anybody found
out. He was that kind of a man.

Apart from the matter of unearned increment, however, he always followed his
hunches; but this one he did not like
at all. He had been resisting it for hours, because he had never visited the
lounge and did not want to visit it now.
But something down there was pulling like a tractor, so he went. He didn't go
to his cabin; didn't even take off his
side-arm. He didn't even think of it; the .41 automatic at his hip was as much
a part of his uniform as his pants.

Entering the lounge, he did not have to look around.

She was playing bridge, and as eyes met eyes and she rose to her feet a
shock-wave swept through him that made
him feel as though his every hair was standing straight on end.

"Excuse me, please," she said to the other three at her table. "I must go
now." She tossed her cards down onto the
table and walked straight toward him; eyes still holding eyes.-

He backed hastily out into the corridor, and as the door closed behind her
they went naturally and wordlessly into
each other's arms. Lips met lips in a kiss that lasted for a long, long time.
It was not a passionate embrace-passion
would come later-it was as though each of them, after endless years of
bootless" fruitless longing, bad come
finally home.

"Come with me, dear, where we can talk," she said" finally; eyeing with
disfavor the half-dozen highly interested
spectators.

And a couple of minutes later" in cabin two hundred eighty-one, Deston said:
"So this is why I had to come down
into passenger territory. You came aboard at exactly zero seven forty-three."

"Uh-uh." She shook her yellow head. "A few minutes before that. That was when
I read your name in the list of
officers on the board. First Officer" Carlyle Deston. I got a tingle that went
from the tips of my toes up and out
through the very ends of my hair. Nothing like when we actually saw each
other, of course. We both knew the truth,
then. It's wonderful that you're so strongly psychic" too."

"I don't know about that," he said, thoughtfully. "All my training has been
based on the axiomatic fact that the map is
not the territory. Psionics, as I understand it" holds that the map
is-practically-the territory, but can't prove it. So I
simply don't know what to believe. On one hand, I have had real hunches all my
life. On the other, the signal doesn't
carry much information. More like hearing a siren when you're driving along a
street. You know you have to pull
over and stop, but that's all you know. It could be police, fire,
ambulance-anything. Anybody with any psionic ability
at all ought to do a lot better than that, I should think."

"Not necessarily. You've been fighting it. Ninety-nine per cent of your mind
doesn't want to believe it; is dead set
against it. So it has to force its way through whillions and skillions of ohms
of resistance, so only the most
powerful stimuli-'maximum signal' in your jargon, perhaps?-can get through to
you at all." Suddenly she giggled
like a schoolgirl. "You're either psychic or the biggest wolf in the known
universe, and I know you aren't a wolf. If
you hadn't been as psychic as I am, you'd've jumped clear out into subspace
when a perfectly strange girl attacked
you."

"How do you know so much about me?"

"I made it a point to. One of the junniors told me you're the only virgin
officer in all space."

"That was Eddie Thompson." "Uh-huh." She nodded brightly. "Well, is that bad?"

"Anything else but. That is, he thought it was terrible outrageous-a betrayal
of the whole officer caste-but to me it
makes everything just absolutely perfect."

"Me, too. How soon can we get married?"
"I'd say right now, except. . . ." She caught her lower lip between her teeth
and thought. "No, no 'except.' Right now,
or as soon as you can. You can't, without resigning" can you? They'd fire
you?"

"Don't worry about that," he grinned. "My record is good enough, I think, to
get a good ground job. Even if they fire
me for not waiting until we ground" there's lots of jobs. I can support you,
sweetheart."

"Oh, I know you can. I wasn't thinking of that. You wouldn't like a ground
job."

 "What difference does that make?" he asked, in honest surprise. "A man grows
up. I couldn't have you with me in
space" and I'd like that a lot less. No. I'm done with space" as of now. But
what was that 'except' business?"

"I thought at first I'd tell my parents first-they're both aboard-but I
decided not to. She'd scream bloody murder and
he'd roar like a lion and none of it would make me change my mind" so we'll
get married first."

He looked at her questioningly; she shrugged and went on. "We aren't what
you'd call a happy family. She's been
trying to make me marry an old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go
roll her hoop-to get a divorce and marry
the foul old beast herself. And to consolidate two empires, he's been wanting
me to marry a multibillionaire-who is
also a louse and a crumb and a heel. Last week he insisted on it and I blew up
like an atomic bomb. I told him if I
got married a thousand times I'd pick every one of my husbands myself, without
the least bit of help from either
him or her. I'd keep on finding oil and stuff for him, I said, but that was
all. . . ."

"Oil!" Deston exclaimed, involuntarily, as everything fell into place in his
mind. The way she walked; poetry in
motion . . . the oil-witch . . . two empires . . . more millions than he had
dimes. . . . "Oh" you're Barbara Warner"
then."

"Why, of course; but my friends call me 'Bobby.' Didn't you-but of course you
didn't-you never read passenger
lists. If you did, you'd've got a tingle, too."

"I got plenty of tingle without reading, believe me. However, I never expected
to-"

"Don't say it, dear!" She got up and took both his hands in hers. "I know how
you feel. I don't like to let you ruin
your career, either, but nothing can separate us" now that we've found each
other. So I'll tell you this." Her eyes
looked steadily into his. "If it bothers you the least bit, later on, I'll
give every dollar I own to some foundation or
other, I swear it."

He laughed shamefacedly as he took her in his arms. "Since that's the way you
look at it, it won't bother me a bit."
"Uh-huh, you do mean it." She snuggled her head down into the curve of his
neck. "I can tell."

"I know you can, sweetheart." Then he had another thought, and with strong,
deft fingers he explored the muscles of
her arms and back. "But those acrobatics in plus gee-and you're trained down
as hard and fine as I am, and it's my
business to be-how come?"

"I majored in Physical Education and I love it. And I'm a Newmartian, you
know, so I teach a few courses-"
"Newmartian? I've heard-but you aren't a colonial; you're as Terran as I am."

"By blood, yes; but I was born on Newmars. Our actual and legal residence has
always been there. The tax situation,
you know."

"I don't know, no. Taxes don't bother me much. But go ahead. You teach a few
courses. In?"

"Oh, bars, trapeze, ground-and-lofty tumbling, aerobatics, aerialistics,
high-wire, muscle-control, judo-all that kind
of thing."

"Ouch! So if you ever happen to accidentally get mad at me you'll tie me right
up into a pretzel?"

"I doubt it; very seriously. I've tossed lots of two hundred-pounders around,
of course, but they were not space
officers." She laughed unaffectedly as she tested his musculature much more
professionally and much more
thoroughly than he had tested hers. "Definitely I couldn't. A good big man can
always take a good little one, you
know."

"But I'm not big; I'm just a little squirt. You've probably heard what they
call me?"

"Yes, and I'm going to call you 'Babe,' too, and mean it the same way they do.
Besides, who wants a man a foot taller
than she is and twice as big? You're just exactly the right size!"

"That's spreading the good old oil, Bobby, but I'll never tangle with you if I
can help it. Buzz-saws are small, too,
and sticks of dynamite. Shall we go hunt up the parsonor should it be a
priest? Or a rabbi?"

"Even that doesn't make a particle of difference to YOU."

"Of course not. How could it?"

"A parson, please." Then, with a bright, quick grin: "We have got a lot to
learn about each other, haven't we?" "Some
details, of course, but nothing of any importance and we'll have plenty of
time to learn them." "And we'll love every
second of it. You'll live down here in the Middle with me" won't you" all the
time you aren't actually on duty?"

"I can't imagine doing anything else," and the two set out, arms around each
other" to find a minister. And as they
strolled along:

"Of course you won't actually need a job, ever, or my money, either. You never
even thought of dowsing, did you?"

"Dowsing? Oh, that witch stuff. Of course not." "Listen, darling. All the time
I've been touching you I've been
learning about you. And you've been learning about me."

"Yes" but="

"No buts" buster. You have really tremendous powers, and they aren't latent,
either. All you have to do is quit
fighting them and use them. You're ever so much stronger and fuller than I am.
All I can do at dowsing is find water,
oil, coal, and gas. I'm no good at all on metals-I couldn't feel gold if I
were perched right on the roof of Fort Knox;
I couldn't fee! radium if it were frying me to a crisp. But I'm positive that
you can tune yourself to anything you
want to find."

 He didn't believe it" and the argument went on until they reached the
"Reverend's" quarters. Then" of course" it was
dropped automatically; and the next five days were deliciously, deliriously"
ecstatically happy days for them both.

II

At the time of this chronicle the status of interstellar flight was very
similar to that of intercontinental jet-plane
flight in the nineteen-sixties. Starships were designed by humanity's best
brains; carried every safety device those
brains could devise. They were maintained and serviced by ultra-skilled,
ultra-trained, ultra-able crews; they were
operated by the creme-de-la-creme of manhood. Only a man with an extremely
capable mind in an extremely
capable body could become an officer of a subspacer.

Statistically" starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by
man; so safe that Very Important '
Persons used them regularly" unthinkingly, and as a matter of course.
Statistically, the starships' fatality rate per
million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of that of the automobiles'
per million passenger-miles.
Insurance companies offered odds of tens of thousands to one that any given
star-traveller would return unharmed
from any given star-trip he cared to make.

Nevertheless, accidents happened. A chillingly large number of lives had" as a
total, been lost; and no catastrophe
had ever been even partially explained. No message of distress or call for
help had ever been received. No single
survivor had ever been found; nor any piece of wreckage.

And on the Great Wheel of Fate the Procyon's number came up.

In the middle of the night Carlyle Deston came instantaneously awake-feeling
with his every muscle and with his
every square inch of skin; listening with all the force he could put into his
auditory nerves; while deep down in his
mind a huge, terribly silent voice continued to yell "DANGER! DANGER! DANGER!"

In a very small fraction of a second Carlyle Deston moved-and fast. Seizing
Barbara by an arm" he leaped out of
bed with her.

"We are abandoning ship-get into this suit--quick!" "But what ... but I've got
to dress!"

"No time! Snap it up!" He practically hurled her into her suit; clamped her
helmet tight. Then he leaped into his
own. "Skipper!" he snapped into the suit's microphone. "Deston. Emergency!
Abandon ship!"

The alarm bells clanged once; the big red lights flashed once; the sirens
barely started to grow!" then quit. The
whole vast fabric of the ship trembled and shuddered and shook as though it
were being mauled by a thousand
impossibly gigantic hammers. Deston did not know and never did find out
whether it was his captain or an auto-

matic that touched off the alarm. Whichever it was, the disaster happened so
fast that practically no warning at all
was given. And out in the corridor:

"Come on, girl-sprint!" He put his arm under hers and urged her along.

She did her best, but in comparison with his trained performance her best
wasn't good. "I've never been checked out
on sprinting in spacesuits!" she gasped. "Let go of me and go on ahead. I'll
follow-"

Everything went out. Lights, gravity" air-circulation everything.

"You haven't been checked out on free fall, either. Hang onto this tool-hanger
here on my belt and we'll travel."

"Where to?" she asked, hurtling through the air much faster than she had ever
gone on foot.

"Baby Two-that is, Lifecraft Number Two-my crash assignment. Good thing I was
down here in the Middle, I'd
never have made it from up Top. Next corridor left, I think." Then, as the
light of his headlamp showed numbers on
the wall: "Yes. Square left. I'll swing you."

He swung her and they shot to the end of the passage. He kicked a lever and
the lifecraft's port swung open-to
reveal a blaze of light and a startled, grey-haired man.

"What happened.... What hap ... ?" The man began. "Wrecked. We've had it.
We're abandoning ship. Get into that
cubby over there, shut the door tight behind you, and stay there!"

"But can't I do something to help-?"

"Without a suit and not knowing how to use one? You'd get burned to a cinder.
Get in them-and jumpt" The oldster
jumped and Deston turned to his wife. "Stay here at the port, Bobby. Wrap one
leg around that lever, to anchor you.
What does your telltale read? That gauge there-your radiation meter. It reads
twenty, same as mine. Just pink, so
we've got a minute or so. I'll roust out some passengers and toss 'em to
you-you toss 'em along in there. Can do?'

She was white and trembling; she was very evidently on the verge of being
violently sick; but she was far from
being out of control. "Can do, sir."

"Good girl, sweetheart. Hang on one minute more and we'll have gravity and
you'll be O.K."

The first five doors he tried were locked; and, since they were made of armor
plate, there was nothing be could do
about them except give each one a resounding kick with a heavy steel boot. The
sixth was unlocked, but the
passengers-a man and a woman-were very evidently and very gruesomely dead.

So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a
spacesuit was floundering help-

lessly in the air. He glanced at his telltale. Thirty-two. High in the red,
almost against the pin.

"Bobby! What do you read?" "Twenty-six."

 "Good. I've found only one, but were running out of time. I'm coming in."

In the lifecraft he closed the port and slammed on full drive away from the
ship. Then, wheeling, he shucked
Barbara out of her suit like an ear of corn and shed his own. He picked up a
fire-extinguisher-like affair and jerked
open the door of a room a little larger than a clothes closet. "Jump in here!"
He slammed the door shut. "Now strip,
quick!" He picked the canister up and twisted four valves.

Before he could get the gun into working position she was out of her
pajamas-the fact that she had been wondering
visibly what it was all about had done nothing whatever to cut down her speed.
A flood of thick, creamy foam
almost hid her from sight and Deston began to talk-quietly.

"Thanks, sweetheart, for not slowing us down by arguing and wanting
explanations. This stuff is DEKON-short for
'Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Adsorbent, and Chelating, Type DCQ-429.'
Used soon enough, it takes care
of radiation. Rub it in good, all over you like this." He set the foam gun
down on the floor and went vigorously to
work. "Yes, hair, too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane.
Yes, into your eyes. It stings 'em a
little, but that's a lot better than' going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six
good big mouthfuls-it's tasteless and
goes down easy.

"Now the soles of your feet-OK. The last will hurt plenty, but we've got to
get some of it into your lungs and we
can't do it the hospital way. So when I slap a gob of it over your mouth and
nose inhale bard and deep. Just once is
all anybody can do, but that's enough. And don't fight. Any ordinary woman I
could handle, but I can't handle you fast
enough. So if you don't inhale deep I'll have to knock you cold. Otherwise you
die of lung cancer. Will do?"

"Will do, sweetheart. Good and deep. No fight"" and she emptied her lungs.

He slapped it on. She inhaled, good and deep; and went into convulsive
paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his
arms until the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she
pulled herself away from him. "But ...
how ... about . . . you?" She could just barely talk; her voice was distorted"
almost inaudible. "Let . . . me . . . help . . .
you . . . quick!"

 "No need, darling. Two other men out there. The old man probably won't need
it-I think I got him into the safe
quick enough-the other guy and I will help each other. So lie down there on
the bunk and take it easy until I come
back here and help you get the gunkum off. So-long for half an hour, pet."

Forty-five minutes later, while all four were still cleaning up the messes of
foam, something began to buzz sharply.
Deston stepped over to the board and flipped a switch. The communicator came
on. Since everything aboard a
starship is designed to fail safe, they were, of course, in normal space. On
the visiplates hundreds of stars blazed in
vari-colored points of hard, bright light.

"Baby Two acknowledging," Deston said. "First Officer Deston and three
passengers. Deconned to zero. Report,
please."

"Baby Three. Second Officer Jones and four passengers. Deconned to-"

"Thank God, Herc!" Formality vanished. "With you to astrogate us" we may have
a chance. But how'd you make it?
I'd've sworn a flying saucer couldn't've got down from the Top in the time we
had."

"Same thing right back at you, Babe. I didn't have to come down. We were in
Baby Three when it happened." Full
vision was on; a big, square-jawed, lean, tanned face looked out at them from
the screen.

"Hub? How come? And who's `we'?"

"My wife and L" Second Officer Theodore "Hercules" Jones was somewhat
embarrassed. "I got married, too" day
before yesterday. After the way the old man chewed you out, though, I knew
he'd slap irons on me without saying a
word, so we kept it dark and hid out in Baby Three. These three are all we
could find before our meters went high
red. I deconned Bun, then-"

"Bun?" Barbara broke in. "Bernice Burns? How wonderful!"

"Formerly Bernice Burns." The face of a platinum-blonde beauty appeared on the
screen beside Jones. "And am I
glad to see you, Barbara, even if I did just meet you yesterday! I don't know
whether I'd ever see another girl's face
or not!"
"Let's cut the chat," Deston said then. "Here, give me course, blast, and time
for rendezvous . . . hey! My watch
stopped!"

"So did mine," Jones said. "So just hold one gravity on eighteen dash
forty-seven dash two seventy-one and IT
correct you as necessary."

After setting course, and still thinking of his watch, Deston said: "But it's
nonmagnetic. It never stopped before."

The grey-haired man spoke. "It was never in such a field before. You see"
those two observations of fact invalidate
twenty-four of the thirty-eight best theories of hyper-space. But tell me-am I
correct in saying that none of you
were in direct contact with the metal of the ship when it happened?"

"We avoided it in case of trouble. You? Name and job?" Deston jerked his head
at the younger stranger.

"I know that much. Henry Newman. Crew-chief, normal space jobs, unlimited."

"Your passengers, Herc?"

"Vincent Lopresto, finished, and his two bodyguards. They were sleeping in
their suits, on air-mattresses.
Grounders. Don't like subspace-or space, either."

"Just so." The grey-haired man nodded, almost happily. "We survivors, then"
absorbed the charge gradually-" "But
what the-" Deston began.

"One moment, please" young man. You perhaps saw some of the bodies. What were
they like?"

"They looked . . . well, not exactly as though they had exploded, but-" he
paused.

"Precisely." Grey-Hair beamed. "'That eliminates all the others except
three-Morton's, Sebring's, and Rothstein's."

"You're a specialist in subspace then?"

"Oh" no, I'm not a specialist at all. I'm a dabbler, really. A specialist, you
know, is one who learns more and more
about less and less until he knows everything about nothing at all. rm just
the opposite. rm learning less and less
about more and more; hoping in time to know nothing at all about everything."

"In other words, a Fellow of the College. I'm glad you're aboard, sir."

"Oh, a Theoretician?" Barbara's face lit up and she held out her hand. "With
dozens of doctorates in everything from
Astronomy to Zoology? I've never met . . . I'm ever so glad to meet you,
Doctor-?"

"Adams. Andrew Adams. But I have only eight at the moment. Earned degrees,
that is."
"But what were you doing in this lifeboat? No, let me guess. You were
X-ray-eying it and fine-toothing it for
improvements made since your last trip, and storing the details away in your
eidetic memory."

"Not eidetic, by any means. Merely very good."

"And how many metric tons of apparatus have you got in the hold?" Deston
asked.

 "Less than six. Just what I must have in order to-" "Babe!" Jones' voice cut
in. "Course change. Stay on alpha
eighteen. Shift beta to forty-four and gamma to two sixty-five."

Rendezvous was made. Both lifecraft hung motionless relative to the Procyon's
hulk. No other lifecraft had
escaped. A conference was held.

Weeks of work would be necessary before Deston and Jones could learn even
approximately what the damage to
the Procyon had been. Decontamination was automatic" of course, but there
would be literally hundreds of hot
spots, each of which would have to be sought out and neutralized by hand. The
passengers' effects would have to be
listed and stored in the proper cabins. Each body would have to be given
velocity away from the ship. And so on.
Every survivor would have to work, and work hard.

The two girls wanted to be together. The two officers almost had to be
together, to discuss matters at unhampered
length and to make decisions. Each was, of course" almost as well versed in
engineering as he was in his own
specialty. All ships' officers from First to Fifth had to be. And, as long as
they lived or until the Procyon made
port, all responsibility rested First, upon First Officer Deston; and second,
upon Second Officer Jones. Therefore
Theodore and Bernice Jones came aboard Lifecraft Two, and Deston asked Newman
to flit across to Lifecraft
Three.

"Not me; I like the scenery here better." Newman's eyes raked Bernice's
five-feet-eight of scantily-clad sheer
beauty from ankles to coiffure. "If you're too crowded I know a lifecraft
carries only fifty people-go yourself."

"As a crew-chief, you know the law." Deston spoke quietly-too quietly, as the
other man should have known. "I am
in command."

"You ain't in command of me, pretty boy!" Newman sneered. "You can play God
when you're on sked, with a shipful
of trained dogs to bite for you, but on here where nobody has ever come back
from I make my own law with this!"
He patted his side pocket.

"Draw it, then!" Deston's voice now had all the top deck rasp of his rank. "Or
craw!!"

The First Officer had not moved; his right hand still hung quietly at his
side. Newman glanced at the girls, both of
whom were frozen; at Jones, who smiled at him pityingly; at Adams, who was
merely interested. "I . . . my . . . yours
is right where you can get at it," be faltered.

"You should have thought of that sooner. But" this once, I won't move a finger
until your band is in your pocket."

"Just wing him, Babe," Jones said then. "He looks strong enough" except for
his head. We can use him to shovel out
the gunkum and clean up."

"Uh-uh. I'll have to kill him sometime, and the sooner the better. Square
between the eyes. Do you want a hundred
limit at ten bucks a millimeter on how far the hole is off dead center?"

The two girls gasped; stared at each other and at the two officers in horror;
but Jones said calmly, without losing
any part of his smile: "I don't want a dime's worth of that. I've lost too
much money that way already." At which
outrageous statement both girls knew what was going on and smiled in relief.

And Newman misinterpreted those smiles completely;

especially Bernice's. The words came hard, but he managed to say them. "I
crawl."

"Crawl, what?"

"I crawl, sir. You'll want my gun-"

"Keep it. There's a lot more difference than that between us. How close can
you count seconds?"

"Plus or minus five per cent, sir."

 "Close enough. Your first job will be to build some kind of a brute force,
belt-or-gear thing to act as a clock. You
will really work. Any more insubordination or any malingering at all and I'll
put you into a life-craft and launch you
into space, where you can make your own laws and be monarch of all you survey.
Dismissed! Now mod"

Newman flitted-fast-and Barbara, turning to her husband, opened her mouth to
speak and shut it. No" he would have
killed the man; he would have had to. He still might have to. Wherefore she
said instead: "Why'd you let him keep
his pistol? The . . . the slime! And after you actually saved his life, too!"

