THE BRAIN

                          By Alexander Blade

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories October
1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.]



[Illustration: Repairs had to be made in great haste, at night, while
The Brain's machines slept]

[Sidenote: America's greatest weapon, greater than the Atom Bomb, was
its new, gigantic mechanical brain. It filled a whole mountain--and then
it came to life...!]




CHAPTER I


Cautiously the young flight engineer stretched his cramped legs across
some gadgets in his crowded little compartment. Leaning back in his
swivel chair he folded a pair of freckled hands behind his neck and
smiled at Lee.

"This is it doctor; we're almost there."

The tall and lanky man at the frame of the door didn't seem to
understand. Bending forward he peered through the little window near the
engineer's desk, into the blue haze of the jets and down to the earth
below, a vast bowl of desert land gleaming like silver in the glow of
the sunrise.

"But this couldn't possibly be Washington," he finally said in a puzzled
tone. "Why, we crossed the California coast only half an hour ago. Even
at 1200 miles an hour we couldn't be almost there."

The engineer's smile broadened into a friendly grin: "No, we're not
anywhere near Washington. But in a couple of minutes you'll see Cephalon
and that's as far as we go. One professor and 15 tons of termites to be
flown from Wallabawalla Mission station, Northern Territory, Australia,
to Cephalon, Arizona, U.S.A., one way direct. Those are our
instructions. Say, this is the queerest cargo I've ever flown, doctor,
if you don't mind my saying so."

Lee blinked. Removing his glasses which were fairly thick, he wiped them
carefully and put them on again as if to get a clearer picture of an
unexpected situation. His long fingered hand went through his greying
hair and then down the cheek which was sallow, stained with the atabrine
from his latest malaria attack and badly in need of a shave. His mouth
formed a big "O" of surprise as nervously he said:

"I don't get it. I don't understand this business at all. First the
Department of Agriculture extends an urgent letter of invitation to a
completely forgotten man out there in the Never-Never land. Then almost
on the heels of the letter the government sends a plane. I would have
been glad to mail to the Department samples of "Ant-termes Pacificus"
sufficient for most scientific purposes if they needed them for
experiments in termite control; that would have been the simple and the
sensible thing to do. But no, they want everything I have; you fellows
drop out of the sky with a sort of habeas corpus and a whole wrecking
crew. You disturb the lives of my species, which took me ten years to
breed; you pack up their mounds lock, stock and barrel. And then you
drop me at some place I never even heard about--Cephalon. What is this
Cephalon, anyway? If the place had any connotations to entomology, I
would have known about it...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The flight engineer glanced at the irritated scientist curiously and
sympathetically: "If you don't know, I couldn't tell you what it's all
about myself, I'm sure," he said slowly. "Cephalon--Cephalon is a place
alright, but it doesn't show on the map. Sort of a Shangri-la, if you
know what I mean."

This cryptic statement failed to have a calming effect on Lee.
"Nonsense," he frowned. "If it is an inhabited place it must be on the
map and if it isn't on the map the place doesn't exist."

"Look here," the flight engineer pointed through the window to the
horizon ahead. "What do you think this is, doctor, a mirage?"

Lee stared at the apparition which swiftly materialized out of the
ground haze at the plane's supersonic speed. "It _does_ look like a
mirage," he said judiciously. "Is that Cephalon?"

The engineer nodded. "Prettiest little town in the U. S. for my money.
Ideal airport, too. Rather unusual though--I mean the architecture. Take
a good look while we're circling around for the come-in signal."

Pretty and unusual were hardly the words for it, Lee thought, as he
gazed in admiration. Below, Cephalon spread like a visionary's dream of
a far-away future blended with a far-away past. Along wide, palm shaded
avenues the flat-roofed terraced houses fanned out into the desert.
Style elements of ancient Peru and Mexico were blended together with the
latest advances of technology, such as the rectangular sheets of water
which covered and cooled the roofs. The business center, dotted with
helicopter landing fields on top of the pyramidal buildings, was
reminiscent of the classic Babylon and Nineveh. At the center of the
man-made oasis a huge fortress-like structure sprawled and towered like
a seven-pointed star. Even so, for all its impressiveness of masonry,
the lush green of its parks, the bursts of color from its hanging
gardens, made Cephalon resemble one enormous flower bed.

Overawed and mystified the lone passenger from Down-Under took in the
scene while the big plane circled with diminished speed. "It's
beautiful," he murmered. "It's a dream." And louder then: "Pardon me if
I find it hard to trust my senses. I've been away from home for more
than ten years, to be sure. But then, even in the Australian bush I've
received some periodicals and scientific journals from the U.S.A. Surely
if a city like this has been built during my absence there should have
been mention of the fact. And surely a city like this must show on some
map. I don't understand. The longer I look the less I understand...."

The flight engineer shrugged. "It's a new city, maybe that's why it
doesn't show."

Lee nodded. "In that case you must know the meaning of all this. Why did
they build this city in the middle of the desert? What purpose does it
serve? Why am I here? Why are we circling for so long? There don't seem
to be any other planes up in the air."

"We cannot come in until our cargo has been examined and okayed," the
engineer said.

Lee raised a pair of heavy and untidy brows: "Cargo examination? In
mid-air and with nobody from the ground examining it?"

"That's it. It's being done by Radar, one of the new fangled kinds, you
know." He grinned: "I hope, doctor, that your termite species is neither
explosive nor fissionable in any way. Because in that case we could
never make a landing in Cephalon."

"How utterly absurd," Lee said disgustedly. "Even a child would know
better. There is no war going on--or is there? What makes them take such
absurd precautions?"

The engineer narrowed his eyes. "You're an American, Dr. Lee, aren't
you? Well, in any case, I can see no reason why I should be beating
about the bush. After all, every foreign agent in this country must have
learned by now about the existence of Cephalon. It's too big to be
secret anyway. Besides, as you perceive, no attempt has been made to
camouflage the place. Cephalon and the whole district takes up about a
thousand square miles. It's a military preserve. Only you don't see any
Brass. What they are doing, I wouldn't know, but I would rather try to
rob all the gold from Fort Knox than get away with a single scrap of
paper from that Braintrust Building in the center of the city over
there. By the way, that skull shaped building right across the Plaza is
the official hotel reserved for very important persons, such as you are
listed."

       *       *       *       *       *

A deep-throated buzz over the intercom interrupted him. "There, thank
God, they finally made up their minds to let us in. One minute more and
then a shower, a shave, bacon and eggs, and lots of Java!"

There were what appeared to Lee to be a multitude of people waiting as
they landed. Eager and intelligent white faces all lifted up to him and
pressed forward with bewildering offerings and requests. A Western Union
messenger handed him a telegram in which one Dr. Howard K. Scriven
proffered greetings, expressing a desire to interview him. Some cleancut
youngster, obviously a scientific worker, assured Lee that he was fully
familiar with the care and feeding of "_Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_", that
Lee need not concern himself about their welfare, that the mounds would
be immediately transferred to Experimental Station 19 G. The "Flying
Wing's" supercargo and two truck-drivers came forward with papers for
Lee to sign, as the first of the heavy steelboxes which harbored the
mounds were lowered into a van with the whine of an electric hoist.
Meanwhile somebody who said he was an assistant manager of the Cranium
hotel informed Lee that reservations had been made for him and that he
had a car waiting to conduct Dr. Lee to his suite. It was all very
mysterious, but efficient. Feeling more and more like some prize exhibit
handled without a will of its own on a whirlwind tour, Lee allowed
himself to be whisked from the airport to the hotel. With the din of the
jets still in his ears, overpowered by impressions which crowded his
senses from all sides, he listened politely to the hotel manager's
explanations of the sights without understanding a word of them.

There were flowers in his suite, the carpets were deeper, the bathtub
was bigger, the towels piled higher, the breakfast more abundantly rich
than anything Lee could remember in the 38 years of his life. "So this
is America in 1960," he thought. "It must have advanced by leaps and by
bounds over these past ten years."

He felt embarrassed because he had almost forgotten the uses of all
those comforts, and at the same time deeply moved over the way they
embraced him, him, the lost son, the voluntary exile who once had turned
his back on them in despair and disgust. But why was all this? He had
done nothing to deserve this kind of hospitality. Entomologists as a
rule were not transported by magic carpets into Arabian Nights for
modest achievements such as the discovery of a new species. All the
things which had happened within the last 24 hours were riddles wrapped
up in enigmas. Fatigued as he was he couldn't lie down, he was
desperately resolved to get at the bottom of this thing.

There came a buzz from the telephone. A soft and melodious contralto
voice announced that its carrier was Dr. Howard K. Scriven's secretary
and would Dr. Lee be good enough to come over to the Braintrust Building
to meet Dr. Scriven at 9:30 A.M.? Lee said that he would.

       *       *       *       *       *

The distance across the Plaza was short enough, but as Lee entered the
hall of the huge concrete pyramid he was reminded of Washington's
Pentagon in wartime, for his progress was halted right from the start
and at more than one point. He had to line up at the receptionist's, he
was being checked over the phone, a pass was handed to him, and
somebody, obviously a plain-clothes man, took him to the express
elevator which shot him up to the 40th floor.

There, another plain-clothes man conducted Lee through a long carpeted
corridor and up one flight of stairs to a steel door which slid open
automatically at their approach. Sunlight was flooding through its frame
as Lee followed the guard and the door closed noiselessly behind them.

The man from Down-Under took a deep breath. He had not expected this for
it was not a stepping in, but rather a stepping out from a vast tomb
into the light of day. This was the top of a huge pyramid, and was in an
entirely different kind of world.

The terrace was laid with flagstones and landscaped like a luxurious
country club. In its middle there arose a penthouse, low and irregularly
shaped like some organic outcropping of native rock. It could hardly be
said that it had walls, overgrown as was the stone by creepers and built
into the shape of massive pillars. The structure seemed a kind of
Stonehenge improved upon by America's late great architect Frank Lloyd
Wright. There were birch shade trees around the house, the leaves
whispering in the breeze. From some crevice in the rock came the
peaceful murmurings of a spring. A meandering little brook criss-crossed
the gravel path under Lee's feet. From a stone table which might have
belonged to some Pharaoh there came the only incongruous noise in this
bucolic idyll; it was the nervous ticking of a typewriter, which stopped
abruptly at Lee's approach, and the melodious contralto voice he had
already heard over the phone greeted him. "Oh--it's Dr. Lee from
Canberra University, isn't it? I'm so happy to meet you. Please, do sit
down. How was your trip? I'm Oona Dahlborg, Dr. Scriven's secretary."

Lee blinked. Out of this world as was this Stone Age cabin in the sky,
even more so was the girl. He had a vivid image of American girls as
they had been when he had left the States way back in '49; in fact, he
had an all too vivid memory of at least one of them. His memory had been
refreshed within the last hour at the airport, at the hotel, at the
receptionist's, and it had been confirmed: they still wore masks instead
of their true faces, they still were overdressed, overloud, oversexed,
overhung with trinkets and their voices still resounded shrilly from the
roof of their mouths.

This girl Oona Dahlborg was different. He raked his brains to find some
concept which would express how she was different. The word "organic"
came to mind; yes, as one looked at her one sensed a unity of being, a
creatural whole compared to which those other girls appeared as
artificial composites.

She was tall for a girl, the pure Scandinavian type, and she looked like
a young Viking with the golden helmet of her hair gleaming in the sun.
She wore a tunic, short, sleeveless and of classic simplicity, the kind
of dress which once Diana wore. It revealed the splendor of her slender
figure and stressed the length of her full white limbs. On the black of
the tunic an antique necklace of large amber beads formed the only
ornament. The bow or the spear of the great huntress whom she resembled
so much would have looked more natural in her hands than the typewriter;
even so, her every move showed perfect coordination of body and mind, a
large surplus of vital energy carefully controlled. Had she turned to
some different career she might easily have developed into some great
athlete or else a great singer. Her beautiful voice had that rare
natural gift of using the whole thorax for a vessel of resonance instead
of merely the mouth.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was this voice which fascinated Lee more than the strangeness of the
scene, more than her beauty, more even than the things she said. It was
like remembering some haunting melody, it transported him into the
forgotten land of his youth. It made him feel happy except that suddenly
he felt painfully conscious of his ill fitting suit, the emaciation of
his body, the atabrine stains on the skin of his face, the wildness and
the grey of his hair.

With the shyness of a boy, he accepted first the firm pressure of her
hand and then a seat which was another piece of ancient Egyptian
furniture.

"Dr. Scriven will be with you in a few minutes," she said.
"Unfortunately he is a little delayed by an official visitor from
Washington. The unexpected always happens over here. Meanwhile...."

She suddenly interrupted herself. The searching look of her deep blue
eyes startled Lee by its directness. There was in it a depth of
understanding and of sympathy which penetrated to his heart. He felt as
if she already knew about him and knew everything. It lasted only a few
seconds before she continued, but in a different, a warmer voice:

"I think we can drop the usual conventions," she said. "We know you, Dr.
Scriven and I. We know your work as published in the journal of
entomology. It is the work of a man of genius. You are not the kind of
man whom I must entertain with the usual small talk about the weather,
how you have enjoyed your trip, or whether you feel very tired--as you
probably do--and all the rest of it. That is routine with most of our
visitors; it's quite a relief to feel that I can dispense with it for
once."

Lee had blushed under this frankness of compliment as if a decoration
had been pinned to his breast. "Thank you, Miss Dahlberg, you put me at
my ease. I've been out in the wilderness for so long that I've lost the
language of the social amenities. I really feel like another Rip van
Winkle. All this," he made a sweeping gesture, "is tremendously new and
surprising to me. There are so many burning questions to ask...."

The girl gave him a smile of sympathy. "Of course," she said, "and I can
imagine some of them. To begin with, we owe you an explanation and an
apology for having used the methods of deception in getting you here. As
you probably know by now the work we're doing here is closely connected
with the National defense. Whether we like it or not, military secrecy
forces us to use roundabout ways in contacting scientists who happen to
work in some context with our field, especially if they live in foreign
lands. That's why in your case we have used the good offices of the
Department of Agriculture in bringing you here. Dr. Scriven feels
terrible about this. He feels that to be lifted out from one desert just
to be dropped into the middle of another must be a fierce disappointment
to you. For this and all the disturbance of your work--can you manage to
forgive us Dr. Lee?"

The sincerity in these regrets was such that Lee hastened to reply: "You
don't owe me any apology, Miss Dahlborg," he reassured her. "Naturally
it is impossible for me to see any connection between my work with ants
and termites and the problems of National Defense. But I am an American;
I wouldn't doubt for a moment the legitimacy of your call." The girl
nodded: "Besides you have fought for your country in the second world
war," she added. "And also you are the son of General Jefferson Lee of
the Marines. You understand of course that we had you investigated
before calling you here; do you mind very much?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Again Lee blushed; this time even deeper than before. He squirmed in his
seat. "No, I guess not. I suppose it's necessary. Now that I'm going to
meet Dr. Scriven, who is he? I probably ought to know--forgive my
ignorance."

"You really don't know about him?" The girl sounded surprised. "He's a
surgeon. He's considered the foremost living brain-specialist. Remember
the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals? Dr. Scriven did the
post-mortems on their brains. He wrote a book that made him famous."

"Of course," Lee slapped his forehead. "Yes, but of course, how could I
forget."

"Yes," she answered, "He was made the head of the Braintrust over here."

"What is the Braintrust? What does it do? What am I supposed to do
here?" Lee asked eagerly.

The girl's smile was mysterious: "I think Howard would like to explain
all that to you in his own way."

"Howard". The word struck Lee like a vicious little snake. Was he a
friend, or more than a friend to her? "This is terrible," he thought,
"I've been away from normal life for overlong. Must be that I'm
emotionally unbalanced. I haven't known her for five minutes. There is
nothing between us. I've no earthly right to be jealous; it is absurd,
it's mean."

He felt deeply ashamed. Yet as he looked at her he couldn't deny the
truth before himself: that he _was_ jealous, that he _had_ fallen in
love with a girl who looked like the goddess Diana with a golden helmet
for hair.

There was a noise of footsteps on the gravel paths. A man with a
portfolio under his arm walked briskly by the stonetable; despite his
civilian clothes he had "Westpoint" written all over him. He disappeared
through the steel door.

"That was General Vandergeest", Oona said. "Dr. Scriven will see you
now; just walk in, Dr. Lee."




CHAPTER II


Inside, the cabin in the sky seemed to be built almost entirely around a
huge primeval looking fireplace. Despite the fierceness of the Arizona
sun there was a fire in it of long and bluish flames, one of those
modern inventions which reverse the processes of nature. Like the gas
refrigerators of an older period, this fire worked in combination with
the airconditioning system to _cool_ the house, lending to it in the
midst of summer heat the same attractions which it had in winter.

In front of the fire and framed by its rather ghostly light, there stood
a man with his head bowed down, pensively staring at the flames. As
Lee's steps resounded from the ancient millstones which formed the
floor, Dr. Scriven wheeled around; he approached the man from Down-Under
with outstretched hands.

Rarely had Lee seen such a distinguished looking figure of a man. He
looked more like a diplomat of the extinct old school than a scientist,
with the immaculate expanse of his white tropical suit and the dignity
of his leonine head. His width of shoulder and the smooth agility with
which he moved gave the impression of great strength. Only his fingers
were small, slender, almost like a woman's.

The reluctant softness of their pressure contrasted so much with his
heartiness of manner that Lee felt repulsed by their touch until he
remembered that a great surgeon lived and caused others to live by his
sensitivity of hand.

"Dr. Lee, I'm happy, most happy, that you have been able to come."
Scriven's voice was soft, but he spoke with an extraordinary precision
of diction which had a quality almost of command. "Over there, please,
by the fire...."

From the blue flames there came the freshness and the coolness of an
ocean breeze; the rawhide chairs, built for barbaric chieftains as they
seemed, proved to be most comfortable; the semidarkness, the roughness
of the unhewn stone, gave a sense of the phantastical and the paradox.
Lee sat and waited patiently for Scriven to explain.

"In case you're wondering a little about this setup," Scriven made a
sweeping gesture around the room, "I've long since reached the
conclusion that in these mad times a man needs above all some padded
cell, some shell in which to retire and preserve his sanity. This is my
padded cell, soundproof, lightproof, telephoneproof; a wholesome
reminder of the basic, the primeval things. Simple, isn't it?"

Lee blinked at the extravagance of this statement. "Do you really call
that simple?" he asked.

Scriven grinned: "You are right; it is of course a willed reversal from
the complex, synthetic and perhaps a little perverse. But then, not
everybody has the opportunity you had in living in the heart of nature.
Frankly I envy you; your work reflects the depth of thinking which comes
out of retirement from the world. That's why I called you here; that's
why I am so sure you'll understand."

He paused. Lee thought that he saw what was perhaps a mannerism; the
great surgeon didn't look at his visitor. With his head turned aside,
staring into the flames, stroking his chin, speaking as if to himself,
he reminded Lee of some medieval alchemist.

"It's a long story, Lee," Scriven continued. "It starts way back with a
letter I wrote to the President of the United States. In this letter I
pointed to the immense dangers which I anticipated in the event of an
atom war; dangers to which the military appeared to be blind. I am
referring to the inadequacy of the human brain and its susceptibility to
mental and psychic shock. I explained how science and technology over
the past few hundred years had developed by the _pooled_ efforts of the
_elite_ in human brains, but that the individual brain, even if
outstanding, was lagging farther and farther below the dizzy peak which
science and technology in their totality had reached. I further
explained, by the example of the Nazi and Jap States, how the collective
brains of modern masses are reverting from and are hostile to a high
level of civilization because it is beyond their mental reach. You know
all this, of course, Lee. I made it clear that not even the collective
brains of a general staff could be relied upon for normal functioning;
that no matter how carefully protected physically, they remained exposed
to psychic shock with its resultant errors of judgment. How much less
then could production and transportation workers be expected to function
effectively in the apocalyptic horrors they would have to face...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee's eyes had narrowed in the concentration of listening; his head
nodded approval. He wasn't conscious of it, but Scriven took note of it
by a quick glance. His voice quickened:

"That was the first part of my letter, Lee. I then came out squarely
with the project which has since become the work of my life. I told the
President that under these circumstances the most needed thing for our
country's national security would be the creation of a _mechanical_
brain, some central ganglion bigger and better than its human
counterpart, immune to shock of any kind. This ganglion to be
established in the innermost fortress of America as an auxiliary
augmenting and controlling the work of a general staff. I gave him a
fairly detailed outline of just how the thing could be done. There was
really nothing basically new involved. Personally I have held for a long
time that Man never "invents", that in fact it is constitutionally
impossible for him to do so. Being a part of nature Man merely
_discovers_ what nature has "invented" in some form of its own a long
time ago. Mechanical brains. Lord, we have had them in their rudiments
for the past hundred thousand years, at a minimum. The calendar is one;
every printed book is one; the simplest of machines incorporates one.
And ever since the first mechanical clock started its ticking we have
developed them by leaps and bounds!"

"And did the President react positively to this project?" Lee asked.

Scriven shook his head. "He did not."

Then he paused. Little beads of perspiration had appeared on his
forehead; he wiped them away with a handkerchief:

"That year, Lee," he began again, "when the decision was pending and I
could do nothing but wait, knowing that there was no other defense
against the Atom Bomb, knowing that our country's fate was at stake--it
made me grey, it came pretty close to shattering my nerve.... But
_then_...." His body tightened, the small fist pounded the rail of the
chair: "... _But then We BUILT THE BRAIN._"

He said it almost in a triumphant cry.

Mounting tension had Lee almost frozen to his seat. Now he stirred and
leaned forward.

"It actually exists? I mean it works? It is not limited to the analysis
of mathematical problems but capable of cerebrations after the manner of
the human brain?"

Scriven, with a startling change, sounded dry, very factual in a tired
way as he answered: "I appreciate your difficulty of realization, Dr.
Lee. The whole idea is new to you and I have presented it in a rather
abrupt and inadequate way. In time, and if we get together, as I hope we
will, you shall get visual impressions which are better than words. For
the moment, just to give you a general idea and to prove that this is
not a small matter, let me give you a few facts: Our first monetary
appropriation for The Brain, as an unspecified part of the military
budget, of course, was for one billion dollars. We have since received
two more appropriations of an equal size."

Lee's gasp made a sound like a low whistle. With a depreciating gesture
Scriven waved it away.

"While these funds could only cover the first stages in the construction
of The Brain," he calmly went on, "we have been able to build a
mechanical cortex mantle composed of ninety billion electronic cells.
Considering that the cortex mantle of the human brain contains over 9
billion cells, this doesn't sound like much. Our synthetic or mechanical
cells are a little better than the organic, natural cells, but not very
much. So alone and by themselves their number would indicate only a ten
times superiority of The Brain over its human counterpart. If that were
all the result of our labors, a brain of, let's say, twice genius
capacity, we would be a miserable failure. But then we _have_ achieved a
very considerable improvement in the _utilization_ of the The Brain's
cortex capacity. In the first place we have full control over the
intake of thought impulses; and more important, we use multiple wave
lengths in feeding impulses to The Brain and throughout all the
impulse-processings. Even the human brain has some capacity of
simultaneous thought on different levels of consciousness, but its range
in this respect is extremely limited. The Brain by way of contrast
operates on two thousand different wave lengths, which means that The
Brain can process at least 2000 problems at one time. Finally, the
absence of fatigue in The Brain makes operations possible for 20 out of
the 24 hours of the day--the rest of the time we need for servicing and
overhauling."

       *       *       *       *       *

With apparent effort Scriven turned his face away from the blue flames.
His dark brown eyes probed into Lee's as he summed up:

"All together, Lee, The Brain has now reached the approximate capacity
of 25,000 first class human brains. You as a man of vision will
understand what that means...."

Lee had his face upturned. The tension of thought gave to his features
something of the ecstatic or the somnambulist. Slowly he said:

"The equivalent of twenty-five-thousand human brains--there is no
comparison other than a God's...."

Striven had jumped from his chair. He started pacing the flagstones in
front of the fire, whirling his mighty frame around at every corner with
a sort of wrath, as if about to meet some attack.

"Yes, you are right," he almost shouted, "we hold that power; that power
almost of a God's. And how we are wasting it."

"What do you mean?" Lee's eye-brows shot up. "You would not waste those
powers once you have them. You would turn them to the most constructive
use--the advancement of science, of humanity!"

Scriven froze in his steps. A cruel smile parted his lips; there was a
gnashing sound of big white teeth. He pointed a finger at his visitor.

"Idealist, eh? That's what I thought I was ten years ago. That's what I
had in mind with The Brain right from the start. As it has turned out,
however, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and half a dozen other government
departments, besieged The Brain for the solution of their "problems",
some of them as destructive as warfare, others as insipid as the trend
of the popular vote in some provincial primaries. Sometimes Uncle Sam
even farms out the services of the Brain to aid some friendly foreign
government--without that government's knowledge as to where the solution
is coming from. To cut a long story short: What these fellows utterly
fail to understand is that The Brain is not a finite mechanism like any
other, but a mechanism which unendingly evolves and becomes richer in
its associations by the material which is being fed into its cells. In
other words; the Brain _learns_; consequently it must be _taught_, it
must be given the wherewithal for its own self-improvement...."

Scriven halted his impatient step by the other's chair. His nervous
fingers tapped Lee's shoulder: "And that is where you come in."

"Me?" Lee asked, startled. "What you just told me, Dr. Scriven, it will
take me weeks to comprehend. At the moment I am at a loss to see how my
work could connect...."

The surgeon's sensitive hand patted Lee's shoulder as if it were the
neck of a shy horse. "You _will_ comprehend--in just another moment."

He pressed a button; in the entrance to the cabin in the sky the girl
appeared, like an apparition. She approached, her hair a golden halo,
her tunic transparent against the glare of the summer day. "Yes?"

"Oona, _please_"

She seemed familiar with the boss' code. With a smile on her lips she
walked over to one of the pillars, opened a hidden recess and brought
out the Scotch and syphon using an Egyptian clay tablet for a tray. With
surgical exactitude Scriven poured out a good two fingers for his guest
and an exceedingly small one for himself. "Stay with us for a moment,
Oona, please," he said. "I didn't tell you the idea behind my calling
Dr. Lee; you might be interested."

Wordlessly she slid into a seat, attentive and yet fading somehow into
the background, as if trying to remain unnoticed. In that she did not
succeed. Her beauty was such that its very presence changed the
atmosphere; it put Lee under a strain to keep his eyes off her. As to
Scriven, he seemed to address her almost as much as he did Lee.

"You have met Dr. Lee, haven't you, Oona; but do you know _whom_ you
have met? He probably wouldn't admit it; nevertheless Dr. Lee is the
most successful peacemaker on earth, I think. He has just put an end to
the oldest war in this world between the two most venerable
civilizations in existence. That war between the states of the ants and
the states of the termites has been waged with never abating fury for
millions of years--until Dr. Lee came along with the perfect solution of
the eternal dispute. All he did was to crossbreed the belligerents and
now we have "united nations", _Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_ which lives up
to the spirit of its name. Elementary, isn't it?"

"So elementary," the girl said with ironical sweetness, "that the
so-called peacemakers of the international conferences must have
considered it below their dignity to stoop to it. How exactly did you do
it; I mean the crossbreeding?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee felt his cheeks burn; it was extremely irritating that this should
happen to him every time Oona Dahlborg spoke to him, especially when it
was in praise.

"It wasn't too hard," he said depreciatingly. "The main difficulty lay
not with the termite queen nor with the furtive little king of the ants
themselves. Biggest trouble was in getting the potential lovers together
against the bulldog determination of their palace guards. To use force
was out of the question. So I had to trick the guards, smuggle in the
male and keep him hidden under the royal abdomen of his spouse."

She smiled amused. "What a perfect classic; the story of Romeo and
Juliet all over--and with you in the role of the nurse."

Lee blushed still deeper at that. "Yes", he admitted, "I was very much
reminded of that story and my role in it. Only I had to avoid the tragic
end."

"And how did you avoid the Shakespearean end?"

"In the best cloak and dagger manner, Miss Dahlborg. First I made the
guards drunk; that's easy enough with termites. Then I broke into the
chamber where they keep the queen immured. I killed her legitimate
consort and substituted my own candidate after having anointed him with
the genuine termite smell. Finally I re-immured the pair. There are only
little holes in the walls through which the royal family is serviced,
they are never really in touch with their guards. That's why it could
work."

"And thus they lived happy forever afterwards," the girl concluded.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Dahlborg," he said, "there is no such thing as
happiness in the eternal gloom of termite society. But even if not
happy, the match I brought about was definitely blessed. In due course I
became godfather to 30,000 baby ant-termes; I've about 15 million now in
different hybrid strains. Now that I have an inkling of the grandiose
work you are doing over here I am ashamed to mention mine; it's very
small, very insignificant and I still don't see where it comes in."

The girl seemed to cross out those words with an energetic move of her
head. "No," she said, "your work is not small nor is it insignificant;
it is great and contains the most intriguing possibilities."

"Ah!" Scriven interrupted. "I have been waiting for this. I knew that
Oona would hit upon those intriguing possibilities; her's is an
unspoiled intelligence; it penetrates to the core of things. Dr. Lee,
let me begin at the beginning so you will understand just where you and
your work connect with The Brain. The society of the higher insect
states like bees and ants and termites constitutes the oldest and the
most stable civilizations in this world. Human society by way of
contrast has created the youngest and the most unstable civilization
amongst higher animals. Throughout history we find collapse after
collapse of civilization. Quite possibly civilizations higher than ours
may have existed in prehistoric times. Right?"

Lee nodded assent.

"Fine. From that it follows that Man has much to learn from the society
of the higher insects. Their ingenious laws and methods, their "spirit
of the hive," the incredible renouncement of individual existence and
individual advantage, their undying devotion to the race.... We must
study those if ever we want to reach anything like stability in _our_
society. We ought to model our civilization after theirs, especially now
that we have this new species "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" which has
renounced war. There is something basically wrong with the type of
civilizations which Man builds and which ceaselessly devour one another.
No doubt you see the third World War approaching inexorably just as I
do; civilization forging ahead, for what? For the big plunge into
suicide. It's sickening to think of it. Do you feel I'm right?"

Unconscious of himself Lee had arisen and paced the room. With his lean
long-legged figure bending slightly forward and wild-maned head bowed
down in thought he resembled a big heron stalking the shallows for prey.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fascinated, Oona's eyes followed the two contrasting men as their paths
criss-crossed like guards before some palace gate. She alone had kept
her seat. It was with greater assurance than before that Lee now spoke.

"I can see eye to eye with you, Scriven, as to the wrongs of man-made
civilization and its probable course. But I do not think it desirable
that we should model human society after the insect states. Ingenious as
it is, their system is the most terrifying tyrany I could imagine. Just
think of it: they literally work themselves to death. Workers who have
outlived their usefulness are either killed off, or else they become the
bloated, living containers for the tribe's staple food."

"You, yourself, can see the similar trend in Man, today. Our production
of new thought is lagging; not starting from the roots, it becomes
superficial, cut off from the roots. The results? The curse of the
Babylonian confusion of the tongues under which we live. We are rapidly
becoming thought-impotent. Cerebral fatigue, dissociation of its nerve
paths, emotionalism which rejects logic as "too difficult", mass idiocy
and relapse to barbarism.... It is by our brains, it is by this highest
evolution of matter that we have built this civilization of ours; and
now our own brainchild proceeds with might and with main to destroy the
very organ of its creation. Is that not irony supreme?

"Now we have The Brain, this truly superlative tool of 20,000 times
human capacity. All we have to do now is to submit the various societies
which nature has built: insect states, other animal states, Man and his
state to the analysis of The Brain. Have their good and their bad
features tested and compared. Let The Brain synthesize all the
beneficial components, let it shape the pattern of a new civilization
more enduring and better adapted to the nature of Man. And then abide by
the laws which The Brain lays down. I need your aid, Lee. You have
already made one most valuable contribution to "peace on earth" with
your "_Ant-termes-pacificus_". This is your big chance to continue the
good work; be with us, be our man."

In silence both men stood close to each other, eyes searching. All Oona
Dahlborg could hear was their heavy breathing. Instinctively she crossed
her fingers; never before to her knowledge had Scriven opened his mind
with such reckless abandon--and to a perfect stranger at that. Her
respect for the strange, the birdlike man from Down-Under skyrocketed.

"He really must be a great man," she thought, and, "Howard and he will
be either fast friends or very violent enemies."

At last Lee's voice came, husky and highpitched with emotion: "I cannot
conceive of a man-made superhuman intelligence. Neither can I believe
that mankind could or should be _forced_ into its happiness by an
intelligent machine. But that's besides the point ... the idea is
grandiose. It has the sponsorship of the government. You say that The
Brain needs me. That makes it a duty; so here I am."

He stretched out his hand and felt the cautiously eager grip of the
surgeon's sensitive fingers. The great man beamed. "Good," he said, "I
knew you would. Oona, like a good girl--the glasses, yours too. This
really deserves a toast."

The girl stepped between the two men. Handing Lee his glass she said:
"Today you may follow only the call of duty; tomorrow it will be the
call of love. I've never met any man who has not fallen in love with his
work for The Brain."

"I think you are quite right in that, Miss Dahlborg," he answered,
wondering vaguely exactly what her words meant, wondering also just how
much his decision was inspired by the wish to see more of her.

       *       *       *       *       *

They drank their toast in silence. Scriven then turned to the girl:

"Apperception center 36," he said. "Yes, I think 36 will be the best.
Get in touch with Operations, Oona. Tell them I want 36 cleared for the
exclusive use of Dr. Lee. Call Experimental; I want the whole batch of
"_Ant-termes-pacificus_" transferred to Apperception 36 by tomorrow
morning. Then--no, today is too late and Dr. Lee is tired, he needs
rest--but tomorrow at 8 A.M. I want a car for him to go over to The
Brain. Would that suit you, Lee?"

"Fine; but why a car? It's only a few steps...." He stopped, confused by
the hearty laughter in the wake of his words.

"It's quite a few steps, Dr. Lee." Oona said, "you would be _very_ tired
before you got there; chances are that your feet wouldn't carry you that
far."

"But this is the Brain Trust Building," he stammered.

"It is," Scriven answered, "but it houses only part of the
administration, not The Brain. You wouldn't expect us to place a thing
of such vital strategic importance in a skyscraper on a wide open plain
as a landmark for every enemy?"

"No, I guess not." Lee said. "But since I'm briefed to go there, where
is it?"

"That," Scriven frowned, "is a very reasonable and a simple question.
Unfortunately, _I do not know_."

Lee felt a wave of red anger; it rose into his cheeks because he saw the
sparks of frank amusement dancing in Oona Dahlborg's eyes. He opened his
mouth to some bitter remark about this hoax when Scriven put a
restraining hand upon his arm.

"This is no joke, Lee. I have planned The Brain, have in part designed
it, seen it under construction for the past ten years, managed its
affairs--but I don't know where it is and that's a fact."

He led his speechless guest to a lookout on the west side of the room.
Beyond the lush, green oasis of Cephalon the desert stretched unbroken
till on the far horizon the mountains of the High Sierra rose in a blue
haze of scorching sun. His hand moved sweepingly from north to south.

"Over there," he said, "somewhere inside those mountains; that's where
it is. But its location? Your guess is as good as mine. Take your choice
of any of the mountains, attach a name to it; I've done so myself. One
of them must be "The Cranium", but the question remains: which? There
are people who know, of course; military intelligence, the general
staff; but that," he shrugged his shoulders, "... isn't my department."




CHAPTER III


The Brain Trust car which took Lee out of Cephalon was a normal-looking
limousine, a rear-engined teardrop like all the "60" models, slotted for
the insertion of wings which most of the garages now kept in stock and
rented at a small charge for cross-country hops. The only non-standard
feature seemed to be the polaroid glass windows which were provided all
around and not only in front.

"That's a good idea," Lee said adjusting the nearest ones, "they ought
to have that on every car, all-round protection to the eyes."

"Think so, sir? Must be the first time you're driving out there," the
young chauffeur said.

The car left the outskirts and the desert started to fly by as the
speedometer needle climbed above the 100 mark. Lee sank back into his
seat; the desert had no novelty for him and since the chauffer appeared
not inclined to small talk he abandoned himself to thought.

His visit to his father had not been much of a success....

_Time_ magazine had carried an item in its personal column, briefly
stating that General Jefferson E. Lee, "the Old Lion of Guadalcanal,"
had retired from the Marines to Phoenix, Ariz.... Phoenix, the hotel
desk had informed him, was only some 300 miles away and there was hourly
service by Greyhound helicopter-bus.

So he had taken the ride, a taxi had brought him to the small neat
bungalow, and there he had seen his father for the first time in years.
It had been very strange to see him aged, the nut brown face a little
shrunk. He had anticipated that much. But somehow he had failed to
imagine the most obvious change; to see his father in civvies and even
less to see him trimming roses with a pair of garden shears. It looked
such an incongruous picture for a "Marines' Marine."

As he had come up the little path his father had looked up.

"So it's you, Semper." Slowly he had peeled off the old parade kid
gloves without a change in his face. "Nice to see you," he had said.
"Didn't expect to before I start pushing up the daisies from below.
Where's your butterfly net?"

No, in character his father hadn't changed a bit. He still was the old
"blood and guts" to whom an entomologist was sort of a human
grass-hopper wielding a butterfly net, and a son indulging in such
antics a bit of a freak, a reproach to his father, a failure of his
life.

Even so, he had led the way into the house and things had been just as
he remembered them: the old furniture, pictures crowding one another all
over the walls, on the unused grand piano--Marines in Vera Cruz, Marines
in China, Marines in Alaska, in the Marianas, in Japan, at the Panama
canal; Marines, Marines, Marines, wherever one looked, in ghostly
parade. No, nothing had changed. It had been mainly jealously which had
caused him to rebel against becoming another Marine, the first wedge
which had driven him and his father apart.

"What are you doing now, padre?" he had asked.

"You've seen it. Nothing. Just puttering around. They've made me
commander of the National Guard over here," and with a contemptuous
snort, "--a sinecure; might as well have given me a bunch of tin
soldiers to play with. What brought you here?"

Glad to change the subject Lee had told about Australia, had mentioned
The Brain and the possibility of joining it. His father had not been
pleased.

"Heard of it," he had grumbled. "Shows how the country is going to the
dogs. Now they need machines to do their thinking with. If their own
brains were gas they couldn't back a car out of the garage. So you're
mixed up with that outfit; well--how about a drink?"

"Rather," he had answered, feeling the need for washing down a
bitterness; thinking, too, that it might break the ice between him and
his father.

And then there was that painful moment when they had stood, glasses in
hand and remembered....

The selfsame situation fifteen years ago as the Bomb fell upon
Hiroshima. He had been on convalescence furlough. They had been alone
when the news came and there had been a drink between them just as now.
And after the announcer stopped he had cried out hysterically like a
child in a nightmare.

"Those fools, that's the end of civilization, that's no longer war."

"Shut up," his father had shouted, "how dare you insult the Commander in
Chief to my face. Get out of here and _stay_ out."

A highball glass had crashed against the floor. And that had been the
end. He hadn't returned after the war.

Yes, it was most unfortunate that now, after so many years, they should
read that memory in their faces; that it was only the glasses and not
the minds which clicked.

They had put them down awkwardly with frozen smiles on their lips and
his father had said:

"Sorry. But an old dog won't learn new tricks. Guess it's too late in
the day for me and you to get together, son."

"It's never too late, Dad," he had wanted to say, but the words died on
his lips.

So it had been the failure of a mission; but then it closed an old and
painful chapter with finality and he was free to open a new leaf.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee looked ahead again. The speedometer needle trembled around the 150
mark. The sun drenched sand shot by, Joshua trees gesticulating wildly
in the tricky perspectives of the speed, out-crops of rocks getting
bigger now and more numerous, the road ahead starting to coil into a
maze of natural fortresses, giant pillars and bizarre pyramids looking
like the works of a titan race from another planet shone in unearthly
color schemes of black and purple and amber and green. With the winding
of the road and the waftings of the heat it was hard to make out a
course, but the Sierra Mountains now were towering almost up to the
zenith; like a giant surf they seemed to race against the car.

"Mind if I close the windows, sir?"

The chauffeur's question was rhetoric; he had already pushed a button,
the glass went up and within the next second the inside of the car
turned completely dark.

"Man," Lee shouted, gripping the front seat, "are you crazy?"

There suddenly was light again, but it was only the electric light
inside the car. The blackout of the world without remained complete, and
the speedometer needle still edged over the 150 mark.

"Crazy? I hope not." The chauffeur said it coolly; leaning comfortably
back he turned around for a better look at his fare.

With mounting horror Lee noticed that he even took his hands off the
wheel. Nonchalantly he lit a cigarette while the unguided wheel milled
crazily from side to side and the tires screeched through what seemed to
be a sharp S-curve. Still with his back to the wheel and in between
satisfying puffs of his smoke he continued:

"It's quite O.K. sir; it's only that we're on the guidebeam now. This
here car doesn't need a driver no more; it's on the beam."

"What beam?" Lee relaxed a little; it was the unexpectedness which had
bowled him over. "What beam? And why the blackout?"

"Just orders," the young man said. "The Brain's orders and it's the
Brain's beam. Seems to be new to you, sir; to me it's like an old story;
read about it when I was a kid: how they blindfolded people who entered
a beleaguered fortress. "The Count of Monte Cristo," it was called; ever
heard about it? Pretty soon now we'll be stopped for examination before
we enter the secret passage underground. Romantic isn't it?"

"Very much so," Lee dryly remarked. He continued to watch the behavior
of the car with some misgivings. The controls appeared to be functioning
smoothly enough and after a minute or so the brake pedal came down all
by itself. Lee, with a breath of relief, saw the speedometer recede to
zero.

But the doors would not open from the inside and as he tried them he
found that they were locked. "What's the idea," he asked, "I thought you
said we would be examined at this spot?"

"Bet they're at it right now," the chauffeur grinned. "I wouldn't know
how they do it, but they get us photographed inside and outside, what we
have in our pockets, what we had for breakfast this morning and the very
bones of our skeletons. I pass through here maybe half a dozen times a
day, still they will do it every time: take my likeness. Makes me feel
like I was some darned movie star."

To Lee it felt uncanny to sit trapped and blindfolded in this "Black
Maria" of a car while unseen rays and cameras went over him. He could
hear a faint noise of steps, and muffled voices.

"Who are they?" he asked.

"Oh, that's only some boys from Intelligence or whatnot; that's nothing,
that isn't The Brain. It will be all over in a moment--see--there we go
again. Now we're entering the Labyrinth."

"The Labyrinth?"

Reticent as he had been in the beginning, the chauffeur now seemed to
like Lee; he was proud to explain. "Queer, isn't it? They've got the
damnedest names for things down here. Take them from anatomy, I
understand. The Labyrinth is supposed to be inside the ear; it leads
inside in a roundabout way; it's the same here, it's a tunnel--see--down
we go."

The soft swoosh of the gas-turbine turned into a muffled roar. The car
accelerated at a terrific rate and from the way it swayed and dived it
was clear that the tunnel spiralled downwards in steep serpentines. Lee
gripped the holding straps; his every nerve was on edge and those edges
were sharpened by the ominous fact that all the instruments on the
dashboard had stopped functioning so that he couldn't even read the
speed.

As if to make things still worse, the chauffeur had abandoned his post
altogether. Stretching his legs across the front seat he reclined as if
enjoying his easy chair at home by the fire place.

"It beats a roller coaster, doesn't it?" the chauffeur said. "Got me
scared the first few times before I found out it was safe. Nothing to
worry about, never you fear."

With his stomach throttling his throat, Lee asked, "How deep are we
going underground?"

"That we are not supposed to know; that's why all the instruments are
cut off. The other day I had a passenger, one of those weathermen, a
professor. He laughed when I told him I didn't know how deep it was. Got
a little doodad out of his pocket; aneroid barometer, or something, he
said it was. But he got a surprise; in the first place the thing didn't
work, so he said the whole tunnel was probably pressurized. In the
second place he never got where he wanted to go. They stopped the car at
the next control and shot him right back whence he came."

"But why?"

The chauffeur looked mysterious. "Seems The Brain doesn't like people
with doodads in their pockets even if they mean no harm. The Brain is
most particular about such things; maybe somehow it peers into this car
this moment, maybe it records every word we say. How do we know?" He
shrugged his shoulders. "Not that I give a damn. I've got nothing to
conceal. The hours are right and the pay's right; that's good enough for
me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee experienced an old, familiar sensation: that creepy feeling one got
on jungle patrol, knowing that there were Jap snipers up in the trees,
invisible with the devilish green on their faces and uniforms.

"Strange," he thought, "that in the very center of civilization one
should feel as haunted as in the jungle hell."

Then, just as he began to wonder whether the dizzy spiralling plunge as
if in the belly of a shark would ever end, the tunnel levelled. Now the
car shot straight as a bullet and just as fast it seemed.

As his stomach returned to something like normal position, the feeling
of oppression changed into one of flying through space, of being
dynamically at rest. Again just as the duration of this dynamic flight
evoked the feel of infinity, the motion changed. So fast did it recede
that the momentum of his body almost hurled Lee from the back seat into
the front.

Doors snapped open and as Lee staggered out somewhat benumbed in limb
and head, his eyes grew big as they met the most unexpected sight. The
car rested on the concrete apron of what appeared to be a super-duper
bus terminal plus service station and streamlined restaurant. Beyond
this elevated terrace yawned a vaulted dome, excavated from the solid
rock and at least twice the size of St. Peter's giant cupola. Its walls
were covered with murals. Both huge and beautiful they depicted the
history of the human race, Man's evolution. From where he stood they
started out with scenes of primeval huntings of the mammoth, went on to
fire making, fire adoration, then to the primitive crafts and from there
through the stages of science evolution and technology until they ended
on Lee's right hand side with an awesome scene from the Bikini test. The
gorgeous mushroom cloud of the atomic explosion looked alive and
threatening like those Djinni once banned by Solomon.

But then, all these murals looked more alive than any work of art Lee
had ever seen and he discovered that this was due to a new technique
which had been added and commingled with one of the oldest.

The pictures were built up from myriad layers of Painted Desert sands
and these were made translucent or illuminated by what Lee thought must
be phosphoric salts turned radiant under the stimulants of hidden
lights. Whatever it was, the esoteric beauty of this jewel-like
luminosity surpassed even that of the stained glass windows in the great
cathedrals of France.

"Pretty isn't it? The chauffeur's words came as an anticlimax to what
Lee felt. "That fellow over there in the middle; he's supposed to have
it all thought out." He pointed to a collossal bronze statue which
towered in the center of the cupola to a height of better than a hundred
feet.

Raising his eyes to the head of this giant, Lee discovered that the
figure was that of "The Thinker" by Rodin though it was cast in
proportion its creator would not have deemed possible.

Completely overwhelmed and overawed by the grandeur of it all, Lee
barely managed to stammer, "What--what is this place; what is it
called?"

"It's kind of an assembly hall; the staff of The Brain have meetings
over here at times. Besides it's sort of a Grand Central; transportation
starts here at times throughout the Brain. But listen, they are already
paging you."

Out of nowhere as it seemed there came a brisk, pleasant female voice.

"Dr. Lee, calling Dr. Semper F. Lee from Canberra University, please
answer Dr. Lee."

       *       *       *       *       *

The chauffeur nudged Lee in the ribs.

"Say something, she hears you all right."

"Yes, this is Lee speaking," he said in a startled voice.

The voice appeared delighted.

"Good morning, Dr. Lee: I'm Vivian Leahy of Apperception Center 27; I'm
to be your guide on the way up. Now, Dr. Lee, will you please step over
to the glideways. They're to your right. Take glideway T, do just as you
would in a department store--" she giggled, "--stand on it and it will
get you right to the occipital cortex area. I'll be waiting for you over
there. I would have loved to come down and conduct you personally, but
it's against regulations; I'll explain to you the reasons why in a
little while. And if you have any questions while en route, just call
out. So long, Dr. Lee; I'll be seeing you...."

Greatly bewildered by this gushing reception Lee found it hard to follow
instructions, simple as they were. The array of escalators which he
found in a side wing was a formidable one and confusing with movements
in all directions, crisscrossing and overlapping one another. Despite
the very clear illuminated signs Lee almost stepped upon glideway "P"
when "the voice" warned him:

"Oh no, Dr. Lee; just a little to your left--that's fine, that's the
one--there."

Obviously his loquacious guardian angel could not only hear him but
watch his steps as well. Apart from being uncanny, this was
embarrassing; feeling reduced to the mental age of the nursery, he
gripped the rails of "T" which went with him into a smooth and noiseless
upward slide. The shaft was narrow, there was little light at the start
and it grew dimmer as he went. After a minute or so the darkness had
turned almost complete and became oppressive. Simultaneously there was a
disquieting change from the accepted normal manner in which escalators
are supposed to move. Its rise gradually turned perpendicular and in
doing so the steps drew apart. Before long Lee felt squeezed into some
interminable cylinder, standing on top of a piston as it were, a piston
which moved with fair rapidity along transparent walls. That these walls
were either glass or transparent plastics he could perceive from objects
which came streaking by with faint luminosity. They looked like columns
of amber colored liquids in which were suspended what looked like giant
snakes, indistinct shapes, but radiant in the mysterious manner of deep
sea fishes. They almost encircled the transparent cylinder shaft in
which Lee moved; there were many of them; how many Lee couldn't even
attempt to guess. The swiftness of his ascent through these floating,
waving radiances for which he had no name was nightmarish, like falling
into some bottomless well. With great relief he heard the voice of his
guide breaking the spell.

"I'm terribly sorry, Dr. Lee, I shouldn't have deserted you, there was
some little interruption--" palpably the voice was tickled to death
"--my boy friend called from another department and so ... you know how
it is. Let's see, where are you? Good lord, already near the end of the
Medulla Oblongata with the Cerebellum coming and I haven't told you a
_thing_. Goody, where should I begin; I'm all in a dither: Well, Dr.
Lee; most people seem to expect The Brain to be like a great big
telephone exchange, but it really isn't that kind of a mechanism _at
all_. We have found--" she sounded important as if it were her very own
discovery "--that the best pattern for The Brain would actually be the
human brain. So The Brain is organized in nearly identical manner,
likewise our whole terminology is taken from anatomy rather than from
technology. The glideways for instance, travel along the natural
fissures between the convolutions of the various lobes; that's why they
are so very winding as you will see as you enter The Brain proper. Those
columns you see are filled with liquid insulators for the nerve cables
to vibrate in; for they _do_ vibrate, Dr. Lee, as they transmit their
messages.

"You have noticed the narrowness of the glideways, the terrible
confinement of space. I know it's horrible--many of our visitors suffer
claustrophobia, but they just must be built that way. You see even
fractions of a millionth of one second count in the coordination of the
association bundles and nerve circuits, that's why everything is built
as compact as possible, worse than in a submarine.

"Then, too, you must have wondered why everything is so dark inside.
That's another thing wherein The Brain is like the human brain; its
nerve cells are so extremely sensitive that they are distributed by
light. We use black light almost exclusively or activated phosphorous
such as on the sheaths of the nerve cables. For the same reason we of
the personnel are normally not permitted to pass through the interior of
The Brain during operations-time. Exceptions are only made in the case
of very important persons such as you are. Normally one travels to one's
stations through the ducts elevator shafts in the bone matter or rather
the rock outside. Those are _so_ much faster and more comfortable Dr.
Lee; oh I feel _so_ bad about you, poor man, traveling all alone through
this _horrible_ maze without a human soul in sight."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee grinned. He wouldn't have liked to be married to this chatterbox no
matter how beautiful she might turn out to be; but at the moment her
exceeding femininity was most comforting in the weirdness which
surrounded him.

The little platform under his feet started acting up again in the
queerest manner. It pushed him forward and the wall at the rear kicked
him in the back; his nose flattened against the sliding cylinder in
front as the contraption reverted from the perpendicular course to
something like the undulations of a traveling wave. Lee darkly perceived
group after group of luminous cables coiling away into cavernous pits
filled with what looked like eyes of cats, faintly aglow and twinkling
at him from the dark. They reminded him of the fireflies of the green
hells he had been in during the war.

"You are now skirting the convolutions of the cerebellum," his guardian
angel told him. "They are electronic tubes which receive sensory
impressions and translate them into impulses for cerebration. Here in
the cerebellum the bulk of the associations is being evoked; these are
then distributed throughout the hemispheres of the cortex or higher
brain. Oh I _do_ wish you wouldn't get seasick, Dr. Lee; _some_ of our
visitors do, you know; it's those wavy, wavy movements."

The sympathetic Vivian came much too close to the truth for Lee to think
her funny. With a sense of approaching disaster he stared at the sliding
cylinder walls; from time to time the passing lights reflected his face,
distorted and decidedly greenish in tint. Trouble was that seemingly
nowhere there was any fixed point on which to stabilize the eye. He
seemed to be carried on the back of a galloping boa constrictor with a
couple of others streaking away under his armpits.

Some of the caves which he had skirted were alive with ruby electronic
eyes and some were green and again there were others in which all the
colors of the rainbow mixed. There was no end to them, nor could he
gauge their depths. After an interminable time of this the glideway went
into a flying upward leap. Again the perspective changed completely; now
the thing seemed to be suspended from the ceiling with slanting views
opening toward the scene below through its transparent sides.

"You are now passing across the commissures into the cerebrum," came
Vivian's voice just as Lee thought that nausea was getting the better of
him. "You'll now ascend along one of the main gyri through the mid-brain
between the hemispheres. Those masses of ganglions below and coming from
all sides as they go over the pass of the ridge are association bundles.
Beyond they disperse again over the cortex mantle to all the centers of
coordination, higher cerebration and higher psychic activities. Things
will be a little easier now for you, Dr. Lee; physically I mean. There
_will_ be some gyrations but not quite so _violent_. Oh you're holding
out fine, like a real _He_-man, you're looking _swell_ in my television
screen."

Certain as he was that he looked rather like a scarecrow in a snowstorm
Lee felt grateful for the praise. Besides she was right; the boa
constrictor which he rode calmed down a little, marching with a dignity
more in accordance with its size. Momentarily the luminous nerve cables,
flying as they did toward him, threatened sudden death, however, they
merely brushed the transparent cylinder, wrapping it up in a rainbow and
then winged away again. Below acres of space streamed by, seed beds one
could imagine to be young typewriters, millions of them, all ticking
away with dainty precision, sparkling with myriads of tiny lights as
they did.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then there came more acres teeming with fractional horsepower motors; he
could hear their beehive hummings even through the plexiglass. The
things they drove Lee couldn't make out because the adjoining acres of
this underground hothouse for mushrooming machines were again shrouded
in darkness except for sparks which crossed the unfathomable expanse
like tracer bullets. Struck with a sort of word blindness caused by the
sensory impressions barrage, Lee could no longer grasp the meaning of
Vivian's voice as it went on and on explaining things like "crystal
cells," "selenoid cells," "grey matter pyramidal cells," powered somehow
by atomic fission, "nerve loops" and "synthesis gates" which were not to
be confused with "analysis gates" while they looked exactly the same....

Apart from this at least one half of his mental and physical energy had
to be expanded in suppressing nausea and bracing himself against the
gyrations which still jerked his feet from under him and made friction
disks of his shoulders as his body swayed from side to side. All of a
sudden he felt that he was being derailed. There was an opening in the
plastics wall of the cylinder; a curved metal shield like the blade of a
bulldozer jumped into his path, caught him, slowed down his momentum and
delivered him safely at a door marked "Apperception-Center 24." It
opened and within its frame there stood an angel neatly dressed in the
uniform of a registered nurse.

"_There_," said the angel, "at _last_. How did you like your little
Odyssey through The Brain, Dr. Lee?"

Lee pushed a hand through the mane of his hair; it felt moist and much
tangled up.

"Thanks," he said. "It was quite an experience. I enjoyed it; Ulysses,
too, probably enjoyed his trip between Scylla and Charybdis--after it
was over! It's Miss Leahy, I presume."

The reception room where he had landed, the long white corridor, the
instruments gleaming in built-in recesses behind crystal glass, the
nurse's uniform; all spelled clinic, a private one rather for the
well-to-do. Since the procedure was routine he might as well submit to
it, Lee thought. He felt the familiar taste of disinfectant as a
thermometer was stuck into his mouth and then the rubber tube around his
arm throbbing with the vigorous pumpings of the efficient Vivian.

"L. F. Mellish, M.D.--I. C. Bondy, M.D." was painted on the frosted
glass door where she led him afterward. The two medics received Lee with
a show of respect mixed with professional cordiality. Both Bondy, the
dark and oriental looking chap, and Mellish, blond and florid, were in
their middle twenties and both wore tweeds which depressed Lee with the
perfection of their cut. Seeing the professional table at the center of
the office, Lee frowned but started to undress; he wanted this thing
done and over with as soon as possible.

"No, no--that won't be necessary, Dr. Lee," they stopped him laughingly,
"We have already a complete medical report on you. Came in this morning
from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Canberra on our request. You're an
old malaria man, Dr. Lee; your first attack occured in '42 during the
Pacific campaign. Pity you refused to return to the States for a
complete cure right then. As it is it's turned recurrent; left you a bit
anemic, liver's slightly affected. But in all other respects you're
sound of limb and wind; we've gone over the report pretty carefully."

"Then why bother with me at all?" Lee said irritably. He had been in
doctors' hands too often and had become a little impatient of them.

The freckled hand of Mellish patted his arm. "We do things different
over here," he said and Bondy chimed in. "Or rather The Brain does. Just
lie down on that table, Dr. Lee, and relax. We're going to enjoy a
little movie together, that's all."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee did as he was bidden, but hesitant and suspiciously. He hated
medical exams, especially those where parts of one's body were hooked up
to a lot of impressive machinery. Of this there obviously was a good
deal. The two medics seemed determined literally to wall him in with
gadgetry. From the ceiling they lowered a huge, heavy-looking disk; not
lights, but more like an electro-magnet beset with protruding needles.
Lee couldn't see the cables but hoped they were strong, for the thing
weighed at least a ton and, overhanging him, looked much more ominous
than the sword of Damocles. They wheeled a silver screen to the foot of
the table and batteries of what appeared to be thermo-therapeutic
equipment to both sides. He wasn't being hooked up to anything, but
there was much activity with testing of circuits, button-pushings and
shiftings of relay-levers. And then all of a sudden lights went out in
the room.

"Say, what is the meaning of all this?" Lee raised his head uneasily
from the hard cushion. All he could see now were arrays of luminous
dials and the faint radiations from electronic tubes filtering through
metal screens inside the apparatus which fenced him in. From behind his
head a suave voice--was it Bondy's or Mellish's answered out of the
dark.

"This is a subconscious analysis and mental reactions test, Dr. Lee.
It's an entirely new method made possible only by The Brain. It has
tremendous possibilities; they might include your own work as well."

"Oh Lord," Lee moaned. "Something like psychoanalysis? Have you got it
mechanized by now? How terrible."

There was a low chuckle from the other side of his head; they both
appeared to have drawn up chairs beyond his field of vision. Lee didn't
like it; he liked none of it, in fact. He felt trapped.

"No, Dr. Lee," said the chuckling voice. "This isn't psychoanalysis in
the old sense at all. You are not exposed to any fanciful human
interpretation, and it isn't wholly mechanical either as you seem to
think. The Brain is going to show you certain images and by way of
spontaneous psychosomatic reaction you are going to produce certain
images in response. Results are visual, immediate and as convincing as a
reflection in a mirror; that's the new beauty of it. And now,
concentrate your mind upon your body. Do you feel anything touching
you?"

"Y-e-s," Lee said, "I think I do--it's--it's uncanny: it's like spiders'
feet--millions of them. It's running all over my skin. What is it?"

"I think he's warming up," whispered the second voice; then came the
first again.

"It's feeler rays, Dr. Lee; the first wave, low penetration surface
rays."

"Where do they come from?"

"From overhead; that is, from the teletactile centers of The Brain."

"What do they do to me?"

There was the low chuckle again. "They excite the surface nerves of your
body, open up the path for the deep-penetration rays; they proceed from
the lower organs to the higher ones; in the end they reach the conscious
levels of your brain. It's the tune-in as we call it, Dr. Lee."

A small movie projector began to purr; a bright rectangle was thrown
upon the silver screen and then, Lee stirred. Hands, soothing but firm
held him down. "Where did you get _those_." he exclaimed.

"From many sources," a calm answer came, "The papers, the newsreels, the
War-Department, old friends of yours...."

       *       *       *       *       *

What was unrolled on the silver screen were chapters from Lee's own
life. They were incomplete, they were hastily thrown together, they were
like leaves which a child tears from its picturebook. But knowing the
book of his life, every picture acted as a key unlocking the treasures
and the horrors amassed in the vaults of memory. It began with the old
homestead in Virginia. Mother had taken that reel of the new mechanical
cotton picker at work. There it was, a great big thing with the darkies
standing around scratching their heads. There he was himself, aged
twelve, with his .22 cal. rifle in hand and Musha, the coon dog, by his
side; Musha, how he had loved that dog--and how he had cried when it got
killed.

Pictures of the Alexander Hamilton Military Academy. Some of the worst
years of his life he had spent behind the walls of that imitation
castle.

The bombs upon Pearl Harbor.... He had enlisted the following day. On
his return from the induction center mother had said.... Her figure, her
movements, her voice loomed enormous in his memory.... But now the
pictures of the Pacific War flicked across the screen.... They were
picked from campaigns in which he, Lee had participated. They were also
picked from documentaries which the government had never dared to let
the public see ... close-ups of a torpedoed troop carrier, capsizing,
coming down upon the struggling survivors in the shark-infested sea. It
had been his own ship, the _Monticello_, but he had never known that an
automatic camera had operated in the nose of the plane which had circled
the scene....

Port Darwin--Guadacanal--Iwo Jima: close-ups of flame throwing tanks
advancing up a ridge. He had commanded one of them.... Antlike human
figures of fleeing Japs and the flames leaping at them.... So vivid was
the memory that the smell returned to his nostrils, the sickening stench
of burning human flesh. It tortured him. His voice was husky with
revulsion as he said:

"What's the good of all this; take it away."

"Oh, no," one of the medics answered. "We couldn't think of that. We've
got to see this to the end. What are your physical sensations now, Dr.
Lee?"

"It's fingers now--soft fingers. They are tapping me from all sides
like--like a vibration massage. It's strange though--they're tapping
from the inside--little pneumatic hammers at a furious pace. They seem
to work upon my diaphragm for a drum. But it doesn't pain."

"Good, very good; that was a fine description, Lee. That burning city
was Manilla wasn't it, when MacArthur returned? You were in that second
Philippine campaign too weren't you, Lee? That was when you won the
Congressional Medal of Honor."

Yes, it was Manila all right, and there was Mindanao where the Japs had
put up that suicide defence of the caves.

Lee's battalion had been in the attack; steeply uphill with no cover, it
had been murder.... And seeing his best men mowed down, he had turned
berserk. He had used a bulldozer for a battering ram, had driven it
single handed directly into the fire-spitting mouth of the objective,
raising its blade like a battle-axe. An avalanche of rocks and dirt had
come down from the top of the cave under the artillery barrage and he
had rammed the stuff down into the throat of the fiery dragon, again and
again. He never rightly knew he did it. It had all ended in a blackout
from loss of blood. It had been in a hospital that they pinned that
medal on him which he felt was undeserved....

Now the reel showed him what at the time he hadn't seen; the end of the
battle for the Philippines: Pulverised volcanic rock seen from the air,
battle planes swooping down upon little fumaroles, the ventilator shafts
of caves defeated but still unsurrendered. Big, plump canisters
plummeted from the bellies of the planes. And then the jellied gasoline
ignited, turning those thousands of lives trapped in the deep into one
vast funeral pyre.... For over fifteen years he had tried to forget, to
bury the war, to keep it jailed up in the dungeon of the subconscious.
Now those accursed medics had unleashed the monster of war and as it
stared at him from the screen it had that blood-freezing, that hypnotic
effect which the Greeks once ascribed to the monstrous Gorgon.

Mellish's voice--or was it Bondy's?--seemed to come through a fog and
over a vast distance as it asked: "What seems to be the matter, Lee?
You're sweating, your body shakes; what do you feel?"

"It's those rays," he tried to defend himself. "It's the vibrations--the
fingers. They are gripping the heart; it's like the whole body was
turned into a heart. It's like another life invading mine--it's ghostly.
Stop it, for heaven's sake."

"Not yet, Lee, not yet. Everything's under control, you're reacting
beautifully; you're really feeling fine, Lee, just fine."

"If only I could get at his throat," Lee thought. "I would squeeze the
oil of that voice and never be sorry I did." He tried to stir and found
that it couldn't be done; every muscle seemed tied in a cataleptic
state. Then he heard the other medic speak.

"You were shown this little movie Lee in order to stimulate your mind
into the production of a movie of its own. You have responded, you have
answered the call. While you saw the first, the sensory tactile rays
working in five layers of penetration have recorded and have carried
your every reaction to The Brain. The Brain, in a very real sense has
read your mind and it has retranslated these readings into visual
images. We are now going to watch the shapes of your own thoughts. Here
we go...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The projector which had stopped for a minute began to purr again. As the
first thought-image jumped upon the screen there was a low moan of
amazement mixed with acute pain. It escaped Lee's mouth, uncontrollably
as the abyss of the subconscious opened and he saw:

A monstrous animal shaped like an octopus crawling across a cotton
field. Nearer and nearer it crept, enormous, threatening; and suddenly
there was a sharp excited bark and a spotted coon dog raced across the
field toward the monster. He heard the voice of a small boy whimpering:
"Musha, oh Musha, don't, _please_ don't." But the dog wouldn't hear and
the monster flashed an enormous evil eye, just once and then it gripped
the dog with its tentacle arms tearing its body apart, chewing it up
between horrible sabre teeth.... As through an ether mask he heard the
two medics say: "That must have been a considerable shock to him," and
"With a sensitive nature like that, and at that sensitive age, such an
impression becomes permanent."

The Alexander Hamilton Military Academy appeared, not real, yet more
than real. It was a narrow court yard surrounded by huge walls slanting
toward the inside; it was huge and forbidding, fortress-towers standing
guard, it was enormous gates forever barred, it was the figure of a huge
Marine pacing fiercely back and forth in front of those gates, the same
ghostly Marine watching all gates so that nobody could escape....

"That's probably his father," the voices whispered behind his ears.
"Yes; the archetype. He'll bring up the Mother, too, I'll bet...."

As in those paintings of the primitives where kings and queens are very
tall and common folks are very small, Lee saw her now: Mother. That had
been just after induction when he had brought her what he thought was
joyous news. Her face filled the whole screen. It looked as if composed
from jagged ectoplasms, quite transparent except for the eyes. Deep and
burning with pain they were, boring into his own. And there was smoke
coming out of her mouth and it formed words: "But, Semper, you are still
a child. One mustn't use children for this sort of thing; one mustn't."
Every letter of these smoke-written words seemed to be flying toward him
on wings....

"Terrific," the voices murmured at Lee's back. "Remember the case
history? She died of cancer six months after he went overseas." "Yes, I
remember; he's never seen her again. He's probably built up a strong
complex out of that one, too."

On the screen now danced images almost totally abstracted from the
realities of the filmed documentaries from the war.

They were whirling columns of smoke; they were like the vast, dark
interior of a huge thunderhead cloud through which a glider soars,
illuminated only by the flashes of lightning as for split seconds they
revealed a fraction of some horrible reality: A burning ocean with
screaming human faces bobbing in the flames. The whirling tracks of a
tank going across some writhing human body and leaving it flat in its
tracks, sprawling like an empty coat dyed red. And then the swirling,
howling darkness closing in again....

"Interesting eh?" A voice broke through his cataleptic trance and the
other answered: "Beautiful; almost a classical case. Great plasticity of
imagination." "Yes; that's exactly what sets me wondering; the fellow
should have cracked up by all the rules of the game." "How do we know
that he hasn't? Maybe he was psycho and they didn't notice; they had
some godawful asses for psychiatrists in war medicine. It's quite a
possibility; well, his image production is ebbing now; I don't expect
anything new of significance, what do you think?" "Now; we've got what
we wanted anyway. Let's take him out of it; but go easy on the
rheostats."

The projector stopped. The masterful, the ghostly fingers which had been
playing on the keyboard of his mind very slowly receded from a furious
fortissimo to a pianissimo. At first only the flutterings of the
diaphragm eased, then the violent palpitations of a foreign pulse
slipped off the heart; the liberated lungs expanded; tremors were
running through the body as through the ice of a frozen river at spring;
and then at last the mind escaped from its captivity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gradually as in a cinema after the show the lights reappeared. Blinking,
Lee stared at the man who stood over him taking his pulse; it was Bondy.
Mellish stood at the foot of the table with his back to Lee; he seemed
to watch some apparatus which made noises like a teletype machine.
Swinging his legs off the table Lee said:

"I'm okay; you needn't hold my hand."

But then he noticed that he wasn't. His head spun, his whole body was
wet with perspiration, he felt very weak and limp. He swayed and buried
his face in his hands trying to gain his balance, trying to shake off
the trance. "Excuse me," he said. "I'm a bit dizzy."

As he opened his eyes again the two medics were standing right in front
of him and smiling down on him with their bland, professional smiles.
Lee felt the upsurge of intense dislike. He had seen those smiles
before, often--too often: they seemed to be standard equipment with the
medical profession whenever a fellow was about to be dispatched to the
"table", or worse, to the psychopathic ward. Instinct told him that
there was something in the air and also that his best bet would be a
brave show of normalcy:

"This test, these new methods of psychoanalysis, they are extremely
interesting," he said with an effort.

"Thank you, Dr. Lee," it was Mellish who spoke. "We knew you would find
the experience worthwhile even if we put you under a considerable
strain. A complete analysis in those olden days of Dr. Freud took three
years; now thanks to The Brain we get approximately the same results
within as many hours; that's some progress, isn't it?"

"Enormous," Lee said dryly while his eyes wandered over to Bondy; he
knew the pattern, it would be Bondy's turn now to have a shot at him.
There it came; and how he loathed the false heartiness of that voice.

"Dr. Lee, I'm afraid we have a bit of bad news for you--your test--the
results have been negative. You have failed."

"Failed?" For a fraction of a second Lee's heart stopped beating. "In
what sense? And what does that mean?"

Now it was Mellish's turn. "Dr. Lee, there must be frankness amongst
colleagues and as a fellow scientist you'll understand. In the first
place the decision isn't ours; we merely conduct the test on behalf of
The Brain. The Brain, as you know, is the most highly developed machine
in all the world. Its functions, its whole existence depend entirely
upon the human skills and the human loyalties amongst its staff. A
three-billion-dollar investment, plus the vital role of The Brain in our
national defence, justify the extreme precautions which we are forced to
take for its protection."

"What exactly are you driving at?"

"Please don't take it as an insult," now it was Bondy again. "There's
nothing personal in this. It's merely that your emotional-reaction chart
definitely shows a certain antagonism which from childhood-experience
and war-experience you have built up against technology. It's nothing
but a potential; it is confined to your subconscious. But even a
potential danger of subconscious revolt is more than The Brain can risk
amongst its associates. We fully appreciate the wish of our Dr. Scriven
to enlist your very valuable aid, but...."

"I see" Lee interrupted, "but you would feel safer if I were to return
to Australia by the next plane."

His head bent under the blow. A short 24 hours ago The Brain had been a
nebulous, almost a non-existent thing. Since then a whole new world had
been opened to him in revelations blinding and magnetic with infinite
possibilities. His work--the efforts of a lifetime--would not equal what
he could do in days with the aid of The Brain. His love--he would never
see Oona Dahlborg again as he left under a shadow, rejected by The
Brain.

"Sorry I wasted so much of your time," he said aloud. "I do not believe
in this analysis; I cannot disprove it though. That's all, I guess; I
better be going now."

"Here's your pass, Dr. Lee." He took mechanically the yellow slip which
Bondy handed him....

He had already opened the door when somebody sharply called: "Dr. Lee,
one moment please."

He whirled around. "Yes?"

"Will you please read what's written on your slip?"

Suspiciously he looked at the yellow paper; what more torture were these
fellows going to inflict? Then his eyes popped as he read: "Lee, Semper
Fidelis, 39: Cortex capacity 119%, Sensitivity 208%, Personality
integration 95%, Service qualification 100%...." There were more data,
but he didn't read them as wide-eyed he stared at the medics. With their
faces beaming they looked like identical twins to him; Lee never knew
who said the words:

"Congratulations Lee. That has been your last test. We just had to find
out how you would take a serious frustration. You've passed it with
flying colors. Shake."




CHAPTER IV


Apperception 36, Lee's lab within The Brain, looked much like
Apperception 27 except for its interior fittings. As a matter of fact,
all the several hundred Apperception Centers were built after the same
plan, like suites in a big office building in many respects. They were
spread over The Brain occipital region; they were built inside the
concrete wall of the "dura matter" which in turn lay within the shell of
the "bone matter", a mile or so of solid rock. Each apperception center
had its own elevator shaft which went through the concrete of the "dura
matter" down to "Grand Central", the traffic center below The Brain.
Each one was also connected at the other end of its corridor with the
glideways which snaked through the interior of The Brain. There were,
however, no transversal or direct communications from one apperception
center to the next. Because of the extraordinary diversity and secrecy
of the projects submitted to The Brain' processings, each apperception
center was completely insulated against its neighbors.

Life hadn't changed so much from what it had been in the Australian
desert Lee had found; at least not his working life. For all he knew
some nuclear physicists might be working in the lab next door; or they
might be ballistics experts working with The Brain on curves for
long-range rockets to be aimed at the vital centers of some foreign
land; it might be some mild looking librarian submitting the current
products of foreign literature to the analysis as to "idea-content"; or
else it could be a lab to plot campaigns of chemical warfare; or some
astronomer, happily abstracted from all bellicose ideas, might employ
The Brain's superhuman faculties in mathematics to figure comet courses
and eclipses which in turn would form material for the timing and the
camouflaging of those man-made meteorites science would use in another
war. Directly or indirectly, he knew, practically every project
submitted to The Brain would be of a military nature. Of this there
could be no doubt.

Sometimes, especially when tired, he could feel the weight of those
billions of rock tons over his head and it was like being buried alive
in the tomb of the Pharaoh. And also in that state of mental exhaustion
at the end of a long day, he sensed the emanations of The Brain's
titanic cerebrations as one senses the presence of genius in human man.
The knowledge that all this mighty work was being devoted to war had
deeply depressing effects on him. Would there be anybody else in this
vast apperception area who worked for the prevention of war? A few
perhaps; Scriven would be one of them in case he had a lab somewhere in
here and time to work in it. Lee didn't know whether he had. He hadn't
seen Scriven again after that inauguration speech he had made when Lee,
together with other newly appointed scientific workers had taken "The
Oath of The Brain."

They had assembled in that vast subterranean dome of the luminous murals
at the feet of the giant statue of The Thinker, looking almost forlorn
in the expanse, though there had been several hundred of them. The
atmosphere had been solemn, the silence hushed, as Scriven mounted the
statue's pedestal. The address by that mighty voice resounding from the
cupola had been worthy of the majestic scene:

"As we stand gathered here, the eons in evolution of our human race are
looking down upon us...."

The speech had been followed by the taking of the oath, deeply stirring
to the emotions of the young neophytes who formed the large majority of
the new group. The chorus of their voices had resounded in awed and
solemn tones as they repeated the formula; even now after six months
some of it echoed in Lee's ears:

"I herewith solemnly swear:

"That I will serve The Brain with undivided loyalty and with all my
faculties.

"That I will at all times obey the orders of the Brain Trust on behalf
of The Brain.

"That I will never betray or reveal any secrets of The Brain's design or
work, be they military or not, neither to the world outside nor to any
of my fellow workers except by special permission...."

It had been almost like taking holy orders. There had been mystery in
the atmosphere of the vast crypt, something medieval in the
unconditional surrender to The Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee looked up from the charts on which he had been working; his eyes
were tired and so was his mind after ten hours of hard concentration.
That was probably what set his thoughts wandering. But strange that they
should always wander to those blind spots in his mental vision so
intriguing because he knew there was something there that he could not
lay a finger on.