"With some people what's past doesn't count. The other was just a gesture.
Psychology. It'll slow him down, I think.
Besides, he'd have another one as soon as we get back into the Procyon."

"But you can lock up all their guns" can't you? Bernice asked.

"I'm afraid not. How about the other three, Herc?" "With thanks to you"
Barbara, for the word; slime. If Lopresto is
a financier" I'm an angel, with wings and halo complete. Gangsters; hoodlums;
racketeers; you'd have to open every
can of concentrate aboard to find all their spare artillery."
"Check. The first thing to do is-"

"One word first," Bernice put in. "I want to thank you, First Off-no, not
First Officer, but I could hardly=' "Sure you
can. I'm 'Babe' to us all, and you're 'Bun.' As to the other" forget it. You
and I, Herc, will go over and-"

"And I," Adams put in, definitely. "I must photograph everything, before it is
touched; therefore I must be the first
on board. I must do some autopsies and also-"

"Of course. You're right," Deston said. "And if I haven't said it before, I'm
tremendously glad to have a Big Brain
along . . . oh, excuse that crack" please, Dr. Adams. It slipped out on me."

Adams laughed. "In context, I regard that as the highest compliment I have
ever received. To you youngsters my
advanced age of fifty-two represents senility. Nevertheless, you men need not
'Doctor' me. Either 'Adams' or
'Andy' will do very nicely. As for you two young women-"

I'm going to call you 'Uncle Andy,"' Barbara said, with a grin. "Now, Uncle
Andy, you being a Big Brain the term
being used in its most complimentary sense and the way you talked, one of your
eight doctorates is in medicine."

"Of course."

"Are you any good at obstetrics?"

"In the present instance I am perfectly safe in saying-" "Wait a minute!"
Deston snapped. "Bobby, you are' not-"

"I am too! That is, I don't suppose I am yet, since we were married only last
Tuesday, but if he's competent and I'm
sure he is-I'm certainly going to! If we get back to Earth I want to" and if
we don't both Bun and I have got to.
Castaways' Code, you know. So how about it, Uncle Andy?"

"I know what you two girls are"" Adams said, quietly. "I know what you two men
must of necessity be. Therefore I
can say without reservation that none of you need feel any apprehension
whatever."

 Deston was about to say something, but Barbara forestalled him. "Well, we can
think about it, anyway, and talk it
over. But for right now, I think it's high time we all got some sleep. Don't
you?"

It was; and they did; and after they had slept and had eaten "breakfast" the
three men wafted themselves across a
couple of hundred yards of space to the crippled starship. Powerful
floodlights were rigged.

"What . . . a . . . mess." Deston's voice was low and wondering. "The whole
Top looks as though she'd crash- landed
and spun out for eight miles. But the Middle and Tai! look untouched."

Inside, however, devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Bulkheads, walls,
floors, structural members; were
torn, sheared, twisted into weirdly-distorted shapes impossible to understand
or explain. And, much worse, were
the absences: for in dozens of volumes, of as many sizes and of shapes
incompatible with any three-dimensional
geometry, every solid thing had vanished-without leaving any clue whatever as
to where or how it had gone.

After three long days of hard work, Adams was satisfied. He had taken pictures
as fast as both officers could
process the film; he had covered many miles of tape with words only half of
which either spaceman could under-

stand. Then, finally, he said:

"Well, that covers the preliminary observations as well as I know how to do
it. Thank you, boys, for your for-

bearance and your help. Now, if you'll help me find my stuff and bring some of
it-a computer and so on-up to the
lounge? They did so; the "and so on" proving to be a bewildering miscellany
indeed. "Thank you immensely,
gentlemen; now I won't bother you any more."

"You've learned a lot, Doc, and we haven't learned much of anything." Deston
grinned ruefully. "That makes you the
director. You'll have to tell us, in general terms" what to do."

"Oh? I can offer a few suggestions. It is virtually certain: One, that no
subspace equipment will function. Two, that
all normal-space equipment, except for some items you know about, will
function normally. Three, that we can't do
anything about subspace without landing on a planet. Four, that such landing
will require extreme - I might almost
say fantastic--precautions."

Although both officers thought that they understood Item Four, neither of them
had any inkling as to what Adams
really meant. They did understand thoroughly" however, Items One, Two, and
Three.

"Hell's jets!" Deston exclaimed. "Do you mean we'll have to blast normal to a
system?"

"It isn't as bad as you think, Babe," Jones said. "Stars are much thicker
here-we're in the center somewhere than
around Sol. The probability is point nine plus that any emergence would put us
less than point four light-year away
from a star. A couple of them show discs. I haven't measured any yet; have
you, Doc?"

"Yes. Point two two, approximately, to the closest." "So what?" Deston
demanded. "What's the chance of it having
an Earth-type planet?"

"Any solid planet will do," Adams said. "Just so it has plenty of mass."

"That's still quite a trip." Deston was coming around. "Especially since we
can't use more than one point-" "One
point zero gravities," Jones put in, "Over the long pull-and the women-you're
right," Deston agreed, and took out his
slide rule. "Let's see . . . one gravity, plus and minus . . . velocity ...
time . . . it'll take about eleven months?"

 "Just about," Jones agreed, and Adams nodded. "Well, if that's what the cards
say, there's no use yowling about it,"
and all nine survivors went to work. Deston, besides working, directed the
activities of all the others except Adams;
who worked harder and longer than did anyone else. He barely took time out to
eat and to sleep. Nor did either
Deston or Jones ask him what he was doing. Both knew that it would take five
years of advanced study before either
of them could understand the simplest material on the doctor's tapes.

III

The tremendous engines of the Procyon were again putting out their wonted
torrents of power. The starship, now a
mere spaceship, was on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their
slots, but the five and the four still lived in
them rather than in the vast and oppressive' emptiness that the ship itself
now was. And socially, outside of working
hours, the two groups did not mix.

Clean-up was going nicely, at the union rate of six hours on and eighteen
hours off. Deston could have set any
hours he pleased, but he didn't. There was plenty of time. Eleven months in
deep space is a fearfully, a tre-

mendously long time.

"Morning"" "afternoon," "evening," and "night" were, of course, purely
conventional terms. The twenty-four hour
"day" measured off by the brute-force machine that was their masterclock
carried no guarantee, expressed or
implied, as to either accuracy or uniformity.

One evening, then, four hard-faced men sat at two small tables in the main
room of Lifecraft Three. Two of them"
Ferdy Blaine and Moose Mordan, were playing cards for small stakes. Ferdy was
of medium size; compact rather
than slender; built of rawhide and spring steel. Lithe and poised, he was the
epitome of leashed and controlled
action. Moose was six-feet-four and weighed a good two forty-stolid, massive,
solid. Ferdy and Moose; a tiger and
an elephant; both owned in fee simple by Vincent Lopresto.

The two at the other table had been planning for days. They had had many
vitrolic arguments" but neither had made
any motion toward his weapon.

"Play it my way and we've got it made, I tell you!" Newman pounded the table
with his fist. Seventy million if it's a
cent! Heavier grease than your lousy spig Syndicate ever even heard of! I'm as
good an astrogator as Jones is" and a
damn sight better engineer. In electronics I maybe ain't got the theory Pretty
Boy has, but at building and repairing
the stuff I've forgot more than he ever will know. At practical stuff, and
that's all we give a whoop about" I lay over
both them sissies like a Lunar dome."
"Oh, yeah?" Lopresto sneered. "How come you aren't ticketed for subspace,
then?"

"For hell's sake, act your age!" Newman snorted in disgust. Eyes locked and
held, but nothing happened. "D'ya think
I'm dumb? Or that them subspace Boy Scouts can be fixed? Or I don't know where
the heavy grease is at? Or I can't
make the approach? Why ain't you in subspace?"

"I see." Lopresto forced his anger down. "But I've got to be sure we can get
back without 'em."

"You can be damn sure. I got to get back myself, don't I? But get one thing
down solid. I get the big peroxide
blonde."

"You can have her. Too big. I like the little yellow head a lot better."

Newman sneered into the hard-held face so close to his and said: "And don't
think for a second you can make me
crawl, you small-time, chiselling punk. Rub me out after we kill them off and
you get nowhere. You're dead. Chew
on that a while, and you'll know who's boss."

After just the right amount of holding back and objecting, Lopresto agreed.
"You win, Newman, the way the cards
lay. Have you ever planned this kind of an operation or do you want me to?"

"You do it, Vince," Newman said, grandly. He had at least one of the qualities
of a leader. "Besides, you already
have, ain't you?"

"Of course. Ferdy will take Deston-" "No he won't! He's mine, the louse!"

"If you're that dumb, a!! bets are off. What are you using for a brain? Can't
you see the guy's chain lightning on ball
bearings?"

"But we're going to surprise 'em, ain't we?"

"Sure, but even Ferdy would just as soon not give him an even break. You
wouldn't stand the chance of a snowflake
in hell, and if you've got the brains of a louse you know it."

"OK, we'll let Ferdy have him. Me and you will match draws to see who-"

"I can draw twice to your once, but I suppose I'll have to prove it to you.
I'll take Jones; you will gun the professor;
Moose will grab the dames, one under each arm" and keep 'em out of the way
until the shooting's over. The only
thing is, when? The sooner the better. Tomorrow?"

"Not quite, Vince. Let 'em finish figuring course, time, distance, all that
stuff. They can do it a lot faster and some
better than I can. I'll tell you when."

"OK, and I'll give the signal. When I yell `NOW' we give 'em the business."

Newman went to his cabin and the muscle called Moose spoke thoughtfully. That
is, as nearly thoughtfully as his
mental equipment would allow.

"I don't like that ape, boss. Before you gun him, let me work him over just a
little bit, huh?"

"It'll be quite a while yet, but that's a promise, Moose. As soon as his job's
done he'll wish he'd never been born.

Until then, we'll let him think he's Top Dog. Let him rave. But Ferdy, any
time he's behind me or out of sight" watch
him like a hawk. Shoot him through the right elbow if he makes one sour move."

"I get you, boss."

A couple of evenings later, in Lifecraft Two, Barbara said: "You're worried,
Babe, and everything's going so
smoothly. Why?"

"Too smoothly altogether. That's why. Newman ought to be doing a slow burn and
goldbricking all he dares; instead
of which he's happy as a clam and working like a nailer . . . and I wouldn't
trust Vincent Lopresto or Ferdinand
Blaine as far as I can throw a brick chimney by its smoke. This whole
situation stinks. There's going to be shooting
for sure."

"But they couldn't do anything without you two!" Bernice exclaimed. "It'd be
suicide . . . and with no motive . . .
could they, Ted, possibly?"

Jones' dark face did not lighten. "They could, and I'm very much afraid they
intend to. As a crewchief, Newman is a
jack-leg engineer and a very good practical `troncist; and if be's what I
think he is-" He paused.

"Could be," Deston said, doubtfully. "In with a mob of normal space
pirate-smugglers. I'll buy that, but there
wouldn't be enough plunder to-"

"Just a sec. So he's a pretty good rule-of-thumb astrogator, too, and we're
computing every element of the flight.
As for motive-salvage. With either of us alive" none. With both of us dead,
can you guess within ten million bucks
of how much they'll collect?"

"Blockhead!" Deston slapped himself on the forehead. "I never even thought of
that angle. That nails it down
solid."

"With the added attraction," Jones went on, coldly and steadily, "of having
two extremely desirable women for
eleven months before killing them, too."

Both girls shrank visibly, and Deston said: "Check. I thought that was the
main feature, but it didn't add up. This
does. Now, how will they figure the battle? Both of us at once, of-"

"Why?" Barbara asked. "I'd think they'd waylay you, one at a time."

"Uh-uh. The survivor would lock the ship in null-G and it'd be like shooting
fish in a barrel. Since we're almost
never together on duty . . . and it won't come until after we've finished the
computations . . . they'll think up a good
reason for everybody to be together, and that itself will be the tipoff. Ferdy
will probably draw on me-"

"And he'll kill you," Jones said, flatly. "So I think I'll blow his brains out
tomorrow morning on sight.".

"And get killed yourself? No . . . much better to use their own trap-"

"We can't! Fast as you are, you aren't in his class. He's a
professional-probably one of the fastest guns in space."
"Yes" but . . . I've got a . . . I mean I think I can-" Bernice, grinning
openly now, stopped Deston's floundering. "It's
high time you fellows told each other the truth. Bobby and I let our back hair
down long ago we were both
tremendously surprised to know that both you boys are just as strongly psychic
as we are. Perhaps even more so."

"Oh . . . so you get hunches, too?" Jones demanded. "So you'll have plenty of
warning?"

"All my life. The old alarm clock has never failed me yet. But the girls can't
start packing pistols now."

"I wouldn't know how to shoot one if I did," Bernice laughed. "I'll throw
things I'm very good at that." "Huh?" Jones
asked. He didn't know his new wife very well, either. "What can you throw
straight enough to do any good?"

"Anything I can reach," she replied, confidently. "Baseballs, medicine balls,
cannon balls, rocks, bricks, darts, dis-

cus, hammer, javelin-what-have-you. In a for-real battle I'd prefer . . .
chairs, I think. Flying chairs are really hard to
cope with. Knives are too . . . uh-uh, I'd much rather have you fellows do the
actual executing. I'll start wearing a
couple of knives in leg-sheaths, but I won't throw 'em or use 'em unless I
absolutely have to. So who will I knock
out with the first chair?"

"I'll answer that," Barbara said, quietly. "If it's Blaine against Babe, it'll
be Lopresto against Herc. So you'll throw
your chairs or whatever at that unspeakable oaf Newman."

"I'd rather brain him than anyone else I know, but that would leave that
gigantic gorilla to . . . why, he'd . . . listen,
you'll simply have to go armed."

"I always do." Barbara held out her hands. "Since they don't want to shoot us
two-yet-these are all the weapons I'll
need."

"Against a man-mountain like that? You're that good? Really?"

"Especially against a man-mountain like that. I'm that good. Really," and both
Joneses began to realize what Deston
already knew-just how deadly those harmless seeming weapons could be.
Barbara went on: "We should have a signal, in case one of us gets warning
first. Something that wouldn't mean
anything to them . . . musical, say . . . Brahms. That's it. The very instant
any one of us feels their intent to signal
their attacks he yells 'BRAHMS!' and we all beat them to the punch. OK?"

 It was OK, and the four-Adams was still hard at work in the lounge-went to
bed.

And three days later, within an hour after the last flight datum bad been "put
in the tank." the four intended victims
allowed themselves to be inveigled into the lounge. Everything was peaceful;
everyone was full of friendship and
brotherly love. But suddenly "BRAHMS!" rang out, with four voices in absolute
unison; followed a moment later by
Lopresto's stentorian "NOW!"

It was a very good thing that Deston had had ample warning, for be was indeed
competing out of his class. As it was,
his bullet crashed through Blaine's head, while the gunman's went harmlessly
into the carpet. The other pistol duel
wasn't even close! Lopresto's hand barely touched his gun.

Bernice, even while shrieking the battle-cry, leaped to her feet, hurled her
chair, and reached for another; but one
chair was enough. That fiercely but accurately-sped missile knocked the
half-drawn pistol from Newman's hand and
sent his body crashing to the floor, where Deston's second bullet made it
certain that he would not recover
consciousness.

Barbara's hand-to-hand engagement took about one second longer. Moose Mordan
was big and strong; and, for such
a big man, was fairly fast physically. If he had had time to get his muscles
ready, he might have had a chance. His
thought processes, however, were lamentably slow; and Barbara Warner Deston
was almost as fast physically as
she was mentally. Thus she reached him before he even began to realize that
this pint-sized girl actually intended to
hit him; and thus it was that his bellymuscles were still completely relaxed
when her small but extremely hard left
fist sank half-forearm-deep into his solar plexus.

With an agonized "WHOOSH!" he began to double up, but she scarcely allowed him
to bend. Her right hand,
fingers tightly bunched, was already boring savagely into a selected spot at
the base of his neck. Then, left hand at
his throat and right hand pulling hard at his belt, she put the totalized and
concentrated power of her whole body
behind the knee she drove into his groin.

That ended it. The big man could very well have been dying on his feet. To
make sure, however-or to keep the girl
from knowing that she had killed a man?-Deston and Jones each put a bullet
through the falling head before it
struck the rug.

Both girls flung themselves, sobbing, into their husband's arms.

The whole battle had lasted only a few seconds. Adams" although he had seen
almost everything, had been concen-

trating so deeply that it took those few seconds for him actually to realize
what was going on. He got up, felt the
back of Newman's head, then looked casually at the three other bodies.

"Oh, I killed him, Carl!" Barbara sobbed, convulsively. "And the worst of it
is, I really meant to! I never did anything
like that before in my whole life!"

"You didn't kill him, Barbara," Adams said.

"Huh?" She raised her head from Deston's shoulder; the contrast between her
streaming eyes and the relief dawning
over her whole face was almost funny. "Why, I did the foulest things possible,
and as hard as I possibly could. I'm
sure I killed him."

 "By no means, my dear. Judo techniques" however skillfully and powerfully
applied, do not and can not kill
instantly. Bullets through the brain do. I will photograph the cadavers" of
course, and perform the customary post-

mortem examinations for the record: but I know already what the findings will
be. These four men died instantly of
gunshot wounds."

With the four gangsters gone, life aboard ship settled down quickly into a
routine. That routine, however" was in no
sense dull. The officers had plenty to do; operating the whole ship and
rebuilding the mechanisms that were
operating on jury rigging or on straight "breadboard" hookups. And in their
"spare" time they enjoyed themselves
tremendously in becoming better and better acquainted with their wives. For
Bernice and Jones" like Barbara and
Deston, had for each other an infinite number of endless vistas of
personality; the exploration of which was
sheerest delight.

The girls-each of whom became joyously pregnant as soon as she could-kept
house and helped their husbands
whenever need or opportunity arose. Their biggest chore" however, was to see
to it that Adams got sleep, food, and
exercise. For, if left to his own devices, he would never have exercised at
all" would have grabbed a bite now and
then, and would have slept only when he could no longer stay awake.

"Uncle Andy" why don't you use that Big Brain of yours?" Barbara snapped at
him one day. "For a man that's actually
as smart as you are, I swear you've got the least sense of anybody I know!"

"But it's necessary, my dear child," Adams explained, unmoved. "This material
is new. There are many extremely
difficult problems involved" and I have less than a year to work on them. Less
than one year; and it is a task for a
team of specialists and all the resources of a research center."

To the officers, however" Adams went into more detail. "Considering the
enormous amounts of supplies carried;
the scope" quantity, and quality of the safety devices employed; it Is
improbable that we are the first survivors of a
subspace catastrophe to set course for a planet." After some argument, the
officers agreed.

"While I cannot as yet detect it, classify it, or evaluate it" we are carrying
an extremely heavy charge of an unknown
nature; the residuum of a field of force which is possibly more or less
analogous to the electromagnetic field. This
residuum either is or is not dischargeable to an object of planetary mass; and
I'm virtually certain that it is. The
discharge may be anything from an imperceptible flow up to one of such
violence as to volatilize the craft carrying
it. From the facts: One, that in the absence of that field the subspace radio
will function normally; and Two" that no
subspace-radio messages have ever been received from survivors; the conclusion
seems inescapable that the
discharge of this unknown field is in fact of extreme violence."

"Good God!" Deston exclaimed. "Oh . . . that was what you meant by `fantastic
precautions"' back there?"
"Precisely."

"But what can we do about it?"

 "I don't know. I . . . simply . . . do . . . not ... know." Adams lost
himself in thought for over a minute. "This is all so
new . . . I know so little . . . and am working with such pitifully inadequate
instrumentation- However, we have
months of time yet, and if I am unable to arrive at a conclusion before
arrival -I don't mean a rigorous analysis, of
course, but merely a stop-gap, empirical, pragmatic solution-we will simply
remain in orbit around that sun until I
do."

IV

The Procyon bored on through space" at one unchanging gravity of acceleration.
It may not seem, at first glance,
that one gravity would result in any very high velocity; but when it is
maintained steadily for days and weeks and
months, it builds up to a very respectable speed. Nor was there any question
of power, for the Procyon's atomics
did not drive the ship, but merely energized the "Chaytors"-the Chaytor Effect
engines that tapped the energy of the
expanding universe itself.

Thus, in less than six months, the Procyon had attained a velocity almost half
that of light. At the estimated mid-

point of the flight the spaceship, still at one gravity of drive, was turned
end-for-end; so that for the ensuing
five-and-a-fraction months she would be slowing down.

A few weeks after the turnover. Adams seemed to have more time. At least, he
devoted more time to the expectant
mothers, even to the point of supervising Deston and Jones in the construction
of a weirdly-wired device by means
of which he studied and photographed the unborn child each woman bore. He said
nothing, however" until Barbara
made him talk.
"Listen, you egregious clam," she said, firmly, "I know darn well I've been
pregnant for at least seven months" and I
ought to be twice this big. Our clock isn't that far off; Carl said that by
wave lengths or something it's only about
three per cent fast. And you've been pussyfooting and hem-hawing around all
this time. Now, Uncle Andy, I want
the truth. Are we in for a lot of trouble?"

"Trouble? Of course not. Certainly not. No trouble at all, my dear. Why,
you've seen the pictures-here, look at
them again . . . see? Absolutely normal foetus-yours, too, Bernice. Perfect!
No malformations of any kind."

"Yes, but for what age?" Bernice asked, pointedly. "Four months, say? I see, I
was exposed to a course in
embryology myself, once."

"But that's the interesting part of it!" Adams enthused. "Fascinating! And"
indubitably, supremely important. In fact,
it may point out the key datum underlying the solution of our entire problem.
If this zeta field is causing this
seemingly peculiar biological effect, that gives us a tremendously powerful
new tool, for certain time vectors in
the generalized matrix become parameters. Thus, certain determinants, notably
the all-important delta-prime
sub-mu, become manipulable by . . . but you aren't listening!"