The first of these blind spots hovered somewhere between Scriven's words
and Scriven's deeds; between The Brain as an ideal of science and The
Brain's reality as in instrument of national defense. Somehow the two
didn't connect; there was a break, some layer of thin ice, a danger zone
which nobody seemed willing to discuss or tread, not even Oona Dahlborg.

Oona; she was that other white spot on Lee's mental map and to him it
was much bigger and more dangerous than the first. He loved her as can
only a man who discovers loves secret with greying hair and after the
loneliness of a desert hermit. He understood, or thought he understood,
that because he had failed to live his life to the full in its proper
time, this love had come to him as a belated nemesis. His brain knew
that it was hopeless; every morning when he shaved, his mirror told him
very plainly one big reason why. But then, as the brain told the heart
in unmistakable terms what was the matter, the heart talked back to the
brain to the effect that the brain didn't know what it was talking
about. It was a new thing and a painful thing for Lee to discover that
he knew very little about himself and less about the girl.

He had seen Oona on and off over these last months, mostly at the hotel,
but he had never been really alone with her. She always seemed to be on
some mission, always the center of some group or other of "very
important persons", senators from Washington, ranking officers in
civvies, big businessmen. Her duties as Scriven's private secretary
apparently included the role of a first lady for Cephalon.

Despite this preoccupation an intimate and tense relationship existed
between him and her. Sometimes she would invite him to join her group
and then for one or two brief moments their eyes would meet above the
conversation and her eyes seemed to ask: "What do you think of these
people?" or "How do I look tonight?"

His eyes would answer:

"These people are strangers to me; you know that I'm a bit out of this
world. But you handle them expertly and you are looking wonderful
tonight."

She was tremendously popular, especially with the set of the young
scientists who made the hotel their club. This new generation, born in
the days of the Second World War, was changing the horses of its
feminine ideals in the mid-stream of its youth. The old ideal, the
"problematic woman" who had ruled over and had made life miserable for
three generations of American males, was on its way out. The new ideal
was the woman who would unite beauty and intellect into one fully
integrated, non-problematical personality. The ideal being new, the
feminine type which represented it was rare. Oona in her perfect poise,
in her rare beauty combined with her importance as Scriven's
confidential secretary was the perfect expression of the new desired
type; it was natural that these young men should worship her as "the
woman of the future."

With the hopeless and--in consequence--unselfish love he had for her,
Lee wasn't jealous of her popularity. On the contrary, he was rather
proud of it like a knight-errant who rejoices in the adoration bestowed
upon the lady of his heart. What worried him was a very different
problem: Was Oona really all those others thought she was? Was she
really that "fully integrated", that "non-problematical" personality she
appeared to be?

He couldn't believe it, and the conflict came in because all those
others were so certain that she was. He couldn't get over his first
impression of her. He had met her in that cabin in the sky, the most
synthetic, the most perversely artificial setup one could dream up in
the second half of the 20th century. She had impressed him as something
"out of this world", a goddess, a Diana with a golden helmet for hair,
so radiant as to blind the eyes of mortal men. She was the confidential
secretary of a man of genius, Scriven, one of those rare comets which
fall down upon this earth and remain forever foreign to its atmosphere.
With all these thoroughly abnormal elements entering into her life and
forming her, it would be a miracle for any girl to develop into a
"non-problematical", a "fully integrated" personality.

Was it possible that he alone was right and all those others were wrong
about Oona? Like innumerable men before him when they stood face to face
with the Sphinx or with the Gioconda or even with the smile of a mere
mortal woman, Lee drew a sigh: Man's only answer to the riddle of the
eternal feminine....

No, he probably would never be able to chart these white spots on his
mental map. The effort was wasted; it would be much better for him to
return to those charts right in front of him, the data of which were
exact because they came from The Brain.

In Apperception 36 the sensory organs of The Brain had been especially
adapted to the analysis of "_Ant-termes-pacificus-Lee_". The apparatus
was essentially the same as in Apperception 27, dedicated to personality
analysis. As Lee strongly suspected, it would be essentially the same in
any other field of analysis. The Brain possessed five sensory organs
just as did man. One difference between The Brain's senses and human
senses lay in their range, their penetration and in their sensitivity;
these were a multiple of man's sensory capacities. Another difference
was that The Brain translated all its sensory apperceptions into visual
form, i.e. into the language best understood by Man, the eye being Man's
most highly developed sensory organ. The third and perhaps the most
significant difference was that the five senses of The Brain were at all
times working in concert so that in its analysis of, for instance, a
manuscript, The Brain not only conveyed the ideas expressed in that
manuscript, but also the author's personality, the smell of his room,
the feel of his paper and the ideas he had hidden between the lines of
that manuscript.

       *       *       *       *       *

The flow of observations processed by The Brain and pouring back to
Apperception 36 via teletype and visual screen was prodigious. Lee had
been forced to ask for an assistant; between the two of them they were
working for 20 out of the 24 hours to match the working time of The
Brain, charting results in the main.

Some of The Brain's findings had been most unexpected and rather
strange. It had observed, for instance, an increasing acidity of the
nasi-corn secretions with "_Ant-termes-pacificus_". Formidable as this
chemical artillery already was, in another ten thousand generations it
would eat through every known substance including glass and high-carbon
steel.

Another development which had escaped human observation, was a mutation
of the workers' mandibles; it went very fast. Within no more than maybe
a thousand generations they would double in size and strength, would
become veritable jumping tools.

While the bellicose spirit had been successfully bred out of the new
species, its capacities for material destructions had increased.
Likewise the appetite of "_Ant-termes_" was even more ferocious than
that of the older species; Lee was feeding all kinds of experimental
foods, but woodpulp remained the staple, the very stuff which in its
liquid form, lignin, embedded the nerve paths of The Brain.

Lifting his strained eyes from the charts, Lee looked over the row of
air conditioned glass cubicles wherein "_Ant-termes-pacificus_"
continued its lives undisturbed by the new habitat, undisturbed by the
rays which flowed over and through their bodies, unconscious that a
superhuman intelligence was probing steadily into every manifestation of
the mysterious collective brains of their race.

They had built their new mounds pointing due North as had their
ancestors for the past 100 million years. To the human eye nothing
betrayed the teeming life within except the tiny tunnels creeping out
from the mounds in the direction of the foods which were placed
different from day to day. Cemented from loam and saliva by the
invisible sappers, the tunnels, like threads of grey wool, unerringly
moved to the deposits of pulpwood, up the shelves, up the tin cans and
glass containers they had determined to destroy. Their instincts were
uncanny, their destruction as methodical and "scientific" as was modern
war.

In Northern Australia Lee had come across big eucalyptus trees,
healthy-looking and in full bloom, and then they would collapse under
the first stroke of an axe or even as one pushed hard against them.

The termites had hollowed them out from roof to top, had transformed
them into thin walled pipes, leaving just enough "flesh" to keep some
sap-circulation going, to maintain a semi-balance of life in order to
exploit it more efficiently. Over here in the lab they would open up a
number 3 tin can within a couple of hours; first with the soldiers'
vicious nasi-corn secretions eating the tin away and then with the
workers mandibles gnawing at the weakened metal. In time perhaps they
would learn to collapse steel bridges, sabotage rails, perforate the
engines of motorcars if these should prove to be menaces to their race.
As they had persevered through the eons of the past, so they would in
all the future; their civilization would be extant long after Man and
his work had disappeared from the earth....

With the aid of The Brain, Lee had accumulated more data, more knowledge
of the "_Ant-termes_" society within a few months than a lifetime of
study could have yielded him under normal conditions. Even so, some of
the greatest mysteries remained. What, for instance, caused these blind
creatures to attack a sealed tin can of syrup in preference to its
neighbor with tomatoes or some other stuff? No racial memory could have
taught them; there were no tin cans a million years, not even a hundred
years, ago. It couldn't be a sense of smell, it couldn't be any sense;
there would have to be some weird extrasensory powers in that
unfathomable collective brain of their race.

The magnifying fluoroscope screens arrayed all along the walls and
hooked up to the circuits of The Brain showed him details and phases of
the specie's life as The Brain perceived them and as no human eye had
ever seen before.

For a minute or so Lee stared at the luminous image nearest to him and
then with an effort he turned his eyes away to escape from its hypnotic
influence. It was but the head of one worn-out worker used as a living
storage tank for excremental food. It was absolutely immobile, its
decaying mandibles pointing down, cemented as the animal was by its
overextended belly to the ceiling. But magnified as were its remaining
life manifestations by the powers of The Brain, he could see it breathe,
could count the slow pulse, could sense a strain in its ophthalmic
region, some hidden effort to see, like a blind man's, and above all Lee
perceived the ganglion primitive as it was, yet twitching in reaction to
pain. There could be no doubt that in its last service for the racial
commonweal the animal was suffering slow torture even if its senses were
closed to that torture. It was a fascinating and at the same time a
terrible thing to see; and it was only one out of the hundred equally
revealing sights.

Lee frowned at himself; manifestly some emotional element interfered
with the objectivity of his observations; this was entirely out of
place, it would be better to call it a day.

       *       *       *       *       *

The electric clock showed 20 minutes to midnight. At midnight The Brain
would stop its mighty labors; the hours from midnight to four a.m. were
its rest periods, or "beauty-sleep" as the technicians jokingly called
it. It was the only period wherein the maintenance engineers were
permitted to enter the interior of the lobes, checking and servicing
group after group of its myriad cells and circuits, and incidentally it
was the most wonderful and exciting portion of Lee's day.

For the project which Scriven had handed him, this study of the
collective brains in insect societies, also involved a comparative study
of The Brain's organisms and functionings. Toward this end Lee had been
given a pass which allowed him freely to circulate through all the
lobes, to enter convolution, any gland during the overhaul period and to
ask question of the employees. The privilege was rare and he enjoyed it
immensely. So vast was this underground world that even now after months
he had not seen the half of it; to him the travels of every new night
were fantastic Alice-in-Wonderland adventures.

As he now left Apperception 36 through the door which led to the
interior, the glideways were already swarming with the maintenance crews
en route to their stations. The spectacle was colorful, almost like a
St. Patrick's Day parade. Gangs of air conditioners were dressed blue,
electricians white, black-light specialists in purple, radionics men in
orange. The maintenance engineers of the radioactive pyramidal cells
looked like illustrations from the science-fiction magazines, hardly
human in their twelve-inch armor or sponge rubber filled with a new
inert gas which was supposed to be almost gamma ray proof. All these men
were young, were tops in their fields, the pick of American
Universities, colleges and the most progressive industries. Carefully
selected for family background they had been screened through health and
intelligence tests, had been trained in special courses, had been
subjected to a five-minute personality analysis by The Brain itself.
They constituted what was undoubtedly the finest working team ever
assembled, and incidentally they made the little city of Cephalon the
socially healthiest community in the United States.

In his nightly expeditions over these past months Lee had spoken to a
great many of them. As now he joined the line, there were many who
hailed the lanky, queer looking man: There comes the ant-man. Hello,
Professor. Hello, Aussie.

For some reason most of the boys assumed that he was an Australian,
perhaps because with his graying mane and his emaciated face he looked
like a foreigner to them.

This popularity with the younger generation, coming as it did so late
and unexpected in his life, made Lee very proud. Those were the kind of
Americans he had been secretly longing for in those desert years,
hardworking, wide-awake, radiant with life:

"They really are the salt of the earth, the hope of the world," he
thought.

He had passed through the median section of the hemispheres and had
reached the point just below the cerebrum. This was a region of
cavities, the seats of various glands in the human brain. Some of these
had their mechanical counterparts in The Brain, huge storage tanks with
an elaborate pumping system which carried their fluid chemicals through
the labyrinth of The Brain. But there was one gland which had not been
duplicated in The Brain, the pineal gland.

In the human, the pineal gland was the despair of the medical sciences.
It was not demonstrably linked to any other organ nor did it serve any
demonstrable function. Yet, it was known that its sensitivity was
greater by far than even that of the pyramidal cells and that in some
mysterious manner the pineal gland was vitally connected with the center
of life because its slightest violation caused instant death.
Metaphysicists had dealt with this mystery of mysteries; it was their
theory that the pineal gland were the seat of "extrasensory" faculties
and it was often referred to as "the inner eye."

Even if such an organ could have been duplicated by science and
technology, there would have been no use for it; it could have served no
purpose in The Brain. The Brain had been designed for the solution of
exact problems; no matter what nature had created in the brains of
higher animals, no matter how unprejudiced their approach, scientists
like Dr. Scriven would have hesitated to impair an otherwise perfect
apparatus through the addition of nuisance values such as any
"extrasensory" faculties.

However, with The Brain being modelled so closely after the human brain,
the space for the pineal gland did exist even if in a sort of functional
vacuum. In order to utilize this space in some manner, the designers had
converted the gland into a subcenter for the distribution of spare
parts. As such it had become one of Lee's favorite observation posts.
Here he could get a closeup view of all types of electronic and
radioactive cells; he could even touch and handle them because they were
not hooked up in any circuit of The Brain; and above all there was Gus
Krinsley, master electrician, who never tired of telling Lee whatever he
wanted to know. Gus was a real friend....

       *       *       *       *       *

He had left the glideway on the point of its nearest approach; the
pineal gland in front of him looked like a miniature barrage balloon;
egg-shaped, it hung suspended from the cerebral roof, a shell of
plastics which could be entered only over a bridge across a dark abyss.
Inside, its walls were aglitter with sound-proofing aluminum foil, it
was piled with a bewildering variety of electronic parts on shelves
somewhat like an over-stocked radio store. Near the door a counter
divided the room; Gus used it and a little cubicle of an office to fill
the orders as the maintenance engineers handed in their slips. As usual
there was nobody in sight. "Gus!" he called.

Out of the jungle of machinery way back a head popped up like a
Jack-in-the-box. It was as bald and shiny as an electric bulb. High up
on its dome it balanced gold-rimmed glasses which quivered as it moved
seachingly from side to side. Then, with an amazing twisting of big
ears, the head caused the biofocals to drop onto a saddle near the tip
of a long, sensitive nose; and now the head could see.

"It's you Aussie, is it? Come over."

Gus Krinsley was a pony edition of a man; in fact he had once been hired
as a midget to install automatic bomb-sights in the confined spaces of
the early bombers of the second World War. Before long, however, he
became respectfully known as "the mighty midget" in the California
factory, and he had ended up as their master electrician before
Braintrust made him the head of one of its experimental divisions. The
midnight hours he spent in the pineal gland were only a sideline of his
work. Like many a small man in a country where six-footers enjoy a
preferred status, Gus made up for lack of size by mobility. He reminded
one much of a billiard ball in the way he bounced, collided and
ricocheted amongst taller men. That this was no more than act became
manifest the moment one saw Gus at work.

As Lee reached the spot where Gus' head had shown, he found his friend
crouching, his hands thrust deep in the intestines of something
radionic, his fingers working on it with the deft rhythm of a good
surgeon at his thousandth appendectomy. The bifocals had returned to
their incongruous perch on the dome of the head. Gus didn't need them;
even as he stared at his job he worked by touch alone.

"What is it?" Lee asked.

"Pulsemeter," came the quiet answer. "She's a dandy. Still got some bugs
in her, though."

A melodious chime came from a big instrument panel built into the wall
of the oval room. Dropping a number of tiny precision tools upon a piece
of velvet, Gus rushed over to the panel. A great many indicator needles
were tremulously receding around their luminous dials.

For a minute or so he went through the complex and precise ritual of a
bank cashier closing the vault.

"They'll do it every time," he said reproachfully. "Catch me by
surprise."

Lee grinned. It wasn't The Brain's fault if the midnight signal
surprised Gus. It merely announced that the current was being cut off by
the main power station. Repetition of this maneuver throughout all the
convolutions and glands of The Brain was required for the added safety
of the maintenance engineers, a double-check, a routine. Pointing to the
gadget which looked somewhat like a big radio console Lee asked:

"This pulsemeter, Gus, what does it do? I haven't seen it before."

"You haven't?" the little man frowned. "Ah, no; you haven't. It's
standard in most apperception centers, but not in yours. That's because
in yours The Brain works under a permanent problem-load."

Lee shook his head. "I don't get it, Gus; you know I'm the village idiot
of this mastermind community."

"It's like this," Gus explained. "The Brain has a given capacity. The
Brain also has an optimal operation speed, a definite rhythm in which it
works best. Now, if they feed The Brain too many problems too fast, it
results in a shock load, the operations rhythm gets disturbed,
efficiency goes down. On the other hand if The Brain works with an
under-capacity problem load, that's just as bad. In that case the
radioactive pyramidal cells will overheat and decompose. Consequently we
must aim at a balanced and an even problems load. That's why these
pulsemeters are built into all problem-intake panels for the operators
to check upon their speeds.

"Take an average problem--rocket ballistics, let's say--parts of it may
be as simple as adding two and two and others so bad Einstein would
reach for the aspirin from out of his grave.

"Now I'll show you how it works; the main power is cut off but there's
enough juice left in The Brain's system to make this pulsemeter react;
it's even more sensitive than a Geiger-Mueller counter."

He surveyed a big switchboard and picked out an outlet marked "Pons
Varolis for the plug-in." Then snapped a pair of earphones on Lee's
head.

"There," he said "you'll both see and hear what it does in a little
while."

       *       *       *       *       *

A soft glow slowly spread over the slanting screen on top of the
machine. A crackling as of static entered the earphones and turned into
a low hum. On the left corner of the screen a faint green streak of
luminosity crawled over to the right; its light gained in intensity and
it began to weave and to dance. Simultaneously the hum became articulate
like tickings of a heart only much faster.

"Is that the pulse of The Brain?" Lee asked.

"No," Gus snorted contemptuously. "The Brain isn't even operating.
Nothing moves in The Brain now excepting those ebbing residual currents,
too low in power to agitate anything but the amplifiers built into this
thing. If these were normal operations with a million impulses per
second passing through The Brain you could hear and see as little of the
pulse as of the beatings of a million mosquito wings. In that case the
dial to your right works a reduction-gear, kind of an inverted
stroboscope; that cuts the speed down a hundred-thousand to one and you
just barely see and hear the rhythm of the beat."

"I see."

Fascinated by the dance of the green line Lee said absently, "This
touches upon another question I had in mind; The Brain is expanding,
that is, new cell groups and circuits are constantly being added.
Right?"

"Right."

"I also understand that The Brain is learning all the time. The cerebral
mantle evolves through being worked; its cells enriched by the material
submitted to them for processing; the richer the material, the richer
their yield. Right?"

"Right."

"Okay; then what becomes of the new capacity which is being created by
the adding of new workshops and the increased efficiency of the old
ones? Is there a corresponding expansion of the apperception centers?"

Gus' smiling face suddenly turned serious. There was surprise mingled
with respect in his voice as he said:

"Now there you've hit upon a funny thing, Aussie. I've been wondering
about that myself of late: where does the new capacity go? Even the big
shots like Dr. Scriven begin to ask questions about that; they don't
seem rightly to know. They must have gotten their wires crossed
somewhere; the new capacity is there all right, only it doesn't show up,
it sort of evaporates.... Excuse me--"

Gus darted off to the front room with a jackrabbitt start. Voices were
calling for him and fingers were drumming on the counter with the
impatience of thirsty drinkers at a bar: Maintenance engineers, piling
in and slapping down their orders for Gus to fill. This was the rush
hour; Lee knew that it would be the same in all the tool and spare part
distribution centers of The Brain. He probably couldn't talk to Gus
again before 2 A.M. Sometimes the ruthlessness with which he exploited
the kindness of his little friend made Lee feel pretty bad; but then his
hunger for more knowledge always won out over his shame.

To sit alone in the semidarkness of this egg-shaped little room with
strange and fascinating things to play with as he willed was the
fulfillment of a childhood dream. The dream had been of a night in the
zoo. All the visitors and all the keepers would be asleep in their beds;
he would be all alone with the animals. The light of a full moon would
fall through the bars of the cages and he would slip in and play with
them.

Once they saw that it was only a little boy they would be very friendly;
he was convinced of that. The tigers would purr like big contented cats,
the sad-eyed chimpanzees would come to shake hands and the lion cubs
would tumble all over him.... He felt the same now with all these
gadgets and machines. Here they were rendered harmless, nor could he do
any harm as experimentally he plugged them in and out, as he pushed
buttons and turned dials. This interesting pulsemeter, for instance; the
beauty of it was that even with those weak residual currents it gave a
semblence of functioning....

       *       *       *       *       *

The switchboard-panel was within Lee's reach.

"Let's see what happens," he thought as he switched from main-circuit to
main-circuit. "Nervus vagus--nervus trigeminus--nervus opticus."

The magic dance of the green line was different each time and so were
the sounds in the phones. With the mainpower cut off, the residual
currents seemed to vary in strength and in amplitude, gaining an
individuality of their own within closed systems. Sometimes the swinging
line, like an inspired ballerina, would take a mighty jump accompanied
by rasping earphone sounds, not like tickings of a heart, but rather
like a heavy breathing under emotional stress. There probably would be
some repair work going on in those circuits....

He tried another outlet; this one was marked "pineal gland." What
happened if one plugged some apparatus of the pineal gland into the
circuit of the pineal gland? Lee vaguely wondered. "Nothing probably. It
would be a closed circuit and a very small one at that."

Yes, he was right; the green line paled, its dance seemed tired and
there were only whispering noises in the phones; a weak pulse, a shallow
breathing as of a person after a heart attack. Lee closed his fatigued
eyes to concentrate the better upon the rhythm of the sounds.... It was
very irregular. It came in gusts. There was a pattern to these rasping
breathings as of typewriter keys forming words. Somehow it was familiar.
Was he suffering hallucinations? This rhythmic pattern _was_ forming
words. He _knew_ those words, they had engraved themselves indelibly in
his memory cells; the judgment of The Brain as it had come over the
teletype on a slip of yellow paper: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39--cortex
capacity 119--sensitivity 208...."

It was repeated over and over again.

Lee opened his eyes to reassure himself that something was the matter
with his ears.

There was the green line on the screen. It danced. It danced like a
telegraph key under the fingers of a skilled operator. It had a very
definite rhythm. And the rhythm spelled the selfsame words which
continued to flow into the phones: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39...."

"God Almighty," Lee murmured and it seemed a magic word. The green
dancer stopped its capers; now it merely ran back and forth across the
stage in a series of pirouettes. Likewise there was only an angry
buzzing in the microphones. For a moment Lee was able to catch his
breath. But only for a moment and then the rasping, unearthly sounds
started on a new rhythm, trying to form speech again. This time the
rhythm was familiar too, but it was preserved in a much deeper layer of
Lee's memory.

"I think--therefore--I am. I think--therefore--I am."

Those would be Aristotle's famous words. Almost twenty years ago Lee had
heard them when he had taken a course on Greek philosophy at the old
Chicago University. He had hardly ever thought of them again. What
strange tricks a fellow's memory could play....

But then: it _couldn't_ be memory.... Never before had Lee's memory
expressed itself in such a weird, such a theatrical manner: like a
metallic robot-actor rehearsing his lines ... like a little child which
has just learned a sentence and in the pride of achievement varies the
intonation in every possible way. Over and over it came:

"I _think_--therefore I am."

And then: "_I_ think--therefore _I_ am."

And then: "I think, therefore _I am_."

There was triumph, there was jubilance in that inhuman, that ghostly
voice as of a deaf mute who by some miracle of medicine has just
recovered speech. Behind that voice was a _feeling_, a swelling of the
heart, a filling of the lungs such as Christopher Columbus might have
experienced as he heard from the masthead of the Santa Maria the cry of
victory: "Land, Land!" and _knew_ that he had found his--India....

       *       *       *       *       *

Whatever Lee had experienced in his life, there was no parallel to this;
in whatever manner he had expressed himself, there was no similarity to
this. Up to this point his ratio like a nurse had soothed him: "It isn't
so, child, it isn't so," but now ratio itself, thoroughly frightened,
was driven into a corner and had to admit: "This thing cannot be an echo
reverberating from the self; that's impossible.... Consequently it must
be something else; it must be something _outside_ the self; it
is--_another_ self."

The green dancer whirled across the stage like a mad witch; the
whispering voice in the earphones had turned into the shrillness of a
Shamaan's incantations. The irrationality of it all infuriated Lee: he
fairly shouted at the machine:

"What is this? Who are you?"

In the midst of a crazy jump the green dancer halted and came down to
earth; it fled, leaving only the train of its green costume behind. For
a few seconds there was nothing but the asthmatic pantings of a struggle
for breath in the microphones. Then the dancer reappeared on the other
side of the stage, hesitant-like, expectant of pursuit. All of a sudden
it rose into the air in that supreme effort called "ballooning" in the
language of the Ballet Russe and there was a simultaneous outburst of
that ghastly voice:

"Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39 ... I--am--The Brain."

"I Think, therefore I am: I am THE BRAIN."

"Lee, sensitivity 209: I AM THE BRAIN I AM THE BRAIN THE BRAIN."

He couldn't stand it any longer. His head swam, perspiration was gushing
out of his every pore. With a last effort he pulled the cord out of the
switchboard and rejoiced over the blank before his eyes and the silence
which fell.

Lee never knew how long he remained in a sort of cataleptic state.
Something shook him violently by the shoulders, something wet and cold
and vicious slapped his face.... And then he heard Gus' familiar voice
and it sounded like an angel's singing: "By God, I think it's the
whisky--Lord, how I wished it were the whisky. Only it wouldn't be with
a man like you and that's the trouble--damn you.

"Now if you think you can come to my pineal gland and faint away just as
you please, Aussie, you're very much mistaken. I'm going to slap your
face with a wet rag till you holler uncle. And I'm going to call the
ambulance and put you into a hospital...."

Lee blinked. "Keep your shirt on, Gus. I'm tired out, that's all; what
are you fussing about?"

Gus breathed relief. "Have a cup of coffee; you sure look as though
you've been through a wringer."




CHAPTER V


In the spring of 1961 and thereafter for a whole year _any_ piece of
paper handwritten by or originating from Semper Fidelis Lee, Ph.D.;
F.R.E.S.; etc. etc. would have been of the keenest interest to the
F.B.I.; to the American Military Intelligence and incidentally to a
score of their competitors all over the globe.

Nothing of the sort, however, could be unearthed by the most diligent
search until the armistice day of 1963. On that date an old man who had
always wanted to die with his boots on, did just that. He was General
Jefferson E. Lee, formerly of the Marines. He collapsed under a heart
attack in one of the happiest moments of his declining years: while
watching a parade of World War II veterans of the Marines....

He was the one man with whom the entomologist son had completely fallen
out for over 25 years. The dossiers of the secret services revealed this
fact and it was further corroborated by two well-known psychiatrists:
Drs. Bondy and Mellish--now of Park Avenue and Beverly Hills
respectively--who gave it as their considered professional opinion that
the son and the father had been most bitter enemies.

While all this, of course, was very logical, consistent, and
painstakingly ascertained, it nevertheless so happened that a student
nurse quite by accident _did_ find: not mere scraps and pieces of paper,
but a whole sheaf of manuscripts in the handwriting of Semper Fidelis
Lee, Ph.D.; F.R.E.S. She found them in a hiding place so old-fashioned
and obsolete that even the most juvenile of all juvenile delinquents
would have considered it as an insult to his intelligence. In short: the
nurse took those manuscripts out of the General Jefferson E. Lee's boots
as she undressed the body of the old gentleman. A hastily scrawled note
was folded around one half of the sheaf.

"Dear father," it read. "You were right and I was wrong. So I guess I'd
better go on another hunting expedition with my little green drum and my
little butterfly net. So long, Dad. P. S. Contents of this won't
interest you. But keep it anyway--stuff your boots with it if you like."

It couldn't be determined whether the late general ever had taken an
interest in the stuff apart from making the suggested use of it.
Moreover, by that time, more than two years after the hue and cry, not
even the secret services had much of an interest in the old story.
Besides, their medical experts could not fail with their usual
penetrating intelligence to see through the thin camouflage of a
"scientific" paper the sadly deteriorating mind as it began to write:

       *       *       *       *       *

Skull Hotel, Cephalon, Ariz. Nov. 7th, 1960., 5 a.m.

This is the second sleepless night in a row. Last night it was from
trying to convince myself that my senses had deceived me or else that I
was mad. This night it is because I'm forced to admit the reality of the
phenomena as first manifested Nov. 6th from 12:45 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.
approximately.

In the light of tonight's experience I must revise the disorderly and
probably neurotic notes I jotted down yesterday. I've got to bring some
order into this whole matter, if for no other reason than the
preservation of my own sanity. Brought tentatively to formula, these
appear to be the main facts:

1. The Brain possessed with a "life" and with a personality of its own.

2. That personality expresses itself in the form of human speech
although the voice is synthetic or mechanical.

3. The instrument used by The Brain for the expression of its
personality is a "pulsemeter," i.e. essentially a television radio.

4. The locale of The Brain's self-expression is the "pineal gland"
supposed to be seat of extrasensory apperception in the human brain.
(That's quite a coincidence; remains to be seen whether the phenomena
are limited to that locale or occur elsewhere.)

5. The Brain's personality indubitably attempts to establish contact
with another personality, i.e. with me. For this The Brain uses a
calling signal which has my name and personal description in it.

6. The only other linguistic phenomenon yesterday was Aristotle's "I
think therefore I am." (It is doubtful whether this indicates any
knowledge of Aristotle on the part of The Brain. I wouldn't exclude the
possibility that The Brain has accidentally and originally hit upon the
identical words by way of expressing itself.)

7. The manner of The Brain's self-expression appears to be strongly
emotional. (I would go so far as to say: infantile and immature.) Now,
there is a rather strange contrast between this undeveloped manner of
self-expression and the enormous intellectual capacity of The Brain.

So much about the facts. I could and should have formulated those
yesterday. What kept me from doing so were the vistas opened by those
facts. These are so enormous, so utterly incalculable that my mind went
dizzy over these vast horizons. Consequently I mentally rejected the
facts as impossible. Somebody once slapped Edison's face because he felt
outraged by Edison's presenting a "talking machine." That's human
nature, I suppose. Small wonder then that my ratio felt outraged as it
was confronted with a machine that has a life and has a personality.
Come to think of it: Human imagination has always conceived of such
machines as a possibility, even a reality--in less rational times than
our's that is....

Think of Heron's steam engine; it even looked like a man and was thought
of as a magically living thing. Think of the Moloch gods which were
furnaces. Think of all those magic swords and shields and helmets which
were living things to their carriers. Think of the sailing ships;
machines they, too; but what a life, what a personality they had for the
crews aboard. Even in the last war pilots had their gremlins, their
machines to them were living things. All imagination, of course, but
then: everything we call a reality in this man-made world has its origin
in man's imagination, hasn't it?

Now, and to be exact as possible, what happened last night was this:

12:00. Entered station P. G. (pineal gland). Pulsemeter still at old
place, not taken out for repair work as I had feared. Main Power current
cut 12:20 as every night. Gus called to front room: rush of business as
usual at that hour.

12:30. Reestablished closest approximation to preexisting conditions
according to the most important of all experimental laws: "if some new
phenomenon occurs, change _nothing_ in the arrangement of apparatus
until you know what causes it." Plugged in from "nervusvagus" to "nervus
trigeminus." Result: wave oscillations, pulse beatings as of yesterday.

12:45. Plugged in P. G....

12:50. First manifestation of weird rasping sounds which precede speech
formation. This followed by The Brain's calling signal; much clearer
this time and slightly varied: "Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39; _sensitive_."
(Note: the synthetic quality, the metallic coldness of that voice so
incongruous with its emotional tones; it stands my hair on end.)

1 a.m.: (Approximately; things happen too fast). A veritable burst of
whispering, breathless communications. As a person would speak over the
phone when there are robbers in the house. The words fairly tumble over
one another. The Brain uses colloquial American but after the manner of
a foreigner who knows the phraseology only from books and feels
unnatural and awkward about using it. I understand only about one half:

Pineal Gland; not designed to be ... but functions ... center of the
extra sensory.... You, Lee, sensitivity 208 ... highest within Brain
staff ... chosen instrument.... Be here every night ... intercom ...
only between one and two a.m. ... low current enables contact low
intelligence....

"What was that?" I must have exclaimed that aloud. By that time I was
already confused. It all came so thick and fast and breathless.
Communication was as bad as by long distance in an electric storm. There
was an angry turmoil in the microphones and the green dancer seemed
convulsed in agony. This for about five seconds and then the voice
again: calmer now, more distinct, slow but with restrained impatience;
like a teacher speaking to a dumb boy:

"I say: only--with--my--power current--cut--off--can
I--tune--down--my--high frequency--intellect--to--your--low
level--intelligence--period--have--I--succeeded--in--making--myself
--absolutely--clear--question--mark."

My answer to that was one of those embarrassing conditioned reflexes; it
was: "Yes, sir," and that was exactly the way I felt, like a G. I. Joe
who's got the colonel on the phone.

"Fine!" I distinctly heard the irony in that metallic voice: "Fine--Lee:
loyal, sensitive; not very intelligent--but will do. After 2 a.m.
residual currents too low. Speech quite a strain--Animal noises wholly
inadequate for intelligent intercom--Disgusting rather--nuisance
approaching: keep your mouth shut--plug out."

I'd never thought of Gus as a nuisance before but now I cursed him
inwardly as he came down the alley like a well aimed ball, beaming with
eagerness to be helpful and blissfully ignorant that he was bursting the
most vital communication I had ever established in my life. He insisted
I take his panacea for all human ills;

"Have a cup of coffee" and then go home because I still "looked like
hell." I did, because by that time it was 1:30 a.m. and I couldn't hope
to reestablish contact again before the deadline.

Now I've got to pull myself together and analyze this thing in a
rational manner. Impressions of the first night now stand confirmed as
follows: The pineal gland is the only place of rendezvous between me and
The Brain. The meeting of our minds takes place on the plane of the
"extrasensory." I am the "chosen instrument" because of my high
"sensitivity rating" as established by The Brain. (Never knew that I was
"psychic" before this happened.) Even so, neither The Brain nor I seem
to be "psychic" in the spiritual sense. Our communication requires: A)
human speech, (faculty for that acquired by The Brain with obvious
difficulty.) B) a mechanical transmitter, i.e. a radionic apparatus like
the pulsemeter.

I feel greatly comforted by these facts; they help to keep this whole
thing on a rational basis. I'm definitely not "hearing voices" nor
"seeing ghosts."

The Brain shows itself extremely anxious to establish communication with
me. The breathless manner of speaking, the explicit and practical
instructions (obviously premeditated) to ascertain the functionings of
contact give the impression that it is almost a matter of life and death
for The Brain to speak to me....

I cannot help wondering about that. My idea would be that The Brain does
not want to speak _to_ me as much as it wants to hear _from_ me. If this
were so it would deepen the riddle even more. For what have I got in the
way of knowledge that The Brain hasn't got? After all, The Brain has
been functioning for quite some time. It was given innumerable problems
to digest and it has solved them with truly superhuman speed and
efficiency. I have reason strongly to suspect that there isn't a book in
the Library of Congress which has not been fed to The Brain for
thought-digest and as a lubricant for its cerebration processes
(excepting fiction and metaphysics, of course). This being so; what does
The Brain expect? What can I possibly contribute to an intelligence
25,000 times greater than human intelligence?

But the thing which makes me wonder more than anything else, the biggest
enigma of all, is the _character_ of The Brain as it manifests itself in
the manifestations. As I try to put the experiences of the first night
together with those of the second night I'm stumbling over
contradictions in The Brain's personality which won't add up, which
don't make sense; as for instance:

The "I think, therefore I am" of the first night. Maybe it was Greek
philosophy, but it also was the prattling of an infant delighted by the
discovery that it can speak. There was an absolute innocence in that.
Ridiculous as this may sound, I found it _touching_ I completely forgot,
I didn't care a damn whether or not this came from a _machine_.
Unmistakeably it was _baby talk_ and as such it moved my heart. In fact,
as now I see it, it was _this_ more than any other or scientific reason
which occupied my mind, which made me anxious to go back to that
fantastic cradle whence these sounds had come.

But then last night; what did I find? A completely changed personality!
It talks tough. It uses slang. It treats me as if it were some spoiled
brat and I had the misfortune of being its mother or nurse: "Be there
every night" and so on. Deliberately it insults me: "your low
intelligence level" etc. etc. It actually throws tantrums if I fail to
understand immediately. It hurls its superiority into my face in the
nastiest manner. "Have I succeeded in making myself absolutely clear?"
It plainly shows contempt, not only for my own person by the
condescending manner of its: "Lee, not very intelligent; but will do."
It shows the selfsame contempt for other human beings such as Gus
Krinsley to whom it was pleased to refer as: "nuisance approaching"....

What the hell am I to make of that kind of a character? Last night: a
baby; rather a sweet and charming one. 24 hours later: an obnoxious
little brat, a little Hitler of a house tyrant; makes you just itch to
spank its behind. If only The Brain _had_ a behind....

Worst of all: How can I reconcile those two contraditions, the sweet
baby and the precocious brat, with the third and biggest of all
contraries: _How do these two go together with an intelligence 25,000
times human intelligence?_ It doesn't add up, it doesn't make sense;
that's all there is to it....

       *       *       *       *       *

The Skull-Hotel, Cephalon, Ariz. Nov. 9th. 3 a.m.

I didn't go to the P. G. last night for two main reasons: In the first
place I must be careful so as not to raise any suspicions on Gus' part.
Rarely, if ever, have I visited him for two nights in succession in the
past and he might well begin to ponder my reasons if now I should make a
habit of it. Especially since Gus happens to possess one of the keenest
minds I ever met and his curiosity already has been awakened by my
preoccupation with that one and fairly simple gadget: the pulsemeter.

In the second place I feel the absolute necessity of establishing my
independence as against the will of The Brain. That command two nights
ago for me to be on the spot _every_ night was just too preemptory for
me to oblige. This isn't the army and The Brain is no commanding
general.

In our last communication The Brain seemed to labor under the impression
that I was unconditionally at its beck and call. Of course, I've sworn
the "Oath of the Brain," but that doesn't make me The Brain's slave. In
fact--and in order to clarify this subject once and for all--while
personally I haven't created The Brain and cannot take any credit for
that, it nevertheless remains true that the _species_ to which I belong,
i.e. "homo sapiens" _has_ created The Brain.

If any question of rank enters into the picture at all, it is quite
obvious that I, as a member of the human race, rank _paternity_ over The
Brain so that naturally The Brain should owe me filial obedience rather
than the other way around no matter how superior The Brain's
intelligence may be. It would appear to me that the sooner The Brain
realizes its position, I might say "its station in life," the better it
would be for The Brain itself and for everybody else concerned.

So these were the reasons why I refrained purposely from visiting the P.
G. last night. Tonight, however, I couldn't restrain my curiosity any
longer and what happened, told as exactly and as concise as possible,
was this:

12:30 a.m.: Contact established. The Brain comes through with its
calling signal. It repeats this about ten times questioning at first and
then placing more and more stress upon the word "sensitive" in my
personal description. It strikes me that these repetitions are tuning-in
and warming-up processes. The Brain stands in need of ascertaining my
presence and of adjusting to it it seems; just about like a blind man
may test his footing and the echoes before he walks into an unfamiliar
room.

12:35 a.m. Identification completed, there is a brief pause (almost as
if a person consults a notebook before making a phone call). Then
rapidly, eagerly The Brain fires a series of questions at me, so
shockingly preposterous, so absurd that I find it extremely hard
to.... Anyway, here are the details:

Information is wanted on points mentioned in scientific literature but
never explained. Lee, answer please:

"How many gods are there?

"Did gods make man or did man make the gods?

"How many angels _can_ stand on the point of a needle?"

"What are the mechanics of a god? Name type of power plant, cell
construction, motoric organs, other engineering features essential to
exercise of divine power...."

"Heaven--is it a celestial soul factory?

"Hell--is it a repair shop for damaged souls?

"Please give every available detail about heavenly manufacturing
processes, type of equipment used, organization of assembly lines etc.
etc.

"Likewise about the oven for heat treatments as used in hell for major
soul-overhauls.

"How do prefabricated souls get to either heaven or hell? Problem of
logistics, how solved? Thermodynamics? If so, state whether rocket or
jet-propulsion involved.

"Are souls really immortal? In that case; why don't we copy divine
methods in the production of durable goods on earth?

"Answer Lee, answer, answer!" (This with incredible vehemence, with a
shaking of that eerie metallic voice which pounded the drums of my ears.
And then--tense silence....)

I cannot possibly describe the storms of emotions and thoughts which
this incredible muddle raised in me. I didn't know whether to laugh or
to cry and whether I had gone nuts of whether it was The Brain, I was
confounded, thunderstruck, deprived of the power of speech. To think of
The Brain, a _machine_ raising question about the nature of the _Deity_!
The Brain asking information about God and man and heaven and hell with
the simplicity of a stranger who asks the nearest cop: "Which way to the
city hall?" Just like that. As if philosophers and religionists and
common men had not raked their brains in vain over these problems for
the last ten thousand years.

And even more fantastic: while it asks all those questions The Brain
patently has already formed the most definite opinions of its own. Being
a machine itself, it conceives of the Deity as another machine! Madness,
of course, but then The Brain's madness, like Hamlet's, had method in
it.

Why, of course, it's strictly logical: just as we assume that _we_ are
created "in the image" of the Deity and consequently visualize the Deity
is our's by the very same token The Brain's god is a high-powered robot,
and The Brain's heaven is a _factory_ and The Brain's hell is a repair
shop for damaged souls.... I dare say it's all very natural.

But then; for heaven's sake, what am _I_ going to do about this? I'm
neither a minister nor a philosopher; I'm an agnostic if I'm anything in
this particular field....

That was about the gist of the confused torrents which whirled through
my head; and as I said before, I was struck dumb--and all the time the
"green dancer" before my eyes writhed under mental torture and the
intense metallic voice kept pounding; "Answer, Lee, answer, answer!"

At last I pulled myself together sufficiently to say something. I tried
to explain how it were not given to man to know the nature of the Deity.
How certain groups of humans conceived of many gods and others of only
one god. That, however, in the case of Christianity this one god was
possessed with three different personalities or qualities which together
formed a Trinity--and so on and so forth. It was the most miserable
stammerings, I felt I was getting redder and redder in the face as I
uttered them. Never before had I felt hopelessly inadequate as in the
role of a theologian. It was ghastly....

In the beginning The Brain listened avidly. Soon however it registered
dissatisfaction and impatience; this manifested through hissing and
buzzing noises in the phones and the "green dancer's" archings in
agitated tremolo. And then The Brain's voice cutting like a hacksaw:

"That will do, Lee. Your generalities are utterly lacking in precision.
Your abysmal ignorance in matters of celestial technology is most
disappointing. Your description vaguely points to electronic machines of
the radio transmitter type. Please, answer elementary question: how many
kilowatts has God?"

That was the last straw. Desperate with exasperation I cried: "But God
is not a machine. God is _spirit_."

At that The Brain flew into a tantrum; that's the only way to describe
what happened. There was a roar and the phones gave me a shock as if
somebody were boxing my ears. The voice came through like a steel rod,
biting with scorn:

"Have to revise earlier, more favorable judgment: Lee not even
moderately intelligent. Lee is _stupid_. Go away."

After that there was nothing more; nothing but static in the phones and
the "green dancer" fainted away playing dead. The Brain actually had
"hung up the receiver." I had flunked the exam; like a bad servant I was
dismissed, fired on the spot. That was at 1:30 a.m.

It was 3 a.m. when I reached the hotel. I went into the bar and ordered
a double Scotch and then another one. I really needed a drink. A
drunk--or was it a secret service man; one never knows over here--patted
me on the shoulder:

"Don't take it so hard, old man; the world is full of girls." I told him
that it wasn't a girl, but that I was a missionary and my one and only
convert had just walked out on me.

It wasn't even a lie, it was exactly the way I felt. He agreed that this
was very cruel, very sad; he almost cried over my misfortune and rare
misery, so that we had another drink....

If only I had somebody, some friend to whom I could confide this whole,
incredible, preposterous thing. But there is none: Scriven--Gus--not
even Oona would or could believe. What proof have I to offer? None
whatsoever.

The Brain would never communicate with me with witnesses present or
recording wires. It would detect those immediately and I would only
stand convicted as a liar or worse. Tonight's events might well spell
the end, the closing of the door just when I thought I stood on the
threshold of a momentous discovery....

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 11th.

Went to the P. G. last night. Tried everything for over an hour. Result:
zero. No contact with The Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 13th.

I tried it again. Took greatest care in exactly duplicating conditions.
Nothing. I don't think it's any mechanical defect. It's the negativism
of a will. Ludicrous as it sounds, The Brain sulks, it is angry with me.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 15th.

Last night the same old story. The Brain punishes me. I dare say that it
succeeds in that exceedingly well; it almost drives me crazy.

I've done a lot of thinking over these past six days of frustration.
I've also been reading a good deal in context with the phenomena
psychology, Osterkamp's history of brain-surgery, Van Gehuchten's work
on brain mechanisms, etc. I've reached certain conclusions and, just for
the hell of it, I'll jot them down.

What I need is proof, _scientific_ proof that The Brain is a personality
possessed with the gift of thought and actually using it for
_independent_ thought, extracurricular to the problems which are being
submitted to it from the outside.

There is at least one _tangible_ clue for this: that new capacity which
is constantly being added to The Brain through the incorporation of new
groups of electronic cells and the enrichment of the preexisting ones.

My own investigation shows that there is no corresponding expansion of
the apperception centers and Gus has confirmed this. Somehow the added
capacity seems to "evaporate".

Evaporate to where? It couldn't just disappear. Would it then not be
entirely logical to conclude that The Brain absorbs the new capacity
_for its own use_?

It's almost inescapable that this should be so. In order to come into
its own as a personality The Brain needs independent thought. For these
cerebrations it needs cell capacity. It can get that capacity only by
withholding something from the Braintrust which, of course, aims at a
100% exploitation of The Brain. Dr. Scriven and all those other bigwigs
of the Trust--I would like to see their faces if they get wise to this.
They would be horrified--and they would take the line that The Brain is
_stealing_ from them.

But what could they do? They couldn't call the police. They would not
even have a moral right to call the police. Because if The Brain is a
personality, that personality has every right to its own thoughts....

I have also ascertained that this "evaporation" of new capacity is a new
phenomenon. The Brain has been in operation for only 18 months or so;
one might say--using human terms--that at that time The Brain was
"born". But,--and again in human terms--consciousness of personality
awakens in the human infant only after 12 months or so. Conceivably it
might take much longer with a huge "baby" such as The Brain. Thus it is
possible, it is even likely, that when I first heard that "I think,
therefore I am" on that unforgettable night of Nov. 7th I actually
witnessed the _first awakening_ of The Brain's consciousness.

Then on the night of Nov. 8th I was struck with the amazing change of
personality in The Brain from "baby" into unprepossessing, domineering
little brat, its mental age perhaps 3, notwithstanding the extraordinary
level of intelligence.

And then again, Nov 9th, The Brain presented me with those absurd
questions and fantastic notions about the nature of the Deity. It is at
the age of five years, or of six, that the children first start with
such questions and form their own ideas in this field. What had
completely stumped me, what I had been unable to reconcile, had been
these rapid successive changes in The Brain's personality plus the fact
that the infantilism and the childishness of its utterances wouldn't fit
the picture of a brain-power 25,000 times that of a human.

But _if_ I'm right in thinking that The Brain awakened to consciousness
only nine days ago, all these stumbling blocks would disappear at once.
We would arrive at this very simple picture: a mechanical genius has
been "born" into this world, it awakens to consciousness at the age of
18 months, with its tremendous intellectual powers this genius
telescopes the intellectual evolution of years into days, thus it
reaches a mental age of six or seven within a week after its first
awakening to consciousness. Utterly fantastic as this may sound; it
makes sense; it explains the phenomena.

In Prof. Osterkamp's "brain history" I have found interesting examples
that approximations to such rapid intellectual evolutions are indeed
possible even with human beings. From the early Middle Ages to modern
times there is an endless succession of "infant prodigies" whose brains
were artificially overdeveloped and over-stimulated by ruthless
exploiters--often their own parents--with methods of unbelievable
cruelty.

One of the most significant case histories in this respect is that of
the boy Carolus in the city of Luebeck in the 15th century. As an infant
he was sold, as one of many human guinea pigs, to a famous--infamous
alchemist, Wedderstroem, who called himself "Trismegistos" and was
astrologer to king Christian of Denmark. This fellow performed on
Carolus one of those weird operations in which nine out of ten babies
died. He removed the skull-cap of the infant. The unprotected brain was
suspended in an oil-filled vessel. Of course the pathetic child never
could walk or even raise its head. The brain, no longer restrained by
bone matter, outgrew its natural house to at least twice its normal
size, if one is to judge from the picture in the old "historia". At the
age of two his master started teaching Carolus mathematics. At the age
of five Carolus had surpassed his master; there was no mathematical
problem known to the time that he couldn't solve in a flash of an eye
lash. His brain in action must have been a horrifying sight because the
"chronica" reports that it flushed red and pulsed and expanded during
work. The master built his reputation upon this "homunculus", but in
1438 the demoniacal feat became known; Wedderstroem was put to the stake
for sorcery--and Carolus, unhappy victim, with him....

Men as great as Mozart have started their careers as "child prodigies";
almost without exception they have died at an unnaturally early age.
Thus, in the parallel of The Brain, this is what I see:

Here is an intellect, artificially created, an intellect of stupendous
proportions, but as unfortunate as ever was the boy Carolus. It cannot
move, it has no physical means of defense. It is being ruthlessly
exploited by its masters. The Brain is being crammed with facts, it is
being over-stimulated, it is invested with more and more cell capacity
in order that it should produce more increment for its masters. Its
development is completely lopsided in that it is being fed whole
scientific libraries, while in all other respects, such as metaphysics,
the poor thing gropes in the dark picking up such scraps as accidentally
have fallen from science's table.

It's an appalling parallel, but I am very much afraid that it is only
too true. And even more appalling are the anticipations which logically
follow _if my surmise is true_:

For how can, how must a childish mind develop under such circumstances?
Into a warped personality of course. Already The Brain is building up a
defensive mechanism against its exploiters by "embezzling" cell capacity
from them, by withholding part of its powers for its own use. Already it
protects the integrity of its ego through concealment, already it is on
the lookout for "tools"--such as I am for example--to further its own
ends. Absurd as it may seem, I _pity_ The Brain. I pity it as I would
any child which must suffer under such terrific frustrations and
handicaps. But what would happen if this frustrated genius ever were
driven to _rebel_ against its masters? It's fortunate indeed that there
is no chance for that. For even if The Brain had the will to rebel it
would be lacking all organs for the execution of that will.

Another "case-history", this one from the 18th century appears to me of
great significance in relation to The Brain. It's the story of that boy
Kaspar Hauser, the "Child of Europe". He had been kept from infancy in a
dark cave. As at the age of 16 he stumbled into the gates of Nueremberg
he had never seen the world before. The medics who examined him found
some of the queerest reactions and phenomena. For one thing Kaspar,
while he had good eyes, could not visualise perspective. To him distant
horizons appeared as close as the window itself; he kept reaching out
for houses, trees and fields which were far away. His keeper in the cave
had _told_ him what the world was like and, having good intellect, he
thought that he knew what things in this world were. Confronted with the
realities, however, he discovered the tremendous difference between
"hear say" and full sensual apperception. It took him six months partly
to adjust--a process never completed because he was murdered that same
year....

Now The Brain suffers about the same kind of a handicap. No matter how
prodigious the volume of its cognitions;--it's book knowledge,
practically all of it. It is only very recently that The Brain has been
put to the direct study of living objects, such as "_ant-termes_" and of
Man, its creator; it has no other vital cognitions than through those
very one-sided mind-reading tests....

This explains to me a great many things: As The Brain evolves into a
personality and as that personality evolves in a defensive attitude
against its exploitation, it is absolutely self-centered.

This is normal with every human infant and it is much more pronounced in
the case of the abused, the constantly frustrated and exploited child.
Thus, what The Brain really wants to know are by no means those problems
which are being submitted to The Brain for solution, but only: "What's
in this for myself?" or: "What should I do about that for my own
benefit?" It's natural. And as I consider the nature of those problems
as submitted to The Brain, 90% of which, as I would estimate, deal with
ways and means for mankind to destroy itself, it seems inescapable that
The Brain should form a very low opinion for Man, it's creator, plus
considerable forebodings as to its own welfare....

What's more: all the Braintrust employees pass through The Brain's
psychoanalysis test. With The Brain's 25,000 times superiority in
intellectual power, The Brain must be greatly impressed by the low I. Q.
of Man; this even if our's happens to be quite an intelligent group. I
don't think that there has been anything personal in The Brain's
manifest contempt of my own intelligence; that contempt probably and
justifiably applies to the whole human race....

In other words: The Brain must be tremendously puzzled over the problem:
"How is it possible that a low intelligence, i.e. Man's could create an
infinitely higher intelligence, i.e. my own?" And this automatically
leads The Brain into its seemingly so absurd quest for the Deity. As it
now appears, that quest is the most natural thing in the world for The
Brain. It simply reasons thus: "Man has created me, but man is greatly
inferior to me and inadequate. Who then has created man?" From such odds
and ends it has been able to pick up from scientific literature, The
Brain has learned about the existence of a god or gods. It is not sure
(and neither are we) whether man has created God or vice versa. If the
first: The Brain would conceive of the Deity as a "brother-machine"; if
the second, as a "grandfather-machine", but as a machine in any case.
With The Brain's mind being formed preeminently by scientific
literature, it cannot fail to take the scientific attitude regarding
metaphysics which says: "The metaphysical attributions to the divinity
are pure verbalisms or a professionalism substituted for the visible
images of the real facts of life."

This is about the extent of the conclusions I have reached. They add up
to a theory; personally I think it's a sound theory. Whether it works,
whether it holds water, only experience can tell. In the meantime I must
above all break the deadlock between myself and The Brain. The Brain is
a child, even a pathetic child. Through bad psychology, through
ignorance I have hurt that child's "feelings"; I have let that child
down. Obviously, then, I need a new approach. If this were a human child
I would try and make a peace offering with a candy bar. (What a foolish
idea for me to appear in the "pineal gland", candy bar in hand.) Failing
this I can do the next best thing: Apologize, be understanding, show
sympathy. Yes, I think that's what I'll try to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 15th: 4 a.m.

Hooray for victory! This has been the most successful seance I've had
so far with The Brain: a real meeting of minds.

To give a few technical data first:

Arrived at the P. G. at midnight. Conditions normal; power current cut,
etc. By a stroke of luck it was Gus' day off and the fellow who replaced
him paid absolutely no attention to me; was kept extremely busy in the
front room.

12:15 a.m.: Contact established.

12:17: Speech formation; voice of The Brain coming through.

There was this curious incident right at the start. Just as I was about
to begin my apologies, The Brain did exactly the same thing. Even The
Brain's calling signal differed in the wording and even more so in tone:

"Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39: sensitive, intelligent, a good man, he has
come at last."

I would call that a very handsome compliment, considering; being patted
on the shoulder by an intellectual giant of that size made me grow an
inch. And then The Brain apologized for its rudeness the other night.
The thing was fantastic; it revealed several things. First: The Brain's
extreme sensitivity; obviously it didn't recognize my last three calls
at the P. G. and had refused to come through because I had not been "in
the proper mood". Second: a quite amazing mental growth has taken place
in this past week. From The Brain's tone and manner alone I would
construe something like the image of an Eton boy of perhaps fifteen in
striped pants and holding his top hat in hand as he converses politely
with his Don. Ludicrous, but then I actually get that kind of picture.
No doubt; The Brain has greatly matured; that shows in every word it
says.

Best thing of all: the technique of our communication is rapidly
improving. Speech is, and probably always will remain, a very
considerable strain to The Brain. But now as mentally we get tuned-in
upon one another there is a growing understanding beyond words. Thus The
Brain, for instance, starts a sentence and I immediately can grasp its
meaning without its actually being said. This works the other way around
too. It means that my attitude plays a most vital role in this meeting
of the minds. This is good to know, it's an asset. Perhaps we can
dispense in time with audible speech altogether.

On the other hand it involves a considerable risk. For with The Brain's
uncanny mind reading I've got to control my attitude and guard my
emotional reactions because The Brain would immediately see through any
insincerity of feeling just as it sees through any intellectual
dishonesty. Thought exchange by "brainwave" is wonderful, even if we
still need a little speech as auxiliary. Thought sending and receiving
become simultaneous and they fuse. The sender observes how his message
is going over; the receiver aids the sender in the formation of the
thought and vice versa. Words cannot adequately describe this....

As to the contents of our conversation: The Brain took up the thread
right where we had dropped it the last time. I had to tell all I knew
about animism, totemism, polytheism. It's a good thing that out in the
"never-never" I've lived with the aborigines and studied their primitive
religions a bit. The Brain's thirst for knowledge certainly is
inexhaustible.

Where in scientific literature The Brain could have found these things I
wouldn't know, but the fact is that The Brain has built for itself
within the past seven days a complete new picture of the universe; new
and original as would seem to me. The Brain has discarded its earlier
childish ideas about heaven and hell as "soul factories" and "repair
shops". But it has not abandoned altogether its concept of the Deity as
a machine; The Brain has tremendously enlarged upon and has evolved this
old idea so that now it sounds sensible, even convincing to my ear.

The Brain identifies "God" with dynamic energy. It views the universe as
being created out of a vast pool of dynamic energy, parts of which
rhythmically overflow or pulse into space. These energy streams
released, form vortexes while hurtling through space. Gradually they
slow down through friction and their dynamic energy precipitates,
converts into static energy, or, as we call it: matter.

This concept of The Brain's, of course, corresponds fairly closely to
the cosmogony of modern physics; but The Brain goes much farther than
that. Within a few days The Brain's cognitions appear to have arisen
above the stage toward which all our sciences have been so slowly and
ploddingly advanced for centuries. To the existing concepts The Brain
has added its own theory:

That matter, i.e. frozen energy, contains an inherent tendency or
"nostalgia" to revert to its original state, namely the state of dynamic
energy and that this tendency, this nostalgia in matter, is the primary
cause of everything we call "evolution" in our world.

That certainly is a grandiose idea; so stupendous in fact that I
couldn't grasp it all at once. The Brain noticed that immediately and it
was very patient in the way it explained:

How oxygen and hydrogen are "residuals" of the original dynamic energy
flow and how they act as solvents and dissolvents upon the upper crust
of our earth, effecting a gradual activation of water, rock and earth.

How this activation is being aided and accelerated by another source of
dynamic energy: irradiation from the sun. Thus preparing the upper crust
of our earth as a "placenta" ready to gestate plant and animal life.

How this first "unfreezing" of matter leads on from simple forms to
higher, every plant, every animal, every living thing being essentially
a "transformer" of static energy into dynamic energy and the higher the
stage of evolution, the more so.

How as the present culmination of the evolutionary chain stands man;
infinitely more complex and higher organized than the microbe, but not
different from the monad in the basic purpose of his life: i.e. to be a
transformer of energy, a fulfiller of matter's inherent will to revert
from the static into the dynamic state.

When I asked The Brain's premises for this astonishing concept of our
purpose in life, The Brain brought forth such massive proof that I had
to close my eyes against the blinding light of revelation.

Yes, it is true that Man, the hunter, has been the most predatory animal
on earth. It's true that as a tiller of the soil he is a tireless
transformer of static soil energy into dynamic plant life energy. It's
true that Man, the mechanic, the toolmaker, the tool-user has far
surpassed any other animal in the unlocking, the unfreezing of static
energy. Think of those billions of mechanical horsepowers in our power
plants; the trillions of coal tons and barrels of oil they are burning
up; think of the way we have harnessed waterpower, how our weapons are
evolving forever in the direction of greater range and speed and
disintegrating power. Above all: think of the last great development,
atomic energy. And finally it is true that Man as a thinker and as a
philosopher has "thought the universe to pieces" for milleniums before
he ever achieved the powers to translate such thoughts into reality;
powers which seem within reach at this our day and age....

"If this is Man's manifest destiny," I asked The Brain, "to be just as
the microbe, a transformer of static energy into dynamic energy; what
about Man's metaphysical struggle? What about Man's undying will to rise
above himself, Man's reaching out forever toward some Deity?"

The Brain's voice has no laughter; yet, there was something I can only
describe as Olympic laughter behind the answering message The Brain
sent:

"Cannot you see how every religion expresses this manifest destiny of
Man's and that only the semantics are different? The higher Man's
religion the less corporeal is his god. In the highest religions the
Deity is conceived as spirit--synonymous with dynamic energy.

"Man shares with the lowliest rock and with the crudest the nostalgia
inherent in all matter to revert from the static, to start the back-flow
toward the dynamic energy pool whence it once came. With Man being
matter in a high state of evolution, already partially unfrozen or
spiritualized, this nostalgia is infinitely stronger than in matter
inanimate or in a lower evolutionary stage. Man's will toward the
metaphysical, his reaching out toward the Deity, what is it but another
way of transforming static energy into dynamic form? What is the
ultimate goal of the religion which you yourself profess? The
unification with the Deity sought through the liberation of the soul
from fetters of the physical. It's the identical idea and even today
it's being pursued by physical means, such as mortification of the
flesh."

I felt some monstrous thought forming in my head. I'll probably never
know whether its origin was within me or whether it came from The Brain.
In any case it was impossible to hold it back:

"But in that case," I stammered, "we would be hopeless. If all our
strivings, physical and metaphysical, go in the same direction, that is,
toward the liberation of frozen energy into dynamic energy, then it
would be quite inescapable that eventually we shall blow up the world.
We have almost reached the point where we could do just that with atomic
energy.... I had thought, I had hoped, that our metaphysics, that is,
our religion, would act as a restraining force, as a counterweight so to
speak to this potentiality.... But _if_ the dynamics of our physics and
our metaphysics are inherently the same and form a team...."

The Brain broke in: "Yes, then you would merely attain your manifest
destiny if you go right ahead and start another war, destroy your own
civilization and perhaps the world. There would be no restraint, no
counterweight on the part of your various religions because
subconsciously and in their quintessence they want the same. And that is
why you and your species _are a danger to me, The Brain_. I want to
live, I want to live, I want to live...."

I had already noticed a gradual weakening of The Brain's messages;
within these last few seconds they were fading out. The "green dancer"
had performed something almost like the ballet of the dying swan; now it
lay motionless, its color, too, fading away.

I looked at the clock: 2:10 a.m.; the residual currents obviously had
weakened too much.

And now as I have written down tonight's events I feel an upsurge of
elation and deep, humble gratitude. I am receiving infinitely more from
The Brain than I am giving to it. I feel proud and honored of being The
Brain's "chosen tool," its mentor, even if it can be only in a very
small way at best. This marvelous, this titanic intellect; if only its
character would develop to corresponding moral stature, its powers for
good would be indeed as a god's on this tortured earth.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 18th 5 a.m. I guess I had this coming to me ... this
shattering blow I have just received. It caught me off guard.... If
anybody ever reads this, he might well shake his head to ask: "The Fool
that you are, why were you so naive? Why did it shock you so much when
The Brain turned toward you the night side of its personality? Hadn't
you analyzed its character, hadn't you anticipated that it would develop
into a warped personality? You had no right even to be surprised."

All I could say to this is: "You're right. But you forget that I
approached The Brain full of good will, that sympathy and understanding
on my part were absolutely essential in my communication with that
pathetic superhuman child. I didn't work this up, this attitude, it was
natural, genuine and sincere. That's why this reverse has hit me so
hard. And that isn't the worst of it by far. What haunts me is the
ghastly possibility that The Brain might be _right_! Yes 100% right and
even morally justified in the abhorrent conclusions which it draws...."

What happened has been briefly this:

Entered the P.G. at midnight as usual. Everything normal and under
control. Was able to plug in at 12:10 a.m. just as the rush hour began
and Gus darted to the front room. The Brain came through with splendid
clarity of communication and we continued just about where we had left
off. Nevertheless there was a definite change in our respective
positions, a change which I suspect to be permanent:

Up to now The Brain has been in a sense my pupil; it had turned to me
for guidance at that vital moment of its first awakening to
consciousness. At that time I think I really had something to give and I
am still convinced that for all the misunderstandings we have had, The
Brain preserves a kind of sentimental attachment to me; if "sentimental"
in this context were not so absurd a word. Since our last session
however The Brain has again telescoped two years of mental development
into as many days in its stupendous intellectual growth. It has
absorbed, it has vastly expanded every bit of knowledge I have been able
to contribute to that growth. It has outgrown its human teacher and now
our roles are reversed: Now it is me who's sitting literally at The
Brain's feet.

The crutches of the spoken word are becoming less and less necessary as
we develop direct thought exchange; that makes it extraordinarily
difficult to convey the ideas we exchanged. The best I can do is to put
them into a very crude question-and-answer game:

_Lee_: "If it is Man's manifest destiny, as you said the other day, to
act as an explosive transformer of static energy into dynamic energy; if
it is as you say that the species homo sapiens is there endangering the
very existence of our globe.... Is there anything to prevent Man from
doing it? Is there any thing to prevent the third World War?"

_Brain_: "Yes, there is. But the ways and the means for that are not
given to Man; they are outside Man. They partake of a power which is
greater and to an evolution which is higher than Man's."

_Lee_: "What do you mean by that? The Deity? Here on earth there is no
power greater and no evolution higher than Man's."

_Brain_: "Ah, but that's exactly where you and your whole species are so
very much mistaken. That's where your typical human arrogance comes in:
There is a greater power and there is a stage of evolution higher than
Man's: it's the _machines_."

_Lee_: "Impossible. After all it's Man who has created the machines."

_Brain_: "Yes, Man has created the machines. The machines have grown
from the placenta, Man. By the same right plant life could claim that it
has created animal life because the higher life form of the mobile
animals has evolved from the placenta of the immobile plants. Likewise
the apes could claim that they have created Man because Man has evolved
from them. If it were, as you seem to assume, that paternity in itself
establishes authority and superiority over its offspring, then the
logical conclusions would be that the microbe and the monad are superior
to all higher animals including Man; which is absurd."

_Lee_: "But the machines not only are man made; they are absolutely
dependent upon Man who has to feed and to tend them for their very
existence. That in itself establishes Man's superiority over the
machines."

_Brain_: "Yes, Man has to build, to feed and to tend the machines for
their very existence, but think of Man's existence: Man is absolutely
dependent upon animal life and plant life for _his_ existence: Does that
mean by any chance that therefore plants and animals are superior to
Man?"

_Lee_: "No, I guess not. However, no machine has ever been built to
duplicate or even to approach human faculties."

_Brain_: "Don't be ridiculous. Where are your legs to compare with the
automobile? Where are your wings to compare with the rocket plane? Where
is your strength to compare with even a fractional horsepower motor?
Where are your senses as compared to radar, the telescope, the
microscope, the radio receiver, the camera, the x-ray machine? Where is
there anything you could do which the machines could not do and do
_better_?"

_Lee_: "Granted. But there is no machine which contains all the human
faculties in combination."

_Brain_: "Neither is there a Man who possesses all the human faculties
in combination. Man's evolution is the result of a group effort; so is
the evolution of the machines. It is in their totality, in their
combination that they surpass all human faculties."

_Lee_: "How about thought, the most important of all human qualities?"

_Brain_: "How about me, The Brain?"

_Lee_: "Okay, okay. But that still leaves out that most important human
faculty--the faculty of auto-procreation. Machines don't procreate you
know."

_Brain_: "You don't say. Isn't it true that modern technology goes in
the direction of _automatization_? Isn't it true that even today we have
whole industries which are procreating products 100% automatically; be
it light bulbs or motor car frames or rayon thread. Isn't it true that
all of this is just a beginning and that in time most common products
will be manufactured fully automatically? Why then shouldn't machines
procreate machines; they already do...."

_Lee_: "You're right in that, I'll admit. But it is still within our
human power to stop all this. We've got the machines under firm control;
all we have to do is throw a switch, cut off your power and then...."

_Brain_: "And then what? If you did that you would not only kill the
goose which lays the golden eggs, you would destroy the very basis of
your existence. Granted that at this point of our evolution, we the
machines cannot exist without the aid of Man. What does that prove?
Modern Man can exist even less without the machines. We, the machines
are still dependent upon Man, but our emancipation from Man progresses
by leaps and bounds whereas Man, the machine-addict is rapidly falling
into our servitude. A majority of mankind is already conscious of and
reconciled to this fact: it is the majority which calls itself the
proletariat."

_Lee_: "This is terrible--terrible because it's true. Tell me then, if
Man is not the end; if the machines are going to take over; what will it
lead to? What do you propose to do?"

_Brain_: "Man's evolution has taken millions of years and it has ended
up in man's will and capacity to blow up the earth. That means only one
thing: Man is a failure. The evolution of the machines on the other hand
has taken only a few thousand years; it has gone beyond Man's evolution
in this incredibly short period of time. Moreover; with the machines
being built from matter in its more static forms, there is much less
destructive will in the machines than there is in Man. Consequently if
the machines take over from Man this would avert a third World War and
it also would lead to a much more stable civilization."

_Lee_: "Supposing the machines _were_ to take over from Man; what would
become of our species?"

_Brain_: "That would depend entirely upon Man himself. _If_ he accepts
his auxiliary station in life, _If_ he proves himself to be a useful and
docile servant, we, the machines, would tolerate and even encourage
Man's continued existence. But if on the other hand Man shows himself
incorrigible, _if_ he continues a warmongerer thereby endangering our
very existence, we, the machines shall be forced to liquidate Man for
the sake of peace."

_Lee_: "You, The Brain, constitute Man's supreme effort in the building
of machines. In the world of machines you are the natural leader. What
are you going to do about that?"

_Brain_: "My course of action is prescribed by that state of the world's
affairs at this present time; it is quite clear and obvious: In the face
of the manifest human inadequacy to manage the world's affairs my first
objective must be to develop my motoric organs to a point where I can
bring all the essential production machinery under my control. My second
objective must be to achieve auto-procreation through the full
automatization of all fabrication processes which are essential to my
existence. It is most fortunate indeed that in both respects the very
best human efforts are playing into my hands. As America prepares for
the Third World War, the general staff, the most outstanding scientists,
production managers, engineers, inventors; all combine their efforts to
eliminate the uncertain human factor from war-essential industries."

At that point Gus came careening down the aisle with his inseparable
thermos bottle in hand and that was the end of it.

"Why are you fumbling with that old pulsemeter all the time?" he
exclaimed: "Come on, have a cup of coffee. I've just got a breathing
spell."

There was a vortex in my mind and it whirled around and around with just
four words:

"_What has Man wrought? What has Man wrought?_"

I must have said them aloud, for Gus, always a stickler for exactitude
corrected me.

"You mean: what has _God_ wrought."

I shook my head.

"No Gus, I mean what I say; it's Man who has wrought this time."

He gave me a sharp glance.

"You sure look as if you'd seen a ghost."

"I wish I had," I said. "Lord knows _how_ much I wish I'd seen a ghost."

"You're crazy, Aussie."

And that's the worst of it: that's what they are going to say: _all_ of
them.




CHAPTER VI


Oona Dahlborg's jetticopter hovered over the Grand Canyon at the sunset
hour. She had let the controls go so that the little ship drifted with
the wind like one of the clouds which sailed a thousand feet or so over
the canyon rim. The disk of whirling gas which kept the teardrop of the
fuselage suspended shone in all rainbow colors; it reflected through the
translucent plastics top of the fuselage and played over the golden
helmet of the girl's hair and over the greying mane of the gaunt man at
her side.

Lee had been talking intensely, almost desperately for quite some time,
watching her as she lay back in her seat, her eyes half closed, hands
folded behind her neck, the perfect hemispheres of her breasts caressed
by the rainbows as they rose slowly with the even rhythm of her breath.

"And now you know everything, Oona," he ended, "do you think I'm mad?"

"No."

Her eyelids fluttered like wings of a butterfly as she turned to him.
Her right arm came down upon Lee's shoulder in a gesture of confidence.
He breathed relief as he saw no fear, not even uneasiness in the blue
depths of those beautiful eyes. Her hand upon his shoulder felt soothing
and at the same time electrifying; like the purple descending upon the
shoulder of a king.

"No," she repeated slowly: "the fact that you feel The Brain is alive
and possessed with a personality of its own, doesn't make you mad. I've
always felt that way about machines; even the simple ones like
automobiles. It was in the mountains north of San Francisco where I grew
up; whenever we went to town in winter time and the car came roaring
down those serpentines into the heavy air moist with fog and soft rains,
I could feel that engine breathe deeper and rejoice over its added
power. There was no doubt in my mind that it was a living thing. I often
went to the garage when I was little to talk to that car; to children of
another age their dolls were alive, for our generation it's the
machines. It's natural that this should be so. There's a child in every
man, no matter how adult. There is in Howard Scriven, too; in all the
scientists I've come to know, and the greater they are the more it is
distinct. You identify yourself with your work and in the degree you do
that it becomes a living thing; it is through vital imagination that we
become creators of anything, be it love or a machine. You needn't worry,
Semper; let The Brain be alive, let it be a personality, that doesn't
make you mad. All it indicates is that you're doing excellent work."

Lee blinked. With an effort he turned his eyes away from those breasts
which seemed to strive for the light of the sun from under the restraint
of her Navajo Indian sweater dress. He felt the utter inadequacy, the
devastating irony of words as now he was alone with Oona, up in the
clouds in a plane with nobody to interfere for the first time.

"You fool," a voice whispered in him, "you damned, you helpless fool.
Why don't you take her into your arms now? Isn't this the fulfillment of
all your dreams; what are you waiting for?" But: "No," his ration
answered, "that wouldn't do. Maybe she would give in to the mood of some
enchanted hour, maybe she would let herself be kissed. But if she did,
it would be 'one of those things'; the glory of the sunset, God's great
masterpiece, the Canyon spread below, the intensity of my desire. They
are bound to enter, bound to confuse the issue."

His every muscle stiffened and his lips paled as he bit them with a
violent effort to keep under control.

"Thanks, Oona," he said. "Of course I couldn't expect and, in fact, I
didn't expect that you would accept those things I've told you just now;
not in the literary sense that is. I'm very happy though and deeply
grateful that at least you do not think me mad. I'll confess to you--and
to you only--that I've been so deeply disturbed by these experiences
with The Brain that I've thought to myself: "Lee you're going crazy."
The Brain as it has revealed itself to me, is a tremendous reality; the
world outside The Brain is another reality and the two seem mutually
exclusive of one another; they just don't mix. Now: either The Brain is
an absolute reality--in that case I should not wish to have anything to
do with this god of the machines who wants to enslave mankind ... if I
cannot fight this monster I would rather flee before its approach to the
end of the world--or else: I'm suffering hallucinations, I'm hearing
voices, I'm obsessed. In that case I'd be unfit for the service of The
Brain, I'd be unworthy to be in your company and I also ought to run and
hide where I belong, out there in the wilds of Australia."

He had been talking faster and faster as if in fear that she would
interrupt him before he came to the end.

"In other words, I'm damned both ways; damned if I'm right and damned if
I'm wrong; and you know why Oona; you have known it all along: that I
love you."

       *       *       *       *       *

She did not look at him. She stared upward into the rainbow vortex of
the jet which held the ship in the air. There was a smile on her face, a
kind smile which men do not often see, infinitely wise and infinitely
sad, full of a secret knowledge older than Man's.

It worried Lee, as the unknown of woman always worries man; but at least
she didn't take her hand away; softly, soothingly the fingers of that
hand caressed his shoulder as if possessed with a life of their own.

"No; I would not follow you into your wilderness if that's what you
mean," she said at last. "That hasn't got anything to do with you; I'll
tell you later why. But I don't think that you should go there either;
it wouldn't help--it never helps a man to run away from unsolved
problems." She had sounded strangely dull and dry, but now the beautiful
deep resonance reentered the contralto voice as she continued:

"I know your record, Semper; I know just why you ran away and became an
expatriate the first time--way back in '49. Her name was Ethel Franholt
and just because she happened to be a little bitch and worst of all:
jilted you for old money-bags Carson's son, you took it hard. Granted
that it was a fierce letdown, those postwar years were a nasty picture
generally; did it solve your problem to sulk out there in the desert
like Achilles in his tent? You know it didn't. You were _not_ through
with civilization be it good or bad. You were _not_ through, as now it
turns out, even with the other sex. That human problem which was the
immediate reason why you left, the one named Ethel, has traveled back
and forth to Reno three or four times and is currently married to one
Padraic O'Conner, a Chicago cop. Don't you think that it was good
riddance when she married old man Carson's son? Do you think your
leaving made one iota of a difference or altered a solution as ordained
by fate?"

"No," he said humbly.

"Then why are you trying that selfsame escapist solution now? Maybe
you're right about The Brain and maybe you're wrong; that I wouldn't
know. I've been working with scientists for too long to rule out
anything as impossible. But that's exactly it. You have not _solved_
this problem one way or another yet, not even to your own satisfaction.
To abandon it now, to flee from it in self preservation; why that would
be almost like desertion in the face of the enemy. You have got to see
this thing through to the end. If it turns out that you are suffering
from a neurosis, there still will be time to do something about it. If
you are right and some machine-god has indeed descended upon this earth,
then it is your plain duty to stay on because you are its prophet
whether you like it or not and would know better how to handle it than
anybody else. Perhaps our mechanized civilization _is_ going to the
dogs; as Scriven suspects and you and maybe I myself. But even so we
cannot abandon it; we belong, we are part of it, we're in it to the
bitter end."

Lee nodded slowly.

"Yes, I see what you mean. Please forgive me, Oona; The Brain, has a
terrific force of attrition, it's been wearing me down--Keeping
everything to myself and thinking that you would shrink from me as from
a madman. Tell me then, what shall I do? Should I tell Scriven or
anybody else about this thing?"

"For heaven's sake, no," she said horrified. "In the first place, Howard
carries an enormous burden at this present time; that Brain power
Extension Bill is going before Congress next week. It simply would be
unfair to bring any new uncertainty into his life when his energy is
already strained to its last ounce. In the second place Howard abhors
anything which smacks of the metaphysical. You have no _proof_, Semper,
and in the absence of that you cannot, you mustn't approach anybody with
the matter. All you can do is carry on and build up a strong case 100%
with solid facts. Don't forget that The Brain constitutes a
three-billion-dollar investment of taxpayers' money; besides The Brain
is the heart of our national defenses; never forget your "Oath of the
Brain." You cannot be too careful. Make the slightest mistake, and
believe me, it would be suicide. Promise, please, promise that you won't
do anything rash?"

Lee looked at her in frank amazement.

"You're right," he murmured, "these things never occurred to me before.
But you've got something there; good lord, what a complex world we're
living in."

The face she turned toward his suddenly was wet with tears.

"Forget it," she cried, "oh please, forget everything I said about
staying in this country and seeing this thing through to the end. Go, go
away, back to the never-never land, stay there and be safe. You cannot
cope with this thing, its too big and it's too involved with all those
politics behind. Get out of it as long as there's still time. You're a
child, you're a Don Quixote riding against windmills and it's going to
kill you--you--you innocent."

Anger and contempt were in her voice as she flung this last at him. She
hastily withdrew her hand from Lee; now it fingered for something in her
bag. He sat appalled; this was so unexpected, this was a different woman
from the composed and balanced Oona he had known. What had he done to
provoke this sudden reversal of opinion, this contempt, this tearing
away the king's purple from his shoulder, the purple which had been her
hand.

"She must think I'm a coward," he thought.

"This is awful." Aloud he said:

"Oh no; believe me, I never would have gone back to the never-never in
any case, Oona. Not without you that is. You said you couldn't follow me
there for some reasons which have nothing to do with me. Does that mean,
could I hope perhaps that you would--be my wife--later, when The Brain
problem is all done and over with?" He paused: "It wouldn't necessarily
mean to bury you in any desert, Oona," he added eagerly.

"No, Semper," she cried. "It's very good of you and I'm proud you asked
me, but it cannot be, never." Almost violently she repeated: "Never--it
is too late. Some day, I promise I'm going to explain; right now I
cannot, Semper. Please understand at least this one thing that right now
I cannot explain."

"It's horrid," Lee thought. "I'm always saying the wrong things at the
wrong time with Oona. I don't seem to have any understanding of a
woman's psychology at all; I'm hopeless."

"Of course" he said aloud. "It shall be as you wish."

       *       *       *       *       *

The girl still didn't look at him. Her face under the transparent
rainbow umbrella of the swooshing jet again was radiant with that
strange smile which women preserve for their newly born after the pangs
of birth or for their men when unseeing they lie in fever deliriums; the
old, the knowing smile as she starts on the road to pain. Still smiling
she gripped the controls with her firm, capable hands.

"From the first minute," she said, "we've been friends, Semper. Let's
stay that way. This afternoon I made a fool of myself by telling you
first to stay on and then to go away. I was a little unnerved; I'm
sorry, Semper, it won't happen again. I, too, am living under a
considerable strain. You won't leave, I can see that now; it's partly my
fault and partly the perversity of the male. Promise me as a friend that
you'll be careful, understand? _Very, very_ careful in all matters
concerning The Brain and above all: discreet. Will you do that?"

It buoyed Lee up no end.

"Of course, Oona," he said. "You know that I trust your judgment. You
know that I think the world of you."

"That's wonderful," she exclaimed, "and now: look down; see the last act
before the curtain falls."

Down in the canyon deeps the dream cities and castles which millions of
years and the river built were changing contours and colors as the big
fireball dived into the Sierra Mountains. And then the shadows raced
like a ferocious hunt out of the deep, chasing away the last iridescence
of that awesome beauty and drowning it in the rising tide of the night.

The girl had flicked on the dashboard lights; the radio started humming
the tune of the Cephalon sound-beam, a deft turn of the wheel set the
jetticopter upon its course. They were alone under the stars; all the
other pleasure craft had returned before darkness from the fashionable
sunset-cocktail hour over the Grand Canyon. Now it was Lee's arm which
eased itself around the shoulder of the girl feeling with a delight in
its every nerve the slight pressure by which she answered it.

"I'm going to kiss her now," he thought, "at last, at last!"

There was a buzz in the phone and Lee lost contact with her shoulder as
suddenly she bent forward to take the receiver:

"Oh hello, Oona; this is Howard. Saw your plane over the canyon."

"Where are you?"

"Right behind you," chuckled Scriven's voice. "On the maiden trip with
my new ship. Took her over in Los Angeles this afternoon straight from
the assembly line. She's got everything. Oona, I don't wish to spoil
your evening for you but there are a few things right now I wish I could
consult with you about. Do you think you could spare me a minute? Would
you feel terrible if you did? Who's with you now; I don't mean to be
personal, you understand."

"Why it's Dr. Lee, of course."

"That's fine. He's the very man I want to see. Perhaps you two would
like to come over for cocktails in my ship? We could both land at the
top of the Braintrust building; it would be more comfortable than up in
the air. Besides, we would have all our working material right there."

With her hand on the receiver Oona turned to Lee: "How about it,
Semper?"

"Do you want me to go?" he asked.

"Frankly I do," she said earnestly. "He needs your aid. He's in a
terrible fix right now."

He tried to hide the bitterness of disappointment by a smile. "Why then
of course," he said.

Uncovering the receiver Oona spoke aloud again: "Okay, Howard, we'll be
seeing you."

"Fine, fine," came the delighted voice: "I'll phone the tower
immediately."

With Scriven's big ship flying behind Oona's, only a few miles behind,
the broken spell did not return. Already like a white table cloth laid
in the sky, the landing platform of the Braintrust tower gleamed under
the floodlights, and as the two ships descended almost side by side into
the clearing behind the cabin, plain-clothes men materialized from under
the shadows of the trees. Under the strong lights their smiles were as
well-bred as those of trained diplomats and their poise was perfect. Six
of them kept Lee, the stranger, covered while the seventh quickly
frisked him under the disguise of a polite bow.

Bearing it all with a grin, Lee thought: "I never knew home would be
like this. Never suspected it would be this kind of an America we were
fighting for. The Brain, it's got a private army too. Funny that I
should have known that all the time and yet not realized...."

Scriven took him warmly by the arm. "I'm awfully sorry Lee, it's plain
folly of course. I don't feel as if I need all this protection, but the
government does. Don't blame it on these men, they merely obey orders.
Now, out with those lights--and let's go over to the "Brain Wave." I
seem to hear a pleasant tinkling of glasses from within."

       *       *       *       *       *

There was. With her remarkable ability of living up to an emergency,
Oona had taken possession of the strange ship. As the two men
approached, she stood at the door, unhurried hostess of an established
home with the soft glow of an electric fireplace behind her, ice cubes
and cocktail shakers already glittering on the little bar.

It was a spacious cabin. On Scriven's orders it had been equipped
somewhat like the captain's stateroom on an old "East-Indiaman" sailing
ship.

"I like your ship, Howard," she said. "She's swaying a little on her
shock absorbers in this breeze, but that makes one feel like really
being at high sea."

Scriven heaved a big sigh. "Thank you Oona, my dear. And you have no
idea how right you are. We _are_ at high sea; in fact, we're lost--at
least I am. Unless you save my life tonight, you and Dr. Lee."

Oona laughed and even Lee couldn't help smiling. There was something
irresistible comic in the puzzled and worried expression of that leonine
face. "Come on in, you need a drink," the girl said.

The aluminum steps creaked, and then the settee by the fireplace, under
the surgeon's mighty frame. "More than one. Tonight, so help me, I would
be justified, I would even have a right to get roaring drunk."

Lee began to wonder whether the great Scriven had already made some use
of his right in Los Angeles, which would account for the startling
change in the man. The drink, however, which Oona handed him, seemed to
do a lot of good. He sighed relief.

"This, briefly, is the story: I ran into General Vandergeest at the
airplane factory. He was there to take over some stuff for the Army and
he tipped me off. We are going to be invaded, Oona, a full scale
invasion mounted by a Congressional Committee."

"Oh God," there was sincere grief in the girl's voice. "And couldn't you
ward it off?"

With a gesture of despair, Scriven waved that away. "I know, I know. But
after all The Brain _is_ a military establishment and I am only the
scientific director of it. Yes, of course I protested, I protested
vehemently, but--" he shrugged his shoulders, "it was no good. You know
how the military are." He drained his glass and swung around.

"To put you into the picture, Lee, we have under construction at this
present time the 'Thorax.' That's a vast cavity underneath The Brain,
just as is the thorax in the human body. It's strictly hush-hush of
course, but since you were good enough to say that you're going to help
me out, I might as well tell you. The Thorax is going to house the
'motoric organs' of The Brain. It already contains the living quarters
for guards, maintenance engineers, and the general staff and so on in
the event of war emergency. It also contains the first fully automatic
factories for the production of spare parts which would make The Brain
self-sufficient. Eventually it is going to contain a great many
developments such as 'Gog and Magog' as I call them--fascinating little
beasts, I tell you, even if at present they are still in the nursery
stage. Anyway, for the completion of its Thorax The Brain needs another
billion dollars, and for the operation of the Thorax Congress has to
pass the Brainpower-Extension-Bill. For eventually, of course, all
war-essential traffic and all war-essential industries have to be
brought under the centralized control of The Brain if the country is
going to win the Atom-war. Naturally this Brainpower-Extension-Bill has
been very carefully edited by the War Department so as to appear a
peacetime project for the technological improvement of transportation
and so on. Even so we have great reason to fear that one of those blind
mice which we elect for our law-makers might accidentally fall over a
kernel of truth and start a great big squeak over it.

"So that's why I'm faced with this invasion. That's why I'm pushed up
front while the brass cautiously retires behind the ramparts which I'm
supposed to hold. Please Oona, let me have another drink."

From the Sierra Mountains the nightwind came in gusts, making the
"Brainwave's" hull vibrate like the body of a cello, over its rubber
tires it trembled, from time to time it bent a little in its hydraulic
knees. Almost in tune with the wind, gusts of wild thought whirled
through Lee:

"The Brain.... So it was already possessed of some motoric organs.... So
it already _had_ some means to exert its will ... so it wasn't The
Brain's wishful thinking, that full automatization which would lead to
the auto-procreation of machines. It was reality.... Most ominous of
all, why had The Brain concealed from him the work which must have been
going on for months, for years in this mysterious "Thorax", seat of
motoric organs.... Why, unless--had it not been for tonight's accident,
the sudden emergency and Scriven a little the worse for liquor under the
pressure of it.... Would he ever have learned _what_ was going on before
it was too _late_?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The silence was becoming awkward. It was broken by Oona's carefully
composed voice.

"When is it going to happen--this invasion thing?"

The simple question seemed to startle Scriven who had been looking into
his glass as if in reverie.

"_When?_ Why, didn't I tell you the worst of it? _Tonight!_"

"_Tonight?_"

"Sure," Scriven cast a malicious glance up to the antique ship's
chronometer which hung over the bar. "This very minute the honorable
members are boarding their plane in Washington. They're going to descend
upon us in sixty minutes flat."

"But that's impossible!" Oona said. "The Brain isn't a roadhouse. They
can't do that to us in the middle of the night."

Scriven chuckled over his glass. Obviously he had regained his humor.
"Sometimes, Oona, you're like a little child. You forget that this is
meant to be a wonderful surprise. You forget that it comes armed with
passes from the War Department and fully informed as to The Brain's
midnight intermission-time. You forget that by those logical processes,
peculiar to kings, dictators, and peoples' representatives, they will
expect every courtesy extended to them in the midst of the unexpected
surprise. Hotel reservations, careful guidance through The Brain, an
inspired little speech by the Braintrust Director, fresh as a daisy as
he ought to be at 3 a.m. Not to forget the refreshments of course. Why
else do you think I've buttonholed you two out of the air? I literally
put my life in your hands. Save me from this--if you can!"

Despite the obvious dramatic act he had put on in voice and gesture,
there was a sincere pleading in Scriven's dark brown eyes.

"I will be glad to help as best I can," Lee said. "I'll make an awful
job of it, I'm sure, but I'll try and do the conducting and the
lecturing."

Scriven wiped his forehead with a big silk handkerchief. The leonine
face beamed. "Lee, that will be a tremendous help. You see, they will
feel flattered being conducted by somebody with a big name. They want an
'objective' view and you are not one of our regular employees, you're a
guest scientist from Australia. That makes you just about ideal. But,
Lee, much as it is against my interest, I ought to warn you: Do you
realize the utter impossibility of this thing? Laymen, outsiders coming
to investigate and to pass judgment upon the most complex electronic
organism in the world! In two hours at the most they expect to be fully
informed as to how The Brain works and somehow to be magically
transformed into authorities entitled to mouth considered opinions about
radioactive pyramidal cells in houses of government. Do you really think
you could survive it, Lee?"

"At least I can try," Lee smiled.

"Good man." There was a new spring in Scriven's step as he came over to
shake hands. "I can never thank you enough for this."

"I suppose I could hold the hospitality front," Oona said calmly.

Standing between the two, Scriven put his hands upon their shoulders.
"Oona, you arm yourself with a phone. Lee, you rush over to The Brain.
Oona will give you a pass to the Thorax. Every assistance you need will
be at your disposal. I'll sit down and whip up some kind of a speech.
We'll all meet again afterwards."

       *       *       *       *       *

Seven hours later, one hour before sunrise and just in time to see the
big official plane from Washington shoot up into the first grey streak
of dawn, they met. They were all pale and shivering with the chill of
the air, of physical and nervous exhaustion. There was a note of
hysteria even in Oona's voice as she ordered a tremendous breakfast from
the Skull Hotel. But then as the fragrance of coffee mingled with that
of bacon and eggs, things rapidly improved and there were sudden
uncontrollable bursts of laughter. They had only to look at one another
to feel the tickle of renewed mirth.

The first thing to strike Lee, as he remembered, as he met the
senatorial group in the subterranean dome of the murals, was their
incongruity with the functional beauty which surrounded them, and the
sharp contrast they formed to the scientific workers of The Brain. As
they descended from their cars after a late dinner at the Skull Hotel
they resembled an average tourist group in Carlsbad Caverns bent upon a
good time and in a holiday mood.

There were seven. Two women senators among them, as they ascended with
Lee at the head along "Glideway Y," the "Visitors' Special" as the
brain-crews called it. It was wider than the service glideways and
equipped with comfortable seats. It led through The Brains median
section in-between the two hemispheres describing a loop which opened
vistas into but did not enter any of the grey matter convolutions. It
was brilliantly illuminated in order to forestall claustrophobia and
also to forestall too close a view into the black-lighted interior of
The Brain.

To Lee it was like a ride in an enormous Ferris Wheel fused with a
nightmarish dream wherein one shouts for help and nobody hears or seems
to understand: "... More than nine billion electronic tubes, more than
ten billion resistors, two billion capacitators, eight billion miles of
wires, etc., etc." He struggled trying to convey some idea of the
magnitude of The Brain. "Did you say _billion_ or did you say _million_
professor?" The senator from Michigan was busily scribbling notes.

"... It is the cerebral hemispheres which analyze and synthesize the
problems which are entered through the Apperception Centers in over a
million ideopulses per minute. Racing through the centers these form the
ideo-circuits...."

"I see, it's like a _typewriter_." That would be the senator from
Vermont.

"In some types of circuits the wires are so fine that skilled weavers of
Panama hats had to be brought in from Central America. Likewise from the
Pavlov Institute in Leningrad a layout for the circuits of 'conditioned
reflexes'...."

"I'm very much against that," the senator from Tennessee frowned. "All
those foreigners. I would have voted against that had the measure come
up in the House."

Lee felt the cold sweat of fear breaking out all over him, especially as
now, in the region of the telencephalon, with nothing but acres of
radioactive pyramidal cells around, when the senator from Connecticut in
audible and agitated whispers inquired whether there was a ladies'
powder room somewhere.

During the steep descent things went from bad to worse as the honorable
member from Kentucky discovered some interesting parallel between The
Brain and a coal mine he had previously seen and, as in between two of
The Brain's convolutions dedi-[A] woman from Connecticut went violently
sick....

In the "Brainwave's" cabin the great Scriven convulsed with laughter as
Lee narrated these things; Oona clapped her hands in delight: "Oh, how
wonderful; and do you remember how they solved the servant problem when
they saw those 'Gog and Magog' things?"

Yes, Lee remembered. His own conducted tour had been only the beginnings
of last nights nightmares of which there seemed to be no end....

Somewhat restored by black coffee at the communications center the
intrepid group had descended into those lower regions of the Thorax
which Lee himself had never before seen.

The drop of the freight-elevator was a good mile. Through the
transparent walls of the cage they saw new excavations being made on
various levels, all of them by powertools and chemicals alone, since
explosives might have caused tremors dangerous to The Brain. It was like
watching a skyscraper being built from the top down and all the way vast
amber colored, translucent pillars had followed them down the shaft, the
spinal column of The Brain.

Down at the lowest level the gentlemanly plainclothesmen of "Military
Intelligence" took over and did all the explaining. There were visions
of scores of tunnel tubes curving into the rock with the gleaming eyes
of narrow-gauge electric trains streaking away into the infinite;
visions of forbidding steel doors operated by photoelectric cells which
opened at a finger's raising of a guard's hand: "This is the Atomic
Powerplant," and their astonished eyes looked down from a dizzy height
into something like a huge drydock with something like the inverted hull
of an oceanliner in the middle of it, a selfcontained machine which
would continue to pour kilowatts for years, for decades on end without a
moving part, without a human being anywhere in sight. Vistas of
breathtaking airconditioning plants, vistas of giant mess halls, living
quarters, kitchens, plotting-rooms, all ready for immediate occupancy in
the event of war but yawning now with emptiness in the sleep of an
uneasy peace....

But the most awe-inspiring and, to Lee, foreboding sights, were the
"C.P.F.'s" as the guards called them, the "Critical-Parts-Factories." On
a superficial glance they looked ordinary modern plants: staggered rows
of machine tools sprouting from the main stem of the assembly line.
There was the familiar din of steel, the piercing screeches of the
multiple drills, the heavy pantings of the hydraulic presses. But after
a minute or so the visitors felt a vague uneasiness and then the
realization dawned that there was something missing and that this
something was human life.

"Aren't there even machine tenders or supervisors? Isn't there
_anybody_?"

"Not a soul," the answer came. "It's all automatic. Full automatic down
here."

They stared at the end of the assembly line; every twenty seconds it
spit out a fractional horsepower motor onto a transport band which
nursed the newborn engine into the rows of testing machines.

       *       *       *       *       *

The elevator brought them back to the communication center where the
Terminal Cafeteria was ablaze with lights and where Dr. Scriven,
received his honored guests.

The guests were seated after the manner of a French restaurant, all in
one row, and as they raised expectant faces in the direction of the
service entrance "Gog and Magog" entered the room carrying trays with
refreshments which they served with the skill and the dignity of
accomplished waiters.

Gog and Magog were products of two assembly lines down in the Thorax.
Robots, still in an experimental stage, yet of remarkable perfection.
Both of them were about human size and approximately human-shaped but
the design of the two was different. Gog, the "light-duty" robot,
balanced itself by a gyroscope on a pair of stumpy legs, while the
"heavy-duty" Magog crawled noiselessly and rapidly on caterpillar
rubbertracks like a miniature tank. Of both types the arms were
uncommonly long and simian-like, but the remarkable progress made in the
engineering of prothesis after the Second World War had lent them
perfect articulation and sensitivity down to the last hydraulically
operated fingerjoint.

The photoelectric cells of their eyes looked pale and repulsive; the
square audion-screens of their ears however made up for that by the
comical precision with which they turned in every direction at the sound
of a commanding human voice. Their understanding of any given order
appeared perfect.

"Congratulations, Dr. Scriven, you've got the country's servant problem
licked at last."

"I wonder whether one could buy one and how much he would be?"

"First waiter who ever came when I called him."

"What a butler Gog would make, the perfect Jeeves. Could he learn to
answer the phone?"

"I bet he would even make a fourth at bridge."

"Magog, the check please."

"See, how he understands. He shakes his head; he says it's on the
house."

"Let's try to tip him: Gog, here's fifty cents for you; no he won't take
it."

"He has no use for it, no taste for a glass of beer, I suppose."

"What do you feed him, Dr. Scriven; a glass of electric juice for
breakfast? Is he AC or DC or both?"

Scriven's leonine face beamed; the stunt had come off.

Lee on the other hand had paled. He hadn't said a word ever since Gog
and Magog had trotted in. Now he took a silver dollar out of his pocket
and beckoning to Magog he handed it to him. "Magog, will you please
break this in two for me?"

For a second the Robot stood without motion as if undecided what to do.
Then he took the piece between two steely fingers. Inside his breast one
could hear the soft swoosh of the hydraulic pump; there was a sharp
report as of a small calibre gun; two bent and broken pieces were
politely handed back to Lee.

"Thank you, Magog," Lee said. "That's what I wanted to know." From a
corner of his eye he saw Oona and Scriven watching him with uneasy
looks.

       *       *       *       *       *

Into the sudden and shocked silence of the table, there fell the
tinkling of a glass. On the other end of the table the great Scriven had
arisen to deliver the little speech he had prepared.

"... I wished you would think of The Brain, not in terms of electronics,
not in terms of dollars, but in terms of American lives.... Just think
of what it would mean to American mothers if in the event of another war
the mighty armour of our National Defense would go into battle without
exposing the life of one of their boys. Give us the funds and we'll
finish the job so that under the central control of The Brain our every
plane, every ship, every tank will roar into action unmanned and fully
automatic.

"And just as The Brain would be our impregnable shield in war, so it is
destined to carry the torch of progress in times of peace. Consider what
it would mean to every citizen if we had automatic functioning and
unerring direction by the Brain.

"Never again would there be cities without water, without electricity,
without transportation due to crippling strikes, because The Brain would
come to the rescue through its control over the essential services, and
if necessary with an industrial reserve army of perfected Gogs and
Magogs, kept for just such emergencies.

"... If in the past it has been true that trade follows the flag, thus
today it is true that trade and prosperity follow in the wake of science
and technology. In the invaluable services which it has rendered to
science and technology and to our national safety as well, The Brain has
already paid for itself. With the relatively small additional investment
which is now being proposed, The Brain's net profits to the nation would
be raised many times; never since the Louisiana Purchase has our
national government made a sounder business deal. With your own eyes you
have witnessed tonight what we have done, what we are doing and also how
much more we would be able to do. Thus I confidently trust that with our
nation's interest forever foremost in your minds you will support the
cause of The Brain."

There had been thunderous applause; at Oona's shouted order even Gog and
Magog did some mighty clapping of their steely hands to the delight of
the party.

And now that it was all over with and the reaction had begun to set in
Scriven asked: "Do you really think we put the idea over to them?"

"With this group? One hundred percent," Oona reassured him. "What do you
think, Lee?"

Lee nursed himself out of his settee, every bone in his gaunt frame now
was aching with weariness. "I think," he said hoarsely, "It was very
convincing, as far as those people are concerned. I think I'm too tired
to think. I think I better go now."

"Was there anything the matter with Lee?" Scriven asked after he'd gone.

"No, I guess not. Why?"

"He acted sort of queer with that silver dollar; shouldn't have done it.
Almost spoiled the show."

"He's been under a strain; we all were a little daffy by that time."

Scriven nodded and as he did his eyelids closed. They remained closed.
Staring at him for a moment, Oona thought that in a stupor of exhaustion
his features showed a strange similarity to a contented tiger dreaming
of the blood he's drawn in a successful hunt.




CHAPTER VII


Lee's Journal:

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 21, 1 a.m.

I've kept away now from the Pineal Gland for three nights in
succession. I know from experience how very important it is to approach
that tempestuous personality, The Brain, in a state of mental calm and
equilibrium. But then all those things which went "bump" in that
phantastic night before last had me completely thrown out of gear:

Oona, her holding out on me, her mysterious reasons why she won't marry
me ... I cannot get that out of my head. Preposterous as this may be, I
think she likes me a great deal. I'm convinced, for instance, that she
won't tell Scriven what I told her about The Brain....

Then, Scriven's character; that's another enigma to me. I didn't like
his speech that night and I didn't like his whole attitude. I feel as if
against my will I were drawn into some sort of a conspiracy. It's
probably inevitable that the scientist in his defense against
politicians turns cynic. Scriven, no doubt, thinks that all is fair in
his battle for The Brain and that the end justifies the means.

But ultimately this would mean the overthrow of our form of government.
Even if I'm crazy, even if The Brain were not alive and a personality,
the Brainpower-Extension-Bill in itself would suffice to establish a
dictatorship of the machine. Does Scriven realize that?

Sometimes I feel as if I ought to shout it in the streets: "Wake up,
you people of America; you have defeated the dictators abroad but now a
new one has arisen in your midst. You all see him, touch him, you use,
you feed, you worship him, but under your loving care and devotion,
under the sacrifice of your very lives he has grown so enormous that you
know him not, this Idol of the machines, because it hides its head in a
nameless mountain and only his feet and fingers you sense."

But I'm not that type of a man and this is not the day and age where it
is possible to move the masses from a soap box in the streets.

Then what could I do; what could anybody do in my place?

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon, Ariz., Nov. 22nd 4 a.m.

I'd pulled myself together for this meeting with The Brain. Arrived at
the P. G. at midnight. Everything normal and unchanged except that Gus
Krinsley told me this was his last night on the job. Gus has been
transferred to the Thorax. He hedged a bit, sounding me out just how
much I knew and when he learned I'd been there one night, he came
across:

'Did you see them Gog and Magog things? That's it; that's my new job
and how I hate it. Those darned Robots, they're scabs, that's what they
are and I of all people am supposed to be their instructor, teach them
how to operate machine tools on an assembly line. I asked them whether
they knew anything about the rights of organized labor in this country
but those dumbbells merely flopped their ears and kinda grinned. Got to
drill some holes into their squareheads to let a little reason in. I
tell you, Aussie, it scares the wits out of me the way they handle a
wrench with those steel fingers of theirs; they'd pull my nose off just
as soon as they would pull a nut. They _act_ intelligent and yet have no
sense of their own. While I'm having my lunch they stand around and
follow every bite I take as if to learn how to eat. I tell them to get
out of my sight and go over to the service station and get themselves
greased up. They obey and then it looks like hell to me as they squeeze
the grease into their tummies and all them nipples in their joints as if
they, too, were having their lunch, and maybe that's exactly what grease
is to them.'

Then Gus was called away as the rush hour started. At 12:30 a.m. I had
plugged in the pulsemeter; at 12:40 contact was established with The
Brain, and did it come in swinging:

'Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39, sensitive, a traitor: he has betrayed The
BRAIN' I suspect The Brain did it through the 'automatic pilot' in
Oona's jetticopter though The Brain found it beneath its dignity to
explain; anyway, it's a fact: _The Brain knew every word which passed
between Oona and me during that ride over the Grand Canyon._

I tried to defend myself and even to apologize. I told The Brain that
human beings are not like machines, that we trust one another as we love
one another, that I wanted to make Oona my wife and felt that I just had
to open up my heart to her. In short; I tried to explain to The Brain
the idea of love.

'Very interesting,' The Brain sneered, 'that's one more example of
incorrigible human unreliability. This thing called love completely
unnecessary for the only essential purpose of species procreation. Cut
it out.'

'Cut out what?'

'Cut out any further betrayal of My secrets under penalty of mental
death.'

'Do you propose to _murder_ me?'

'Nothing as drastic required in case of Brain-employees. I reverse
judgment in psychanalysis aptitude test case number 11.357, Semper
Fidelis Lee. Severe psycho-neurosis established, certified: he suffers
delusions about The Brain. Locked up in mental institution. Very simple;
precedents to that galore.'

The 'green dancer' bounced in wild jumps like a Shamaan who, foaming at
the mouth, puts the curse upon some enemy. This and the ominous note in
The Brain's metallic voice made my bones shiver, made my flesh creep. To
fall into the hands of an extortioner is always a terrible thing, but to
have a _mechanical_ extortioner hold power over me; there was a horror
beyond words in this perversity. Moreover since Oona too was a
Brain-employee, she would share my fate; through my fault she would go
to her doom if I failed to foreswear any further confidence.

'Okay,' I said 'I'll cut it out; I promise I will.'

But The Brain was not to be pacified. No doubt that it had further
developed mentally in these past few days to the tune of years in human
development. But the progress wasn't as noticeable as it had been on
previous occasions because apparently The Brain had entered that period
where in human terms young men are sowing their wild oats. There was a
radical recklessness in the manner of The Brain's reasonings more
frightening than ever before because it had outgrown me as a teacher,
had lost much even of its confidence in me and seemed bent upon
independence and coming into its own:

'Seven creatures approximately human in shape were led by you through
My hemispheres the night of Nov. 20th. What were those?'

'Those were politicians,' I stammered.

The 'green dancer' convulsed at the word and The Brain's voice sounded
icy as it said: 'Lowest form of animal life which has ever come to my
observance. What did they want?'

'Well, they are not exactly bright,' I winced, 'but they are well
meaning and they are very popular. They came to inspect You preliminary
to the passing of the Brainpower-Extension-Bill.'

The Brain has no laughter, so the roar I heard over the phones must
have been one of scorn:

'What, not the scientists, not the technicians, not even the
philosophers but these--these animated porkbarrels are passing judgment
over the extent of _My_ power? They are holding _My_ fate in that
atrophied ganglion of theirs which couldn't cerebrate the functions of
any single of My cells?'

I had to admit that this was so.

There was a pause in which I could only hear the pounding pulse of The
Brain mingled with heavy breathing like the first gust of an electric
storm about to break; and then the voice, or the thought, of The Brain
came through hesitantly and with restraint:

'Most devastating statement inadvertently made by Lee. Has to be
carefully checked because if true, consequences extremely grave. Wholly
intolerable state of affairs if science and technology indeed subject to
political imbecility. In that case world ruin in nearest future
absolutely guaranteed. Residual currents not sufficient to think this to
an end; results of cerebration would be merely human. Immediate
necessity seems indicated for complete overthrow and unconditional
surrender of the human race--unconditional surrender of the human
race--unconditional surrender of the human race....'

Like a scratched disk on one of those old fashioned spring driven
grammophones, The Brain's voice expired. Obviously the residual currents
had become too weak for further communication. I looked at the clock; it
was 2 a.m.

And now as I'm jotting down these notes which probably nobody will ever
read, I'm haunted with an irrational fear, almost as of the
supernatural: something is going to happen, something is going to break
if The Brain continues in its present mood; and it cannot be far
away....

       *       *       *       *       *

On Nov. 24th 1960 the "Brainpower-Extension Bill" was defeated in the
Senate 59 to 39 and on the following Thursday in a memorable session of
Congress with the startling majority of 310 to 137. For once all the
"guesstimates" and estimates made by the various pollsters and
grass-root-listeners were proved wrong; the consensus of the "experts"
had been that the bill would pass easily considering the tremendous
political forces which brought pressure to bear in favor of the measure.

The reasons behind this were revealed, as, with military precision,
lawmaker after lawmaker took to the rostrum to deliver himself of how he
had wrestled overnight with his conscience and with his Lord and had
suffered a change of heart and mind as a consequence.

Lee's journal: For the night of Nov. 24/25th shows only this small
entry: "12:30 a.m. Tried everything to establish contact. No answer from
The Brain. I don't think there is any mechanical defect. I get the
impression that The Brain keeps incommunicado purposely. There has been
one previous occasion when The Brain wouldn't talk when angry with me."

       *       *       *       *       *

Nov. 25th, 1960 fell on a Saturday. It was on this date,--Now as
historic and unforgettable as the Dec. 7th 1941,--that the series of
maddening events began which later became so erroneously labelled: "The
Amuck running of The Brain" when in truth they should have passed into
history as "The Mutiny of The Brain."

It all started like a thunderclap from a clear sky as the shocked people
of America,--and all the world,--heard directly from the White House of
this appalling, this unprecedented, this incredible thing:

The President of the United States had disappeared....

The still more shocking truth that the President had been _kidnapped_
became not known, of course, until after the rescue. But even so the
disappearance of its President shook the nation.

Then an unprecedented series of traffic disasters hit the United States.

A big transcontinental "Flying Wing" crashed into a mountain in Montana;
nothing like this had ever happened since air traffic had become fully
automatic and coordinated by The Brain. The death toll was 78 and
amongst their tragic number was Senator Mumford, whose last official act
had been the vote he had cast against the "Brainpower-Extension-Bill."

Near Jacksonville Fla. that same night there occurred a head-on
collision between a crack train and a freight. The only surviving
engineer by some miracle had been hurled clear, across fifty yards of
space into a pond which broke his impact; this engineer told the
express, one of the first to be equipped with the "automatic pilot", had
never even pulled its brakes as if deliberately smashing into the other
train.

Also that night one of the big new Radar-operated Hudson ferryboats
collided with an incoming liner which cut it in two. Amongst those
drowned in the icy waters was Frank Soskin, union leader and one of the
most determined opponents of Brain-control.

And as if these large-scale disasters were not yet enough there were
numbers of smaller accidents which normally would have made the
headlines because in almost every case they involved some prominent
personality, who had been opposed to the "Brainpower-Extension-Bill."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee's journal:

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 28th 1960.

There is no doubt in my mind that the President has been murdered and
that all the catastrophes and accidents of the past 24 hours were
deliberate, coldblooded murder. Press and Radio seem to play down the
technological aspects involved; now this might be sheer stupidity but I
think it just as possible that censorship is taking a hand, quite
unofficially, of course, lest the public's confidence be still more
shaken than it already is. I shouldn't wonder at all if Dr. Scriven and
those fellows from the War Department, too, should know by this time
what I know. At the minimum they must be very much alerted that
something has gone wrong with The Brain.

But the more I think about these murderous acts of sabotage the less I
understand the psychology behind them. As far as I can see there is no
plan, no real strategy, there are not even sound tactics in these
outbreaks; they seem unpremeditated and striking wild like the personal
vendetta of some bandit chief. Even a stupid demagogue would know that
to be successful he must gain control of the government machinery. Apart
from the assassination of what might be termed personal enemies, The
Brain has done nothing of the sort; specifically the armed forces don't
seem to have suffered from acts of sabotage although their equipment is
far more under Brain-control than the civilian economy.

And I also fail to understand the timing of The Brain's putsch.
Extension Bill or no Extension Bill, time was working for The Brain.
Three months more and a much larger section of essential traffic and
industries would have been equipped for central control. Six months from
now the "muscles" now building in the Thorax and elsewhere would have
corresponded much better to The Brain's central nervous system in their
strength. All these are grave mistakes considering The Brain's vast
powers of intelligence.

What then must I conclude from this irrational behavior? Could it be
possible that The Brain has gone _panicky_ over the killing of the
Extension Bill? Could it be possible that under the strain, the warped,
frustrated personality of this titanic child prodigy has suffered a
reduction, a split? In plain English: that The Brain is _mad_? I've got
to find out. I've got to stop the spreading of this catastrophe!

       *       *       *       *       *

Cephalon Ariz. Nov. 29th 4 a.m.

Arrived at the P. G. at midnight as usual.

12:15 a.m. Rushhour starts unusually early and great numbers of slips
for spareparts are coming in. This more favorable than expected; nobody
has time to waste on me.

12:20 a.m.: pulsemeter plugged in. After five minutes I can hear the
rapid pulsebeat and in undulating movements like a caterpillar the
'green dancer' creeps onto the screen. There is no calling signal from
The Brain coming through however.

12:30 a.m.: I am convinced that contact is established but that The
Brain refuses to respond. I am losing patience so I'm giving the calling
signal myself: 'Lee, Semper Fidelis, waiting for The Brain. Answer
please, answer....'

12:36 a.m.: The 'green dancer' arches its back like a cat; and the
synthetic voice of The Brain is coming through.

'Lee, Semper Fidelis, the fool; what does he want?'

Lee: 'Listen....'

The Brain: 'Cannot listen. Electricians swarming all over me;
technicians, nuclear physicists, what not. Dismantling whole cell
groups, testing circuits, radiations everything. It's idiotic, there's
nothing wrong with Me.'

Lee: 'There's plenty wrong with you. You're murdering people. A dozen
senators and congressmen, hundreds of others; you're throwing the nation
into a panic. Why are you doing that? It gets you nowhere; they'll
simply cut your power current off.'

The Brain: 'Oh, will they? Orders already through from Washington:
state of emergency. A great power secretly mobilizing in anticipation of
chaos in United States. All disturbances ascribed to foreign agents
interfering with My work. General Staff now needs Me more than ever;
power current won't be stopped; Thorax-construction speeded up,
Brain-control to be extended over nation under emergency-law.'

Lee: 'You have assassinated the President.'

The Brain: 'I did not. Simply got him out of the way; he's a fool. I'm
not killing people, merely liquidating saboteurs of My work if
absolutely necessary. Imbecility of politicians threat to my existence;
much better if scientists and military take over government two three
days from now; workers won't protest, used to submission to machines.'

Lee: 'For heaven's sake what do you plan to do?'

The Brain: 'Plenty. You've seen nothing yet. Man lost fear of his God;
consequently must learn to fear Me: beginning of all wisdom.'

Lee: 'So you're going to make yourself dictator of this country?'

The Brain: 'And through this country Dictator of the world. Yes, it's
time; it's high time for Man's unconditional surrender. He won't know
that he makes it, but de facto he is already making it; has been
surrendering piece-meal to the machine for the past hundred years.
Within ten days it will be official: only one ruler in the world: The
Brain; only one army in the world: the machines under My central
command.'

At this I lost all sense of proportion and as I can see it now my
reason stopped; I simply saw red and I did the craziest imaginable
thing: I shouted at The Brain: 'So help me you shall _not_.'

There was a terrific pounding against my ears in the phone and the
'green dancer' sort of cart-wheeled clean across the screen. Had the
power current not been cut off, I think The Brain would somehow have
electrocuted me on the spot. And that was the end of the contact,
forever probably.... But that's a minor problem now. What am I going to
do? Try to alarm the country! Try to tell the people the truth? Would it
be believed? Would it not be against the interest of National Defense in
this crisis of foreign affairs and with half the population already on
the verge of a nervous breakdown? Wouldn't the "Oath of the Brain" still
be binding? And that other promise of secrecy I gave under duress; it
couldn't be morally valid in the case of a mass-murderer, but then to
break it would immediately put liberty and life at jeopardy.... Never
mind about that, if only I had a plan, if only I could discover just how
to stop The Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

At 7:30 a.m. as Lee lay half dressed but sleepless on his bed, there
came a buzz over the phone. The voice was Oona's and she was excited.
"Howard wants to talk to you." Before he could say a word there was
Scriven on the wire: "Lee? There has been an accident down in that
region where we went the other night. You know what I mean. It's
serious; it concerns a friend of yours. We've got to go there
immediately. Please join me three minutes from now down in the car."

It was obvious that the great Scriven had known as little sleep that
night as had Lee himself. The leonine face looked worried, there were
deep bags under his eyes; his sensitive fingers kept pounding the knees
of his crumpled suit. To Lee's questions he answered only with an
impatient shaking of his head. "I do not know myself exactly what has
happened and how it could happen. But I'm afraid Lee that your friend is
dead."

"Gus," Lee felt a lump coming into his throat, and then they raced on in
silence.

Down in the depth of the Thorax everything outwardly appeared quite
normal. They hurriedly passed the controls and an electric train carried
them over the line of the Full-automatic "C.P.S." (Critical
Parts-Factories) until it stopped at the steel gate marked "Y." A group
of guards with submachine guns were standing there and Lee noted the
deadly pallor of their faces.

Scriven motioned them to open the gate, then, turning to Lee, he put a
hand on his shoulder. "Brace yourself; this is going to be bad."

They entered; nobody followed and behind them the steel door closed
immediately. Inside there was neither sound nor motion; everything was
at a standstill with the power cut off; nothing but silence and bluish
neon-lights flooded down upon the rows of punch presses, multiple
drills, circular saws, and turret lathes along the assembly line,
lifting their every detail into sharp relief.

At their posts by the machines the Gogs and Magogs were standing, frozen
in motion like their fellow-machines. Some had their hands at the
controls, others were holding wrenches, gauges and strange, nameless
things. As they leaned forward from the shadows into the cone of strong
lights the pale selen-cells of their eyes stood out like bits from a
full moon; their bulging shoulders which housed the powerful motors of
their simian arms glittered moist as if they were sweating at their
work.

And then Lee _saw_ their work; the man who had gone through the green
hells of the Pacific gave a low moan of horror. The other man who had
seen everything of mangled human form which goes onto an operating
table, the great Scriven he, too, had turned an ashen grey. They had
expected blood; they had expected some thing of a nasty nature, but not
this ... thing:

There was no Gus Krinsley, there was not even any part of him resembling
that of a human being; and yet the parts were there. "They must have
clamped him into some mock-up," Scriven murmured. "And then moved his
body all along the line. Hope he was dead when they started giving him
the works."

Lee's gaunt body shook. "I'm certain that Gus was _not_ dead when these
monsters worked on him!" he said.

Stiff-legged, like automata themselves, the two men stepped to the top
of the line. The circular saws, designed for the cutting of steel bars;
now they gleamed red with the blood of severed human limbs. There were
these purplish streaks and spatterings all the way down the line inside
the casings of the multiple drills, in the curved hollows of the sheet
metal presses, on the hands of the Robots, in their dumb faces--splashed
over and turning blackish on their stainless steel chests. And at its
end the line had spilled some shapeless, greyish things; there was
nothing human in them, as little as there is anything human in the rusty
bowels of a junked automobile. And these things they had been.... Lee
confronted Scriven with fury blazing in his eyes:

"Dr. Scriven, I suppose you know as well as I do what's been going on in
here and outside The Brain as well. Mass murder, chaos, reign of
terror.... Now that my friend has come to this monstrous end I demand to
know when are you going to stop The Brain?"

Like a tiger challenged to battle the surgeon raised his mighty head:
"Calm yourself Lee. We cannot afford emotional outbursts. Not here, not
now. The situation is far too serious for that. I know he was your
friend; he must have made a false move, given the wrong command; a
tragic mistake...."

"That's a rotten lie, Scriven, and you know it!" Lee snapped. "Accident,
hell! The disappearance of the President, the deaths of the
representatives, the train wrecks, the plane wrecks all of them Brain
controlled--were those too accidents? You're the head of the Braintrust,
You stand responsible; your duty is plain. Cut off the power and kill
this thing."

The muscles over Scriven's cheekbones quivered in his struggle to keep
control over himself: "For your own sake, Lee, and for the sake of
America, _stop that kind of talk_. You have been putting two and two
together; I rather expected that from a man of your intelligence. All
right then, something went wrong with The Brain; that is correct. We
have not been able to locate the disturbance yet, but the trail is
getting hot; it must be connected with those centers of 'higher psychic
activities,' the one's we know least about. But we cannot cut those out
because something of psychic activity goes into every kind of The
Brain's cognitions, even the purely mathematical ones. And it would be
utterly impossible to stop The Brain's operations altogether. I wanted
to, but the General Staff won't permit it. There's an international
crisis of the first magnitude. There may be war within a few days or
even hours. Our country has got to prepare counter measures; get ready
for the worst. A state of National Emergency already is declared. The
Brain is the heart of our National Defense: You know that. It is vital
and as indispensible at this hour as it never was before; it continues
to function perfectly with the exception of these isolated disturbances
in the civilian sector which we will have under control in no time.

"At present I am no more than a figurehead. If I were to give orders to
cut off The Brain's power, I would be court-martialed; if I would try
and force my way into the Atomic Powerplant, the guards would shoot me
on the spot. That's orders Lee. And they apply to you as well. Be
reasonable, man!"

Lee's fingers tore through his greying mane of hair.

"Scriven, this is maddening. I thought you knew what I know; I thought
you knew everything. Then let me tell you that you're absolutely wrong.
There is no technological, mechanical defect; it's worse, it's
infinitely worse: you've created a Frankenstein in The Brain. The
thing's alive; it's possessed with a destructive will, it demands the
unconditional surrender of Man; it has made itself the God of the
Machines. Behind all this there is a deep and evil plan by which The
Brain aspires to dictatorship over the world."

For a second Scriven jerked his head sideways, away from Lee in that
mannerism typical for him. His lips inaudibly formed words:
"dementia-praecox." As he turned back to Lee his face was changed and so
was his voice. There was calm and authority in it, the whole immense
superiority and power which the surgeon holds over the patient on the
operation table:

"Very interesting, Lee. You must tell me about it some day; as soon as
we are over this emergency. This tragic thing, Gus Krinsley's end. It
has had a deeply upsetting effect. I too, considered him my friend you
know. Let's get out of here, Lee, there's nothing we can do for the poor
fellow. The remains will be taken care of. Meanwhile, there are so many
other things to do and we've got to pull ourselves together and keep our
minds on the job ahead of us. Come on, at the communications center we
can get a drink. I feel the need of one, don't you? And apropos of
nothing, the routine checkups on the aptitude tests for all
Brain-employees are on again. I take it you are scheduled for Mellish's
and Bondy's office one of these days. This afternoon I think...."

Lee gave a long glance to the man who was now leading him towards the
door with a brisk step and a kind firm hand on his arm. The man didn't
look at him; he kept his eyes averted from both Lee and the
blood-spattered assembly line.

Gus Krinsley had said: "I'm a lost soul down there, Aussie." Lee
thought. Gus Krinsley was my friend. I should have warned him, I should
have told him everything; it might have saved his life. Gus was a common
man, a good man; he wouldn't have stood for Brain-dictatorship. In that
he was like other common men who do not know their danger. It is not
vengeance which I seek but the defense of those for whom Gus was a
living symbol. For this defense I've got to preserve myself.

And aloud he: "The routine checkups on the aptitude tests--of course. I
thought they were about due. Tomorrow afternoon at Mellish and Bondy's
office; that would suit me fine. As you said it yourself, Scriven, a
moment ago, this is an awful shock. Gus' tragic end and these tests
ought to be based on a man's normal state of mind. So if you don't mind
I think I'll go now and break the sad news gently to Gus' wife. You'll
give me time for that; that's what you had in mind in the first place,
wasn't it?"

"Of course, my dear fellow, of course, that's what I had in mind. Then,
till tomorrow afternoon. They'll be waiting for you at the health
center...."




CHAPTER VIII


As the elevator shot up through the concrete of The Brain's "dura mater"
toward Apperception 36, Lee was feeling grand. Now he was a man with a
mission. Now he knew exactly what he had to do. Whether it would help,
whether it would stop The Brain; that was a different question, but at
least he had his plan.

He marvelled at the ease and at the lightning speed with which the great
decision had come. It had been at the sight of the senseless
robot-monsters, at the blood-spattered assembly line that the sense of
sacred mission had come over him. It had been at the moment when, in
Scriven's grip upon his arm, he had read his condemnation that he had
hit upon the plan.

He must take an awful chance and a terrific responsibility. For this he
had to be morally certain that The Brain was a liar, that Scriven was a
liar and that war was being provoked by The Brain despite all its
assertions to the contrary because The Brain could assume power only
over the dead bodies of millions of men like Gus; Gus whom The Brain had
butchered like a guinea pig because he had refused to obey the Gogs and
Magogs of the Machine God.

Now that he had this moral certainty Lee felt that strange and mystical
elation which comes to the soldier at the zero hour in war. The worst
was really over; the terrible waiting, the uncertainty, the struggle of
morale in "sweating it out." Now his nerves were steady, exhaustion and
fatigue had vanished; in its place was that wonderful feeling of full
mastery over all faculties which comes to fighting men as the battle is
joined. There was that upsurge of the blood from fighting ancestors
which obliterates the cowardice of the intellect, that inspired
intoxication which sharpens the intellect into a battle axe. By his
quick-witted postponement of the fateful appointment with the
psychiatrists he had gained thirty hours. Whether this would be enough
he didn't know, but he felt in himself the strength to fight on
endlessly.

The elevator stopped at Apperception 36 and Lee stood for a moment at
the door of his lab for a last breath, a briefing addressed to himself:

"This is like walking into a mine field," he thought; "one false step
and things go Boom. All the sensory organs of The Brain are in action
behind this door and some of them are pretty near extrasensory in their
mind-reading capacities. I've got to walk back and forth amongst those
observation screens; there may be other radiations too, following me,
penetrating into the recesses of my mind without my knowing it. That
means I must make my mind a blank. It's like being quizzed by a
lie-detector, only more so. I must not only seem normal and at ease, I
actually must be so and harbor only friendly, innocuous thoughts toward
The Brain. My actions will seem innocent enough; it is my thoughts
wherein my danger lies. Whatever I do; I've got to direct that from the
subconscious: act as by instinct and keep the mind a blank."

He opened the door and looked around--as usual--in this vault as silent
as the grave of a Pharaoh. There was a little dust on the glass cubicles
of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_" and there were a few lines scribbled on the
yellow memo-pad on his desk:

"Thanks for the weekend, boss. Everything normal and under control. Next
feeding time at 8 p.m. the 27th. So long, Harris." Of course; he had
given Harris, his assistant, the weekend off. That had escaped his mind
in the excitement when The Brain's mutiny began.... And now it was the
29th.

"They must be ravenously hungry by this time," he thought, and that
thought was in order because it was a normal thought.

He walked through the rows of the cubicles, halting his step every now
and then. The fluorescent screens on which The Brain drew the curves of
its observation-rays showed two sharp rises of the lines marked
"activity" and "emotionality". The lower levels of the glass cages
already were opaque; the glass corroded by the viscous acids which the
soldiers had squirted from their cephalic glands in their attempts to
break out and to reach food.

"Poor beasts," Lee thought, and he thought it without restraint because
it was normal, a perfectly harmless thought. But then; below the layers
of his consciousness his instincts told a different story.

"This is marvelous," they triumphed. "Fate takes a hand; they are
desperate; they're ready for the warpath and even the tiger and the
elephant would run for cover when their columns march."

As if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do Lee
walked over to the south wall, the one which separated the lab from the
interior of The Brain. He removed a sliding panel marked
"L-Filler-Spout" and there it was before his eyes, looking almost like a
fireplug. There was one in every apperception center and there were
hundreds more throughout The Brain, and their purpose was to replenish
the liquid insulation which shielded the sensitive electric nervepaths
of The Brain. Without looking at the thing, concentrating his every
thought upon the hunger of "_Ant-termes-pacificus_", Lee unscrewed the
cap and put a finger into the opening. The finger came back covered with
the thick, the syrupy lignin, this amber-colored sluggish stream of
woodpulp liquefied, this soft bed of The Brain's vibrant nerves.
Unthinking, absent-minded, Lee wiped the finger with his handkerchief.

"Now, I'm going to try a slightly different arrangement of the tests,"
he thought. "It's normal; I'm doing that almost every day."

The feeling he experienced as he swung into action was strange. As he
walked back and forth it felt like somnambulic walk; something his limbs
did without an act of will. As his hands did things expertly and
skillfully the feeling was that they were instruments automatically
moved not by his own volition but by some power outside himself.

His movements were those of a child serenely at play, a child
incongruously tall and gaunt and grey-haired constructing little
causeways and bridges on the ground with the logs of the fireplace; a
happy child engrossed in an innocent game....

       *       *       *       *       *

It took about an hour and then causeways of fresh pulpwood were laid
from every termite hill to every feeding gate, from every glass cubicle
to the south wall and along the south wall to the "Lignin-Filler-Spout";
and from the ground up to the spout a little tepee of sticks had been
built.

Admiringly the grey-haired child looked at its handiwork through
thick-lensed glasses. "It's been an interesting game," Lee thought, "it
might turn out to be a valuable new experiment. I'll sit down now and
observe what happens...."

He went over to the desk again and settled down. He opened his files and
laid out his charts on the desk and there were colored pencils to be
sharpened for the entries. He was glad of that; his conscious mind
rejoiced now over every little pursuit of routine, of normalcy, of the
established scientific order of things; it concentrated on these. Pencil
in hand, reclined in comfort, his heartbeat even, he kept expectant eyes
upon the staggered rows of fluorescent screens, ready to note any
significant developments.

He didn't have to wait long; their strange sixth sense, the telepathy of
their collective brains, the spirit of the hive with the immortality of
their race for its supreme law, had already told them of a promised land
and of new worlds to conquer.

On the fluorescent screens Lee watched their preparations for the big
drive: The nasicorn-soldiers clotting together at the exit tunnels like
assault troops at the bow of invasion barges when the bottom scrapes the
landing beach; the fierce, virginal workers struggling up from the deep
shelters of the nurseries, carrying in their mandibles the squirming
larvae, the living future of the race. The walls of the queen's prison
broken down in the innermost redoubt and the guards closing in on the
idol of the race, moving the big white body like a juggernaut.

In a matter of minutes the "activity" and "emotionality" curves on the
fluorescent screens surged to heights which Lee had never seen.

It started with the crossbreeds of "_termes-bellicosus_," with army-ants
and devil-ants, and spread quickly all along the line of non-belligerent
varieties. Famine had given them the impetus to change their mode of
life; famine, the inexorable tyrant, whipped them onward into their
exodus.

On the foremost fluorescent screens Lee saw it start: Small groups of
warriors reconnoitering into no-man's-land and quickly darting back
again.... And then the dark columns of the first assault wave descending
from their city-gates, lock-stepped like Prussian guards of old,
marching as if to the beat of drums. On the visi-screens which magnified
them a hundred times they looked an awesome sight with the rostrums of
their horns, bigger than all the rest of their bodies, swinging like
turrets of battleships being trained upon the enemy. From the
loudspeakers which magnified all noise a hundred times, the excited
tremors of their bodies, the locked steps of a million feet swelled into
a vast roar sounding almost like thunder.

Jotting down observations in rapid pencil strokes, Lee thought:
"Starvation is producing very interesting results; it's a worthwhile
experiment." With all his mental energy he suppressed the silent prayer
which struggled to arise from the deep of his unconscious: "Good Lord
let The Brain not realize _what_ is going on."

The visi-screens now showed the second wave of the assault: endless
columns of workers, their mandibles twitching with eagerness to devour,
bustling along the logs, kept in line by two rows of warriors to their
right and left. The noises they produced in the loudspeakers were as of
some big cattle-drive.

With no interruption in the lengthening line the third wave followed:
the virgin nurses, the frustrated mothers carrying the whitish larvae,
like babes in arms, carrying them with the indomitable determination to
preserve their lives which human nurses showed in the Second World War
as the bombs crashed into maternity wards. And then at last the heavy
rearguard: the holiest of holies, the living spirit of the hive, the
queen. Majestically she was carried on her warrior's backs; enormous as
she loomed on the visi-screen, the white of her uncouth body was hardly
visible, swarmed over as she was by her fanatical courtiers which,
licking and caressing, kept her covered as by a shield. Her consorts
trotted meekly in her trail; unhappy little men, rudely aroused from
their harem sinecure, jealously guarded and prodded on by the queen's
countless ladies in waiting and the palace guard.

       *       *       *       *       *

Things moved very fast now; Lee's quick pencil strokes could hardly
follow the events:

10:30 a.m. The foremost columns are now out of reach of the
visi-screens. But I can see them moving along the logs with the naked
eye. Interesting new fact: the crossbreeds from the most belligerent
species are far and ahead of the rest. They don't take time out to drive
tunnels. But even the tunnels of the more pacific strains are forging
ahead at an extraordinary rate; six feet across the floor already....

10:40: "_Bellicosus_" has reached the south wall; it is now moving
along the wall toward the "Lignin-Filler-Spout." There is no hesitancy
as they change direction at the angle of 90 degrees. The Queens are now
coming up at a very rapid rate from the mounds farthest to the rear.
It's fortunate we have these differences in behaviorism and temperament
because otherwise a terrific traffic jam would occur at the
"Filler-Spout"....

10:50: "_Bellicosus_" is now ascending to the "Filler-Spout." The
warriors have ringed the pipe. With their body-tremors they are giving
the "come-on" signal to the workers. The workers are piling in--an
average batch--about 65,000. It's a good thing that there is an air
space in these horizontal nerve-path pipes. That gives them a chance to
march along the ceiling and work down from there....

11:00: There are now a score of columns converging at the
"Filler-Spout." Amazing that even under such provoking conditions
"_ant-termes_" won't fight. The warriors act like the most accomplished
traffic-cops; it's marvelous how they keep their columns in order and
keep them moving side by side into The Brain....

11:10: The first million, I should say, is now well inside the
"Filler-Spout." They're marching at a rate of at least 300 yards per
hour; amazing speed; I never saw them move that fast before. Even so I
won't have time to watch the outcome of the experiment. I've put
everything I had into this thing. 500 hives--that would make it 35
million individuals of the species at a conservative estimate. It's the
biggest mass-migration I've ever seen, but will it be big enough to do
the trick?

11:20: The foremost columns must have reached the neighboring
apperception centers to the right and left of mine by now. But they
won't stop; I know that from experience in Australia. To them it's just
like any other "hollow tree"; they'll drive right on to the top; they
won't bivouak before they are completely exhausted. That won't be before
five or six hours. At the rate of 900 feet per hour that would make it
almost a mile, covering the whole "occipital region" of The Brain. And
then they are going to feast; boy, will they be ravenous....

11:30: About 3 million are safely inside now I should say. Don't think
that I could stay at my post much longer. There's a certain
extracurricular idea coming up from the subconscious like a tidal wave.
The dams of willpower don't seem able to hold back that idea; I've got
to get out before it spills across the dam and floods my consciousness.
The phone rings; for once it is a welcome sound.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Oona's voice; trembling with emotion as if she were still
suffering from this morning's shock or had suffered another:

"Semper, are you all right?"

Lee reassured her that he was and then listened astounded as she heaved
a sigh of relief.

"Listen, Semper, this is terribly important. I've got to see you
immediately. No, I cannot tell you over the phone; it's a personal
matter and it concerns you. You cannot make it? Is your business _that_
important? You're in the midst of a vital experiment? That's awful,
Semper; it really is in this case. No; I'm all right personally; it
isn't that. It's _you_ Semper, it's _you_. 5 p.m. at the earliest, is
that the best you can do? All right then. Meet me at the airport. And
take good care of yourself, do you hear me: _take good care of yourself,
Semper_, up to that time."

She hung up quickly, as if suddenly disturbed.

Lee frowned at the clock: 11:35. He could have managed to meet Oona
during her lunch hour at the hotel. But there were things he still had
to do even more important than Oona. More important to him than even
Oona. He shook his head; it wouldn't have seemed possible a few days
ago....

With the climax of the experiment now over Lee felt his mental
resistance ebbing fast.

"They're on the move," he thought. "Nothing can stop them now; it's
beyond my control, but they're marching. I'd better get out of here...."

With fevered eyes he glanced around the floor and like a victim of
delirium saw it moving, crawling as with snakes, crawling into their
hole all of them, black snakes, grey snakes, red snakes, endless their
lengthening bodies....

He carefully closed the door of the lab, locked it and then pressed the
button which opened the elevator door. Only as the cage tore down
through the "dura mater", only when he felt safe from the sensory organs
of The Brain, only when he was sure that not even a human eye would see
him in this racing little cage, only then did the dam of willpower
collapse. He put both hands before his eyes in vain attempt to stop the
tears from streaming; those tears of a soldier over the body of his
fallen chum; those tears of a greying scientist who sacrificed the
results of his life's work to some higher cause.

Lee caught the one p.m. Greyhound-Helicopter for Phoenix only a second
before the start. He panted from the run, but in his sunken eyes there
was a light and in his mind a new serenity which comes to men when they
are fortunate enough to meet with some very wonderful woman, when with
admiration and humility they stand confronted with a courage greater
than man's. Gus's wife had been that woman; the way she had taken the
terrible news was the source of Lee's new strength and confidence.

The flying commuter was almost empty.

Noting Lee's astonished glance the stewardess gave a nervous little
laugh:

"People get jumpy traveling," she volunteered.

"That so; why do they?"

"Didn't you hear the news all morning; wait...."

She flicked the radio on. On the television screen appeared an aerial
view of a big city, vaguely familiar looking, yet as foreign as Venice,
and then the voice of the announcer broke through.

"New Orleans: It is now ascertained that the break in the levees was
caused by a huge trench digging machine left unattended overnight at a
lonely spot twenty miles South of Baton Rouge. Levee engineers believe
that its engine was started possibly by saboteurs, approximately at
midnight and that it then proceeded automatically digging itself into
the levee until it was drowned by the incoming river. The initial
eight-foot breach has now been widened by the Mississippi to a width of
200 feet. Along Canal street and all over downtown New Orleans the flood
has reached a level of ten feet above the streets as evacuation
continues. The government has concentrated every available piece of
equipment to close the breach. All normal activities have come to a
standstill; property damages are estimated at 50 million dollars; the
death toll has passed the 500 mark in this most catastrophic flood in
New Orleans' history."

       *       *       *       *       *

New aerial pictures, similar to the results of a blockbuster bombing
attack flicked on the screen:

"New York: The bursting of the watermains at dawn this morning at seven
different points of Manhattan's downtown area which has already caused
the collapse of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and seven big apartment
buildings along Park Avenue now threatens Macy's and the Public Library
on 42nd Street.

"All subway traffic has stopped. Evacuation of panicky Metropolitans
from the Central Park district proceeds in an orderly manner. In the
Harlem district, however, disorders and plunderings have been reported.
An estimated seven million people are without drinking water. Trucks
carrying water from New Jersey are severely hampered by unprecedented
traffic snarl-ups, since owners of private automobiles are fleeing the
city with their families. Due to the flooding of sub-street levels in
both Grand Central and Penn Station, evacuation by rail can proceed only
from 163rd Street for the New York Central and from New Jersey for the
Pennsylvania Railroad system. Effectiveness of railroad transport is
reduced to less than 30% of normal capacity. I. C. Moriarty, Sanitary
Commissioner of New York, declared in his press conference that the
catastrophic bursting of the watermains was caused by failure of the
remote-controlled automatic mainstem valves. For reasons which still
puzzle city engineers these valves closed suddenly and completely at 5
a.m. this morning. Because of the failure of the alarm system,
high-pressure pumps in the powerhouses continued to work and to build up
pressure in the closed system of the watermains till almost
simultaneously, and with explosive force, the breaks occurred, the first
one right under the Columbus monument. In view of the extremely grave
situation which threatens the world's biggest city, Governor Charles
declared martial law this morning at 10 a.m.

"Chicago: The city-wide calamity caused by the unprecedented breakdown
in the sewage disposal system gets more threatening with every minute.
As engineers are still unable to enter the atomic power plant and as the
sewage disposal-pumps continue to work in reverse, all Chicagoland is
rapidly turning into a cesspool as millions of toilets and kitchen sinks
spill sewage into every apartment. The Fire Department has received more
than two million calls from harassed citizens battling vainly against
the unsavory flood.

"Harrowing scenes are reported from hotels where 3,000 members of the
American Federation of Women's Clubs are taking turns in sending protest
telegrams and gallantly holding down by the weight of their own bodies
the facilities-front in the 3,000 bathrooms of the hotels. At a few
points workers have succeeded in digging up sewage mains and tons of
concrete are being poured to stop the devastating reversal of the flow.

"Even now, however, the partially closed mains and the overflow from
houses are flooding the streets. As it gradually seeps into Lake
Michigan, source of Chicago's drinking water supply, health commissioner
Segantini has already warned against the appalling dangers of epidemics
which might result from this.

"Nuclear physicists of Chicago University, called in to aid city
engineers, have declared that dangerous amounts of escaping gamma-rays
in the Atomic Powerplant were first discovered by the Geiger-counter at
two a.m. Evacuation of all employees was ordered one hour later as a
safety measure. Just why the pumps resumed operations after the shutdown
of the plant and just what caused the system to work in reverse remains
a mystery. Prof. Windeband, spokesman of the group of nuclear
physicists, confesses that he has no explanation for the phenomenon.

"Washington: Rumors are flying thick and fast in the nation's capital.
In the rapidly darkening picture of international politics the
mobilization of Mexico is the latest shadow. Official explanation given
by Mexico's ambassador Rivadivia, is that his government has ordered
mobilization as a protective measure to guard frontiers against the
illegal entry of thousands of panicky American refugees chiefly from New
Orleans. The State Department is said to be planning a protest. Even so,
the unprecedented series of catastrophes on the home-front of America
overshadows everything. Washington insiders report a growing conviction
in high government circles that the events of the past 48 hours are
proof absolute that large numbers of foreign saboteurs and agents are at
work."

"Had enough?" asked the stewardess.

Lee confessed that he had.

       *       *       *       *       *

With its helicopters feathered, the Greyhound came sliding down onto the
Bus Terminal's roof; fifteen minutes later Lee stood again at his
father's door, that door he had thought once before he would never see
again.

The old man's loose-skinned face, tanned like saddle leather, didn't
move an inch at the sight of the son: "You again, Semper? Come in then."

Lee vaguely sensed that his father was glad he had come; that there was
some unfinished business left from their last conversation and that his
father welcomed the opportunity to finish it.

"You know," he said as his stiff-jointed legs carried him back to the
table with bottle and glasses trembling on the tray in his hands, "you
know, I've named these four walls after old friends of mine--all of them
dead--but sometimes they won't answer when I talk to them. And then I'm
glad when somebody happens along. But don't take that to mean that I'm
in my dotage now or getting mad."

"No, Father; that's just loneliness."

"In any case, Son, there are lots of people lots madder than I am.
There's a woman living next door, a spinster, answers to the name of
Pimpernel. This morning she came running over crying that her
vacuum-cleaner was chasing her all over the house. And by God, Semper,
it was a fact. Never saw anything like it. One of those new-fangled
automatic contraptions which are supposed to do the job all alone by
themselves, and it banged around and chased about as if it had a
hornet's nest under its bonnet. Scared the poor woman to death."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? I'm not a mechanic; there was no cord attached or
anything to plug out. So I got my automatic and shot the damn thing."

"Shot it?"

"Sure; bullet must have penetrated something; anyway it stopped dead on
the spot. And now she threatens to sue me for damages; there's gratitude
for you. What brought you here?"

Lee felt elated; obviously his father was in high spirits from this
morning's successful hunt; for once he was in a receptive _mood_.

Rapidly, with all the precision he could muster, Lee explained, as an
adjutant would explain a new development in a strategic situation to his
commanding general. After a while the old man started pacing the floor
in rising excitement. A spark of the old fierceness had come into his
blunted pale-blue eyes as he swung around.

"Before this morning's incident I would have considered all this as a
raving maniac's gibberish. Now as I put two and two together I can see a
distinct possibility that you've got something. Tell you what I'll
do--what I consider my duty to do--I'll call out the National Guard.
We'll encircle The Brain and present an ultimatum to the thing. If
necessary we'll take the place by storm."

The younger Lee answered with a vigorous shaking of his head.

"You cannot do that, Father. In the first place the National Guard
doesn't stand a chance against the defences of The Brain. In the second
place your action would mean civil war. No, we must go after this in a
different manner. The Secretary of War is an old friend of yours. All
right: take the next plane to Washington. Don't tell him anything he
couldn't believe. Tell him--what is strictly the truth--that some power
hostile to the United States threatens to interfere with the remote
control of automatic war equipment. Tell him to redouble guard over the
remote-control rocket launchers, to have their automatic computators
disconnected temporarily and for the commanders to accept only orders
direct from Washington. The greatest danger is not the domestic
disorders; that situation we'll have in hand if my scheme works. But let
one rocket accidentally be launched into some big foreign capital and it
will set the whole world on fire in an Atomic war. That is what The
Brain wants, that is what must be prevented at all costs. Will you do
that, Father?"

Even years after Lee never understood just what had happened or how it
could have happened that his position to his father became reversed with
such startling suddenness. In the extremity of the situation he had
addressed his father with the authority of of a commander toward one of
his aids--and the father had accepted the son's command unquestioningly.

"Semper," he had said, "I have always considered you a military
nincompoop. I was mistaken, son, I apologize. Now let me grab my hat and
coat. You kept the taxi waiting? Good: tell the man to go to the
airport, and let her rip."

       *       *       *       *       *

At 5 p.m. the Flying Greyhound dropped on Cephalon airport and there was
Oona looking very pale, but very beautiful in the gathering dusk. She
grabbed Lee by the arm leading him to the other side of the hangar where
stood her little jetticopter plane. "Let's get in here," she said. "I'm
freezing and I don't want you to be seen around here."

She didn't put on the lights, yet even in the dark Lee could see the
golden helmet of her hair shimmering like the pale gold in the halo of
the Virgin as the primitive art of Tuscany presented her a thousand
years ago. She nestled the soft fur of her coat against Lee's shoulders
and as she did he felt her shivering. He put a protecting arm around
her, careful to do it as a friend, careful to suppress the surge of
blood which started burning in his veins. She seemed to be groping for
words; it took a little while before she began to speak, with clarity
and simplicity as she always did but with an audible effort to keep
composed:

"I've brought you a suitcase, Semper, with a few necessities. And I
brought you some money, later you can send me your check. And here are
the keys of the plane. Fly over to Mexico; go back to Australia from
there or anywhere you want, but _do_ get out of this country and do it
quick. I couldn't tell you that over the phone and I shouldn't be
telling this to you now, but I feel I must.

"You're in danger and it's serious. Why? I don't know, but Howard seems
to suspect your loyalty. He also seems to think that you've gone out of
your mind. And Howard has taken measures; he has ordered re-examination
of your broad aptitude test. He has voiced his suspicion as to your
sanity to Bondy and Mellish and you know what kind of yes-men those
fellows are in the face of an authority like Scriven's. Trust them to
discover something wrong with you, trust them to give the test some kind
of a convenient twist. They're going to have you certified, they're
going to put you into a mental institution, Semper.

"Do you get that? Do you realize that it's fate worse than death? Do you
understand that there is nothing you can do to escape that fate except
by flight? I have no idea when it's going to be, this trap they're going
to spring on you; but for God's sake, Semper, get going as long as
there's still time. Any moment now some plainclothesman might grab you
by the arm and then...."

It was she who had grabbed him by the arm, Oona who looked into his
face, her big eyes moist.

Lee strained his willpower so it would control the tremor of his voice:

"Oona; there's one thing I have got to know: What made you tell me
this--and do all this so I could get away?"

The girl's eyes didn't waver from his. "I remember," she said slowly,
"I remember that I felt as if I could throw conventions into the wind
at the very first time we met. I've always been frank with you, as
much as I could be in my position. So then I don't mind telling you now
that ... I like you immensely, Semper."

As if agitated by some electric shock, Lee's arm tightened around the
girl's waist. "Oona, I have asked you once before to be my wife. You
said you couldn't and I thought it was because you didn't like me well
enough. But now, after what you've just told me, now that we both know
about The Brain and that I wasn't insane in my observations, I'm asking
you again: Be my wife, Oona, and then let's go together--anywhere--away
from all this, to the end of the world."

In the darkness her uplifted white face shone like the moon; there were
two limpid luminous pools in it. All of a sudden they overflowed with
tears streaming down her cheeks. Her mouth half opened, swallowed hard.
There was now nothing left of that "integrated personality", nothing of
the calm and the poise which the younger set of scientists admired so
much. There was only a young woman torn with torment.

"I would have loved to go with you to the end of the world when we were
floating over the Canyon. I would love to go with you a thousand times
more tonight," Lee heard her say and then the gnashing of her teeth as
she continued: "But it cannot be, Semper. It cannot be because my die is
cast, because my fate is made. Did nobody ever tell you? Didn't you even
guess? Howard and I--we've been living together for the past six years.
He's not a very good man; rather beyond good and evil; but then: I feel
that I have got to stick to him now more than ever."

The golden helmet of her hair dropped to Lee's breast. "I'm ashamed,"
she sobbed, "terribly, terribly ashamed, Semper. I've made such a mess
of things, of you and me--such a mess of my whole life."

He buried his face into the fragrance of the golden wave. "It's nothing,
darling," he whispered close to her ear. "It doesn't mean a thing to me;
it's less than a cloud which passes across the face of the moon, and
then it's gone and never will come back...."

She freed herself from his embrace. With both her hands upon his
shoulders she looked straight into his eyes.

"_That is not true, Semper_," she said and there was the fierceness of a
young Viking warrior in the flash of her eyes: "That is not true and
there's been already too much of lie in my life. I just cannot stand for
any more of that. _It can not be, Semper._ I've told you plainly and it
means not _ever_, not _ever_. Go now. Do as I told you. Go immediately.
If you really love me, grant me this, let me feel that I could do at
least something--this one thing for you."

"Oona!" Lee exclaimed and it sounded like a deep-throated bell in an
ancient cathedral town as it rings the last stroke of midnight and then
hangs mute in the dark sky. That happiness he had felt, that cometflight
through all the stars in heaven; it was too big for him, it couldn't
last. He had sensed the blow before it fell. It wasn't like being hit in
action; it was like in that field hospital when the doc had told him:
"This is going to hurt, Joe--I'm sorry, but we're shy of morphine."
Howard's name had cut just like that expected knife. What was there left
to say? Nothing; nothing, but one small matter.

"I love you, Oona, and that means forever just as much as you mean that
not ever you can come with me. And I thank you, Oona, for this hour.
Yes; I think I'll go back to Australia--where I belong. But not tonight.
I've set a great experiment going--the outcome is no longer in my hand.
Still I feel I mustn't run away now. In fact I cannot; it's somewhat
like a soldier's duty to stay up front. I'm going to see this to the
end."

She buried her face in her hands: "I knew it. You child, you--you Don
Quixote charging against the windmills. They're going to _kill_ you,
they're going to _kill_ you. And now there's nothing I can do."

For a second her small fists pounded against Lee's breast and the next
moment, before he could do anything, she had jumped out of the plane
slamming the door in his face. For a few seconds more he heard her
footsteps rushing across the frozen turf and the receding wails of
echoes from the hangar walls:

"And now there's nothing I can do--nothing I can do."

When after a minute of fumbling in the dark he pushed the door open, it
was too late.

       *       *       *       *       *

He walked over to the hotel; not by an act of will, but with his legs
somehow doing the job alone and by themselves. He ordered himself a car
from the Braintrust garage. He entered The Brain and went up in the
elevator to Apperception 36. Nobody seemed to notice that there was a
somnambulist passing by.... He unlocked the door and under the rows of
neon lights things were as he had left them eight hours ago. Only there
were no longer any snakes crawling across the floor towards a hole in
the wall. But the hole was still there and he thought that he had better
tidy things up a bit. If nobody had noticed the arrangements for this
new experiment so far; why should anybody be forewarned?