"I'm listening, pops, but nothing is coming through. But thanks much, anyway.
I fee! a lot better, knowing I'm not
going to give birth to a monster. Or are you sure, really?"

"Of course I'm sure!" Adams snapped. testily" and Barbara led Deston aside.

"Have you got the slightest idea of what he was talking about?" she asked.

"Just the slightest, if any. Either that time is relative no, that's so
elementary he wouldn't mention it. Maybe he's
figured out a variable time of some kind or other. Anyway, you girls' slowness
in producing has given the old boy
a big lift, and I'm mighty glad of it."

.,But aren't you worried, sweetheart? Not even the least little bit?"

"Of course not"" and Deston very evidently meant just that.

"I am. I can't help but be. Why aren't you?" "Because Doc isn't, and he knows
his stuff, believe me. He can't lie any
better than a three-year-old, and he's sure that all four of you are just as
safe as though you were in God's lefthand
hip pocket."

 "Oh-that's right. I never thought of it that way. So I don't have anything to
worry about, do IT' She lifted her lips to
be kissed; and the kiss was long and sweet.

Time flew past until, one day a couple of weeks short of arrival, Adams rushed
up to Deston and Jones. "I have it!"
he shouted, and began to spout a torrent of higher very much
higher-mathematics.
"Hold it, Doc!" Deston held up an expostulatory hand. "I read you zero and
ten. Can't you delouse your signal?
Whittle the stuff down to our size?"

"W-e-l-l," the scientist looked hurt, but did consent to forego the high math.
"The discharge is catastrophic; in
energy equivalent something of the order of magnitude of ten thousand
discharges of lightning. And, unfortunately.
I do not know what it is. It is virtually certain" however, that we will be
able to dissipate it in successive decrements
by the use of long, thin leads extending downward toward a high point of the
planet."

"Wire" you mean? What kind?"

"The material is not important except in that it should have sufficient
tensile strength to support as many miles as
possible of its own length."

"We've got dozens of coils of hook-up wire," Deston said. "but not too many
miles and it's soft stuff." "Graham
wire!" Jones snapped his finger.

"Of course," Deston agreed. "Hundreds of miles of it. Float the senser down on
a Hotchkiss-"

"Tear-out." Jones objected.

"Bailey it-spidered out to twenty or so big, flat feet. That'll take metal,
but we can cannibal the whole Middle
without weakening the structure."

"Sure . . . surges-backlash. Remote it." "Check. Remote everything to Baby
Two, and "Would you mind delousing
your signal?" Adams asked" caustically.

"'Scuse, please, Doc, A guy does talk better in his own lingo, doesn't he?
Well, Graham wire is one-point-three-

millimeter-diameter, ultra-high-tensile steel wire. Used for re-wrapping the
Grahams, you know."

"No, I don't know. What are Grahams?"

"Why, they're the intermediates between the Chaytors ... OK, OK, they're
something like bottles, that have to stand
terrifically high pressures."

"That's what I want to know. Such wire will do very nicely. Note now that our
bodies must be grounded very
thoroughly to the metal of the ship."

 "You're so right. We'll wrap the girls in silver-mesh underwear up to the
eyeballs, and run leads as big as my wrist
to the frame."

The approach was made, and the fourth planet out from that strange sun was
selected as a ground. That planet was
not at a!! like Earth. It had little water, very little atmosphere, and very
little vegetation. It was twice as massive as
Earth; its surface was rugged and jagged; one of its stupendous mountain
ranges had sharp peaks more than forty
thousand feet high.

"There's one thing more we must do," Adams said. "I have barely begun to study
this zeta field, and this one may
very well be unique-irreplaceable. We must, therefore" launch all the
lifecraft-except Number Two, of course into
separate orbits around this sun, so that a properly stalled and
properly-equipped expedition can study it."

"Your proper expedition might get its pants burned off, too."

"There is always that possibility; but I will insist on being assigned to the
project. This information, young man, is
necessary."

"OK, Doc," and it was done; and in a few days the Procyon hung motionless, a
good five hundred miles high,
directly above the highest, sharpest mountain peak they had been able to find.

The Bailey boom, with its spider-web-like network of grounding cables and with
a large pulley at its end, extended
two hundred feet straight out from the side of the ship. A twenty-five-mile
coil of Graham wire was mounted on
the remote-controlled Hotchkiss reel. The end of the wire was run out over the
pulley; a fifteen-pound weight, to
act both as a "senser" and to keep the wire from fouling" was attached; and a
few hundred feet of wire were run out.

Then, in Lifecraft Two-as far away from the "business district" as they could
get-the human bodies were grounded
and Deston started the reel. The wire ran out and ran-and ran-and ran. The
full twenty-five miles were paid out, and
still nothing happened. Then, very slowly, Deston let the big ship move
straight downward. Until, finally, it
happened.

There was a blast beside which the most terrific flash of lightning ever seen
on Earth would have seemed like a
firecracker. In what was almost a vacuum though she was, the whole immense
mass of the Procyon was hurled
upward like the cork out of a champagne bottle. And as for what it felt
like-since the five who experienced it could
never describe it, even to each other, it is obviously indescribable by or to
anyone else. As Bernice said long
afterward, when she was being pressed by a newsman: "Just tell 'em it was the
living end," and that is as good a
description as any.

The girls were unwrapped from their silver-mesh cocoons and, after a minute or
so of semi-hysterics, were as
good as new. Then Deston stared into the 'scope and gulped. Without saying a
word he waved a hand and the others
looked. It seemed as though the entire tip of the mountain was gone; had
become a seething, flaming volcano on a
world that had known no vulcanism for hundreds of thousands of years.

"And what"" said Deston finally, "do you suppose happened to the other side of
the ship?"

The boom, of course. was gone. So were all twenty of the grounding cables
which, each the size of a man's arm, had
fanned out in all directions to anchorages welded solidly to the vessel's skin
and frame. The anchorages, too, were
gone; and tons upon tons of high-alloy steel plating and structural members
for many feet around where each
anchorage had been. Steel had run like water; had been blown away in gusts of
vapor.

"Shall I try the radio now, Doc?" Deston asked.

 "By no means. This first blast would, of course, be the worst, but there will
be several more, of decreasing vio-

lence."

There were. The second, while it volatilized the boom and its grounding
network, merely fused portions of the an-

chorages. The third took only the boom itself; the fourth took only the
dangling miles of wire. At the sixth trial
nothing-apparently-happened; whereupon the wire was drawn in and a two-hundred
pound mass of steel was
lowered until it was in firm and quiescent contact with the solid rock of the
planet.

"Now you may try your radio," Adams said.

Deston flipped a switch and spoke, quietly but clearly" into a microphone.
"Procyon One to Control Six. Flight
Eight Four Nine. Subspace Radio Test Ninety-Five-I think. How do you read me,
Control Six?"

The reply was highly unorthodox. It was a wild yell, followed by words not
directed at Deston at all. "Captain
Reamer! Captain French! Captain Holloway! ANYBODY! It's the Procyon! The
PROCYON, that was lost a year
ago! Unless some fool is playing a dumb joke."

"It's no joke-I hope." Another voice, crisp and authoritative, came in;
growing louder as its source approached the
distant pickup. "Or somebody will rot in jail for a hundred years."

"Procyon One to Control Six," Deston said again. His voice was not quite
steady this time; both girls were crying
openly and joyfully. "How do you read me" Frenchy old horse?"

"It is Procyon One-the Runt himself- Hi, Babe!" the new voice roared, then
quieted to normal volume. "I read you
eight and one. Survivors.?"

"Five. Second Officer Jones, our wives, and Dr. Andrew Adams, a Fellow of the
College of Advanced Study. He's
solely responsible for our being here, so-"

"Skip that for now. In a lifecraft? No, after this long" it must be the ship.
Not navigable, of course?"
"Not in subspace, and only so-so in normal. The Chaytors are OK, but the whole
Top is spun out and the rest of her
won't hold air-air, hell! She won't hold shipping crates! All the Wesleys are
shot, and all the Q-converters. Half the
Grahams are leaking like sieves, and-"

"Skip that, too. Just a sec-I'll cut in the downstairs recorder. Now start in
at your last check and tell us what's
happened since."

"It's a long story."

"Unwind it, Runt, I don't give a damn how long it is. Not a full-detailed
report, just hit the high spots-but don't leave
out anything really important."

"Wow!" Jones remarked, audibly. "Wotta man, Frenchy! Like the exurbanite said
to the gardener: "I don't want you
to work hard just take big shovelfuls and lots of 'em per minute."'

"That's enough out of you, Herc my boy. You'll be next. Go ahead, Babe."

Deston went ahead, and spoke almost steadily for thirty minutes. He did not
mention the gangsters; nor any per-

sonal matters. Otherwise, his report was accurate and complete. He had no idea
that everything he said was going
out on an Earth-wide hookup; or that many other planets, monitoring constantly
all subspace channels, were
hooking on. When he was finally released Captain French said, with a chuckle:

"Off the air for a minute. You've no idea what an uproar this has stirred up
already. They let them have all your stuff,
but we aren't putting out a thing until some Brass gets out there and gets the
real story-"

"That is the real story, damn it!"

"Oh, sure, and a very nice job, too, for an extemporaneous effort-if it was.
Semantics says, though, that in a couple
of spots it smells like slightly rancid cheese, and . . . no-no, keep still!
Too many planets listening in-verbum .rap.
Anyway, THE PRESS smells something, too, and they're screaming their lungs
out, especially the sob-sisters.
Now, Here, on the air, you're orbiting the fourth planet of a sun. What sun?
Where?"

"I don't know. Unlisted. We're in completely unexplored territory. Standard
reference angles are as follows"-and
Jones read off a long list of observations, not only of the brightest stars of
the galaxy, but also of the standard
reference points, such as S-Doradus, lying outside it. "When you get that
stuff all plotted, you'll find a hell of a big
confusion; but I hope there aren't enough stars in it but what you can find us
sometime."

"Off the air-for good, I hope. Don't make me laugh, Buster. Your probable
center will spear it. If there's ever more
than one star in any confusion you set up, I'll eat all the extras. But
there's a dozen Big Brains here, gnawing their
nails off up to the wrist to talk to Adams all the rest of the night, so put
him on and let's get back to sleep, huh?
They're cutting this mike now."

"Just a minute!" Deston snapped. "What's your time?" "Three, fourteen,
thirty-seven. So go back to bed, you
night-prowling owl."

 "Of what day, month, and year?" Deston insisted. "Friday, Sep-" French's
voice was replaced by a much older one;
very evidently that of a Fellow of the College. After listening for a moment
to the newcomer and Adams, Barbara
took Deston by the arm and led him away. "Just a little bit of that gibberish
is a bountiful sufficiency" husband
mine. So I think we'd better take Captain French's advice, don't you?"

Since there was only one star in Jones' "Confusion" (by the book, "Volume of
Uncertainty") finding the Procyon
was no problem at all. High Brass came in quantity and the entire story-except
for one bit of biology-was told. Two
huge subspace-going machine shops also came, and a thousand mechanics, who
worked on the crippled liner for al-

most three weeks.

Then the Procyon started back for Earth under her own subspace drive, under
the command of Captain Theodore
Jones. His first, last, and only subspace command, of course, since he was now
a married man. Deston had wanted
to resign while still a First Officer, but his superiors would not accept his
resignation until his promotion "for
outstanding services" came through. Thus, Ex-Captain Carlyle Deston and his
wife were dead-heading, not quite
back to Earth, but to the transfer-point for the planet Newmars.

"Theodore Warner Deston is going to be born on Newmars, where he should be,"
Barbara had said and Deston had
agreed.

"But suppose she's Theodora?" Bernice had twitted her. "Uh-uh," Barbara had
said, calmly. "I just know he's
Theodore."

"Uh-uh, I know." Bernice had nodded her spectacular head. "And we wanted a
girl, so she is. Barbara Bernice Jones,
her name is. A living doll."

Although both pregnancies were well advanced, neither was very near full term.
Thus it was clear that both periods
of gestation were going to be well over a year in length; but none of the five
persons who knew it so much as men-

tioned that fact. To Adams it was only one tiny datum in an incredibly huge
and complex mathematical structure.
The parents did not want to be pilloried as crackpots, as publicity-seeking
liars, or as being unable to count; and
they knew that nobody would believe them if they told the truth; even-or
especially?-no medical doctor. The more
any doctor knew about gynecology and obstetrics, in fact, the less he would
believe any such story as theirs.
Of what use is it to pit such puny and trivial things as facts against
rock-ribbed, iron-bound, entrenched
AUTHORITY?

The five, however, knew; and Deston and Jones had several long and highly
unsatisfactory discussions; at first with
Adams, and later between themselves. At the end of the last such discussion, a
couple of hours out from the
transfer point, Jones lit a cigarette savagely and rasped:

"Wherever you start or whatever your angle of approach, he always boils it
down to this: 'Subjective time is
measured by the number of learning events experienced.' I ask you, Babe, what
does that mean? If anything?"

"It sounds like it ought to mean something, but I'll be damned if I know
what." Deston gazed thoughtfully at the
incandescent tip of his friend's cigarette. "However, if it makes the old boy
happy and gives the College a toehold
on subspace" what do we care?"
                       THE IMPERIAL STARS

 They were the finest interstellar agents-and greatest circus stars-the
Service of the Empire had!

I

 DesPlaines (Plan) 75 rev cat 4-7076-9525. Hostile PX-3MRKQ. Pop. (2440) 7500
00. COL 2015 Fr (qv) &
NrAm (qv) phys. cult. Comml stndg, 229th. Prin ctrib gal: Circus d/t Gal, heav
met, prec stones. (Encyclopedia
Galactica, Vol. 9, p. 2937).

Jules and Yvette

For twenty-eight minutes The Flying d'Alemberts-who throughout two centuries
had been the greatest troupe of
aerialists of the entire Empire of Earth-had kept the vast audience of the
Circus of the Galaxy spellbound: densely
silent; almost tranced. For twenty-eight minutes both side rings had been
empty and dark. The air over the center
ring, from the hard-packed, imitation-sawdust-covered earth floor up to the
plastic top one hundred forty-five feet
above that floor, had been full of flying white-clad forms-singles and pairs
and groups all doing something utterly
breath-taking.

Suddenly, in perfect unison, eighteen of the twenty d'Alemberts then
performing swung to their perches, secured
their apparatus, and stood motionless, each with his or her right arm pointing
upward at the highest part of the Big
Top.

As all those arms pointed up at her, Yvette d'Alembert moved swiftly,
smoothly, out to the middle of her high wire
-and that wire was high indeed, being one hundred thirty-two feet above the
floor of the ring. She did not carry even
a fan for balance. She maintained her equilibrium by almost imperceptible
movements of her bands, feet, and body.
Reaching the center of the span, she stopped and posed. To the audience she
appeared as motionless as a statue.

Like all the other d'Alemberts, she was dressed in silver spangled tights that
clung to every part of her body like a
second skin. Thus, while she was too short and too wide and too thick to be
acceptable as an Earthly high-fashion
model, her flamboyantly female figure made a very striking and very attractive
picture-at a distance. Close up, how-

ever, that picture changed.

Her ankles were much larger than any Earthwoman's should have been. Her wrists
were those of a six-foot-four,
two-hundred-fifty-pound timberman. Her musculature" from toenails to ears to
fingertips, would have made all the
beach boys of Southern California turn green with envy.

 After a few seconds of posing, she turned her head and looked down at her
brother Jules. on a perch sixty-one feet
below her and an "impossible" sixty-four feet off to one side. Then, flexing
her knees and swinging her horizontally
outstretched arms in ever-increasing arcs, she put more and more power into
her tightly stretched steel-and Jules,
grasping a flying ring in his left hand, began to flex his knees and move his
body in precise synchronization with the
natural period of the girl-wire system so far above him. Finally, in the last
cycle through which she could hold the
wire, Yvette squatted and drove both powerful legs downward and to her
right-and something snapped, with a harsh"
metallic report as loud as a pistol shot.

The wire, all its terrific tension released instantly as one end broke free
and dropped, coiled itself up in the air with
metallic whinings and slitherings; and Yvette d'Alembert, premiere aerialiste
of all civilization, sprawling
helplessly in mid-air, began her long fall to the floor.

Eighteen d'Alemberts came to life on their perches, seized all the equipment
they could reach, and hurled it all at
the falling girl. One of her frantically reaching fingertips barely touched
the bar of one swinging trapeze; none of
the other apparatus came even close.

Jules, in the lowest position. had more time than did any of the others; but
he did not have a millisecond to spare. In
the instant of the break he went outward and downward alone the arc of the
ninety-eight-foot radius of his tophung
flying ring. His aim was true and the force of launching had been precisely
right.

Yvette was falling face down. flat and horizontal, at a speed of over seventy
feet a second as she neared the point of
meeting. Jules, rigidly vertical at the bottom of his prodigious swing, was
moving almost half that fast. In the
instant before a right-angle collision that would have smashed any two
ordinary athletes into masses of bloody
flesh. two strong right hands smacked together in the practically unbreakable
hand-over-wrist grip of the aerialist
and Yvette spun and twisted like a cat-except much faster. Both her feet went
flat against his hard, flat belly. Her
hard-sprung knees and powerful leg muscles absorbed most of the momentum of
his mass and speed. Then, at the
last possible instant, her legs went around his waist and locked behind his
back, and his right hand flashed up to join
his left in gripping the ring.

That took care of the horizontal component of energy, but the vertical one was
worse-much worse; almost twice as
great. Its violence drove their locked bodies downward and into a small but
vicious arc; a savagely wrenching
violence that would have broken any ordinary man's back in a fraction of a
second. But Jules d'Alembert, although
only five feet eight in height, had a mass of two hundred twenty-five pounds,
most of which was composed of
superhard, super-reactive muscle; unstretchable. unbreakable gristle; and
super-dense, super-strong, horse-sized
bone. His arms were as large as, and immensely stronger than, an ordinary
Earthman's legs.

The two bodies, unstressed now relative to each other" began to hurtle
downward together, at an angle of thirty
degrees from the vertical, toward the edge of the ring facing the
reserved-seat and box section of the stands.

The weakest point in the whole stressed system was now Riles' grip on that
leather-covered steel ring. Could he
hold it? Could he possibly hold it? Not one person in all that immense
audience moved a muscle: not one of them
even breathed.-

He held his grip for just under half a second, held it while that half-inch
nylon cable stretched a good seven feet,
held it while the entire supporting framework creaked and groaned. Then the
merest moment before that frightful
fall would have been arrested and both would have been safe, Jules' hands
slipped from the ring and both began to
fall the remaining forty feet to the ground.

A high-speed camera, however, would have revealed the fact that they did not
fall out of control, Each landed in
perfect position. Hard-sprung knees took half of the shock of landing;
bard-sprung elbows took half of what was
left. Heads bent low on chests; powerful leg muscles drove forward; thick,
hard shoulders and back muscles struck
the floor in perfect rolls; and both brother and sister somersaulted lightly
to their feet.

Hand in hand, they posed motionless for a moment; then bowed deeply in unison.
turned and ran lightly to an exit -

and they covered that one hundred yards of distance in less than five seconds.

And the multitude of spectators went wild.

They had seen a girl falling to certain death. They had felt a momentary flash
of relief-or actually of disappoint-

ment?-when it seemed as though her life might be saved. Then they had watched
two magnificently alive young
people fall, if not to certain death, at least to maiming, crippling injury.
Then, in the climactic last split second" the
whole terrible accident had become the grand finale of the act.

That it was a grand finale-a crashing smash of a finish -there was no possible
doubt. The only question was" what
emotion predominated in that shrieking, yelling, clapping, jeering, cheering,
whistling and catcalling throng of
Earth-people-relief, appreciation or disappointment?

Whatever it was, however, they had all had the thrill of a life-time; and few
if any of them could understand how it
could possibly have been done.

For of the teeming billions of people inhabiting the nine hundred forty-two
other planets of the Empire of Earth,
scarcely one in a million had ever even heard of the planet DesPlaines. Of
those who had heard of it, comparatively
few knew that its surface gravity was approximately three thousand centimeters
per second squared-more than
three times that of small, green Earth. And most of those who knew that fact
neither knew nor cared that harsh,
forbidding, hostile DesPlaines was the home world of the Circus of the Galaxy
and of The Family d'Alembert.

II

 The Service of the Empire (SOTS) was founded in 2239 by Empress Stanley 3,
the first of the Great Stanleys,
who, during her reign of 37 years (2237-2274) inculcated in it the spirit of
loyalty and devotion that has
characterized it ever since. Its spirit wavered only once, under weak and
vicious Empress Stanley S, whose
reign-fortunately very short (2293-2299)-was calamitous in every respect. SOTE
came to full power, however,
only under Emperor Stanley 10 (reign 2379- ), the third and greatest of the
Great Stanleys, under whom it
became the finest organization of its kind ever known. (Baird, A Study of
Security, Ed. 2447, p. 291).

                 The Brawl in the Dunedin Arms

The city of Tampeta, Florida, had a population of over fifteen million. It
included, not only what had once been
Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, but also all the other cities and
villages between Sarasota on the south and
Port Richey on the north. Just outside Tampeta's city limit, well out toward
Lakeland, Jay the Pinellas Fair Ground.
There the Circus of the Galaxy had been playing to capacity crowds for over a
week, with a different show
especially with an entirely different climax-every night.

Jules and Yvette d'Alembert, as top stars of the show, of course had private
dressing rooms. They also had private
entrances. Thus no one connected with the show saw, and no one else either
noticed or cared, that two short, fat
Delfians, muffled to the eyes in the shapelessly billowing robes and hoods of
their race, joined one of the columns
of people moving slowly toward the exit leading to the immense parking lot. It
took them half an hour to get to
their car, but they were in no hurry.