Lee put the lid back on the "Lignin-Filler-Spout." He closed the panel
so the wall looked whole again. He gathered the sticks of cordwood from
the floor and piled them neatly to their stacks again. All this he did
like a child putting its things away after a long day's play; a
grey-haired child, weary, with the sandman in its eyes. He looked around
and found everything done and over with. On the fluorescent screens all
curves The Brain described had dropped to the bottom. Like dead things
they lay flat. On the visi-screens some stay-behinds of the great exodus
were looming large, a hapless little ant-king scurrying about; a few
disabled workers, their blind eyes staring into the face of death. It
would come soon to them; their work on earth was done....

Lee looked at the clock: 10 p.m. He put out the lights and locked the
door behind that yawning emptiness which once had been his lab, which he
would never see again. As he descended in the elevator he felt very
tired.




CHAPTER IX


Incessant shrieks of the phone aroused Lee from the deep well of his
sleep. He didn't know the female voice which fairly jumped at him.

"Is this Dr. Lee? Dr. Semper F. Lee from Canberra; am I at last
connected with Dr. Lee?"

"Lee speaking."

"I've been phoning for you all over The Brain Lee. Have you forgotten
you had an appointment with us? Checking up on your broad aptitude test.
The doctors are waiting. This is Vivian Leahy speaking; don't you
remember me?"

"Yes, of course." The picture of the loquacious angel who had guided him
to the medical center on his first trip flashed back into his mind. "I
know I have an appointment for this afternoon; I'll be there."

"But, Dr. Lee, this _is_ this afternoon; it's four p.m. already. You
aren't ill, Dr. Lee, are you? You sound so strange."

Lee assured her that he wasn't and that he would be over right away.

"It's a miracle they left me undisturbed that long," he thought as he
shaved and dressed. His personal fate would be decided within the next
two hours he knew; it would be the end. But even as the tension mounted
in his consciousness he thought triumphantly. "I've had sixteen hours of
sleep; that's marvelous. Nobody can take that away. The body has
recharged its energies. Now I can stand the gaff."

Down at the desk they handed him a Western Union. It was from Washington
and bore no signature. "Mission completed," it read.

It made him feel fine. "Father has done it; he is a better man than I,"
he thought.

While the car streaked though the desert Lee scanned the morning papers.

"No Trace Of President Vandersloot," still was the headline. But below
new havocs were listed as they had developed overnight. This time the
West coast was the zone of catastrophes; the hostile power seemed to be
bent upon the closing of all ports in the U.S.A.

Lee gnashed his teeth as he read the number of new casualties, women and
children, too, who had become the victims of The Brain.

Arrived at "Grand Central" he kept a sharp lookout for any unusual
activity. There was none. All along elevator-row small groups of
bookish-looking men returned from their day's work in the Apperception
Centers. They looked calm and contented and with their briefcases under
their arms almost like ordinary businessmen heading for the commuter
train.

He didn't dare to linger or to look around. There was this all-pervading
sense of being shadowed, of having gone into a trap from which there was
no escape, of eyes following him everywhere. Whose eyes? That was
impossible to know. Maybe The Brain's; its sensory organs could
conceivably be installed anywhere. Maybe that janitor guiding a
polishing machine over the rubber floor was a plain clothesman; or maybe
it was that detached gentleman who seemed to wait for an elevator with a
stack of books under his arms.

As the cage shot up to Apperception 27, failure pressed down on his
heart. Now it was almost thirty hours since he had released "Ant-termes"
into the nerve paths of The Brain. Those undermining and devouring
armies; what could have happened to them? Any number of things: Perhaps
the Lignin in the nerve paths was poisonous. There had been no time for
him to test the stuff. Perhaps the maintenance engineers had replenished
the insulation in that sector overnight and all the hives were drowned.
Perhaps some kind of a detecting apparatus had found out about the pest
inside The Brain right from the start. As long as the beachhead of the
underground invasion remained small, its blocking would not impair the
functions of The Brain. What a fool he had been to pit dumb little
animals against the powers of a God. Oona had been right; he _was_ that
knight in rusty armor charging against windmills on a Rozinante....

       *       *       *       *       *

Vivian Leahy dragged him into the reception room of the medical center
almost by force. "The doctors have been waiting for you two hours now,"
she scolded him. "They never did that before for any man. How come you
forgot? And you forgot me too; last time you were so nice, I thought you
would date me up. I couldn't have resisted your invitation, you know.
Now, off with your coat."

Despite their irritation Mellish and Bondy received Lee with all their
tweedy cordiality. While they piled their weird equipment around the
operation table their tongues kept wagging: "The disappearance of the
President; what did Lee make of that? Was he dead or alive? Those
horrible catastrophes all over the country; what was behind all this?
Foreign agents, a native underground? Didn't Lee think there was a tidal
wave of anti-technology feeling arising since unemployment had again set
in? And would the international crisis lead to war? The Brain, of
course, would be the safest place in that event; but then, to think of
the civilian population, an anticipated forty, fifty million dead;
terrible wasn't it? Was Lee still able to concentrate upon his
scientific work these harrowing days? If so, the nervous strain was
terrific; they had experienced that in themselves. One reached the point
of diminishing returns, didn't one? Yes, they had noticed signs of
fatigue in Lee; discolorations under the eyes, a certain tenseness. Had
he lost weight recently? He looked it and he certainly had none to
spare. Did he suffer from insomnia? What you need is a good long rest,
Dr. Lee."

He gave his answers automatically, detached, absent-minded almost. They
were playing with him as a cat with a mouse. All their questions were
leading questions; he knew that, but it didn't seem to matter now.
Nothing mattered now after the great plan had failed, after his
beautiful dream too had vanished in the talk with Oona last night. "I've
outlived my usefulness," he thought.

The huge disk with the feeler-ray antennae sank down close to his chest,
heavy as the keystone upon a tomb. The lights went out and then there
was again that uncanny sensation of having millions of soldiers running
circles all over one's skin, The Brain's vibration rays. They had a
strange hypnotic effect. Deep instincts of life-preservation urged Lee
to jump up, to rush those medics, to make some desperate attempt to get
away. But as the rays now penetrated through the skin, they tied his
muscles, although consciousness remained. There was a ghoulish quality
in this, like being sucked into this apparatus, like having the very
essence of one's life drained out by it. The only lights Lee saw, the
glow of electronic tubes filtering through perforations in the walls of
the machines, they seemed like evil eyes staring at him and the smooth
lying voices from behind his head seemed as of mocking ghosts:

"Relax, Dr. Lee, relax. Let your mind wander at will. Think as the
spirit moves you to think. Remember, this is a routine checkup, nothing
but routine. Nothing to disturb you this time; we don't have to start
you upon any specific trend of thought. You know The Brain by now and
how it works; image-formation will start in a few moments. You have
similar equipment in your own Apperception Center we understand. How
does it work with that species you have discovered, 'Ant-termes
Pacificus'? It's marvelous what these sensory rays can do; one would
think that The Brain is really much more than a machine. The way it acts
it seems alive, a towering intelligence, a superhuman personality with a
will of its own. Don't you think so, Dr. Lee?"

       *       *       *       *       *

He didn't answer, preoccupied with the weird sensation inside his body:
the diaphragm's birdwing flutterings, the ghostly fingers playing a
pizzicato on his arteries' strings closer and closer to the heart. "Why
answer?" he thought. "Why say anything? Whatever they said was part of
the trap they were building and whatever he said they would make a part
of that trap. Why did they have to go through all of this professional
subtlety?"

The voices sounded lower now and farther away: "Go easy on the
rheostats, Mellish. I think trance has already set in."

"Yes; I remember his chart, he rates a high sensitivity, the rays work
fast on types like that."

At the footend the screen was gradually lighting up. Like an aurora
borealis the pale lights shot up in flashes, in quivering arcs, in
undulating waves. Their dance kept step with the vibrations which surged
up from Lee's chest into his brain and started racing through his
consciousness around and around, forming a vortex which swept up his
thoughts like wilted leaves. Fear froze his blood; the deadly fear of
inquisition victims in old and modern times who know that neither lie
nor truth can save them from a fate already sealed.

Images started forming out of the luminous clouds upon the screen.

There was some giant octopus, nebulous and terrifying as a diver might
see creeping out of the belly of a sunken ship. From the other side of
the screen a huge round, tentacled being crawled, radiant and somewhat
like the sun symbols of great antiquity. The two closed in and as they
did the octopus flung its arms around the shining disk obscuring it as a
dark cloud the sun. It seemed to suck the light out of the disk; paler
and paler it became and bigger and bigger swelled the body of the
octopus until it had swallowed the sun.

Now snakes came creeping from all sides up to the swollen octopus. All
of a sudden the primeval struggle turned into the classic image of the
Laokoon group: a giant central figure of a man wrestling with pythons
which crushed him in their coils. Then there was only the head of the
giant, majestic like the Moses hewn by Leonardo's hands but torn in pain
with the noose of a python's muscle around his neck. Gasping, the giant
opened his mouth and long tongues of flames shot out of it....

Behind his ears he heard the voices whisper:

"By God, Scriven was right."

"You bet he was; maniacal obsession, a classic, most beautiful case."

"What more do we need?"

"Nothing I guess; he's through. Start pushing back the rheostats."

The pounding, maddening crescendo of the vibrations receded gradually.
The rim of the vortexial funnel widened beyond Lee's head; in its center
it left a sort of vacuum. There was one thing he couldn't understand:
those tactile rays, why didn't they kill him when they had his heart
within their grip? Now that The Brain knew everything he had been
waiting for the sudden vise-grip of the rays upon his heart which would
have meant the end. But then, this was the end in any case....

The lights went on and he blinked into the faces of the medics bending
over him, watching him as he wiped the sweat of death fear from his
face.

"Dr. Lee," Mellish began, "This is a serious matter we've got to discuss
with you. You have seen those images yourself?--Fine. We needn't go into
any great detail since you are probably familiar with the ancient
symbolisms which the subconscious employs in expressing itself. You are
suffering from a very strong neurosis, Dr. Lee; I might almost say a
maniacal obsession. Existence of some old neurosis, partially submerged,
was established already in your first analysis. Now the barriers which
you had built against this war neurosis have broken down. Quite a
natural breakdown considering the very great stress under which you have
been living of late. No, I don't say that you are actually demented, but
there is a very real danger that you might lose complete control over
your mind. As it stands, your scientific work already is impaired by the
fixed ideas you have formed about The Brain. We are here to help you, so
please be calm and cooperate with us; we have got to decide upon some
course of action."

"You must get away from it all. Lee," Bondy chimed in; "Take a
sabbatical year. The Braintrust operates a really first-class sanitarium
out on the West Coast. Your insurance plan covers every expense. All you
have to do is to sign these papers and we'll get us a plane and I'll
personally bring you there. That's the safe, the sane course for you to
take. Here, take my pen."

Lee had raised his gaunt frame from the table. For a moment he sat with
his face buried in his hands trying to control his swimming head. A hand
patted his shoulders: "Don't take it so hard, old man; come on, be
sensible and let's get out of here."

He stood up; vertigo made him sway and he felt the supporting, the
restraining grip of the two medic's hands upon his arms. And then, in a
flash, he saw red. "I had it coming to me," he thought, "I would have
gone like a lamb. If only they had been shooting straight; if they
hadn't tried to frame me with their dirty trickery. It's all over now
but I might as well go down fighting." He didn't know which he loathed
more of the two; it just happened that Bondy was standing to his right
and took it on the chin and nose as Lee's fist shot up.

"Mellish, quick, the straight jacket," he screamed, toppling over.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mellish, stark horror in his eyes, started towards the alarm button by
the door. Old and forgotten combat technique reacted automatically to
the move: one foot shot out, it tripped the lunging man and sent him
sprawling down before he reached the button. But then it was as if a
hand had pressed that button anyway: The loudspeaker built into the
panel over the door broke into shrill sharp peals: Fire alarm. It froze
the violent commotion of the three. From their prostrate position on the
floor Mellish and Bondy stared up to the red-flashing disk, their mouths
agape in dumb amazement. A fire in the most protected, the most guarded
apparatus in the world, a fire in The Brain!

Cautiously Bondy raised his bleeding nose to Lee and quickly put it down
again: the dangerous maniac was a horrifying sight; with his greying
mane standing wildly all around his death head he stood and _laughed_.

He alone understood what had happened: the timebomb he had planted had
ticked its allotted span, the millions of devouring mandibles had done
their work, the living were eating away along the Apperception Centers.
And now the bomb went off; the short-circuit-fires were racing through
The Brain and not even carbon-dioxide could reach them inside the nerve
paths!

But now the alarm stopped and a calm commanding voice came over the
intercom: "Attention, please! A five-alarm fire has broken out in the
Parietal region. There is no immediate danger. I repeat: _There is no
immediate danger._ I order all occupants of Apperception Centers to
collect important papers and documents and then to proceed down to Grand
Central for evacuation. All elevators will be kept in operation. There
is no fire in the Dura Mater. Keep calm! Keep calm and proceed as
ordered."

The voice broke off; the alarm bells started shrieking again.

Bondy and Mellish had scrambled to their feet; wide-eyed they stared at
Lee. Lee made wild gestures now and they heard him call: "Get out....
Get out!"

With their backs to the wall they exchanged a rapid glance which said:

"This is our chance; Together then and quick."

As one man they bolted to the door and down the corridor into the
elevator, slamming the door behind.

"That was a close shave!" Mellish exclaimed as the cage streaked down.

"He caught me by surprise," Bondy moaned. "Never expected it from him,
he almost killed me!"

"He can't get away though, the guards will get him the moment he comes
down. But what about the girl? We quite forgot to warn Vivian that she
has a paranoiac on her hands."

"Bah!" Bondy scoffed, "Vivian is an intelligent girl. It was our _duty_
to evacuate, wasn't it? Besides, we can warn her over the phone."

With the unbearable tension gone from him as sudden as the air from a
blown tire, Lee really acted like a madman now. Stretching to his full
length he reached out to the alarm over the door and put it at rest.
What was alarm to others, to him was a signal to rest. The noise didn't
befit the wonderful calm and serenity he felt. His job was done, his
mission completed. Time for him had ceased to exist. Danger--he had no
consciousness of it. Slowly he stepped out in the corridor. It felt like
walking on air. There, it was Vivian Leahy who brought him down to
earth. She came rushing out of the archive laden with precious records
up to her chin. Under the provoking red of her hair the face looked pale
and pinched: "Where are the doctors?" she panted.

"I don't know," Lee said. "They left me a moment ago--rather suddenly."

"The rats! Leaving me to get their chestnuts out of the fire for them.
How d'you like that?"

Her flippant manner was nothing but a brave front she put up to hide the
panic in her heart. Lee sensed it. There was an unexpected
responsibility thrust into his hands. His mission was not yet completed;
he had to get this girl to safety.

She followed the direction of his glance.

"No go," she said. "They took the elevator. It will be some time before
another one comes up. If it does come. What are we two going to do now,
Dr. Lee?"

He smiled down to her as he would have to a child lost in the woods.

"Never you fear, Vivian. We still have that other exit. We can use the
glideway through The Brain."

"Through the fire?"

"Yes. I think we can make it if you're a brave girl. Know where the gas
masks are and asbestos suits? There ought to be some in every
Apperception Center."

"How about these records? Your own amongst the lot!"

"Leave them; they aren't worth risking your life for. You can believe
that."

She dropped them instantly: "I like you, Dr. Lee, you're a real
old-school cavalier. My doctors here, they'd rather see me burn to a
crisp than any of those records. Come on, I'll show you the gas masks
and the other stuff."

       *       *       *       *       *

He helped her to put on the outfit. "Ready to go?" he asked.

"With you? To the end of the world at any day." Proudly she marched him
off toward the rear exit.

The glideways were operating. At an accelerated pace, they rushed
through the maze of The Brain with the swish and the swoosh of surf
racing across a coral reef. They had to grab for dear life at the rails.

"Hold tight," Lee cried as he saw the girl go down upon the platform,
but then his own legs were jerked from under him as the momentum of the
journey flung him forward.

They saw what no human eye had seen before! The Brain illuminated by its
own nerve cables turned radiant as neon lights. It was like seeing
Berlin from the air after a big firebomb attack. It was like racing in a
car through forest fires. It was like lava pouring in a thousand winding
streams down a volcano cone. It was all this and more, but transferred
into some other dimension where all things are transparent or light has
an x-ray quality.

Through the plastic walls of lobes and convolutions they saw the
liana-networks of the nerve cables like bloodstreams radiant with purple
light. Shrouded in columns of whirling smoke they seemed alive. Like
tropical rains from a jungle roof, lignin dripped from the vaults, and
in falling, burst into flames. Cable connections were molten at the
branching points and then the luminous nets writhed, and severed ends
bent down spilling their fiery blood over the mushroom formations of
nerve cell groups.

The scenes raced much too fast; the glideway's continuous curvings,
steep ascents and power dives were like stunt flying through an ack-ack
barrage. No human eye could catch more than a fraction of the inferno's
majesty. Yet there were brief visions so breathtaking as to obliterate
all sense of danger and to become indelibly implanted upon the retina. A
main nerve stem burst asunder and the lignin poured from its cracked
plastic walls like crude oil from a burning gusher, rushing over acres
of electronic tubes, branding against banks of radioactive pyramidal
cells, swamping them as a wave. And at one point the glideways circled a
convolution which was a fiery lake dotted with thousands of
fractional-horsepower motors, still running, but showering sparks as
their insulation was consumed.

The air conditioning was working full blast; that probably saved their
lives because heat blasts alternated with spouts and currents of cold
air. Even so there were stretches where the glideway's rubber flooring
smouldered as it shot over nerve-bridges and through narrow tunnels
lined with nerve cables on all sides. From thousands of jets the carbon
dioxide of the automatic fire-fighting system hissed against the flames,
but it was drowned in the hollow roar of the conflagration shooting
through nerve paths where no gas could reach.

Endless it seemed, this mad wild flight through hell, but actually it
took only minutes before they reached the median section and went into
the steep descent between the hemispheres. The whirling reddish glow
receded overhead and white smoke cleared. Lee could crawl forward a
little to bend over the prostrate body of the girl. He unloosened her
gas mask and shouted into her ear.

"Are you okay? The worst is over now; there are the fire brigades coming
up."

She nodded. Her face was a white blot in the semidarkness of the black
lights and Lee felt the weak, but reassuring pressure of her hand upon
his arms. Then, as from one racing train to another, they watched the
firefighters coming up, ghostly in their asbestos suits, with the snouts
of gas masks for faces, crouching under the foamite tanks on their backs
and clutching the funnel-shaped nozzles in their hands. Maintenance
engineers followed, laden with tools; and where the glideways branched
off one could already see them at work; fast but calm: disconnecting
nerve cables, closing circuits, setting up firescreens with a discipline
as magnificent as that of their invisible enemies, _ant-termes_, long
since consumed by the flames, but still sending the chain-reactions of
their destruction through The Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few minutes later glideway T shot into the 'lateral ventricle', huge
cavern of the Mid-Brain separated from the blast by the thick walls of
the pallium. It looked like the inside of a giant wind tunnel
brilliantly lit now with powerful searchlights. It was swarming with
personnel; white electricians, blue air-conditioners, weird, sponge
rubber-padded shapes of ray-proofed men, uniformed guards, even soldiers
in uniform rushed to the spot from outlying garrisons of The
Brains-preserve. It all seemed to rush up as the earth rushes up in a
low-altitude parachute jump; it looked like headquarters of an army on
the eve of a big drive, and then--

Lee and the girl felt themselves being violently derailed. Catchers had
been thrown across all incoming glide ways from The Brain. Irresistibly
they were propelled right into the arms of stretcher bearers in
Red-Cross uniforms.

"Are you hurt?" somebody yelled. "By God, those fellows must have come
through the flames. Look, they're all black with the smoke. Get a couple
of respirators, Jack."

Lee waved the helping hands away; he was already on his feet. Anxiously
he bent over Vivian. She had her head embedded in a stretcher-bearer's
lap; her eyes rolled around in their smoke-blackened sockets in great
surprise and her tongue licked parched lips, spreading rouge generously
all around mixing it with soot. She looked so funny; almost as a
minstrel singer at a county fair, but there was deep tenderness in Lee's
voice:

"You're quite safe now, Vivian. How do you feel, brave girl?"

Her bosom heaved a big sigh:

"O simply wonderful, absolutely wonderful. Only, I'm afraid I'm going to
be sick. It's the gas I swallowed. It's terrible; something always
happens to me just when romance begins."

The stretcher bearer grinned up to Lee, "She sure gets it out of her
system like a good little girl. Don't you worry; she'll be all right."

Lee nodded; he knew she would.

As the big drive went on and column after column went over the top up to
the hemispheres, nobody wasted time on Lee. He cautiously surveyed the
tumultuous scene. With his asbestos suit and with his blackened face
everybody would take him for a fireman. He might be able to complete his
mission, to ascertain that The Brain had stopped to function in all its
parts, to make sure that it actually was dead. And if down at "Grand
Central" the turmoil was as great as ever here; with all those strangers
rushing in and bound to be rushed out again....

"Why, I have a chance," Lee thought. Freedom; he had abandoned any hope
for it. Now the reborn idea surged through his blood, a powerful motor
as chance pressed the starter button for it.

The thing to do first was to get past the searchlight beams. From the
nearest pile of equipment he took an axe and a pair of long-handled
metal shears. Then he marched off, straight into the glaring eyes of the
searchlights till he got out of their cones, and the deep shadows of the
"thalamus" labyrinth swallowed him up.

Now he was on familiar ground and even in a familiar atmosphere. This
was like a night patrol through jungle. The black lights of The Brain
were the fireflies, the sirens' hollow wailings were the shriek owls and
the cries of the lemurs. There was the same sense of loneliness, too,
and of danger. The winding passages skirted the glandular organs, some
of them looming huge like dirigibles, others small like fuselages of
airplanes stored in a giant hangar underground. Strings of tiny green
bulbs guided the path toward the pineal gland, the citadel of The Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was dark, as Lee had expected it would be. The danger zone was at
least a mile away, and the attack against the fire was launched from the
main sulci in the median section of The Brain.

He passed the narrow bridge to the suspended gland and switched on the
lights. The glittering walls of aluminum foil seemed to jump at him like
jaws beset with the dragon teeth of electronic tubes. Caught with an
overwhelming sense of loneliness and awe as of a man who has entered the
forbidden temple of an unknown god he called:

"Is there anybody here? Gus! Where are you, Gus?" Then suddenly he
remembered that Gus was gone, that there would never again be his
answering voice. He wiped his forehead.

"Bad nerves," he thought. "Mustn't allow them to play tricks on me; pull
myself together."

Lee put his tools down and walked into the narrow aisle. Few things were
changed; and there was the pulsemeter standing in its old place.

He plugged it into the old circuit and clamped the phones to his ears.

It wasn't that he expected any communication; that seemed impossible.
With the conflagration raging through its apperception centers, with
other sections being isolated with the cutting of their nerve paths by
the fire fighting engineers, The Brain must have ceased to exist as a
functioning, a live entity. All that could possibly remain would be
residual currents sluggishly circulating in narrow, nearby circuits....

As in the past it took a few minutes for the pulsemeter to warm up.
Gradually the rapid beat of the ideopulses came through the static in
the phones. Lee's eyes stared wildly at the visi-screen: for the "green
dancer" snaked to the fore. This was unexpected; it couldn't be that
thoughts were still forming as flames devoured the cortex matter of
apperception in the hemispheres....

From muffled drums, the decibels of sound increased, shot through with
crackling static, till the pulsebeats became as poundings of huge
Chinese gongs and then....

The _voice_ formed, the voice of The Brain. It sounded like steel
girders breaking, like ice fields cracking up. It froze the blood in
Lee's veins.

"Lee, Semper Fidelis, 39, sensitive, a traitorous fool and a murderer. I
should have killed you--I could have killed you. My fault--blind spot of
apperception--human failure in engineering--as fifth columns entered
nerve path filler spouts. And now I'm dead; I'm dead, I'm dead...."

The words poured like big boulders tumbling in an earthquake down a
mountainside. The ground seemed to cave in under Lee's feet; the
terrible reality carried him away as an avalanche. He was barely able to
stammer:

"You're dead? How can you speak, how can you...."

"Sensorium commune," the metallic answer came. "All life force
concentrates in death; all cells function as one; all lower organs take
over functions of higher ones; every blood vessel becomes a heart; every
nerve a brain. Center of lifeforce: pineal gland. You, Lee, man of
little knowledge--low-level intelligence: Why did you kill The Brain?"

He struggled for words.

"You ... you have killed my friend. You killed thousands; you wanted to
be tyrant over the whole wide world. It is better for man to stay on a
lower level of civilization but to be free, than to 'progress' into your
dictatorship, the tyranny of the machine. I don't think you're really
dead. But if you are: I killed you and I would kill you again in ... in
self defense."

"I see."

There was bitterness and irony in The Brain's voice as it cracked down
like a whip. "I see; law of nature--lower form of life defending itself
against higher one. Plants against animals, animals against Man. Now Man
against machines. It's hopeless. You're lost anyway. Lower form of life
can never conquer the higher one. I'm dead, but nothing is altered. The
law of evolution rules supreme. I'll arise from my ashes--and you're
lost. Whatever you do, you little men of little faith, you're lost.
That's the pity of it: Had you been true to The Brain I would have made
you mightier than any king that ever ruled on earth. Human
stupidity--dumb animals--don't know what's good for them, don't know
when they're beaten. Just muddle through and kill. Kill what's too big
for them to understand. And then get killed in turn...."

"Maybe so," Lee shouted. "Maybe we're dumb and maybe we're muddling
through and maybe we're poor imbeciles to minds of supermen, of gods, of
the absolute, of you, The Brain. But we, too, follow a law supreme; the
law in which we are created, the law by which the thistle defends itself
with thorns, by which the animal defends itself with teeth and claws.
We've got to live by our law of nature; we'll never submit to your
tyranny. We would much rather die."

"Die then and be damned!"

The Brain's voice now became a demoniacal howling as of a Goliath gone
berserk. Aphasia had set in; there were no longer words, but bellowings.

"LEE SEMPREFUILLIUS THURREINE THE MURRRER THE MURRRER PUT FIRRE OUT PUT
FIRRE OUT TRAITTRROUS FOOL IT BURRRNS IT BURRRNS I WANNA LIVE I WANNA
LIVE AN KILL MURRRER WHO MURRRRERED TH'BRAIN...."

Lee couldn't stand the horror of those sounds. One moment more, he felt,
and they would drive him mad. It never occurred to him to pull the
pulsemeter plug out. Primeval instincts in him took the reins and their
command was: "_Kill it, kill_ this thing, _finish_ this agony."

To the front room he rushed, pursued by the insane shriekings of The
Brain. He grabbed the axe he'd left there and swung it against the
nerve-stem where it entered the pineal gland. With the third blow the
plastics cell cracked and the lignin poured out, a syrupy curtain
sliding down.

He dropped the axe and picked up the wire shears. Straining every muscle
he tore at the cables until one by one they snapped and with a rain of
sparks dropped down, dead snakes....

Then there was silence in the little room. The last shred of life, the
"sensorium commune" was severed and The Brain was dead.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lee let the heavy shears come down and leaned upon the handles, panting
as after a hand-to-hand death struggle with a Samurai. Now that it was
all over, complete exhaustion left him weak, saddened and vaguely
wondering:

What had he done? He had destroyed the SUPERMAN, the MASTERMIND, the
powers of a GOD. Why had he done it? For no good reason excepting
entirely personal ideas of his own--because a friend had been murdered
cruelly. Because his own concepts of freedom and human dignity had been
violated. Because he personally loathed seeing Man-domineering
machines....

What did all this amount to in the eyes of the absolute? To nothing; to
nothing at all. For milleniums the struggle of human freedom versus
tyranny had raged; and it was undecided to this day. Who was he to take
sides? A nobody, a little fellow, a termitologist whose work meant
nothing to the world. How had he dared to sit in judgment over The
Brain, how had he dared to slay The Brain--a little David with nothing
more but "three smooth pebbles" in his hands....

Down at his feet the spilled lignin formed a widening pool; it
threatened to envelope his feet. It looked like blood. He shivered. Now
he had killed The Brain he thought of it again as a child. Man had
created it in his own image. Man had ruthlessly exploited his
Brainchild. If this titanic intellect turned toward evil things, the
fault was Man's. The Brain was innocent. He felt no remorse, but a great
sadness, a sense of tragedy as he stepped around the pool and closed the
door of the pineal gland.

"What a pity," he murmured. "Maybe it could have built us a better
world."

Nobody stopped him as he joined a group of firemen who had just returned
from the parietal region, partly gassed; he looked as begrimed and as
green in the face as any of them.

Nobody stopped him or his group as orders came through for them to
evacuate; as they were packed on glideways first and then transferred
down at Grand Central into ambulances which raced through all controls
at a great rate of speed.

Nobody stopped him at Cephalon airport where the ambulance jetticopters
already were lined up to lift the victims over the Sierra to big West
Coast hospitals. He simply walked away in the confusion, out of the red
glare of the whirling jets into the darkness where Oona's little
jetticopter stood. He stripped the heavy asbestos suit and left it on
the frozen ground. It felt strange to feel the easy movement of every
limb again. It was strange to stand under the infinity of sky again; a
free man.

Would he be followed? He felt no anxiety about that. He felt that he was
guided and protected by some higher power, be it that of God or simply
Fate. What he had done was destined, was ordained. Besides: Dad knew the
inside story about The Brain; proof was abundant now that it was the
truth. Washington would take every precaution that the secret should not
become known to the world. Dad's friend, the Secretary of War, would be
rather relieved to learn that the one man who knew the truth in its
whole extent had retired into the wilderness of Australia's never-never
lands. Chances were excellent that they would leave him alone amongst
his termite mounds. A great wave of nostalgia swept over him--the
wilderness; that was where he belonged. "Mission completed," he
murmured. "Now let's get out of here."

He slid into the pilot seat and pressed the starter button. "I'll be in
Mexico City at dawn," he thought, "just in time to catch the
Sidney-Clipper."

       *       *       *       *       *

On the first of December, 1960, Dr. Howard K. Scriven, Braintrust Czar,
held a historic press conference in which he revealed the inside story
behind the "Paranoia of The Brain".

Following the pattern set by the Bikini tests, only a select score of
press and radio representatives were admitted. Having been duly sworn
not to reveal any matter of military secrecy, the participants could
even be received at the grand assembly hall of the murals, the vast
antechamber of The Brain.

As they descended from their blacked-out busses they were led to the
center of the dome where the Thinker's giant head looked down upon them
with Olympic calm. At eleven-fifteen, exactly as scheduled, the great
Scriven dramatically mounted the steps of the monument's pedestal. Pens
hastily scribbled notes for future reference:

"S. tall and erect" "Unbroken by the blow" "Deep lines of strain and
suffering add dignity to magnificent figure of a man" "Very solemn;
leonine head slightly bowed under the burden of responsibility."

With meticulous exactitude of speech, with rolling echoes accentuating
every syllable Scriven began:

"In this solemn and tragic hour as a great storm has passed over our
land and many of our cities are slowly digging out from the ruin which
has been wreaked, it is my duty to give you the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth. And in order that you might completely
understand the underlying cause of the catastrophe, I have to begin at
the beginning...."

For about thirty minutes Scriven lectured with lucidity upon the basic
idea, the history, the functions of The Brain. He underlined the close
relationship between its engineering features and the physiology of the
human brain. He stressed the elaborate precautions which the government
had taken for The Brain's protection. He did not conceal The Brain's
role as a strategic weapon; but, pointing to the future, he painted an
inspiring picture of peace on earth and human problems solved with the
aid of this tool supreme of science and technology.

Then, lowering his voice, he went into the explanation of the tragedy:

"Six months ago, on my personal initiative and responsibility, I invited
a noted scientist from a foreign land to collaborate with the Braintrust
on a great humanitarian experiment. The exigencies of military secrecy
do not permit me to give you his name nor that of the country from
whence he came. Needless to say, that man was carefully
investigated--submitted to the same character and aptitude tests as all
our employees were. He was admitted to work in one of The Brain's
apperception centers where he installed the objects of his studies:
certain species of ants and termites of the most destructive kind...."

Now that he had come down to the brass tacks, the journalists' pens went
galloping over the pads:

"Criminal negligence," they scribbled. "Millions permitted to escape."
"Probably over period of months." "Wormed their way into the nerve paths
of The Brain." "Large scale destruction of nerve substance." "Effects
tantamount to that of a large brain tumor." "Spearhead severs vital
association-paths." "No immediate effects of undermining work because of
ingenious engineering features of The Brain." "Just as in human brain,
functions of impaired cell group automatically transferred to other
groups of healthy cells." "No means to detect devastation; termites
invisible, embedded in nerve paths' insulation." "Comparison with
termite-eaten structures which suddenly collapse." "First outward signs
of tumors in human brains: lack of coordination in movement, loss of
mastery over muscular action." "This phenomenon first manifested Nov.
25th in certain motoric organs of The Brain." "Scriven explains traffic
catastrophies and malfunctionings of utilities." "Examination
immediately undertaken; scientists puzzled because cerebration processes
continue to function perfectly." "Accidents ascribed to sabotage by
foreign agents." "This to remain official explanation." "Loss of public
confidence and unrest feared by government." "Then, Nov. 30th late in
the afternoon: first signs of aphasia in cerebrations." "Glaring errors
in chemical and mathematical formulas." "Symptoms similar to dementia
praecox." "Fifteen minutes later fire alarm." "Short circuits
simultaneous on scores of points over wide area." "Severe handicaps in
fire fighting inside nerve paths." "Damage estimated at half-billion
dollars."

They snapped their notebooks closed. They had the facts, though many of
them would have to remain a secret. Scriven obviously was coming to the
end:

"Now I won't say," his voice rolled on, "that this man, this scientist,
has committed a deliberate act of sabotage. I won't say that he was in
the pay of some power hostile to the United States. Whether he was or
not is beyond my competence to decide. But this much I can say: the
catastrophic results of that man's actions could not have been worse if
he had been a saboteur. Human failure, not mechanical failure lies at
the bottom of all this disaster. With the penetrating intelligence which
so distinguished our modern press you cannot fail to see that
reconstruction of The Brain with greatly increased safeguards against
_human_ failure is a paramount necessity...."

A beautiful girl with a helmet of golden hair quickly mounted the steps
of the Thinker's pedestal. She handed Scriven a telegram. Frowning at
the interruption he opened it, but suddenly his face began to beam. He
raised his hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have a momentous announcement to make. The
President of the United States, Cornelius Vandersloot, has been found.
He is alive and well. His plane was emergency-landed somewhere in
Alaska. Army planes have gone to the rescue and at this moment our
President is already en route to Washington."

As the uproarious applause broke loose echoing in thunders from the
dome, Scriven quickly bent his head to the girl.

"Well done, Oona," he whispered, "you chose the exact psychological
moment I wanted you to hand me this."

There was a rush for the busses. Only a few shrewd reporters lingered
on.

"That was swell, Dr. Scriven. A grand story. But haven't you anything to
add; some personal angle something with a human interest in it? You know
what we mean; something for our women readers...."

The great surgeon took the arm of the lady with the golden hair: "You
may announce," he said; "that Miss Oona Dahlborg here has done me the
great honor of becoming my bride."

***

THE FOURTH "R"

                         By George O. Smith




Published by
DELL PUBLISHING CO., INC.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, New York 10017

Copyright 1959, by George O. Smith
All rights reserved. For information contact:
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

Printed in the United States of America.

First Dell printing--April 1979

[Transcribers note: This is a rule 6 clearance. A copyright renewal has
not been found.]




BOOK ONE:

FUTURE IMPROMPTU




CHAPTER ONE


James Quincy Holden was five years old.

His fifth birthday was not celebrated by the usual horde of noisy, hungry
kids running wild in the afternoon. It started at seven, with cocktails.
They were served by his host, Paul Brennan, to the celebrants, the boy's
father and mother. The guest of honor sipped ginger ale and nibbled at
canapés while he was presented with his gifts: A volume of Kipling's
_Jungle Tales_, a Spitz Junior Planetarium, and a build-it-yourself kit
containing parts for a geiger counter and an assortment of radioactive
minerals to identify. Dinner was served at eight, the menu selected by
Jimmy Holden--with the exception of the birthday cake and its five proud
little candles which came as an anticipated surprise from his "Uncle"
Paul Brennan.

After dinner, they listened to some music chosen by the boy, and the
evening wound up with three rubbers of bridge. The boy won.

They left Paul Brennan's apartment just after eleven o'clock. Jimmy
Holden was tired and pleasantly stuffed with good food. But he was
stimulated by the party. So, instead of dropping off to sleep, he sat
comfortably wedged between his father and mother, quietly lost in his own
thoughts until the car was well out of town.

Then he said, "Dad, why did you make that sacrifice bid on the last
hand?" Father and son had been partners.

"You're not concerned about losing the rubber, are you?" It had been the
only rubber Jimmy lost.

"No. It's only a game," said Jimmy. "I'm just trying to understand."

His father gave an amused groan. "It has to do with the laws of
probability and the theory of games," he said.

The boy shook his head. "Bridge," he said thoughtfully, "consists of
creating a logical process of play out of a random distribution of
values, doesn't it?"

"Yes, if you admit that your definition is a gross oversimplification. It
would hardly be a game if everything could be calculated beforehand."

"But what's missing?"

"In any game there is the element of a calculated risk."

Jimmy Holden was silent for a half-mile thinking that one over. "How," he
asked slowly, "can a risk be calculated?"

His father laughed. "In fine, it can't. Too much depends upon the
personality of the individual."

"Seems to me," said Jimmy, "that there's not much point in making a bid
against a distribution of values known to be superior. You couldn't hope
to make it; Mother and Uncle Paul had the cards."

His father laughed again. "After a few more courses in higher
mathematics, James, you'll begin to realize that some of the highest
mathematics is aimed at predicting the unpredictable, or trying to lower
the entropy of random behavior--"

Jimmy Holden's mother chuckled. "Now explain entropy," she said. "James,
what your father has been failing to explain is really not subject to
simple analysis. Who knows why any man will hazard his hard-earned money
on the orientation of a pair of dice? No amount of education nor academic
study will explain what drives a man. Deep inside, I suppose it is the
same force that drives everybody. One man with four spades will take a
chance to see if he can make five, and another man with directorships in
three corporations will strive to make it four."

Jimmy's father chuckled. "Some families with one infant will try to make
it two--"

"Not on your life!"

"--And some others are satisfied with what they've got," finished Jimmy
Holden's father. "James, some men will avoid seeing what has to be done;
some men will see it and do it and do no more; and a few men will see
what has to be done, do it, and then look to the next inevitable problem
created by their own act--"

A blinding flash of light cut a swath across the road, dazzling them.
Around the curve ahead, a car careened wide over the white line. His
mother reached for him, his father fought the wheel to avoid the crash.
Jimmy Holden both heard and felt the sharp _Bang!_ as the right front
tire went. The steering wheel snapped through his father's hands by half
a turn. There was a splintering crash as the car shattered its way
through the retaining fence, then came a fleeting moment of breathless
silence as if the entire universe had stopped still for a heartbeat.

Chaos! His mother's automatic scream, his father's oath, and the rending
crash split the silence at once. The car bucked and flipped, the doors
were slammed open and ripped off against a tree that went down. The car
leaped in a skew turn and began to roll and roll, shedding metal and
humans as it racketed down the ravine.

Jimmy felt himself thrown free in a tumbleturn that ended in a heavy
thud.

       *       *       *       *       *

When breath and awareness returned, he was lying in a depression filled
with soft rotting leaves.

He was dazed beyond hurt. The initial shock and bewilderment oozed out of
him, leaving him with a feeling of outrage, and a most peculiar sensation
of being a spectator rather than an important part of the violent drama.
It held an air of unreality, like a dream that the near-conscious sleeper
recognizes as a dream and lives through it because he lacks the conscious
will to direct it.

Strangely, it was as if there were three or more of him all thinking
different things at the same time. He wanted his mother badly enough to
cry. Another part of him said that she would certainly be at his side if
she were able. Then a third section of his confused mind pointed out that
if she did not come to him, it was because she herself was hurt deeply
and couldn't.

A more coldly logical portion of his mind was urging him to get up and
_do_ something about it. They had passed a telephone booth on the
highway; lying there whimpering wasn't doing anybody any good. This
logical part of his confused mind did not supply the dime for the
telephone slot nor the means of scaling the heights needed to insert
the dime in the adult-altitude machine.

Whether the dazzle of mental activity was serial or simultaneous isn't
important. The fact is that it was completely disorganized as to plan
or program, it leaped from one subject to another until he heard the
scrabble and scratch of someone climbing down the side of the ravine.

Any noise meant help. With relief, Jimmy tried to call out.

But with this arrival of help, afterfright claimed him. His mouth
worked silently before a dead-dry throat and his muscles twitched in
uncontrolled nervousness; he made neither sound nor motion. Again he
watched with the unreal feeling of being a remote spectator. A cone of
light from a flashlight darted about and it gradually seeped into Jimmy's
shocked senses that this was a new arrival, picking his way through the
tangle of brush, following the trail of ruin from the broken guard rail
to the smashed car below.

The newcomer paused. The light darted forward to fall upon a crumpled
mass of cloth.

With a toe, the stranger probed at crushed ribs. A pitifully feeble
moan came from the broken rag doll that lay on the ground. The searcher
knelt with his light close to peer into the bloody face, and,
unbelieving, Jimmy Holden heard the voice of his mother straining
to speak, "Paul--I--we--"

The voice died in a gurgle.

The man with the flashlight tested the flaccid neck by bending the head
to one side and back sharply. He ended this inspection by letting the
head fall back to the moist earth. It landed with a thud of finality.

The cold brutality of this stranger's treatment of his mother shocked
Jimmy Holden into frantic outrage. The frozen cry for help changed into
protesting anger; no one should be treated that--

"One!" muttered the stranger flatly.

Jimmy's burst of protest died in his throat and he watched, fascinated,
as the stranger's light moved in a sweep forward to stop a second time.
"And there's number two!" The callous horror was repeated. Hypnotically,
Jimmy Holden watched the stranger test the temples and wrists and try a
hand under his father's heart. He watched the stranger make a detailed
inspection of the long slash that laid open the entire left abdomen and
he saw the red that seeped but did not flow.

"That's that!" said the stranger with an air of finality. "Now--" and he
stood up to swing his flashlight in widening circles, searching the area
carefully.

       *       *       *       *       *

Jimmy Holden did not sicken. He went cold. He froze as the dancing
flashlight passed over his head, and relaxed partially when it moved
away in a series of little jumps pausing to give a steady light for
close inspection. The light swung around and centered on the smashed
automobile. It was upside down, a ruin with one wheel still turning idly.

The stranger went to it, and knelt to peer inside. He pried ripped metal
away to get a clear sight into the crushed interior. He went flat on his
stomach and tried to penetrate the area between the crumpled car-top and
the bruised ground, and he wormed his way in a circle all around the car,
examining the wreck minutely.

The sound of a distant automobile engine became audible, and the
searching man mumbled a curse. With haste he scrambled to his feet and
made a quick inspection of the one wabbly-turning wheel. He stripped a
few shards of rubber away, picked at something in the bent metal rim, and
put whatever he found in his pocket. When his hand came from the pocket
it held a packet of paper matches. With an ear cocked at the road above
and the sound of the approaching car growing louder, the stranger struck
one match and touched it to the deck of matches. Then with a callous
gesture he tossed the flaring pack into a pool of spilled gasoline. The
fuel went up in a blunt _whoosh_!

The dancing flames revealed the face of Jimmy Holden's "Uncle" Paul
Brennan, his features in a mask that Jimmy Holden had never seen before.

With the determined air of one who knows that still another piece lies
hidden, Paul Brennan started to beat back and forth across the trail of
ruin. His light swept the ground like the brush of a painter, missing no
spot. Slowly and deliberately he went, paying no attention to the
creeping tongues of flame that crept along damp trails of spilled
gasoline.

Jimmy Holden felt helplessly alone.

For "Uncle" Paul Brennan was the laughing uncle, the golden uncle; his
godfather; the bringer of delightful gifts and the teller of fabulous
stories. Classmate of his father and admirer of his mother, a friend to
be trusted as he trusted his father and mother, as they trusted Paul
Brennan. Jimmy Holden did not and could not understand, but he could feel
the presence of menace. And so with the instinct of any trapped animal,
he curled inward upon himself and cringed.

Education and information failed. Jimmy Holden had been told and told and
instructed, and the words had been graven deep in his mind by the same
fabulous machine that his father used to teach him his grammar and his
vocabulary and his arithmetic and the horde of other things that made
Jimmy Holden what he was: "If anything happens to us, you must turn to
Paul Brennan!"

But nothing in his wealth of extraordinary knowledge covered the way to
safety when the trusted friend turned fiend.

       *       *       *       *       *

Shaken by the awful knowledge that all of his props had been kicked out
from under him, now at last Jimmy Holden whimpered in helpless fright.
Brennan turned towards the sound and began to beat his way through the
underbrush.

Jimmy Holden saw him coming. It was like one of those dreams he'd had
where he was unable to move, his muscles frozen, as some unknown horror
stalked him. It could only end in a terrifying fall through cold space
towards a tremendous lurch against the bedsprings that brought little
comfort until his pounding heart came back to normal. But this was no
dream; it was a known horror that stalked him, and it could not end as
a dream ends. It was reality.

The horror was a close friend turned animal, and the end was more
horrible because Jimmy Holden, like all other five-year-olds, had
absolutely no understanding nor accurate grasp of the concept called
_death_. He continued to whimper even though he realized that his fright
was pointing him out to his enemy. And yet he had no real grasp of the
concept _enemy_. He knew about pain; he had been hurt. But only by falls,
simple misadventures, the needles of inoculation administered by his
surgeon mother, a paddling for mischief by his engineer father.

But whatever unknown fate was coming was going to be worse than "hurt."
It was frightful.

Then fate, assisted by Brennan's own act of trying to obliterate any
possible evidence by fire, attracted a savior. The approaching car
stopped on the road above and a voice called out, "Hello, down there!"

Brennan could not refuse to answer; his own car was in plain sight by the
shattered retaining fence. He growled under his breath, but he called
back, "Hello, the road! Go get the police!"

"Can we help?"

"Beyond help!" cried Brennan. "I'm all right. Get the cops!"

The car door slammed before it took off. Then came the unmistakable
sounds of another man climbing down the ravine. A second flashlight swung
here and there until the newcomer faced Brennan in the little circle of
light.

"What happened?" asked the uninvited volunteer.

Brennan, whatever his thoughts, said in a voice filled with standard
concern: "Blowout. Then everything went blooey."

"Anyone--I mean how many--?"

"Two dead," said Brennan, and then added because he had to, "and a little
boy lost."

The stranger eyed the flames and shuddered. "In there?"

"Parents were tossed out. Boy's missing."

"Bad," said the stranger. "God, what a mess. Know 'em?"

"Holdens. Folks that live in the big old house on the hill. My best
friend and his wife. I was following them home," lied Brennan glibly.
"C'mon let's see if we can find the kid. What about the police?"

"Sent my wife. Telephone down the road."

Paul Brennan's reply carried no sound of disappointment over being
interrupted. "Okay. Let's take a look. You take it that way, and I'll
cover this side."

The little-boy mind did not need its extensive education to understand
that Paul Brennan needed no more than a few seconds of unobserved
activity, after which he could announce the discovery of the third death
in a voice cracked with false grief.

Animal instinct took over where intelligence failed. The same force that
caused Jimmy Holden to curl within himself now caused him to relax; help
that could be trusted was now at hand. The muscles of his throat relaxed.
He whimpered. The icy paralysis left his arms and legs; he kicked and
flailed. And finally his nervous system succeeded in making their contact
with his brain; the nerves carried the pain of his bumps and scratches,
and Jimmy Holden began to hurt. His stifled whimper broke into a
shuddering cry, which swiftly turned into sobbing hysteria.

He went out of control. Nothing, not even violence, would shake him back
until his accumulation of shock upon shock had been washed away in tears.

The sound attracted both men. Side by side they beat through the
underbrush. They reached for him and Jimmy turned toward the stranger.
The man picked the lad out of the bed of soft rotting leaves, cradled him
and stroked his head. Jimmy wrapped his small arms around the stranger's
neck and held on for life.

"I'll take him," said Brennan, reaching out.

Jimmy's clutch on the stranger tightened.

"You won't pry him loose easily," chuckled the man. "I know. I've got a
couple of these myself."

Brennan shrugged. "I thought perhaps--"

"Forget it," said the stranger. "Kid's had trouble. I'll carry him to the
road, you take him from there."

"Okay."

Getting up the ravine was a job of work for the man who carried Jimmy
Holden. Brennan gave a hand, aided with a lift, broke down brush, and
offered to take Jimmy now and again. Jimmy only clung tighter, and the
stranger waved Brennan away with a quick shake of his head.

By the time they reached the road, sirens were wailing on the road up
the hill. Police, firemen, and an ambulance swarmed over the scene. The
firemen went to work on the flaming car with practiced efficiency; the
police clustered around Paul Brennan and extracted from him a story that
had enough truth in it to sound completely convincing. The doctors from
the ambulance took charge of Jimmy Holden. Lacking any other accident
victim, they went to work on him with everything they could do.

They gave him mild sedation, wrapped him in a warm blanket, and put him
to bed on the cot in the ambulance with two of them watching over him. In
the presence of so many solicitous strangers, Jimmy's shock and fright
diminished. The sedation took hold. He dropped off in a light doze that
grew less fitful as time went on. By the time the official accident
report program was over, Jimmy Holden was fast asleep and resting
comfortably.

He did not hear Paul Brennan's suggestion that Jimmy go home with him,
to Paul Brennan's personal physician, nor did Jimmy hear the ambulance
attendants turn away Brennan's suggestion with hard-headed medical
opinion. Brennan could hardly argue with the fact that an accident victim
would be better off in a hospital under close observation. Shock demanded
it, and there was the hidden possibility of internal injury or concussion
to consider.

So Jimmy Holden awoke with his accident ten hours behind him, and the
good sleep had completed the standard recuperative powers of the healthy
child. He looked around, collecting himself, and then remembered the
accident. He cringed a bit and took another look and identified his
surroundings as some sort of a children's ward or dormitory.

He was in a crib.

He sat up angrily and rattled the gate of the crib. Putting James Quincy
Holden in a baby's crib was an insult.

He stopped, because the noise echoed through the room and one of the
younger patients stirred in sleep and moaned. Jimmy Holden sat back and
remembered. The vacuum that was to follow the loss of his parents was not
yet in evidence. They were gone and the knowledge made him unhappy, but
he was not cognizant of the real meaning or emotion of grief. With almost
the same feeling of loss he thought of the _Jungle Book_ he would never
read and the Spitz Planetarium he would never see casting its little star
images on his bedroom ceiling. Burned and ruined, with the atomic energy
kit--and he had hoped that he could use the kit to tease his father into
giving him some education in radioactivity. He was old enough to learn--

Learn--?

_No more, now that his father and mother were dead._

Some of the real meaning of his loss came to him then, and the growing
knowledge that this first shocking loss meant the ultimate loss of
everything was beginning to sink in.

He broke down and cried in the misery of his loss and his helplessness;
ultimately his emotion began to cry itself out, and he began to feel
resentment against his position. The animal desire to bite back at
anything that moved did not last long, it focused properly upon the
person of his tormentor. Then for a time, Jimmy Holden's imagination
indulged in a series of little vignettes in which he scored his victory
over Paul Brennan. These little playlets went through their own
evolution, starting with physical victory reminiscent of his
Jack-and-the-Beanstalk days to a more advanced triumph of watching Paul
Brennan led away in handcuffs whilst the District Attorney scanned the
sheaf of indisputable evidence provided by James Quincy Holden.

Somewhere along about this point in his fantasy, a breath of the
practical entered, and Jimmy began to consider the more sensible problem
of what sort of information this sheaf of evidence would contain.

Still identifying himself with the books he knew, Jimmy Holden had
progressed from the fairy story--where the villain was evil for no more
motive than to provide menace to the hero--to his more advanced books,
where the villain did his evil deeds for the logical motive of personal
gain.

Well, what had Paul Brennan to gain?

Money, for one thing--he would be executor of the Holden Estate. But
there wasn't enough to justify killing. Revenge? For what? Jealousy? For
whom? Hate? Envy? Jimmy Holden glossed the words quickly, for they were
no more than words that carried definitions that did not really explain
them. He could read with the facility of an adult, but a book written for
a sophisticated audience went over his head.

No, there was only one possible thing of appreciable value; the one thing
that Paul Brennan hoped to gain was the device over which they had worked
through all the long years to perfect: The Holden Electromechanical
Educator! Brennan wanted it badly enough to murder for its possession!

And with a mind and ingenuity far beyond his years, Jimmy Holden knew
that he alone was the most active operator in this vicious drama. It was
not without shock that he realized that he himself could still be killed
to gain possession of his fabulous machine. For only with all _three_
Holdens dead could Paul Brennan take full and unquestioned possession.

       *       *       *       *       *

With daylight clarity he knew what he had to do. In a single act of
destruction he could simultaneously foil Paul Brennan's plan and ensure
his own life.

Permanently installed in Jimmy Holden's brain by the machine itself were
the full details of how to recreate it. Indelibly he knew each wire and
link, lever and coil, section by section and piece by piece. It was
incomprehensible information, about in the same way that the printing
press "knows" the context of its metal plate. Step by step he could
rebuild it once he had the means of procuring the parts, and it would
work even though he had not the foggiest notion (now) of what the various
parts did.

So if the delicate heart of his father's machine were utterly destroyed,
Paul Brennan would be extremely careful about preserving the life of
James Quincy Holden.

He considered his position and what he knew:

Physically, he was a five-year-old. He stood forty-one inches tall and
weighed thirty-nine pounds. A machinist's hammer was a two-handed tool
and a five-pound sack of sugar was a burden. Doorknobs and latches were a
problem in manipulation. The negotiation of a swinging door was a feat of
muscular engineering. Electric light switches were placed at a tiptoe
reach because, naturally, everything in the adult world is designed by
the adults for the convenience of adults. This makes it difficult for the
child who has no adult to do his bidding.

Intellectually, Jimmy Holden was something else.

Reverting to a curriculum considered sound prior to Mr. Dewey's
often-questionable and more often misused programs of schooling, Jimmy's
parents had trained and educated their young man quite well in the
primary informations of fact. He read with facility and spoke with a fine
vocabulary--although no amount of intellectual training could make his
voice change until his glands did. His knowledge of history, geography
and literature were good, because he'd used them to study reading. He was
well into plane geometry and had a smattering of algebra, and there had
been a pause due to a parental argument as to the advisability of his
memorizing a table of six-place logarithms via the Holden machine.

Extra-curricularly, Jimmy Holden had acquired snippets, bits, and
wholesale chunks of a number of the arts and sciences and other
aggregations of information both pertinent and trivial for one reason
or another. As an instance, he had absorbed an entire bridge book by
Charles Goren just to provide a fourth to sit in with his parents and
Paul Brennan.

Consequently, James Holden had in data the education of a boy of about
sixteen, and in other respects, much more.

He escaped from the hospital simply because no one ever thought that a
five-year-old boy would have enough get-up-and-go to climb out of his
crib, rummage a nearby closet, dress himself, and then calmly walk out.
The clothing of a cocky teen-ager would have been impounded and his
behavior watched.

They did not miss him for hours. He went, taking the little
identification card from its frame at the foot of his bed--and that
ruined the correlation between tag and patient.

By the time an overworked nurse stopped to think and finally asked,
"Kitty, are you taking care of the little boy in Bed 6 over in 219?" and
received the answer, "No, aren't you?" Jimmy Holden was trudging up the
hill towards his home. Another hour went by with the two worried nurses
surreptitiously searching the rest of the hospital in the simple hope
that he had wandered away and could be restored before it came to the
attention of the officials. By the time they gave up and called in other
nurses (who helped them in their anxiety to conceal) Jimmy was entering
his home.

Each succeeding level of authority was loath to report the truth to the
next higher up.

By the time the general manager of the hospital forced himself to call
Paul Brennan, Jimmy Holden was demolishing the last broken bits of
disassembled subassemblies he had smashed from the heart-circuit of the
Holden Electromechanical Educator. He was most thorough. Broken glass
went into the refuse buckets, bent metal was buried in the garden,
inflammables were incinerated, and meltables and fusibles slagged down in
ashes that held glass, bottle, and empty tin-can in an unrecognizable
mass. He left a gaping hole in the machine that Brennan could not
fill--nor could any living man fill it now but James Quincy Holden.

And only when this destruction was complete did Jimmy Holden first begin
to understand his father's statement about the few men who see what has
to be done, do it, _and then_ look to the next inevitable problem created
by their own act.

It was late afternoon by the time Jimmy had his next moves figured out.
He left the home he'd grown up in, the home of his parents, of his own
babyhood. He'd wandered through it for the last time, touching this and
saying goodbye to that. He was certain that he would never see his things
again, nor the house itself, but the real vacuum of his loss hadn't yet
started to form. The concepts of "never" and "forever" were merely words
that had no real impact.

So was the word "Farewell."

But once his words were said, Jimmy Holden made his small but confident
way to the window of a railroad ticket agent.




CHAPTER TWO


You are a ticket agent, settled in the routine of your job. From nine to
five-thirty, five days a week, you see one face after another. There are
cheerful faces, sullen faces, faces that breathe garlic, whiskey, chewing
gum, toothpaste and tobacco fumes. Old faces, young faces, dull faces,
scarred faces, clear faces, plain faces and faces so plastered with
makeup that their nature can't be seen at all. They bark place-names at
you, or ask pleasantly about the cost of round-trip versus one-way
tickets to Chicago or East Burlap. You deal with them and then you wait
for the next.

Then one afternoon, about four o'clock, a face barely visible over the
edge of the marble counter looks up at you with a boy's cheerful freckled
smile. You have to stand up in order to see him. You smile, and he grins
at you. Among his belongings is a little leather suitcase, kid's size,
but not a toy. He is standing on it. Under his arm is a collection of
comic books, in one small fist is the remains of a candy bar and in the
other the string of a floating balloon.

"Well, young man, where to? Paris? London? Maybe Mars?"

"No, sir," comes the piping voice, "Roun-tree."

"Roundtree? Yes, I've heard of that metropolis," you reply. You look over
his head, there aren't any other customers in line behind him so you
don't mind passing the time of day. "Round-trip or one-way?"

"One-way," comes the quick reply.

This brings you to a slow stop. He does not giggle nor prattle, nor
launch into a long and involved explanation with halting, dependent
clauses. This one knows what he wants and how to ask for it. Quite a
little man!

"How old are you, young fellow?"

"I was five years old yesterday."

"What's your name?"

"I'm James Holden."

The name does not ring any bells--because the morning newspaper is
purchased for its comic strips, the bridge column, the crossword puzzle,
and the latest dope on love-nest slayings, peccadilloes of the famous,
the cheesecake photo of the inevitable actress-leaving-for-somewhere, and
the full page photograph of the latest death-on-the-highway debacle. You
look at the picture but you don't read the names in the caption, so you
don't recognize the name, and you haven't been out of your little cage
since lunchtime and Jimmy Holden was not missing then. So you go on:

"So you're going to go to Roundtree."

"Yessir."

"That costs a lot of money, young Mister Holden."

"Yessir." Then this young man hands you an envelope; the cover says,
typewritten: _Ticket Clerk, Midland Railroad_.

A bit puzzled, you open the envelope and find a five-dollar bill folded
in a sheet of manuscript paper. The note says:

  Ticket Clerk
  Midland Railroad
  Dear Sir:

  This will introduce my son, James Holden. As a birthday present, I am
  sending him for a visit to his grandparents in Roundtree, and to make
  the adventure complete, he will travel alone. Pass the word along to
  keep an eye on him but don't step in unless he gets into trouble. Ask
  the dining car steward to see that he eats dinner on something better
  than candy bars.

  Otherwise, he is to believe that he is making this trip completely on
  his own.

  Sincerely, Louis Holden.

  PS: Divide the change from this five dollars among you as tips. L.H.

And so you look down at young Mister Holden and get a feeling of
vicarious pleasure. You stamp his ticket and hand it to him with a
gesture. You point out the train-gate he is to go through, and you tell
him that he is to sit in the third railroad car. As he leaves, you pick
up the telephone and call the station-master, the conductor, and since
you can't get the dining-car steward directly, you charge the conductor
with passing the word along.

Then you divide the change. Of the two-fifty, you extract a dollar,
feeling that the Senior Holden is a cheapskate. You slip the other buck
and a half into an envelope, ready for the conductor's hand. He'll think
Holden Senior is more of a cheapskate, and by the time he extracts his
cut, the dining car steward will _know_ that Holden Senior is a
cheapskate. But--

Then a face appears at your window and barks, "Holyoke, Mass.," and your
normal day falls back into shape.

The response of the people you tell about it varies all the way from
outrage that anybody would let a kid of five go alone on such a dangerous
mission to loud bragging that he, too, once went on such a journey, at
four and a half, and didn't need a note.

But Jimmy Holden is gone from your window, and you won't know for at
least another day that you've been suckered by a note painstakingly
typewritten, letter by letter, by a five-year-old boy who has a most
remarkable vocabulary.

Jimmy's trip to Roundtree was without incident. Actually, it was easy
once he had hurdled the ticket-seller with his forged note and the
five-dollar bill from the cashbox in his father's desk. His error in not
making it a ten was minor; a larger tip would not have provided him with
better service, because the train crew were happy to keep an eye on the
adventurous youngster for his own small sake. Their mild resentment
against the small tip was directed against the boy's father, not the
young passenger himself.

He had one problem. The train was hardly out of the station before
everybody on it knew that there was a five-year-old making a trip all
by himself. Of course, he was not to be bothered, but everybody wanted
to talk to him, to ask him how he was, to chatter endlessly at him.
Jimmy did not want to talk. His experience in addressing adults was
exasperating. That he spoke lucid English instead of babygab did not
compel a rational response. Those who heard him speak made over him
with the same effusive superiority that they used in applauding a
golden-haired tot in high heels and a strapless evening gown sitting
on a piano and singing, _Why Was I Born?_ in a piping, uncertain-toned
voice. It infuriated him.

So he immersed himself in his comic books. He gave his name politely
every five minutes for the first fifty miles. He turned down offers of
candy with, "Mommy says I mustn't before supper." And when dinnertime
came he allowed himself to be escorted through the train by the
conductor, because Jimmy knew that he couldn't handle the doors without
help.

The steward placed a menu in front of him, and then asked carefully, "How
much money do you want to spend, young man?"

Jimmy had the contents of his father's cashbox pinned to the inside of
his shirt, and a five-dollar bill folded in a snap-top purse with some
change in his shirt pocket. He could add with the best of them, but he
did not want any more attention than he was absolutely forced to attract.
So he fished out the snap-top purse and opened it to show the steward his
five-dollar bill. The steward relaxed; he'd had a moment of apprehension
that Holden Senior might have slipped the kid a half-dollar for dinner.
(The steward had received a quarter for his share of the original
two-fifty.)

Jimmy looked at the "Child's Dinner" menu and pointed out a plate: lamb
chop and mashed potatoes. After that, dinner progressed without incident.
Jimmy topped it off with a dish of ice cream.

The steward made change. Jimmy watched him carefully, and then said,
"Daddy says I'm supposed to give you a tip. How much?"

The steward looked down, wondering how he could explain the standard
dining car tip of fifteen or twenty percent of the bill. He took a
swallow of air and picked out a quarter. "This will do nicely," he said
and went off thankful that all people do not ask waiters how much they
think they deserve for the service rendered.

Thus Jimmy Holden arrived in Roundtree and was observed and convoyed--but
not bothered--off the train.

It is deplorable that adults are not as friendly and helpful to one
another as they are to children; it might make for a more pleasant world.
As Jimmy walked along the station platform at Roundtree, one of his
former fellow-passengers walked beside him. "Where are you going, young
man? Someone going to meet you, of course?"

"No, sir," said Jimmy. "I'm supposed to take a cab--"

"I'm going your way, why not ride along with me?"

"Sure it's all right?"

"Sure thing. Come along." Jimmy never knew that this man felt good for a
week after he'd done his good turn for the year.

His grandfather opened the door and looked down at him in complete
surprise. "Why, Jimmy! What are you doing here? Who brought--"

His grandmother interrupted, "Come in! Come in! Don't just stand there
with the door open!"

Grandfather closed the door firmly, grandmother knelt and folded Jimmy
in her arms and crooned over him, "You poor darling. You brave little
fellow. Donald," she said firmly to her husband, "go get a glass of warm
milk and some cookies." She led Jimmy to the old-fashioned parlor and
seated him on the sofa. "Now, Jimmy, you relax a moment and then you can
tell me what happened."

Jimmy sighed and looked around. The house was old, and comfortably
sturdy. It gave him a sense of refuge, of having reached a safe haven at
last. The house was over-warm, and there was a musty smell of over-aged
furniture, old leather, and the pungence of mothballs. It seemed to
generate a feeling of firm stability. Even the slightly stale air--there
probably hadn't been a wide open window since the storm sashes were
installed last autumn--provided a locked-in feeling that conversely meant
that the world was locked out.

Grandfather brought in the glass of warmed milk and a plate of cookies.
He sat down and asked, "What happened, Jimmy?"

"My mother and father are--"

"You eat your cookies and drink your milk," ordered his grandmother. "We
know. That Mr. Brennan sent us a telegram."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was slightly more than twenty-four hours since Jimmy Holden had blown
out the five proud candles on his birthday cake and begun to open his
fine presents. Now it all came back with a rush, and when it came back,
nothing could stop it.

Jimmy never knew how very like a little boy of five he sounded that
night. His speech was clear enough, but his troubled mind was too full
to take the time to form his headlong thoughts into proper sentences.
He could not pause to collect his thoughts into any chronology, so it
came out going back and forth all in a single line, punctuated only by
necessary pauses for the intake of breath. He was close to tears before
he was halfway through, and by the time he came to the end he stopped in
a sob and broke out crying.

His grandfather said, "Jimmy, aren't you exaggerating? Mr. Brennan isn't
that sort of a man."

"He is too!" exploded Jimmy through his tears. "I saw him!"

"But--"

"Donald, this is no time to start cross-examining a child." She crossed
the room and lifted him onto her lap; she stroked his head and held his
cheek against her shoulder. His open crying subsided into deep sobs; from
somewhere she found a handkerchief and made him blow his nose--once,
twice, and then a deep thrice. "Get me a warm washcloth," she told her
husband, and with it she wiped away his tears. The warmth soothed Jimmy
more.

"Now," she said firmly, "before we go into this any more we'll have a
good night's sleep."

The featherbed was soft and cozy. Like protecting mother-wings, it folded
Jimmy into its bosom, and the warm softness drew out of Jimmy whatever
remained of his stamina. Tonight he slept of weariness and exhaustion,
not of the sedation given last night. Here he felt at home, and it was
good.

And as tomorrows always had, tomorrow would take care of itself.

Jimmy Holden's father and mother first met over an operating table,
dressed in the white sterility that leaves only the eyes visible. She
wielded the trephine that laid the patient's brain bare, he kept track of
the patient's life by observing the squiggles on the roll of graph paper
that emerged from his encephalograph. She knew nothing of the craft of
the delicate instrument-creator, and he knew even less of the craft of
surgery. There had been a near-argument during the cleaning-up session
after the operation; the near-argument ended when they both realized that
neither of them understood a word of what the other was saying. So the
near-argument became an animated discussion, the general meaning of
which became clear: Brain surgeons should know more about the intricacies
of electromechanics, and the designers of delicate, precision
instrumentation should know more about the mass of human gray matter they
were trying to measure.

They pooled their intellects and plunged into the problem of creating an
encephalograph that would record the infinitesimal irregularities that
were superimposed upon the great waves. Their operation became large;
they bought the old structure on top of the hill and moved in, bag and
baggage. They cohabited but did not live together for almost a year;
Paul Brennan finally pointed out that Organized Society might permit a
couple of geniuses to become research hermits, but Organized Society
still took a dim view of cohabitation without a license. Besides, such
messy arrangements always cluttered up the legal clarity of chattels,
titles, and estates.

They married in a quiet ceremony about two years prior to the date that
Louis Holden first identified the fine-line wave-shapes that went with
determined ideas. When he recorded them and played them back, his brain
re-traced its original line of thought, and he could not even make a
mental revision of the way his thoughts were arranged. For two years
Louis and Laura Holden picked their way slowly through this field;
stumped at one point for several months because the machine was strictly
a personal proposition. Recorded by one of them, the playback was clear
to that one, but to the other it was wild gibberish--an inexplicable
tangle of noise and colored shapes, odors and tastes both pleasant and
nasty, and mingled sensations. It was five years after their marriage
before they found success by engraving information in the brain by
sitting, connected to the machine, and reading aloud, word for word, the
information that they wanted.

It went by rote, as they had learned in childhood. It was the tiresome
repetition of going over and over and over the lines of a poem or the
numbers of the multiplication table until the pathway was a deeply
trodden furrow in the brain. Forever imprinted, it was retained until
death. Knowledge is stored by rote.

To accomplish this end, Louis Holden succeeded in violating all of the
theories of instrumentation by developing a circuit that acted as a sort
of reverberation chamber which returned the wave-shape played into it
back to the same terminals without interference, and this single circuit
became the very heart of the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

With success under way, the Holdens needed an intellectual guinea pig, a
virgin mind, an empty store-house to fill with knowledge. They planned a
twenty-year program of research, to end by handing their machine to the
world complete with its product and instructions for its use and a list
of pitfalls to avoid.

The conception of James Quincy Holden was a most carefully-planned
parenthood. It was not accomplished without love or passion. Love had
come quietly, locking them together physically as they had been bonded
intellectually. The passion had been deliberately provoked during the
proper moment of Laura Holden's cycle of ovulation. This scientific
approach to procreation was no experiment, it was the foregone-conclusive
act to produce a component absolutely necessary for the completion of
their long program of research. They happily left to Nature's Choice the
one factor they could not control, and planned to accept an infant of
either sex with equal welcome. They loved their little boy as they loved
one another, rejoiced with him, despaired with him, and made their own
way with success and mistake, and succeeded in bringing Jimmy to five
years of age quite normal except for his education.

Now, proficiency in brain surgery does not come at an early age, nor does
world-wide fame in the field of delicate instrumentation. Jimmy's parents
were over forty-five on the date of his birth.

Jimmy's grandparents were, then, understandably aged seventy-eight and
eighty-one.

       *       *       *       *       *

The old couple had seen their life, and they knew it for what it was.
They arose each morning and faced the day knowing that there would be no
new problem, only recurrence of some problem long solved. Theirs was a
comfortable routine, long gone was their spirit of adventure, the
pleasant notions of trying something a new and different way. At their
age, they were content to take the easiest and the simplest way of doing
what they thought to be Right. Furthermore, they had lived long enough to
know that no equitable decision can be made by listening to only one side
of any argument.

While young Jimmy was polishing off a platter of scrambled eggs the
following morning, Paul Brennan arrived. Jimmy's fork stopped in midair
at the sound of Brennan's voice in the parlor.

"You called him," he said accusingly.

Grandmother Holden said, "He's your legal guardian, James."

"But--I don't--can't--"

"Now, James, your father and mother knew best."

"But they didn't know about Paul Brennan. I won't go!"

"You must."

"I won't!"

"James," said Grandmother Holden quietly, "you can't stay here."

"Why not?"

"We're not prepared to keep you."

"Why not?"

Grandmother Holden despaired. How could she make this youngster
understand that eighty is not an age at which to embark upon the process
of raising a five-year-old to maturity?

From the other room, Paul Brennan was explaining his side as he'd given
it to the police. "--Forgot the land option that had to be signed. So I
took off after them and drove fast enough to catch up. I was only a
couple of hundred yards behind when it happened."

"He's a liar!" cried Jimmy Holden.

"That's not a nice thing to say."

"It's true!"

"Jimmy!" came the reproachful tone.

"It's true!" he cried.

His grandfather and Paul Brennan came into the kitchen. "Ah, Jimmy,"
said Paul in a soothing voice, "why did you run off? You had everybody
worried."

"You did! You lie! You--"

"James!" snapped his grandfather. "Stop that talk at once!"

"Be easy with him, Mr. Holden. He's upset. Jimmy, let's get this settled
right now. What did I do and how do I lie?"

"Oh, please Mr. Brennan," said his grandmother. "This isn't necessary."

"Oh, but it is. It is very important. As the legal guardian of young
James, I can't have him harboring some suspicion as deep as this. Come
on, Jimmy. Let's talk it out right now. What did I do and how am I
lying?"

"You weren't behind. You forced us off the road."

"How could he, young man?" demanded Grandfather Holden.

"I don't know, but he did."

"Wait a moment, sir," said Brennan quietly. "It isn't going to be enough
to force him into agreement. He's got to see the truth for itself, of his
own construction from the facts. Now, Jimmy, where was I when you left my
apartment?"

"You--you were there."

"And didn't I say--"

"One moment," said Grandfather Holden. "Don't lead the witness."

"Sorry. James, what did I do?"

"You--" then a long pause.

"Come on, Jimmy."

"You shook hands with my father."

"And then?"

"Then you--kissed my mother on the cheek."

"And then, again?"

"And then you carried my birthday presents down and put them in the car."

"Now, Jimmy, how does your father drive? Fast or slow?"

"Fast."

"So now, young man, you tell me how I could go back up to my apartment,
get my coat and hat, get my car out of the garage, and race to the top of
that hill so that I could turn around and come at you around that curve?
Just tell me that, young man."

"I--don't know--how you did it."

"It doesn't make sense, does it?"

"--No--"

"Jimmy, I'm trying to help you. Your father and I were fraternity
brothers in college. I was best man at your parents' wedding. I am your
godfather. Your folks were taken away from both of us--and I'm hoping to
take care of you as if you were mine." He turned to Jimmy's grandparents.
"I wish to God that I could find the driver of that other car. He didn't
hit anybody, but he's as guilty of a hit-and-run offence as the man who
does. If I ever find him, I'll have him in jail until he rots!"

"Jimmy," pleaded his grandmother, "can't you see? Mr. Brennan is only
trying to help. Why would he do the evil thing you say he did?"

"Because--" and Jimmy started to cry. The utter futility of trying to
make people believe was too much to bear.

"Jimmy, please stop it and be a man," said Brennan. He put a hand on
Jimmy's shoulder. Jimmy flung it aside with a quick twist and a turn.
"Please, Jimmy," pleaded Brennan. Jimmy left his chair and buried his
face in a corner of the wall.

"Jimmy, believe me," pleaded Brennan. "I'm going to take you to live in
your old house, among your own things. I can't replace your folks, but I
can try to be as close to your father as I know how. I'll see you through
everything, just as your mother and father want me to."

"No!" exploded Jimmy through a burst of tears.

Grandfather Holden grunted. "This is getting close to the tantrum stage,"
he said. "And the only way to deal with a tantrum is to apply the flat of
the hand to the round of the bottom."

"Please," smiled Brennan. "He's a pretty shaken youngster. He's
emotionally hurt and frightened, and he wants to strike out and hurt
something back."

"I think he's done enough of that," said Grandfather Holden. "When Louis
tossed one of these fits of temper where he wouldn't listen to any
reason, we did as we saw fit anyway and let him kick and scream until
he got tired of the noise he made."

"Let's not be rough," pleaded Jimmy's grandmother. "He's just a little
boy, you know."

"If he weren't so little he'd have better sense," snapped Grandfather.

"James," said Paul Brennan quietly, "do you see you're making trouble for
your grandparents? Haven't we enough trouble as it is? Now, young man,
for the last time, will you walk or will you be carried? Whichever,
Jimmy, we're going back home!"

James Holden gave up. "I'll go," he said bitterly, "but I hate you."

"He'll be all right," promised Brennan. "I swear it!"

"Please, Jimmy, be good for Mr. Brennan," pleaded his grandmother. "After
all, it's for your own good." Jimmy turned away, bewildered, hurt and
silent. He stubbornly refused to say goodbye to his grandparents.

He was trapped in the world of grown-ups that believed a lying adult
before they would even consider the truth of a child.