Out of the traffic jam at last, Jules maneuvered his heavy vehicle up into the
second-level, west-bound Interstate
Four and sped for the Dunedin district and the Dunedin Arms" one of the
plushiest night spots in all North
America. At the Arms, he gave a dollar to the parking-lot attendant" another
to the resplendently-uniformed
doorman and a third to the usher who escorted them ceremoniously into the
elevator and up to the fourth floor. At
the check-stand the two Delfians refused-as expected-to part with any of their
mufflings Jules did, however-also as
expected give the provocatively clad hat-check girl a dollar before he handed
his reservation slip and a five-dollar
bill to the bowing captain.

"Thank you, sir and madam," that worthy said. "We are very glad indeed to have
you with us this evening" Mister and
Miss Tygven. Will you have your table now, or perhaps a little later?"

"A little later, I think," Jules said, using faultlessly the Russo-English
"Empirese" that was the court language of the
Empire. He paused then, and gazed about the huge room. At his right, along the
full two-hundred-foot length of the
room, ran the subduedly ornate, mirror-backed bar. At his left were three
tremendous windows overlooking the
beach and the open Gulf. Heavy tables of genuine oak, not too closely spaced,
filled the place except for a large
central dance floor. On a stage at the far end of the room a spotlighted,
red-haired stripper was doing her stuff.
Priceless paintings and fabulous tapestries adorned the walls. Suits of armor
dating from the ancient days of
chivalry stood on pedestals and niches here and there. The place was jammed
with a gay, colorful and festive
crowd; there were only a few vacant places even at that tremendously long bar.

It was quite evident why the captain had suggested a short delay, so Jules
said, "Yes, later, please. We will do a little
serious drinking at the bar before we eat."

And at the bar, Jules laid a fifty-dollar bill on the oak and said, "A liter
of vodnak, please. Estvan's, if you have it. In
the original bottle-sealed."

"We have it, Mister." The bar-tender set out two glasses, a bowl of ice and
the heavy, crudely molded, green-glass
bottle of the one-hundred-and-twenty-proof beverage that was the favored
tipple of the rim-world, Delf. "We've got
everything. And don't worry about it not being the clear quill. We don't
cheat. With our prices we don't have to"and
he put down on the bar a dollar and fifteen cents in change, which Jules waved
away.

 Before Jules opened the bottle-he was looking into the mirror, and so was
Yvette-the man at Yvette's left finished
his drink and moved away, and a tall, slim Earthman came up to take his place.
Holding up one finger to the
bartender" the newcomer said" "I'll take a jigger of the. . . ."

That was as far as he got. "Rube!" Yvette snapped throughout the years, half
of the old-time circus battle-cry of
"Hey Rube!" had survived. She grabbed the heavy bottle by its neck, and
hurling it even as she dropped-dropped
safely under the vicious blaster-beam that, having incinerated the slender
Earthman, swept through the space her
chest bad occupied an instant before. Still in air" falling almost flat, she
braced one foot against the bar, dived head-

long under the nearest table, bent her back and heaved.

The blaster-beam, however, had already expired. The heavy bottle" still full
and still sealed, hurled with a Des.
Plainian's strength and with an aerialist's sure control, had struck bottom-on
squarely in the middle of the gunner's
face-and that gunner now had no face at all and scarcely enough head to be
recognizable as human.

Jules, too, was busy. He too had dropped at his sister's warning word,
scanning the room as he fell. He too made a
dive; but his was high and far, toward a table for six at which only two
couples sat. One of the men at that table, half
hidden behind a tall and statuesque blonde, had started to rise to his feet
and was reaching for his left armpit.

Jules lit flat on the table and slid angle-wise across its length, in   a welter
of breaking and flying dishes" glassware"
silverware, food and drink, directly at the man trying so frantically   to draw
his weapon. En route" Jules brushed the
blonde aside. He didn't push her hard at all-just a one handed gentle   shove;
just enough to get her out of the way.
Nevertheless, she went over backward, chair and all" and performed an
involuntary back somersault-thus revealing
to all interested observers that she wore only a lacy trifle of nylon   in the
way of underwear.

Continuing his slide, Jules made a point of his left elbow and rammed it into
the man's gut. Then, as the man dou-

bled up and "w-h-o-o-s-h-e-d" in agony, Jules whirled to his feet off of the
table and chopped the hard edge of his
right hand down onto the back of his victim's neck-which broke with a snap
audible for dozens of feet above the
uproar then going on. Then, seizing the man's half-drawn weapon-it was a
stun-gun, not a blaster-he glanced at its
dial. Ten. Wide open. Instantly lethal. Clicking it back to three-a half-hour
stun-he played its beam briefly over the
other man at the table (the guy had been too quiet and too unconcerned by far
during all this action) and whirled
around to see how his sister was making out.

Yvette was doing all right. The table under which she had disappeared had
leaped into the air, turned over shedding
dishes and so forth far and wide and crashed down onto the table at which the
first blasterman and three other
goons had been sitting. She had picked the blaster up and had tried to bend it
around the side of Number Two's head;
but it broke up almost as thoroughly as the head did. Ducking as only such a
performer as she was could duck, she
grabbed Number Three by the ankles, up-ended him" kicked the flaming blaster
out of his hand before it could kill
more than three innocent bystanders and was going to use him as a flail on
Number Four when that unlucky (or
lucky) wight slumped bonelessly to the floor in the beam of her brother's
stunner.

She had the motion all made-why waste it?-So, continuing her swing, she
hammer-threw Number Three over a few
rows of tables and out into fifty feet of air through the middle of one of the
three immense windows already
mentioned.

Have you ever heard four hundred and thirty-two square feet of
three-eighths-inch-thick plate glass shatter all at
once? It makes a noise.

Such a noise that all lesser noises stopped instantly. And in that strained,
tense silence Jules spoke quietly to his
sister. Both were apparently perfectly calm. Neither breathed one count faster
than normal. Only their eyes his a
glacially cold grey; hers a furiously hot blue-showed how angry and how
disconcerted they both were. "Many more
of 'em, you think?" he asked.

"Not to spot." Yvette shook her head. "And we've got no time to check."

"Right. Take that one, I'll bring the other. Flit." Carrying two unconscious
men, the two ran lightly, but at terrific
speed, down three flights of stairs and out into the parking lot. The
attendant, upon seeing what burdens they
carried, tried simultaneously to run and to yell, but accomplished neither-a
half-hour stun saw to that.

Tortured rubber shrieked and smoked as the heavy car spun out of the lot and
into the highway. Fortunately" traffic
was so light-it was then half past two in the morning-that Jules did not have
to drive far before a moment came
when no other car was in sight.

 The d'Alembert vehicle, while it looked pretty much like an ordinary ground
car, was a little too long and too wide
and too round and much too heavy to be any standard model. Thus, alone in the
road for a moment, Jules punched
three buttons and three things happened: 1) the car's lights went out; 2) from
those too-round sides the two halves
of an air-tight, bulletproof, transparent canopy shot up, snapped together,
and locked; and 3) the vehicle went
straight up, at an acceleration of four Earthly gravities-having two Earthers
aboard they couldn't hurry to an altitude
of a hundred and ninety thousand feet before it stopped.

Jules and Yvette removed what was left of their Delfian costumes-which wasn't
very much-and stared wordlessly
into each other's eyes for a long half minute. Then Yvette spoke:

"That was our contact. Our only contact. And we don't know anybody in SOTE on
Earth . . . and there was a leak.
There had to be a leak, Julie."

"That's for sure, and it was no ordinary leak, either. It had to be right in
the Head's own office. . . :' Jules voice died
away.

Yvette shivered. "I'm afraid so. And we haven't an inkling, except for his
retinal pattern, of who the Head is or where
he is. He may not be on Earth, even."

"Well" there'll be somebody in the Tampeta office here and they'll be on the
alert. That brawl put the stuff into the
fan but good. They'll be monitoring the channel every second."

"But our friends' friends down there will he monitoring all channels every
second-and they probably have the
codes."

He thought for a moment, then grinned. "So I'll go back to one that's so old
and so simple that they probably never
heard of it ... unless it'd fool our monitor, too ... uh-uh. Whoever they've
got on monitor right now is no dumb
bunny; so here goes."

He flipped a blue switch and raised his powerful-and not too unmusical-deep
bass voice in song: "Sing of the
evening star, Oh Susan; sweetest old tune ever sung. Oh, Susan, sweet one,
'tis. . . .

"Susan here." A lilting, smooth-as-cream contralto voice came from the
speaker. There was a moment of silence"
then the voice said "Cut!" and Jules flipped his switch; whereupon the voice
concluded, "We'll beep in. Out."

"I'll say they're alert!" Yvette exclaimed; then went on" half-giggling in
relief. "And she's fast on the trigger Susan
here' my left eyeball. You made that whole thing up, didn't you, on the spur
of the moment."

"Uh-huh. If I'd had a little time the verse would have been as good as the
music."

Yvette snorted. "Ha! Modesty, thy name is Jules! I expect them to tap you for
the Met any minute now. But you
were right on one thing-no dumb bunny could make 'S-O-T-E-S-O-S' so fast out
of that mess of yowling. But it
won't really be a beeper, you think?"

"Anything else but. My guess is a laser. They've got us lined up and they'll
pour it right into our cup-so I'd better set
the cup to spinning."

He did so, and in less than a minute the pencil-thin beam came in, chopped up
into evenly-spaced dashes by the
rotation of the cup-antenna of the car. There was of course no voice or
signal.

While Jules was manipulating his finders to determine the exact line of the
beam, he said, "Better unlimber the
launchers, Evie, and break out some bombs. Just in case somebody wants to
argue with us on the way. I'll handle the
other stuff."

"That's a thought-" She broke off; her tone changed, "But just suppose that's
their beam?"

 "Could be; so we'll have to look a little bit out when we land. But they know
that. So if everything's okay they'll
engineer a safe approach-we won't have to. They know who we are." Things had
gone wrong. They had given the
right signal at the rendezvous-but the wrong people had responded. Now they
had to find out why!

III

 Democracy failed because it could not cope with Communism. This failure,
which began early in the twentieth
century, became very evident when, in 1922, Canada, the United States of
America and Mexico united to form
the United States of North America. The Congress of the USNA argued and
filibustered, but could not agree
upon any effective action against Communism. The Premier of Russia, however,
acted. He issued orders; the
recipients of which either obeyed them promptly or were promptly shot. (Mees,
History of Civilization, Vol. 21,
p. 1077).

                           The Head

Sliding down the beam, the d'Alembert's vehicle was heading directly toward
the roof of a building that towered at
least forty stories above any other structure in its neighborhood.

Jules slowed down; approached it gingerly; stopped half a mile away. It was
all dark, except, strangely enough, for a
small, brightly-lighted spot on the roof of one wing.

"Scan it," Jules said. "Infra first. See what it is."

Yvette put her eye to the scanner. "Hall of State; Sector Four. That makes
sense. State would be the best place to
hide the Service, wouldn't it?"

"Check. And the spot?"

"Floodlight. One. That's a girl, standing in it. Young. Skinny, but not bad
for an Earther. Black hair-throat-

mike-sweater-shorts-two Mark Twenty-Nine Service blasters hanging
loose-sandals. Sneak up, Julie."

Jules dropped the "car"-which was in fact one of the deadliest fighting
machines of its weight ever built by man
-down to within a couple of hundred yards of the lighted spot and stopped; and
that highly distinctive throaty con-

tralto voice came again from the speaker.

"It's safe to talk now if we don't say too much," the voice said
conversationally. "Are you armed?"

"Yes." Jules wasn't saying much, yet.

"Good. You won't need these, then." The girl walked out of the ring of light,
put the brutal big hand-weapons down
on the roof, and resumed her former place. "You recognize my voice, of
course."

"Yes."

"You have a retinascope, I suppose." "Yes. Hold it a minute."

Jules cut corn and turned to his sister. "I don't like this a nickel's worth.
What Earther's pattern, except the Head's"
would we recognize without a comparison disc? Nobody's. So, if this is on the
up and up, we've got to manhandle
the Head himself."

Yvette bit her lip. "Well, you said they'd arrange a safe approach, and that
certainly would be one. What else can we
do?"

"Nothing," and Jules again flipped the blue switch. "Go ahead."

"Land anywhere you please and one person will come aboard. Unarmed."
"Oke." Jules landed the car well away from the ring of light and opened a
port.

In the darkness all that could be seen of the man who came up, empty bands
outstretched, was that he was of
medium height, of medium build and almost completely bald. He put his hands in
through the port and Yvette,
taking one of his wrists in each hand, helped him through the narrow opening
and into the cramped front compart-

ment of the car, where she held him gently but securely while Jules applied
the retinascope to the Earthman's right
eye.

"The Head himself," Jules said. "I'm sorry, sir..... "Think nothing of it,
Jules." The stranger laughed deeply. "If you
had acted differently I would have been amazed, displeased and disappointed.
As it is, I am very glad indeed to meet
you in the flesh," and he shook hands vigorously. "And you too, Yvette, my
dear." Taking her hand, he kissed it in as
courtly a fashion as though that tiny, cramped compartment were a ballroom.
"And now-purely a formality, of
course-the eyes. Yvette first, please," and he banded her the 'scope.

 She fitted it to her eye. "But you didn't put any disc in," she said.
"Surely, sir, you don't. . . ."

"I surely do." He studied her pattern briefly, then Jules'. "I don't know very
many patterns, of course; but Jules and
Yvette d'Alembert? You're too modest altogether, my dear." Then, opening the
port, he called out, "Still safe,
Helena?"

"Still safe, father," the girl called back, and began to walk toward the car.
"Nothing suspicious, they say, within three
hundred miles of here."

"Fine," Jules said. He opened the car up and all three got out. Jules went on,
"I was hoping we were fast enough to
get away clean, but I couldn't be sure. Now, sir, about our guests," and be
jerked a thumb toward the rear com-

partment where the prisoners soddenly slept.

"Ah, yes. I've been wondering about them. The reports were confused and
contradictory."

"I'm not surprised; it happened fast. That one-" Jules pointed-"is probably
just a low-bred gunnie that doesn't know a
thing. The other one may not know anything or he may know a lot," and he told,
in a very few words. about the too
imperturbable observer of the brawl. He finished: "So our secret rendezvous
was no secret."

"I see." The Head raised his left wrist to his lips and said, "Colonel
Grandon."

"Yes, sir?"
"Be on the roof   in exactly two minutes. You'll find two men who got number
three stunbeams   about twenty minutes
ago. They're in   a Mark Forty-One Service Special near Space Jay Twelve. Revive
them, find what   they know and
report."

"Very well, sir," and the Head led the way to an elevator. The elevator took
them down to the thirty-first floor,
where it stopped of itself and opened its door into what was very evidently
the private office of an exceedingly im-

portant man.

It was a fairly large room, furnished richly but quietly. The rug, brown in
color, was thick and soft. The beamed
ceiling was of beautifully grained brown solentawood; the panelled walls were
of the same fine, almost metal-hard
wood. On the wall behind the big solentawood desk was inlaid the gold-crowned
Shield of Empire.

"Now we can talk," the girl said then, holding out her hand to Jules. "I'm
Grand Lady. . . . Oh, excuse that please!"
She flushed hotly, whereupon Jules kissed her hand in true Court style; after
which she shook hands cordially with
both Jules and Yvette.

"She should blush, friends," the Head said, but with no reproof in his voice.
"But she hasn't been in the Service very
long." Turning to the girl, he went on. "You are the Head's Girl Friday here,
my dear. Our guests are of the thinnest
upper crust of the entire Service; their worth to the Crown is
immeasureable-beyond any number of Grand Ladies.
We'll sit down, please, and Helena will pour. A whiskey sour for me, if you
please." He cocked an eyebrow at his
two agents. "Yours?"

 "Orange juice, please," Yvette said, promptly; and Jules said, "Lemonade"
please" if you have it handy."

Drinks in hand-Grand Lady Helena was drinking a weirdlooking ice-cream
concoction-the Head said:

"The attack on you was a complete surprise. No leak" no hanky-panky was even
suspected until the man who was to
bring you to me here was killed. The connection between this business and the
matter that brought you to Earth is
clear. In that connection it is a highly pleasing thought that the opposition
knows nothing of you or of the Circus.
You agree?"

"I agree, sir," Jules said, and Yvette nodded.

But Helena was puzzled. "How can it follow that they don't know, father?"

"The d'Alemberts are new to you because there is no record anywhere of any
connection between them and us.
Except for this surprise attack you would not be learning of them now. I will
go into detail after they leave, but for
the present I will simply state as a fact that no one who knows anything about
them would send only six men against
Jules and Yvette d'Alembert. Or, if only six, all six would have fired
simultaneously and on sight at them instead of
burning the contact man first. That shows that they were more afraid of the
Service here than of the supposed
Delfian agents-a fatal error."

"Oh, I see-excuse me, please, for interrupting." "That's quite all right. It's
part of your education, Girl Friday. To
proceed: we are investigating. We will find out where the leak is here and
clean up the mess. In the meantime we
will go ahead with the business for which we scheduled the Circus of Earth.
There's trouble: centering, probably,
on Durward. I'll give you all forty-odd reels of the record on it, but there
are many things that are not on record and
never will be, which is why I had to discuss it with you in person. You'll
also have to talk to some outsiders to get
the full picture. You may want to conduct preliminary investigation on Earth
and/or elsewhere before you go
anywhere near Durward."

The Head got up. These were his most valuable agents, and the fact that he had
brought them here was a measure of
the importance he attached to the situation. He had fully expected that there
would be trouble waiting for them be-

tween the Circus and his office . . . and he had been equally confident that
the d'Alemberts would be able to handle
it.

What he was less sure of was that they-even they would be able to handle the
trouble that lay ahead.

He said abruptly, "Let's fill in some background. For example, consider the
question of loyalty. The Service is loyal
to the Crown as the symbol of Empire; to the wearer of the Crown, whoever or
whatever he or she may be, as the
focal point of the Empire. You agree?"

"Of course, sir," Jules said, and both girls nodded. "Very well. In early
2378, when Crown Prince Ansel was
planning the murder of every other member of the Royal Family, if we could
have caught him at it in time we could
have burned him down" Crown Prince though he was.,"

"Why, I . . . suppose that . , . yes, sir"" Jules said, and Yvette added
thoughtfully.

"I never thought of it before in just that way, sir. But that's the way it
would have to be."

"Nevertheless, after those eleven murders were accomplished facts Ansel, as
the sole surviving member of the
House of Stanley, became Emperor Stanley Nine. Was there then any question of
gunning him? No. We instantly
became as loyal to him as we had been to his father Stanley Eight and now are
to his son Stanley Ten."

"Of course, sir. But what. . . ."

"Now comes some off-the-record material. Have you ever heard of Banion the
Bastard?"

Jules thought for a moment. "I don't think so, sir," he said.

Yvette shook her head, but this time Helena nodded and said, "Oh-oh-a light
beginneth to dawn."

 "I didn't think you two had," the Head went on. "Not too many people now
alive ever have."

IV

 Even before Arnold invented the subether drive and made galactic exploration
possible, all Earth except the
USNA was under Communism and North America was being infiltrated and
undermined. The real explosion of
mankind into space, however, did not begin until 2013, when Copeland
discovered the uranium-rich planet
Urania Four; thus assuring all mankind of cheap and virtually unlimited power.
In 2016 the American
anti-Communists, disgusted and alarmed by the success of the "do-nothings" and
"do-gooder" in blocking all
effective action, left Earth en masse for Newhope, whereupon Communism took
control of all Earth without
firing a shot or launching a missile. (Mees, History of Civilization; Vol. 21,
p. 1281).

                      Banion the Bastard

Marshalling his thoughts, the Head drank of his whiskey sour slowly, then went
on, "Stanley Nine's weakness was
women; particularly young ones. Although he married late in 2378, by the end
of that year the Empress was merely
a part of the furniture and the then Duke of Durward-one Henry, a bachelor of
thirty-saw his big chance. He
combed his planet to find one highly special woman. She bad to be young, a
virgin, spectacularly, beautiful, and
highly intelligent. Also, as unscrupulous, as vicious, and as hard as he
himself was. Also unknown on Earth or at
Court. He found her. . . ."

The Head paused to finish his drink and build another one.

"The Beast of Durward," Helena said. "Surely you've heard of her."

Neither Jules nor Yvette had, and the Head went on, "A small-time ruthlessly
ambitious actress. The Duke arranged
and financed for her a tremendous and tremendously expensive splash at Grand
Imperial Court, right here on Earth.
Stanley Nine fell hard. He didn't stand a chance and, with the Duke's full
backing, she kept him on the hook much
longer than any other woman was ever able to.

"When she was about seven months pregnant the Duke married her; with Nine's
full approval. Thus her son Baniop
was born in wedlock as the first child of and the heir of the Duke and Duchess
of Durward. That, however, wasn't
enough for the schemers. Stanley Nine, still blindly infatuated with the
extremely talented Beast, issued a Patent of
Royalty, admitting paternity and bestowing upon the infant the unique title of
'The Prince of Durward.' This patent
also authorized a coat of arms as follows:

" `Purpure, quarterly three dragons rampant or" in chief sinister a bend
sinister or, in dexter. . . ."'

"Wait up, father!" Helena broke in. "You're not getting through to me at all,
and I don't believe that's our guests'
language, either."

The Head laughed. "Gold dragons, rearing on purple enamel. The bar sinister,
which may not be a mark of illegi-

timacy, in this case definitely was. It goes on that way for a couple of
hundred words, only a few of which are perti-

nent. `Bordure gules, charged thirteen bezants sable.' Poor heraldry-color on
color and an unlucky number of spots
on a background of blood-but that and the fact that the Patent was dated
Friday the Thirteenth of June, 2380, are
perfectly in keeping with the Duke's vicious sense of humor.

"A couple of months later-long overdue-Nine finally got tired of the Beast and
came to with a thud. He who had
wiped out all the rest of the Royal Family had himself set up a pretender with
a completely valid claim. He ordered
the Service to kill the Duke and Banion and destroy the Patent; but he was
'way too late. The Beast had seen it
coming and they got away clean. With the Patent.