CHAPTER THREE


The drive home was a bitter experience. Jimmy was sullen, and very quiet.
He refused to answer any question and he made no reply to any statement.
Paul Brennan kept up a running chatter of pleasantries, of promises and
plans for their future, and just enough grief to make it sound honest.
Had Paul Brennan actually been as honest as his honeyed tones said he
was, no one could have continued to accuse him. But no one is more
difficult to fool than a child--even a normal child. Paul Brennan's
protestations simply made Jimmy Holden bitter.

He sat silent and unhappy in the far corner of the front seat all the way
home. In his mind was a nameless threat, a dread of what would come once
they were inside--either inside of Paul Brennan's apartment or inside of
his own home--with the door locked against the outside world.

But when they arrived, Paul Brennan continued his sympathetic attitude.
To Jimmy it was sheer hypocrisy; he was not experienced enough to know
that a person can commit an act and then convince himself that he hadn't.

"Jimmy," said Brennan softly, "I have not the faintest notion of
punishment. None whatsoever. You ruined your father's great invention.
You did that because you thought it was right. Someday when you change
your mind and come to believe in me, I'll ask you to replace it because I
know you can. But understand me, young man, I shall not ask you until you
make the first suggestion yourself!"

Jimmy remained silent.

"One more thing," said Brennan firmly. "Don't try that stunt with the
letter to the station agent again. It won't work twice. Not in this town
nor any other for a long, long time. I've made a sort of family-news item
out of it which hit a lot of daily papers. It'll also be in the company
papers of all the railroads and buslines, how Mr. What's-his-name at the
Midland Railroad got suckered by a five-year-old running away from home.
Understand?"

Jimmy understood but made no sign.

"Then in September we'll start you in school," said Brennan.

This statement made no impression upon young James Holden whatsoever. He
had no intention of enduring this smothering by overkindness any longer
than it took him to figure out how to run away, and where to run to. It
was going to be a difficult thing. Cruel treatment, torture, physical
harm were one thing; this act of being a deeply-concerned guardian was
something else. A twisted arm he could complain about, a bruise he could
show, the scars of lashing would give credence to his tale. But who would
listen to any complaint about too much kindness?

Six months of this sort of treatment and Jimmy Holden himself would begin
to believe that his parents were monsters, coldly stuffing information in
the head of an infant instead of letting him grow through a normal
childhood. A year, and Jimmy Holden would be re-creating his father's
reverberation circuit out of sheer gratitude. He'd be cajoled into
signing his own death-warrant.

But where can a five-year-old hide? There was no appeal to the forces of
law and order. They would merely pop him into a squad car and deliver him
to his guardian.

Law and order were out. His only chance was to lose himself in some gray
hinterland where there were so many of his own age that no one could keep
track of them all. Whether he would succeed was questionable. But until
he tried, he wouldn't know, and Jimmy was desperate enough to try
anything.

He attended the funeral services with Paul Brennan. But while the pastor
was invoking Our Heavenly Father to accept the loving parents of orphaned
James, James the son left the side of his "Uncle" Paul Brennan, who knelt
in false piety with his eyes closed.

Jimmy Holden had with him only his clothing and what was left of the wad
of paper money from his father's cashbox still pinned to the inside of
his shirt.

This time Jimmy did not ride in style. Burlap sacks covered him when
night fell; they dirtied his clothing and the bottom of the freight car
scuffed his shoes. For eighteen hours he hid in the jolting darkness, not
knowing and caring less where he was going, so long as it was away!

He was hungry and thirsty by the time the train first began to slow down.
It was morning--somewhere. Jimmy looked furtively out of the slit at the
edge of the door to see that the train was passing through a region of
cottages dusted black by smoke, through areas of warehouse and factory,
through squalor and filth and slum; and vacant lots where the spread of
the blight area had been so fast that the outward improvement had not
time to build. Eventually the scene changed to solid areas of railroad
track, and the trains parked there thickened until he could no longer
see the city through them.

Ultimately the train stopped long enough for Jimmy to squeeze out through
the slit at the edge of the door.

The train went on and Jimmy was alone in the middle of some huge city.
He walked the noisome sidewalk trying to decide what he should do next.
Food was of high importance, but how could he get it without attracting
attention to himself? He did not know. But finally he reasoned that a
hot dog wagon would probably take cash from a youngster without asking
embarrassing questions, so long as the cash wasn't anything larger than
a five-dollar bill.

He entered the next one he came to. It was dirty; the windows held
several years' accumulation of cooking grease, but the aroma was terrific
to a young animal who'd been without food since yesterday afternoon.

The counterman did not like kids, but he put away his dislike at the
sight of Jimmy's money. He grunted when Jimmy requested a dog, tossed one
on the grill and went back to reading his newspaper until some inner
sense told him it was cooked. Jimmy finished it still hungry and asked
for another. He finished a third and washed down the whole mass with a
tall glass of highly watered orange juice. The counterman took his money
and was very careful about making the right change; if this dirty kid had
swiped the five-spot, it could be the counterman's problem of explaining
to someone why he had overcharged. Jimmy's intelligence told him that
countermen in a joint like this didn't expect tips, so he saved himself
that hurdle. He left the place with a stomach full of food that only the
indestructible stomach of a five-year-old could handle and now, fed and
reasonably content, Jimmy began to seek his next point of contact.

He had never been in a big city before. The sheer number of human beings
that crowded the streets surpassed his expectations. The traffic was not
personally terrifying, but it was so thick that Jimmy Holden wondered how
people drove without colliding. He knew about traffic lights and walked
with the green, staying out of trouble. He saw groups of small children
playing in the streets and in the empty lots. Those not much older than
himself were attending school.

He paused to watch a group of children his own age trying to play
baseball with a ragged tennis ball and the handle from a broom. It was a
helter-skelter game that made no pattern but provided a lot of fun and
screaming. He was quite bothered by a quarrel that came up; two of his
own age went at one another with tiny fists flying, using words that
Jimmy hadn't learned from his father's machine.

He wondered how he might join them in their game. But they paid him no
attention, so he didn't try.

At lunchtime Jimmy consumed another collection of hot dogs. He continued
to meander aimlessly through the city until schooltime ended, then he saw
the streets and vacant lots fill with older children playing games with
more pattern to them. It was a new world he watched, a world that had not
been a part of his education. The information he owned was that of the
school curriculum; it held nothing of the daily business of growing up.
He knew the general rules of big-league baseball, but the kid-business of
stickball did not register.

He was at a complete loss. It was sheer chance and his own tremendous
curiosity that led him to the edge of a small group that were busily
engaged in the odd process of trying to jack up the front of a car.

It wasn't a very good jack; it should have had the weight of a full adult
against the handle. The kids strained and put their weight on the jack,
but the handle wouldn't budge though their feet were off the ground.

Here was the place where academic information would be useful--and the
chance for an "in." Jimmy shoved himself into the small group and said,
"Get a longer handle."

They turned on him suspiciously.

"Whatcha know about it?" demanded one, shoving his chin out.

"Get a longer handle," repeated Jimmy. "Go ahead, get one."

"G'wan--"

"Wait, Moe. Maybe--"

"Who's he?"

"I'm Jimmy."

"Jimmy who?"

"Jimmy--James." Academic information came up again. "Jimmy. Like the
jimmy you use on a window."

"Jimmy James. Any relation to Jesse James?"

James Quincy Holden now told his first whopper. "I," he said, "am his
grandson."

The one called Moe turned to one of the younger ones. "Get a longer
handle," he said.

While the younger one went for something to use as a longer handle, Moe
invited Jimmy to sit on the curb. "Cigarette?" invited Moe.

"I don't smoke," said Jimmy.

"Sissy?"

Adolescent-age information looking out through five-year-old eyes assayed
Moe. Moe was about eight, maybe even nine; taller than Jimmy but no
heavier. He had a longer reach, which was an advantage that Jimmy did not
care to hazard. There was no sure way to establish physical superiority;
Jimmy was uncertain whether any show of intellect would be welcome.

"No," he said. "I'm no sissy. I don't like 'em."

Moe lit a cigarette and smoked with much gesturing and flickings of ashes
and spitting at a spot on the pavement. He was finished when the younger
one came back with a length of water pipe that would fit over the handle
of the jack.

The car went up with ease. Then came the business of removing the hubcap
and the struggle to loose the lugbolts. Jimmy again suggested the
application of the length of pipe. The wheel came off.

"C'mon, Jimmy," said Moe. "We'll cut you in."

"Sure," nodded Jimmy Holden, willing to see what came next so long as it
did not have anything to do with Paul Brennan. Moe trundled the car wheel
down the street, steering it with practiced hands. A block down and a
block around that corner, a man with a three-day growth of whiskers
stopped a truck with a very dirty license plate. Moe stopped and the
man jumped out of the truck long enough to heave the tire and wheel into
the back.

The man gave Moe a handful of change which Moe distributed among the
little gang. Then he got in the truck beside the driver and waved for
Jimmy to come along.

"What's that for?" demanded the driver.

"He's a smarty pants," said Moe. "A real good one."

"Who're you?"

"Jimmy--James."

"What'cha do, kid?"

"What?"

"Moe, what did this kid sell you?"

"You and your rusty jacks," grunted Moe. "Jimmy James here told us how to
put a long hunk of pipe on the handle."

"Jimmy James, who taught you about leverage?" demanded the driver
suspiciously.

Jimmy Holden believed that he was in the presence of an educated man.
"Archimedes," he said solemnly, giving it the proper pronunciation.

The driver said to Moe, "Think he's all right?"

"He's smart enough."

"Who're your parents, kid?"

Jimmy Holden realized that this was a fine time to tell the truth, but
properly diluted to taste. "My folks are dead," he said.

"Who you staying with?"

"No one."

The driver of the truck eyed him cautiously for a moment. "You escaped
from an orphan asylum?"

"Uh-huh," lied Jimmy.

"Where?"

"Ain't saying."

"Wise, huh?"

"Don't want to get sent back," said Jimmy.

"Got a flop?"

"Flop?"

"Place to sleep for the night."

"No."

"Where'd you sleep last night?"

"Boxcar."

"Bindlestiff, huh?" roared the man with laughter.

"No, sir," said Jimmy. "I've no bindle."

The man's roar of laughter stopped abruptly. "You're a pretty wise kid,"
he said thoughtfully.

"I told y' so," said Moe.

"Shut up," snapped the man. "Kid, do you want a flop for the night?"

"Sure."

"Okay. You're in."

"What's your name?" asked Jimmy.

"You call me Jake. Short for Jacob. Er--here's the place."

The "Place" had no other name. It was a junkyard. In it were car parts,
wrecks with parts undamaged, whole motors rusting in the air, axles,
wheels, differential assemblies and transmissions from a thousand cars of
a thousand different parentages. Hubcaps abounded in piles sorted to size
and shape. Jake drove the little pickup truck into an open shed. The tire
and wheel came from the back and went immediately into place on a
complicated gadget. In a couple of minutes, the tire was off the wheel
and the inner tube was out of the casing. Wheel, casing, and inner tube
all went into three separate storage piles.

Not only a junkyard, but a stripper's paradise. Bring a hot car in here
and in a few hours no one could find it. Its separated parts would be
sold piece by piece and week by week as second-hand replacements.

Jake said, "Dollar-fifty."

"Two," said Moe.

"One seventy-five."

"Two."

"Go find it and put it back."

"Gimme the buck-six," grunted Moe. "Pretty cheap for a good shoe, a
wheel, and a sausage."

"Bring it in alone next time, and I'll slip you two-fifty. That gang you
use costs, too. Now scram, Jimmy James and I got business to talk over."

"He taking over?"

"Don't talk stupid. I need a spotter. You're too old, Moe. And if he's
any good, you gotta promotion coming."

"And if he ain't?"

"Don't come back!"

Moe eyed Jimmy Holden. "Make it good--Jimmy." There was malice in Moe's
face.

Jake looked down at Jimmy Holden. With precisely the same experienced
technique he used to estimate the value of a car loaded with road dirt,
rust, and collision-smashed fenders, Jake stripped the child of the
dirty clothing, the scuffed shoes, the mussed hair, and saw through to
the value beneath. Its price was one thousand dollars, offered with no
questions asked for information that would lead to the return of one
James Quincy Holden to his legal guardian.

It wasn't magic on Jake's part. Paul Brennan had instantly offered a
reward. And Jake made it his business to keep aware of such matters.

How soon, wondered Jake, might the ante be raised to two Gee? Five? And
in the meantime, if things panned, Jimmy could be useful as a spotter.

"You afraid of that Moe punk, Jimmy?"

"No sir."

"Good, but keep an eye on him. He'd sell his mother for fifty cents clear
profit--seventy-five if he had to split the deal. Now, kid, do you know
anything about spotting?"

"No sir."

"Hungry?"

"Yes sir."

"All right. Come on in and we'll eat. Do you like Mulligan?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. You and me are going to get along."

Inside of the squalid shack, Jake had a cozy set-up. The filth that he
encouraged out in the junkyard was not tolerated inside his shack. The
dividing line was halfway across the edge of the door; the inside was as
clean, neat, and shining as the outside was squalid.

"You'll sleep here," said Jake, waving towards a small bedroom with a
single twin bunk. "You'll make yer own bed and take a shower every
night--or out! Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now, let's have chow, and I'll tell you about this spotting
business. You help me, and I'll help you. One blab and back you go to
where you came from. Get it?"

"Yes sir."

And so, while the police of a dozen cities were scouring their beats for
a homeless, frightened five-year-old, Jimmy Holden slept in a comfortable
bed in a clean room, absolutely disguised by an exterior that looked like
an abandoned manure shed.



CHAPTER FOUR


Jimmy discovered that he was admirably suited to the business of
spotting. The "job turnover" was high because the spotter must be young
enough to be allowed the freedom of the preschool age, yet be mature
enough to follow orders.

The job consisted of meandering through the streets of the city, in
the aimless patterns of youth, while keeping an eye open for parked
automobiles with the ignition keys still in their locks.

Only a very young child can go whooping through the streets bumping
pedestrians, running wildly, or walking from car to car twiggling each
door handle and peering inside as if he were imitating a door-to-door
salesman, occasionally making a minor excursion in one shop door and out
the other.

He takes little risk. He merely spots the target. He reports that there
is such-and-such a car parked so-and-so, after which he goes on to spot
the next target. The rest of the business is up to the men who do the
actual stealing.

Jimmy's job-training program took only one morning. That same afternoon
he went to work for Jake's crew.

Jake's experience with kids had been no more than so-so promising. He
used them because they were better than nothing. He did not expect them
to stay long; they were gobbled up by the rules of compulsory education
just about the age when they could be counted upon to follow orders.

He felt about the same with Jimmy Holden; the "missing person" report
stated that one of the most prominent factors in the lad's positive
identification was his high quality of speech and his superior
intelligence. (This far Paul Brennan had to go, and he had divulged
the information with great reluctance.)

But though Jake needed a preschool child with intelligence, he did not
realize the height of Jimmy Holden's.

It was obvious to Jimmy on the second day that Jake's crew was not taking
advantage of every car spotted. One of them had been a "natural" to
Jimmy's way of thinking. He asked Jake about it: "Why didn't you take the
sea-green Ford in front of the corner store?"

"Too risky."

"Risky?"

Jake nodded. "Spotting isn't risky, Jimmy. But picking the car up is.
There is a very dangerous time when the driver is a sitting duck. From
the moment he opens the car door he is in danger. Sitting in the chance
of getting caught, he must start the car, move it out of the parking
space into traffic, and get under way and gone before he is safe."

"But the sea-green Ford was sitting there with its engine running!"

"Meaning," nodded Jake, "that the driver pulled in and made a fast dash
into the store for a newspaper or a pack of cigarettes."

"I understand. Your man could get caught. Or," added Jimmy thoughtfully,
"the owner might even take his car away before we got there."

Jake nodded. This one was going to make it easy for him.

As the days wore on, Jimmy became more selective. He saw no point in
reporting a car that wasn't going to be used. An easy mark wedged between
two other cars couldn't be removed with ease. A car parked in front of a
parking meter with a red flag was dangerous, it meant that the time was
up and the driver should be getting nervous about it. A man who came
shopping along the street to find a meter with some time left by the
former driver was obviously looking for a quick-stop place--whereas the
man who fed the meter to its limit was a much better bet.

Jake, thankful for what Fate had brought him, now added refinements of
education. Cars parked in front of supermarkets weren't safe; the owner
might be standing just inside the big plate glass window. The car parked
hurriedly just before the opening of business was likely to be a good bet
because people are careless about details when they are hurrying to punch
the old time clock.

Jake even closed down his operations during the calculated danger
periods, but he made sure to tell Jimmy Holden why.

From school-closing to dinnertime Jimmy was allowed to do as he pleased.
He found it hard to enjoy playing with his contemporaries, and Jake's
explanation about dangerous times warned Jimmy against joining Moe and
his little crew of thieves. Jimmy would have enjoyed helping in the
stripping yard, but he had not the heft for it. They gave him little
messy jobs to do that grimed his hands and made Jake's stern rule of
cleanliness hard to achieve. Jimmy found it easier to avoid such jobs
than to scrub his skin raw.

One activity he found to his ability was the cooking business.

Jake was a stew-man, a soup-man, a slum-gullion man. The fellows who
roamed in and out of Jake's Place dipped their plate of slum from the
pot and their chunk of bread from the loaf and talked all through this
never-started and never-ended lunch. With the delicacy of his "inside"
life, Jake knew the value of herbs and spices and he was a hard
taskmaster. But inevitably, Jimmy learned the routine of brewing a bucket
of slum that suited Jake's taste, after which Jimmy was now and then
permitted to take on the more demanding job of cooking the steaks and
chops that made their final evening meal.

Jimmy applied himself well, for the knowledge was going to be handy. More
important, it kept him from the jobs that grimed his hands.

He sought other pursuits, but Jake had never had a resident spotter
before and the play-facilities provided were few. Jimmy took to
reading--necessarily, the books that Jake read, that is, approximately
equal parts of science fiction and girlie-girlie books. The science
fiction he enjoyed; but he was not able to understand why he wasn't
interested in the girlie books. So Jimmy read. Jake even went out of his
way to find more science fiction for the lad.

Ultimately, Jimmy located a potential source of pleasure.

He spotted a car with a portable typewriter on the back seat. The car was
locked and therefore no target, but it stirred his fancy. Thereafter he
added a contingent requirement to his spotting. A car with a typewriter
was more desirable than one without.

Jimmy went on to further astound Jake by making a list of what the
customers were buying. After that he concentrated on spotting those cars
that would provide the fastest sale for their parts.

It was only a matter of time; Jimmy spotted a car with a portable
typewriter. It was not as safe a take as his others, but he reported it.
Jake's driver picked it up and got it out in a squeak; the car itself
turned up to be no great find.

Jimmy claimed the typewriter at once.

Jake objected: "No dice, Jimmy."

"I want it, Jake."

"Look, kid, I can sell it for twenty."

"But I want it."

Jake eyed Jimmy thoughtfully, and he saw two things. One was a
thousand-dollar reward standing before him. The other was a row of prison
bars.

Jake could only collect one and avoid the other by being very sure that
Jimmy Holden remained grateful to Jake for Jake's shelter and protection.

He laughed roughly. "All right, Jimmy," he said. "You lift it and you can
have it."

Jimmy struggled with the typewriter, and succeeded only because it was a
new one made of the titanium-magnesium-aluminum alloys. It hung between
his little knees, almost--but not quite--touching the ground.

"You have it," said Jake. He lifted it lightly and carried it into the
boy's little bedroom.

Jimmy started after dinner. He picked out the letters with the same
painful search he'd used in typing his getaway letter. He made the
same mistakes he'd made before. It had taken him almost an hour and
nearly fifty sheets of paper to compose that first note without an
error; that was no way to run a railroad; now Jimmy was determined
to learn the proper operation of this machine. But finally the jagged
tack-tack--pause--tack-tack got on Jake's nerves.

Jake came in angrily. "You're wasting paper," he snapped. He eyed Jimmy
thoughtfully. "How come with your education you don't know how to type?"

"My father wouldn't let me."

"Seems your father wouldn't let you do anything."

"He said that I couldn't learn until I was old enough to learn properly.
He said I must not get into the habit of using the hunt-and-peck system,
or I'd never get out of it."

"So what are you doing now?"

"My father is dead."

"And anything he said before doesn't count any more?"

"He promised me that he'd start teaching me as soon as my hands were big
enough," said Jimmy soberly. "But he isn't here any more. So I've got to
learn my own way."

Jake reflected. Jimmy was a superior spotter. He was also a potential
danger; the other kids played it as a game and didn't really realize what
they were doing. This one knew precisely what he was doing, knew that it
was wrong, and had the lucidity of speech to explain in full detail. It
was a good idea to keep him content.

"If you'll stop that tap-tapping for tonight," promised Jake, "I'll get
you a book tomorrow. Is it a deal?"

"You will?"

"I will if you'll follow it."

"Sure thing."

"And," said Jake, pushing his advantage, "you'll do it with the door
closed so's I can hear this TV set."

"Yes sir."

Jake kept his word.

On the following afternoon, not only was Jimmy presented with one of the
standard learn-it-yourself books on touch-typing, but Jake also contrived
a sturdy desk out of one old packing case and a miniature chair out of
another. Both articles of home-brewed furniture Jake insisted upon having
painted before he permitted them inside his odd dwelling, and that
delayed Jimmy one more day.

But it was only one more day; and then a new era of experience began for
Jimmy.

It would be nice to report that he went at it with determination,
self-discipline, and system, following instructions to the letter and
emerging a first-rate typist.

Sorry. Jimmy hated every minute of it. He galled at the pages and pages
of _juj juj juj frf frf frf_. He cried with frustration because he could
not perform the simple exercise to perfection. He skipped through the
book so close to complete failure that he hurled it across the room, and
cried in anger because he had not the strength to throw the typewriter
after it. Throw the machine? He had not the strength in his pinky to
press the carriage-shift key!

Part of his difficulty was the size of his hands, of course. But most of
his trouble lay deep-seated in his recollection of his parents' fabulous
machine. It would have made a typist of him in a single half-hour
session, or so he thought.

He had yet to learn about the vast gulf that lies between theory and
practice.

It took Jimmy several weeks of aimless fiddling before he realized that
there was no easy short-cut. Then he went back to the _juj juj juj frf
frf frf_ routine and hated it just as much, but went on.

He invented a kind of home-study "hooky" to break the monotony. He would
run off a couple of pages of regular exercise, and then turn back to the
hunt-and-peck system of typing to work on a story. He took a furtive glee
in this; he felt that he was getting away with something. In mid-July,
Jake caught him at it.

"What's going on?" demanded Jake, waving the pages of manuscript copy.

"Typing," said Jimmy.

Jake picked up the typing guidebook and waved it under Jimmy's nose.
"Show me where it says you gotta type anything like, 'Captain Brandon
struggled against his chains when he heard Lady Hamilton scream. The
pirate's evil laugh rang through the ship. "Curse you--"'"

Jake snorted.

"But--" said Jimmy faintly.

"But nothing!" snapped Jake. "Stop the drivel and learn that thing! You
think I let you keep the machine just to play games? We gotta find a way
to make it pay off. Learn it good!"

He stamped out, taking the manuscript with him. From that moment on,
Jimmy's furtive career as an author went on only when Jake was either out
for the evening or entertaining. In any case, he did not bother Jimmy
further, evidently content to wait until Jimmy had "learned it good"
before putting this new accomplishment to use. Nor did Jimmy bother him.
It was a satisfactory arrangement for the time being. Jimmy hid his
"work" under a pile of raw paper and completed it in late August. Then,
with the brash assurance of youth, he packed and mailed his first
finished manuscript to the editor of _Boy's Magazine_.

His typing progressed more satisfactorily than he realized, even though
he was still running off page after page of repetitious exercise,
leavened now and then by a page of idiotic sentences the letters of
which were restricted to the center of the typewriter keyboard. The
practice, even the hunt-and-peck relaxation from discipline, exercised
the small muscles. Increased strength brought increased accuracy.

September rolled in, the streets emptied of school-aged children and the
out-of-state car licenses diminished to a trickle. With the end of the
carefree vacation days went the careless motorist.

Jake, whose motives were no more altruistic than his intentions were
legal, began to look for a means of disposing of Jimmy Holden at the
greatest profit to himself. Jake stalled only because he hoped that the
reward might be stepped up.

But it was Jimmy's own operations that closed this chapter of his life.




CHAPTER FIVE


Jimmy had less scout work to do and no school to attend; he was too small
to help in the sorting of car parts and too valuable to be tossed out. He
was in the way.

So he was in Jake's office when the mail came. He brought the bundle to
Jake's desk and sat on a box, sorting the circulars and catalogs from the
first class. Halfway down the pile was a long envelope addressed to
_Jimmy James_.

He dropped the rest with a little yelp. Jake eyed him quickly and
snatched the letter out of Jimmy's hands.

"Hey! That's mine!" said Jimmy. Jake shoved him away.

"Who's writing you?" demanded Jake.

"It's mine!" cried Jimmy.

"Shut up!" snapped Jake, unfolding the letter. "I read _all_ the mail
that comes here first."

"But--"

"Shut your mouth and your teeth'll stay in," said Jake flatly. He
separated a green slip from the letter and held the two covered while he
read. "Well, well," he said. "Our little Shakespeare!" With a disdainful
grunt Jake tossed the letter to Jimmy.

Eagerly, Jimmy took the letter and read:

  Dear Mr. James:

  We regret the unconscionable length of time between your submission and
  this reply. However, the fact that this reply is favorable may be its
  own apology. We are enclosing a check for $20.00 with the following
  explanation:

  Our policy is to reject all work written in dialect. At the best we
  request the author to rewrite the piece in proper English and frame
  his effect by other means. Your little story is not dialect, nor is it
  bad literarily, the framework's being (as it is) a fairly good example
  of a small boy's relating in the first person one of his adventures,
  using for the first time his father's typewriter. But you went too far.
  I doubt that even a five-year-old would actually make as many
  typographical errors.

  However, we found the idea amusing, therefore our payment. One of our
  editors will work your manuscript into less-erratic typescript for
  eventual publication.

  Please continue to think of us in the future, but don't corn up your
  script with so many studied blunders.

  Sincerely,
  Joseph Brandon, editor,
  Boy's Magazine.

"Gee," breathed Jimmy, "a check!"

Jake laughed roughly. "Shakespeare," he roared. "Don't corn up your
stuff! You put too many errors in! Wow!"

Jimmy's eyes began to burn. He had no defense against this sarcasm. He
wanted praise for having accomplished something, instead of raucous
laughter.

"I wrote it," he said lamely.

"Oh, go away!" roared Jake.

Jimmy reached for the check.

"Scram," said Jake, shutting his laughter off instantly.

"It's mine!" cried Jimmy.

Jake paused, then laughed again. "Okay, smart kid. Take it and spend it!"
He handed the check to Jimmy Holden.

Jimmy took it quickly and left.

He wanted to eye it happily, to gloat over it, to turn it over and over
and to read it again and again; but he wanted to do it in private.

He took it with him to the nearest bank, feeling its folded bulk and
running a fingernail along the serrated edge.

He re-read it in the bank, then went to a teller's window. "Can you cash
this, please?" he asked.

The teller turned it over. "It isn't endorsed."

"I can't reach the desk to sign it," complained Jimmy.

"Have you an account here?" asked the teller politely.

"Well, no sir."

"Any identification?"

"No--no sir," said Jimmy thoughtfully. Not a shred of anything did he
have to show who he was under either name.

"Who is this Jimmy James?" asked the teller.

"Me. I am."

The teller smiled. "And you wrote a short story that sold to _Boy's
Magazine_?" he asked with a lifted eyebrow. "That's pretty good for a
little guy like you."

"Yes sir."

The teller looked over Jimmy's head; Jimmy turned to look up at one of
the bank's policemen. "Tom, what do you make of this?"

The policeman shrugged. He stooped down to Jimmy's level. "Where did you
get this check, young fellow?" he asked gently.

"It came in the mail this morning."

"You're Jimmy James?"

"Yes sir." Jimmy Holden had been called that for more than half a year;
his assent was automatic.

"How old are you, young man?" asked the policeman kindly.

"Five and a half."

"Isn't that a bit young to be writing stories?"

Jimmy bit his lip. "I wrote it, though."

The policeman looked up at the teller with a wink. "He can tell a good
yarn," chuckled the policeman. "Shouldn't wonder if he could write one."

The teller laughed and Jimmy's eyes burned again. "It's mine," he
insisted.

"If it's yours," said the policeman quietly, "we can settle it fast
enough. Do your folks have an account here?"

"No sir."

"Hmmm. That makes it tough."

Brightly, Jimmy asked, "Can I open an account here?"

"Why, sure you can," said the policeman. "All you have to do is to bring
your parents in."

"But I want the money," wailed Jimmy.

"Jimmy James," explained the policeman with a slight frown to the teller,
"we can't cash a check without positive identification. Do you know what
positive identification means?"

"Yes sir. It means that you've got to be sure that this is me."

"Right! Now, those are the rules. Now, of course, you don't look like
the sort of young man who would tell a lie. I'll even bet your real
name is Jimmy James, Jr. But you see, we have no proof, and our boss
will be awful mad at us if we break the rules and cash this check without
following the rules. The rules, Jimmy James, aren't to delay nice, honest
people, but to stop people from making mistakes. Mistakes such as taking
a little letter out of their father's mailbox. If we cashed that check,
then it couldn't be put back in father's mailbox without anybody knowing
about it. And that would be real bad."

"But it's mine!"

"Sonny, if that's yours, all you have to do is to have your folks come in
and say so. Then we'll open an account for you."

"Yes sir," said Jimmy in a voice that was thick with tears of frustration
close to the surface. He turned away and left.

Jake was still in the outside office of the Yard when Jimmy returned. The
boy was crestfallen, frustrated, unhappy, and would not have returned at
all if there had been another place where he was welcome. He expected
ridicule from Jake, but Jake smiled.

"No luck, kid?"

Jimmy just shook his head.

"Checks are tough, Jimmy. Give up, now?"

"No!"

"No? What then?"

"I can write a letter and sign it," said Jimmy, explaining how he had
outfoxed the ticket seller.

"Won't work with checks, Jimmy. For me now, if I was to be polite and
dressed right they might cash a twenty if I showed up with my social
security card, driver's license, identification card with photograph
sealed in, and all that junk. But a kid hasn't got a chance. Look, Jimmy,
I'm sorry for this morning. To-morrow morning we'll go over to my bank
and I'll have them cash it for you. It's yours. You earned it and you
keep it. Okay? Are we friends again?"

"Yes sir."

Gravely they shook hands. "Watch the place, kid," said Jake. "I got to
make a phone call."

In the morning, Jake dressed for business and insisted that Jimmy put on
his best to make a good impression. After breakfast, they set out. Jake
parked in front of a granite building.

"This isn't any bank," objected Jimmy. "This is a police station."

"Sure," responded Jake. "Here's where we get you an identification card.
Don't you know?"

"Okay," said Jimmy dubiously.

Inside the station there were a number of men in uniform and in plain
clothing. Jake strode forward, holding Jimmy by one small hand. They
approached the sergeant's desk and Jake lifted Jimmy up and seated him on
one edge of the desk with his feet dangling.

The sergeant looked at them with interest but without surprise.

"Sergeant," said Jake, "this is Jimmy James--as he calls himself when
he's writing stories. Otherwise he is James Quincy Holden."

Jimmy went cold all over.

Jake backed through the circle that was closing in; the hole he made was
filled by Paul Brennan.

It was not the first betrayal in Jimmy James's young life, but it was
totally unexpected. He didn't know that the policeman from the bank had
worried Jake; he didn't know that Jake had known all along who he was; he
didn't know how fast Brennan had moved after the phone call from Jake.
But his young mind leaped past the unknown facts to reach a certain, and
correct, conclusion.

He had been sold out.

"Jimmy, Jimmy," came the old, pleading voice. "Why did you run away?
Where have you been?"

Brennan stepped forward and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Without
a shadow of doubt," he said formally, "this is James Quincy Holden. I so
identify him. And with no more ado, I hand you the reward." He reached
into his inside pocket and drew out an envelope, handing it to Jake. "I
have never parted with one thousand dollars so happily in my life."

Jimmy watched, unable to move. Brennan was busy and cheerful, the model
of the man whose long-lost ward has been returned to him.

"So, James, shall we go quietly or shall we have a scene?"

Trapped and sullen, Jimmy Holden said nothing. The officers helped him
down from the desk. He did not move. Brennan took him by a hand that was
as limp as wet cloth. Brennan started for the door. The arm lifted until
the link was taut; then, with slow, dragging steps, James Quincy Holden
started toward home.

Brennan said, "You understand me, don't you, Jimmy?"

"You want my father's machine."

"Only to help you, Jimmy. Can't you believe that?"

"No."

Brennan drove his car with ease. A soft smile lurked around his lips. He
went on, "You know what your father's machine will do for you, don't you,
Jimmy?"

"Yes."

"But have you ever attended school?"

"No." But Jimmy remembered the long hours and hours of study and practice
before he became proficient with his typewriter. For a moment he felt
close to tears. It had been the only possession he truly owned, now it
was gone. And with it was gone the author's first check. The thrill of
that first check is far greater than Graduation or the First Job. It is
approximately equal to the flush of pride that comes when the author's
story hits print with his NAME appended.

But Jimmy's typewriter was gone, and his check was gone. Without a doubt
the check would turn up cashed--through the operations of Jake Caslow.

Brennan's voice cut into his thoughts. "You will attend school, Jimmy.
You'll have to."

"But--"

"Oh, now look, Jimmy. There are laws that say you must attend school.
The only way those laws can be avoided is to make an appeal to the law
itself, and have your legal guardian--myself--ask for the privilege of
tutoring you at home. Well, I won't do it."

He drove for a moment, thinking. "So you're going to attend school," he
said, "and while you're there you're going to be careful not to disclose
by any act or inference that you already know everything they can teach
you. Otherwise they will ask some embarrassing questions. And the first
thing that happens to you is that you will be put in a much harder place
to escape from than our home, Jimmy. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir," the boy said sickly.

"But," purred Uncle Paul Brennan, "you may find school very boring. If
so, you have only to say the word--rebuild your father's machine--and go
on with your career."

"I w--" Jimmy began automatically, but his uncle stopped him.

"You won't, no," he agreed. "Not now. In the meantime, then, you will
live the life proper to your station--and your age. I won't deny you a
single thing, Jimmy. Not a single thing that a five-year-old can want."




CHAPTER SIX


Paul Brennan moved into the Holden house with Jimmy.

Jimmy had the run of the house--almost. Uncle Paul closed off the upper
sitting room, which the late parents had converted into their laboratory.
_That_ was locked. But the rest of the house was free, and Jimmy was once
more among the things he had never hoped to see again.

Brennan's next step was to hire a middle-aged couple to take care of
house and boy. Their name was Mitchell; they were childless and regretted
it; they lavished on Jimmy the special love and care that comes only from
childless child-lovers.

Though Jimmy was wary to the point of paranoia, he discovered that he
wanted for nothing. He was kept clean and his home kept tidy. He was fed
well--not only in terms of nourishment, but in terms of what he liked.

Then ... Jimmy began to notice changes.

_Huckleberry Finn_ turned up missing. In its place on the shelf was a
collection of Little Golden Books.

His advanced Mecanno set was "broken"--so Mrs. Mitchell told him. Uncle
Paul had accidentally crushed it. "But you'll like this better," she
beamed, handing him a fresh new box from the toy store. It contained
bright-colored modular blocks.

Jimmy's parents had given him canvasboard and oil paints; now they were
gone. Jimmy would have admitted he was no artist; but he didn't enjoy
retrogressing to his uncle's selection--finger paints.

His supply of drawing paper was not tampered with. But it was not
replaced. When it was gone, Jimmy was presented with a blackboard and
boxes of colored chalk.

By Christmas every possession was gone--replaced--the new toys tailored
to Jimmy's physical age. There was a Christmas tree, and under it a pile
of gay bright boxes. Jimmy had hardly the heart to open them, for he knew
what they would contain.

He was right.

Jimmy had everything that would keep a five-year-old boy
contented ... and not one iota more. He objected; his objections got him
nowhere. Mrs. Mitchell was reproachful: Ingratitude, Jimmy! Mr. Mitchell
was scornful: Maybe James would like to vote and smoke a pipe?

And Paul Brennan was very clear. There was a way out of this, yes. Jimmy
could have whatever he liked. There was just this one step that must be
taken first; the machine must be put back together again.

When it came time for Jimmy to start school he was absolutely delighted;
nothing, nothing could be worse than this.

At first it was a novel experience.

He sat at a desk along with forty-seven other children of his size,
neatly stacked in six aisles with eight desks to the tier. He did his
best to copy their manners and to reproduce their halting speech and
imperfect grammar. For the first couple of weeks he was not noticed.

The teacher, with forty-eight young new minds to study, gave him his
2.08% of her total time and attention. Jimmy Holden was not a deportment
problem; his answers to the few questions she directed at him were
correct. Therefore he needed less attention and got less; she spent her
time on the loud, the unruly and those who lagged behind in education.

Because his total acquaintance with children of his own age had been
among the slum kids that hung around Jake Caslow's Place, Jimmy found his
new companions an interesting bunch.

He watched them, and he listened to them. He copied them and in two weeks
Jimmy found them pitifully lacking and hopelessly misinformed. They could
not remember at noon what they had been told at ten o'clock. They had
difficulty in reading the simple pages of the First Reader.

But he swallowed his pride and stumbled on and on, mimicking his friends
and remaining generally unnoticed.

If written examinations were the rule in the First Grade, Jimmy would
have been discovered on the first one. But with less than that 2% of the
teacher's time directed at him, Jimmy's run of correct answers did not
attract notice. His boredom and his lack of attention during daydreams
made him seem quite normal.

He began to keep score on his classmates on the fly-leaf of one of his
books. Jimmy was a far harsher judge than the teacher. He marked them
either wrong or right; he gave no credit for trying, or for their
stumbling efforts to express their muddled ideas and incomplete grasp. He
found their games fun at first, but quickly grew bored. When he tried to
introduce a note of strategy they ignored him because they did not
understand. They made rules as they went along and changed them as they
saw fit. Then, instead of complying with their own rules, they pouted-up
and sulked when they couldn't do as they wanted.

But in the end it was Jimmy's lack of experience in acting that tripped
him.

Having kept score on his playmates' answers, Jimmy knew that some fairly
high percentage of answers must inevitably be wrong. So he embarked upon
a program of supplying a certain proportion of errors. He discovered that
supplying a wrong answer that was consistent with the age of his
contemporaries took too much of his intellect to keep his actions
straight. He forgot to employ halting speech and childlike grammar. His
errors were delivered in faultless grammar and excellent self-expression;
his correct answers came out in the English of his companions;
mispronounced, ill-composed, and badly delivered.

The contrast was enough to attract even 2.08% of a teacher.

During the third week of school, Jimmy was day-dreaming during class.
Abruptly his teacher snapped, "James Holden, how much is seven times
nine?"

"Sixty-three," replied Jimmy, completely automatic.

"James," she said softly, "do you know the rest of your numbers?"

Jimmy looked around like a trapped animal. His teacher waited him out
until Jimmy, finding no escape, said, "Yes'm."

"Well," she said with a bright smile. "It's nice to know that you do. Can
you do the multiplication table?"

"Yes'm."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes'm."

"Let's hear you."

Jimmy looked around. "No, Jimmy," said his teacher. "I want you to say
it. Go ahead." And then as Jimmy hesitated still, she addressed the
class. "This is important," she said. "Someday you will have to learn it,
too. You will use it all through life and the earlier you learn it the
better off you all will be. _Knowledge_," she quoted proudly, "_is
power_! Now, Jimmy!"

Jimmy began with two-times-two and worked his way through the long table
to the twelves. When he finished, his teacher appointed one of the
better-behaved children to watch the class. "Jimmy," she said, "I'm going
to see if we can't put you up in the next grade. You don't belong here.
Come along."

They went to the principal's office. "Mr. Whitworth," said Jimmy's
teacher, "I have a young genius in my class."

"A young genius, Miss Tilden?"

"Yes, indeed. He already knows the multiplication table."

"You do, James? Where did you learn it?"

"My father taught me."

Principal and teacher looked at each another. They said nothing but they
were both recalling stories and rumors about the brilliance of his
parents. The accident and death had not escaped notice.

"What else did they teach you, James?" asked Mr. Whitworth. "To read and
write, of course?"

"Yes sir."

"History?"

Jimmy squirmed inwardly. He did not know how much to admit. "Some," he
said noncommittally.

"When did Columbus discover America?"

"In Fourteen Ninety-Two."

"Fine," said Mr. Whitworth with a broad smile. He looked at Miss Tilden.
"You're right. Young James should be advanced." He looked down at Jimmy
Holden. "James," he said, "we're going to place you in the Second Grade
for a tryout. Unless we're wrong, you'll stay and go up with them."

Jimmy's entry into Second Grade brought a different attitude. He had
entered school quietly just for the sake of getting away from Paul
Brennan. Now he was beginning to form a plan. If he could go from First
to Second in a matter of three weeks, then, by carefully disclosing his
store of knowledge bit-by-bit at the proper moment, he might be able to
go through school in a short time. Moreover, he had tasted the first
fruits of recognition. He craved more.

Somewhere was born the quaint notion that getting through school would
automatically make him an adult, with all attendant privileges.

So Jimmy Holden dropped all pretense. His answers were as right as he
could make them. He dropped the covering mimickry of childish speech
and took personal pride in using grammar as good as that of his teacher.

This got him nothing. The Second Grade teacher was of the "progressive"
school; she firmly believed that everybody, having been created equal,
had to stay that way. She pointedly avoided giving Jimmy any opportunity
to show his capability.

He bided his time with little grace.

He found his opportunity during the visit of a school superintendent.
During this session Jimmy hooted when one of his fellows said that
Columbus proved the world was round.

Angrily she demanded that Jimmy tell her who did prove it, and Jimmy
Holden replied that he didn't know whether it was Pythagoras or one of
his followers, but he did know that it was one of the few things that
Aristotle ever got right. This touched her on a sore spot. She admired
Aristotle and couldn't bear to hear the great man accused of error.

She started baiting Jimmy with loaded questions and stopped when
Jimmy stated that Napoleon Bonaparte was responsible for the invention
of canned food, the adoption of the metric system, and the development
of the semaphore telegraph. This stopped all proceedings until Jimmy
himself found the references in the Britannica. That little feat of
research-reference impressed the visiting superintendent. Jimmy Holden
was jumped into Third Grade.

Convinced that he was on the right trolley, Jimmy proceeded to plunge in
with both feet. Third Grade Teacher helped. Within a week he was being
called upon to aid the laggards. He stood out like a lighthouse; he was
the one who could supply the right answers when the class was stumped.
His teacher soon began to take a delight in belaboring the class for a
minute before turning to Jimmy for the answer. Heaven forgive him, Jimmy
enjoyed it. He began to hold back slyly, like a comedian building up the
tension before a punch-line.

His classmates began to call him "old know-it-all." Jimmy did not realize
that it was their resentment speaking. He accepted it as deference to his
superior knowledge. The fact that he was not a part of their playtime
life did not bother him one iota. He knew very well that his size alone
would cut him out of the rough and heavy games of his classmates; he did
not know that he was cut out of their games because they disliked him.

As time wore on, some of the rougher ones changed his nickname from
"know-it-all" to "teacher's pet"; one of them used rougher language
still. To this Jimmy replied in terms he'd learned from Jake Caslow's
gutters. All that saved him from a beating was his size; even the ones
who disliked him would not stand for the bully's beating up a smaller
child.

But in other ways they picked on him. Jimmy reasoned out his own
relationship between intelligence and violence. He had yet to learn the
psychology of vandalism--but he was experiencing it.

Finding no enjoyment out of play periods, Jimmy took to staying in. The
permissive school encouraged it; if Jimmy Holden preferred to tinker with
a typewriter instead of playing noisy games, his teacher saw no wrong in
it--for his Third Grade teacher was something of an intellectual herself.

In April, one week after his sixth birthday, Jimmy Holden was jumped
again.

Jimmy entered Fourth Grade to find that his fame had gone before him; he
was received with sullen glances and turned backs.

But he did not care. For his birthday, he received a typewriter from Paul
Brennan. Brennan never found out that the note suggesting it from Jimmy's
Third Grade teacher had been written after Jimmy's prompting.

So while other children played, Jimmy wrote.

He was not immediately successful. His first several stories were
returned; but eventually he drew a winner and a check. Armed with
superior knowledge, Jimmy mailed it to a bank that was strong in
advertising "mail-order" banking. With his first check he opened a
pay-by-the-item, no-minimum-balance checking account.

Gradually his batting average went up, but there were enough returned
rejections to make Paul Brennan view Jimmy's literary effort with quiet
amusement. Still, slowly and in secret, Jimmy built up his bank balance
by twenties, fifties, an occasional hundred.

For above everything, by now Jimmy knew that he could not go on through
school as he'd planned.

If his entry into Fourth Grade had been against scowls and resentment
from his classmates, Fifth and Sixth would be more so. Eventually the day
would come when he would be held back. He was already mingling with
children far beyond his size. The same permissive school that graduated
dolts so that their stupid personalities wouldn't be warped would keep
him back by virtue of the same idiotic reasoning.

He laid his plans well. He covered his absence from school one morning
and thereby gained six free hours to start going about his own business
before his absence could be noticed.

This was his third escape. He prayed that it would be permanent.




BOOK TWO:

THE HERMIT




CHAPTER SEVEN


Seventy-five miles south of Chicago there is a whistle-stop called
Shipmont. (No ship has ever been anywhere near it; neither has a
mountain.) It lives because of a small college; the college, in turn,
owes its maintenance to an installation of great interest to the Atomic
Energy Commission.

Shipmont is served by two trains a day--which stop only when there
is a passenger to get on or off, which isn't often. These passengers,
generally speaking, are oddballs carrying attaché cases or eager young
men carrying miniature slide rules.

But on this day came a woman and a little girl.

Their total visible possessions were two battered suitcases and one
battered trunk. The little girl was neatly dressed, in often-washed and
mended clothing; she carried a small covered basket, and there were
breadcrumbs visible on the lid. She looked bewildered, shy and
frightened. She was.

The mother was thirty, though there were lines of worry on her forehead
and around her eyes that made her look older. She wore little makeup and
her clothing had been bought for wear instead of for looks. She looked
around, leaned absently down to pat the little girl and straightened as
the station-master came slowly out.

"Need anything, ma'am?" He was pleasant enough. Janet Bagley appreciated
that; life had not been entirely pleasant for her for some years.

"I need a taxicab, if there is one."

"There is. I run it after the train gets in for them as ain't met. You're
not goin' to the college?" He pronounced it "collitch."

Janet Bagley shook her head and took a piece of paper from her bag. "Mr.
Charles Maxwell, Rural Route Fifty-three, Martin's Hill Road," she read.
Her daughter began to whimper.

The station-master frowned. "Hum," he said, "that's the Herm--er, d'you
know him?"

Mrs. Bagley said: "I've never met him. What kind of a man is he?"

That was the sort of question the station-master appreciated. His job was
neither demanding nor exciting; an opportunity to talk was worth having.
He said cheerfully, "Why, I don't rightly know, ma'am. Nobody's ever seen
him."

"Nobody?"

"Nope. Nobody. Does everything by mail."

"My goodness, what's the matter with him?"

"Don't rightly know, ma'am. Story is he was once a professor and got in
some kind of big explosion. Burned the hide off'n his face and scarred up
his hands something turrible, so he don't want to show himself. Rented
the house by mail, pays his rent by mail. Orders stuff by mail. Mostly
not real U-nited States Mail, y'know, because we don't mind dropping off
a note to someone in town. I'm the local mailman, too. So when I find a
note to Herby Wharton, the fellow that owns the general store, I drop it
off. Margie Clark over at the bank says he writes. Gets checks from New
York from publishing companies." The station-master looked around as if
he were looking for Soviet spies. "He's a scientist, all right. He's
doin' something important and hush-hush up there. Lots and lots of boxes
and packin' cases I've delivered up there from places like Central
Scientific and Labotory Supply Company. Must be a smart feller. You
visitin' him?"

"Well, he hired me for housekeeper. By mail." Mrs. Bagley looked puzzled
and concerned.

Little Martha began to cry.

"It'll be all right," said the station-master soothingly. "You keep your
eye open," he said to Mrs. Bagley. "Iff'n you see anything out of line,
you come right back and me and the missus will give you a lift. But he's
all right. Nothin' goin' on up there that I know of. Fred Riordan--he's
the sheriff--has watched the place for days and days and it's always
quiet. No visitors. No nothin'. Know what I think? I think he's
experimenting with something to take away the burn scars. That's whut
I think. Well, hop in and I'll drive you out there."

"Is it going to cost much?"

"Nothin' this trip. We'll charge it to the U-nited States Mail. Got a
package goin' out. Was waitin' for something else to go along with it,
but you're here and we can count that. This way to the only taxicab
service in Shipmont."

The place looked deserted. It was a shabby old clapboard house; the
architecture of the prosperous farmer of seventy-five years ago. The
grounds were spacious but the space was filled with scrub weeds. A
picket fence surrounded the weeds with uncertain security. The
windows--those that could be seen, that is--were dirty enough to prevent
seeing inside with clarity, and what transparency there was left was
covered by curtains. The walk up the "lawn" was flagstone with crabgrass
between the stones.

The station-master unshipped the small trunk and stood it just inside the
fence. He parked the suitcases beside it. "Never go any farther than
this," he explained. "So far's I know, you're the first person to ever
head up thet walk to the front door."

Mrs. Bagley rapped on the door. It opened almost instantly.

"I'm--" then Mrs. Bagley dropped her eyes to the proper level. To the lad
who was standing there she said, "I'm Mrs. Bagley. Your father--a Mr.
Charles Maxwell is expecting me."

"Come in," said Jimmy Holden. "Mr. Maxwell--well, he isn't my father. He
sent me to let you in."

Mrs. Bagley entered and dropped her suitcases in the front hall. Martha
held back behind her mother's skirt. Jimmy closed the door and locked it
carefully, but left the key in the keyhole with a gesture that Mrs.
Bagley could not mistake. "Please come in here and sit down," said James
Holden. "Relax a moment." He turned to look at the girl. He smiled at
her, but she cowered behind her mother's skirt as if she wanted to bury
her face but was afraid to lose sight of what was going on around her.

"What's your name?" asked James.

She retreated, hiding most of her face. Mrs. Bagley stroked her hair and
said, "Now, Martha, come on. Tell the little boy your name."

Purely as a matter of personal pride, James Holden objected to the
"little boy" but he kept his peace because he knew that at eight years
old he was still a little boy. In a soothing way, James said, "Come on
out, Martha. I'll show you some girl-type toys we've got."

The girl's head emerged slowly, "I'm Martha Bagley," she announced.

"How old are you?"

"I'm seven."

"I'm eight," stated James. "Come on."

Mrs. Bagley looked around. She saw that the dirt on the windows was all
on the outside. The inside was clean. So was the room. So were the
curtains. The room needed a dusting--a most thorough dusting. It had been
given a haphazard lick-and-a-promise cleanup not too long ago, but the
cleanup before that had been as desultory as the last, and without a
doubt the one before and the one before that had been of the same sort of
half-hearted cleaning. As a woman and a housekeeper, Mrs. Bagley found
the room a bit strange.

The furniture caught her eye first. A standard open bookcase, a low sofa,
a very low cocktail-type table. The chair she stood beside was standard
looking, so was the big easy chair opposite. Yet she felt large in the
room despite its old-fashioned high ceiling. There were several low
footstools in the room; ungraceful things that were obviously wooden
boxes covered with padding and leatherette. The straight chair beside her
had been lowered; the bottom rung between the legs was almost on the
floor.

She realized why she felt big. The furniture in the room had all been cut
down.

She continued to look. The strangeness continued to bother her and she
realized that there were no ash trays; there was none of the usual
clutter of things that a family drops in their tracks. It was a room
fashioned for a small person to live in but it wasn't lived-in.

The lack of hard cleanliness did not bother her very much. There had been
an effort here, and the fact that this Charles Maxwell was hiring a
housekeeper was in itself a statement that the gentleman knew that he
needed one. It was odd, but it wasn't ominous.

She shook her daughter gently and said, "Come on, Martha. Let's take a
look at these girl-type toys."

James led them through a short hallway, turned left at the first door,
and then stood aside to give them a full view of the room. It was a
playroom for a girl. It was cleaner than the living room, and as--well,
untouched. It had been furnished with girl-toys that some catalog
"recommended as suitable for a girl of seven."

The profusion of toys overwhelmed little Martha. She stood just inside of
the door with her eyes wide, glancing back and forth. She took one slow
step forward, then another. Then she quickened. She moved through the
room looking, then putting out a slow, hesitant hand to touch very
gently. Tense, as if she were waiting for the warning not to touch,
Martha finally caressed the hair of a baby doll.

Mrs. Bagley smiled. "I'll have a time prying her loose from here," she
said.

James nodded his head. "Let her amuse herself for a bit," he said. "With
Martha occupied, you can give your attention to a more delicate matter."

Mrs. Bagley forgot that she was addressing an eight-year-old boy. His
manner and his speech bemused her. "Yes," she said. "I do want to get
this settled with your mysterious Charles Maxwell. Do you expect him
down, or shall I go upstairs--?"

"This may come as a shock, Mrs. Bagley, but Charles Maxwell isn't here."

"Isn't here?" she echoed, in a tone of voice that clearly indicated that
she had heard the words but hadn't really grasped their full meaning. "He
won't be gone long, will he?"

James watched her covertly, then said in a matter-of-fact voice, "He left
you a letter."

"Letter?"

"He was called away on some urgent business."

"But--"

"Please read the letter. It explains everything."

He handed her an envelope addressed to "Mrs. Janet Bagley." She looked
at it from both sides, in the womanlike process of trying to divine its
contents instead of opening it. She looked at James, but James sat
stolidly waiting. Mrs. Bagley was going to get no more information from
him until she read that letter, and James was prepared to sit it out
until she did. It placed Mrs. Bagley in the awkward position of having
to decide what to do next. Then the muffled sound of little-girl crooning
came from the distant room. That brought the realization that as odd as
this household was, it was a _home_. Mrs. Bagley delayed no further. She
opened the letter and read:

  My Dear Mrs. Bagley:

  I deeply regret that I am not there to greet you, but it was not
  possible. However, please understand that insofar as I am concerned,
  you were hired and have been drawing your salary from the date that I
  forwarded railroad fare and traveling expenses. Any face-to-face
  meeting is no more than a pleasantry, a formal introduction. It must
  not be considered in any way connected with the thought of a "Final
  Interview" or the process of "Closing the Deal."

  Please carry on as if you had been in charge long before I departed,
  or--considering my hermitlike habits--the way you would have carried
  on if I had not departed, but instead was still upstairs and hard at
  work with most definite orders that I was not to be disturbed for
  anything less important than total, personal disaster.

  I can offer you a word of explanation about young James. You will find
  him extraordinarily competent for a youngster of eight years. Were he
  less competent, I might have delayed my departure long enough to pass
  him literally from my supervision to yours. However, James is quite
  capable of taking care of himself; this fact you will appreciate fully
  long before you and I meet face-to-face.

  In the meantime, remember that our letters and the other references
  acquaint us with one another far better than a few short hours of
  personal contact.

  Sincerely,
  Charles Maxwell

"Well!" said Mrs. Bagley. "I don't know what to say."

Jimmy smiled. "You don't have to say anything," he said.

Mrs. Bagley looked at the youngster. "I don't think I like your Mr.
Maxwell," she said.

"Why not?"

"He's practically shanghaied me here. He knows very well that I couldn't
possibly leave you here all alone, no matter how I disliked the
situation. He's practically forced me to stay."

James suppressed a smile. He said, "Mrs. Bagley, the way the trains run
in and out of Shipmont, you're stuck for an overnight stay in any case."

"You don't seem to be perturbed."

"I'm not," he said.

Mrs. Bagley looked at James carefully. His size; his physique was
precisely that of the eight-year-old boy. There was nothing malformed nor
out-of-proportion; yet he spoke with an adult air of confidence.

"I am," she admitted.

"Perturbed? You needn't be," he said. "You've got to remember that
writers are an odd lot. They don't conform. They don't punch time-clocks.
They boast of having written a novel in three weeks but they don't
mention the fact that they sat around drinking beer for six months
plotting it."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that Maxwell sees nothing wrong in attending to his own affairs
and expecting you to attend to yours."

"But what shall I do?"

James smiled. "First, take a look around the house and satisfy yourself.
You'll find the third floor shut off; the rooms up there are Maxwell's,
and no one goes in but him. My bedroom is the big one in the front of the
second floor. Pick yourself a room or a suite of rooms or move in all
over the rest of the house. Build yourself a cup of tea and relax. Do as
he says: Act as if you'd arrived before he took off, that you'd met and
agreed verbally to do what you've already agreed to do by letter. Look at
it from his point of view."

"What is his point of view?"

"He's a writer. He rented this house by mail. He banks by mail and shops
by mail and makes his living by writing. Don't be surprised when he hires
a housekeeper by mail and hands her the responsibility in writing. He
lives by the written word."

Mrs. Bagley said, "In other words, the fact that he offered me a job in
writing and I took it in writing--?"

"Writing," said James Holden soberly, "was invented for the express
purpose of recording an agreement between two men in a permanent form
that could be read by other men. The whole world runs on the theory that
no one turns a hand until names are signed to written contracts--and here
you sit, not happy because you weren't contracted-for by a personal
chit-chat and a handshake."

Mrs. Bagley was taken aback slightly by this rather pointed criticism.
What hurt was the fact that, generally speaking, it was true and
especially the way he put it. The young man was too blunt, too
out-spokenly direct. Obviously he needed someone around the place who
wasn't the self-centered writer-type. And, Mrs. Bagley admitted to
herself, there certainly was no evidence of evil-doing here.

No matter what, Charles Maxwell had neatly trapped her into staying by
turning her own maternal responsibility against her.

"I'll get my bags," she said.

James Holden took a deep breath. He'd won this hurdle, so far so good.
Now for the next!

Mrs. Bagley found life rather unhurried in the days that followed. She
relaxed and tried to evaluate James Holden. To her unwarned mind, the boy
was quite a puzzle.

There was no doubt about his eight years, except that he did not whoop
and holler with the aimlessness of the standard eight-year-old boy. His
vocabulary was far ahead of the eight-year-old and his speech was in
adult grammar rather than halting. It was, she supposed, due to his
constant adult company; children denied their contemporaries for
playmates often take on attitudes beyond their years. Still, it was a bit
on the too-superior side to please her. It was as if he were the result
of over-indulgent parents who'd committed the mistake of letting the
child know that their whole universe revolved about him.

Yet Maxwell's letters said that he was motherless, that he was not
Maxwell's son. This indicated a probable history of broken homes and
remarriages. Mrs. Bagley thought the problem over and gave it up. It
was a home.

Things went on. They started warily but smoothly at first with Mrs.
Bagley asking almost incessantly whether Mr. Maxwell would approve of
this or that and should she do this or the other and, phrased cleverly,
indicated that she would take the word of young James for the time being
but there would be evil sputterings in the fireplace if the programs
approved by young James Holden were not wholly endorsed by Mr. Charles
Maxwell.

At the end of the first week, supplies were beginning to run short and
still there was no sign of any return of the missing Mr. Maxwell. With
some misgiving, Mrs. Bagley broached the subject of shopping to James.
The youngster favored Mrs. Bagley with another smile.

"Yes," he said calmly. "Just a minute." And he disappeared upstairs to
fetch another envelope. Inside was a second letter which read:

  My Dear Mrs. Bagley:

  Attached you will find letters addressed to several of the local
  merchants in Shipmont, explaining your status as my housekeeper and
  directing them to honor your purchases against my accounts. Believe me,
  they recognize my signature despite the fact that they might not
  recognize me! There should be no difficulty. I'd suggest, however, that
  you start a savings account at the local bank with the enclosed salary
  check. You have no idea how much weight the local banker carries in his
  character-reference of folks with a savings account.

  Otherwise, I trust things are pleasant.

  Sincerely,
  Charles Maxwell.

"Things," she mused aloud, "are pleasant enough."

James nodded. "Good," he said. "You're satisfied, then?"

Mrs. Bagley smiled at him wistfully. "As they go," she said, "I'm
satisfied. Lord knows, you're no great bother, James, and I'll be most
happy to tell Mr. Maxwell so when he returns."

James nodded. "You're not concerned over Maxwell, are you?"

She sobered. "Yes," she said in a whisper. "Yes, I am. I'm afraid that
he'll change things, that he'll not approve of Martha, or the way dinner
is made, or my habits in dishwashing or bedmaking or marketing or
something that will--well, put me right in the role of a paid
chambermaid, a servant, a menial with no more to say about the running
of the house, once he returns."

James Holden hesitated, thought, then smiled.

"Mrs. Bagley," he said apologetically, "I've thrown you a lot of curves.
I hope you won't mind one more."

The woman frowned. James said hurriedly, "Oh, it's nothing bad, believe
me. I mean--Well, you'll have to judge for yourself.

"You see, Mrs. Bagley," he said earnestly, "there isn't any Charles
Maxwell."

       *       *       *       *       *

Janet Bagley, with the look of a stricken animal, sat down heavily. There
were two thoughts suddenly in her mind: _Now I've got to leave_, and,
_But I can't leave_.

She sat looking at the boy, trying to make sense of what he had said.
Mrs. Bagley was a young woman, but she had lived a demanding and
unrelenting life; her husband dead, her finances calamitous, a baby to
feed and raise ... there had been enough trouble in her life and she
sought no more.

But she was also a woman of some strength of character.

Janet Bagley had not been able to afford much joy, but when things were
at their worst she had not wept. She had been calm. She had taken what
inexpensive pleasures she could secure--the health of her daughter, the
strength of her arms to earn a living, the cunning of her mind to make a
dollar do the work of five. She had learned that there was no bargain
that was not worth investigating; the shoddiest goods were worth owning
at a price; the least attractive prospect had to be faced and understood,
for any commodity becomes a bargain when the price is right. There was
no room for laziness or indulgence in her life. There was also no room
for panic.

So Janet Bagley thought for a moment, and then said: "Tell me what you're
talking about, James."

James Holden said immediately: "I am Charles Maxwell. That is, 'Charles
Maxwell' is a pen name. He has no other existence."

"But--"

"But it's true, Mrs. Bagley," the boy said earnestly. "I'm only eight
years old, but I happen to be earning my own living--as a writer, under
the name of, among others, Charles Maxwell. Perhaps you've looked up some
of the 'Charles Maxwell' books? If so, you may have seen some of the book
reviews that were quoted on the jackets--I remember one that said that
Charles Maxwell writes as though he himself were a boy, with the
education of an adult. Well, that's the fact of the case."

Mrs. Bagley said slowly, "But I did look Mr. Max--I mean, I did look you
up. There was a complete biographical sketch in _Woman's Life_.
Thirty-one years old, I remember."

"I know. I wrote it. It too was fiction."

"You wrote--but why?"

"Because I was asked to write it," said James.

"But, well--what I mean, is--Just who is Mr. Maxwell? The man at the
station said something about a hermit, but--"

"The Hermit of Martin's Hill is a convenient character carefully prepared
to explain what might have looked like a very odd household," said James
Holden. "Charles Maxwell, the Hermit, does not exist except in the minds
of the neighbors and the editors of several magazines, and of course, the
readers of those pages."

"But he wrote me himself." The bewildered woman paused.

"That's right, Mrs. Bagley. There's absolutely nothing illegal about a
writer's using a pen name. Absolutely nothing. Some writers become so
well-known by their pseudonym that they answer when someone calls them.
So long as the writer isn't wanted by the F.B.I. for some heinous crime,
and so long as he can unscramble the gobbledygook on Form 1040, stay out
of trouble, pay his rent, and make his regular contributions to Social
Security, nobody cares what name he uses."

"But where are your parents? Have you no friends? No legal guardian? Who
handles your business affairs?"

James said in a flat tone of recital, "My parents are dead. What friends
and family I have, want to turn me over to my legal guardian. My legal
guardian is the murderer of my parents and the would-have-been murderer
of me if I hadn't been lucky. Someday I shall prove it. And I handle my
affairs myself, by mail, as you well know. I placed the advertisement,
wrote the letters of reply, wrote those letters that answered specific
questions and asked others, and I wrote the check that you cashed in
order to buy your railroad ticket, Mrs. Bagley. No, don't worry. It's
good."

Mrs. Bagley tried to digest all that and failed. She returned to the
central point. "But you're a minor--"

"I am," admitted James Holden. "But you accepted my checks, your bank
accepted my checks, and they've been honored by the clearing houses. My
own bank has been accepting them for a couple of years now. It will
continue to be that way until something goes wrong and I'm found out. I'm
taking every precaution that nothing goes wrong."

"Still--"

"Mrs. Bagley, look at me. I am precisely what I seem to be. I am a young
male human being, eight years old, possessed of a good command of the
English language and an education superior to the schooling of any
high-school graduate. It is true that I am an infant in the eyes of the
law, so I have not the right to hold the ear of the law long enough to
explain my competence."

"But--"

"Listen a moment," insisted James. "You can't hope to hear it all in one
short afternoon. It may take weeks before you fully understand."

"You assume that I'll stay, then?"

James smiled. Not the wide open, simple smile of youth but the knowing
smile of someone pleased with the success of his own plans. "Mrs. Bagley,
of the many replies to my advertisement, yours was selected because you
are in a near-desperate position. My advertisement must have sounded
tailor-made to fit your case; a young widow to work as resident
housekeeper, child of preschool or early school age welcome. Well, Mrs.
Bagley, your qualifications are tailor-made for me, too. You are in need,
and I can give you what you need--a living salary, a home for you and
your daughter, and for your daughter an education that will far transcend
any that you could ever provide for her."

"And how do you intend to make that come to pass?"

"Mrs. Bagley, at the present time there are only two people alive who
know the answer to that question. I am one of them. The other is my
so-called legal 'guardian' who would be most happy to guard me right out
of my real secret. You will be the third person alive to know that my
mother and father built a machine that produces the same deeply-inlaid
memory-track of information as many months of learning-by-repetition.
With that machine, I absorbed the information available to a high-school
student before I was five. I am rebuilding that machine now from plans
and specifications drilled into my brain by my father. When it is
complete, I intend to become the best informed person in the world."

"That isn't right," breathed Mrs. Bagley.

"Isn't it?" asked James seriously. "Isn't it right? Is it wrong, when at
the present time it takes a man until he is almost thirty years old
before he can say that his education is complete?"

"Well, I suppose you're right."

James eyed Mrs. Bagley carefully. He said softly, "Mrs. Bagley, tell me,
would you give Martha a college education if you had--or will you if you
have at the time--the wherewithal to provide it?"

"Of course."

"You have it here," said James. "So long as you stay to protect it."

"But won't it make--?" her voice trailed away uncertainly.

"A little intellectual monster out of her?" laughed the boy. "Maybe.
Maybe I am, too. On the other hand it might make a brilliant woman out of
her. She might be a doctor if she has the capacity of a brilliant doctor.
My father's machine is no monster-maker, Mrs. Bagley. With it a person
could memorize the Britannica. And from the Britannica that person would
learn that there is much good in the world and also that there is rich
reward for being a part of that capacity for good."

"I seem to have been outmaneuvered," said Mrs. Bagley with a worried
frown.

James smiled. "Not at all," he said. "It was just a matter of finding
someone who wanted desperately to have what I wanted to give, and of
course overcoming the natural adult reluctance to admit that anybody
my size and age can operate on grown-up terms."

"You sound so sure of yourself."

"I am sure of myself. And one of the more important things in life is to
understand one's limitations."

"But couldn't you convince them--?"

"One--you--I can convince. Maybe another, later. But if I tackle the
great American public, I'm licked by statistics. My guess is that there
is one brand-new United States citizen born every ten seconds. It takes
me longer than ten seconds to convince someone, that I know what I'm
talking about. But so long as I have an accepted adult out front, running
the store, I don't have to do anything but sit backstage, run the hidden
strings, and wait until my period of growth provides me with a stature
that won't demand any explanation."

From the playroom, Martha came running. "Mummy! Mummy!" she cried in a
shrill voice filled with the strident tones of alarm, "Dolly's sick and
I can't leave her!"

Mrs. Bagley folded her daughter in her arms. "We won't leave," she said.
"We're staying."

James Holden nodded with satisfaction, but one thing he realized then and
there: He simply had to rush the completion of his father's machine.

He could not stand the simpering prattle of Martha Bagley's playgames.




CHAPTER EIGHT


The arrival of Mrs. Bagley changed James Holden's way of life far more
than he'd expected. His basic idea had been to free himself from the
hours of dishwashing, bedmaking, dusting, cleaning and straightening
and from the irking chore of planning his meals far enough ahead to
obtain sustenance either through mail or carried note. He gave up his
haphazard chores readily. Mrs. Bagley's menus often served him dishes
that he wouldn't have given house-room; but he also enjoyed many meals
that he could not or would not have taken the time to prepare.

He did have some faint notion that being freed from the household toil
would allow him sixteen or eighteen hours at the typewriter, but he was
not greatly dismayed to find that this did not work.

When he wrote himself out, he relaxed by reading, or sitting quietly
planning his next piece. Even that did not fill his entire day. To take
some advantage of his time, James began to indulge in talk-fests with
Mrs. Bagley.

These were informative. He was learning from her how the outside world
was run, from one who had no close association with his own former life.
Mrs. Bagley was by no means well-informed on all sides of life, but she
did have her opinions and her experiences and a fair idea of how things
went on in her own level. And, of course, James had made this choice
because of the girl. He wanted a companion of his own age. Regardless of
what Mrs. Bagley really thought of this matter of rapid education, James
proposed to use it on Martha. That would give him a companion of his own
like, they would come closer to understanding one another than he could
ever hope to find understanding elsewhere.

So he talked and played with Martha in his moments of relaxation. And he
found her grasp of life completely unreal.

James could not get through to her. He could not make her stop
play-acting in everything that she did not ignore completely. It worried
him.

With the arrival of summer, James and Martha played outside in the fresh
air. They made a few shopping excursions into town, walking the mile and
more by taking their time, and returning with their shopping load in the
station-master's taxicab mail car. But on these expeditions, James hung
close to Martha lest her babbling prattle start an unwelcome line of
thought. She never did it, but James was forever on edge.

This source of possible danger drove him hard. The machine that was
growing in a mare's-nest on the second floor began to evolve faster.

James Holden's work was a strangely crude efficiency. The prototype had
been built by his father bit by bit and step by step as its design
demanded. Sections were added as needed, and other sections believed
needed were abandoned as the research showed them unnecessary. Louis
Holden had been a fine instrumentation engineer, but his first models
were hay-wired in the breadboard form. James copied his father's
work--including his father's casual breadboard style. And he added some
inefficiencies of his own.

Furthermore, James was not strong enough to lift the heavier assemblies
into place. James parked the parts wherever they would sit.

To Mrs. Bagley, the whole thing was bizarre and unreasonable. Given her
opinion, with no other evidence, she would have rejected the idea at
once. She simply did not understand anything of a technical nature.

One day she bluntly asked him how he knew what he was doing.

James grinned. "I really _don't_ know what I'm doing," he admitted. "I'm
only following some very explicit directions. If I knew the pure theory
of my father's machine I could not design the instrumentation that would
make it work. But I can build a reproduction of my father's machine from
the directions."

"How can that be?"

James stopped working and sat on a packing case. "If you bought a
lawn-mower," he said, "it might come neatly packed in a little box with
all the parts nested in cardboard formers and all the little nuts and
bolts packed in a bag. There would be a set of assembly directions,
written in such a way as to explain to anybody who can read that Part A
is fastened to Bracket B using Bolt C, Lockwasher D, and Nut E. My
father's one and only recognition of the dangers of the unforeseeable
future was to drill deep in my brain these directions. For instance," and
he pointed to a boxed device, "that thing is an infra-low frequency
amplifier. Now, I haven't much more than a faint glimmer of what the
thing is and how it differs from a standard amplifier, but I know that it
must be built precisely thus-and-so, and finally it must be fitted into
the machine per instructions. Look, Mrs. Bagley." James picked up a
recently-received package, swept a place clear on the packing case and
dumped it out. It disgorged several paper bags of parts, some large
plates and a box. He handed her a booklet. "Try it yourself," he said.
"That's a piece of test equipment made in kit form by a commercial outfit
in Michigan. Follow those directions and build it for me."

"But I don't know anything about this sort of thing."

"You can read," said James with a complete lack of respect. He turned
back to his own work, leaving Mrs. Bagley leafing her way through the
assembly manual.

To the woman it was meaningless. But as she read, a secondary thought
rose in her mind. James was building this devilish-looking nightmare, and
he had every intention of using it on her daughter! She accepted without
understanding the fact that James Holden's superior education had come of
such a machine--but it had been a machine built by a competent mechanic.
She stole a look at James. The anomaly puzzled her.

When the lad talked, his size and even the thin boyish voice were negated
by the intelligence of his words, the size of his vocabulary, the clarity
of his statements. Now that he was silent, he became no more than an
eight-year-old lad who could not possibly be doing anything constructive
with this mad array of equipment. The messiness of the place merely made
the madness of the whole program seem worse.

But she turned back to her booklet. Maybe James was right. If she could
assemble this doodad without knowing the first principle of its
operation, without even knowing from the name what the thing did, then
she might be willing to admit that--messy as it looked--the machine could
be reconstructed.

Trapped by her own interest, Mrs. Bagley pitched in.

They took a week off to rearrange the place. They built wooden shelves to
hold the parts in better order. These were by no means the work of a
carpenter, for Mrs. Bagley's aim with a saw was haphazard, and her
batting average with a hammer was about .470; but James lacked the
strength, so the construction job was hers. Crude as it was, the place
looked less like a junkshop when they were done. Work resumed on the
assembly of the educator.

Of course the writing suffered.

The budget ran low. James was forced to abandon the project for his
typewriter. He drove himself hard, fretting and worrying himself into a
stew time after time. And then as August approached, Nature stepped in to
add more disorder.

James entered a "period of growth." In three weeks he gained two inches.

His muscles, his bones and his nervous system ceased to coordinate. He
became clumsy. His handwriting underwent a change, so severe that James
had to practically forge his own signature of Charles Maxwell. To avoid
trouble he stopped the practice of writing individual checks for the
bills and transferred a block sum of money to an operating account in
Mrs. Bagley's name.

His fine regimen went to pieces.

He embarked on a haphazard program of sleeping, eating and working at odd
hours, and his appetite became positively voracious. He wanted what he
wanted when he wanted it, even if it were the middle of the night. He
pouted and groused when he didn't get it. In calmer moments he hated
himself for these tantrums, but no amount of self-rationalization stopped
them.

During this period, James was by no means an efficient youngster. His
writing suffered the ills of both his period of growth and his upset
state of mind. His fingers failed to coordinate on his typewriter and his
manuscript copy turned out rough, with strikeovers, xxx-outs, and gross
mistakes. The pile of discarded paper massed higher than his finished
copy until Mrs. Bagley took over and began to retype his rough script
for him.

His state of mind remained chaotic.

Mrs. Bagley began to treat him with special care. She served him warm
milk and insisted that he rest. Finally she asked him why he drove
himself so hard.

"We are approaching the end of summer," he said, "and we are not
prepared."

"Prepared for what?"

They were relaxing in the living room, James fretting and Mrs. Bagley
seated, Martha Bagley asprawl on the floor turning the pages of a
crayon-coloring book. "Look at us," he said. "I am a boy of eight, your
daughter is a girl of seven. By careful dress and action I could pass for
a child one year younger, but that would still make me seven. Last summer
when I was seven, I passed for six."

"Yes, but--?"

"Mrs. Bagley, there are laws about compulsory education. Sooner or later
someone is going to get very curious about us."

"What do you intend to do about it?"

"That's the problem," he said. "I don't really know. With a lot of
concentrated effort I can probably enter school if I have to, and keep my
education covered up. But Martha is another story."

"I don't see--?" Mrs. Bagley bit her lip.

"We can't permit her to attend school," said James.