"The Patent, of course, was most important. It was handwritten and signed in
carbon ink by Emperor Stanley Nine
himself, on Imperial parchment, with the signature driven into the parchment
by the Great Seal of the Empire of
Earth. The Patent was revoked, of course, and erased from all record, and the
people were proscribed; but that
wasn't enough. That Patent had to be found and destroyed; but it wasn't.
Banion the Bastard bad to be found and
killed; but be wasn't.

"In 2381 there was a fairly serious uprising; which, it was deduced later, was
engineered by the Beast on her own.
At least, there was clear evidence that she tried to knife the Duke in bed and
he cut her throat with her own blade.

"The search for that Patent and the Bastard and his blood has been going on
ever since 2380; twenty years before I
was born. As I said, the record of it covers more than forty reels. Results
were neglible-except for finding" at a
cost of eighty-nine lives, three very good forgeries until two years ago" when
several leads pointed back to
Durward again. We sent agents, who found nothing. Three months ago all those
agents stopped reporting. I sent in
four of our best-with orders, of course, to avoid all previous contacts-and
have not heard from any of them. Hence
the Circus; the heaviest artillery the Service has. The threat to Stanley Ten
and The Family is grave indeed. Just how
grave I myself did not fully realize until the event of last night.

"Duke Henry was born in 2350, ninety-seven years ago; so he is probably dead.
So it may or may not be his chil-

dren and/or grandchildren who are carrying on. The Bastard, though" at 67, may
still be a potent force; and he
undoubtedly has children and grandchildren whom we don't know anything about,
either.

"Your job is composed of two equally important parts. One, to find the genuine
Patent and to bring it in so we can
check its authenticity and so Stanley Ten can destroy it with his own hands.
Two, to kill Banion the Bastard and all
of his blood. Goodbye and good luck."

Back at the Circus, well after daybreak. Jules and Yvette reported to their
father, the Managing Director. Then they
drove out to the edge of the field, snugged their "car" down into its berth in
their ultra-fast two-man subspacer, and
Jules said:

"I knew the Head would have to be a Big Wheel, but not that big. If his
daughter's a Grand Lady he's got to be a
Grand Duke, no less. I think maybe I've seen his picture somewhere or seen him
in a parade or something on tridi....
"

"Oh, brother!" Yvette snorted. "And I use the term advisedly. If you didn't
recognize Grand Duke Zander von
Wilmenhorst on sight! Ob no, he isn't much of anybody just one-half Stanley
blood and the fifth from the Throne
itself, is all. You'd better break out your Peerage and start studying it."

"Uh-huh. What a cover for the Head-my God, be owns Sector Four!"

They slept until half past two; then went into the main tent to watch the
climax of the matinee. They watched, with
trained and minutely observant eyes, Yvette and Jules d'Alembert perform
flawlessly a heart-stopping variation of
the act they themselves had performed the night before.

Five minutes later, the younger couple still in spangles, the four d'Alemberts
sat at a table in the commissary. The
two men looked very much alike; so did the two girls which was not surprising,
since the two couples were two
pairs of twins born of the same parents three years apart. No one except a
DesPlainian could have told the two men
or the two girls apart except by direct comparison. To the personnel of the
Circus of the Galaxy this success of top
stars was routine. In the two-hundred-year history of the Circus there had
been almost a hundred pairs called 'Jules
and Yvette d'Alembert'; there would continue to be a succession of them, one
new pair every two or three years, as
long as the Circus should endure.

"How'd we do, Gran'paw?" the younger brother asked. "It must have been a treat
to see a good performance of your
act."

"Close the orifice, Jules,' the younger girl broke in. "Oh" you're calling me
Jules already?"
"Certainly. You are Jules now. What I started to say was, that's the way
people break their arms, patting themselves
on the back so much."

"Okay. What I   meant was. I'm glad the Head pulled them out of the Circus for
special duty.   It wouldn't be too long
before they'd   spatter themselves all over the ring the way their joints are
creaking now.   How about that, Jules?" and
Jules grinned   at Jules.

"That is very true and very sad, Jules," Jules agreed, as a waitress came up
to take their orders. "These ancient and
unwieldly bones are just about ready for the fertilizer mill. The old-time pep
is all shot. . . ."

"Stop crying, Jules, poor dear," the waitress said. She was, of course, a
d'Alembert, too; and she had been a star.
"Before I break down and dilute your soup with a flood of tears of my own. The
King and Queen are dead, et cetera.
So what? You're just getting started on your real jobs. The usual?"

"Not quite," Yvette said. "You can get fresh orange juice here and I'm
drowning myself in it. Squeeze me half a liter,
please Felice dear, besides the usual."

"Drowning yourself is right," the younger Yvette said, darkly. "I've got to
watch my figure; so I'll have one small
glass of lemon sour and a lamb chop."

 After eating, the older Jules and Yvette left the Circus-without a ripple to
show that they had gone.

V

Communism could gain no foot-hold on the new, raw planets. Communists wanted
to agitate, not work; and on
the planets a man either worked or died. Confined to Earth and no longer able
to keep its masses in line by
the imaginary menace of warmongering Capitalism, and facing squarely the fact
that men will not produce
efficiently under the lash, Communism came to a very low ebb . . . until it
was saved by Premier Koslov, a
strong and able executive, who in 2020 made himself King Boris I of Earth and
formed a harsh but just
absolute monarchy based upon the profit motive. (Stanhope, Elements of Empire,
p. 76).

Citizens of Earth

Jules and Yvette studied, analyzed and restudied fortyseven spools of
top-secret data, then sent them-top-

secretly-through channels back to the Head. Then they visited more or less
openly almost every district of Earth.

At every point they encountered the same not-right odor. Something was
definitely wrong. Security had been
breached-within the Service itself!

To Jules and Yvette d'Alembert the situation shrieked for action-instant
effective action, at that. If the Service
caught a chill, a hundred outlying planets lay under the threat of double
pneumonia. For the Service was the
ganglionic nerve system of the Stanleys themselves . . . and every bright,
burning star, every immensely long, black
spacelane, every whirling world and pocket of cosmic dust trembled and shook
when those nerves tingled.

As the evidence grew it became clear that there were two courses of action.
They could patiently, painstakingly
search, sift and study . . . and hope for a break . . . or they could plunge
themselves into a trouble spot-offer
themselves as bait-risk life and limb on a gamble, and trust to mind and
muscle to get them out. These were the
choices....

But really, there was no choice-because they were the d'Alemberts.

"Out of everything we've learned I can see only three points of attack outside
of Durward itself," Jules said,
thoughtfully. "Algonia, Nevander, and Aston. Years apart. Three forged Patents
of Royalty. Eighty-nine good agents
down the drain . . . most of them probably as smart as we are . . . in spite
of all the help the local SOTE could give
them. . . ." He paused.

"Uh-huh. Go on. Or because of it."

"Check. The higher the SOTE the solider the security. We think. But that thing
in the Head's office didn't smell
exactly like Coty's L'Arigon."

"I'll say it didn't. Usually they commit suicide or get their throats cut" but
he simply disappeared. Absolutely
vanished."

"So we'll roll our own, except maybe for tops. So the big question is, what's
our best cover?"

"Well" we can't be Earthers, that's for sure." Yvette shrugged her shoulders
and indicated his shape and her own.
"Nor Delfians, to stand inspection. We're obviously DesPlainians. No other
high-gravity planets were ever
colonized, were there? Except Purity" of course . . . I wonder."

Jules frowned in thought. "That's a thought, sis; that splinter-group of
crackpots on Purity. We can be Puritans."
Yvette nibbled her lip. "But would it work? They won't have anything to do
with anybody they don't absolutely have
to. Everybody's too sinful. They expect all the other planets, especially
mother-planet DesPlaines, to be whiffed
into incandescent vapor any minute by the wrath of God. There are a lot of
renegade Puritans" though. Sinners."

"That's what I meant. We'll play it that they kicked us off because we got to
be too sinful. We liked to dance and
play cards and drink soda pop-to say nothing of mining gold and platinum and
diamonds and emeralds and boot-

legging all our stuff to Earth. That's the way we made all our money.
Remember?"

Yvette laughed. "Just dimly. I must have been looking the other way at the
time, but you can fill me in. They have
kicked a lot of people off of Purity for doing just that-and for much smaller
sins, as well. Go ahead; it listens
good."

"Okay" but I don't know exactly what . . . get into compound low, brain, and
start grinding . . . how about this? We'll
have the Head make us ex-Puritan Citizens of Earth. You know how toplofty and
you-be-damned Earthers are, out
on the planets."

"Uh-buh, and we'll be toploftier and you-be-damneder than anybody. I like."

"Right. Concealment by obviousness. But as you said" not too many people ever
even heard of Purity, and with our
builds-your build especially-but wait a minute, how about disguising me? Hair
down to my shoulders; waved and
liquid-golded. Eyebrows shaved to a different shape and golded. Handle-bar
moustache, waxed to points and
golded. A cockeyed hat with gold plumes two feet long.

Cloth-of-gold sleeveless jersey and tight purple trunks. Arms and legs bare. A
million dollars worth of jewellery-

genuine-and a big, heavy swagger-stick that's really a blaster on one end and
a stunner on the other. Think anybody'd
recognize me as a DesPlainian in that kind of a fancy rig?"

"I'll say they wouldn't!" Yvette laughed delightedly" "anywhere on DesPlaines
they'd shoot you on sight. The idea
being that everyone would look at you and not bother to even wonder whether I
was a DesPlainian or not." "Uh-huh.
Maybe it's a bit thin, but. . . ."

"I've got news for you, Buster." Yvette laughed again. "Not only it's thin,
but also if you think I'm going to play little
brown hen to that gorgeous hunk of rooster you're out of your mind. I'll
design me a costume that will knock
everybody's eyes right out of their sockets-one that no DesPlainian woman
would be caught dead in at a catfight."

"Now you're chirping, birdie!"

"That'll be fun! But it'll take months to grow your hair ... a wig? Uh-huh."

"Uh-huh is correct. Too chancy. But they've been working on this case for
sixty-seven years, so a few extra weeks
isn't going to make any important difference. And we'll have plenty to do in
the meantime."

 "That's true. Okay-let's fly it."

Thus it came about, some time later, that the Executive Office of the Duke of
Algonia was invaded by a couple
whose likes bad never before been seen on the planet Algonia-or, for that
matter, on any other planet. Jules was
just as spectacular as his specifications had called for; Yvette was even more
so. She" too, wore purple and
gold-what little there was of it-with the arrangement of colors the exact
reverse of his.

Her shoes-not silly pumps, but half-calf-high suregrips studded with precious
stones-were royal purple. Her tight
shorts were of exactly the same sbade of purple as her shoes and hair. She
wore a wide, beavily-jewelled belt of
nylon-backed gold; a jewelled half-veil of fine gold mesh; and, to cap the
climax, a towering gold-filigree
headdress of diamonds" emeralds and rubies that had been appraised at and
insured for one million three hundred
ninety thousand dollars.

Paying no attention to the startled stares of the waiting people and office
personnel, they walked calmly to the head
of the line at the receptionist's desk. "We are citizens of Earth," Jules
explained, as he courteously but firmly edged
himself into the narrow space between a fat woman and the desk. He leaned
over, picked up the amazed reception-

ist's hand and tucked a hundred-dollar bill into it. "Carlos and Carmen
Velasquez, Citizens of Earth," he said gently,
and dropped two ID cards onto her desk. "This is where visitors to your fair
planet register, is it not?"

"Oh, no, sir-thank you, sir," the flustered girl said, as soon as her eyes got
back into place and she could again use
her voice. "That's downstairs, sir. The SOTE, sir."

"You will take care of it, my dear." Jules dropped three more notes on the
desk. "Bring the cards over to the Hotel
Splendide, after you have attended to it. We'll be there for a few days . . .
or a few weeks, perhaps. Thank you, my
girl." And the two walked out of the office as unconcernedly as they had
walked in.

At the Splendide, which was the plushiest caravansery the planet boasted, they
soon became the favorite guests.
Not only because they had the penthouse suite; but also because neither of
them knew, apparently, that there was
any smaller unit of currency than a five-dollar Earth bill.

Whatever else they did, however" they always walked at a good,   stiff hiking
gait for at least an hour after supper.
For the first few nights they explored; but after that, having   found a route
they liked, they stuck to it. Every night
thereafter they drove out beyond the city limits, parked their   car and took a
six-mile hike along a fixed succession
of narrow, lonely back-country roads and bridle-paths; a route   that had five
places made to order for ambush-and a
route that they had gone to much trouble to publicize.

For six nights they swung along at their five-miles-an hour hiking gaint in
complete silence. . . .

Complete silence? Yes. Their suregrip shoes made not even a whisper of sound
against the blacktop: no item of
their apparel or equipment rattled or tinkled or squeaked or even rustled.
Everything had been designed that way.
They could hear, but they could not be heard. Anyone laying for them would
have to see them--and they themselves
had very acute hearing and aerialists' eyesight.

Swinging along a clear stretch of road" Yvette asked" "S'pose we goofed,
Julie?"

"Uh-huh. Pretty sure not. It's just taking them time to get set. Senor and
Senora Velasquez aren't the type to just
disappear; it'd raise too much of a stink. Also, besides the king-size
fortunes we're wearing, everybody knows that
we've got enough money in the safe at the Splendide to start a bank and
they'll want that. So the job will take a lot of
planning. This three-quarters-naked stunt wasn't designed to make it tough to
impersonate us, but how would you go
about finding two people to check out of the Splendide-and get that half a
megabuck out of their safe as us?"

"Nice!" Yvette laughed. "I never thought of it cutting both ways. They'll
simply have to get a DesPlainian gangster
and his moll ... but wouldn't they have them ready?"

"I don't think so. You don't find very many DesPlainians on light-grav planets
except in grav-controlled buildings.
They no like-for which I don't blame them. Another month of this with no work
at grav and you and I both will be as
flabby as two tubs of boiled noodles."

"So we hope it won't be a month. Okay; well give 'em a few more days."

Five more hikes were eventless.

 But on the sixth, at a place where the road wound through a coppice of small
trees and dense underbrush" their
straining ears heard sounds and their keen eyes saw movement.

For concealment, the place was perfect, but in order to act the attackers had
to move-and low-echelon thugs are not
very smart. Also, they had no idea whatever how fast their proposed quarry
could move. Jules' hat and swagger stick
and Yvette's tiara and handbag hit the blacktop practically at once as the two
took off in low, flat dives; he to his
side of the road, she to hers.

Diving straight through a bush, Jules slapped the nearest man lightly on the
head-gently, so as not to break his
neck-picked him up, and hurled him at another man, some twelve feet away, who
was just getting to his feet. One
jump-he slugged the third in the solar plexus and in the same instant kicked
the fourth in the face-not with his toe,
but with the whole big flat sole of his shoe. Four down and one to go. But
this action had taken almost a second of
time-plenty of time for Number Five to get organized. Maybe he was the boss,
since he'd been smart enough to
station himself well off to one side.

Number Two, who hadn't been hurt much, began to regain consciousness and to
thrash around. Jules snaked
belly-wise over to him, picked his stunter up, and tapped him on the jaw with
its butt. Then Jules crawled
noiselessly around until he found a place from which he could get a fairly
clear view toward Number Five; who,
although he did not seem to realize it, was making a lot of noise. The seeing
wasn't good-the moon, while high, was
only at quarter-but not much light is necessary to use a stun-gun at close
quarters.

"P-s-s-s-t!" the hood said, finally. "Ed! Hank! Spikel Did you get 'em. What
the hell goes on?" He put his head out
from behind a tree . . . and what went on was a halfhour stun.

"Eve?" Jules asked then, of empty air. "Five here." "Same here," she replied
from across the road. "No sweat. Is there
any clear space over there?" "Yes-we'll lug 'em over here."

Yvette recovered her towering headdress and bag, then came across the road,
dragging two limp forms by the
collars of their leather jackets. In a few minutes ten unconscious or dead
men-Jules was afraid that he had hit
Number Three a little too hard-were laid out on their backs in a neat row.

Jules picked up a stunner, then paused. "Uh-uh." he said, "Better give 'em the
talk-juice now, so they'll be ready
when we get 'em out to the house."

"That'd be better." And Yvette took a hypodermic kit out of her bag and went
to work.

 In two centuries the colonized planets numbered seven hundred, many of them
having large populations.
Interstellar commerce increased exponentially. Interstellar crime became
rampant. The government of Earth,
under a succession of strong and able kings, had been in fact an imperium for
many years when, in 2225, King
Stanley the Sixth of Earth crowned himself Emperor Stanley One of the Empire
of Earth. (Stanhope, Elements
of Empire, p. 539).

Storming the Castle

Jules and Yvette did not drive their car-which was of course the biggest and
most expensive one obtainable back to
the hotel. Instead, they loaded their victims into the limousine like cordwood
and took them to the "house" they had
rented long since-an estate so big and so far away from anywhere that the
nearest neighbors could not have heard a
forty-millimeter Bofors working at full automatic.

They unloaded their freight, then listened to the nine surviving hoodlums
tell, completely unable to lie or withhold
knowledge, everything they knew about crime-and especially its biggest chief.

The gamble paid off. "Got it!" exulted Jules when they were done. "I knew our
friends-whoever they are wouldn't
stay out of a heist with this kind of money involved. But who would have
thought that it was the Baron of Osberg. . .
."

"You for one, brother dear"" supplied Yvette. "And maybe me for another-at
least we knew the boss traitor had to be
somebody big-but tell me, are we going to sit here all night patting you on
the back or are we going to do
something?"

Jules grinned and gave her a mock-salute. Then they gave each of the men a
twelve-bour stun and went elsewhere.

The castle of the Baron of Osberg was some seventy miles away. They parked the
car a good mile down the road
from it and. after selecting certain items of equipment, went the rest of the
way on foot, being very careful not to
be seen. Then, very cautiously and keeping continuously under cover" they made
their way around what was actually
a fortress.

The two gates, front and rear, were built of two-inchsquare bar steel, topped
with charged barbed wire. Neither
could be opened except by electronic impulses from inside the castle. The
estate was surrounded by a reinforced
concrete wall fifteen feet high, surmounted by interlaced strands of charged
barbed wire.

The two grinned at each other and separated. Taking advantage of the high,
thick hedges bordering the drive, they
sneaked up to within six feet of the wall. Both squatted down. Eyes met eyes
through the lower, leafless part of the
hedges. Muscles tensed and, at Yvette's nod both leaped at full strength
upward and inward. Each cleared the top-

most wire by a good three feet" stunners drawn, and at the top of their silent
flight they fired rapidly and precisely"
stunning every guard they could see. Then, running around the main building,
each taking a side, they stunned every-

thing that moved. Yvette ran for the garage; Jules ran to the castle's back
door. It was locked, of course! but a
Talbot cutter burned the lock away in seconds.

Jules did not know whether that door opened directly into the kitchen or into
a hall; but the fact that it did open into
the back ball made the job easy and simple. The door to the kitchen was not
locked. The dozen or so people in it
slumped bonelessly to the floor before any one of them realized that anything
unusual was going on. Through the
kitchen Jules went, through the butler's pantry and the serving hall, and put
an eye to a tiny crack between thick
velvet drapes.

The "commons" room was immense. Its beamed ceiling and panelled walls were of
waxed yellow-wood. It was fur-

nished lavishly and decorated profusely with ancestral portraits. At the far
end there was an antlered fireplace in
which a six-foot log smouldered.

Eleven men were in that room; some sitting, some standing; smoking or drinking
or both; talking only occasionally
and mostly in monosyllables; glancing much too frequently at watches on their
wrists. Jules brought his stunner to
bear and all eleven collapsed limply into their chairs or onto the floor.

In a couple of minutes Yvette came in. "Okay outside." she reported crisply.
"Now the big frisk."

"That's right."

They went over the castle from subcellar to garrets, and when they were
through they knew that everyone else in-

side the wall was unconscious. Then, and only then, Jules went over to the
communicator, cut its video and punched
a number.

"This is the Service of the Empire," a perfectly-trained,
beautifully-modulated voice came from the speaker. "How
may I serve you? If you will turn your vision on, please?"

"Sote six," Jules said. "Affold abacus zymase bezant. The head depends upon
the stomach for survival."
"Bub-but-but, sir. . . ." The change in the girl's voice was shocking. She had
never heard any two of those four
six-letter code words spoken together, and coupled with the words "bead" and
"survival" they knocked her out of
control for a moment; but she rallied quickly. "He's home asleep, sir, but
I'll get him right away. One moment"
please," and Jules heard the strident clatter of an unusually loud squawk-box.

"Lemme 'lone," a sleepy voice protested. "G'way. Cut out the damn racket or. .
. ."

"Mr. Borton! Wake up!" the girl almost screamed. "Please wake up! It's a
crash-pri red urgent!"

"Oh." That had done it. "Okay, Hazel; thanks."

"You are connected, sirs" and I'm out. Signal green" please, when you are
through." She would much rather take a
beating than listen to any part of the conversation that was to follow"
whether she could understand any of it or not.

"Praxis;" Borton said. (Request for identification, symbol, or authority.)

"Fezzle and Fezzle." (Their own identifying numbersAgents Eighteen and
Nineteen.)

"Holy . . ." Borton began, but shut himself up. The very top skimmings of the
very top cream of the entire Service!
"Okay."

"Rafter, angles" angels. Angled. Suffer. Harlot static invert, cosine design.
Single-joyful, singer, status" stasis.
Over."

"My-God! Okay, but you didn't say where you are."

"I don't know your code for local specifics, so ... comprehend Old English
ig-pay attin-lay?"

"Ess-yay."
"Tate-ess-ay aron-bay berg-oz-zay." "Catch."

"Front gate. Douse you glims short-long-short. Over and out if okay."

 "Catch. Okay," Borton said. And it was okay-perfectly so. If Agents Eighteen
and Nineteen told any planetary chief
of SOTS to go jump in the lake he'd do it-and fast. "Here's your green, Hazel.
Thanks."

In the time that elapsed before Borton's arrival at the estate of Baron
Osberg's, Jules and Yvette questioned the
eleven men_ They didn't get enough to give them a clear lead to the planet
Aston and a general idea of what the mob
on Aston would have to be like. Then Borton arrived and they let him in.

"You!" he exclaimed, looking from one spectacular agent to the other and back
again. "That's a switch. You came in
with bands blaring and pennons waving,"

"Check. They would be looking for pussy-footers." "Could be. . . . If I may
ask, I suppose there's a good reason why
I wasn't let in on any of this?"

"Very good. Come in and you'll see what it was." They led him back into the
commons rooms and Jules waved an
arm at the stupefied men who" glazed eyes unseeing, lolled slackly in chairs.

"You used Nitrobarb," Borton said. "And on the Baron of Osberg. Half of them
will die. I see."

"They'll all die," Jules said grimly. "Especially the Baron. Those who live
through this will live a few days longer
than the others, is all. But you really don't see, yet. Keep on looking."

Borton's fast-panning gaze came to a burly, crew-cut man of thirty-odd and
stopped. His face turned grey; he was
too shocked and too surprised even to swear.

"That's Alf Rixton," he managed finally. "My first assistant. He's been with
me over ten years! top clearance-lie
detector and hypnosis-every year. He's done splendid work."

"Yeah-for the other side," Jules said coldly. "The only ones he ever gave you
were the ones they wanted to get rid
of. Take over, Borton, it's all yours. We'll have to stick around for a
while-it'd smell cheesy if we'd leave the planet
too soon-but we don't want to appear in this. Not a whisper. Nobody around
here got a glimpse of us, but there are
nine men-" he told him about them-"who shouldn't talk."

"They won't. But listen! This mess here-I couldn't possibly have done this
alone!"

"Of course not." Jules grinned. "Your assistant there cooked the whole deal up
and helped you swing it. He was a
tiger on wheels. Too bad the honors are posthumous."

Borton nodded slowly. "Thanks. One of our very best, he died a hero's death,
defending gallantly and so forthsob,
sob-the louse. But this thing of me taking all the credit for an operation
that. . . ." He broke off and grinned wryly.
"Okay."

"Uh-huh," Jules agreed. Then he and Yvette said in unison, "Here's to
tomorrow, fellow and friend. May we all live
to see it!" And they strode blithely out. One nest bad been cleared out-it was
time to move on to the next!

Borton, motionless, stared at the closed door. He knew what those two
were-Agents Eighteen and Nineteen-but
that was all he knew or ever would know about them.... But he had too much to
do to waste much time wool-

gathering. Shrugging his shoulders, he called his office and issued orders.

 Then he set up his recorder and began to ask questions of the hoodlums who
were still alive.

THE STANLEY DOCTRINE. Empress Stanley 3 also reorganized, simplified and in a
sense standardized the
theretofore chaotic system of nobility. Her system, which has been changed
very little throughout the years, is
in essence as follows. Grand Dukes rule sectors of space, each containing many
planets. Dukes rule single
planets. Marquises rule continents or the equivalent thereof. Earls rule
states or small nations. Counts rule
counties. Barons rule cities or districts. Primogeniture is strict, with no
distinction as to sex. Nobles may
marry commoners or higher or lower nobles; the lower-born of each pair being
automatically raised to the
full rank of the higher-born spouse. (Stanhope, Elements of Empire, p. 541).

The Switch

The news broke early the following morning. It broke with a crash that was
channelled to every planet of
civilization. Carlos and Carmen Velasquez knew nothing of it until half past
ten, when the eager waiter hurried in
with the breakfast they had ordered a few minutes before. He was accompanied
this time by his captain, who
carried both morning papers in his hand.

"Good morning, sir and madam," that worthy said. "You have perhaps not heard
the extraordinary news on your
receiver?"

"Uh-us." Jules covered a yawn with his hand and shook his head. "We're hardly
awake yet." He was wearing only
purple-and-gold pajamas; Yvette wore her fabulous headpiece and a
purple-and-gold robe that, while opaque in a
few places here and there" was practically transparent everywhere else.
"Something happen?"

"Most assuredly! The most tremendous, the most sensational of happenings, be
assured!" He put the papers down
on a side table and helped the waiter arrange the breakfast table most
meticulously. "But you will read of it later.
You will eat your breakfast now, please, while it is hot." And the two hotel
men accepted gratuities and went back
downstairs.

After eating" Jules and Yvette went through the story with interest-if with an
occasional snort or giggle. The
official version was of course new to them. SOTE, under the masterly direction
and leadership of Planetary Chief
Borton, had been keeping this band of traitors under close and continuous
surveillance for over a year. They had
waited until they were sure that they had found every member and connection of
the band, then they had struck
everywhere at once. They had made a clean sweep. Faced with absolute proof of
guilt, each traitor had confessed
and each had been promptly executed, including the Baron of Osberg, who had
been the leader. Al! had been
cremated and their ashes had been dumped. The reporter was very glad to say
that, since the Baron was the only
member of his family involved in the crime, the Barony of Osberg would not
revert to the crown. The Baroness
Carlotta, who was very well known as a philanthropic clubwoman would
succeed-and so on.

Planetary Chief Borton had had no help, not even from Earth. And there was no
hint anywhere that nitrobarbthe
mere possession of which was by law a capital offensehad been used.

"Nice," Yvette said. "That story is so tight I almost believe it myself. But
you said we'd have to stick around. Why?
The fact that we were here on the planet-coupled with the fact that those two
Delfians had to be DesPlainians
-would be plenty for people not half as smart as they are. Whether we stay
here a month or leave today makes no
difference-except perhaps as an exercise in the old guessing game."

 "That's probably right" at that ... Okay, we'll shoot in a call for the ship
as soon as we're dressed."

Since the ship had to come from DesPlaines, it was eight days later that
Carlos and Carmen Velasquez left the
Hotel Splendide for the spaceport, scattering largesse from the penthouse to
the limousine as they went.

It was good to feel real gravity again; it was vastly more than good, when,
safely inside a private lounge of the big
subspacer, they were met by three particular peopletwo of whom were very
special people indeed.

"Jules!" a brown-haired girl shrieked, and took off at him in a flying leap
from a distance of twelve feet. "Vonnie!
Sweetheart!" He caught her expertly, although her momentum swung him around in
a full circle; and for a long,
ecstatic minute they stood almost motionless, locked fiercely in each other's
arms.

Yvonne pulled back a little" looked at him closely and shook her head. "I've
got to have a picture of you. Both of
you. They told me, but this is a thing that has got to be seen to be believed.
You always were a handsome dog, Julie,
but now you're simply beautiful!" She kissed him a few more times. "But I
don't like that moustache-it tickles! You
know something? I asked the Council to let me be Carmen Velasquez-begged them,
practically on my knees-but the
old stinkers wouldn't. They made me take the thousand-point test, just like
everybody else, and Gabby here beat me
out."

Jules grinned. "Did you think they wouldn't?"

"Well, they certainly ought to've given me the job, since I'm engaged to the
only thousand-pointer alive. Anyway, I
speared second place. I got nine eighty-nine."

"That's mighty good going, sweet." There was a brief interlude" then Jules,
with his arm still around his Yvonne's
waist, turned to the two others, whom he hadn't even looked at before. The man
was of his own age, size and shape,
his hair, moustache, and eyebrows matched Jules' exactly. The girl, too"
except for costume, was a very reasonable
facsimile of Yvette, purple hair and all. The man had been embracing Yvette
ardently; the girl, having taken the
towering ornament from Yvette's head and put it on her own, was unblushingly
admiring herself in a mirror.

"Hi" Gabby; hi, Jacques," Jules said, extending his free band.

"'Gabby,' indeed!" the girl said, tossing her head in fine scorn. "'Grand Lady
Gabrielle' to you, lout. I don't think I'll
even speak to any of the common herd any more unless they come crawling,
bumping their foreheads on the floor"

"Here, herel" "That's telling him, Gabbyl" Yvette and Jacques said at once,
and Yvette added:

"I liked wearing these jewels and that crown and stuff" darn it," she moumed.
"They did something for me," and the
conversation became general.

Jules and Yvette took off their spectacular finery and turned it over to the
new Carlos and Carmen. They had their
hair un-dyed and rebarbered long and plain; and Jules unwaxed and un-curled
his moustache. They donned shapeless
brown trousers and jackets of homespun and became in appearance somewhat
unorthodox Puritans. The switch
completed, at the next transfer-point a new Carlos and Carmen Velasquez, still
tossing five-dollar Earth bills
around like confetti, hoarded the biggest and plushiest liner in port for a
planet halfway across all explored space.

There wasn't room enough in Jules' cabin for him to pace the floor, so he
stoocl still, with clenched fists jammed
into his pockets. Yvette sat on his narrow bunk, frowning in concentration.

"It's like fighting a fog," Jules said,scowling. "And yet everything we find
is just too damned pat."

"You just lost me. Fog, yes. But I haven't noticed any patness."

"Look. In sixty-seven years SOTE hasn't found any evidence that Duke Henry of
Durward wasn't I" T" IT." "Which
goes to show that he was."
"Does it? He milked Durward of a staggering fortune" yes. Billions of bucks.
But could he possibly have got away
with enough to finance a project that big this long? And the others . . ."

"I see what you mean. Never mind the others, let's pursue this one. Either he
had help from the start or he hooked
up with some. He'd have to, to do what he did."

"That's sure. Yet nobody ever got a solid trace, ever. And the leads they did
get didn't point to anything solid; just to
nit-picking stuff. My thought is that every one of those leads was a trap-a
trap that worked."

"And we weren't trapped because we made them come to us."

"I'm not even sure of that."

"My God! Surely you don't think this is a trap!"

"Not exactly. I just think it may be. We have to follow it" of course, but
we'll follow it with our eyes wide open and
everything we've got on the trips. And if what we dig up points to
Durward-we'll go anywhere else in all space but
there."

"So you think everybody's been barking up the wrong trees and all they've got
is forty-seven reels of junk and . . ."

"I said maybe!" Jules snapped. "I don't know anything!" "Which puts you one up
on SOTE," Yvette said quietly. "That
makes the most sense of anything I've heard yet. So we jettison the junk and
start from scratch ... the big question
being-flow? You're implying a Grand Duke. We can't go running around sticking
nitrobarb into Grand Dukes at
random."

"How true; but you've read about how the old FBI used to catcch the top
mobsters?"

"Uh-huh. CPA's."

"So look. Durward is in Sector Ten. Algonia is in Three" Aston is in Six,
Nevander is in Thirteen and Gastonia is a
rim-world clear to hellangone out on the edge of Twenty."

"How did Gastonia sneak into this muddle? It was muddled enough already,
without another question mark." "My
own idea. Empress Stanley Five started exiling rebels there way back in the
twenty-two hundreds sometime and
they've been doing it ever since. What could be nicer for recruiting purposes?
But to get back on the beam, the
Head thinks this thing is getting ripe. If it is, whoever's doing it has had
to do a lot of heavy work and spend an
ungodly lot of money. You can hide a lot of buildingarmaments and such-even
without putting it underground. But
you can't hide big flows of money from experts who know how to look. So if you
don't think I'm nuts, we'll
message the Head tonight to check the growth curves of all the planets for the
last seventy years and put the best
CPA's he's got onto the top five or six."
She looked at him admiringly. "I'm for it; strong. And then we go to Gastonia,
or wherever?"

"No. Then we go to Earth."

 She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared. "I see. It would have
to be a Grand Duke, at that, to get an
agent into-and especially out of-the Head's own office ... and the brains
would almost have to be on Earth. You are
smart, Julie; maybe we're getting somewhere, after all."

The ship docked and the two, after killing half an hourthey expected real
trouble, and preparations were being made
to handle it-made their way to the middle-class dive that was the favorite
hangout of the lower offices and the
highest crewmen of whatever subspacers happened to be in port. That was all
they had-the name of the dive and a
cryptic recognition signal bought for them by nitrobarb at the cost of a man's
life. But it was enough.

Since the latest ship to come to ground was DesPlainian, the six
bouncer-guards of the place-it was a somewhat
unusual fact that all six of them were DesPlainiansthought nothing of it when
half a dozen leather-clad DesPlainian
spacemen came bouncing in, shouting for strong drink and friendly girls.

How could the guards have suspected anything? Or the brains, either, since the
d'Alemberts had pitched them such a
nice curve? There was no evidence that the Velasquez pair had anything to do
with what had happened on Algonia.
And if they had had, what were they skyshooting off into the middle of nowhere
for?

The renegade Puritans came in-it was quite evident that they were renegades,
since no Puritan in good standing
would ever enter a bar-and looked unconcernedly around. Since it was early in
the afternoon" only one bartender
was at work and only a few waitresses and B girls were on hand. The two
strolled up to the bar and Jules said, "I was
told to ask for the Blinding Flash and say the Deafening Report sent me."

The entire room exploded. The six guards tried, but before any of them could
get his blaster half into action he was
struck by over an eighth of a ton of the hardest meat be had ever felt. In the
same instant Jules put his left arm
around the bartender's throat and, with the blaster now in his right hand,
drilled a half-inch hole through the PBX
operator's head. He then whistled sharply at the terrified girls and waved his
weapon at a corner; into which they
and the few noncombatant customers were very glad indeed to run.

In the meantime Yvette had dived at the PBX board. She snatched the single
earphone off the man's head, put it on
her own, let the body fall and sat at the board.

In two minutes the place was a shambles. When a five-hundred-pound pair of
DesPlainian freestyle brawlers strikes
furniture it is the furniture that breaks, not the men. Two tables and
half-a-dozen chairs remained intact; one
savagely warring pair had gone straight through the heavy yellow-wood bar.

And Jules, standing at ease with his blaster hanging at the loose, studied
with keen appreciation the battles going
on. He was not worried about the outcome. Only one result was possible. The
guards were good, but they were not
d'Alembert-and those six d'Alemberts were the pick of the hardest-trained
troupe of no-holds-barred fighting wres-

tlers known to man.

 In three and one-half minutes the place was practically a total loss" but the
battle was over. The six survivors
sported a few eyes that would soon be black, some contusions and abrasions,
and several cuts, tears, scratches,
gouges and bites that were bleeding more or less freely, but there had been no
real damage at all.

"Nice work, fellows; thanks," Jules said, as the sixth spaceman came to his
feet, grinning hugely. "Drink up. There'll
be at least some ginger ale left in whole bottles-I think. And break out some
champagne for the cuties. I wouldn't
know whether they're still in the mood for fun and games or not, but at least
we'll do the gentlemanly thing about
the drinks. "Now" barkeep my friend-" he lifted that wight one-handedly over
the bar" set him on his feet and put
both big hands uncomfortably tight around his throat--"Do you want to tell me
all about all the gizmos between
here and the boss upstairs or do I wring your neck exactly like a chicken's?"

"I'll tell, I'll tell!" the man squawked. "Don't wring my neck-please don'tl
It's all on the board there-really it is-the
whole works !"

"He isn't lying, Julie," Yvette said. "There's a whole row of special red
indicators that doesn't belong on a standard
PBX. It looks like the boss rings down and they set the traps from the board
here."

"That's it, that's itl" the man babbled. "There are blacklight beams across
the halls up there, set to trigger blasters
and stunners. The boss calls down and the man on the boards sets up whatever
he orders."

"Okay. What's his door like-wood or steel? Locked? And how about guards up
there?"

"Wood. Not locked. No guards-no trouble ever gets to where he is" sir. He
would've set 'em, of courses--" nodding
his head at the dead man beside the PBX-"but you blasted 'im too quick."

"Okay. Lead the way. That's so in case of trouble you'll get it first from me,
if necessary."

Nothing happened until they reached the Boss's door. The bartender knocked-no
code, Jules noticed. A voice from
inside the room called "Come in," and the pilot opened the door and led the
way into the office. The man behind the
desk was alone in the room. He gasped once, turned pale and reached for a row
of buttons; but stopped the motion
halfway as Jules' blaster came to bear.

"Go ahead, push 'em," Jules said, but the boss, except for twitching muscles,
made no move whatever as Jules gave
the bartender a tap on the jaw, taking a hypodermic kit out of his pocket,
went up to the desk. The man's eyes
widened in panic fear.

"Not that-please not nitrobarb!" he pleaded, desperately. "I'm allergic to the
stuff-it'll kill me sure, my doctor says."

"What makes you think this is nitrobarb? It could be plain distilled water!"

"Don't mace me, mister! I think I probably know what you want . . . and you
don't need to give me anythingl I'll tell
you everything I know without it, honestly I will!"

And he did, and once again the d'Alemberts listened to the secrets of a
traitors' nest. And it was, as Jules bad
expected it to be, a clear, straight lead to one man in one city of the planet
Durward.

"Okay," Jules said, finally. "I won't kill you this time. Just tell your boss
on Durward I'm coming; loaded to the gills
with stuff he never even beard of."

Then the eight d'Alemberts went back to their ship; where Jules and Yvette
spent all the rest of the day and almost
all of the night in the control room" the most secure spot they could find,
composing and encoding a long message
to the Head.

When it was done, Jules rose" stretched and walked over to the galactic chart.
His eyes brooding, he set it for
maximum span and turned on the activating circuits. As the great wispy
star-clouds of the galactic lens took form,
each surveyed star positioned with minute accuracy, he keyed the index
locators for Durward, the planet to which
all their hard-earned information pointed so surely, and for old Earth.
Quickly the taped data spools whined and
spun and printed out course and the dizzying distance in parsecs between the
two planets. He said slowly, "All the
signs say Durward is where the action is . . ."

 "I know, Julie," said his sister, covering a yawn. "So, of course we go to
Earth. Well, what are we waiting for?"

 All explored space was divided into 36 wedge-shaped sectors; the line common
to all sectors being the line
through the center of Sol perpendicular to the plane of the Earth's orbit.
Each sector was owned, subject only
to the Throne, by a Grand Duke. Earth, by far the most important planet, did
not belong to any sector, but was
the private property of the Throne. Each Grand Duke had a palace, several
residences and a Hall of State on
Earth. Because of these facts the nobility of Earth were far more powerful
than their titles indicated. The
Principal Palace, in which all Grand Imperial Courts were held, was in
Chicago; hence the Count of Chicago
had more real power than most Earls and Marquises. More, in fact, than many
Dukes. (Manley, Feudalism;
Reel I, Intro See viii).

The Massagerie

In his private office the Head was talking with a greyhaired man who, while
old, was in no sense decrepit. Grand
Lady Helena sat, shapely legs crossed, working on a twelveounce glass of
cherry-ice-cream float.

"But what does it mean, Zan?" the older man asked. "Route the Circus to
Durward-with instructions not to do
anything whatever except circus routine. Carlos and Carmen Velasquez will not
report and nothing they do, how-

ever wild, will be of any importance. And now this beautyparlor business,
right here on Earth! It doesn't make
sense."

"Not a beauty parlor, Bill. A massagerie de luxe. Or rather, "The House of
Strength of Body and of Heart."' "But
don't you know what they're doing?"

"Very little; and I don't want to know more. I give them a job; they do it
their own way. I would hazard a guess that
they have some reason to believe that a specific person they are interested in
is likely to take an interest in
bodybuilding. This, you will note, implies that they have reached the point of
being interested in specific persons ...
but I don't know who. That is to the good.

"As a recent event proved, the less I know of detail, the better."

"That's true. No trace of your missing person?" "None. There probably won't be
any until the d'Alemberts crack the
main case. While they're working on it they get anything they want, with no
questions asked."

"As they should, especially since they want so little from us. I know that
Circus taxes are rebated, but surely they
spend more than that on Empire business?"

"My guess is, they don't. The Circus is so successful that its taxes are very
high, but the Duke won't say how high. I
asked him once if we didn't owe him some money and he told me if I wanted to
count pennies I'd better go get
myself a job in a dime store."

The old man laughed. "That sounds exactly like him. But DesPlaines is a rich
planet, you know, and Etienne
d'Alembert is a tremendously able man-as well as being one of my best friends.
Well, I'll leave you to your work. I
like to talk to you when I'm feeling low, Zan; you give me a lift." He raised
his glass. "Tomorrow, fellow and friend.
May we all live to see it." They drank the toast and Emperor Stanley Ten,
erect and springy, left the room.

Helena grinned up at her father. "You didn't exactly lie, either; but if he
knew as much as we do he wouldn't feel so
uplifted." .
"He has troubles enough of his own without having to carry ours. Besides, we
don't know who they're after. It could
turn out to be someone outside those six, as well as not."

The girl nodded. "If we had even a good suspicion, he'd get a shot of
nitrobarb. All we know is that they haven't got a
shred of evidence of anything. But bow under the sun and moon and eleven
circumpolar stars can this glorified
gymnasium help solve anything?"

 "I haven't the most tenuous idea, my dear-and just between us two, I'm just
as curious as you are."

A ten-story gravity-controlled building in the Evanston district of Chicago
had been remodelled from top to
bottom. All the work had been done by the high -grav personnel who now
occupied the building. Over its splendidly
imposing entrance a triple-tube brilliant sign flared red:

DANGER-THREE GRAVITIES-DANGER

 and on each side of the portal, in small, severely plain obsidian letters on
a silver background, a plaque read:

duClos

For weeks before the opening it had been noised abroad that this House of
Strength would cater only to the top-

most flakes of the upper crust; and that was precisely what it did. It turned
down applicants, even of the nobility, by
the score. Its first clients, and for some time its only clients, were the
extremely powerful Count of Chicago, his
Countess and their two gangling teen-age daughters. Since this display of
ultra-snobbishness appealed very strongly
to the ultra-snobbishness of the high nobility of the Capital of Empire,
"duClos" raised snobbery to a height of per-

formance very seldom seen anywhere.

"How're you doing, sis?" Jules asked, one evening. "I'm getting a few bites,
but nothing solid. But there's a feel
about Sector Twenty that I don't like-I'm sure we're on the right track."

"So am I, and I'm getting an idea. I wasn't going to mention it until I could
thicken it up a little, but here goes. You
know that Duchess of Swingleton? That snooty stinker that's supposed to be the
daughter of the Grand Duchess?"