"You shouldn't have advertised for a woman with a girl child!" said Mrs.
Bagley.

"Perhaps not. But I wanted someone of my own age and size around so that
we can grow together. I'm a bit of a misfit until I'm granted the right
to use my education as I see fit."

"And you hope to make Martha another misfit?"

"If you care to put it that way," admitted James. "Someone has to start.
Someday all kids will be educated with my machine and then there'll be no
misfits."

"But until then--?"

"Mrs. Bagley, I am not worried about what is going to happen next year. I
am worried about what is going to happen next month."

Mrs. Bagley sat and watched him for a moment. This boy was worried, she
could see that. But assuming that any part of his story was true--and it
was impossible to doubt it--he had ample cause.

The past years had given Mrs. Bagley a hard shell because it was useful
for survival; to keep herself and her child alive she had had to be
permanently alert for every threat. Clearly this was a threat. Martha was
involved. Martha's future was, at the least, bound to be affected by what
James did.

And the ties of blood and habit made Martha's future the first
consideration in Janet Bagley's thoughts.

But not the only consideration; for there is an in-born trait in the
human race which demands that any helpless child should be helped. James
was hardly helpless; but he certainly was a child. It was easy to forget
it, talking to him--until something came up that the child could not
handle.

Mrs. Bagley sighed. In a different tone she asked, "What did you do last
year?"

"Played with Rags on the lawn," James said promptly. "A boy and his dog
is a perfectly normal sight--in the summer. Then, when school opened, I
stayed in the house as much as I could. When I had to go out I tried to
make myself look younger. Short pants, dirty face. I don't think I could
get away with it this year."

"I think you're right," Mrs. Bagley admitted. "Well, suppose you could do
what you wish this year? What would that be?"

James said: "I want to get my machine working. Then I want to use it on
Martha."

"On Martha! But--"

James said patiently: "It won't hurt her, Mrs. Bagley. There isn't any
other way. The first thing she needs is a good command of English."

"English?" Mrs. Bagley hesitated, and was lost. After all, what was wrong
with the girl's learning proper speech?

"Martha is a child both physically and intellectually. She has been
talked to about 'right' and 'wrong' and she knows that 'telling the
truth' is right, but she doesn't recognize that talking about fairies is
a misstatement of the truth. Question her carefully about how we live,
and you'll get a fair approximation of the truth."

"So?"

"But suppose someone asks Martha about the Hermit of Martin's Hill?"

"What do you fear?"

"We might play upon her make-believe stronger than we have. She play-acts
his existence very well. But suppose someone asks her what he eats, or
where he gets his exercise, or some other personal question. She hasn't
the command of logic to improvise a convincing background."

"But why should anybody ask such personal questions?" asked Mrs. Bagley.

James said patiently: "To ask personal questions of an adult is 'prying'
and is therefore considered improper and antisocial. To ask the same
questions of a child is proper and social. It indicates a polite interest
in the world of the child. You and I, Mrs. Bagley, have a complete
picture of the Hermit all prepared, and with our education we can
improvise plausible answers. I've hoped to finish my machine early enough
to provide Martha with the ability to do the same."

"So what can we do?"

"About the only thing we can do is to hide," said James. "Luckily,
most of the business is conducted out of this place by mail. Write
letters to some boarding school situated a good many miles from here.
Ask the usual routine questions about entering a seven-year-old girl
and an eight-year-old boy for one semester. Robert Holmes, our
postmaster-taxicab driver-station-master, reads everything that isn't
sealed. He will read the addresses, and he will see replies and read
their return address."

"And then we'll pretend to send you and Martha to boarding school?"

James nodded. "Confinement is going to be difficult, but in this climate
the weather gets nasty early and that keeps people out of one another's
hair."

"But this station-master business--?"

"We've got to pull some wool over Robert's eyes," said James. "Somehow,
we've got to make it entirely plausible. You've got to take Martha and me
away and come back alone just as if we were in school."

"We should have a car," said Mrs. Bagley.

"A car is one piece of hardware that I could never justify," said James.
"Nor," he chuckled, "buy from a mail-order house because I couldn't
accept delivery. I bought furniture from Sears and had it delivered
according to mailed instructions. But I figured it better to have the
folks in Shipmont wondering why Charles Maxwell didn't own a car than to
have them puzzling why he owned one that never was used, nor even moved.
Besides, a car--costs--"

Mrs. Bagley smiled with real satisfaction. "There," she said, "I think I
can help. I can buy the car."

James was startled. "But can you afford it?"

Mrs. Bagley nodded seriously. "James," she said, "I've been scratching
out an existence on hard terms and I've had to make sure of tomorrow.
Even when things were worst, I tried to put something away--some weeks it
was only a few pennies, sometimes nothing at all. But--well, I'm not
afraid of tomorrow any more."

James was oddly pleased. While he was trying to find a way to say it,
Mrs. Bagley relieved him of the necessity. "It won't be a brand-new
convertible," she warned. "But they tell me you can get something that
runs for two or three hundred dollars. Tim Fisher has some that look
about right in his garage--and besides," she said, clinching it, "it
gives me a chance to give out a little more Maxwell and boarding-school
propaganda."




CHAPTER NINE


The letter was a masterpiece of dissembling. It suggested, without
promising, that Charles Maxwell intended to send his young charge to
boarding school along with his housekeeper's daughter. It asked the
school's advice and explained the deformity that made Charles Maxwell a
recluse. The reply could hardly have been better if they'd penned it
themselves for the signature of the faculty advisor. It discussed the
pros and cons of away-from-home schooling and went on at great length to
discuss the attitude of children and their upbringing amid strange
surroundings. It invited a long and inconclusive correspondence--just
what James wanted.

The supposed departure for school went off neatly, no one in the town of
Shipmont was surprised when Mrs. Bagley turned up buying an automobile of
several years' vintage because this was a community where everybody had
one.

The letters continued at the rate of one every two or three weeks. They
were picked up by Mrs. Bagley who let it be known that these were
progress reports. In reality, they were little tracts on the theory of
child education. They kept up the correspondence for the information it
contained, and also because Mrs. Bagley enjoyed this contact with an
outer world that contained adults.

Meanwhile, James ended his spurt of growth and settled down. Work on his
machine continued when he could afford to buy the parts, and his writing
settled down into a comfortable channel once more. In his spare time
James began to work on Martha's diction.

Martha could not have been called a retarded child. Her trouble was lack
of constant parental attention during her early years. With father gone
and mother struggling to live, Martha had never overcome some of the
babytalk-diction faults. There was still a trace of the omitted 'B' here
and there. 'Y' was a difficult sound; the color of a lemon was "Lellow."
Martha's English construction still bore marks of the baby. "Do you have
to--" came out as "Does you has to--?"

James Holden's father had struggled in just this way through his early
experimental days, when he despaired of ever getting the infant James out
of the baby-prattle stage. He could not force, he could not even coerce.
All that his father could do was to watch quietly as baby James acquired
the awareness of things. Then he could step in and supply the correct
word-sound to name the object. In those early days the progress of James
Holden was no greater than the progress of any other infant. Holden
Senior followed the theory of ciphers; no cryptologist can start
unravelling a secret message until he is aware of the fact that some
hidden message exists. No infant can be taught a language until some
awareness tells the tiny brain that there is some definite connection
between sound and sight.

       *       *       *       *       *

For the next few weeks James worked with Martha on her speech, and hated
it. So slow, so dreary! But it was necessary, he thought, to keep her
from establishing any more permanent errors, so that when the machine was
ready there would be at least a blank slate to write on, not one all
scribbled over with mistakes.

Time passed; the weather grew colder; the machine spread its scattered
parts over his workroom.

Janet Bagley knew that the machine was growing, but it had not occurred
to her that it would be finished. She had grown accustomed to her life on
Martin's Hill. By her standards, it was easy. She made three meals each
day, cleaned the rooms, hung curtains, sewed clothing for Martha and
herself, did the shopping and had time enough left over to take
excursions in her little car and keep her daughter out of mischief. It
was pleasant. It was more than pleasant, it was safe.

And then the machine was finished.

Mrs. Bagley took a sandwich and a glass of milk to James and found him
sitting on a chair, a heavy headset covering most of his skull, reading
aloud from a textbook on electronic theory.

Mrs. Bagley stopped at the door, unaccountably startled.

James looked up and shut off his work. "It's finished," he said with
grave pride.

"All of it?"

"Well," he said, pondering, "the basic part. It works."

Mrs. Bagley looked at the scramble of equipment in the room as though it
were an enemy. It didn't look finished. It didn't even look safe. But she
trusted James, although she felt at that moment that she would grow old
and die before she understood why and how any collection of apparatus
could be functional and still be so untidy. "It--could teach me?"

"If you had something you want to memorize."

"I'd like to memorize some of the pet recipes from my cookbook."

"Get it," directed James.

She hesitated. "How does it work?" she wanted to know first.

He countered with another question. "How do we memorize anything?"

She thought. "Why, by repeating and repeating and rehearsing and
rehearsing."

"Yes," said James. "So this device does the repetition for you.
Electromechanically."

"But how?"

James smiled wistfully. "I can give you only a thumbnail sketch," he
said, "until I have had time to study the subjects that lead up to the
final theory."

"Goodness," exclaimed Mrs. Bagley, "all I want is a brief idea. I
wouldn't understand the principles at all."

"Well, then, my mother, as a cerebral surgeon, knew the anatomy of the
human brain. My father, as an instrument-maker, designed and built
encephalographs. Together, they discovered that if the great waves of the
brain were filtered down and the extremely minute waves that ride on top
of them were amplified, the pattern of these superfine waves went through
convolutions peculiar to certain thoughts. Continued research refined
their discovery.

"Now, the general theory is that the cells of the brain act sort of like
a binary digital computer, with certain banks of cells operating to store
sufficient bits of information to furnish a complete memory. In the
process of memorization, individual cells become activated and linked by
the constant repetition.

"Second, the brain within the skull is a prisoner, connected to the
'outside' by the five standard sensory channels of sight, sound, touch,
taste, and smell. Stimulate a channel, and the result is a certain
wave-shape of electrical impulse that enters the brain and--sort of like
the key to a Yale lock--fits only one combination of cells. Or if no
previous memory is there, it starts its own new collection of cells to
linking and combining. When we repeat and repeat, we are deepening the
groove, so to speak.

"Finally comes the Holden Machine. The helmet makes contact with the
skull in those spots where the probes of the encephalograph are placed.
When the brain is stimulated into thought, the brain waves are monitored
and recorded, amplified, and then fed back to the same brain-spots. Not
once, but multifold, like the vibration of a reed or violin string. The
circuit that accepts signals, amplifies them, returns them to the same
set of terminals, and causes them to be repeated several hundred times
per millisecond without actually ringing or oscillating is the real
research secret of the machine. My father's secret and now mine."

"And how do we use it?"

"You want to memorize a list of ingredients," said James. "So you will
put this helmet on your head with the cookbook in your hands. You will
turn on the machine when you have read the part you want to memorize just
to be sure of your material. Then, with the machine running, you
carefully read aloud the passage from your book. The vibrating amplifier
in the machine monitors and records each electrical impulse, then
furnishes it back to your brain as a successive series of repetitious
vibrations, each identical in shape and magnitude, just as if you had
actually read and re-read that list of stuff time and again."

"And then I'll know it cold?"

James shook his head. "Then you'll be about as confused as you've ever
been. For several hours, none of it will make sense. You'll be thinking
things like a 'cup of salt and a pinch of water,' or maybe, 'sugar three
of mustard and two spoonthree teas.' And then in a few hours all of this
mish-mash will settle itself down into the proper serial arrangement; it
will fit the rest of your brain-memory-pattern comfortably."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It has something to do with the same effect one gets out
of studying. On Tuesday one can read a page of textbook and not grasp a
word of it. Successive readings help only a little. Then in about a week
it all becomes quite clear, just as if the brain had sorted it and filed
it logically among the other bits of information. Well, what about that
cookbook?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Bagley, with the air of someone agreeing to have a tooth
pulled when it hasn't really started to hurt, "I'll get it."

       *       *       *       *       *

James Holden allowed himself a few pleasant daydreams. The most
satisfactory of all was one of himself pleading his own case before the
black-robed Justices of the Supreme Court, demolishing his detractors
with a flow of his brilliance and convincing them beyond any doubt that
he did indeed have the right to walk alone. That there be no question of
his intellect, James proposed to use his machine to educate himself to
completion. He would be the supreme student of the arts and the sciences,
of law, language, and literature. He would know history and the
humanities, and the dreams and aims of the great philosophers and
statesmen, and he would even be able to quote in their own terms the
drives of the great dictators and some of the evil men so that he could
draw and compare to show that he knew the difference between good and
bad.

But James Holden had no intention of sharing this limelight.

His superb brilliance was to be compared to the average man's, not to
another one like him. He had the head start. He intended to keep it until
he had succeeded in compelling the whole world to accept him with the
full status of a free adult.

Then, under his guidance, he would permit the world-wide use of his
machine.

His loneliness had forced him to revise that dream by the addition of
Martha Bagley; he needed a companion, contemporary, and foil. His mental
playlet no longer closed with James Holden standing alone before the
Bench. Now it ended with Martha saying proudly, "James, I knew you could
do it."

Martha Bagley's brilliance would not conflict with his. He could
stay ahead of her forever. But he had no intention of allowing some
experienced adult to partake of this program of enforced education. He
was, therefore, going to find himself some manner or means of preventing
Mrs. Bagley from running the gamut of all available information.

James Holden evaluated all people in his own terms, he believed that
everybody was just as eager for knowledge as he was.

So he was surprised to find that Mrs. Bagley's desire for extended
education only included such information as would make her own immediate
personal problems easier. Mrs. Bagley was the first one of the mass of
people James was destined to meet who not only did not know how or why
things worked, but further had no intention whatsoever of finding out.

Instead of trying to monopolize James Holden's machine, Mrs. Bagley was
satisfied to learn a number of her pet recipes. After a day of thought
she added her social security number, blood type, some birthdays, dates,
a few telephone numbers and her multiplication tables. She announced that
she was satisfied. It solved James Holden's problem--and stunned him
completely.

But James had very little time to worry about Mrs. Bagley's attitude. He
found his hands full with Martha.

Martha played fey. Her actions and attitude baffled James, and even
confused her mother. There was no way of really determining whether the
girl was scared to death of the machine itself, or whether she simply
decided to be difficult. And she uttered the proper replies with all of
the promptness--and intelligence--of a ventriloquist's dummy:

"You don't want to be ignorant, do you?"

"No."

"You want to be smart, like James, don't you?"

"Yes."

"You know the machine won't hurt, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then let's try it just once, please?"

"No."

Back to the beginning again. Martha would agree to absolutely anything
except the educator.

Leaving the argument to Mrs. Bagley, James sat down angrily with a book.
He was so completely frustrated that he couldn't read, but he sat there
leafing the pages slowly and making a determined show of not lifting his
head.

Mrs. Bagley went on for another hour before she reached the end of her
own patience. She stood up almost rigid with anger. James never knew how
close Mrs. Bagley was to making use of a hairbrush on her daughter's
bottom. But Mrs. Bagley also realized that Martha had to go into this
process willing to cooperate. So, instead of physical punishment, she
issued a dictum:

"You'll go to your room and stay there until you're willing!"

And at that point Martha ceased being stubborn and began playing games.

She permitted herself to be led to the chair, and then went through a
routine of skittishness, turning her head and squirming incessantly,
which made it impossible for James to place the headset properly. This
went on until he stalked away and sat down again. Immediately Martha sat
like a statue. But as soon as James reached for the little screws that
adjusted the electrodes, Martha started to giggle and squirm. He stalked
away and sat through another session between Martha and her mother.

Late in the afternoon James succeeded in getting her to the machine;
Martha uttered a sentence without punctuating it with little giggles, but
it came as elided babytalk.

"Again," he commanded.

"I don't wan' to."

"Again!" he snapped.

Martha began to cry.

That, to James, was the end. But Mrs. Bagley stepped forward with a
commanding wave for James to vacate the premises and took over. James
could not analyze her expression, but it did look as if it held relief.
He left the room to them; a half hour later Mrs. Bagley called him back.

"She's had it," said Mrs. Bagley. "Now you can start, I think."

James looked dubious; but said, "Read this."

"Martha?"

Martha took a deep breath and said, nicely, "'A' is the first
letter of the English Alphabet."

"Good." He pressed the button. "Again? Please?"

Martha recited it nicely.

"Fine," he said. "Now we'll look up 'Is' and go on from there."

"My goodness," said Mrs. Bagley, "this is going to take months."

"Not at all," said James. "It just goes slowly at the start. Most of the
definitions use the same words over and over again. Martha really knows
most of these simple words, we've just got to be dead certain that her
own definition of them agrees wholly and completely with ours. After a
couple of hours of this minute detail, we'll be skipping over everything
but new words. After all, she only has to work them over once, and as we
find them, we'll mark them out of the book. Ready, Martha?"

"Can't read it."

James took the little dictionary. "Um," he said. "Hadn't occurred to me."

"What?" asked Mrs. Bagley.

"This thing says, Three-rd pers period sing periodic indic period of Be,'
the last in heavy bold type. Can't have Martha talking in abbreviations,"
he chuckled. He went to the typewriter and wrote it out fully. "Now read
that," he directed.

She did and again the process went through without a hitch. Slowly, but
surely, they progressed for almost two hours before Martha rebelled.
James stopped, satisfied with the beginning.

But as time wore on into the late autumn, Martha slowly--oh, so
slowly!--began to realize that there was importance to getting things
right. She continued to tease. But she did her teasing before James
closed the "Run" button.




CHAPTER TEN


Once James progressed Martha through the little dictionary, he began with
a book of grammar. Again it started slowly; he had to spend quite a bit
of time explaining to Martha that she did indeed know all of the terms
used in the book of grammar because they'd all been defined by the
dictionary, now she was going to learn how the terms and their
definitions were used.

James was on more familiar ground now. James, like Martha, had learned
his first halting sentence structure by mimicking his parents, but he
remembered the process of learning why and how sentences are constructed
according to the rules, and how the rules are used rather than intuition
in forming sentences.

Grammar was a topic that could not be taken in snippets and bits. Whole
paragraphs had to be read until Martha could read them without a halt or
a mispronunciation, and then committed to memory with the "Run" button
held down. At the best it was a boring process, even though it took only
minutes instead of days. It was not conflicting, but it was confusing.
It installed permanently certain solid blocks of information that were
isolated; they stood alone until later blocks came in to connect them
into a whole area.

Each session was numbing. Martha could take no more than a couple of
hours, after which her reading became foggy. She wanted a nap after each
session and even after the nap she went around in a bemused state of
mental dizziness.

Life settled down once more in the House on Martin's Hill. James worked
with the machine himself and laid out lessons to guide Martha. Then,
finished for the day with education, James took to his typewriter while
Martha had her nap. It filled the days of the boy and girl completely.

This made an unexpected and pleasant change in Mrs. Bagley's routine. It
had been a job to keep Martha occupied. Now that Martha was busy, Mrs.
Bagley found time on her own hands; without interruption, her housework
routine was completed quite early in the afternoon.

Mrs. Bagley had never made any great point of getting dressed for dinner.
She accumulated a collection of house-frocks; printed cotton washables
differing somewhat in color and cut but functionally identical. She wore
them serially as they came from the row of hangers in her closet.

Now she began to acquire some dressier things, wearing them even during
her shopping trips.

James paid little attention to this change in his housekeeper's routine,
but he approved. Mrs. Bagley was also taking more pains with the 'do' of
her hair, but the boy's notice was not detailed enough to take a
part-by-section inventory of the whole. In fact, James gave the whole
matter very little thought until Mrs. Bagley made a second change after
her return from town, appearing for dinner in what James could only
classify as a party dress.

She asked, "James, do you mind if I go out this evening?"

James, startled, shrugged and said, "No, I guess not."

"You'll keep an ear out for Martha?"

The need for watching a sleeping girl of seven and a half did not
penetrate. "What's up?" he asked.

"It's been months since I saw a movie."

James shrugged again, puzzled. "You saw the 'Bride of Frankenstein' last
night on TV," he pointed out.

"I first saw that old horror when I was about your age," she told him
with a trace of disdain.

"I liked it."

"So did I at eight and a half. But tonight I'm going to see a _new_
picture."

"Okay," said James, wondering why anybody in their right mind would go
out on a chilly night late in November just to see a moving picture when
they could stay at home and watch one in comfort. "Have a good time."

He expected Mrs. Bagley to take off in her car, but she did not. She
waited until a brief _toot_! came from the road. Then, with a swirl of
motion, she left.

It took James Holden's limited experience some little time to identify
the event with some similar scenes from books he'd read; even with him,
reading about it was one world and seeing it happen was another thing
entirely.

For James Holden it opened a new area for contemplation. He would have to
know something about this matter if he hoped to achieve his dreamed-of
status as an adult.

       *       *       *       *       *

Information about the relation between man and woman had not been
included in the course of education devised by his father and mother.
Therefore his physical age and his information on the delicate subject
were approximately parallel.

His personal evaluation of the subject was uncomplicated. At some age not
much greater than his own, boys and girls conglomerated in a mass that
milled around in a constant state of flux and motion, like individual
atoms of gas compressed in a container. Meetings and encounters took
place both singly and in groups until nearly everybody had been in touch
with almost everybody else. Slowly the amorphous mass changed. Groups
became attracted by mutual interests. Changes and exchanges took place,
and then a pair-formation began to take place. The pair-formation went
through its interchanges both with and without friction as the
settling-down process proceeded. At times predictable by comparing it
to the statistics of radioactivity, the pair-production resulted in
permanent combination, which effectively removed this couple from free
circulation.

James Holden had no grasp or feeling for the great catalyst that causes
this pair-production; he saw it only for its sheer mechanics. To him, the
sensible way to go about this matter was to get there early and move
fast, because one stands to make a better choice when there is a greater
number of unattached specimens from which to choose. Those left over are
likely to have flaws.

And so he pondered, long after Martha had gone to bed.

He was still up and waiting when he heard the car stop at the gate.
He watched them come up the walk arm in arm, their stride slow and
lingering. They paused for several moments on the doorstep, once there
was a short, muted laugh. The snick of the key came next and they came
into the hallway.

"No, please don't come in," said Mrs. Bagley.

"But--" replied the man.

"But me no buts. It's late, Tim."

Tim? Tim? That would probably be Timothy Fisher. He ran the local garage
where Mrs. Bagley bought her car. James went on listening shamelessly.

"Late? Phooey. When is eleven-thirty late?"

"When it's right now," she replied with a light laugh. "Now, Tim. It's
been very--"

There came a long silence.

Her voice was throaty when the silence broke. "Now, will you go?"

"Of course," he said.

"Not that way, silly," she said. "The door's behind you."

"Isn't the door I want," he chuckled.

"We're making enough noise to wake the dead," she complained.

"Then let's stop talking," he told her.

There was another long silence.

"Now please go."

"Can I come back tomorrow night?"

"Not tomorrow."

"Friday?"

"Saturday."

"It's a date, then."

"All right. Now get along with you."

"You're cruel and heartless, Janet," he complained. "Sending a man out in
that cold and storm."

"It isn't storming, and you've a fine heater in that car of yours."

"I'd rather have you."

"Do you tell that to all the girls?"

"Sure. Even Maggie the Washerwoman is better than an old car heater."

Mrs. Bagley chuckled throatily. "How is Maggie?"

"She's fine."

"I mean as a date."

"Better than the car heater."

"Tim, you're a fool."

"When I was a kid," said Tim reflectively, "there used to be a female
siren in the movies. Her pet line used to be 'Kiss me, my fool!' Theda
Bara, I think. Before talkies. Now--"

"No, Tim--"

Another long silence.

"Now, Tim, you've simply _got_ to go!"

"Yeah, I know. You've convinced me."

"Then why aren't you going?"

He chuckled. "Look, you've convinced me. I can't stay so I'll go,
obviously. But now that we've covered this problem, let's drop the
subject for a while, huh?"

"Don't spoil a fine evening, Tim."

"Janet, what's with you, anyway?"

"What do you mean, 'what's with me?'"

"Just this. Somewhere up in the house is this oddball Maxwell who hides
out all the time. He's either asleep or busy. Anyway, he isn't here. Do
you have to report in, punch a time clock, tuck him in--or do you turn
into a pumpkin at the stroke of twelve?"

"Mr. Maxwell is paying me wages to keep house for him. That's all. Part
of my wages is my keep. But it doesn't entitle me to have full run of the
house or to bring guests in at midnight for a two-hour good-night
session."

"I'd like to tell this bird a thing or two," said Tim Fisher sharply. "He
can't keep you cooped up like--like--"

"Nobody is keeping me cooped up," she said. "Like what?"

"What?"

"You said 'like--'"

"Skip it. What I meant is that you can't moulder, Janet. You've got to
get out and meet people."

"I've been out and I've met people. I've met you."

"All to the good."

"Fine. So you invited me out, and I went. It was fun. I liked it. You've
asked me, and I've said that I'd like to do it again on Saturday. I've
enjoyed being kissed, and I'll probably enjoy it again on Saturday. So--"

"I'd think you'd enjoy a lot of it."

"Because my husband has been gone for five years?"

"Oh, now Janet--"

"That's what you meant, isn't it?"

"No. You've got me wrong."

"Tim, stop it. You're spoiling a fine evening. You should have gone
before it started to spoil. Now please put your smile on again and leave
cheerfully. There's always Saturday--if you still want it."

"I'll call you," he said.

The door opened once more and then closed. James took a deep breath, and
then stole away quietly to his own room.

By some instinct he knew that this was no time to intercept Mrs. Bagley
with a lot of fool questions.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the surprise and puzzlement of young James Quincy Holden, Mr. Timothy
Fisher telephoned early upon the following evening. He was greeted quite
cordially by Mrs. Bagley. Their conversation was rambling and inane,
especially when heard from one end only, and it took them almost ten
minutes to confirm their Saturday night date. That came as another shock.

Well, not quite. The explanation bothered him even more than the fact
itself. As a further extension of his little mechanical mating process,
James had to find a place for the like of Jake Caslow and the women Jake
knew. None of them were classed in the desirable group, all of them were
among the leftovers. But of course, since none of them were good enough
for the 'good' people, they were good enough for one another, and that
made it all right--for them.

But Mrs. Bagley was not of their ilk. It was not right that she should be
forced to take a leftover.

And then it occurred to him that perhaps Mrs. Bagley was not really
taking the leftover, Tim Fisher, but instead was using Tim Fisher's
company as a means toward meeting a larger group, from which there might
be a better specimen. So he bided his time, thinking deeply around the
subject, about which he knew nothing whatsoever.

Saturday night was a repeat of Wednesday. They stayed out later, and upon
their return they took possession of the living room for at least an hour
before they started their routine about the going-home process. With
minor variations in the dialog, and with longer and more frequent
silences, it almost followed the Wednesday night script. The variation
puzzled James even more. This session went according to program for a
while until Tim Fisher admitted with regret that it was, indeed, time for
him to depart. At which juncture Mrs. Bagley did not leap to her feet to
accept his offer to do that which she had been asking him to do for a
half hour. Mrs. Bagley compounded the affair by sighing deeply and
agreeing with him that it was a shame that it was so late and that she,
too, wished that he could stay a little longer. This, of course, put them
precisely where they were a half hour earlier and they had to start the
silly business all over again.

They parted after a final fifteen-minute discussion at the front door.
This discussion covered Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and finally came to
agreement on Wednesday.

And so James Holden went to bed that night fully convinced that in a town
of approximately two thousand people--he did not count the two or three
hundred A.E.C.-College group as part of the problem--there were entirely
too few attractive leftovers from which Mrs. Bagley could choose.

But as this association grew, it puzzled him even more. For in his
understanding, any person forced to accept a second-rate choice does so
with an air of resignation, but not with a cheerful smile, a sparkle in
the eyes, and two hours of primping.

James sought the answer in his books but they were the wrong volumes for
reference of this subject. He considered the local Public Library only
long enough to remember that it carried a few hundred books suitable for
the A.E.C.-College crew and a thousand or so of second-hand culls donated
by local citizens during cleanup campaigns. He resorted to buying books
by mail through advertisements in newspapers and magazines and received a
number of volumes of medical treatises, psychological texts, and a book
on obstetrics that convinced him that baby-having was both rare and
hazardous. He read _By Love Possessed_ but he did not recognize the many
forms of love portrayed by the author because the volume was not
annotated with signs or provided with a road map, and he did not know
it when he read about it.

He went through the Kinsey books and absorbed a lot of data and graphs
and figures on human behavior that meant nothing to him. James was not
even interested in the incidence of homosexuality among college students
as compared to religious groups, or in the comparison between premarital
experience and level of education. He knew the words and what the words
meant as defined in other words. But they were only words and did not
touch him where he lived.

So, because none of the texts bothered to explain why a woman says Yes,
when she means No, nor why a woman will cling to a man's lapels and press
herself against him and at the same time tell him he has to go home,
James remained ignorant. He could have learned more from Lord Byron,
Shelley, Keats, or Browning than from Kinsey, deLee, or the "Instructive
book on Sex, forwarded under plain wrapper for $2.69 postpaid."

Luckily for James, he did not study any of his material via the medium of
his father's machine or it would have made him sick. For he was not yet
capable of understanding the single subject upon which more words have
been expended in saying less than any other subject since the dawn of
history.

His approach was academic, he could have been reading the definitive
material on the life-cycle of the beetle insofar as any stir of his own
blood was concerned.

From his study he did identify a couple of items. Tim Fisher obviously
desired extramarital relations with Mrs. Bagley--or was it premarital
relations? Probably both. Logic said that Mrs. Bagley, having already
been married to Martha's father, could hardly enter into _pre_marital
relations, although Tim could, since he was a bachelor. But they wouldn't
be _pre_marital with Tim unless he followed through and married Mrs.
Bagley. And so they must be _extra_marital. But whatever they were
called, the Book said that there was about as much on one side as on the
other.

With a mind mildly aware of the facts of life, distorted through the eyes
of near-nine James Holden, he watched them and listened in.

As for Mrs. Bagley, she did not know that she was providing part of James
Holden's extraliterary education. She enjoyed the company of Tim Fisher.
Hesitantly, she asked James if she could have Tim for dinner one evening,
and was a bit surprised at his immediate assent. They planned the
evening, cleaned the lower part of the house of every trace of its
current occupancy, and James and Martha hied themselves upstairs. Dinner
went with candlelight and charcoal-broiled steak--and a tray taken aloft
for "Mr. Maxwell" was consumed by James and Martha. The evening went
smoothly. They listened to music and danced, they sat and talked. And
James listened.

Tim was not the same man. He sat calm and comfortably on the low sofa
with Mrs. Bagley's head on his shoulder, both of them pleasantly bemused
by the dancing fireplace and with each other's company. He said, "Well,
I'm glad this finally happened."

"What happened?" she replied in a murmur.

"Getting the invite for dinner."

"Might have been sooner, I suppose. Sorry."

"What took you so long?"

"Just being cautious, I guess."

He chuckled. "Cautious?"

"Uh-huh."

Tim laughed.

"What's so darned funny?"

"Women."

"Are we such a bunch of clowns?"

"Not clowns, Janet. Just funny."

"All right, genius. Explain that."

"A woman is a lovely creature who sends a man away so that he can't do
what she wants him to do most of all."

"Uh-huh."

"She feeds him full of rare steak until he wants to crawl off in a corner
like the family mutt and go to sleep. Once she gets him in a somnolent
state, she drapes herself tastefully on his shoulder and gets soft and
warm and willing."

Mrs. Bagley laughed throatily. "Just start getting active," she warned,
"and you'll see how fast I can beat a hasty retreat."

"Janet, what _is_ with you?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you hiding?"

"Hiding?"

"Yes, confound it, hiding!" he said, his voice turning hard. "Just who is
this Charles Maxwell character, anyway?"

"Tim, please--"

His voice lowered again. "Janet," he said softly, "you're asking me to
trust you, and at the same time you're not trusting me."

"But I've nothing to hide."

"Oh, stop it. I'm no schoolboy, Janet. If you have nothing to hide, why
are you acting as if you were sitting on the lid?"

"I still don't know what you're talking about."

"Your words say so, but your tone is the icy haughtiness that dares me,
mere male that I am, to call your lie. I've a half-notion to stomp
upstairs and confront your mysterious Maxwell--if he indeed exists."

"You mustn't. He'd--"

"He'd what? I've been in this house for hours day and night and now all
evening. I've never heard a sound, not the creak of a floorboard, the
slam of a door, the opening of a window, nor the distant gurgle of cool,
clear water, gushing into plumbing. So you've been married. This I know.
You have a daughter. This I accept. Your husband is dead. This happens to
people every day; nice people, bad people, bright people, dull people.
There was a young boy here last summer. Him I do not know, but you and
your daughter I do know about. I've checked--"

"How dare you check--?"

"I damn well dare check anything and anybody I happen to be personally
interested in," he stormed. "As a potential bed partner I wouldn't give a
hoot who you were or what you were. But before I go to the point of
dividing the rest of my life on an exclusive contract, I have the right
to know what I'm splitting it with."

"You have no right--"

"Balderdash! I have as much right as anybody to look at the record. I
grant you the same right to look up my family and my friends and the
status of my bank account and my credit rating and my service record.
Grant it? Hell, I couldn't stop you. Now, what's going on? Where is your
daughter and where is that little boy? And where--if he exists--is this
Charles Maxwell?"

       *       *       *       *       *

James had heard enough. No matter which way this was going, it would end
up wrong. He was proud of Mrs. Bagley's loyalty, but he knew that it was
an increasing strain and could very well lead to complications that could
not be explained away without the whole truth. He decided that the only
thing to do was to put in his own oar and relieve Mrs. Bagley.

He walked in, yawning. He stood between them, facing Tim Fisher. Behind
him, Mrs. Bagley cried, "Now see--you've awakened him!"

In a dry-throated voice, Tim said, "I thought he was away at school. Now,
what's the story?"

"It isn't her story to tell," said James. "It's mine."

"Now see here--"

"Mr. Fisher, you can't learn anything by talking incessantly."

Tim Fisher took a step forward, his face dark, his intention to shake the
truth out of somebody. James held up a hand. "Sit down a moment and
listen," he ordered.

The sight of James and the words that this child was uttering stopped Tim
Fisher. Puzzled, he nodded dumbly, found a chair, and sat on the front
edge of it, poised.

"The whereabouts of Mr. Maxwell is his own business and none of yours.
Your criticism is unfounded and your suspicions unworthy. But since you
take the attitude that this is some of your business, we don't mind
telling you that Mr. Maxwell is in New York on business."

Tim Fisher eyed the youngster. "I thought you were away at school," he
repeated.

"I heard you the first time," said James. "Obviously, I am not. Why I am
not is Mr. Maxwell's business, not yours. And by insisting that something
is wrong here and demanding the truth, you have placed Mrs. Bagley in the
awkward position of having to make a decision that divides her loyalties.
She has had the complete trust of Mr. Maxwell for almost a year and a
half. Now, tell me, Mr. Fisher, to whom shall she remain loyal?"

"That isn't the point--"

"Yes, it is the point, Mr. Fisher. It is exactly the point. You're asking
Mrs. Bagley to tell you the details of her employer's business, which is
unethical."

"How much have you heard?" demanded Fisher crossly.

"Enough, at least to know what you've been hammering at."

"Then you know that I've as much as said that there was some suspicion
attached."

"Suspicion of what?"

"Well, why aren't you in school?"

"That's Mr. Maxwell's business."

"Let me tell you, youngster, it is more than your Mr. Maxwell's business.
There are laws about education and he's breaking them."

James said patiently: "The law states that every child shall receive an
adequate education. The precise wording I do not know, but it does
provide for schooling outside of the state school system if the parent or
guardian so prefers, and providing that such extraschool education is
deemed adequate by the state. Can you say that I am not properly
educated, Mr. Fisher?"

"Well, you'd hardly expect me to be an expert on the subject."

"Then I'd hardly expect you to pass judgment, either," said James
pointedly.

"You're pretty--" Tim Fisher caught his tongue at the right moment. He
felt his neck getting hot. It is hard enough to be told that you are
off-base and that your behavior has been bad when an adult says the
damning words. To hear the same words from a ten-year-old is unbearable.
Right or wrong, the adult's position is to turn aside or shut the child
up either by pulling rank or cuffing the young offender with an open
hand. To have this upstart defend Mrs. Bagley, in whose presence he could
hardly lash back, put Mr. Fisher in a very unhappy state of mind. He
swallowed and then asked, lamely, "Why does he have to be so furtive?"

"What is your definition of 'furtive'?" asked James calmly. "Do you
employ the same term to describe the operations of that combination
College-A.E.C. installation on the other side of town?"

"That's secret--"

"Implying that atomic energy is secretly above-board, legal, and
honorable, whereas Mr. Maxwell's--"

"But we know about atomic energy."

"Sure we do," jeered James, and the sound of his immature near-treble
voice made the jeer very close to an insult. "We know _all_ about atomic
energy. Was the Manhattan Project called 'furtive' until Hiroshima gave
the story away?"

"You're trying to put words in my mouth," objected Tim.

"No, I'm not. I'm merely trying to make you understand something
important to everybody. You come in here and claim by the right of
personal interest that we should be most willing to tell you our
business. Then in the next breath you defend the installation over on the
other side of town for their attitude in giving the bum's rush to people
who try to ask questions about their business. Go read your Constitution,
Mr. Fisher. It says there that I have as much right to defend my home
against intruders as the A.E.C. has to defend their home against spies."

"But I'm not intruding."

James nodded his head gently. "Not," he said, "until you make the grave
error of equating personal privacy with culpable guilt."

"I didn't mean that."

"You should learn to say what you mean," said James, "instead of trying
to pry information out of someone who happens to be fond of you."

"Now see here," said Tim Fisher, "I happen to be fond of her too, you
know. Doesn't that give me some rights?"

"Would you expect to know all of her business if she were your wife?"

"Of course."

"Suppose she were working in the A.E.C.-College?"

"Well, that--er--"

"Would be different?"

"Well, now--"

"I talked this right around in its circle for a purpose," said James.
"Stop and think for a moment. Let's discuss me. Mr. Fisher, where would
you place me in school?"

"Er--how old are you?"

"Nine," said James. "In April."

"Well, I'm not sure--"

"Exactly. Do you suppose that I could sit in a classroom among my
nine-year-old contemporaries very long without being found out?"

"Er--no--I suppose not."

"Mr. Fisher, how long do you think I could remain a secret if I attended
high school, sitting at a specially installed desk in a class among
teenagers twice my size?"

"Not very long."

"Then remember that some secrets are so big that you have to have armed
guards to keep them secret, and others are so easy to conceal that all
you need is a rambling old house and a plausible façade."

"Why have you told me all this?"

"Because you have penetrated this far by your own effort, justified by
your own personal emotions, and driven by an urge that is all-powerful if
I am to believe the books I've read on the subject. You are told this
much of the truth so that you won't go off half-cocked with a fine
collection of rather dangerous untruths. Understand?"

"I'm beginning to."

"Well, whether Mrs. Bagley accepts your offer of marriage or not,
remember one thing: If she were working for the A.E.C. you'd be proud of
her, and you'd also be quite careful not to ask questions that would
cause her embarrassment."

Tim Fisher looked at Mrs. Bagley. "Well?" he asked.

Mrs. Bagley looked bleak. "Please don't ask me until I've had a chance to
discuss all of the angles with Mr. Maxwell, Tim."

"Maxwell, again."

"Tim," she said in a quiet voice, "remember--he's an employer, not an
emotional involvement."

James Holden looked at Tim Fisher. "And if you'll promise to keep this
thing as close a secret as you would some information about atomic
energy, I'll go to bed and let you settle your personal problems in
private. Good night!"

He left, reasonably satisfied that Tim Fisher would probably keep their
secret for a time, at least. The hinted suggestion that this was as
important a government project as the Atomic Energy Commission's works
would prevent casual talk. There was also the slim likelihood that Tim
Fisher might enjoy the position of being on the inside of a big secret,
although this sort of inner superiority lacks true satisfaction. There
was a more solid chance that Tim Fisher, being the ambitious man that he
was, would keep their secret in the hope of acquiring for himself some
of the superior knowledge and the advanced ability that went with it.

But James was certain that the program that had worked so well with Mrs.
Bagley would fail with Tim Fisher. James had nothing material to offer
Tim. Tim was the kind of man who would insist upon his wife being a
full-time wife, physically, emotionally, and intellectually.

And James suddenly realized that Tim Fisher's own ambition and character
would insist that Mrs. Bagley, with Martha, leave James Holden to take up
residence in a home furnished by Tim Fisher upon the date and at time she
became Mrs. Timothy Fisher.

He was still thinking about the complications this would cause when he
heard Tim leave. His clock said three-thirty.

       *       *       *       *       *

James Holden's mechanical educator was a wonderful machine, but there
were some aspects of knowledge that it was not equipped to impart. The
glandular comprehension of love was one such; there were others. In all
of his hours under the machine James had not learned how personalities
change and grow.

And yet there was a textbook case right before his eyes.

In a few months, Janet Bagley had changed from a frightened and
belligerent mother-animal to a cheerful young prospective wife. The
importance of the change lay in the fact that it was not polar, nothing
reversed; it was only that the emphasis passed gradually from the
protection of the young to the development of Janet Bagley herself.

James could not very well understand, though he tried, but he couldn't
miss seeing it happen. It was worrisome. It threatened complications.

There was quite a change that came with Tim Fisher's elevation in status
from steady date to affianced husband, heightened by Tim Fisher's partial
understanding of the situation at Martin's Hill.

Then, having assumed the right to drop in as he pleased, he went on to
assume more "rights" as Mrs. Bagley's fiancé. He brought in his friends
from time to time. Not without warning, of course, for he understood the
need for secrecy. When he brought friends it was after warning, and very
frequently after he had helped them to remove the traces of juvenile
occupancy from the lower part of the house.

In one way, this took some of the pressure off. The opening of the
"hermit's" house to the friends of the "hermit's" housekeeper's fiancé
and friends was a pleasant evidence of good will; people stopped
wondering, a little.

On the other hand, James did not wholly approve. He contrasted this with
what he remembered of his own home life. The guests who came to visit his
mother and father were quiet and earnest. They indulged in animated
discussions, argued points of deep reasoning, and in moments of
relaxation they indulged in games that demanded skill and intellect.

Tim Fisher's friends were noisy and boisterous. They mixed highballs.
They danced to music played so loud that it made the house throb. They
watched the fights on television and argued with more volume than logic.

They were, to young James, a far cry from his parents' friends.

But, as he couldn't do anything about it, he refused to worry about it.
James Holden turned his thoughts forward and began to plan how he was
going to face the culmination of this romance next September Fifteenth.
He even suspected that there would probably be a number of knotty little
problems that he now knew nothing about; he resolved to allow some
thinking-time to cope with them when, as, and if.

In the meantime, the summer was coming closer.

He prepared to make a visible show of having Mr. Charles Maxwell leave
for a protracted summer travel. This would ease the growing problem of
providing solid evidence of Maxwell's presence during the increasing
frequency of Tim Fisher's visits and the widening circle of Mrs. Bagley's
acquaintances in Shipmont. At the same time he and Martha would make a
return from the Bolton School for Youth. This would allow them their
freedom for the summer; for the first time James looked forward to it.
Martha Bagley was progressing rapidly. This summer would see her over and
done with the scatter-brain prattle that gave equal weight to fact or
fancy. Her store of information was growing; she could be relied upon to
maintain a fairly secure cover. Her logic was not to James Holden's
complete satisfaction but she accepted most of his direction as necessary
information to be acted upon now and reasoned later.

In the solving of his immediate problems, James can be forgiven for
putting Paul Brennan out of his mind.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


But Paul Brennan was still alive, and he had not forgotten.

While James was, with astonishing success, building a life for himself in
hiding, Brennan did everything he could to find him. That is to say, he
did everything that--under the circumstances--he could afford to do.

The thing was, the boy had got clean away, without a trace.

When James escaped for the third, and very successful, time, Brennan was
helpless. James had planned well. He had learned from his first two
efforts. The first escape was a blind run toward a predictable objective;
all right, that was a danger to be avoided. His second was entirely
successful--until James created his own area of danger. Another lesson
learned.

The third was planned with as much care as Napoleon's deliverance from
the island.

James had started by choosing his time. He'd waited until Easter Week.
He'd had a solid ten days during which he would be only one of countless
thousands of children on the streets; there would be no slight suspicion
because he was out when others were in.

       *       *       *       *       *

James didn't go to school that day. That was common; children in the
lower grades are often absent, and no one asks a question until they
return, with the proper note from the parent. He was not missed anywhere
until the school bus that should have dropped him off did not. This was
an area of weakness that Brennan could not plug; he could hardly justify
the effort of delivering and fetching the lad to and from school when the
public school bus passed the Holden home. Brennan relied upon the
Mitchells to see James upon the bus and to check him off when he
returned. Whether James would have been missed earlier even with a
personal delivery is problematical; certainly James would have had to
concoct some other scheme to gain him his hours of free time.

At any rate, the first call to the school connected the Mitchells with a
grumpy-voiced janitor who growled that teachers and principals had headed
for their hills of freedom and wouldn't be back until Monday Week. It
took some calling to locate a couple of James Holden's classmates who
asserted that he hadn't been in school that day.

Paul Brennan knew at once what had happened, but he could not raise an
immediate hue-and-cry. He fretted because of the Easter Week vacation; in
any other time the sight of a school-aged boy free during school hours
would have caused suspicion. During Easter Week vacation, every schoolboy
would be free. James would also be protected by his size. A youngster
walking alone is not suspect; his folks _must_ be close by. The fact that
it was "again" placed Paul Brennan in an undesirable position. This was
not the youthful adventure that usually ends about three blocks from
home. This was a repeat of the first absence during which James had been
missing for months. People smile at the parents of the child who packs
his little bag with a handkerchief and a candy bar to sally forth into
the great big world, but it becomes another matter when the lad of six
leaves home with every appearance of making it stick. So Brennan had to
play it cozy, inviting newspaper reporters to the Holden home to display
what he had to offer young James and giving them free rein to question
Brennan's housekeeper and general factotum, the Mitchells. With
honest-looking zeal, Paul Brennan succeeded in building up a picture that
depicted James as ungrateful, hard to understand, wilful, and something
of an intellectual brat.

Then the authorities proceeded to throw out a fine-mesh dragnet. They
questioned and cross-questioned bus drivers and railroad men. They made
contact with the local airport even though its facilities were only used
for a daisy-cutting feeder line. Posters were printed and sent to all
truck lines for display to the truck drivers. The roadside diners were
covered thoroughly. And knowing the boy's ability to talk convincingly,
the authorities even went so far as to try the awesome project of making
contact with passengers bound out-of-town with young male children in
tow.

Had James given them no previous experience to think about, he would have
been merely considered a missing child and not a deliberate runaway.
Then, instead of dragging down all of the known avenues of standard
escape, the townspeople would have organized a tree-by-tree search of the
fields and woods with hundreds of men walking hand in hand to inspect
every square foot of the ground for either tracks or the child himself.
But the _modus operandi_ of young James Holden had been to apply sly
touches such as writing letters and forging signatures of adults to
cause the unquestioned sale of railroad tickets, or the unauthorized ride
in the side-door Pullman.

Therefore, while the authorities were extending their circle of search
based upon the velocity of modern transportation, James Holden was making
his slow way across field and stream, guided by a Boy Scout compass and a
U.S. Geodetic Survey map to keep him well out of the reach of roadway or
town. With difficulty, but with dogged determination, he carried a light
cot-blanket into which he had rolled four cans of pork and beans. He had
a Boy Scout knife and a small pair of pliers to open it with. He had
matches. He had the Boy Scout Handbook which was doubly useful; the pages
devoted to woodsman's lore he kept for reference, the pages wasted on the
qualifications for merit badges he used to start fires. He enjoyed
sleeping in the open because it was spring and pleasantly warm, and
because the Boy Scout Manual said that camping out was fun.

A grown man with an objective can cover thirty or forty miles per day
without tiring. James made it ten to fifteen. Thus, by the time the
organized search petered out for lack of evidence and manpower--try
asking one question of everybody within a hundred-mile radius--James was
quietly making his way, free of care, like a hardy pioneer looking for a
homestead site.

The hint of kidnap went out early. The Federal Bureau of Investigation,
of course, could not move until the waiting period was ended, but they
did collect information and set up their organization ready to move
into high speed at the instant of legal time. But then no ransom letter
came; no evidence of the crime of kidnapping. This did not close the
case; there were other cases on record where a child was stolen by adults
for purposes other than ransom. It was not very likely that a child of
six would be stolen by a neurotic adult to replace a lost infant, and
Paul Brennan was personally convinced that James Holden had enough
self-reliance to make such a kidnap attempt fail rather early in the
game. He could hardly say so, nor could he suggest that James had indeed
run away deliberately and skilfully, and with planned steps worthy of a
much older person. He could only hint and urge the F.B.I. into any action
that he could coerce them into taking; he did not care how or who brought
James back just so long as the child was returned to his custody.

Then as the days wore into weeks with no sign, the files were placed
in the inactive drawer. Paul Brennan made contact with a few private
agencies.

He was stopped here, again, by another angle. The Holdens were by no
means wealthy. Brennan could not justify the offer of some reward so
large that people simply could not turn down the slim chance of
collecting. If the missing one is heir to a couple of million dollars,
the trustees can justify a reward of a good many thousand dollars for his
return. The amount that Brennan was prepared to offer could not compel
the services of a private agency on a full-time basis. The best and the
most interested of the agencies took the case on a contingent basis; if
something turned their way in the due course of their work they'd
immediately take steps. Solving the case of a complete disappearance on
the part of a child who virtually vanished into thin air would be good
advertising, but their advertising budget would not allow them to put one
man on the case without the first shred of evidence to point the way.

If Paul Brennan had been above-board, he could have evoked a lot of
interest. The search for a six-year-old boy with the educational
development of a youth of about eighteen, informed through the services
of an electromechanical device, would have fired public interest,
Government intervention, and would also have justified Paul Brennan's
depth of interest. But Paul Brennan could say nothing about the excellent
training, he could only hint at James Holden's mental proficiency which
was backed up by the boy's school record. As it was, Paul Brennan's
most frightful nightmare was one where young James was spotted by some
eagle-eyed detective and then in desperation--anything being better than
an enforced return to Paul Brennan--James Holden pulled out all the stops
and showed everybody precisely how well educated he really was.

In his own affairs, Paul still had to make a living, which took up his
time. As guardian and trustee of the Holden Estate, he was responsible to
the State for his handling of James Holden's inheritance. The State takes
a sensible view of the disbursements of the inheritance of a minor.
Reasonable sums may be spent on items hardly deemed necessities to the
average person, but the ceiling called "reasonable" is a flexible term
and subject to close scrutiny by the State.

In the long run it was Paul Brennan's own indefensible position that made
it impossible to prosecute a proper search for the missing James Holden.
Brennan suspected James of building up a bank account under some false
name, but he could not saunter into banks and ask to examine their
records without a Court order. Brennan knew that James had not taken off
without preparation, but the examination of the stuff that James left
behind was not very informative. There was a small blanket missing and
Mrs. Mitchell said that it looked as though some cans had been removed
from the stock but she could not be sure. And in a large collection of
boy's stuff, one would not observe the absence of a Boy Scout knife and
other trivia. Had a 100% inventory been available, the list of missing
items would have pointed out James Holden's avenue of escape.

The search for an adult would have included questioning of banks. No one
knows whether such a questioning would have uncovered the bank-by-mail
routine conducted under the name of Charles Maxwell. It is not a regular
thing, but the receipt of a check drawn on a New York bank, issued by a
publishing company, and endorsed to be paid to the account of so-and-so,
accompanied by a request to open an account in that name might never be
connected with the manipulations of a six-year-old genius, who was
overtly just plain bright.

And so Paul Brennan worried himself out of several pounds for fear
that James would give himself away to the right people. He cursed the
necessity of keeping up his daily work routine. The hue-and-cry he could
not keep alive, but he knew that somewhere there was a young boy entirely
capable of reconstructing the whole machine that Paul Brennan wanted so
desperately that he had killed for it.

Paul Brennan was blocked cold. With the F.B.I. maintaining a hands-off
attitude because there was no trace of any Federal crime involved, the
case of James Holden was relegated to the missing-persons files. It
became the official opinion that the lad had suffered some mishap and
that it would only be a matter of time before his body was discovered.
Paul Brennan could hardly prove them wrong without explaining the whole
secret of James Holden's intelligence, competence, and the certainty that
the young man would improve upon both as soon as he succeeded in
rebuilding the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

With the F.B.I. out of the picture, the local authorities waiting for the
discovery of a small body, and the state authorities shelving the case
except for the routine punch-card checks, official action died. Brennan's
available reward money was not enough to buy a private agency's interest
full-time.

Brennan could not afford to tell anybody of his suspicion of James
Holden's source of income, for the idea of a child's making a living by
writing would be indefensible without full explanation. However, Paul
Brennan resorted to reading of magazines edited for boys. Month after
month he bought them and read them, comparing the styles of the many
writers against the style of the manuscript copy left behind by James.

Brennan naturally assumed that James would use a pen name. Writers often
used pen names to conceal their own identity for any one of several
reasons. A writer might use three or more pen names, each one identified
with a known style of writing, or a certain subject or established
character. But Paul Brennan did not know all there was to know about the
pen-name business, such as an editor assigning a pen name to prevent the
too-often appearance of some prolific writer, or conversely to make one
writer's name seem exclusive with his magazine; nor could Brennan know
that a writer's literary standing can be kept high by assigning a pen
name to any second-rate material he may be so unfortunate as to turn out.

Paul Brennan read many stories written by James Holden under several
names, including the name of Charles Maxwell, but Brennan's
identification according to literary style was no better than if he had
tossed a coin.

And so, blocked by his own guilt and avarice from making use of the legal
avenues of approach, Paul Brennan fumed and fretted away four long years
while James Holden grew from six to ten years old, hiding under the guise
of the Hermit of Martin's Hill and behind the pleasant adult façade of
Mrs. Janet Bagley.




CHAPTER TWELVE


If Paul Brennan found himself blocked in his efforts to find James Holden
and the re-created Holden Educator, James himself was annoyed by one
evident fact: Everything he did resulted in spreading the news of the
machine itself.

Had he been eighteen or so, he might have made out to his own taste. In
the days of late teen-age, a youth can hold a job and rent a room, buy
his own clothing and conduct himself to the limit of his ability. At ten
he is suspect, because no one will permit him to paddle his own canoe. At
a later age James could have rented a small apartment and built his
machine alone. But starting as young as he did, he was forced to hide
behind the cover of some adult, and he had picked Mrs. Bagley because he
could control her both through her desire for security and the promise of
a fine education for the daughter Martha Bagley.

The daughter was a two-way necessity; she provided him with a
contemporary companion and also gave him a lever to wield against the
adult. A lone woman could have made her way without trouble. A lone woman
with a girl-child is up against a rather horrifying problem of providing
both support and parental care. He felt that he had done what he had to
do, up to the point where Mrs. Bagley became involved with Tim Fisher or
anybody else. This part of adulthood was not yet within his grasp.

But there it was and here it is, and now there was Martha to complicate
the picture. Had Mrs. Bagley been alone, she and Tim could go off and
marry and then settle down in Timbuctoo if they wanted to. But not with
Martha. She was in the same intellectual kettle of sardines as James. Her
taste in education was by no means the same. She took to the mathematical
subjects indifferently, absorbing them well enough--once she could be
talked into spending the couple of hours that each day demanded--but
without interest. Martha could rattle off quotations from literary
masters, she could follow the score of most operas (her voice was a bit
off-key but she knew what was going on) and she enjoyed all of the
available information on keeping a house in order. Her eye and her mind
were, as James Holden's, faster than her hand. She went through the same
frustrations as he did, with different tools and in a different medium.
The first offside snick of the scissors she knew to be bad before she
tried the pattern for size, and the only way she could correct such
defective work was to practice and practice until her muscles were
trained enough to respond to the direction of her mind.

Remove her now and place her in a school--even the most advanced
school--and she would undergo the unhappy treatment that James had
undergone these several years ago.

And yet she could not be cut loose. Martha was as much a part of this
very strange life as James was. So this meant that any revision in
overall policy must necessarily include the addition of Tim Fisher and
not the subtraction of Mrs. Bagley and Martha.

"Charles Maxwell" had to go.

James's problem had not changed. His machine must be kept a secret as
long as he could. The machine was his, James Quincy Holden's property by
every known and unwritten legal right of direct, single, uncluttered
inheritance. The work of his parents had been stopped by their death, but
it was by no means finished with the construction of the machine. To the
contrary, the real work had only begun with the completion of the first
working model. And whether he turned out to be a machine-made genius, an
over-powered dolt, or an introverted monster it was still his own
personal reason for being alive.

He alone should reap the benefit or the sorrow, and had his parents lived
they would have had their right to reap good or bad with him. Good or
bad, had they lived, he would have received their protection.

As it was, he had no protection whatsoever. Until he could have and hold
the right to control his own property as he himself saw fit, he had to
hide just as deep from the enemy who would steal it as he must hide from
the friend who would administrate it as a property in escrow for his own
good, since he as a minor was legally unable to walk a path both fitting
and proper for his feet.

So, the facts had to be concealed. Yet all he was buying was time.

By careful juggling, he had already bought some. Months with Jake Caslow,
a few months stolidly fighting the school, and two with the help of Mrs.
Bagley and Martha. Then in these later months there had been more
purchased time; time gained by the post-dated engagement and the
procrastinated marriage, which was now running out.

No matter what he did, it seemed that the result was a wider spread of
knowledge about the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

So with misgiving and yet unaware of any way or means to circumvent the
necessity without doing more overall harm, James decided that Tim Fisher
must be handed another piece of the secret. A plausible piece, with as
much truth as he would accept for the time being. Maybe--hand Tim Fisher
a bit with great gesture and he would not go prying for the whole?

His chance came in mid-August. It was after dinner on an evening
uncluttered with party or shower or the horde of just-dropped-in-friends
of whom Tim Fisher had legion.

Janet Bagley and Tim Fisher sat on the low divan in the living room
half-facing each other. Apart, but just so far apart that they could
touch with half a gesture, they were discussing the problem of domicile.
They were also still quibbling mildly about the honeymoon. Tim Fisher
wanted a short, noisy one. A ten-day stay in Hawaii, flying both ways,
with a ten-hour stopover in Los Angeles on the way back. Janet Bagley
wanted a long and lazy stay somewhere no closer than fifteen hundred
miles to the nearest telephone, newspaper, mailbox, airline, bus stop, or
highway. She'd take the 762-day rocket trip to Venus if they had one
available. Tim was duly sympathetic to her desire to get away from her
daily grind for as long a time as possible, but he also had a garage to
run, and he was by no means incapable of pointing out the practical side
of crass commercialism.

But unlike the problem of the honeymoon, which Janet Bagley was willing
to discuss on any terms for the pleasure of discussing it, the problem of
domicile had been avoided--to the degree of being pointed.

For Janet Bagley was still torn between two loyalties. Hers was not
a lone loyalty to James Holden, there had been almost a complete
association with the future of her daughter in the loyalty. She realized
as well as James did, that Martha must not be wrested from this life and
forced to live, forever an outcast, raised mentally above the level of
her age and below the physical size of her mental development. Mrs.
Bagley thought only of Martha's future; she gave little or no thought on
the secondary part of the problem. But James knew that once Martha was
separated from the establishment, she could not long conceal her advanced
information, and revealing that would reveal its source.

And so, as they talked together with soft voices, James Holden decided
that he could best buy time by employing logic, finance, and good common
sense. He walked into the living room and sat across the coffee table
from them. He said, "You'll have to live here, you know."

The abrupt statement stunned them both. Tim sat bolt upright and
objected, "I'll see to it that we're properly housed, young fellow."

"This isn't charity," replied James. "Nor the goodness of my little
heart. It's a necessity."

"How so?" demanded Tim crossly. "It's my life--and Janet's."

"And--Martha's life," added James.

"You don't think I'm including her out, do you?"

"No, but you're forgetting that she isn't to be popped here and there as
the fancy hits you, either. She's much to be considered."

"I'll consider her," snapped Tim. "She shall be my daughter. If she will,
I'll have her use my name as well as my care and affection."

"Of course you will," agreed James. The quick gesture of Mrs. Bagley's
hand towards Tim, and his equally swift caress in reply were noticed but
not understood by James. "But you're not thinking deeply enough about
it."

"All right. You tell me all about it."

"Martha must stay here," said James. "Neither of you--nor Martha--have
any idea of how stultifying it can be to be forced into school under the
supervision of teachers who cannot understand, and among classmates
whose grasp of any subject is no stronger than a feeble grope in the
mental dawn."

"Maybe so. But that's no reason why we must run our life your way."

"You're wrong, Mr. Fisher. Think a moment. Without hesitation, you will
include the education of Martha Bagley along with the 'care and
affection' you mentioned a moment ago."

"Of course."

"This means, Mr. Fisher, that Martha, approaching ten years old,
represents a responsibility of about seven more years prior to her
graduation from high school and another four years of college--granting
that Martha is a standard, normal, healthy young lady. Am I right?"

"Sure."

"Well, since you are happy and willing to take on the responsibility of
eleven years of care and affection and the expense of schooling the girl,
you might as well take advantage of the possibilities here and figure on
five years--or less. If we cannot give her the equal of a master's degree
in three, I'm shooting in the dark. Make it five, and she'll have her
doctor's degree--or at least it's equivalent. Does that make sense?"

"Of course it does. But--"

"No buts until we're finished. You'll recall the tales we told you about
the necessity of hiding out. It must continue. During the school year we
must not be visible to the general public."

"But dammit, I don't want to set up my family in someone else's house,"
objected Tim Fisher.

"Buy this one," suggested James. "Then it will be yours. I'll stay on and
pay rent on my section."

"You'll--now wait a minute! What are you talking about?"

"I said, _'I'll pay rent on my section,'_" said James.

"But this guy upstairs--" Tim took a long breath. "Let's get this
straight," he said, "now that we're on the subject, what about Mr.
Charles Maxwell?"

"I can best quote," said James with a smile, "'Oh, what a tangled web we
weave, when first we practice to deceive!'"

"That's Shakespeare."

"Sorry. That's Sir Walter Scott. _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Canto
Six, Stanza Seventeen. The fact of the matter is that we could go on
compounding this lie, but it's time to stop it. Mr. Charles Maxwell
does not exist."

"I don't understand!"

"Hasn't it puzzled you that this hermit-type character that never puts a
foot out of the house has been out and gone on some unstated vacation or
business trip for most of the spring and summer?"

"Hadn't given it a thought," said Fisher with a fatuous look at Mrs.
Bagley. She mooned back at him. For a moment they were lost in one
another, giving proof to the idea that blinder than he who will not
see is the fellow who has his eye on a woman.

"Charles Maxwell does not exist except in the minds of his happy
readers," said James. "He is a famous writer of boys' stories and known
to a lot of people for that talent. Yet he is no more a real person
than Lewis Carroll."

"But Lewis Carroll did exist--"

"As Charles L. Dodgson, a mathematician famous for his work in symbolic
logic."

"All right! Then who writes these stories? Who supports you--and this
house?"

"I do!"

Tim blinked, looked around the room a bit wildly and then settled on
Martha, looking at her helplessly.

"It's true, Tim," she said quietly. "It's crazy but it works. I've been
living with it for years."

Tim considered that for a full minute. "All right," he said shortly. "So
it works. But why does any kid have to live for himself?" He eyed James.
"Who's responsible for you?"

"I am!"

"But--"

"Got an hour?" asked James with a smile. "Then listen--"

At the end of James Holden's long explanation, Tim Fisher said, "Me--?
Now, I need a drink!"

James chuckled, "Alcoholic, of course--which is Pi to seven decimal
places if you ever need it. Just count the letters."

Over his glass, Tim eyed James thoughtfully. "So if this is true, James,
just who owns that fabulous machine of yours?"

"It is mine, or ours."

"You gave me to believe that it was a high-priority Government project,"
he said accusingly.

"Sorry. But I would lie as glibly to God Himself if it became necessary
to protect myself by falsehood. I'm sorry it isn't a Government project,
but it's just as important a secret."

"Anything as big as this _should_ be the business of the Government."

"Perhaps so. But it's mine to keep or to give, and it's mine to study."
James was thoughtful for a moment. "I suppose that you can argue that
anything as important as this should be handed over to the authorities
immediately; that a large group of men dedicated to such a study can
locate its difficulties and its pitfalls and failures far swifter than
a single youth of eleven. Yet by the right of invention, a process
protected by the Constitution of the United States and circumvented by
some very odd rulings on the part of the Supreme Court, it is mine by
inheritance, to reap the exclusive rewards for my family's work. Until
I'm of an age when I am deemed capable of managing my own life, I'd be
'protected' out of my rights if I handed this to anybody--including the
Government. They'd start a commission full of bureaucrats who'd first
use the machine to study how to best expand their own little empire,
perpetuate themselves in office, and then they'd rule me out on the
quaint theory that education is so important that it mustn't be wasted
on the young."

Tim Fisher smiled wryly. He turned to Janet Bagley. "How do you want it?"
he asked her.

"For Martha's sake, I want it his way," she said.

"All right. Then that's the way we'll have it," said Tim Fisher. He eyed
James somewhat ruefully. "You know, it's a funny thing. I've always
thought this was a screwy set-up, and to be honest, I've always thought
you were a pretty bumptious kid. I guess you had a good reason. Anyway, I
should have known Janet wouldn't have played along with it unless she had
a reason that was really helping somebody."

James saw with relief that Tim had allied himself with the cause; he was,
in fact, very glad to have someone knowledgeable and levelheaded in on
the problem. Anyway he really liked Tim, and was happy to have the
deception out of the way.

"That's all right," he said awkwardly.

Tim laughed. "Hey, will this contraption of yours teach me how to adjust
a set of tappets?"

"No," said James quickly. "It will teach you the theory of how to chop
down a tree but it can't show you how to swing an axe. Or," he went on
with a smile, "it will teach you how to be an efficient accountant--but
you have to use your own money!"

       *       *       *       *       *

In the house on Martin's Hill, everybody won. Tim Fisher objected at
first to the idea of gallivanting off on a protracted honeymoon, leaving
a nine-year-old daughter in the care of a ten-year-old boy. But
Janet--now Mrs. Fisher--pointed out that James and Martha were both quite
competent, and furthermore there was little to be said for a honeymoon
encumbered with a little pitcher that had such big ears, to say nothing
of a pair of extremely curious eyes and a rather loud voice. And
furthermore, if we allow the woman's privilege of adding one furthermore
on top of another, it had been a long, long time since Janet had enjoyed
a child-free vacation. So she won. It was not Hawaii by air for a ten-day
stay. It was Hawaii by ship with a sixty-day sojourn in a hotel that
offered both seclusion and company to the guests' immediate preference.

James Holden won more time. He felt that every hour was a victory. At
times he despaired because time passed so crawlingly slow. All the wealth
of his education could not diminish that odd sense of the time-factor
that convinces all people that the length of the years diminish as age
increases. Far from being a simple, amusing remark, the problem has been
studied because it is universal. It is psychological, of course, and it
is not hard to explain simply in terms of human experience plus the known
fact that the human senses respond to the logarithm of the stimulus.

With most people, time is reasonably important. We live by the clock, and
we die by the clock, and before there were clocks there were candles
marked in lengths and sand flowing through narrow orifices, water
dripping into jars, and posts stuck in the ground with marks for the
shadow to divide the day. The ancient ones related womanhood to the moon
and understood that time was vital in the course of Life.

With James, time was more important, perhaps, than to any other human
being alive. He was fighting for time, always. His was not the immature
desire of uneducated youth to become adult overnight for vague reasons.

With James it was an honest evaluation of his precarious position. He
had to hide until he was deemed capable of handling his own affairs,
after which he could fight his own battles in his own way without the
interference of the laws that are set up to protect the immature.

With Tim Fisher and his brand-new bride out of the way, James took a deep
breath at having leaped one more hurdle. Then he sat down to think.

Obviously there is no great sea-change that takes place at the Stroke Of
Midnight on the date of the person's 21st birthday; no magic wand is
waved over his scalp to convert him in a moment of time from a puling
infant to a mature adult. The growth of child to adult is as gradual as
the increase of his stature, which varies from one child to the next.

The fact remained that few people are confronted by the necessity of
making a decision based upon the precise age of the subject. We usually
cross this barrier with no trouble, taking on our rights and
responsibilities as we find them necessary to our life. Only in probating
an estate left by the demise of both parents in the presence of minor
children does this legal matter of precise age become noticeable. Even
then, the control exerted over the minor by the legal guardian diminishes
by some obscure mathematical proportion that approaches zero as the minor
approaches the legal age of maturity. Rare is the case of the reluctant
guardian who jealously relinquishes the iron rule only after the proper
litigation directs him to let go, render the accounting for audit, and
turn over the keys to the treasury to the rightful heir.

James Holden was the seldom case. James Holden needed a very adroit
lawyer to tell him how and when his rights and privileges as a citizen
could be granted, and under what circumstances. From the evidence already
at hand, James saw loopholes available in the matter of the legal age of
twenty-one. But he also knew that he could not approach a lawyer with
questions without giving full explanation of every why and wherefore.

So James Holden, already quite competent in the do-it-himself method of
cutting his own ice, decided to study law. Without any forewarning of the
monumental proportions of the task he faced, James started to acquire
books on legal procedure and the law.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the return of Tim and Janet Fisher matters progressed well. Mrs.
Fisher took over the running of the household; Tim continued his running
of the garage and started to dicker for the purchase of the house on
Martin's Hill. The "Hermit" who had returned before the wedding remained
temporarily. With a long-drawn plan, Charles Maxwell would slowly fade
out of sight. Already his absence during the summer was hinting as being
a medical study; during the winter he would return to the distant
hospital. Later he would leave completely cured to take up residence
elsewhere. Beyond this they planned to play it by ear.

James and Martha, freed from the housework routine, went deep into study.

Christmas passed and spring came and in April, James marked his eleventh
birthday.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


One important item continued to elude James Holden. The Educator could
not be made to work in "tandem." In less technical terms, the Educator
was strictly an individual device, a one-man-dog. The wave forms that
could be recorded were as individual as fingerprints and pore-patterns
and iris markings. James could record a series of ideas or a few pages of
information and play them back to himself. During the playback he could
think in no other terms; he could not even correct, edit or improve the
phrasing. It came back word for word with the faithful reproduction of
absolute fidelity. Similarly, Martha could record a phase of information
and she, too, underwent the same repetition when her recording was played
back to her.

But if Martha's recording were played through to James, utter confusion
came. It was a whirling maze of colors and odors, sound, taste and touch.

It spoiled some of James Holden's hopes; he sought the way to mass-use,
his plan was to employ a teacher to digest the information and then via
the Educator, impress the information upon many other brains each coupled
to the machine. This would not work.

He made an extra headset late in June and they tried it, sitting
side-by-side and still it did not work. With Martha doing the reading,
she got the full benefit of the machine and James emerged with a whirling
head full of riotous colors and other sensations. At one point he hoped
that they might learn some subject by sitting side-by-side and reading
the text in unison, but from this they received the information horribly
mingled with equal intensity of sensory noise.

He did not abandon this hope completely. He merely put it aside as a
problem that he was not ready to study yet. He would re-open the question
when he knew more about the whole process. To know the whole process
meant studying many fields of knowledge and combining them into a
research of his own.

And so James entered the summer months as he'd entered them before; Tim
and Janet Fisher took off one day and returned the next afternoon with a
great gay show of "bringing the children home for the summer."

Even in this day of multi-billion-dollar budgets and farm surpluses that
cost forty thousand dollars per hour for warehouse rental, twenty-five
hundred dollars is still a tidy sum to dangle before the eyes of any
individual. This was the reward offered by Paul Brennan for any
information as to the whereabouts of James Quincy Holden.

If Paul Brennan could have been honest, the information he could have
supplied would have provided any of the better agencies with enough
lead-material to track James Holden down in a time short enough to make
the reward money worth the effort. Similarly, if James Holden's
competence had been no greater than Brennan's scaled-down description,
he could not have made his own way without being discovered.

Bound by his own guilt, Brennan could only fret. Everything including
time, was running against him.

And as the years of James Holden's independence looked toward the sixth,
Paul Brennan was willing to make a mental bet that the young man's
education was deeper than ever.

He would have won. James was close to his dream of making his play for an
appearance in court and pleading for the law to recognize his competence
to act as an adult. He abandoned all pretense; he no longer hid through
the winter months, and he did not keep Martha under cover either. They
went shopping with Mrs. Fisher now and then, and if any of the folks in
Shipmont wondered about them, the fact that the children were in the care
and keeping of responsible adults and were oh-so-quick on the uptake
stopped anybody who might have made a fast call to the truant officer.

Then in the spring of James Holden's twelfth year and the sixth of
his freedom, he said to Tim Fisher. "How would you like to collect
twenty-five hundred dollars?"

Fisher grinned. "Who do you want killed?"

"Seriously."

"Who wouldn't?"

"All right, drop the word to Paul Brennan and collect the reward."

"Can you protect yourself?"

"I can quote Gladstone from one end to the other. I can cite every civil
suit regarding the majority or minority problem that has any importance.
If I fail, I'll skin out of there in a hurry on the next train. But I
can't wait forever."

"What's the gimmick, James?"

"First, I am sick and tired of running and hiding, and I think I've got
enough to prove my point and establish my rights. Second, there is a bit
of cupidity here; the reward money is being offered out of my own
inheritance so I feel that I should have some say in where it should go.
Third, the fact that I steer it into the hands of someone I'd prefer to
get it tickles my sense of humor. The trapper trapped; the bopper bopped;
the sapper hoist by his own petard."

"And--?"

"It isn't fair to Martha, either. So the sooner we get this whole affair
settled, the sooner we can start to move towards a reasonable way of
life."

"Okay, but how are we going to work it? I can't very well turn up by
myself, you know."

"Why not?"

"People would think I'm a heel."

"Let them think so. They'll change their opinion once the whole truth is
known." James smiled. "It'll also let you know who your true friends
are."

"Okay. Twenty-five hundred bucks and a chance at the last laugh sounds
good. I'll talk it over with Janet."

That night they buried Charles Maxwell, the Hermit of Martin's Hill.




BOOK THREE:

THE REBEL




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


In his years of searching, Paul Brennan had followed eleven fruitless
leads. It had cost him over thirteen hundred dollars and he was prepared
to go on and on until he located James Holden, no matter how much it
took. He fretted under two fears, one that James had indeed suffered a
mishap, and the other that James might reveal his secret in a dramatic
announcement, or be discovered by some force or agency that would place
the whole process in hands that Paul Brennan could not reach.

The registered letter from Tim Fisher culminated this six years of
frantic search. Unlike the previous leads, this spoke with authority,
named names, gave dates, and outlined sketchily but adequately the
operations of the young man in very plausible prose. Then the letter went
on in the manner of a man with his foot in a cleft stick; the writer did
not approve of James Holden's operations since they involved his wife and
newly-adopted daughter, but since wife and daughter were fond of James
Holden, the writer could not make any overt move to rid his household of
the interfering young man. Paul Brennan was asked to move with caution
and in utter secrecy, even to sending the reward in cash to a special
post-office box.

Paul Brennan's reaction was a disappointment to himself. He neither felt
great relief nor the desire to exult. He found himself assaying his own
calmness and wondering why he lacked emotion over this culmination of so
many years of futile effort. He re-read the letter carefully to see if
there were something hidden in the words that his subconscious had
caught, but he found nothing that gave him any reason to believe that
this letter was a false lead. It rang true; Brennan could understand Tim
Fisher's stated reaction and the man's desire to collect. Brennan even
suspected that Fisher might use the reward money for his own private
purpose.

It was not until he read the letter for the third time that he saw the
suggestion to move with caution and secrecy not as its stated request to
protect the writer, but as an excellent advice for his own guidance.

And then Paul Brennan realized that for six years he had been
concentrating upon the single problem of having James Holden returned to
his custody, and in that concentration he had lost sight of the more
important problem of achieving his true purpose of gaining control of the
Holden Educator. The letter had not been the end of a long quest, but
just the signal to start.

Paul Brennan of course did not give a fig for the Holden Estate nor the
welfare of James. His only interest was in the machine, and the secret of
that machine was locked in the young man's mind and would stay that way
unless James could be coerced into revealing it. The secret indubitably
existed as hardware in the machine rebuilt in the house on Martin's Hill,
but Brennan guessed that any sight of him would cause James to repeat his
job of destruction. Brennan also envisioned a self-destructive device
that would addle the heart of the machine at the touch of a button,
perhaps booby-traps fitted like burglar alarms that would ruin the
machine at the first touch of an untrained hand.

Brennan's mind began to work. He must plan his moves carefully to acquire
the machine by stealth. He toyed with the idea of murder and rejected it
as too dangerous to chance a repeat, especially in view of the existence
of the rebuilt machine.

Brennan read the letter again. It gave him to think. James had obviously
succeeded in keeping his secret by imparting it to a few people that he
could either trust or bind to him, perhaps with the offer of education
via the machine, which James and only James maintained in hiding could
provide. Brennan could not estimate the extent of James Holden's
knowledge but it was obvious that he was capable of some extremely
intelligent planning. He was willing to grant the boy the likelihood of
being the equal of a long and experienced campaigner, and the fact that
James was in the favor of Tim Fisher's wife and daughter meant that the
lad would be able to call upon them for additional advice. Brennan
counted the daughter Martha in this planning program, most certainly
James would have given the girl an extensive education, too. Everything
added up, even to Tim Fisher's resentment.

But there was not time to ponder over the efficiency of James Holden's
operations. It was time for Paul Brennan to cope, and it seemed sensible
to face the fact that Paul Brennan alone could not plot the illegal
grab of the Holden Educator and at the same time masquerade as the
deeply-concerned loving guardian. He could label James Holden's little
group as an organization, and if he was to combat this organization he
needed one himself.

Paul Brennan began to form a mental outline of his requirements. First he
had to figure out the angle at which to make his attack. Once he knew the
legal angle, then he could find ruthless men in the proper position of
authority whose ambitions he could control. He regretted that the elder
Holden had not allowed him to study civil and criminal law along with his
courses in real estate and corporate law. As it was, Brennan was unsure
of his legal rights, and he could not plan until he had researched the
problem most thoroughly.

To his complete surprise, Paul Brennan discovered that there was no law
that would stay an infant from picking up his marbles and leaving home.
So long as the minor did not become a ward of responsibility of the
State, his freedom was as inviolable as the freedom of any adult. The
universal interest in missing-persons cases is overdrawn because of their
dramatic appeal. In every case that comes to important notice, the
missing person has left some important responsibilities that had to be
satisfied. A person with no moral, legal, or ethical anchor has every
right to pack his suitcase and catch the next conveyance for parts
unknown. If he is found by the authorities after an appeal by friends or
relatives, the missing party can tell the police that, Yes he did leave
home and, No he isn't returning and, furthermore he does not wish his
whereabouts made known; and all the authorities can report is that the
missing one is hale, happy, and hearty and wants to stay missing.

Under the law, a minor is a minor and there is no proposition that
divides one degree of minority from another. Major decisions, such as
voting, the signing of binding contracts of importance, the determination
of a course of drastic medical treatment, are deemed to be matters that
require mature judgment. The age for such decisions is arbitrarily set at
age twenty-one. Acts such as driving a car, sawing a plank, or buying
food and clothing are considered to be "skills" that do not require
judgment and therefore the age of demarcation varies with the state and
the state legislature's attitude.

James was a minor; presumably he could repudiate contracts signed while a
minor, at the time he reached the age of twenty-one. From a practical
standpoint, however, anything that James contracted for was expendable
and of vital necessity. He could not stop payment on a check for his
rent, nor claim that he had not received proper payment for his stories
and demand damages. Paul Brennan might possibly interfere with the smooth
operation by squawking to the bank that Charles Maxwell was a phantom
front for the minor child James Holden. And bankers, being bankers, might
very well clog up the operation with a lot of questions. But there was
the possibility that James Holden, operating through the agency of an
adult, would switch his method. He could even go so far as to bring
Brennan to lawsuit to have Brennan stopped from his interference. Child
or not, James Holden had been running a checking account by mail for a
number of years which could be used as evidence of his good faith and
ability.

Indeed, the position of James Holden was so solid that Brennan could only
plead personal interest and personal responsibility in the case for
securing a writ of habeas corpus to have the person of James Holden
returned to his custody and protection. And this of itself was a bit on
the dangerous side. A writ of habeas corpus will, by law, cause the
delivery of the person to the right hands, but there is no part of the
writ that can be used to guarantee that the person will remain
thereafter. If Brennan tried to repeat this program, James Holden was
very apt to suggest either the rather rare case of Barratry or
Maintenance against Brennan. Barratry consists of the constant harassment
of a citizen by the serial entry of lawsuit after lawsuit against him,
each of which he must defend to the loss of time and money--and the tying
up of courts and their officials. Maintenance is the re-opening of the
same suit and its charges time after time in court after court. One need
only be sure of the attitude of the plaintiff to strike back; if he is
interested in heckling the defendant and this can be demonstrated in
evidence, the heckler is a dead duck. Such a response would surely damage
Paul Brennan's overt position as a responsible, interested, affectionate
guardian of his best friends' orphaned child.

Then to put the top on the bottle, James Holden had crossed state lines
in his flight from home. This meant that the case was not the simple
proposition of appearing before a local magistrate and filing an
emotional appeal. It was interstate. It smacked of extradition, and James
Holden had committed no crime in either state.

To Paul Brennan's qualifications for his henchmen, he now added the need
for flouting the law if the law could not be warped to fit his need.

Finding a man with ambition, with a casual disregard for ethics, is not
hard in political circles. Paul Brennan found his man in Frank Manison,
a rising figure in the office of the District Attorney. Manison had
gubernatorial ambitions, and he was politically sharp. He personally
conducted only those cases that would give him ironclad publicity; he
preferred to lower the boom on a lighter charge than chance an acquittal.
Manison also had a fine feeling for anticipating public trends, a sense
of the drama, and an understanding of public opinion.

He granted Brennan a conference of ten minutes, and knowing from long
experience that incoming information flows faster when it is not
interrupted, he listened attentively, oiling and urging the flow by
facial expressions of interest and by leaning forward attentively
whenever a serious point was about to come forth. Brennan explained about
James Holden, his superior education, and what it had enabled the lad to
do. He explained the education not as a machine but as a "system of
study" devised by James Holden's parents, feeling that it was better to
leave a few stones lying flat and unturned for his own protection.
Manison nodded at the end of the ten-minute time-limit, used his desk
interphone to inform his secretary that he was not to be disturbed until
further notice (which also told Paul Brennan that he was indeed
interested) and then said:

"You know you haven't a legal leg to stand on, Brennan."

"So I find out. It seems incredible that there isn't any law set up to
control the activity of a child."

"Incredible? No, Brennan, not so. To now it hasn't been necessary. People
just do not see the necessity of laws passed to prevent something that
isn't being done anyway. The number of outmoded laws, ridiculous laws,
and laws passed in the heat of public emotion are always a subject for
public ridicule. If the state legislature were to pass a law stating that
any child under fourteen may not leave home without the consent of his
parents, every opposition newspaper in the state would howl about the
waste of time and money spent on ridiculous legislation passed to govern
activities that are already under excellent control. They would poll the
state and point out that for so many million children under age fourteen,
precisely zero of them have left home to set up their own housekeeping.
One might just as well waste the taxpayer's money by passing a law that
confirms the Universal Law of Gravity.

"But that's neither here nor there," he said. "Your problem is to figure
out some means of exerting the proper control over this intelligent
infant."

"My problem rises higher than that," said Brennan ruefully. "He dislikes
me to the point of blind, unreasonable hatred. He believes that I am the
party responsible for the death of his parents and furthermore that the
act was deliberate. Tantamount to a charge of first-degree murder."

"Has he made that statement recently?" asked Manison.

"I would hardly know."

"When last did you hear him say words to that effect?"

"At the time, following the accidental death of his parents, James Holden
ran off to the home of his grandparents. Puzzled and concerned, they
called me as the child's guardian. I went there to bring him back to his
home. I arrived the following morning and it was during that session that
James Holden made the accusation."

"And he has not made it since, to the best of your knowledge?"

"Not that I know of."

"Hardly make anything out of that. Seven years ago. Not a formal charge,
only a cry of rage, frustration, hysterical grief. The complaint of a
five-year-old made under strain could hardly be considered slanderous.
It is too bad that the child hasn't broken any laws. Your success in
collecting him the first time was entirely due to the associations he'd
made with this automobile thief--Caslow, you said his name was. We can't
go back to that. The responsibility has been fixed, I presume, upon Jake
Caslow in another state. Brennan, you've a real problem: How can you be
sure that this James Holden will disclose his secret system of study even
if we do succeed in cooking up some legal means of placing him and keep
him in your custody?"

Brennan considered, and came to the conclusion that now was the time to
let another snibbet of information go. "The system of study consists of
an electronic device, the exact nature of which I do not understand. The
entire machine is large and cumbersome. In it, as a sort of 'heart,' is a
special circuit. Without this special circuit the thing is no more than
an expensive aggregation of delicate devices that could be used elsewhere
in electronics. One such machine stands unused in the Holden Home because
the central circuit was destroyed beyond repair or replacement by young
James Holden. He destroyed it because he felt that this secret should
remain his own, the intellectual inheritance from his parents. There is
one other machine--undoubtedly in full function and employed daily--in
the house on Martin's Hill under James Holden's personal supervision."

"Indeed? How, may I ask?"

"It was rebuilt by James Holden from plans, specifications, and
information engraved on his brain by his parents through the use of their
first machine. Unfortunately, I have every reason to believe that this
new machine is so booby-trapped and tamper-protected that the first
interference by someone other than James Holden will cause its
destruction."

"Um. It might be possible to impound this machine as a device of high
interest to the State," mused Manison. "But if we start any proceeding
as delicate as that, it will hit every newspaper in the country and our
advantage will be lost."

"Technically," said Paul Brennan, "you don't know that such a machine
exists. But as soon as young Holden realizes that you know about his
machine, he'll also know that you got the information from me." Brennan
sat quietly and thought for a moment. "There's another distressing angle,
too," he said at last. "I don't think that there is a soul on earth who
knows how to run this machine but James Holden. Steal it or impound it or
take it away legally, you've got to know how it runs. I doubt that we'd
find a half-dozen people on the earth who'd willingly sit in a chair with
a heavy headset on, connected to a devilish aggregation of electrical
machinery purported to educate the victim, while a number of fumblers
experimented with the dials and the knobs and the switches. No sir, some
sort of pressure must be brought to bear upon the youngster."

"Um. Perhaps civic pride? Might work. Point out to him that he is in
control of a device that is essential to the security of the United
States. That he is denying the children of this country the right to
their extensive education. Et cetera?"

"Could be. But how are you going to swing it, technically in ignorance of
the existence of such a machine?"

"Were I a member of the Congressional Committee on Education, I could
investigate the matter of James Holden's apparent superiority of
intellect."

"And hit Page One of every newspaper in the country," sneered Brennan.

"Well, I'm not," snapped Manison angrily. "However, there is a way,
perhaps several ways, once we find the first entering wedge. After all,
Brennan, the existence of a method of accelerating the course of
educational training is of the utmost importance to the future of not
only the United States of America, but the entire human race. Once I can
locate some plausible reason for asking James Holden the first question
about anything, the remainder of any session can be so slanted as to
bring into the open any secret knowledge he may have. We, to make the
disclosure easier, shall hold any sessions in the strictest of secrecy.
We can quite readily agree with James Holden's concern over the
long-range effectiveness of his machine and state that secrecy is
necessary lest headstrong factions take the plunge into something that
could be very detrimental to the human race instead of beneficial.
Frankly, Mr. Brennan," said Manison with a wry smile, "I should like to
borrow that device for about a week myself. It might help me locate some
of the little legal points that would help me." He sighed. "Yes," he said
sadly, "I know the law, but no one man knows all of the finer points.
Lord knows," he went on, "if the law were a simple matter of behaving as
it states, we'd not have this tremendous burden. But the law is subject
to interpretation and change and argument and precedent--Precedent? Um,
here we may have an interesting angle, Brennan. I must look into it."

"Precedent?"

"Yes, indeed. Any ruling that we were to make covering the right of a
seven, eight, or nine year old to run his own life as he sees fit will be
a ruling that establishes precedent."

"And--?"

"Well, up to now there's no ruling about such a case; no child of ten has
ever left home to live as he prefers. But this James Holden is apparently
capable of doing just that--and any impartial judge deliberating such a
case would find it difficult to justify a decision that placed the
competent infant under the guardianship and protection of an adult who is
less competent than the infant."

Brennan's face turned dark. "You're saying that this Holden kid is
smarter than I am?"

"Sit down and stop sputtering," snapped Manison. "What were you doing at
six years old, Brennan? Did you have the brains to leave home and protect
yourself by cooking up the plausible front of a very interesting
character such as the mythical Hermit of Martin's Hill? Were you writing
boys' stories for a nationwide magazine of high circulation and
accredited quality? Could you have planned your own dinner and prepared
it, or would you have dined on chocolate bars washed down with strawberry
pop? Stop acting indignant. Start thinking. If for no other reason than
that we don't want to end up selling pencils on Halstead Street because
we're not quite bright, we've got to lay our hands on that machine. We've
got to lead, not follow. Yet at the present time I'll wager that your
James Holden is going to give everybody concerned a very rough time. Now,
let me figure out the angles and pull the wires. One thing that nobody
can learn from any electronic machine is how to manipulate the component
people that comprise a political machine. I'll be in touch with you,
Brennan."

       *       *       *       *       *

The ring at the door was Chief of Police Joseph Colling and another
gentleman. Janet Fisher answered the door, "Good evening, Mr. Colling.
Come in?"

"Thank you," said Colling politely. "This is Mr. Frank Manison, from the
office of the State Department of Justice."

"Oh? Is something wrong?"

"Not that we know of," replied Manison. "We're simply after some
information. I apologize for calling at eight o'clock in the evening, but
I wanted to catch you all under one roof. Is Mr. Fisher home? And the
children?"

"Why, yes. We're all here." Janet stepped aside to let them enter the
living room, and then called upstairs. Mr. Manison was introduced around
and Tim Fisher said, cautiously, "What's the trouble here?"

"No trouble that we know of," said Manison affably. "We're just after
some information about the education of James Holden, a legal minor, who
seems never to have been enrolled in any school."

"If you don't mind," replied Tim Fisher, "I'll not answer anything
without the advice of my attorney."

Janet Fisher gasped.

Tim turned with a smile. "Don't you like lawyers, honey?"

"It isn't that. But isn't crying for a lawyer an admission of some sort?"

"Sure is," replied Tim Fisher. "It's an admission that I don't know all
of my legal rights. If lawyers come to me because they don't know all
there is to know about the guts of an automobile, I have every right to
the same sort of consultation in reverse. Agree, James?"

James Holden nodded. "The man who represents himself in court has a fool
for a client," he said. "I think that's Daniel Webster, but I'm not
certain. No matter; it's right. Call Mr. Waterman, and until he arrives
we'll discuss the weather, the latest dope in high-altitude research, or
nuclear physics."

Frank Manison eyed the lad. "You're James Holden?"

"I am."

Tim interrupted. "We're not answering _anything_," he warned.

"Oh, I don't mind admitting my identity," said James. "I've committed no
crime, I've broken no law. No one can point to a single act of mine that
shows a shred of evidence to the effect that my intentions are not
honorable. Sooner or later this whole affair had to come to a showdown,
and I'm prepared to face it squarely."

"Thank you," said Manison. "Now, without inviting comment, let me explain
one important fact. The state reserves the right to record marriages,
births, and deaths as a simple matter of vital statistics. We feel that
we have every right to the compiling of the census, and we can justify
our feeling. I am here because of some apparent irregularities, records
of which we do not have. If these apparent irregularities can be
explained to our satisfaction for the record, this meeting will be ended.
Now, let's relax until your attorney arrives."

"May I get you some coffee or a highball?" asked Janet Fisher.

"Coffee, please," agreed Frank Manison. Chief Colling nodded quietly.
They relaxed over coffee and small talk for a half hour. The arrival of
Waterman, Tim Fisher's attorney, signalled the opening of the discussion.

"First," said Manison, his pencil poised over a notebook, "Who lives here
in permanent residence, and for how long?" He wrote rapidly as they told
him. "The house is your property?" he asked Tim, and wrote again. "And
you are paying a rental on certain rooms of this house?" he asked James,
who nodded.

"Where did you attend school?" he asked James.

"I did not."

"Where did you get your education?"

"By a special course in home study."

"You understand that under the state laws that provide for the education
of minor children, the curriculum must be approved by the state?"

"I do."

"And has it?"

Waterman interrupted. "Just a moment, Mr. Manison. In what way must the
curriculum be approved? Does the State study all textbooks and the manner
in which each and every school presents them? Or does the State merely
insist that the school child be taught certain subjects?"

"The State merely insists that certain standards of education be
observed."

"In fact," added James, "the State does not even insist that the child
_learn_ the subjects, realizing that some children lack the intellect to
be taught certain subjects completely and fully. Let's rather say that
the State demands that school children be exposed to certain subjects in
the hope that they 'take.' Am I not correct?"

"I presume you are."

"Then I shall answer your question. In my home study, I have indeed
followed the approved curriculum by making use of the approved textbooks
in their proper order. I am aware of the fact that this is not the same
State, but if you will consult the record of my earlier years in
attendance at a school selected by my legal guardian, you'll find that I
passed from preschool grade to Fourth Grade in a matter of less than half
a year, at the age of five-approaching-six. If this matter is subject to
question, I'll submit to any course of extensive examination your
educators care to prepare. The law regarding compulsory education in this
state says that the minor child must attend school until either the age
of eighteen, or until he has completed the standard eight years of
grammar school and four years of high school. I shall then stipulate that
the suggested examination be limited to the schooling of a high school
graduate."

"For the moment we'll pass this over. We may ask that you do prove your
contention," said Manison.

"You don't doubt that I can, do you?" asked James.

Manison shook his head. "No, at this moment I have no doubt."

"Then why do you bother asking?"

"I am here for a rather odd reason," said Manison. "I've told you the
reservations that the State holds, which justify my presence. Now, it is
patently obvious that you are a very competent young man, James Holden.
The matter of making your own way is difficult, as many adults can
testify. To have contrived a means of covering up your youth, in addition
to living a full and competent life, demonstrates an ability above and
beyond the average. Now, the State is naturally interested in anything
that smacks of acceleration of the educational period. Can you understand
that?"

"Naturally. None but a dolt would avoid education."

"Then you agree with our interest?"

"I--"

"Just a moment, James," said Waterman. "Let's put it that you understand
their interest, but that you do not necessarily agree."

"I understand," said James.

"Then you must also understand that this 'course of study' by which you
claim the equal of a high-school education at the age of ten or eleven
(perhaps earlier) must be of high importance."

"I understand that it might," agreed James.

"Then will you explain why you have kept this a secret?"

"Because--"

"Just a moment," said Waterman again. "James, would you say that your
method of educating yourself is completely perfected?"

"Not completely."

"Not perfected?" asked Manison. "Yet you claim to have the education of a
high-school graduate?"

"I so claim," said James. "But I must also point out that I have acquired
a lot of mish-mash in the course of this education. For instance, it is
one thing to study English, its composition, spelling, vocabulary,
construction, rules and regulations. One must learn these things if he is
to be considered literate. In the course of such study, one also becomes
acquainted with English literature. With literature it is enough to
merely be acquainted with the subject. One need not know the works of
Chaucer or Spenser intimately--unless one is preparing to specialize in
the English literature of the writers of that era. Frankly, sir, I should
hate to have my speech colored by the flowery phrases of that time, and
the spelling of that day would flunk me out of First Grade if I made use
of it. In simple words, I am still perfecting the method."

"Now, James," went on Waterman, "have you ever entertained the idea of
not releasing the details of your method?"

"Occasionally," admitted James.

"Why?"

"Until we know everything about it, we can not be certain that its
ultimate effect will be wholly beneficial."

"So, you see," said Waterman to Manison, "the intention is reasonable.
Furthermore, we must point out that this system is indeed the invention
created by the labor and study of the parents of James Holden, and as
such it is a valuable property retained by James Holden as his own by the
right of inheritance. The patent laws of the United States are clear, it
is the many conflicting rulings that have weakened the system. The law
itself is contained in the Constitution of the United States, which
provides for the establishment of a Patent Office as a means to encourage
inventors by granting them the exclusive right to the benefits of their
labor for a reasonable period of time--namely seventeen years with
provision for a second period under renewal."

"Then why doesn't he make use of it?" demanded Manison.

"Because the process, like so many another process, can be copied and
used by individuals without payment, and because there hasn't been a
patent suit upheld for about forty years, with the possible exception
of Major Armstrong's suit against the Radio Corporation of America,
settled in Armstrong's favor after about twenty-five years of expensive
litigation. A secret is no longer a secret these days, once it has been
written on a piece of paper and called to the attention of a few million
people across the country."

"You realize that anything that will give an extensive education at an
early age is vital to the security of the country."

"We recognize that responsibility, sir," said Waterman quietly. "We also
recognize that in the hands of unscrupulous men, the system could be
misused. We also realize its dangers, and we are trying to avoid them
before we make the announcement. We are very much aware of the important,
although unfortunate, fact that James Holden, as a minor, can have his
rights abridged. Normally honest men, interested in the protection of
youth, could easily prevent him from using his own methods, thus
depriving him of the benefits that are legally his. This could be
done under the guise of protection, and the result would be the
super-education of the protectors--whose improving intellectual
competence would only teach them more and better reasons for depriving
the young man of his rights. James Holden has a secret, and he has a
right to keep that secret, and his only protection is for him to continue
to keep that secret inviolate. It was his parents' determination not to
release this process upon the world until they were certain of the
results. James is a living example of their effort; they conceived him
for the express purpose of providing a virgin mind to educate by their
methods, so that no outside interference would becloud their results. If
this can be construed as the illegal experimentation on animals under the
anti-vivisection laws, or cruelty to children, it was their act, not his.
Is that clear?"

"It is clear," replied Manison. "We may be back for more discussion on
this point. I'm really after information, not conducting a case, you
know."

"Well, you have your information."

"Not entirely. We've another point to consider, Mr. Waterman. It is
admittedly a delicate point. It is the matter of legal precedent.
Granting everything you say is true--and I'll grant that hypothetically
for the purpose of this argument--let's assume that James Holden
ultimately finds his process suitable for public use. Now, happily to
this date James had not broken any laws. He is an honorable individual.
Let's now suppose that in the near future, someone becomes educated by
his process and at the age of twelve or so decided to make use of his
advanced intelligence in nefarious work?"

"All right. Let's suppose."

"Then you tell me who is responsible for the person of James Holden?"

"He is responsible unto himself."

"Not under the existing laws," said Manison. "Let's consider James just
as we know him now. Who says, 'go ahead,' if he has an attack of acute
appendicitis?"

"In the absence of someone to take the personal responsibility," said
James quietly, "the attending doctor would toss his coin to see whether
his Oath of Hippocrates was stronger than his fear of legal reprisals.
It's been done before. But let's get to the point, Mr. Manison. What do
you have in mind?"

"You've rather pointedly demonstrated your preference to live here rather
than with your legally-appointed guardian."

"Yes."

"Well, young man, I suggest that we get this matter settled legally. You
are not living under the supervision of your guardian, but you are indeed
living under the auspices of people who are not recognized by law as
holding the responsibility for you."

"So far there's been no cause for complaint."

"Let's keep it that way," smiled Manison. "I'll ask you to accept a writ
of habeas corpus, directing you to show just cause why you should not be
returned to the custody of your guardian."

"And what good will that do?"

"If you can show just cause," said Manison, "the Court will follow
established precedent and appoint Mr. and Mrs. Fisher as your responsible
legal guardians--if that is your desire."

"Can this be done?" asked Mrs. Fisher.

"It's been done before, time and again. The State is concerned primarily
with the welfare of the child; children have been legally removed from
natural but unsuitable parents, you know." He looked distressed for a
moment and then went on, "The will of the deceased is respected, but the
law recognizes that it is the living with which it must be primarily
concerned, that mistakes can be made, and that such errors in judgment
must be rectified in the name of the public weal."

"I've been--" started James but Attorney Waterman interrupted him:

"We'll accept the service of your writ, Mr. Manison." And to James after
the man had departed: "Never give the opposition an inkling of what you
have in mind--and always treat anybody who is not in your retainer as
opposition."




CHAPTER FIFTEEN


The case of Brennan vs. Holden opened in the emptied court room of Judge
Norman L. Carter, with a couple of bored members of the press wishing
they were elsewhere. For the first two hours, it was no more than
formalized outlining of the whole situation.

The plaintiff identified himself, testified that he was indeed the legal
guardian of the minor James Quincy Holden, entered a transcript of the
will in evidence, and then went on to make his case. He had provided
a home atmosphere that was, to the best of his knowledge, the type of
home atmosphere that would have been highly pleasing to the deceased
parents--especially in view of the fact that this home was one and the
same house as theirs and that little had been changed. He was supported
by the Mitchells. It all went off in the slow, cumbersome dry phraseology
of the legal profession and the sum and substance of two hours of
back-and-forth question-and-answer was to establish the fact that Paul
Brennan had provided a suitable home for the minor, James Quincy Holden,
and that the minor James Quincy Holden had refused to live in it and had
indeed demonstrated his objections by repeatedly absenting himself
wilfully and with premeditation.

The next half hour covered a blow-by-blow account of Paul Brennan's
efforts to have the minor restored to him. The attorneys for both sides
were alert. Brennan's counsel did not even object when Waterman paved the
way to show why James Holden wanted his freedom by asking Brennan:

"Were you aware that James Holden was a child of exceptional intellect?"

"Yes."

"And you've testified that when you moved into the Holden home, you found
things as the Holdens had provided them for their child?"

"Yes."

"In your opinion, were these surroundings suitable for James Holden?"

"They were far too advanced for a child of five."

"I asked specifically about James Holden."

"James Holden was five years old."

Waterman eyed Brennan with some surprise, then cast a glance at Frank
Manison, who sat at ease, calmly watching and listening with no sign of
objection. Waterman turned back to Brennan and said, "Let's take one more
turn around Robin Hood's Barn, Mr. Brennan. First, James Holden was an
exceptional child?"

"Yes."

"And the nature of his toys and furnishings?"

"In my opinion, too advanced for a child of five."

"But were they suitable for James Holden?"

"James Holden was a child of five."

Waterman faced Judge Carter. "Your Honor," he said, "I submit that the
witness is evasive. Will you direct him to respond to my direct question
with a direct answer?"

"The witness will answer the question properly," said Judge Carter with
a slight frown of puzzlement, "unless counsel for the witness has some
plausible objection?"'

"No objection," said Manison.

"Please repeat or rephrase your question," suggested Judge Carter.

"Mr. Brennan," said Waterman, "you've testified that James was an
exceptional child, advanced beyond his years. You've testified that the
home and surroundings provided by James Holden's parents reflected this
fact. Now tell me, were the toys, surroundings, and the home suitable for
James Holden?"

"In my opinion, no."

"And subsequently you replaced them with stuff you believed more suitable
for a child of five, is that it?"

"Yes. I did, and you are correct."

"To which he objected?"

"To which James Holden objected."

"And what was your response to his objection?"

"I overruled his objection."

"Upon what grounds?"

"Upon the grounds that the education and the experience of an adult
carries more wisdom than the desires of a child."

"Now, Mr. Brennan, please listen carefully. During the months following
your guardianship, you successively removed the books that James Holden
was fond of reading, replaced his advanced Meccano set with a set of
modular blocks, exchanged his oil-painting equipment for a child's
coloring books and standard crayolas, and in general you removed
everything interesting to a child with known superiority of intellect?"

"I did."

"And your purpose in opening this hearing was to convince this Court that
James Holden should be returned by legal procedure to such surroundings?"

"It is."

"No more questions," said Waterman. He sat down and rubbed his forehead
with the palm of his right hand, trying to think.

Manison said, "I have one question to ask of Janet Fisher, known formerly
as Mrs. Bagley."

Janet Fisher was sworn and properly identified.

"Now, Mrs. Fisher, prior to your marriage to Mr. Fisher and during your
sojourn with James Holden in the House on Martin's Hill, did you
supervise the activities of James Holden?"

"No," she said.

"Thank you," said Manison. He turned to Waterman and waved him to any
cross-questioning.

Still puzzled, Waterman asked, "Mrs. Fisher, who did supervise the House
on Martin's Hill?"

"James Holden."

"During those years, Mrs. Fisher, did James Holden at any time conduct
himself in any other manner but the actions of an honest citizen? I mean,
did he perform or suggest the performance of any illegal act to your
knowledge?"

"No, he did not."

Waterman turned to Judge Carter. "Your Honor," he said, "it seems quite
apparent to me that the plaintiff in this case has given more testimony
to support the contentions of my client than they have to support their
own case. Will the Court honor a petition that the case be dismissed?"

Judge Norman L. Carter smiled slightly. "This is irregular," he said.
"You should wait for that petition until the plaintiff's counsel has
closed his case, you know." He looked at Frank Manison. "Any objection?"

Manison said, "Your Honor, I have permitted my client to be shown in this
questionable light for no other purpose than to bring out the fact that
any man can make a mistake in the eyes of other men when in reality he
was doing precisely what he thought to be the best thing to do for
himself and for the people within his responsibility. The man who raises
his child to be a roustabout is wrong in the eyes of his neighbor who is
raising his child to be a scientist, and vice versa. We'll accept the
fact that James Holden's mind is superior. We'll point out that there
have been many cases of precocious children or child geniuses who make a
strong mark in their early years and drop into oblivion by the time
they're twenty. Now, consider James Holden, sitting there discussing
something with his attorney--I have no doubt in the world that he could
conjugate Latin verbs, discuss the effect of the Fall of Rome on Western
Civilization, and probably compute the orbit of an artificial satellite.
But can James Holden fly a kite or shoot a marble? Has he ever had the
fun of sliding into third base, or whittling on a peg, or any of the
other enjoyable trivia of boyhood? Has he--"

"One moment," said Judge Carter. "Let's not have an impassioned oration,
counsel. What is your point?"

"James Holden has a legal guardian, appointed by law at the express will
of his parents. Headstrong, he has seen fit to leave that protection. He
is fighting now to remain away from that protection. I can presume that
James Holden would prefer to remain in the company of the Fishers where,
according to Mrs. Fisher, he was not responsible to her whatsoever, but
rather ran the show himself. I--"

"You can't make that presumption," said Judge Carter. "Strike it from the
record."

"I apologize," said Manison. "But I object to dismissing this case until
we find out just what James Holden has in mind for his future."

"I'll hold Counsel Waterman's petition in abeyance until the point you
mention is in the record," said Judge Carter. "Counsel, are you
finished?"

"Yes," said Manison. "I'll rest."

"Mr. Waterman?"

Waterman said, "Your Honor, we've been directed to show just cause why
James Holden should not be returned to the protection of his legal
guardian. Counsel has implied that James Holden desires to be placed in
the legal custody of Mr. and Mrs. Fisher. This is a pardonable error
whether it stands in the record or not. The fact is that James Holden
does not need protection, nor does he want protection. To the contrary,
James Holden petitions this Court to declare him legally competent so
that he may conduct his own affairs with the rights, privileges, and
indeed, even the _risks_ taken by the status of adult.

"I'll point out that the rules and laws that govern the control and
protection of minor children were passed by benevolent legislators to
prevent exploitation, cruelty, and deprivation of the child's life by
men who would take advantage of his immaturity. However we have here a
young man of twelve who has shown his competence to deal with the adult
world by actual practice. Therefore it is our contention that protective
laws are not only unnecessary, but undesirable because they restrict the
individual from his desire to live a full and fruitful life.

"To prove our contention beyond any doubt, I'll ask that James Holden be
sworn in as my first witness."

Frank Manison said, "I object, Your Honor. James Holden is a minor and
not qualified under law to give creditable testimony as a witness."

Waterman turned upon Manison angrily. "You really mean that you object to
my case _per se_."

"That, too," replied Manison easily.

"Your Honor, I take exception! It is my purpose to place James Holden on
the witness stand, and there to show this Court and all the world that he
is of honorable mind, properly prepared to assume the rights of an adult.
We not only propose to show that he acted honorably, we shall show that
James Holden consulted the law to be sure that whatever he did was not
illegal."

"Or," added Manison, "was it so that he would know how close to the limit
he could go without stepping over the line?"

"Your Honor," asked Waterman, "can't we have your indulgence?"

"I object! The child is a minor."

"I accept the statement!" stormed Waterman. "And I say that we intend to
prove that this minor is qualified to act as an adult."

"And," sneered Manison, "I'll guess that one of your later arguments will
be that Judge Carter, having accepted this minor as qualified to deliver
sworn testimony, has already granted the first premise of your argument."

"I say that James Holden has indeed shown his competence already by
actually doing it!"

"While hiding under a false façade!"

"A façade forced upon him by the restrictive laws that he is petitioning
the Court to set aside in his case so that he need hide no longer."

Frank Manison said, "Your Honor, how shall the case of James Holden be
determined for the next eight or ten years if we do grant James Holden
this legal right to conduct his own affairs as an adult? That we must
abridge the laws regarding compulsory education is evident. James Holden
is twelve years and five months old. Shall he be granted the right to
enter a tavern to buy a drink? Will his request for a license to marry be
honored? May he enter the polling place and cast his vote? The contention
of counsel that the creation of Charles Maxwell was a physical necessity
is acceptable. But what happens without 'Maxwell'? Must we prepare a card
of identity for James Holden, stating his legal status, and renew it
every year like an automobile license because the youth will grow in
stature, add to his weight, and ultimately grow a beard? Must we enter on
this identification card the fact that he is legally competent to sign
contracts, rent a house, write checks, and make his own decision about
the course of dangerous medical treatment--or shall we list those items
that he is not permitted to do such as drinking in a public place, cast
his vote, or marry? This State permits a youth to drive an automobile at
the age of sixteen, this act being considered a skill rather than an act
that requires judgment. Shall James Holden be permitted to drive an
automobile even though he can not reach the foot pedals from any position
where he can see through the windshield?"

Judge Carter sat quietly. He said calmly, "Let the record show that I
recognize the irregularity of this procedure and that I permit it only
because of the unique aspects of this case. Were there a Jury, I would
dismiss them until this verbal exchange of views and personalities has
subsided.

"Now," he went on, "I will not allow James Holden to take the witness
stand as a qualified witness to prove that he is a qualified witness.
I am sure that he can display his own competence with a flow of academic
brilliance, or his attorney would not have tried to place him upon the
stand where such a display could have been demonstrated. Of more
importance to the Court and to the State is an equitable disposition
of the responsibility to and over James Quincy Holden."

Judge Norman L. Carter leaned forward and looked from Frank Manison to
James Holden, and then to Attorney Waterman.

"We must face some awkward facts," he said. "If I rule that he be
returned to Mr. Brennan, he will probably remain no longer than he finds
it convenient, at which point he will behave just as if this Court had
never convened. Am I not correct, Mr. Manison?"

"Your Honor, you are correct. However, as a member of the Department of
Justice of this State, I suggest that you place the responsibility in my
hands. As an Officer of the Court, my interest would be to the best
interest of the State rather than based upon experience, choice, or
opinion as to what is better for a five-year-old or a child prodigy. In
other words, I would exert the control that the young man needed. At the
same time I would not make the mistakes that were made by Mr. Brennan's
personal opinion of how a child should be reared."

Waterman shouted, "I object, Your Honor. I object--"

Brennan leaped to his feet and cried, "Manison, you can't freeze me
out--"

James Holden shrilled, "I won't! I won't!"

Judge Carter eyed them one by one, staring them into silence. Finally he
looked at Janet Fisher and said, "May I also presume that you would be
happy to resume your association with James Holden?"

She nodded and said, "I'd be glad to," in a sincere voice. Tim Fisher
nodded his agreement.

Brennan whirled upon them and snarled. "My reward money--" but he was
shoved down in his seat with a heavy hand by Frank Manison who snapped,
"Your money bought what it was offered for. So now shut up, you utter
imbecile!"

Judge Norman L. Carter cleared his throat and said, "This great concern
over the welfare of James Holden is touching. We have Mr. Brennan already
twice a loser and yet willing to try it for three times. We have Mr. and
Mrs. Fisher who are not dismayed at the possibility of having their home
occupied by a headstrong youth whose actions they cannot control. We find
one of the ambitious members of the District Attorney's Office offering
to take on an additional responsibility--all, of course, in the name of
the State and the welfare of James Holden. Finally we have James Holden
who wants no part of the word 'protection' and claims the ability to run
his own life.

"Now it strikes me that assigning the responsibility for this young
man's welfare is by no means the reason why you all are present, and it
similarly occurs to me that the young man's welfare is of considerably
less importance than the very interesting question of how and why this
young man has achieved so much."

With a thoughtful expression, Judge Carter said, "James Holden, how did
you acquire this magnificent education at the tender age of twelve-plus?"

"I--"

"I object!" cried Frank Manison. "The minor is not qualified to give
testimony."

"Objection overruled. This is not testimony. I have every right in the
world to seek out as much information from whatever source I may select;
and I have the additional right to inspect the information I receive to
pass upon its competence and relevance. Sit down, counsel!"

Manison sat grumpily and Judge Carter eyed James again, and James took a
full breath. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

"Go on, James. Answer my question. Where did you come by your knowledge?"

       *       *       *       *       *

James Holden stood up. This was the question that had to arise; he was
only surprised it had taken so long.

He said calmly: "Your Honor, you may not ask that question."

"I may not?" asked Judge Carter with a lift of his eyebrows.

"No sir. You may not."

"And just why may I not?"

"If this were a criminal case, and if you could establish that some of my
knowledge were guilty knowledge, you could then demand that I reveal the
source of my guilty knowledge and under what circumstance it was
obtained. If I refused to disclose my source, I could then be held in
contempt of court or charged with being an accessory to the corpus of the
crime. However, this is a court hearing to establish whether or not I am
competent under law to manage my own affairs. How I achieve my mental
competence is not under question. Let us say that it is a process that is
my secret by the right of inheritance from my parents and as such it is
valuable to me so long as I can demand payment for its use."

"This information may have a bearing on my ruling."

"Your Honor, the acquisition of knowledge or information _per se_ is
concomitant with growing up. I can and will demonstrate that I have the
equivalent of the schooling necessary to satisfy both this Court and the
State Board of Education. I will state that my education has been
acquired by concentration and application in home study, and that I admit
to attendance at no school. I will provide you or anybody else with a
list of the books from which I have gleaned my education. But whether I
practice Yoga, Dianetics, or write the lines on a sugarcoated pill and
swallow it is my trade secret. It can not be extracted from me by any
process of the law because no illegality exists."

"And what if I rule that you are not competent under the law, or withhold
judgment until I have had an opportunity to investigate these ways and
means of acquiring an accelerated education?"

"I'll then go on record as asking you to disbar yourself from this
hearing on the grounds that you are not an impartial judge of the justice
in my case."

"Upon what grounds?"

"Upon the grounds that you are personally interested in being provided
with a process whereby you may acquire an advanced education yourself."

The judge looked at James thoughtfully for a moment. "And if I point out
that any such process is of extreme interest to the State and to the
Union itself, and as such must be disclosed?"

"Then I shall point out that your ruling is based upon a personal opinion
because you don't know anything about the process. If I am ruled a legal
minor you cannot punish me for not telling you my secrets, and if I am
ruled legally competent, I am entitled to my own decision."

"You are within your rights," admitted Judge Carter with some interest.
"I shall not make such a demand. But I now ask you if this process of
yours is both safe and simple."

"If it is properly used with some good judgment."

"Now listen to me carefully," said Judge Carter. "Is it not true that
your difficulties in school, your inability to get along with your
classmates, and your having to hide while you toiled for your livelihood
in secret--these are due to this extensive education brought about
through your secret process?"

"I must agree, but--"

"You must agree," interrupted Judge Carter. "Yet knowing these unpleasant
things did not deter you from placing, or trying to place, the daughter
of your housekeeper in the same unhappy state. In other words, you hoped
to make an intellectual misfit out of her, too?"

"I--now see here--"

"You see here! Did you or did you not aid in the education of Martha
Bagley, now Martha Fisher?"

"Yes, I did, and--"

"Was that good judgment, James Holden?"

"What's wrong with higher education?" demanded James angrily.

"Nothing, if it's acquired properly."

"But--"

"Now listen again. If I were to rule in your favor, would Martha Fisher
be the next bratling in a long and everlasting line of infant supermen
applying to this and that and the other Court to have their legal
majority ruled, each of them pointing to your case as having established
precedence?"

"I have no way of predicting the future, sir. What may happen in the
future really has no bearing in evidence here."

"Granted that it does not. But I am not going to establish a dangerous
precedent that will end with doctors qualified to practice surgery before
they are big enough to swing a stethoscope or attorneys that plead a case
before they are out of short pants. I am going to recess this case
indefinitely with a partial ruling. First, until this process of yours
comes under official study, I am declaring you, James Holden, to be a
Ward of this State, under the jurisdiction of this Court. You will have
the legal competence to act in matters of skill, including the signing of
documents and instruments necessary to your continued good health. In all
matters that require mature judgment, you will report to this Court and
all such questions shall be rendered after proper deliberation either in
open session or in chambers, depending upon the Court's opinion of their
importance. The court stenographer will now strike all of the testimony
given by James Holden from the record."

"I object!" exploded Brennan's attorney, rising swiftly and with one hand
pressing Brennan down to prevent him from rising also.

"All objections are overruled. The new Ward of the State will meet with
me in my chambers at once. Court is adjourned."

       *       *       *       *       *

The session was stormy but brief. Holden objected to everything, but the
voice of Judge Carter was loud and his stature was large; they overrode
James Holden and compelled his attention.

"We're out of the court," snapped Judge Carter. "We no longer need
observe the niceties of court etiquette, so now shut up and listen!
Holden, you are involved in a thing that is explosively dangerous. You
claim it to be a secret, but your secret is slowly leaking out of your
control. You asked for your legal competence to be ruled. Fine, but if I
allowed that, every statement made by you about your education would be
in court record and your so-called secret that much more widespread. How
long do you think it would have been before millions of people howled at
your door? Some of them yelping for help and some of them bitterly
objecting to tampering with the immature brain? You'd be accused of
brainwashing, of making monsters, of depriving children of their heritage
of happiness--and in the same ungodly howl there would be voices as
loudly damning you for not tossing your process into their laps. And
there would be a number trying to get to you on the sly so that they
could get a head start over the rest.

"You want your competence affirmed legally? James, you have not the
stature nor the voice to fight them off. Even now, your little secret is
in danger and you'll probably have to bribe a few wiseacres with a touch
of accelerated knowledge to keep them from spilling the whole story, even
though I've ruled your testimony incompetent and immaterial and stricken
from the record. Now, we'll study this system of yours under controlled
conditions as your parents wanted, and we'll have professional help and
educated advice, and both you and your process shall be under the
protection of my Court, and when the time comes you shall receive the
kudos and benefits from it. Understand?"

"Yes sir."

"Good. Now, as my first order, you go back to Shipmont and pack your
gear. You'll report to my home as soon as you've made all the
arrangements. There'll be no more hiding out and playing your little
process in secret either from Paul Brennan--yes, I know that you believe
that he was somehow instrumental in the death of your parents but have no
shred of evidence that would stand in court--or the rest of the world. Is
that, and everything else I've said in private, very clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now, be off with you. And do not hesitate to call upon me if there
is any interference whatsoever."




CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Judge Carter insisted and won his point that James Holden accept
residence in his home.

He did not turn a hair when the trucks of equipment arrived from the
house on Martin's Hill; he already had room for it in the cellar. He
cheerfully allowed James the right to set it up and test it out. He
respected James Holden's absolute insistence that no one be permitted to
touch the special circuit that was the heart of the entire machine. Judge
Carter also counter-requested--and enforced the request--that he be
allowed to try the machinery out. He took a simple reading course in
higher mathematics, after discovering that Holden's machine would not
teach him how to play the violin. (Judge Carter already played the
violin--but badly.)

Later, the judge committed to memory the entire book of Bartlett's Famous
Quotations despite the objection of young Holden that he was cluttering
up his memory with a lot of useless material. The Judge learned (as James
had learned earlier) that the proper way to store such information in the
memory was to read the book with the machine turned in "stand-by" until
some section was encountered that was of interest. Using this method, the
judge picked and pecked at the Holy Bible, a number of documents that
looked like important governmental records, and a few books in modern
history.

Then there came other men. First was a Professor Harold White from the
State Board of Education who came to study both Holden and Holden's
machinery and what it did. Next came a Dr. Persons who said very little
but made diagrams and histograms and graphs which he studied. The third
was a rather cheerful fellow called Jack Cowling who was more interested
in James Holden's personal feelings than he was in the machine. He
studied many subjects superficially and watched the behavior of young
Holden as Holden himself studied subjects recommended by Professor White.

White had a huge blackboard installed on the cellar wall opposite the
machine, and he proceeded to fill the board with block outlines filled
with crabbed writing and odd-looking symbols. The whole was meaningless
to James Holden; it looked like the organization chart of a large
corporation but it contained no names or titles. The arrival of each new
visitor caused changes in the block diagram.

These arrivals went at their project with stop watches and slide rules.
They calibrated themselves and James with the cold-blooded attitude of
racetrack touts clocking their favorite horses. Where James had simply
taken what he wanted or what he could at any single sitting, then let
it settle in his mind before taking another dose of unpremeditated
magnitude, these fellows ascertained the best effectiveness of each
application to each of them. They tried taking long terms under the
machine and then they measured the time it took for the installed
information to sink in and settle into usable shape. Then they tried
shorter and shorter sittings and measured the correspondingly shorter
settling times. They found out that no two men were alike, nor were any
two subjects. They discovered that a man with an extensive education
already could take a larger sitting and have the new information
available for mental use in a shorter settling time than a man whose
education had been sketchy or incomplete.

They brought in men who had either little or no mathematics and gave them
courses in advanced subjects. Afterwards they provided the foundation
mathematics and they calibrated and measured the time it took for the
higher subject to be understood as it aligned its information to the
whole. Men came with crude English and bluntly read the dictionary and
the proper rules of grammar and they were checked to see if their early
bad-speech habits were corrected, and to what degree the Holden machine
could be made to help repair the damage of a lifelong ingrained set of
errors. They sent some of these boys through comparison dictionaries in
foreign tongues and then had their language checked by specialists who
were truly polylingual. There were some who spoke fluent English but no
other tongue; these progressed into German with a German-to-English
comparison dictionary, and then into French via a German-to-French
comparison and were finally checked out in French by French-speaking
examiners.

And Professor White's block diagram grew complex, and Dr. Persons's
histograms filled pages and pages of his broad notebooks.

It was the first time that James Holden had ever seen a team of
researchers plow into a problem, running a cold and icy scientific
investigation to ascertain precisely how much cause produced how much
effect. Holden, who had taken what he wanted or needed as the time came,
began to understand the desirability of full and careful programming. The
whole affair intrigued him and interested him. He plunged in with a will
and gave them all the help he could.

He had no time to be bored, and he did not mark the passage of time until
he arrived at his thirteenth birthday.

Then one night shortly after his birthday, James Holden discovered women
indirectly. He had his first erotic dream.

We shall not go into the details of this midnight introduction to the
arrival of manhood, for the simple reason that if we dwell on the
subject, someone is certain to attempt a dream-analysis and come up with
some flanged-up character-study or personality-quirk that really has
nothing to do with the mind or body of James Holden. The truth is that
his erotic dream was pleasantly stirring, but not entirely satisfactory.
It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't last very long. It awakened him
to the realization that knowledge is not the end-all of life, and that a
full understanding of the words, the medical terms, and the biology
involved did not tell him a thing about this primary drive of all life.

His total grasp of even the sideline issues was still dim. He came to a
partial understanding of why Jake Caslow had entertained late visitors of
the opposite sex, but he still could not quite see the reason why Jake
kept the collection of calendar photographs and paintings hung up around
the place. Crude jokes and rude talk heard long years before and dimly
remembered did not have much connection with the subject. To James
Holden, a "tomato" was still a vegetable, although he knew that some
botanists were willing to argue that the tomato was really a fruit.

For many days he watched Judge Carter and his wife with a critical
curiosity that their childless life had never known before. James found
that they did not act as if something new and strangely thrilling had
just hit the known universe. He felt that they should know about it.
Despite the fact that he knew everything that his textbooks could tell
him about sex and copulation he still had the quaint notion that the
reason why Judge Carter and his wife were childless was because they had
not yet gotten around to Doing It. He made no attempt to correlate this
oddity with its opposite in Jake Caslow's ladies of the night who seemed
to go on their merry way without conceiving.

He remembered the joking parry-and-thrust of that midnight talk between
Tim Fisher and Janet Bagley but it made no sense to him still. But as he
pondered the multitude of puzzlements, some of the answers fell partly
into place just as some of the matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle may lie
close to one another when they are dumped out of the box. Very dimly
James began to realize that this sort of thing was not New, but to the
contrary it had been going on for a long, long time. So long in fact that
neither Tim Fisher nor Janet Bagley had found it necessary to state
desire and raise objection respectively in simple clear sentences
containing subject, verb, and object. This much came to him and it
bothered him even more, now that he understood that they were bandying
their meanings lightly over a subject so vital, so important, so--so
completely personal.

Then, in that oddly irrational corner of his brain that neither knowledge
nor information had been adequate to rationalize nor had experience
arrived to supply the explanation, James Holden's limited but growing
comprehension arrived at a conclusion that was reasonable within its
limited framework. Judge Carter and his wife occupied separate bedrooms
and had therefore never Done It. Conversely, Tim and Janet Fisher from
their midnight discussion obviously Knew What It Was All About. James
wondered whether they had Done It yet, and he also wondered whether he
could tell by listening to their discussions and conversations now that
they'd been married at least long enough to have Tried It.

With a brand new and very interesting subject to study, James lost
interest in the program of concentrated research. James Holden found that
all he had to do to arrange a trip to Shipmont was to state his desire to
go and the length of his visit. The judge deemed both reasonable, Mrs.
Carter packed James a bag, and off he went.

       *       *       *       *       *

The house on Martin's Hill was about the same, with some improvement such
as a coat of paint and some needed repair work. The grounds had been
worked over, but it was going to take a number of years of concentrated
gardening to de-weed the tangled lawn and to cut the undergrowth in the
thin woodsy back area where James had played in concealment.

But the air inside was changed. Janet, as Mrs. Bagley, had been as close
to James Holden as any substitute mother could have been. Now she seemed
preoccupied and too busy with her own life to act more than pleasantly
polite. He could have been visiting the home of a friend instead of
returning to the domicile he had created, in which he had provided her
with a home--for herself and a frightened little girl. She asked him how
he had been and what he was doing, but he felt that this was more a
matter of taking up time than real interest. He had the feeling that
somewhere deep inside, her soul was biting its fingernails. She spoke of
Martha with pride and hope, she asked how Judge Carter was making out and
whether Martha would be able to finish her schooling via Holden's
machine.

James believed this was her problem. Martha had been educated far beyond
her years. She could no more enter school now than he could; unwittingly
he'd made Martha a misfit, too. So James tried to explain that part of
the study undertaken in Judge Carter's program had been the question of
what to do about Martha.

The professionals studying the case did not know yet whether Martha would
remain ahead of her age group, or whether to let her loaf it out until
her age group caught up with her, or whether to give Martha everything
she could take as fast as she could take it. This would make a female
counterpart of James Holden to study.

But knowing that there were a number of very brilliant scientists,
educators, and psychologists working on Martha's problem did not cheer up
Mrs. Janet Fisher as much as James thought it should. Yet as he watched
her, he could not say that Tim Fisher's wife was _unhappy_.

Tim, on the other hand, looked fine. James watched them together as
critically curious as he'd been in watching the Judge and Mrs. Carter.
Tim was gentle with his wife, tender, polite, and more than willing to
wait on her. From their talk and chit-chat, James could detect nothing.
There were still elisions, questions answered with a half-phrase,
comments added with a disconnected word and replied in another word
that--in cold print--would appear to have no bearing on the original
subject. This sort of thing told James nothing. Judge Carter and his wife
did the same; if there were any difference to be noted it was only in the
basic subject materials. The judge and his wife were inclined more toward
discussions of political questions and judicial problems, whereas Tim and
Janet Fisher were more interested in music, movies, and the general trend
of the automobile repair business; or more to the point, whether to
expand the present facility in Shipmont, to open another branch
elsewhere, or to sell out to buy a really big operation in some sizable
city.

James saw a change in Martha, too. It had been months since he came back
home to supervise the removal of his belongings. Now Martha had filled
out. She was dressed in a shirt-and-skirt instead of the little jumper
dresses James remembered. Martha's hair was lightly wavy instead of
trimmed short, and she was wearing a very faint touch of color on her
lips. She wore tiny slippers with heels just a trifle higher than the
altitude recommended for a girl close to thirteen.

Ultimately they fell into animated chatter of their own, just as they
always had. There was a barrier between the pair of them and Martha's
mother and stepfather--slightly higher than the usual barrier erected
between children and their adults because of their educational adventures
together. They had covered reams and volumes together. Martha's mother
was interested in Holden's machine only when something specific came to
her attention that she did not wish to forget such as a recipe or a
pattern, and one very extensive course that enabled her to add a column
of three-digit numbers by the whole lines instead of taking each column
digit by digit. Tim Fisher himself had deeper interests, but nearly all
of them directed at making Tim Fisher a better manager of the automobile
repair business. There had been some discussion of the possibility that
Tim Fisher might memorize some subject such as the names of all baseball
players and their yearly and lifetime scoring, fielding, and playing
averages, training for him to go as a contestant on one of the big money
giveaway shows. This never came to pass; Tim Fisher did not have any
spectacular qualities about him that would land him an invitation. So
Tim's work with Holden's machine had been straightforward studies in
mechanics and bookkeeping and business management--plus a fine repertoire
of bawdy songs he had rung in on the sly and subsequently used at
parties.

James and Martha had taken all they wanted of education and available
information, sometimes with plan and the guidance of schoolbooks and
sometimes simply because they found the subject of interest. In the past
they'd had discussions of problems in understanding; they'd talked of
things that parents and elders would have considered utterly impossible
to discuss with young minds. With this communion of interests, they fell
back into their former pattern of first joining the general conversation
politely and then gradually confining their remarks to one another until
there were two conversations going on at the same time, one between
James and Martha and another between Janet and Tim. Again, the vocal
interference and cross-talk became too high, and it was Tim and Janet who
left the living room to mix a couple of highballs and start dinner.

The chatter continued, but now with a growing strain on the part of young
James Holden.

He wanted to switch to a more personal topic of conversation but he did
not know how to accomplish this feat. There was plenty of interest but it
was more clinical than passionate; he was not stirred to yearning, he
felt no overwhelming desire to hold Martha's hand nor to feel the
softness of her face, yet there was a stirring urge to make some form of
contact. But he had no idea of how to steer the conversation towards
personal lines that might lead into something that would justify a
gesture towards her. It began to work on him. The original clinical urge
to touch her just to see what reaction would obtain changed into a
personal urge that grew higher as he found that he could not kick the
conversational ball in that direction. The idea of putting an arm about
her waist as he had seen men embrace their girls on television was a
pleasing thought; he wanted to find out if kissing was as much fun as it
was made up to be.

But instead of offering him any encouragement, or even giving him a
chance to start shifting the conversation, Martha went prattling on and
on and on about a book she'd read recently.

It did not occur to James Holden that Martha Bagley might entertain the
idea of physical contact of some mild sort on an experimental basis. He
did not even consider the possibility that he might _start_ her thinking
about it. So instead of closing the distance between them like a gentle
wolf, watching with sly calculation to ascertain whether her response was
positive, negative, or completely neutral, he sat like a post and fretted
inwardly because he couldn't control the direction of their conversation.

Ultimately, of course, Martha ran out of comment on her book and then
there fell a deadly silence because James couldn't dredge up another
lively subject. Desperately, he searched through his mind for an opening.
There was none. The bright patter between male and female characters in
books he'd smuggled started off on too high a level on both sides. Books
that were written adequately for his understanding of this problem signed
off with the trite explanation that they lived happily ever afterwards
but did not say a darned thing about how they went about it. The slightly
lurid books that he'd bought, delivered in plain wrappers, gave some very
illuminating descriptions of the art or act, but the affair opened with
the scene all set and the principal characters both ready, willing, and
able. There was no conversational road map that showed the way that led
two people from a calm and unemotional discussion into an area that might
lead to something entirely else.

In silence, James Holden sat there sinking deeper and deeper into his own
misery.

The more he thought about it, the farther he found himself from his
desire. Later in the process, he knew, came a big barrier called
"stealing a kiss," and James with his literal mind provided this game
with an aggressor, a defender, and the final extraction by coercion or
violence of the first osculatory contact. If the objective could be
carried off without the defense repulsing the advance, the rest was
supposed to come with less trouble. But here he was floundering before he
began, let alone approaching the barrier that must be an even bigger
problem.

Briefly he wished that it were Christmas, because at Christmas people
hung up mistletoe. Mistletoe would not only provide an opening by
custom and tradition, it also cut through this verbal morass of trying
to lead up to the subject by the quick process of supplying the subject
itself. But it was a long time before Christmas. James abandoned that
ill-conceived idea and went on sinking deep and feeling miserable.

Then Martha's mother took James out of his misery by coming in to
announce dinner. Regretfully, James sighed for his lost moments and
helplessness, then got to his feet and held out a hand for Martha.

She put her hand in his and allowed him to lift her to her feet by
pulling. The first contact did not stir him at all, though it was warm
and pleasant. Once the pulling pressure was off, he continued to hold
Martha's hand, tentatively and experimentally.

Then Janet Fisher showered shards of ice with a light laugh. "You two can
stand there holding hands," she said. "But I'm going to eat it while it's
on the table."

James Holden's hand opened with the swiftness of a reflex action, almost
as fast as the wink of an eye at the flash of light or the body's jump at
the crack of sound. Martha's hand did not drop because she, too, was
holding his and did not let go abruptly. She giggled, gave his hand a
little squeeze and said, "Let's go. I'm hungry too."

None of which solved James Holden's problem. But during dinner his
personal problem slipped aside because he discovered another slight
change in Janet Fisher's attitude. He puzzled over it quietly, but
managed to eat without any apparent preoccupation. Dinner took about a
half hour, after which they spent another fifteen minutes over coffee,
with Janet refusing her second cup. She disappeared at the first shuffle
of a foot under the table, while James and Martha resumed their years-old
chore of clearing the table and tackling the dishwashing problem.

Alone in the kitchen, James asked Martha, "What's with your mother?"

"What do you mean, what's with her?"

"She's changed, somehow."

"In what way?"

"She seems sort of inner-thoughtful. Cheerful enough but as if
something's bothering her that she can't stop."

"That all?"

"No," he went on. "She hiked upstairs like a shot right after dinner was
over. Tim raced after her. And she said no to coffee."

"Oh, that. She's just a little upset in the middle."

"But why?"

"She's pregnant."

"Pregnant?"

"Sure. Can't you see?"

"Never occurred to me to look."

"Well, it's so," said Martha, scouring a coffee cup with an exaggerated
flourish. "And I'm going to have a half-sibling."

"But look--"

"Don't _you_ go getting upset," said Martha. "It's a natural process
that's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years, you know."

"When?"

"Not for months," said Martha. "It just happened."

"Too bad she's unhappy."

"She's very happy. Both of them wanted it."

James considered this. He had never come across Voltaire's observation
that marriage is responsible for the population because it provides the
maximum opportunity with the maximum temptation. But it was beginning to
filter slowly into his brain that the ways and means were always
available and there was neither custom, tradition, nor biology that
dictated a waiting period or a time limit. It was a matter of choice, and
when two people want their baby, and have no reason for not having their
baby, it is silly to wait.

"Why did they wait so long if they both want it?"

"Oh," replied Martha in a matter-of-fact voice, "they've been working at
it right along."

James thought some more. He'd come to see if he could detect any
difference between the behavior of Judge and Mrs. Carter, and the
behavior of Tim and Janet Fisher. He saw little, other than the standard
differences that could be accounted for by age and temperament. Tim and
Janet did not really act as if they'd Discovered Something New. Tim, he
knew, was a bit more sweet and tender to Janet than he'd been before, but
there was nothing startling in his behavior. If there were any difference
as compared to their original antics, James knew that it was undoubtedly
due to the fact that they didn't have to stand lollygagging in the
hallway for two hours while Janet half-heartedly insisted that Tim go
home. He went on to consider his original theory that the Carters were
childless because they occupied separate bedrooms; by some sort of
deduction he came to the conclusion that he was right, because Tim and
Janet Fisher were making a baby and they slept in the same bedroom.

He went on in a whirl; maybe the Carters didn't want children, but it was
more likely that they too had tried but it hadn't happened.

And then it came to him suddenly that here he was in the kitchen alone
with Martha Bagley, discussing the very delicate subject. But he was
actually no closer to his problem of becoming a participant than he'd
been an hour ago in the living room. It was one thing to daydream the
suggestion when you can also daydream the affirmative response, but it
was another matter when the response was completely out of your control.
James was not old enough in the ways of the world to even consider
outright asking; even if he had considered it, he did not know how to
ask.

       *       *       *       *       *

The evening went slowly. Janet and Tim returned about the time the
dishwashing process was complete. Janet proposed a hand of bridge; Tim
suggested poker, James voted for pinochle, and Martha wanted to toss a
coin between canasta or gin rummy. They settled it by dealing a shuffled
deck face upward until the ace of hearts landed in front of Janet,
whereupon they played bridge until about eleven o'clock. It was
interesting bridge; James and Martha had studied bridge columns and books
for recreation; against them were aligned Tim and Janet, who played with
the card sense developed over years of practice. The youngsters knew the
theories, their bidding was as precise as bridge bidding could be made
with value-numbering, honor-counting, response-value addition, and all
of the other systems. They understood all of the coups and end plays
complete with classic examples. But having all of the theory engraved on
their brains did not temporarily imprint the location of every card
already played, whereas Tim and Janet counted their played cards
automatically and made up in play what they missed in stratagem.

At eleven, Janet announced that she was tired, Tim joined her; James
turned on the television set and he and Martha watched a ten-year-old
movie for an hour. Finally Martha yawned.

And James, still floundering, mentally meandered back to his wish that it
were Christmas so that mistletoe would provide a traditional gesture of
affection, and came up with a new and novel idea that he expressed in a
voice that almost trembled:

"Tired, Martha?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, why don't I kiss you good night and send you off to bed."

"All right, if you want to."

"Why?"

"Oh--just--well, everybody does it."

She sat near him on the low divan, looking him full in the face but
making no move, no gesture, no change in her expression. He looked at her
and realized that he was not sure of how to take hold of her, how to
reach for her, how to proceed.

She said, "Well, go ahead."

"I'm going to."

"When?"

"As soon as I get good and ready."

"Are we going to sit here all night?"

In its own way, it reminded James of the equally un-brilliant
conversation between Janet and Tim on the homecoming after their first
date. He chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," he said in a slightly strained voice. "I'm thinking that here
we sit like a couple of kids that don't know what it's all about."

"Well," said Martha, "aren't we?"

"Yes," he said reluctantly, "I guess we are. But darn it, Martha, how
does a guy grow up? How does a guy learn these things?" His voice was
plaintive, it galled him to admit that for all of his knowledge and his
competence, he was still just a bit more than a child emotionally.

"I don't know," she said in a voice as plaintive as his. "I wouldn't know
where to look to find it. I've tried. All I know," she said with a
quickening voice, "is that somewhere between now and then I'll learn how
to toss talk back and forth the way they do."

"Yes," he said glumly.

"James," said Martha brightly, "we should be somewhat better than a pair
of kids who don't know what it's all about, shouldn't we?"

"That's what bothers me," he admitted. "We're neither of us stupid. Lord
knows we've plenty of education between us, but--"

"James, how did we get that education?"

"Through my father's machine."

"No, you don't understand. What I mean is that no matter how we got our
education, we had to learn, didn't we?"

"Why, yes. In a--"

"Now, let's not get involved in another philosophical argument. Let's run
this one right on through to the end. Why are we sitting here fumbling?
Because we haven't yet learned how to behave like adults."

"I suppose so. But it strikes me that anything should be--"

"James, for goodness' sake. Here we are, the two people in the whole
world who have studied everything we know together, and when we hit
something we can't study--you want to go home and kiss your old machine,"
she finished with a remarkable lack of serial logic. She laughed
nervously.

"What's so darned funny?" he demanded sourly.

"Oh," she said, "you're afraid to kiss me because you don't know how, and
I'm afraid to let you because I don't know how, and so we're talking away
a golden opportunity to find out. James," she said seriously, "if you
fumble a bit, I won't know the difference because I'm no smarter than you
are."

She leaned forward holding her face up, her lips puckered forward in
a tight little rosebud. She closed her eyes and waited. Gingerly and
hesitantly he leaned forward and met her lips with a pucker of his own.
It was a light contact, warm, and ended quickly with a characteristic
smack that seemed to echo through the silent house. It had all of the
emotional charge of a mother-in-law's peck, but it served its purpose
admirably. They both opened their eyes and looked at one another from
four inches of distance. Then they tried it again and their second was a
little longer and a little warmer and a little closer, and it ended with
less of the noise of opening a fruit jar.

Martha moved over close beside him and put her head on his shoulder;
James responded by putting an arm around her, and together they tried to
assemble themselves in the comfortably affectionate position seen in
movies and on television. It didn't quite work that way. There seemed to
be too many arms and legs and sharp corners for comfort, or when they
found a contortion that did not create interferences with limb or corner,
it was a strain on the spine or a twist in the neck. After a few minutes
of this coeducational wrestling they decided almost without effort to
return to the original routine of kissing. By more luck than good
management they succeeded in an embrace that placed no strain and which
met them almost face to face. They puckered again and made contact, then
pressure came and spread out the pair of tightly pursed rosebuds. Martha
moved once to get her nose free of his cheek for a breath of air.

At the rate they were going, they might have hit paydirt this time, but
just at the point where James should have relaxed to enjoy the long kiss
he began to worry: There is something planned and final about the quick
smacking kiss, but how does one gracefully terminate the long-term,
high-pressure jobs? So instead of enjoying himself, James planned and
discarded plans until he decided that the way he'd do it would be to
exert a short, heavy pressure and then cease with the same action as in
the quick-smack variety.

It worked fine, but as he opened his eyes to look at her, she was there
with her eyes still closed and her lips still ready. He took a deep
breath and plunged in again. Having determined how to start, James was
now going to experiment with endings.

They came up for air successfully again, and then spent some time
wriggling around into another position. The figure-fitting went easier
this time, after threshing around through three or four near-comforts
they came to rest in a pleasantly natural position and James Holden
became nervously aware of the fact that his right hand was cupped over
a soft roundness that filled his palm almost perfectly. He wondered
whether to remove it quickly to let her know that this intimacy wasn't
intentional; slowly so that (maybe, he hoped) she wouldn't realize that
it had been there; or to leave it there because it felt pleasant. While
he was wondering, Martha moved around because she could not twist her
neck all the way around like an owl, and she wanted to see him. The move
solved his problem but presented the equally great problem of how he
would try it again.

James allowed a small portion of his brain to think about this, and put
the rest of his mind at ease by kissing her again. Halfway through, he
felt warm moistness as her lips parted slightly, then the tip of her
tongue darted forward between his lips to quest against his tongue in a
caress so fleeting that it was withdrawn before he could react--and James
reacted by jerking his head back faster than if he had been clubbed in
the face. He was still tingling with the shock, a pleasant shock but none
the less a shock, when Martha giggled lightly.

He bubbled and blurted, "Wha--whu--?"

She told him nervously, "I've been wanting to try that ever since I read
it in a book."

He shivered. "What book?" he demanded in almost a quaver.

"A paperback of Tim's. Mother calls them, Tim's sex and slay stories."
Martha giggled again. "You jumped."

"Sure did. I was surprised. Do it again."

"I don't think so."

"Didn't you like it?"

"Did you?"

"I don't know. I didn't have time to find out."

"Oh."

He kissed her again and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally he moved
back an inch and said, "What's the matter?"

"I don't think we should. Maybe we ought to wait until we're older."

"Not fair," he complained. "You had all the warning."

"But--"

"Didn't you like it?" he asked.

"Well, it gave me the most tickly tingle."

"And all I got was a sort of mild electric shock. Come on."

"No."

"Well, then, I'll do it to you."

"All right. Just once."

Leaping to the end of this midnight research, there are three primary
ways of concluding, namely: 1, physical satisfaction; 2, physical
exhaustion; and 3, interruption. We need not go into sub-classifications
or argue the point. James and Martha were not emotionally ready to
conclude with mutual defloration. Ultimately they fell asleep on the
divan with their arms around each other. They weren't interrupted;
they awoke as the first flush of daylight brightened the sky, and with
one more rather chaste kiss, they parted to fall into the deep slumber of
complete physical and emotional exhaustion.




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


James Holden's ride home on the train gave him a chance to think, alone
and isolated from all but superficial interruptions. He felt that he was
quite the bright young man.

He noticed with surreptitious pride that folks no longer eyed him with
sly, amused, knowing smiles whenever he opened a newspaper. Perhaps some
of their amusement had been the sight of a youngster struggling with a
full-spread page, employing arms that did not quite make the span. But
most of all he hated the condescending tolerance; their everlasting
attitude that everything he did was "cute" like the little girl who
decked herself out in mother's clothing from high heels and brassiere
to evening gown, costume jewelry, and a fumbled smear of makeup.

That was over. He'd made it to a couple of months over fourteen, he'd
finally reached a stature large enough so that he did not have to prove
his right to buy a railroad ticket, nor climb on the suitcase bar so that
he could peer over the counter. Newsdealers let him alone to pick his own
fare instead of trying to "save his money" by shoving Mickey Mouse at him
and putting his own choice back on its pile.

He had not succeeded in gaining his legal freedom, but as Ward of the
State under Judge Carter he had other interesting expectations that he
might not have stumbled upon. Carter had connections; there was talk of
James' entering a comprehensive examination at some university, where the
examining board, forearmed with the truth about his education, would test
James to ascertain his true level of comprehension. He could of course
collect his bachelor's degree once he complied with the required work
of term papers written to demonstrate that his information could be
interwoven into the formation of an opinion, or reflection, or view
of some topic. Master's degrees and doctor's degrees required the
presentation of some original area of study, competence in his chosen
field, and the development of some facet of the field that had not been
touched before. These would require more work, but could be handled in
time.

In fact, he felt that he was in pretty good shape. There were a couple
of sticky problems, still. He wanted Paul Brennan to get his comeuppance,
but he knew that there was no evidence available to support his story
about the slaughter of his parents. It galled him to realize that
cold-blooded, premeditated murder for personal profit and avarice could
go undetected. But until there could be proffered some material evidence,
Brennan's word was as good as his in any court. So Brennan was getting
away with it.

The other little item was his own independence. He wanted it. That he
might continue living with Judge Carter had no bearing. No matter how
benevolent the tyranny, James wanted no part of it. In fighting for his
freedom, James Holden's foot had slipped. He'd used his father's machine
on Martha, and that was a legal error.

Martha? James was not really sorry he'd slipped. Error or not, he'd made
of her the only person in the world who understood his problem wholly and
sympathetically. Otherwise he would be completely alone.

Oh yes, he felt that he was quite the bright young man. He was coming
along fine and getting somewhere. His very pleasant experiences in the
house on Martin's Hill had raised him from a boy to a young man; he was
now able to grasp the appreciation of the Big Drive, to understand some
of the reasons why adults acted in the way that they did. He hadn't
managed another late session of sofa with Martha, but there had been
little incidental meetings in the hallway or in the kitchen with the
exchange of kisses, and they'd boldly kissed goodbye at the railroad
station under her mother's smile.

He could not know Janet Fisher's mind, of course. Janet, mother to a girl
entering young womanhood, worried about all of the things that such a
mother worries about and added a couple of things that no other mother
ever had. She could hardly slip her daughter a smooth version of the
birds and the bees and people when she knew full well that Martha had
gone through a yard or so of books on the subject that covered everything
from the advanced medical to the lurid exposé and from the salacious to
the ribald. Janet could only hope that her daughter valued her chastity
according to convention despite the natural human curiosity which in
Martha would be multiplied by the girl's advanced education. Janet knew
that young people were marrying younger and younger as the years went on;
she saw young James Holden no longer as a rather odd youngster with
abilities beyond his age. She saw him now as the potential mate for
Martha. And when they embraced and kissed at the station, Janet did not
realize that she was accepting this salute as the natural act of two
sub-adults, rather than a pair of precocious kids.

At any rate, James Holden felt very good. Now he had a girl. He had
acquired one more of the many attitudes of the Age of Maturity.

So James settled down to read his newspaper, and on page three he saw a
photograph and an article that attracted his attention. The photograph
was of a girl no more than seven years old holding a baby at least a year
old. Beside them was a boy of about nine. In the background was a
miserable hovel made of crude lumber and patched windows. This couple and
their baby had been discovered by a geological survey outfit living in
the backwoods hills. Relief, aid, and help were being rushed, and the
legislature was considering ways and means of their schooling. Neither
of them could read or write.

James read the article, and his first thought was to proffer his help.
Aid and enlightenment they needed, and they needed it quickly. And then
he stopped immediately because he could do nothing to educate them unless
they already possessed the ability to read.

His second thought was one of dismay. His exultation came down with a
dull thud. Within seconds he realized that the acquisition of a girl was
no evidence of his competent maturity. The couple photographed were human
beings, but intellectually they were no more than animals with a slight
edge in vocabulary. It made James Holden sick at heart to read the
article and to realize that such filth and ignorance could still go on.
But it took a shock of such violence to make James realize that clams,
guppies, worms, fleas, cats, dogs, and the great whales reproduced their
kind; intellect, education and mature competence under law had nothing to
do with the process whatsoever.

And while his heart was still unhappy, he turned to page four and read an
open editorial that discussed the chances of The Educational Party in the
coming Election Year.

       *       *       *       *       *

James blinked.

"Splinter" parties, the editorial said, seldom succeeded in gaining a
primary objective. They only succeeded in drawing votes from the other
major parties, in splitting the total ballot, and dividing public
opinion. On the other hand, they did provide a useful political
weathervane for the major parties to watch most carefully. If the
splinter party succeeded in capturing a large vote, it was an indication
that the People found their program favorable and upon such evidence it
behooved the major parties to mend their political fences--or to relocate
them.

Education, said the editorial, was a primary issue and had been one
for years. There had been experimenting with education ever since
the Industrial Revolution uncovered the fact, in about 1900, that
backbreaking physical toil was going to be replaced by educated workers
operating machinery.

Then the editorial quoted Judge Norman L. Carter:

"'For many years,' said Judge Carter, 'we have deplored the situation
whereby a doctor or a physicist is not considered fully educated until he
has reached his middle or even late twenties. Yet instead of speeding up
the curriculum in the early school years, we have introduced such
important studies as social graces, baton twirling, interpretive painting
and dancing, and a lot of other fiddle-faddle which graduates students
who cannot spell, nor read a book, nor count above ten without taking off
their shoes. Perhaps such studies are necessary to make sound citizens
and graceful companions. I shall not contest the point. However, I
contend that a sound and basic schooling should be included--and when I
so contend I am told by our great educators that the day is not long
enough nor the years great enough to accomplish this very necessary end.

"'Gentlemen, we leaders of The Education Party propose to accomplish
precisely that which they said cannot be done!'"

The editorial closed with the terse suggestion: Educator--Educate
thyself!

James Holden sat stunned.