Jules came to attention with a snap. "Supposed to be?" "Well, is then. Maybe I
shouldn't have put it quite that
way-but you know how I've learned to sneer, in my own inimitable ladylike
way?"

"I wouldn't put that 'quite that way,' either. If it was me on the receiving
end I'd sock you right in the middle of your
puss."

"She'd really like to. I've been giving her the royal snoot all along and
she's burning like a torch. But her mother,
Grand Duchess Olga, takes it in stride. So why wouldn't Swingleton . . .
unless she's bursting at the seams with
something she's bottling up?"

"My God, Eve! You think she's the Bastard's daughter?" "I'm not that far along
yet, it's just a possibility. Not
daughter; sixty-seven he would be; she's only about twenty. Still in the silly
age-which may account for her touchi-

ness and everything. She's beautiful, athletic, rich, talented, noble and
spoiled rotten. Her hobby is men. She works
hard at it. So my thought is this: if she gets the idea from somewhere that
duClos. himself is the one and only
Mister Big in this business I'm positive that she'll insist on you coaching
her yourself-personally. You take her on,
but instead of bowing down and worshipping, you act like and say that you
wouldn't be caught dead with her at a cat-

fight, to say nothing of in bed. If I'm right she'll blow up like a bomb and
say something she shouldn't."

 Jules whistled piercingly through his teeth. "Wowl" he said.

Three days later, Jules accompanied Yvette into the apartment of the Duchess
of Swingleton, who proved to be a
tall girl-two inches taller than Jules-beautiful of face and figure, with dark
blue eyes and a mass of wheat-straw-

colored hair piled high on a proudly-held. Jules, after being presented,
walked slowly around her once, studying her
from head to foot from every angle. He scowled and then said, "Maybe I can do
something with this, but there
doesn't seem to be much of anything there to work on. Peel, you, and I'll
see."

"Peel?" The girl's head went even higher, her eyes blazed. "Are you talking to
me?" she flared.

"I'm talking to a mass of fat and a little flabby meat that ought to be muscle
but isn't, he replied caustically. "Do you
expect a master sculptor to make something of a tub of clay without touching
it? Wear a bikini or tights if you
like-although how you can imagine that I, duClos, would get the thrills over
such a slug's body as yours is
completely beyond my comprehension."

"Get out!" Trembling with rage, she pointed at the door. "Leave this castle at
once!"

He gave her his choicest top-deck sneer. "Madame, nothing could possibly
please me more." He executed a snappy
about-face and made for the door.

"Wait, you! Turn around!" "Yes?" he asked, coldly.

"I am the Duchess of Swingleton!"

"And I, madame, am duClos. There are hundreds and hundreds of duchesses, but
there is only one duClos."
She fought her anger down. "I'll put on a swimsuit," she said. "After all, I
do want to find out whether you're any
good or not."

But when she came back, dressed in practically nothing, duClos was even less
impressed than before. "Lard," he
said, when his talented fingers had reported their preliminary findings to his
brain. "Flabby, unrendered lard; but I'll
see what I can do with it. Well go to your gymnasium now."

"Why, aren't you going to take me to your place?"

He looked at her in amused and condescending surprise. "Are you that stupid?
You'd fall flat and could hardly get
up. It'll take a month of work here before you'll be able to work in the House
of Strength. To your gymnasium, I
say."

In the castle's gymnasium, he said, "First, we'll show you what we, accustomed
to three Earth gravities, can do
easily here on Earth," and he and Yvette went through a routine of such
violence that the apparatus creaked and
groaned and the very floor shook.

"Now what a fair Earth gymnast-such as perhaps I'll be able to make out of
you-can do," and they showed her that.

"Now I'll find out what you can do-if anything. You can't do even fifty fast
push-ups without going flat on your
face," and of course she couldn't

He worked her fairly hard for half an hour, which was about all she could
take, then said, "That's enough for today,
poor thing." Then, turning to Yvette, "Give her a massage in steam, and go
deep. After that, the usual."

"No, I want you to do it yourself," the girl said. "They say you're tops and I
want nothing but the best."

"Okay," Jules said, in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, and peeled down to
his white nylon shorts. "That'd be
better-I'll know more exactly how you come along."

 The ladies-in-waiting were shocked-or pretended to be -as the
three-quarters-naked man worked on their com-

pletely naked mistress; but Jules, alone, of all those present,
was-apparently-not affected at all. He was a
top-expert masseur working at his profession.

This went on for day after day. Since the Duchess was actually a strong,
healthy athletic girl, splendidly built, and
agile both physically and mentally, she learned fast and developed fast. But
for the first time in her life she had
struck a man and bounced. It was an intolerable situation -a situation that
got no better at all as time went on.

He stayed coldly impersonal and more than somewhat contemptuous; he was and he
remained a master craftsman
wasting his talents on material entirely unworthy of his skill. He paid no
attention whatever to any of the little plays
she made.

One day, however, when she had become a pretty fair gymnast and was very proud
of her accomplishments, all the
ladies-in-waiting disappeared before the massage was to begin.

"We don't need them any more, I don't think." She posed, with her skimpy
garment half off, and gave him an
undereyebrows look that would have put any other man she knew into a flat
spin. "Do we?"

"I don't, that's sure," he said, with the sneer that had become so maddening
that she wanted to bash it back into his
skull with a sledgehammer. "And if you're trying to seduce me you're wasting
your time. You're a hunk of clay I'm
trying to model into something halfway worth while, and nothing else. I'd not
rather have you than any other mass
of poor-grade clay-or a dime's worth of catmeat."

That blew it-sky high. "You low-born oaf!" she screamed. "You clod! You
base-born peasant, I'll have you flayed
alive and staked out on . . ." She stopped screaming suddenly and her eyes
widened the veriest little.

"Stop running off at the mouth!" he rasped, timing it so perfectly that she
knew he had interrupted her tirade. "My
birth, high or low, has no bearing. I am duClos. I am trying to mold you into
what our Creator intended you to be;

His instrument to produce men, not the milksops and flabs now infesting this
sinful planet Earth."

"Oh? Don't tell me you're a Puritan!" she exclaimed, very glad indeed to
change the subject. "I should have known
it, though, by al! that hair."

"An ex-Puritan," be corrected her. "I do not believe that everything pleasant
is sinful, but neglect of the human body
most certainly is. So get in there. And snap it upbefore you cool off too
much."

Work went on, exactly as though nothing had happened. She graduated into the
House of Strength and, everything
considered, she did very well there.

 And she convinced herself quite easily that she had not revealed any tittle
of the secret that had been held for
sixtyseven years.

IX

 As an example of the traditional loyalty of the Navy: When Empress Stanley 5,
her husband and four of their
five children were assassinated in 2229, their youngest child, Prince Edward,
escaped death only because he,
then an ensign in the Navy, was being guarded as no other person had ever been
guarded before. Fleet
Admiral Simms declared martial law and, in the bloodiest purge in all history,
executed not only all those
found guilty, including Prince Charles and Princess Charlene, but also their
entire families. He then made
himself regent and ruled with an iron hand for six years. Then, to the vast
surprise of all, he relinquished his
regency on the day that Prince Edward came of age and he himself crowned
Prince Edward Emperor Stanley
Six (Farnham; The Empire, Vol. 1, p. 784).

The Fortress of Englewood

Jules and Yvette deigned to accept six Grand Dukes and their wives as personal
clients-among whom were Grand
Duke Nicholas and Grand Duchess Olga of Sector Twenty -but that was all they
would take. In that position of
intimacy they dug up a few hints, but neither of them could lay hold of
anything solid.

At every opportunity they planted Earth operators in the kitchens, in the
garages and everywhere else they could.
These detectives found bits and pieces of information, but they could not find
any leads to Banion or to any of his
blood: nor to the all-important Patent of Royalty.

"We've got to take this to the Head, Eve," Jules said finally. "I hate to yell
for help on our first really big job, but
he's just too damned big for us. And it's more than a possibility that it'd be
the Head's head that would roll, not
Duke Twenty's. We simply can't take the chance."

Yvette nodded. "You're right, I'm afraid. He's really big . . . but he hasn't
got a drop of Stanley blood in him..."

"Which is why he's playing it this way," Jules declared. "The power behind the
Throne. I'll set up a meet."

He set it up and they laid the whole ugly mess squarely on the line, and while
they talked the Head aged ten years.
When they were done he sat silent and motionless, in intense concentration,
for a good fifteen minutes. They could
almost feel the master strategist's keen brain at work. Finally he lifted his
head sharply and he said:

"I was hoping it would be one of the others, but you're right. We can't move
against him without the genuine Patent
actually in our hands."

Jules scowled. "That's what I was afraid you'd say. And that Patent must be in
the solidest safe-deposit vault on
Earth."

"It isn't," the Head said, flatly. "The Emperor can open any bank vault he
pleases, with no reason at all. So it's in a
vault as good as any on Earth, but in the deepest subcellar of Castle
Englewood. I'd stake my head on that.
Theoretically, the Emperor could open that vault, too, at whim. But trying it
would touch everything off and Nich-

olas might win. So I'm going to stake all our heads. No matter how daintily we
try to pussyfoot it, there's always the
chance of our touching off the explosion. However, there'd be no point in his
killing the Crown Princess as long as
the Emperor and the Empress are alive, so what do you think of this?" and they
discussed details for two hours.

Three days later, the news media announced that Emperor Stanley Ten had had a
heart attack.

It wasn't too serious, as such things go, but a battery of specialists agreed
unanimously that he bad to have at least
two months of carefree rest, preferably at his favorite summer place, Big
Piney in the Rockies. Wherefore Crown
Princess Edna was given the unusual title of "Empress Pro Tem" and her parents
went, with no pomp or circum-

stance at all-not to Big Piney, but to an island in the Pacific that was
guarded by every defensive device known to
the military science of the age.

And Empress Pro Tern Edna announced a party-a getting-acquainted party that,
beginning with a full Grand Imperial
Court, would last for three days-to which all thirty-six Grand Dukes and their
entire families were invited. And did
any of the invitees even think of declining? Not one.

As that party began, Jules and Yvette and a regiment of experts went as
insidiously as possible to work on Castle
Englewood. Having free run of the place, as far as anyone now there was
concerned, the two went first-with
stunners in their hands-to visit the key personnel. They were followed by
fifty cat-footed, fully briefed
d'Alemberts, who took care of everyone else; particularly of the
many-timestoo-numerous Castle Guard.

Architects and engineers had detailed plans of the castle, but they were found
useless. The actual details had never
been registered. So electronic technicians unlimbered their most sensitive
detectors and explored walls, floors and
ceilings. They traced cable after cable, wire after wire; and section after
section of the vast building went dark and
powerless.

It had been clear from the start that this was no ordinary residence of any
ordinary Grand Duke. It was a fortress; a
fortress that, except for the Head's brilliant strategy and the d'Alemberts'
ability to carry it out, would have been
starkly impregnable. And, even so, the attack almost failed.

"How about this, Major?" Jules asked, as the company, after exploring all the
other tunnels and corridors in the
sub-basements, returned to a grimly thick steel wall.

"It opens from somewhere, somehow." The officer pointed out an almost
invisible crack where steel butted against
steel. "It'd probably take a week, though, to find out where or how, I think
we cut all external leads to here, but they
could have independent power in that section."

"We'll assume they have," Jules said. "And automatic blasters-or worse,
stunners. Gas, maybe, or triggered bombs.
But the Head gambled his life on a lot less than we know now, so bring up your
shields and high-powers and burn
the damned thing down."

When the eight-inches-thick mass of armor-plate fell inward into the
brilliantly lighted room, revealing a squad of
tremendously-muscled DesPlainians, it struck a steel floor with a crash that
shook the very bed-rock upon which
Castle Englewood was built.

 One glance, however, was all Jules had; for even before steel struck steel he
was smashed down flat by a force of
twenty-five gravities; and the fact that the musclemen inside the room went
down too was of little enough comfort.
They were weight-lifters. He wasn't.

"Ultra-grav!" Jules gritted, through his clenched teeth. "Can you fellows do
anything with it, Rick?" he demanded of
the leader of the fighting wrestlers who had done such good work on Aston. "It
looks like they've got me just about
stuck down."

"We're working on it, Chief," Rick said hoarsely, and they were.

It was fantastic to see two-hundred-fifty-pound brawlers, muscled like
Atlases, exerting every iota of their tre-

mendous strength; first to get up onto their knees and then to lift, with the
full power of both arms, a five-pound
weapon up into some kind of firing poistion. Unfortunately, one of the
guards-a giant even for a DesPlainian
weightlifter-made it first. His first blast went straight through the man in
front of Jules; and Jules, who had
managed to get almost to his knees, lost a fist-sized chunk of flesh out of
his left leg and went back down.

Only the one guard, however, beat the d'Alemberts into action. In the ensuing
awkward, slow-motion battle eighteen
men died; eight of them being the Grand Duke's guards. Then slowly,
ultratoilsomely, the d'Alembert found the
gravity controls and restored a heavenly three thousand centimeters per
second. And Yvette, who had been pinned
down all this time, rushed over and first-aid-bandaged the ghastly wound in
her brother's leg.

They did not try to unlock the vault. It was too late now for cat-footing.
Demolition experts brought up their
shields and sandbags and blew the whole face of it to bits. They removed the
debris and ransacked the vault-and
they found a Patent of Royalty.

Then, hearts in throats and scarcely breathing, they looked on while
hand-writing experts and documentary experts
gave the parchment the works.

"This is the genuine Patent," the chief examiner said finally; and in the
joyously relieved clamor that followed even
the dead were for the moment forgotten.

The rest of the project went smoothly enough. The full regiment of Imperial
Guards sealed the Principal Palace
bottle-tight. The Navy put an impenetrable umbrella over all Chicago. Fleet
Admiral Armstrong himself led a com-

pany of marines into the Grand Ballroom and broke up the Empress Pro Tem's
party by putting Grand Duke
Nicholas and his entire retinue under arrest. And immediately, then and there
in the Grand Ballroom, the Emperor's
personal physician administered nitrobarb and the Court Psychologist asked
questions. And Empress Pro Tent
Edna, her face too stern and hard by far for any girl of her years, listened;
and having listened, issued orders which
Fleet Admiral Armstrong carried out.

Since it is much faster to work such an inquiry from the top down than from
the bottom up, full information was
obtained in less than a week. And thus, while the resultant vacancies in the
various services were many and terribly
shocking, the menace that had hung over the Empire for sixty-seven years was
at long last abated.

 And thus-a thing supremely important to Jules and Yvette d'Alembert-the
Service of the Empire was at long last
clean.

X

Because of their high intelligence, their super-cat agility, their
hair-trigger speed of reaction and their
enormous physical strength, DesPlainians had been the best secret service
agents of, in turn, the Central
Intelligence of Earth, the Galactic Intelligence Agency and the Service of the
Empire. And of all DesPlainians,
throughout the years, the d'Alemberts had been by far the best. The fact that
the Circus of the Galaxy was
SOTE's right arm did not leak from Earth because only the monarch, the Head
and a very few of their most
highly trusted intimates ever knew it. Nor did it leak from the Circus. Circus
people never have spoken to
rubes, and the inflexible Code d'Alembert was that d'Alemberts spoke only to
d'Alemberts and to the Head
(unpublished data).

Bill, Irene and Edna

Again it was late at night. Again the d'Alemberts Service Special slanted
downward through the air toward the roof
of the Hall of State of Sector Four. This time, however, the little speedster
was not riding a beam and there was no
spot of light upon the building's roof. Except for the light of the
almost-full moon, everything was dark and still.

Yvette was the Yvette of old. Jules, again short-haired and smooth-shaved,
looked like his usual self; but there was
a crutch beside him and his sister was doing the piloting.

She landed the craft near the kiosk of the ultra-private elevator, opened up
and leaped lightly out; Jules clambered
out, clumsily and stiffly; and Grand Lady Helena came running up in a very
ungrand-ladylike fashion.
"Oh, you're wonderful, Yvette-simply marvellous!" She put both arms around
Yvette's neck and kissed her three
times on the lips. "I'm awfully glad father let me be the one to meet you!"
She turned and went somewhat carefully
into Jules' arms. "And you, Jules! Oh, I just can't-but surely you can hug a
girl tighter than this, can't you? Even with
a bum leg?"

Jules, returning her kisses enthusiastically, tightened his arms a little, but
not much. Then, lifting her by the arm-

pits, he held her feather-lightly out at arms' length, with her toes ten or
twelve inches in air. "Sure I can," he said,
solemnly but with sparkling eyes, "but the trouble is, I never hugged an
Earther before and I'm afraid of breaking
you in two. It wouldn't be quite de rigeur, would it, to break a Grand Lady's
back and half of her ribs?"

"Oh, there's no danger of that. I'm ever so much stronger than. . . ." She
broke off and her eyes widened in surprise
as her hands, already on his arms, tried with all their strength to drive her
fingertips into them.

"Oh, I see," she said quietly. "I never quite realized." Jules lowered her
gently to the roof and she led the way into
the elevator. She did not tell them what the Head wanted of them and they did
not ask. As the elevator started down
she said, "Jules, I'm going to tell you something. I was all set to fall in
love with you and make you love me whether
you wanted to or not. But when I couldn't make even a dent in those muscles of
yours . . . arms as big and as hard as
those of a heroic-size bronze . . . well. . . ." Her voice died away.

"You couldn't, possibly," he replied soberly. "There's too much difference.
Three of your gravities is a lot of grav,
Helena. But we have your friendship?"

"More than that, both of you. Ever so much more. That, and admiration and
esteem and. . . ." She broke off as the
elevator door opened.

She stepped aside; motioned for them to precede her. They took one step into
the Head's private office and stopped
dead in their tracks, their eyes and mouths becoming O's of astonishment. For
The big but trim old grey-haired man
was Emperor Stanley Ten! The statuesque, regal, brown-haired woman was Empress
Irenel And the beautifully
built, prematurely stern-faced girl mixing drinks at the Head's bar was Crown
Princess Edna.

The emperor stood up and raised a hand. "Do not kneel," he said-but of course,
with their speed of reaction, Yvette
was already on her knees and Jules, gimpy leg and all, was on one.

He raised them to their feet, kissed Yvette's hand and shook Jules' and said,
"During this visit and here-after in
private, my friends, to you two I am Bill."

"Oh, we couldn't, Your ... Sire . . . not possibly," Jules said. "But we might
call you `sir,' sir?"

Stanley Ten smiled; and in that smiling shed a heavy load. "Oh? I understand.
Many of the younger generation are
not so well bred. `Sir' will do very nicely. I take pleasure in presenting you
both to Mrs. Stanley . . . and to our
daughter, Edna."

Introductions made, Edna Stanley went around with her tray, serving Jules
last. As she handed him his glass of
lemonade her dark, grey eyes, usually distant, were soft and warm. "It's a
damned dirty stinking shame," she said,
feelingly, "that we can't give you two, the two who saved our lives, at least
a Grand Imperial Court channelled to
every planet in space. And to cap it off we have to give that stuffed shirt
Armsbold all the credit. The fathead! And
he'll get another medal, I suppose-and compared to you two he positively could
not detect a smell on a skunk!"
"Well-" Jules began, but the princess rushed on.

"Oh, I know that's the way it has to be, Jules, and I know why. And I know
exactly how you feel about it. The Service
of the Empire. The fine tradition of the finest group of men and women who
ever lived. But knowing all that doesn't
make it taste any better or go down any easier that all we can do is thank you
for saving all three of our lives at such
tremendous risk of your own, and that we have to do even that on the sneak-or
cost you yours."

She threw her arms around Jules' neck and kissed him warmly. And, while he
could not bring himself to the point of
kissing the Crown Princess of the Empire as though she were an ordinary girl,
his response was adequate.

Edna Stanley was not the crying type, but her eyes brimming as she drew her
head back, looked straight into Jules'
eyes and went on, "But we three will remember it as long as we live; and you
two will have a very special place in
my heart as long as I live."

Without giving Jules a chance to say anything-which was just as well, since he
could not possibly have said a
word-she wriggled free and embraced Yvette. "What did you expect. Yvette? And
call me Edna; we're about the
same age."

"I'd love to, Edna, it warms me clear through. What I expected was a pat on
the back from the Head there and
another tough job."

The Head laughed. "You'll get both, my dear." Then, turning to Stanley, "You
see, Bill?"

"I see, Zan. D'Alemberts. Metal of proof. Wrought and tempered." Stanley
turned to Jules and Yvette. "You young
people don't realize that your lives are more important to the Empire than
mine is."

"I not only don't realize it, sir," Jules said, doggedly, "but I don't see how
it can possibly be true. You are the third
and the greatest of the Great Stanleys. Eve and I are just two d'Alemberts out
of over a thousand."

"Correction, please. As of now you are, and probably for the next two or three
years will continue to be the two
most capable human beings alive." Stanley replenished his drink and brought
Yvette a small pitcher of fresh orange
juice, while Edna waited on the others. "Let's examine this 'Great Stanley'
business a little; it will be a good way to
get better acquainted. I've studied the House of Stanley quite thoroughly;
enough to have developed what is-to me,
at least-a new theory. Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why the three
so-called Great Stanleys happened to be
the three who reigned longest? Empress Stanley Three, thirty-seven years;
Emperor Stanley Six, thirtysix years;
and I, who have more than either, and will probably-thanks to you-reign two
more before reaching the age of
seventy and abdicating in favor of Edna here?" "N-o-o-o, sir. I can't say that
I have."

"It's a highly pertinent fact. You know, I'm sure, that only one Stanley so
far has died in bed."

"Yes, sir, but. . . ."

"And one died in a space accident. The other seven were assassinated, usually
by their own sons or daughters or
brothers or sisters."

"Yes, sir. I know that."

"They had too many children, too young. So Irene and I had only one child, and
Edna wasn't born until I was forty-

five years old. So as soon as she's able to carry the load we'll hand it to
her on a platter and step out."

"Dad!" the Crown Princess exclaimed. "You know very well I'd never even think
of such a thing!" And: "William!"
the Empress protested. "What a nasty thing to say!"

The Emperor grinned. "If you'll analyze what I actually said you'll see that
you read that wicked thought of regicide
and patricide into it-and you'll know why. Anyway, Irene, you helped plan it.
And it's worked out beautifully for all
of us. You've all heard the old wheeze that "Power corrupts; absolute power
corrupts absolutely?"'

They all had.

"My theory is that only the first part of that old saying is really true. For,
as a matter of fact, no human being ever
had absolute power until King Stanley the Sixth crowned himself Emperor
Stanley One and took it. He had the
whole galaxy. Every other despot in history was always reaching for more; so
the truth of that old saying was never
tested.

"Indeed, there is much in preStanley history that argues against its truth.
The worst gangsters and the most
rapacious capitalists Earth ever knew, when they got old enough and powerful
enough and rich enough, turned from
crime and rapacity to something that was for the good of all mankind. And the
entire history of the House of
Stanley bears this out."

There was a short silence, then the Empress said, thoughtfully, "Well, it's
something to think about, at least . . . and
it does seem to make sense . . . but my dear, what has all that to do with the
present case?"

"Everything," Stanley said, deadly serious now. "It shows why these two
d'Alemberts-highly trained, uniquely gifted,
innately and- completely loyal to the Empire-are much more important to the
Empire than I am. Not that they are
indispensable. No one is. But they are at present irreplaceable and I am not.
Any Stanley who is able to live long
enough becomes a Great Stanley by sheer force of circumstance, and Edna will
be one from the day she is
crowned."

The Emperor turned to face Jules and Yvette. "Nevertheless, my young friends,
my life is extremely important to
me. It is also extremely important to Irene and to Edna, as are their lives to
me. Our three lives are important to a
few real friends, such as Zander there and your father the Duke; but you would
be surprised to know just how
scarce such real friends are. The life of any individual Emperor or Empress,
however, is of very little importance
to the Empire itself, of which its rulers are merely the symbols. The Empire
endures only because of the loyalty to
it of such people as you. Such loyalty can not be commanded;

it must be earned. The Empire will endure as long as, and only as long as, it
continues to be worthy of such loyalty.
Without that loyalty the Empire would fall. Instead of prosperity and peace
there would be widespread and terribly
destructive wars of planetary conquest. Our present civilization would
degenerate into barbarism and savagery.

"We Stanleys do what we can; but in the last analysis the Empire rests
squarely upon the arch of its various
services, and your Service of the Empire is the very keystone of that arch.

"As Edna said, it is a shame that we three can give you only our thanks. It is
not, however the thanks of only three
people, I am speaking for the Empire when I say to you and through you to
those who work with you. . . ... Emperor
Stanley Ten took the d'Alemberts' right hands, one in each of his own:

"Thanks."
                           AFTERWORD

The Epic of Space

How do I write a space story? The question is simple and straightforward
enough. The answer, however, is not;
since it involves many factors.

What do I, as a reader, like to read? Campbell, de Camp, Heinlein, Leinster,
Lovecraft, Merritt, Moore, Starzl,
Taine, van Vogt, Weinbaum, Williamson-all of these rate high in my book. Each
has written more than one
tremendous story. They cover the field of fantastic fiction, from pure weird
to pure science fiction. While very
different, each from all the others, they have many things in common, two of
which are of interest here. First, they
all put themselves into their work. John Kenton is Abraham Merritt; Jirel of
Joiry is Catherine Moore. Second,
each writes-or wrote -between the lines, so that one reading is not enough to
discover what is really there. Two are
necessary-three and four are often-times highly rewarding. Indeed, there are
certain stories which I still re-read,
every year or so, with undiminished pleasure.

Consider Merritt, for instance. He wrote four stories"The Ship of Ishtar,"
"The Moon Pool," "The Snake Mother,"
and "Dwellers in the Mirage"-which will be immortal. A ten-year-old child can
read them and thrill at the exciting
adventurous surface stories. A poet can read them over and over for their
feeling and imagery. A philologist can
study them for their perfection of wording and phraseology. And yet,
underlying each of them, there is a bedrock
foundation of philosophy, the magnificence of which simply cannot be absorbed
at one sitting.

In this connection, how many of you have read, word by word, the ascent to the
Bower of Bel, in "The Ship of
Ishtar?" Those who have not, have missed one of the most sublime passages in
literature. And yet a friend of mine
told me that he had skipped "that stuff." It was too dry!

These differences in reader attitude, however, bring up the very important
matter of treatment. It is a well-known
fact that many readers, particularly those whose heads are of use only in
keeping their ears apart, want action, and
only action. Slambang action; the slammier and the bangier the better. It is
also a fact that some editors will either
reject or rewrite stories which do not conform to such standards. Since it is
practically impossible to read such a
story twice, however, the type is mentioned only in passing.

Something besides action, then, is necessary. What? And how much? And should
the characters grow, or not? Many
writers-good ones, at that-do not let their characters grow. It is easier.
Also, it allows a series of stories about the
same characters to go on practically endlessly; being limited only by the
readers--" patience. Personally, I like to
have my characters grow and develop; even though this growth limits sharply
the number of stories I am able to
write about them:
It would seem as though anyone, after a few days or weeks of study of any good
book on "How to Write the Great
American Novel," could emerge with a clear understanding of such basic things
as plot, conflict, situation, incident,
suspense, interest, treatment, and atmosphere; but unfortunately, I didn't.
Authorities differ. I don't know yet
whether there are three basic plots, or eleven, or whether an author has a
brand-new plot when he changes his hero
from a bright young lawyer to a brilliant young physicist, and his heroine
from a wise-cracking brunette
stenographer to a witty blonde stewardess. I don't know yet whether the
incomparable Weinbaum's "Trweel,"
which-or who?rocked Fandom on its foundations was a new plot, a new school of
thought, or an incident. So, while
I will probably use some of those words, I will use them in the ordinary, and
not in the technical, sense.

Besides action,   a good story must have background material and atmosphere to
give authority,   authenticity, and
verisimilitude.   It must also have characterization-character-drawing-to make
its people real   people and not marion-

ettes dancing at the end of the author's string. To balance these factors is
not easy, since they are mutually almost
exclusive-not entirely so, since much can be shown in action sequences-and
since the slower-moving material
must not detract too much from that intangible, indefinable asset which
writers and editors call "story value."

Nor does the choice lie entirely, or even mostly, with the author; for the
public cannot read stories which editors
will not publish. I wrote three stories (not scientific fiction) which were
not slanted, but which were written
exactly as I wanted to write them. I liked them; but editors did not. Hence
they will remain unpublished.

Character-drawing, however deftly or interestingly it is done, does operate to
slow down the action of a story.
Background material and atmosphere are usually slower still. Philosophy, even
in small doses, is slowest of all.
Yet any story, if it is to live beyond the month of its publication, must be
balanced. Hence the often-heard
accusation of "wordiness" hurled at so many writers is almost never justified.
I do not believe that any author writes
words merely to fill up space. He uses words just as a mechanic uses tools or
as an artist uses colors and brushes,
and with just as definate an aim in view. The casual reader may not know, or
care, what that end is, but in practically
every case the author has known exactly what he was trying to do with everyone
of those words. He may have been
using them for atmosphere, for character-drawing, for a subtle imagery or
philosophy perceptible only to the
reader able and willing to read between the lines, or for any one of a dozen
other purposes. Thus, the action fan
begrudges every word which does not hurl the story along; and does not like
Lovecraft, saying that he is "wordy."
To the reader who likes and appreciates atmosphere, however, Lovecraft was the
master craftsman.
Some authors are better than others, of course. There are poor mechanics, too;
and poor artists. For that matter, I
wonder if any artist ever painted a picture that was as good as he wanted and
intended it to be?

Great stories must be logical and soundly motivated; and it is in these
respects that most "space-operas"-as well as
more conventional stories-fail. A story must have action, conflict, and
suspense. An author must get his hero into a
jam; and, whether not he really must marry him off, he usually does so, either
actually or by implication. Now it is
(or at least it should be) apparent that if the hero has even half of the
brain with which the author has so carefully
endowed him, he is not going to land his spaceship and, without examination or
precaution, gallop heedlessly away
from it, specifically to be captured by ferocious natives. Yet how often that
precise episode has occurred, for
exactly that reason! Similarly, if anyone connected with the take-off of a
rocket-ship-especially an experimental
model-had any fraction of a brain, there would be just about as much chance of
a beautiful female stowing away
aboard it as there would be in the case of a 500-mile racer at Indianapolis.
Yet that atrocity has been used
sickeningly often, to introduce effortlessly an interference with the hero's
plans and to drag it by the heels a love
interest that does not belong there.

Now sound, solid motivation is far from easy-a fact which accounts for the
rather widespread use of coincidence.
This dodge, while not as bad as some other crimes, reveals mental
laziness-excepting, of course, when it is an
element in mass-production methods of operation.

I have found motivation the hardest part of writing; and several good men have
told me that I am not alone. It takes
work-plenty of work--to arrange things so that even a really smart man will be
forced by circumstances to get into
situations that make stories possible. It takes time and thought; and many
times it requires extra words and back-

ground material whose purpose is not immediately apparent.

To refer to an example with which I am thoroughly familiar, what possible
motive force would make Kimball
Kinnison, an adult, brilliant, and highly valued officer of the Galactic
Patrol, go willingly into a hyper-spatial tube
which bore all the ear-marks of a trap set specifically for him? I could not
throw this particular episode into the
circular file, as I have done with so many easier ones, because it is the
basis of the grand climax of the final
Lensman story, "Children of the Lens." Nor could I duck the issue or slide
around it, since any weakness at that
point would have made waste paper of the whole book. Kinnison had to go in.
His going in had to be inevitable,
with an inevitability apparent to his wife, his children, and-I hope and
believe-even to the casual reader. That
problem had me stumped for longer than I care to admit; and its solution
necessitated the introduction of
seemingly unimportant background material into "Galactic Patrol," which was
published in 1937, and into the two
other Lensman novels which have appeared since.

Now to go into the way in which I write a space story, specifically, the
"Lensman" series, since it is in reality one
story. Early in 1927, shortly after the "Skylark of Space" was accepted by the
old Amazing, I began to think
seriously of writing a space-police novel. It had to be galactic, and
eventually inter-galactic, in scope; which would
necessitate velocities vastly greater than that of light. How could I do it?
The mechanism of the "Skylark," even
though employing atomic energy, would not do. There simply wasn't enough of
it, as several mathematicians
pointed out to me later in personal correspondence-and as both Dr. Garby and I
knew at the time. Also, the
acceleration employed would have flattened out steel springs, to say nothing
of human bodies, into practically
monomolecular layers. Mrs. Garby and I knew that, too-but since the "Skylark"
was pseudo-science, and since it
was written long before the advent of scientific fiction, we could and did use
those two mathematically
indefensible mechanisms. This spacepolice yam, however, would have to be
scientific fiction.

I would not use mathematically impossible mechanics, such as that
too-often-revived monstrosity of a second
satellite hiding eternally from Earth behind the moon. Since the inertia of
matter made it impossible for even
atomic energy to accelerate a space-ship to the velocity I had to have, I
would have to do away with inertia. Was
there any mathematical or philosophical possibility, however slight, that
matter could exist without inertia? There
was-I finally found it in no less an authority than Bigelow (Theoretical
Chemistry-Fundamentals). Einstein's
Theory of course denies that matter can attain such velocities, but that did
not bother me at all. It is still a
theory-velocities greater than that of light are not absolutely mathematically
impossible. That is enough for me. In
fact, the more highly improbable a concept is-short of being contrary to
mathematics whose fundamental
operations involve no neglect of infinitesimals-the better I like it.

Other great drawbacks, philosophical or logical rather than mathematical, were
the difficulties of communicating
with strange races and the apparent impossibility of having my policemen
invent or develop an identifying symbol
which all good citizens would recognize but which malefactors could not
counterfeit. The only emblems which I
could devise led, one and all, to the old "deus ex machina" plot, which
therefore was the one I adopted; with, of
course, details tailored to fit the broad scheme I had in mind and to put in a
new twist or two.

Having the Lensmen's universe fairly well set up, I went through my
collection, studying and analyzing every "cops-

and-robbers' story on my shelves: from Canstantinescu's "War of the Universe,"
which I did not consider a master-

piece, up to the stories of Starzl and Williamson, who wrote literature worthy
of the masters they are. I then wrote
to the editor of Astounding, describing my idea briefly and asking whether or
not he considered it advisable to go
ahead with it, in view of the good work already done in the field.

He wrote back one of the most cheering letters I have ever received. I will
not quote it exactly, but its gist was that
it was not the pioneers in any field who did the best work, but some fellow
who, coming along later, could take
advantage of their strengths and avoid their weaknesses -and he thought that I
could deliver the goods.

Thus encouraged to go ahead (I always did do better work while being patted on
the back than while being kicked in
the seat of the pants) I drew up the preliminary, very broad outline. As
fundamentals, I had inertialessness and the
Lens. I had the Arisians and their ultimate opponents, the Eddorians. I had a
sound psychological reason why the
real nature of the fundamental conflict should never be made known to any
member of Homo Sapiens; since that
knowledge would have set up an ineradicable inferiority complex throughout the
Patrol.

It soon became evident that the story could not be told in a hundred thousand
words. There would have to be at least
three stories; and when the outline was done, it called for four. The point
then arose: how could each book be
ended without leaving loose ends dangling all over the place? I have never
liked unfinished novels-I fairly gritted
my teeth when Edgar Rice Burroughs left Dejah Thoris locked up in a doorless
cell while he wrote the next book!
By taking the Boskonians one echelon at a time, the first two years could be
ended satisfactorily enough. The third,
however, was getting so close to the ultimate conflict that I had to do one of
two things, neither of which I liked:
either leave loose ends or apparently use the ancient and whiskery device, of
the "mad scientist." After some
experimental writing, I adopted the latter course. Please note, however, that
neither I as the author nor Mentor of
Arisia ever said anywhere that Fossten was either mad or an Arisian; although
I have had, time and again, to go over
the whole episode word by word to convince certain critics of the truth of
this statement.

From the first quarter of the broad, general outline, only a few pages long, I
made a more detailed outline of
"Galactic Patrol;" laying out at the same time a graph of the structure, the
progression of events, the alterations of
characters, the peaks of emotional intensity and the valleys of
characterization and background material. Each peak
was a bit higher than the one before, as was each valley floor, until the
climax was reached; after which the graph
descended abruptly. My graphs are beautiful things. Unfortunately, however,
while I can't seem to work without
something of the kind, I have never yet been able to follow one at all
closely. My characters get away from me and
do exactly as they damn please, which accounts for my laborious method of
writing.

I write the first draft with a soft pencil, upon whatever kind of
scratch-paper is handiest. This draft is a mess; so full
of erasures, interlineations, marginal notes, and CTOSSovers to the other side
of the paper that I can't read it
myself after it gets cold. The second draft is written, a day or so later,
from the first-with variations. It is also in
pencil, but isn't so messy; except when radical changes are necessitated by
departures from the outline a few
chapters later. My wife can read most of it, and she types what we call the
"typescript;" in reality the third rough
draft. This draft, in various stages of completion, is read and heatedly
discussed by the Galactic Roamers; a fan
club in Michigan -and Los Angeles. Comments and suggestions are written on the
margins; on some
hotly-contested points they cover the entire backs of pages. I accept and use
the ideas which I think are better than
my own original ones; I reject the others. By rights, these friends of mine
should have their names on the
title-pages and a share of the loot, but to date I have been able to resist
the compulsion to give them their due.

From the typescript, after the last "final" revision, my wife types the
"original," which goes to Campbell. And as
soon as it has been shipped I always wish that I had it back, to spend a few
more weeks on the rough spots.

I have already mentioned the Galactic Roamers as a group. E. E. Evans pointed
out the fact that "Triplanetary,"
having been laid in the Lensman universe, should be, was, and MUST BE the
first story of the Lensman series, in-

stead of "Galactic Patrol." Ed Counts found flaws and suggested corrections in
my handling of the Red Lensman in
the grand climax. The planet Trenco was designed and computed, practically in
toto, by an aeronautical engineer
who was in part responsible for the Lightning, the Constellation, and the
Shooting Star. Dr. James Enright, of
Hawaii, psychologist and psychiatrist, solved some of my knottiest problems.
Dr. Richard W. Dodson, nuclear
physicist, helped a lot. So did Heinlein. So did many others, not only in the
United States, but also in such
widely-separated places as Australia, Sweden, China, South Africa, Egypt, and
the Philippines. It is bromidic, but
true, to say that two heads are better than one. It has been my experience
that fifty are still better.

In conclusion, if you want to write a space epic, go to it. This is the way I
do it. The remuneration per hour does not
compare with what a bricklayer earns, and it's harder work-I have done them
both, and know. However, I get a
terrific kick out of writing; especially out of the fact that quite a good
many people really like my stuff.

Besides, you may find a way that is easier or better than mine: maybe one that
is both easier and better,
                           BIBLIOGRAPHY

Magazine appearances.

Catastrophe (non-fiction article), Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1938
Children of the Lens (Four part serial novel), Astounding Science-Fiction,
Nov. 1947
Fall of Atlantis, The (short story), Science Fiction Monthly, No. 10, 1974.
Galactic Patrol (Six part serial novel), Astounding Stories, Sept. 1937
Galaxy Primes, The (Three part serial novel), Amazing Stories, Mar. 1959
Grey Lensman (Four part serial novel), Astounding ScienceFiction, Oct. 1939
Imperial Stars, The (novelette), Worlds Of If, May 1964
Lord Tedric (novelette), Universe Science Fiction, Mar. 1954
Origin of Life, The (non-fiction article),* Luna No. 7 1969
     *Transcript of speech presented at 12th World SF Convention, California,
Sept. 1954
Masters of Space* (Two part serial novel), Worlds Of If, Nov, 1961
     *collaboration with E. E. Evans
Robot Nemesis* (short story), Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939
     *see also as What a Course! reprinted Startling Stories, July 1950
Second-Stage Lensman (Four part serial novel), Astounding Science-Fiction,
Nov. 1941
Skylark Duquesne (Five part serial novel), Worlds Of If, June 1965
Skylark of Space, The (Three part serial novel), Amazing Stories, Aug. 1928
Skylark of Valeron, The (Seven part serial novel), Astounding Stories, Aug.
1934
Skylark Three (Three part serial novel), Amazing Stories, Aug. 1930
Spacehounds of IPC (Three part serial novel), Amazing Stories, July 1931
Storm Cloud on Deka (novelette), Astounding Stories, June 1942
Subspace Survivors (novelette), Astounding (Analog) Science Fact and Fiction,
July 1960
Tedric (short story), Other Worlds Science Fiction Stories, Mar. 1953
Triplanetary (Four part serial novel), Amazing Stories, Jan. 1934
Vortex Blaster, The (short story), Comet Stories, July 1941
Vortex Blaster Makes War, The (short story), Astonishing Stories, Oct. 1942
What a Course! (Robot Nemesis) (short story), Fantasy Magazine: `Cosmos' part
13, 1934
Magazine series stories, in sequence:

Lensman series includes:
Triplanetary
Galactic Patrol
Grey Lensman
Second-Stage Lensman
Children of the Lens

Skylark series includes:
The Skylark of Space
Skylark Three
The Skylark of Valeron
Skylark Duquesne

Storm Cloud, Vortex Blaster series includes:
The Vortex Blaster
Storm Cloud on Deka
The Vortex Blaster Makes War

Tedric series includes:
Tedric
Lord Tedric
Book anthology appearances.
Atlantis (short story: see also "The Fall of Atlantis" above; from chapter two
of book version of Triplanetary). In-

cluded in lourney to Infinity (Gnome, 1951) edited by Martin Greenburg.

Epic of Space, The (non-fiction article on sf writing). Included in symposium
Of Worlds Beyond (Fantasy Press,
1947) edited by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach.

Vortex Blaster, The (short story). Included in Modern Masterpieces of Science
Fiction (World, 1966) edited by
Sam Moskowitz; also in paperback selection from this volume, The Vortex
Blaster (Macfadden, 1967) edited by
Sam Moskowitz.

What a Course! (short story). Included in Cosmos (Ruppert, N.Y. 1934). The 17
episodes of the round-robin serial
from Science Fiction Dieest (later Fantasy Magazine) professionally bound by
Conrad H. Ruppert. Edition
Limited to approximately 50 copies.

Supplementary:

A biographical /bibliographical profile of Smith by Sam Moskowitz appeared in
the April 1964 issue of Amazing
Stories, later included in book Seekers of Tomorrow (World, 1966) by Sam
Moskowitz.

Books:

Note: In all cases, the first publication in the U.S.A. is given, and all
editions are hardcover, except where stated.
All titles are now in print in the U.K. in paperback.
Children of the Lens (Fantasy Press, 1954)
First Lensman (Fantasy Press, 1951 )
Galactic Patrol (Fantasy Press, 1950)
Galaxy Primes, The (Ace, 1965: paperback)
Grey Lensman (Fantasy Press, 1951)
Second-Stage Lensman (Fantasy Press, 1953)
Skylark Duquesne (Pyramid Books, 1967: paperback)
Skylark of Space, The (Buffalo Book Co., 1946)
Skylark of Valeron (Fantasy Press, 1949)
Skylark Three (Fantasy Press, 1947)
Spacehounds of I.P.C. (Fantasy Press, 1947)
Subspace Explorers (Canaveral Press, 1965)
Triplanetory (Fantasy Press, 1950)
Vortex Blaster, The (Fantasy Press, 1960; later paperbacked as Masters of the
Vortex)

And:

Best of E. E. 'Doc' Smith. Ph.D. (Futura, 1975: paperback)

The Skylark series, in sequence:
The Skylark of Space
Skylark Three
Skylark of Valeron
Skylark Duquesne
The Lensman series, in sequence:
Triplanetary
First Lensman
Galactic Patrol
Grey Lensman
Second-Stage Lensman
Children of the Lens
The Vortex Blaster