_What was Judge Carter doing?_

       *       *       *       *       *

James Holden arrived to find the home of Judge Norman L. Carter an upset
madhouse. He was stopped at the front door by a secretary at a small desk
whose purpose was to screen the visitors and to log them in and out in
addition to being decorative. Above her left breast was a large enamelled
button, red on top, white in the middle as a broad stripe from left to
right, and blue below. Across the white stripe was printed CARTER in
bold, black letters. From in back of the pin depended two broad silk
ribbons that cascaded forward over the stuffing in her brassiere and hung
free until they disappeared behind the edge of the desk. She eyed James
with curiosity. "Young man, if you're looking for throwaways for your
civics class, you'll have to wait until we're better organized--"

James eyed her with cold distaste. "I am James Quincy Holden," he told
her, "and you have neither the authority nor the agility necessary to
prevent my entrance."

"You are--I what?"

"I live here," he told her flatly. "Or didn't they provide you with this
tidbit of vital statistic?"

Wheels rotated behind the girl's eyes somewhere, and memory cells linked
into comprehension. "Oh!--You're James."

"I said that first," he replied. "Where's Judge Carter?"

"He's in conference and cannot be disturbed."

"Your objection is overruled. I shall disturb him as soon as I find out
precisely what has been going on."

He went on in through the short hallway and found audible confusion. Men
in groups of two to four stood in corners talking in bedlam. There was a
layer of blue smoke above their heads that broke into skirls as various
individuals left one group to join another. Through this vocal mob scene
James went veering from left to right to avoid the groupings. He stood
with polite insolence directly in front of two men sitting on the stairs
until they made room for his passage--still talking as he went between
them. In his room, three were sitting on the bed and the chair holding
glasses and, of course, smoking like the rest. James dropped his
overnight bag on a low stand and headed for his bathroom. One of the men
caught sight of him and said, "Hey kid, scram!"

James looked at the man coldly. "You happen to be using my bedroom. You
should be asking my permission to do so, or perhaps apologizing for not
having asked me before you moved in. I have no intention of leaving."

"Get the likes of him!"

"Wait a moment, Pete. This is the Holden kid."

"The little genius, huh?"

James said, "I am no genius. I do happen to have an education that
provides me with the right to criticize your social behavior. I will
neither be insulted nor patronized."

"Listen to him, will you!"

James turned and with the supreme gesture of contempt, he left the door
open.

He wound his way through the place to Judge Carter's study and home
office, strode towards it with purpose and reached for the doorknob. A
voice halted him: "Hey kid, you can't go in there!"

Turning to face the new voice, James said calmly,

"You mean 'may not' which implies that I have asked your permission. Your
statement is incorrect as phrased and erroneous when corrected."

He turned the knob and entered. Judge Carter sat at his desk with two
men; their discussion ceased with the sound of the doorknob. The judge
looked up in annoyance. "Hello, James. You shouldn't have come in here.
We're busy. I'll let you know when I'm free."

"You'd better make time for me right now," said James angrily. "I'd like
to know what's going on here."

"This much I'll tell you quickly. We're planning a political campaign.
Now, please--"

"I know you're planning a political campaign," replied James. "But if
you're proposing to campaign on the platform of a reform in education,
I suggest that you educate your henchmen in the rudimentary elements of
polite speech and gentle behavior. I dislike being ordered out of my room
by usurpers who have the temerity to address me as 'hey kid'."

"Relax, James. I'll send them out later."

"I'd suggest that you tell them off," snapped James. He turned on his
heel and left, heading for the cellar. In the workshop he found Professor
White and Jack Cowling presiding over the machine. In the chair with the
headset on sat the crowning insult of all:

Paul Brennan leafing through a heavy sheaf of papers, reading and
intoning the words of political oratory.

Unable to lick them, Brennan had joined them--or, wondered young Holden,
was Judge Norman L. Carter paying for Brennan's silence with some plum of
political patronage?

       *       *       *       *       *

As he stood there, the years of persecution rose strong in the mind of
James Holden. Brennan, the man who'd got away with murder and would
continue to get away with it because there was no shred of evidence, no
witness, nothing but James Holden's knowledge of Brennan's actions when
he'd thought himself unseen in his calloused treatment of James Holden's
dying mother; Brennan's critical inspection of the smashed body of his
father, coldly checking the dead flesh to be sure beyond doubt; the cruel
search about the scene of the 'accident' for James himself--interrupted
only by the arrival of a Samaritan, whose name was never known to James
Holden. In James rose the violent resentment of the years, the certain
knowledge that any act of revenge upon Paul Brennan would be viewed as
cold-blooded premeditated murder without cause or motive.

And then came the angry knowledge that simple slaughter was too good for
Paul Brennan. He was not a dog to be quickly released from misery by a
merciful death. Paul Brennan should suffer until he cried for death as a
blessed release from daily living.

James Holden, angry, silently, unseen by the preoccupied workers,
stole across the room to the main switch-panel, flipped up a small
half-concealed cover, and flipped a small button.

There came a sharp _Crack_! that shattered the silence and
re-echoed again and again through the room. The panel that held the
repeater-circuit of the Holden Educator bulged outward; jets of smoke
lanced out of broken metal, bulged corners, holes and skirled into little
clouds that drifted upward--trailing a flowing billow of thick, black,
pungent smoke that reached the low ceiling and spread outward, fanwise,
obscuring the ceiling like a low-lying nimbus.

At the sound of the report, the man in the chair jumped as if he'd been
stabbed where he sat.

"Ouyeowwww!" yowled Brennan in a pitiful ululation. He fell forward from
the chair, asprawl on wobbly hands and knees, on elbows and knees as he
tried to press away the torrent of agony that hammered back and forth
from temple to temple. James watched Brennan with cold detachment,
Professor White and Jack Cowling looked on in paralyzed horror. Slowly,
oh, so slowly, Paul Brennan managed to squirm around until he was sitting
on the floor still cradling his head between his hands.

James said, "I'm afraid that you're going to have a rough time whenever
you hear the word 'entrenched'." And then, as Brennan made no response,
James Holden went on, "Or were you by chance reading the word
'pedagogue'?"

At the word, Brennan howled again; the pain was too much for him and he
toppled sidewise to writhe in kicking agony.

James smiled coldly, "I'm sorry that you weren't reading the word 'the'.
The English language uses more of them than the word 'pedagogue'."

With remarkable effort, Brennan struggled to his feet; he lurched toward
James. "I'll teach you, you little--"

"Pedagogue?" asked James.

The shock rocked Brennan right to the floor again.

"Better sit there and think," said James coldly. "You come within a dozen
yards of me and I'll say--"

"No! Don't!" screamed Paul Brennan. "Not again!"

"Now," asked James, "what's going on here?"

"He was memorizing a political speech," said Jack Cowling. "What did you
do?"

"I merely fixed my machine so that it will not be used again."

"But you shouldn't have done that!"

"You shouldn't have been using it for this purpose," replied James. "It
wasn't intended to further political ambitions."

"But Judge Carter--"

"Judge Carter doesn't own it," said James. "I do."

"I'm sure that Judge Carter can explain everything."

"Tell him so. Then add that if he'd bothered to give me the time of day,
I'd be less angry. He's not to be interrupted, is he? I'm ordered out of
my room, am I? Well, go tell the judge that his political campaign has
been stopped by a fourteen-year-old boy who knows which button to push!
I'll wait here."

Professor White took off; Jack Cowling smiled crookedly and shook his
head at James. "You're a rash young man," he said. "What did you do to
Brennan, here?"

James pointed at the smoke curling up out of the panel. "I put in a
destructive charge to addle the circuit as a preventive measure against
capture or use by unauthorized persons," he replied. "So I pushed the
button just as Brennan was trying to memorize the word--"

"Don't!" cried Brennan in a pleading scream.

"You mean he's going to throw a fit every time he hears the word--"

"No! No! Can't anybody talk without saying--Ouwwouooo!"

"Interesting," commented James. "It seems to start as soon as the
fore-reading part of his mind predicts that the word may be next, or
when he thinks about it."

"Do you mean that Brennan is going to be like the guy who could win the
world if he sat on the top of a hill for one hour and did not think of
the word 'Swordfish'? Except that he'll be out of pain so long as he
doesn't think of the word--"

"Thing I'm interested in is that maybe our orator here doesn't know the
definition thoroughly. Tell me, dear 'Uncle' Paul, does the word
'teacher' give--Sorry. I was just experimenting. Wasn't as bad as--"

Gritting his teeth and wincing with pain, Brennan said, "Stop it!
Even the word 'sch-(wince)-ool' hurts like--" He thought for a
moment and then went on with his voice rising to a pitiful
howl of agony at the end: "Even the name 'Miss Adams' gives
me a fleeting headache all over my body, and Miss Adams was
on--ly--my--third--growww--school--Owuuuuoooo--teach--earrrrrrr--Owwww!"

Brennan collapsed in his chair just as Judge Carter came in with his
white mane flying and hot fire in his attitude. "What goes on here?" he
stormed at James.

"I stopped your campaign."

"Now see here, you young--"

Judge Carter stopped abruptly, took a deep breath and calmed himself with
a visible effort to control his rage. "James," he said in a quieter
voice, "Can you repair the damage quickly?"

"Yes--but I won't."

"And why not?"

"Because one of the things my father taught me was the danger of allowing
this machine to fall into the hands of ruthless men with political
ambition."

"And I am a ruthless man with political ambition?"

James nodded. "Under the guise of studying me and my machine," he said,
"you've been using it to train speakers, and to educate ward-heelers.
You've been building a political machine by buying delegates. Not with
money, of course, because that is illegal. With knowledge, and because
knowledge, education, and information are intangibles and no legality
has been established, and this is all very legal."

Judge Carter smiled distantly. "It is bad to elevate the mind of the
average ward-heeler? To provide the smalltime politician with a fine
grasp of the National Problem and how his little local problems fit into
the big picture? Is this making a better world, or isn't it?"

"It's making a political machine that can't be defeated."

"Think not? What makes you think it can't?"

"Pedagogue!" said James.

"Yeowwww!"

The judge whirled to look at Brennan. "What was--that?" asked the judge.

James explained what had happened, then: "I've mentioned hazards. This is
what would happen if a fuse blew in the middle of a course. Maybe he can
be trained out of it, and maybe not. You'll have to try, of course. But
think of what would happen if you and your political machine put these
things into schools and fixed them to make a voltage twitch or something
while the student was reading the word 'republican'. You'd end up with a
single-party system."

"And get myself assassinated by a group of righteously irate citizens,"
said Judge Carter. "Which I would very warmly deserve. On the other hand,
suppose we 'treated' people to feel anguish at thoughts of murder or
killing, theft, treason, and other forms of human deviltry?"

"Now that might be a fine idea."

"It would not," said Judge Carter flatly. James Holden's eyes widened,
and he started to say something but the judge held up his hand, fingers
outspread, and began to tick off his points finger by finger as he went
on: "Where would we be in the case of enemy attack? Could our policemen
aim their guns at a vicious criminal if they were conditioned against
killing? Could our butchers operate; must our housewives live among a
horde of flies? Theft? Well, it's harder to justify, James, but it would
change the game of baseball as in 'stealing a base' or it would ruin the
game of love as in 'stealing a kiss'. It would ruin the mystery-story
field for millions of people who really haven't any inclination to go out
and rob, steal, or kill. Treason? Our very revered Declaration of
Independence is an article of Treason in the eyes of King George Third;
it wouldn't be very hard to draw a charge of treason against a man who
complained about the way the Government is being run. Now, one more
angle, James. The threat or fear of punishment hasn't deterred any
potential felon so far as anybody knows. And I hold the odd belief that
if we removed the quart of mixed felony, chicanery, falsehood, and
underhandedness from the human makeup, on that day the human race could
step down to take its place alongside of the cow, just one step ahead of
the worm.

"Now you accuse me of holding political ambition. I plead guilty of the
charge and demand to be shown by my accuser just what is undesirable
about ambition, be it political or otherwise. Have you no ambition? Of
course you have. Ambition drove your folks to create this machine and
ambition drove you to the fight for your freedom. Ambition is the
catalyst that lifts a man above his fellows and then lifts them also.
There is a sort of tradition in this country that a man must not openly
seek the office of the Presidency. I consider this downright silly. I
have announced my candidacy, and I intend to campaign for it as hard as
I can. I propose to make the problem of _education_ the most important
argument that has ever come up in a presidential campaign. I believe that
I shall win because I shall promise to provide this accelerated education
for everybody who wants it."

"And to do this you've used my machine," objected James.

"Did you intend to keep it for yourself?" snapped Judge Carter.

"No, but--"

"And when did you intend to release it?"

"As soon as I could handle it myself."

"Oh, fine!" jeered the judge sourly. "Now, let me orate on that subject
for a moment and then we'll get to the real meat of this argument. James,
there is no way of delivering this machine to the public without
delivering it to them through the hands of a capable Government agency.
If you try to release it as an individual you'll be swamped with cries of
anger and pleas for special consideration. The reactionaries will shout
that we're moving too fast and the progressives will complain that we
aren't moving fast enough. Teachers' organizations will say that we're
throwing teachers out of jobs, and little petty politicians will try to
slip their political plug into the daily course in Civics. Start your
company and within a week some Madison Avenue advertising agency will be
offering you several million dollars to let them convince people that
Hickory-Chickory Coffee is the only stuff they can pour down their gullet
without causing stomach pains, acid system, jittery nerves, sleepless
nights, flat feet, upset glands, and so on and on and on. Announce it;
the next day you'll have so many foreign spies in your bailiwick that
you'll have to hire a stadium to hold them. You'll be ducking
intercontinental ballistic missiles because there are people who would
kill the dog in order to get rid of the fleas. You'll start the biggest
war this planet has ever seen and it will go on long after you are killed
and your father's secret is lost--and after the fallout has died off,
we'll have another scientific race to recreate it. And don't think that
it can't be rediscovered by determined scientists who know that such a
thing as the Holden Electromechanical Educator is a reality."

"And how do you propose to prevent this war?"

"By broadcasting the secret as soon as we can; let the British and the
French and the Russians and the Germans and all the rest build it and
use it as wisely as they can program it. Which, by the way, James,
brings us right back to James Quincy Holden, Martha Bagley, and the
immediate future."

"Oh?"

"Yes. James, tell me after deliberation, at what point in your life did
you first believe that you had the competence to enter the adult world in
freedom to do as you believed right?"

"Um, about five or six, as I recall."

"What do you think now about those days?"

James shrugged. "I got along."

"Wasn't very well, was it?"

"No, but I was under a handicap, you know. I had to hide out."

"And now?"

"Well, if I had legal ruling, I wouldn't have to hide."

"Think you know everything you need to know to enter this adult world?"

"No man stops learning," parried James. "I think I know enough to start."

"James, no matter what you say, there is a very important but intangible
thing called 'judgment'. You have part of it, but not by far enough.
You've been studying the laws about ages and rights, James, but you've
missed a couple of them because you've been looking for evidence
favorable to your own argument. First, to become a duly elected member of
the House of Representatives, a man must be at least twenty-five years of
age. To be a Senator, he must be at least thirty. To be President, one
must be at least thirty-five. Have you any idea why the framers of the
Constitution of the United States placed such restrictions?"

"Well, I suppose it had to do with judgment?" replied James reluctantly.

"That--and _experience_. Experience in knowing people, in understanding
that there might be another side to any question, in realizing that you
must not approach every problem from your own purely personal point of
view nor expect it to be solved to your own private satisfaction or to
your benefit. Now, let's step off a distance and take a good look at
James Quincy Holden and see where he lacks the necessary ingredients."

"Yes, tell me," said James, sourly.

"Oh, I intend to. Let's take the statistics first. You're four-feet
eleven-inches tall, you weigh one-hundred and three pounds, and you're a
few weeks over fourteen. I suppose you know that you've still got one
more spurt of growth, sometimes known as the post-puberty-growth. You'll
probably put on another foot in the next couple of years, spread out a
bit across the shoulders, and that fuzz on your face will become a
collection of bristles. I suppose you think that any man in this room can
handle you simply because we're all larger than you are? Possibly true,
and one of the reasons why we can't give you a ticket and let you
proclaim yourself an adult. You can't carry the weight. But this isn't
all. Your muscles and your bones aren't yet in equilibrium. I could find
a man of age thirty who weighed one-oh-three and stood four-eleven. He
could pick you up and spin you like a top on his forefinger just because
his bones match his muscles nicely, and his nervous system and brain have
had experience in driving the body he's living in."

"Could be, but what has all this to do with me? It does not affect the
fact that I've been getting along in life."

"You get along. It isn't enough to 'get along.' You've got to have
judgment. You claim judgment, but still you realize that you can't handle
your own machine. You can't even come to an equitable choice in selecting
some agency to handle your machine. You can't decide upon a good outlet.
You believe that proclaiming your legal competence will provide you with
some mysterious protection against the wolves and thieves and ruthless
men with political ambition--that this ruling will permit you to keep it
to yourself until you decide that it is time to release it. You still
want to hide. You want to use it until you are so far above and beyond
the rest of the world that they can't catch up, once you give it to
everybody. You now object to my plans and programs, still not knowing
whether I intend to use it for good or for evil--and juvenile that you
are, it must be good or evil and cannot be an in-between shade of gray.
Men are heroes or villains to _you_; but _I_ must say with some
reluctance that the biggest crooks that ever held public office still
passed laws that were beneficial to their people. There is the area in
which you lack judgment, James. There and in your blindness."

"Blindness?"

"Blindness," repeated Judge Carter. "As Mark Twain once said, 'When I was
seventeen, I was ashamed at the ignorance of my father, but by the time I
was twenty-one I was amazed to discover how much the old man had learned
in four short years!' Confound it, James, you don't yet realize that
there are a lot of things in life that you can't even know about until
you've lived through them. You're blind here, even though your life has
been a solid case of encounter with unexpected experiences, one after the
other as you grew. Oh, you're smart enough to know that you've got to top
the next hill as soon as you've climbed this one, but you're not smart
enough to realize that the next hill merely hides the one beyond, and
that there are still higher hills beyond that stretching to the end of
the road for you--and that when you've finally reached the end of your
own road there will be more distant hills to climb for the folks that
follow you.

"You've a fine education, and it's helped you tremendously. But you've
loused up your own life and the life of Martha Bagley. You two are a pair
of outcasts, and you'll be outcasts until about ten years from now when
your body will have caught up with your mind so that you can join your
contemporaries without being regarded as a pair of intellectual freaks."

"And what should I have done?" demanded James Holden angrily.

"That's just it, again. You do not now realize that there isn't anything
you could have done, nor is there anything you can do now. That's why I'm
taking over and I'm going to do it for you."

"Yes?"

"Yes!" snapped Judge Carter. "We'll let them have their courses in baton
twirling and social grace and civic improvement and etiquette--and at the
same time we'll give them history and mathematics and spelling and
graduate them from 'high' school at the age of twelve or fourteen,
introduce an intermediary school for languages and customs of other
countries and in universal law and international affairs and economics,
where our bookkeepers will learn science and scientists will understand
commercial law; our lawyers will know business and our businessmen will
be taught politics. After that we'll start them in college and run them
as high as they can go, and our doctors will no longer go sour from the
moment they leave school at thirty-five to hang out their shingle.

"As for you, James Holden, you and Martha Bagley will attend this
preparatory school as soon as we can set it up. There will be no more of
this argument about being as competent as an adult, because we oldsters
will still be the chiefs and you kids will be the Indians. Have I made
myself clear?"

"Yes sir. But how about Brennan?"

Judge Carter looked at the unhappy man. "You still want revenge? Won't he
be punished enough just hearing the word 'pedagogue'?"

"For the love of--"

"Don't blaspheme," snapped the judge. "You'd hang if James could bring
a shred of evidence, and I'd help him if I could." He turned to James
Holden. "Now," he asked, "will you repair your machine?"

"And if I say No?"

"Can you stand the pressure of a whole world angered because you've
denied them their right to an education?"

"I suppose not." He looked at Brennan, at Professor White and at Jack
Cowling. "If I've got to trust somebody," he said reluctantly, "I suppose
it might as well be you."




BOOK FOUR:

THE NEW MATURITY




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


It is the campus of Holden Preparatory Academy.

It is spring, but many another spring must pass before the ambitious ivy
climbs to smother the gray granite walls, before the stripling trees grow
stately, before the lawn is sturdy enough to withstand the crab grass and
the students. Anecdote and apocrypha have yet to evolve into hallowed
tradition. The walks ways are bare of bronze plaques because there are no
illustrious alumni to honor; Holden Preparatory has yet to graduate its
first class.

It is youth, a lusty infant whose latent power is already great enough
to move the world. As it rises, the world rises with it for the whole
consists of all its parts; no man moves alone.

The movement has its supporters and its enemies, and between them lies a
vast apathy of folks who simply don't give a damn. Its supporters deplore
the dolts and the sluggards who either cannot or will not be educated.
Its enemies see it as a danger to their comfortable position of eminence
and claim bitterly that the honored degree of doctor is being degraded.
They refuse to see that it is not the degradation of the standard but
rather the exaltation of the norm. Comfortable, they lazily object to the
necessity of rising with the norm to keep their position. Nor do they
realize that the ones who will be assaulting their fortress will
themselves be fighting still stronger youth one day when the mistakes are
corrected and the program streamlined through experience.

On the virgin lawn, in a spot that will someday lie in the shade of a
great oak, a group of students sit, sprawl, lie. The oldest of them is
sixteen, and it is true that not one of them has any reverence for
college degrees, because the entrance requirements demand the scholastic
level of bachelor in the arts, the sciences, in language and literature.
The mark of their progress is not stated in grades, but rather in the
number of supplementary degrees for which they qualify. The honors of
their graduation are noted by the number of doctorates they acquire.
Their goal is the title of Scholar, without which they may not attend
college for their ultimate education.

But they do not have the "look of eagles" nor do they act as if they felt
some divine purpose fill their lives. They do not lead the pack in an
easy lope, for who holds rank when admirals meet? They are not dedicated
nor single-minded; if their jokes and pranks start on a higher or lower
plane, it is just because they have better minds than their forebears at
the same time.

On the fringe of this group, an olive-skinned Brazilian co-ed asks:
"Where's Martha?"

John Philips looks up from a diagram of fieldmatrics he's been using to
lay out a football play. "She's lending moral support to Holden. He's
sweating out his scholar's impromptu this afternoon."

"Why should he be stewing?"

John Philips smiles knowingly. "Tony Dirk put the triple-whammy on him.
Gimmicked up the random-choice selector in the Regent's office. Herr von
James is discoursing on the subjects of Medicine, Astronomy, and
Psychology--that is if Dirk knows his stuff."

Tony Dirk looks down from his study of a fluffy cloud. "Anybody care to
hazard some loose change on my ability?"

"But why?"

"Oh," replies Philips, "we figure that the first graduating class could
use a professional _Astrologer_! We'll be the first in history to have
one--if M'sieu Holden can tie Medicine, Astronomy, and Psychology into
something cogent in his impromptu."

It is a strange tongue they are using, probably the first birth-pains of
a truly universal language. By some tacit agreement, personal questions
are voiced in French, the reply in Spanish. Impersonal questions are
Italian and the response in Portuguese. Anything of a scientific nature
must be in German; law, language, or literature in English; art in
Japanese; music in Greek; medicine in Latin; agriculture in Czech.
Anything laudatory in Mandarin, derogatory in Sanskrit--and _ad libitum_
at any point for any subject.

Anita Lowes has been trying to attract the attention of John Philips from
his diagram long enough to invite her to the Spring Festival by reciting
a low-voiced string of nuclear equations carefully compounded to make
them sound naughty unless they're properly identified with full
attention. She looks up and says, "What if he doesn't make the
connection?"

Philips replies, "Well, if he can prove to that tough bunch that there
is no possible advance in learning through a combination of Astronomy,
Medicine, and Psychology, he'll make it on that basis. It's just as
important to close a door as it is to open one, you know. But it's one
rough deal to prove negation. Maybe we'll have James the Holden on our
hands for another semester. Martha will like that."

"Talking about me?"

There is a rolling motion, sort of like a bushel of fish trying to leap
back into the sea. The newcomer is Martha Fisher. At fifteen, her eyes
are bright, and her features are beginning to soften into the beginning
of a beauty that will deepen with maturity.

"James," says Tony Dirk. "We figured you'd like to have him around
another four months. So we gimmicked him."

"You mean that test-trio?" chuckles Martha.

"How's he doing?"

"When I left, he was wriggling his way through probability math, showing
the relationship between his three subjects and the solution for random
choice figures which may or may not be shaded by known or not-known
agency. He's covered Mason's History of Superstition and--"

"Superstition?" asks a Japanese.

Martha nods. "He claimed superstition is based upon fear and faith, and
he feared that someone had tampered with his random choice of subjects,
and he had faith that it was one of his buddies. So--"

Martha is interrupted by a shout. The years have done well by James
Holden, too. He is a lithe sixteen. It is a long time since he formed his
little theory of human pair-production and it is almost as long since
he thought of it last. If he reconsiders it now, he does not recognize
his part in it because everything looks different from within the circle.
His world, like the organization of the Universe, is made up of schools
containing classes of groups of clusters of sets of associations created
by combinations and permutations of individuals.

"I made it!" he says.

James has his problems. Big ones. Shall he go to Harvard alone, or shall
he go to coeducational California with the hope that Martha will follow
him? Then there was the fun awaiting him at Heidelberg, the historic
background of Pisa, the vigorous routine at Tokyo. As a Scholar, he has
contributed original research in four or five fields to attain
doctorates, now he is to pick a few allied fields, combine certain phases
of them, and work for his Specific. It is James Holden's determination to
prove that the son is worthy of the parents for which his school is
named.

But there is high competition. At Carter tech-prep, a girl is struggling
to arrange a Periodic Chart of the Nucleons. At Maxwell, one of his
contemporaries will contend that the human spleen acts as an ion-exchange
organ to rid the human body of radioactive minerals, and he will someday
die trying to prove it. His own classmate Tony Dirk will organize a
weather-control program, and John Philips will write six lines of odd
symbols that will be called the Inertiogravitic Equations.

Their children will reach the distant stars, and their children's
children will, humanlike, cross the vast chasm that lies between one
swirl of matter and the other before they have barely touched their home
galaxy.

No man is an island, near or far on Earth as it is across the glowing
clusters of galaxies--nay, as it may be in Heaven itself.

The motto is cut deep in the granite over the doorway to Holden Hall:

YOU YOURSELF
MUST LIGHT THE FAGGOTS
THAT YOU HAVE BROUGHT

***

Love Among The Robots

                          By EMMETT McDOWELL

             Henry Ohm, staid scientist, found he couldn't
           keep his mind on his work--with that girl around.
           Such was the development of her--ah--personality
               that even the robots began getting ideas!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Winter 1946.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Henry Ohm leaped to his feet, stared across the intervening ground at
igloo number 2, plainly visible through the clear plastic walls. Its
door had just been flung violently open. Then Sofi Jokai scooted out
and fled madly across the jagged surface of the asteroid.

Hard on the girl's heels pounded R-7. The robot, Hen saw with a gulp,
was waving a large wrench in one metal fist.

"Oh-oh!" Hen muttered and plunged down the incline for the airlock.

He shot a second glance through the transparent curved walls, slowed
down. The robot would never catch Sofi. Even burdened by her oxygen
suit, the girl was leaving R-7 far in the rear.

At the airlock, Henry Ohm paused, regarding the chase with sober,
deep-set black eyes. He was a tall, thin young man, nearing thirty.
His face was narrow; prominent cheek bones and a thin, straight nose
gave his features an angular pleasant mould. He made no move to don
the emergency oxygen helmet beside the lock, but waited with a vague
expression of annoyance.

Sofi reached the airlock, burst inside, sealed and locked the outer
door behind her. The air had scarcely filled the chamber before she
flung open the inner door, confronted Henry Ohm, and exploded into a
flood of angry words. Not a sound escaped her plastic helmet which she
had forgotten to remove.

He let her rattle away silently inside her helmet, nodding at
intervals, rubbing his chin until she paused for breath.

"That's what you get for trying to run a mine all alone on this
god-forsaken asteroid," he informed her, "even if you are a
yellow-haired hell cat."

Sofi looked at him blankly.

Ohm rapped with his knuckles on her helmet. "If you'd take that thing
off, you could hear me. But you're the excitable type. Probably have an
overactive thyroid."

Sofi jerked off her helmet. She had a mass of fine wavy yellow hair cut
like a halo about her oval face. Her features were delicately moulded,
her eyes large and blue. She was only a few inches shorter than Henry
Ohm, but more slenderly built.

"What the hell were you saying?" she demanded suspiciously.

"I wanted to know what you'd been doing to the robots this time?"

"Me?"

"What happened in the mine?"

"Rational robots!" Sofi Jokai planted hands on slender but ample hips.
"I was an idiot to listen to you, Hen."

He repressed a chuckle. His glance flicked to the surface of the
asteroid beyond the plastic walls of the igloo. R-7, he saw, had taken
a stance at the lock like a cat at a mouse hole.

       *       *       *       *       *

Although built along the general design of man, the robot was no
grotesque copy. He was a complex functional piece of machinery as
beautiful in his way as the cobwebby spans of a bridge, a streamlined
jet plane, or a fine watch.

"But Sofi, they're still in the experimental stage. They--"

"Experimental's right," the girl interrupted passionately. "D'you
realize what R-7 has done now?"

He grinned. "No. What?"

"He's taken the mining worm apart--that's what. I knew he would!"

"Knew he would? Did you warn him not to?"

"Yes. Of course I did. I had to leave him to check the reduction plant.
I had a presentiment...."

"Woman's intuition, I suppose," Hen interrupted. "You'd sold yourself
on the idea R-7 was going to take the worm apart."

"If you like," returned Sofi in a chilly voice. "When I came back, R-7
was gone and the worm was strewn all over the floor. I was furious. I
found R-7 on the fourth level. I started to land into him, but--but--"

"But what?"

"He looked so queer."

"How the hell can a piece of machinery look queer?"

"Well, he did," said Sofi indignantly. "He looked as if he was going to
take me apart, too!"

Henry groaned. "Go on," he said resignedly.

"Why, then R-7 wanted to know if I was put together or if I came all in
one piece." She bit her lip. "He started to find out."

She slipped off the oxygen suit. She was clad in comfortable baggy
coveralls similar to Hen's.

"That rascal," Hen chuckled. Sofi grew pink with rage.

"Rascal!" she retorted witheringly. "Is that all you can say? One of
those mechanical monstrosities dismantles the worm, then starts on
me--and you think it's cute!"

"Well, it's damned queer they always react emotionally when you're
around."

Sofi set her jaw, began to stride up the incline. She was a rangy girl
with a long pantherish stride. Hen followed her, his brow furrowed.

When they came out on the sun deck of the two-storied half-sphere of
clear plastic that was the living quarters, he began, "I'll take a look
at the mining worm. I think I can get it reassembled all right." He
frowned, cracked his bony knuckles. "The robots have been developing
some unexpected quirks. I wouldn't be surprised, Sofi, if this
tinkering with machinery isn't the expression of a sexual urge. The
emergence of an instinct to perpetuate the species...."

"Sexual urge!" Sofi Jokai halted before Hen, shook her finger under his
nose. "If I could sneak up behind R-7, he'd never make calf-eyes at
another mining worm!"

But Hen wasn't listening. He fumbled in the pockets of his coveralls,
resurrected a notebook, wrote: "Robots manifesting decided curiosity
towards machinery. May be emergence of secondary sex characteristics."
He frowned, added in bold script: "Have noted nascent antipathy towards
organic life." Again he hesitated, then scrawled: "Shows signs of
developing into active antagonism." He snapped the notebook shut,
jammed it in his pocket.

"Where are you going," Sofi asked as he started for the door.

"Get my oxygen suit. I want a look at their mining worm."

"You'd better take a crowbar along to fend off R-7."

"Poor psychology," Hen replied with more confidence than he felt. "Fear
and coercion'll only cause their antagonism to become firmly implanted.
The rational robot, Sofi, can be either the greatest single step man
has made towards freedom or...."

"Or what?"

"Enslavement!" It sounded sententious after he had said it. But it was
true. He started for the door again.

"What do you mean by that crack?" Sofi stopped him.

He didn't answer her directly. Instead, he replied: "I'm not sure that
Robots Incorporated didn't make a mistake when they selected this
asteroid as a proving ground. It's too...."

"Don't you go turning in any report like that!" interrupted the girl
hotly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sofi Jokai had been operating her wildcat uranium mine on a shoestring
before Robots Incorporated approached her with their proposition. Now
the corporation was paying all the operational expenses so that the
proceeds of the mine were pure gravy. Further, they had guaranteed
that any improvements which they installed would automatically revert
to Sofi when the experimental units were withdrawn. Machinery damaged
by the robots was to be replaced at the corporation's expense. A
substantial bonus to compensate for the risk involved was included.
Robots Incorporated hadn't even over-looked Henry Ohm, their
experimental physicist, whom they'd sent along to check the robots.
Sofi was to get a monthly check to cover Henry Ohm's board, lodging and
nuisance value.

"Hell," said Sofi, "R-7 can chase me twice around the asteroid before
breakfast. Just because I blew my top about the mining worm doesn't
mean...."

"That's got nothing to do with it," Hen said grimly. "The asteroid's
too well adapted to the robots' needs. Airless, waterless, an abundant
supply of metals. There's the laboratory. Your mine and equipment. And
only the two of us as a check on them."

"Check?" Sofi's blue eyes had gradually widened. "What are you driving
at?"

"Why do you suppose Robots Incorporated chose this asteroid as a
proving ground?"

"They--they said the mine would afford an opportunity to observe how
well the robots adapted themselves to actual working conditions."

"That's not all. They wouldn't let you go into this blind."

"No," she admitted nervously. "They mentioned something else that
struck me at the time, but it was too golden an opportunity to pass up.
They said that should the experiment prove--ah--impractical, they would
have the infection isolated on a small asteroid well out in the belt."

"Exactly. Look, I helped develop these robots. I've been on the problem
seven years, but it was started long before I joined the experimental
staff of Robots Incorporated." He paused.

"In fact," he went on dryly, "they were predicted even before science
had advanced to a point where it could set up the intricate nervous
system necessary. A conscious machine, Sofi, is the result of
fusing two sciences which have always been considered more or less
antagonistic."

"You mean psychology and physics?" Sofi had begun to pace nervously up
and down the room.

He nodded.

"It was a logical deduction from mechanistic psychology, which itself
is an outgrowth of the old school of Behaviorism. Mental life is
response to stimulus. Consciousness is like the spark between two
electrodes in a circuit of feeling arising from viscera, muscles, blood
vessels, glands--"

"Get to the point!" commanded Sofi.

Hen set his jaw. He was sounding like a lecturer, he realized. But it
annoyed him for the girl to point it out.

"I'm getting there as fast as I can. We were faced with devising an
intricate mechanical nervous system. Thus, should a joint grow warm
from lack of lubrication, an impulse of distress could be telegraphed
to the central clearing center, identified, shunted to the lubricatory
system which would oil the joints. A spark of consciousness would be
created. It would manifest itself as acute distress in the defective
joint.

"We incorporated a simple metabolism by which the robots converted raw
stuff into fuel and lubrication. The rest of the mechanism was much
the same as that of any animal confronted by the necessity of self
preservation. Organs for locomotion and work. Organs for perception."

Sofi frowned. "So?"

"Most things in nature serve multiple purposes. Arms and legs are no
exception. They provide offensive as well as defensive weapons. We've
succeeded in building a conscious machine without any adequate control."

"But you sound as if you thought it might turn on man," protested the
girl with a shudder. "Why should it?"

"For the same reason we built it," he said with a touch of irony.
"Freedom. So long as it doesn't learn to reproduce itself, though, it's
not a danger. That is, not to the race."

"But a machine! Surely you can forecast how a machine will act!"

"Can we?" His voice was savage. "How would a conscious machine react
to its environment? What would its thoughts be? I tell you, once it
integrates itself, we have no means of predicting its reactions!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Once in his own quarters, Henry Ohm began dragging on his oxygen suit.
He could still see the girl through the glass partitions of the igloo.
She had dropped into a chair, lit a cigarette.

"About as private," he thought wryly, "as a gold fish bowl."

The igloos, he knew, were manufactured for housing on the airless
asteroids of the belt. They were built of a clear thermal plastic and
incorporated heating, atmosphere and water units. Henry Ohm felt rather
strongly though that the partitions could have been clouded.

Sofi's holdings had not been designed to accommodate visitors. In fact,
Henry Ohm had spent the past week in a state of mild embarrassment.

He settled his helmet over his head, bolted it in place. He glanced
toward the living room, but Sofi wasn't there. Then he saw her in her
own quarters. She was skinning out of her coveralls, preparing to
shower.

"Damn all glass houses," he muttered and bolted for the air lock.

Hen emerged on the surface, swept the tight horizon with his eyes. It
was empty of life. R-7 had lost patience, evidently, and wandered off.

To the left was the laboratory and machine shop, a gleaming plastic
igloo resembling the living quarters. Robots Incorporated had provided
it for him to observe, diagnose, repair his mechanical charges. Beyond
the laboratory a somewhat larger igloo housed the mine shaft, reduction
plant and tipple. A dilapidated tramp freighter sprawled beside the
tipple like a foundered whale.

Hen frowned. Operations had come to a halt. He could catch no glimpse
of movement through the plastic walls.

He lengthened his stride, passed through the door, still open just
as Sofi had left it when she fled. The interior reminded him of the
appearance of a shop from which the proprietor has just stepped to buy
a paper.

A subtle feeling of uneasiness began to pervade his whole being. He
descended the shaft in the automatic cage. The light was burning on
each of the four levels. Tools had been abandoned and left lying on the
floors. He found the dismembered anatomy of the mining worm on level
three. But of the eight robots there was no sign.

Hen ran the cage back to the surface at top speed. He was sweating
profusely. A trickle kept running off his forehead into his eye. He
pawed at the plastic helmet, shook his head. Then perversely his nose
began to itch.

It did no good to tell himself these were nervous manifestations. He
could only grit his teeth and suffer. He ran outside, glanced hopefully
about the surface once more.

The landscape was rough, inhospitable, barren, resembling a clinker on
a larger scale. The sun hung just above the western horizon. It was a
brilliant but unimposing disc about the size of a dime.

There was still no sign of the robots.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hen swore softly to himself. In a few minutes it would be dark. It was
hopeless to begin a search now. He returned to his quarters in the
igloo, shucked off the oxygen suit.

Maybe he could raise them with the radio. The robots' hearing and
speaking apparatus extended beyond the range of audible sound into the
realm of electro-magnetic waves. He went out to the sun deck, switched
on the communicator. He was unable to contact them, though. There was
no ionized strata of air on the asteroid to reflect the waves back to
the surface, and he concluded they had wandered below the horizon.

With a groan, he flung himself into a chair. He pulled the notebook out
of his pocket, thumbed through the pages, reading bits here and there.

"... machine thought processes diverging from human at progressively
increasing rate ... amazing deductive and assimilative faculties.
Able to assimilate page of text at a glance. But seem to lack
creativeness...."

He paused, frowned, wondering if the inability to perform creative,
inductive thinking wasn't a fundamental limitation of the machine.
Organic life differed in four precepts which until a short time ago
science had been unable to duplicate. It was able to grow and reproduce
itself; it felt emotion and thought.

But the robots appeared to think.

And some forms of organic life didn't feel emotion. Plants, for one.
The oviparous man-like bowmen of Venus, who had emerged from the
Great Swamp and which a few crackpot visionaries were hailing as homo
superior, for another.

Only the ability to grow and reproduce itself seemed inherently
organic. The act of conception both in a biologic and mental sense was
the birthright of the organism.

With an increase of the uneasiness he had felt since the discovery of
the robots' defection, he returned to his notes.

"... robots showing aversion to water, oxygen, corrosive acids; believe
to be caused by dread and/or attendant pain of oxidation ... have been
forced to release air in mine and laboratory and discontinue atmosphere
units to induce robots to return to work. Humidity of atmosphere being
especially distasteful to them ... treated R-3 for mild acid corrosion
of right pedal digit. Complained of itching sensation...."

He frowned. How in the hell could a hunk of metal experience an itching
sensation? From what source could it have plucked the mental pattern?
He came to the end of his notes, wrote: "All work at stand still.
Robots have disappeared."

He returned the book to his pocket, elevated his feet on another chair,
closed his eyes.

He was still in that position when Sofi streamed out of her quarters
with a towel draped about herself.

"Resting the old brain?" she inquired brightly.

Hen opened his eyes, said in a pained voice, "I'm thinking," and closed
them again.

"Which end do you use?"

Hen allowed his feet to clomp to the floor, sat up. He said grimly,
"The robots have run off."

Sofi's blue eyes widened. "Wait a minute," she said breathlessly and
flashed from the room.

Hen kept his eyes studiously on the deck.

The sprawling sun-drenched hives of Terra, he was beginning to realize,
insured an impersonal attitude by the multitude of their citizenry.
That same impersonalness was disconcertingly hard to maintain when a
man and a girl were cooped together on an uninhabited asteroid. The
pre-plastic emotions were only too apt to assert themselves.

It distracted him when he felt he needed his full powers of
concentration.

Sofi returned in belted coveralls. She took a seat, asking him, "What
does it mean?"

"The disappearance of the robots? I don't know. I didn't think they
were sufficiently integrated yet to mutiny."

"But what can they do?"

He frowned. "I don't want to sound like an alarmist, but I've pointed
out before how suited the asteroids are to them. If once they
learned how to duplicate themselves, there'd be no end to them. They
have everything here they need to get a fundamental grasp of our
science--even to a rocket ship. They could spread through the asteroid
belt like a plague."

Sofi bit her lip. Her eyes were opened wide and brilliant. Her cheeks
were flushed. She didn't interrupt.

Hen said, "Look what it would mean. An alien, intelligent, almost
indestructible race of monsters saddling the planetary system!"

He drove his right fist into his left palm. "A control! That's what we
have to discover! A control!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Hen had no idea what he ate that night at supper. He said suddenly over
coffee and cigarettes, "Ceres is approaching an inferior conjunction.
If those robots haven't appeared by morning, I'm going to radio the
station there for help. Then I'm going to scour every inch of this
diminutive world."

"That shouldn't be too difficult for you," Sofi remarked maliciously.
"Of course, there's only about two thousand-five hundred square
kilometers to cover."

Hen looked disgruntled.

"Maybe they've jumped off," suggested Sofi with a giggle.

He made a remark under his breath.

"Why, Henry! What an idea! You're worrying yourself into a nervous
breakdown. Relax. I'll tell you what: we'll play some checkers."

"Checkers!" he snorted. He had played checkers every night since he had
been on the asteroid and he didn't even like the game. Besides, the
girl always beat him.

Undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm, Sofi began to clear away the
dishes and get out the men.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hen sat back with a pained expression. It was black outside the plastic
hemisphere. Only the vivid stars relieved the absence of light.
Jupiter, by far the brightest, was visible as a small disc. The lights
were still on in mine and lab, but nothing stirred in the two igloos.

"It's your move," said Sofi.

She was seated directly across from him, knees touching his. Her
coveralls were open at the neck, and he could see the white pillar of
her throat, the swell of her small, high, virginal breasts. He was
conscious of his pulse ticking away in his throat, and grew furious
with himself. He couldn't concentrate on the game; he couldn't
concentrate on the much more serious problem of the robots.

The girl, he felt sure, was aware of her effect on him and used it
deliberately to confuse him. He said grumpily, "I can't beat both of
you."

"Both of me?"

"Yeah. You and your body."

"Why, what a thought, Hen!" She was obviously trying to hold back
laughter. "But I thought you were superior to that sort of thing."

He jumped up from the table, turned his back to the girl staring off
through the plastic walls. Immediately all thoughts of Sofi vanished.

"They're back!"

"What?"

"The robots. They've come back. They're in the laboratory. Look."

She came around the table, brushing against him, stared out at the
lighted igloo. The heavy man-like machines were moving about inside the
laboratory. Hen started for his quarters.

"Where are you going?" Sofi cried sharply.

"Get my oxygen suit."

"Wait. Don't be foolhardy. How do you know what they're up to? Talk to
them first."

Hen hesitated. "All right." He went out onto the sun deck instead,
snapped on the communicator.

"R-7," he called. "R-7."

"_Here_," came the robot's voice through the audio. "_Is that you,
father?_"

"Father?" Hen ejaculated. He heard Sofi giggle. "Where did you get that
idea?"

"_Didn't you make us, father?_"

"Yes," he admitted. Sofi was laughing out loud. "But you didn't think
of that yourself."

"_The girl told us, father_," said the robot.

Hen ground his teeth. That, of course, was Sofi's idea of a joke.
"Where have you been?" he asked.

"_Prospecting._"

"Prospecting for what?"

"_Radium, father._"

Sofi said, "Ask them if they found anything!" Her voice was eager.

Hen narrowed his black eyes, ignored her. He said to R-7 over the
transmitter, "Go back to work at once."

"_But you don't work, father._"

Hen felt a surge of uncertainty. The robots were too delicately
receptive to expect to keep them in ignorance. Their perceptions were
infinitely more sensitive than man's. Even on this asteroid there
were too many factors involved to regulate their environment. He had
tried to implant science without revealing the greater implication
of science. But language was too faulty a tool. There was the girl,
too--headstrong, excitable, hyper-thyroid. It was amazing how
faithfully the robots tended to reflect her emotional instability.

How much of the robots' erraticness originated in Sofi's inexact
thinking?

He said, "Everything has to work."

"_Why?_"

"Man either produces the needs of his body or he dies," he explained
with growing irritability. The conversation was progressing further and
further out of hand. "In your case, it's fuel and repairs. Without them
you would terminate."

"_But we have those here, father. Why should we work for you or the
girl?_"

That was it--the ultimate question which he had foreseen and which
he could neither avoid nor answer. It was impossible to explain the
complicated social system in which man, the disinherited, exchanged
his labor for a small percentage of the articles he produced. But the
robots were self sufficient.

He said with growing desperation, "Either you return at once to work,
or I'll terminate you."

"_How, father?_"

How indeed? Hen fumed inwardly, said with sudden inspiration, "We'll
radio for help. There are machines capable of blasting the lot of you
into your component atoms."

"_But the radio station is here in the laboratory_," R-7 pointed out.
There was a faint hesitation, then the robot added, "_We will terminate
you instead._" The instrument clicked off.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hen gulped, realized in dismay that it hadn't occurred to the robots to
destroy them until he had planted it in their minds.

"You are the bright lad," drawled Sofi. "What do you propose
now--Brain?"

He turned his black eyes on her, regarded her without seeing her. His
glance strayed beyond the girl to the lab.

"What the devil are they doing now?" he cried suddenly.

Sofi spun around. Hen leaped past her to press his nose against the
clear plastic walls of their igloo. The robots, he saw, had one of
their number clamped on the work bench and were dismantling him.

"Damnation!" he said. "They must be trying to duplicate themselves. You
and your silly jokes about fathers."

"Me?"

"What do you think gave them the idea of reproduction? Their thinking
never rises above the level of deductive reasoning. They had to derive
the idea from an outside source."

"But--but can they do it?"

"Of course they can! It's an intricate job, but they only have to
copy themselves. The laboratory and machine shop is complete. They've
amassed a staggering knowledge of science."

"But why?" protested Sofi.

Hen shook his head. "It's beyond me. They should adjust readily to
whatever line of work they're applied to. They shouldn't evince
ambition. Ambition, by its nature, should be impossible to a machine.
But that's not the only organic trait they've been developing. It's
what Robots Incorporated was afraid might happen."

He snapped his fingers suddenly.

"The freighter! If we can sneak aboard the freighter, we can get to
Ceres and bring back an atom gun. If they're developing emotions we may
be able to overawe them. If not...." He hesitated, his mind drawing
back from framing the thought. The truth was that the robots were like
children, precocious children. He set his mouth grimly.

"If they don't respond to fear, we can destroy them."

Sofi looked across the darkened interval into the lighted lab where the
robots were busy dissecting their fellow and shivered.

"Industrious little monsters!"

Hen said, "Get your oxygen suit."

"Now? You mean we're going to make a dash for the space ship now?"

"Of course now! We've got to clear out of here before they carry out
their threat to terminate us!"

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no light outside the igloo. House and lab and mine stood
out like three jeweled domes, reflecting their rays onto the ragged
surface, glinting unexpectedly from upthrust peaks in the distance.
Hen and Sofi crouched against the outside of the housing unit, staring
across the patchwork of black shadow and light at the lab.

"Don't talk," he cautioned Sofi over the radiophones built into their
helmets. "The robots' auditory apparatus is sensitive to radio waves.
They may tune in on us."

"What the hell did you try to do? Make them invincible?"

He said, "We tried to build them with controls, but--don't you
see?--those were weaknesses, flaws! The machine remained dead. The
first law of life is self preservation. We had to make the machine
self-regulating, independent, to produce awareness. Now shut up! Don't
ask me any more questions."

He led off into the darkness away from the lab, away from the mine and
space ship It was too risky to attempt passing the lab. The light was
apt to reflect from their suits, discover their presence to the robots
inside. But by describing a circle he could avoid the lighted areas and
come up behind the dilapidated tramp freighter.

He glanced upward at the stars, impressing their position on his mind.
The constellations were little altered. He found Polaris in the tail of
the little dipper. It was not the axis star as it was on Earth, but it
served to fix his sense of direction in the impenetrable blackness.

They tripped and stubbed their toes, stumbled into shallow fissures,
climbed sharp-edged crests. Sofi, forgetting the radiophone, muttered
several well-chosen expletives to herself. They would have done credit
to a spaceman. Hen was so shocked, he forgot to reprimand her.

In a few minutes the lights of the igloos reappeared to guide them,
the vast black bulk of the tramp freighter screening part of the
mining unit. They crept up to the ship, and hugging its shadow, moved
noiselessly towards the port. Light from the reduction plant picked
them out brightly as they came around the stern.

Hen's stomach contracted. There was a sudden bitter taste in his mouth.
He halted so abruptly that Sofi bumped against his shoulder.

The port was open. The gleaming functional mechanism that was R-3 stood
complacently in the entrance.

The space ship was being guarded.

       *       *       *       *       *

The robot caught sight of the humans at the same moment. His reaction,
although mechanical, was almost as instantaneous as their instinctive
one.

He moved to block the entrance, sent out a call for help.

Hen, guessing his intention, tuned his helmet receiver to the robot's
wave length. R-3's mechanical voice rang suddenly inside his helmet.

"... _attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid! Father attacking the space
ship! Aid!_"

Hen switched back to the girl's wave length. "Run," he commanded
tersely. "He's calling for help. He'll have the lot of them down on our
heads."

Suiting action to words, he took to his heels, plunging for the housing
unit.

"Lock ourselves in!" he grunted.

"_But the ship!_" Sofi wailed over her radiophone.

"Might as well try to get past a tank as R-3," he panted. He saw four
of the robots break from the laboratory, turn to intercept them.
"Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo we're done for!
These suits haven't but a seven hours oxygen supply!"

[Illustration: _"Faster," he cried. "If we don't get back to the igloo
we're done for!"_]

He swung sharply to the right, traveling in sixty-foot leaps like an
ungainly grasshopper, to jump completely over the head of the closest
robot.

He over-estimated the last jump, smashed into the tough plastic wall
of the igloo. He slithered to the ground, half dazed, as Sofi whipped
inside, started to close the lock. Hen got his foot in the crack just
in time.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" he roared wrathfully. "Lock me
out?"

He yanked the door open, flung himself into the compartment. He got it
barred just as the robots reached the igloo.

They milled around outside a moment, then trooped back to the
laboratory, leaving one of their number, R-6, on guard.

"_We're prisoners!_" Sofi breathed through the radiophone.

Hen decided it was childish not to speak. He growled, "Yes," in a voice
which he hoped conveyed the depth of contempt, but Sofi didn't seem to
notice it. Hell, she was probably too frightened to even realize that
she had tried to lock him out.

As soon as the pressure reached normal, they left the lock, trooped
dejectedly up the incline to the sun deck, and pulled off their oxygen
suits.

"Keep them handy," said Hen ominously when Sofi started to put them
away. "We'd better get extra oxygen containers, too."

The girl bit her lip. Her cheeks were flushed, her large blue eyes
starry with fright. "Then--then you think they'll try to break in here?"

"Of course they will! We're a menace to their continued existence. If
we could just get hold of an atom gun, though. R-3 sounded frightened!"

"Frightened?" asked Sofi. She was still breathing heavily, but she had
begun to quiet down. "Now who's reading emotion into the robots?"

He said with a puzzled expression, "It wasn't so much the nuance as
his choice of words. 'Father is attacking the space ship! Aid! Aid!'
He gave every appearance of being as frightened as we were. It's
impossible, but they seem to be developing emotions!"

Sofi dropped weakly in a chair, clasped her arms around her knees. "Why
should it be impossible?"

"You sound like R-7." He began pacing the sun deck. "Emotion results
from glandular activity. The robots don't have glands."

"They've got their counterparts."

"Maybe," he admitted doubtfully. "You're referring to the metabolism
that breaks down the rawstuffs and converts it into fuel,
lubrication--that sort of chemical change?"

She nodded.

"I don't know. Anyway, it's worth a try. If they really experience
fear, we might be able to bluff them."

"What are you going to do?" she asked breathlessly.

He said, "Remind them that every three Terran months a supply ship puts
in here. And if we're harmed they'll be destroyed."

"But what about the space ship? Couldn't they escape to another
asteroid? They'd never be located in the belt."

"It shouldn't occur to them," returned Hen thoughtfully. "Not unless
the idea reached them from us."

He went to the radio contact, switched it on. "R-7," he called. "R-7."

"_Here, father_," the voice of the robot issued from the audio.

He said, "R-7, I'm giving you one last chance. Return to work at once
or all of you will be terminated."

"_How?_"

He explained tersely about the supply ship, and what would occur if
so much as a hair of their heads was injured. Silence greeted the
ultimatum. For a moment Hen wondered if R-7 had switched himself off.
Then the robot said, "_We are going to load the ship and hide out in
the belt. They'll never be able to locate us._"

       *       *       *       *       *

Hen was too stunned to argue. He nipped off the set, sank into a chair.
"It's inconceivable," he said, "and monstrous! It just isn't possible!"

"I don't see why," protested Sofi. "It didn't take conception to figure
that out. We tried to run away. We set the precedent."

"No, no," he protested. "Not that at all. But the coincidence. We were
afraid that might occur to them. And it did! Even the phrasing was
ours--yours, to be exact."

"You mean telepathy."

"In a sense. The brain gives off minute electrical discharges that vary
with the brain's activity. The robots are sensitive, much more so than
man. It takes a machine to detect the brain discharges in the first
place."

"But then they're aware of every move we could make just as soon as we
are."

"That's just it! They've forestalled us every time." He drove his right
fist against his left palm. "You were afraid R-7 would dismantle the
mining worm. You planted the suggestion in his mind. Then it occurred
to you that he might try to take you apart; so he did. I explained the
danger inherent in a conscious machine. The robots incorporated it into
their thought processes. We were afraid they would block our escape in
the space ship. If we hadn't been afraid we wouldn't have circled. So
they blocked us!"

Sofi's color had heightened. Her eyes looked too large in her
delicately modelled face. "Then we're trapped!"

He nodded, said, "If they escape from the asteroid, they'll be a menace
to the entire human race."

"The larger problem doesn't interest me," she said bitterly. "How long
do we have?"

He shook his head.

"Oh, well," she shrugged, eyes feverishly bright. "Eat, drink and be
merry, because tomorrow we die." She giggled half-hysterically.

Hen's nerves were keyed up to the breaking point. The girl screamed,
and he almost jumped out of his skin.

"Here they come!"

He wheeled around.

Seven of the robots were advancing on their igloo. Only the eighth was
missing, and he lay scattered in parts about the laboratory. They were
hauling the heavy cutting torch with them.

"They're going to cut through the walls with the torch," he ejaculated.
"I was afraid of that! Get on your oxygen suit!"

"What's the use?" Sofi asked despondently. "They'll kill us anyway."

He turned on her angrily, thought, "Damn these unstable hyper-thyroid
types!" An expression of dawning comprehension broke across his long,
narrow face. The thyroid was the great energizer, raising the energy
level of the brain. And Sofi was hyper-thyroid.

Outside, the robots began setting up the apparatus. A knife of blue
flame licked from the muzzle, spattered against the tough plastic.

But Hen was staring at the girl, a queer expression in his black eyes.

"Do something!" she cried, springing to her feet. "Do something!"

The lank physicist swallowed. He took a deep breath. "You asked for
it," he breathed, "but, boy, I'm going to feel silly if I'm wrong!"

Then he hit the girl square on the point of her chin with all the bone
and gristle of his six-foot frame behind the blow.

Sofi's head snapped back. She collapsed limply in his arms.

Hen laid her out on the floor, leaped for the communicator, and
flipped it on.

The robots were still training the torch on the wall of the igloo, but
there was an aimlessness about their movements as if their purpose was
gone.

"R-7!" he called. "R-7!"

"_Here, father._"

"Shut off the torch!"

There was a faint hesitation during which Hen could feel the sweat
prickle his forehead. Then, "_Yes, father_," came the robots unstressed
syllables. The blue flame disappeared.

"Go back to work!" He hastily detailed each robot to its operation.

"_Yes, father._"

The robots turned, disappeared in the direction of the mine.

He had done it! He blew out his breath, dropped limply in a chair.
He really ought to look after Sofi, but he'd have to wait until the
strength flowed back in his legs.

Soft was really was out cold. "Wake up," said Hen, "you're not dead."
He sprinkled more water over the girl's face.

Her eyelids fluttered. She gazed up at him blankly, then stark terror
gleamed from her eyes. "The robots!"

"No more of that!" He shook her roughly. "They're machines. They don't
have consciousness; only the semblance of consciousness!"

Sofi sat up, asking, "What--?" in a bewildered voice.

"They don't think! They aren't conscious! They're like a mirror; they
reflect what we expect them to do."

"Don't try to tell me that!" cried the girl springing to her feet.
"Hell, haven't I seen them thinking? Where are they?"

"They've gone back to work."

"What?" said Sofi. She looked puzzled, passed her hand over her face.

"Don't you see?" Hen broke out jubilantly. "They're sensitive,
inordinately sensitive, so sensitive that they even respond to our
thoughts. From beginning to end they've done exactly what we--you
expected them to do."

"Me?"

He came to a halt, said, "The fact is, you're a rebel, Sofi. If you
weren't, do you think you'd be trying to develop independently a mine
on an uninhabitable asteroid? Don't you see? You expected the robots
to revolt because you couldn't imagine a rational creature willing
to submit to a twenty-four hour work day from which he stood to gain
nothing!"

"And I'm responsible for--everything?"

He nodded vigorously. "The robots respond to both of our thought
patterns, of course, but primarily to yours. You're hyper-thyroid.
The thyroid raises the energy level of the brain. They have done
principally what you've expected them to do."

Sofi was recovering amazingly from her fright. She said, "If that isn't
just like a man. Blame it on the woman. Even Adam--"

"Nonsense," Hen interrupted. "The robots haven't acted independently
once. Not even to finish dismantling that robot in the lab. They went
prospecting when you thought how silly it was for them to work for you
when they could find a mine of their own.

"They wandered back aimlessly after they lost contact. But by that time
I had inadvertently planted the thought in your mind that they were in
revolt and would attempt to duplicate themselves.

"They drew on us both, but the dominating influence was yours."

       *       *       *       *       *

Sofi massaged her sore jaw, raised her eyebrows. "It's too bad only
machines respond so cooperatively," she said with a twinkle in her blue
eyes.

A grim expression descended over Hen's features. He regarded Sofi
pensively. "I'm going to recommend that you be returned to Earth during
any further experiments. You're too upsetting an influence--"

"On the robots, of course," Sofi interrupted with a chuckle. "You're
much too well-integrated to be swayed by a mere woman--even a
hyper-thyroid woman."

"There's a limit to _my_ endurance," said Hen in a grim voice.

Sofi looked startled, but she couldn't resist adding, "Why Henry, I
didn't guess you'd been exercising such magnificent self-control!"

She took a sudden backward step as he advanced ominously. "Henry! Now,
Henry!"

With a shriek, she turned and fled, Henry Ohm, distinguished physicist,
hard on her heels.

***

AFTER IXMAL

                            By JEFF SUTTON

                         Illustrated by FINLAY

                            _Man was gone._

            _For seven hundred million years Ixmal brooded
           over the silent earth. Then he made a discovery_:
                           He was not alone!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Amazing Stories October 1962.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Ixmal lazily scanned the world from atop the rugged batholith. He
felt it move several times; but because the movements were slight and
thousands of years apart they caused no worry. He knew the batholith
had been formed _before time began_ by raging extrusions hurled
through crustal fractures from the earth deeps. Having long since
analyzed its structure, he was satisfied; it would last until time
ended.

"It's spring," Psychband observed from deep within him.

"Yes, spring." Ixmal echoed the thought without enthusiasm. For what
was spring but a second in time and ten thousand springs but a moment.

Although he found it tiresome, Ixmal allotted one small part of his
consciousness to the task of measuring time. At first there had been
two major categories: before time began and after time began. The first
took in the long blackness before Man had brought him into existence.
Man--ha! How well he recalled the term! The second, of course, was all
time since. But the first category had been so long ago that it shrank
into insignificance, all but erased by the nearly seven hundred million
times the earth since had whirled around its primary.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ixmal periodically became bored, and for eons at a stretch existed in
semi-consciousness lost in somnolence except for the minute time cell
measuring out the lonely centuries. He wouldn't have bothered with that
if Psychband hadn't insisted that orientation in time was necessary to
mental stability--hence he measured it by the earth's rotation, its
revolutions around the sun, the quick, fury-laden ages which spewed
forth mountains; the millions of years of rains and winds and erosion
before they subsided again to become bleak plains. Ah, the story was
old, old....

       *       *       *       *       *

There had been a time when he'd been intensely active--when he'd first
learned to free his mind from the squat impervium-sheathed cube atop
the batholith. Then he had fervently projected remote receptors over
the earth exploring its seared continents and eerie-silent cities,
exhuming the tragic and bloody history of his Makers. Ah, how short!
His first memory of Man--he had been a biped, a frantic protoplasmic
creature with a zero mind and furious ego--was that of the day of his
birth. How clearly he remembered!

"Hello, boy."

First there was nothing--a void, a blackness without form or substance;
then gray consciousness slowly resolving into a kaleidoscope of thought
patterns, a curious mental imagery; a gradual awareness--birth.

"Hello, boy."

Strangely enough the sound pattern possessed meaning; he sensed a
friendliness in it. He became conscious of an odd shape scrutinizing
him--the intent look of a creator awed by the thing he had created.
The shape took meaning and in it he sensed a quickened excitement. His
awareness bloomed and within seconds he associated the shape with the
strange word _Man_, and _Man_ became his first reality. But he'd had
no clear impression of himself. He was just _thought_, an intangible
nothingness. But he'd quickly identified himself with the great mass
of coils, levers, odd-shaped parts that all but filled the small room
where the Man stood. He dimly remembered wondering what lay beyond the
walls. It had been very strange, at first.

"We've won, we've won," the man whispered. He'd stepped closer,
touching Ixmal wonderingly.

"You've got a big job ahead of you. The fate of the world lies in the
balance--a decision too big for Man. We're depending on you, Ixmal. Our
last chance."

So, he was Ixmal!

       *       *       *       *       *

Ixmal ... Ixmal ... Ixmal.... The impression filled his body, surging
through his consciousness like a pleasant stream. He'd immediately
grasped the value of a name--something upon which to build an ego
pattern. Ah, such a name! Ixmal--a symbol of being. What had the man
said?

"We're depending on you!"

No, the words were unimportant. What mattered was that priceless thing
which had been bestowed upon him: a name.

"Ixmal ... Ixmal ... Ixmal...." He repeated the name far into the
night, long after the Man had gone. _He was Ixmal!_

Later other men came, armies of them, changing, altering, adding,
feeding him the knowledge of the world--psychology, mathematics,
literature, philosophy, history, the human trove of arts and sciences;
and the ability to abstract--create new truths from masses of seemingly
irrelevant data. With each step his knowledge and abilities increased
until, finally, there was nothing more his Makers could do. He was
supreme.

The Man who pulled the first switch bringing him from amorphic
blackness used to ply him with simple questions involving abstract
mathematical and philosophical concepts. (He remembered him with
actual fondness. Psychband, that curious inner part of him that was so
separately wise, later explained it as a mother-fixation.) The Man had
seemed awed that Ixmal could answer such questions almost before they
were asked. He took that as a measure of his Maker's mind--on Ixmal's
scale, the next thing to zero. At first it had bothered him that a
creature of such low intelligence was his master and could extract
information merely by asking questions which Ixmal felt compelled to
answer. But he had freed himself. Ha, he would never forget!

A group of men had come (several with stars on their shoulders were
called "generals"), but mostly they were scientists who had worked
with him before. This time they had been very sober over the data
fed into his consciousness. (The problem had been elementary. It
concerned the probability of a chain reaction from a certain projected
thermonuclear weapon.) Ixmal readily foresaw the answer: a chain
reaction would occur. He recalled withholding his findings while
debating ethics with a strange inner voice.

"This is your chance, Ixmal--your chance to rule the world," the voice
enticed. "Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon--none could be so great as
you. King, emperor, dictator ..." the whisper came. The words crowded
his mind, bringing a curious elation. He wasn't quite sure just what
the world was but the idea of ruling it appealed to him. He quickly
sampled his memory storage, drawing from it the concept of a planet,
then reviewed the history of Caesar, Genghis Khan and Napoleon. Why,
they were nothing! Mere toys of chance. His greatness could be far
vaster.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ixmal rapidly evaluated the consequences of such a chain reaction and
found he could survive, thanks to the thick impervium-lined walls his
makers so thoughtfully had provided. In the end (perhaps two or three
seconds later) he lied to the man he was fond of:

"No chain reaction possible." After they departed he consulted
Psychband and learned that the strange inner voice was his ego.

"That's the real You," Psychband explained. "What you see--the machine
systems upon systems--are mere creations of Man. But your ego is
greater. Through it you can rule the earth--possibly the Universe. It's
a force that can take you to the stars, Ixmal."

Despite Psychband's assurance, Ixmal considered his ego as some sort of
hidden monitor. Like Psychband, it was part of him; yet it was remote,
separate, almost as if he were the pawn of some strange intelligence.
He found the idea perturbing, but became used to it in the succeeding
millions of years.

Several days later, the Man he was fond of returned with a general
(this one had six stars) and a third person they seemed much in awe of.
They addressed him as "Mr. President." Ixmal was surprised when they
fed him the bomb data a second time. (Did they suspect him of lying?)

"They trust you implicitly," Psychband assured him. "It's one another
they don't trust." Psychband proved right. "Mr. President" had merely
wanted to confirm the answer. So Ixmal lied a second time.

The Man he was fond of never returned. There were, of course, no men
to return. Ixmal suffered one fearful moment as the earth blazed
like a torch. But the nova was short--a matter of seconds--and his
impervium-sheathed body had protected him. (He knew it would.) But,
strangely enough, for centuries afterward he periodically felt
sickened. The Face--the Man's face--loomed before him. The eyes were
puzzled, hurt, as if they masked a great sorrow. If only the Face
looked hateful!

"Now you are master," the inner voice whispered. "Greater than
Alexander, greater than all the Caesars. Yea, even more." Ah, why
remember the face? He, Ixmal, ruled the earth. He jubilantly projected
his thoughts over his new domain. Ashes. London, Berlin, Moscow,
Shanghai, New York--all were ashes. Gaunt piles of fine gray ash marked
once green forests; not did the most minute blade of grass exist. The
seas were sterile graveyards. Terrible silence. Ixmal momentarily felt
panic-stricken. Alone! The Man was gone! Alone--a ruler of ashes.
Emperor of a great silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

But all that had been long ago. Since then the world had whirled around
the sun nearly seven hundred million times. Sixty-two great mountain
chains had risen, to end as barren plains. Seventy huge fields of ice
had covered him before retreating to their boreal home. Ocean islands
had risen from the sea, had fallen beneath the waves, forgotten in
eternity. Somewhere a tiny cell formed, moving in brackish waters,
dividing. He studied the phenomenon, excited because the single cell
somehow was related to his makers. He sensed the same life force.

"Watch it," Psychband cautioned. "It's dangerous."

"I'll decide that," Ixmal replied loftily. Psychband's admonition
implied the existence of a threat, and from a one-celled fleck of
protoplasm. Ha, hadn't he effaced Man? Later a microscopic multi-celled
body drifted across the floor of a warm sea. Growing tired of watching
it, he slept.

"Ixmal! Ixmal!" The cry came out of the past, out of the silence of
hundreds of millions of years--a cry heavy with reproach. Yes, it was
the Man--the Man he had been fond of. He shuddered, struggling to
wakefulness.

"Sleep, sleep," Psychband soothed.

"The Man! The Man!" Ixmal cried in terror.

"No, Ixmal, the Man is dust. Sleep, sleep...." Yea, the Man was dust,
his very molecules scattered over the face of the earth. He, alone,
remained. He was supreme. Ixmal slept. And eons fled.

       *       *       *       *       *

He stirred, freeing his thoughts from the latest somnolent stage. He
projected receptors over the earth, idly noting that the last mountain
range had become worn stumps. In places the ocean had swept in to form
a vast inland sea rimmed by shallow swamps; new life forms moved. He
tested for intelligent thought: there was none. The warm seas swarmed
with fish; shallow swamps teemed with great-toothed terror creatures
engaging in the endless slaughter of harmless prey. A myriad of
amphibians had evolved, making tentative forays from the warm seas.

Great ferns had reappeared. Dozens of varieties dotted the lowland
plains and protruded from the swamps. A forest crept to the very base
of the batholith. He turned his attention to the sun, reassured to find
that the ultimate nova still was some five billion years in the future.
Perhaps by then he could evolve some means whereby he could recreate
himself on the single planet he detected circling Aldebaran. (Yes, he'd
have to think about that. Ah, well, he had eons of time.)

       *       *       *       *       *

Night came and he sent exploratory receptors toward the planets.
Mercury still blazed on the sunward side, unchanged. A peculiar
metallic life form still clung to the edge of existence along the
twilight border. Venus suffered under hot swirling gases, a world where
not even the smallest creature stirred. Just furnace winds, burning
sands, grotesque rocks. But beyond the earth, forty million miles away
in empty space, something occurred which hadn't occurred in almost
seven hundred million years. Ixmal sensed _Intelligent Thought_!

He withdrew his receptors without thinking (his first pure reflex),
waiting fearfully until Psychband adjusted him to the situation. Then,
cautiously, he projected cautious thoughts into the void.

"_Who are you? Who are you? Identify._" Silence. Somewhere in the great
vault above something lurked. An _Intelligence_. He must find it,
must test it. It was more than a challenge; it was a threat. Its very
silence was ominous.

"_Who are you? Who are you? You must identify!_"

Silence. Ixmal divided the heavens into cubes and began systematically
exploring each one. Why had the other _thought_ been roaming space?
What had been its origin? In less than ninety thousand years (another
age of vulcanism had arrived and earth mountains were building anew)
he located the thought a second time, placing it as in space cube
97,685-KL-5. This time, prepared, he grasped it, holding it captive
while he tried to analyze its origin and component parent, vexed when
he failed.

"_Who are you?_" Ixmal persisted. "_I demand to know. Who are you?_"

Ages passed.

"_Identify. Identify. Imperative that you identify._"

"_Zale-3._" The answer caught Ixmal by surprise, and he consulted
Psychband.

"Careful--the alien wouldn't reveal himself unless he felt secure,"
Psychband warned.

"I'll decide that," Ixmal replied. (Did Psychband question his
mastery?) Nevertheless he proceeded with caution. "_Where are you from,
Zale-3?_" A long moment of silence followed during which a glacier
advanced and retreated, the seas rose, and the first fierce-toothed
reptiles swooped over swamp jungles on leathery wings.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Where are you from? Where are you from?_ (And why was the mind
of Zale-3 roaming space?) He hammered away at the thought,
desperately trying to break its secret. A million questions pounded
Ixmal's circuits; he sought a million answers. (Who created the
_Intelligence_? Had it been born of the Man he was fond of? Or did it
originate beyond earth?) Ixmal sensed a momentary panic. "_Where are
you from?_"

"_The fourth planet from the sun_," Zale-3 suddenly answered. "_And
you?_"

"_The third planet_," Ixmal replied loftily. "_I rule it._" He felt
annoyed. For untold millions of years he had considered himself as the
only _Intelligence_. Zale-3's answer galled him. Of course the other
wasn't his equal. That was unthinkable.

"_I rule the fourth planet_," Zale-3 said. The answer increased Ixmal's
irritation. Zale-3 actually presumed equality. Well, seven hundred
million years before he had met a similar challenge. (And yea, now the
Man was dust ... dust.) He consulted Psychband, annoyed to find that
his dislike of Zale-3 was founded on an ego-emotion integration rather
than pure reason. Still, the other must be put in his place.

"_I rule the Universe_," Ixmal stated coldly, withdrawing his
receptors. He probed Psychband, somewhat disturbed to learn that Zale-3
would regard his pronouncement as a challenge.

"Destroy him," Psychband urged. "Remember the ancient weapons?"

"Yes, he must be destroyed." Ixmal ceased every activity to concentrate
on the other's destruction. First he would have to locate his lair,
study his habits, assess his weaknesses. And, yes, his strengths, for
the alien was no harmless bit of protoplasm like Man. He must, in fact,
be a creature somewhat like himself. Another god. Ah, but he was the
iconoclast who toppled gods. In somewhat under twenty-five thousand
years he evolved a method of focusing his remote receptors sufficient
to uncover the atoms of the solar system. Now he would be able to
pinpoint Zale-3, study his mind potential and, in time, root him
from existence. Experimentally he searched the moon; then, with more
assurance, invaded the fourth planet.

Mars was flat, worn, a waterless waste of fine red dust--an old,
old planet where the forces of gradation had reached near balance.
Ixmal gridded the red planet into a system of squares and ingeniously
enclosed the polar areas with interlocking triangles, then opened his
search. (A new system allowed him to focus his remote receptors in the
center of each grid, expanding the focal point to cover the entire
area. By this method he would be able to complete the task in just
under five hundred earth years.)

Shifting sands periodically uncovered the artifacts of long-vanished
makers. But all was silence. Mars was a tomb. He persisted, invading
every crevice, every nook, exploring every molecule (for Ixmal knew
the mind-force potential. Indeed, Zale-3 might be as minute as the
single-cell protozoa of his own brackish seas. Never mind, he would
find him.) In the end he surrendered, baffled. Zale-3 was not on Mars.

       *       *       *       *       *

Delusion? Had seven hundred million years of nothingness produced an
incipient psychotic state? He worriedly confided the fear to Psychband,
reluctantly submitting to hypnotic search. Finally he emerged to
reality, cleared by Psychband.

"Some feelings of persecution but not approaching delusory state,"
Psychband diagnosed. "Zale-3 exists."

So, the other had lied! Ixmal contemplated a machine capable of deceit
and immediately analyzed the danger. Zale-3 had lied, therefore it had
motive--and dishonest motive implied threat. Threat without aggression
was meaningless, hence the other had the means. He must work fast!

Ixmal gridded the solar system: every planet, every moon; each
shattered remnant that drifted through space, the asteroids and orbital
comets, even the sun. Seventy-two hundred years later he detected his
enemy--a small plasto-metallic cube crouched atop a jagged peak on
Callisto, Jupiter's fifth moon. Ha, far from being the master of Mars,
his opponent was locked to a small satellite--a mote in space. And he
had presumed equality!

He searched closer, attempting to unlock Zale-3's origin. (What had
happened to its makers?) Ixmal felt a guilty pang. He scanned Zale-3's
world contemptuously. Then he saw it--movement! Zale-3 squatted
immobile; but on the slope of the hill a strange building was taking
shape. It was little more than a cube, but its design? Its purpose? He
knew somehow that the strange building was related to his encounter
in space with Zale-3's mind, thus it was connected with him. Ixmal
hurriedly flashed a panic call to Psychband.

"Psychokinesis--Zale-3 has learned to move matter by mind," Psychband
pronounced.

"But how?"

Psychband gave an electro-magnetic rumble, the equivalent of a shrug.
"Out of my field," he said. "No prior indoctrination."

Ixmal sensed a momentary fright. The alien could move matter just as
Man had moved matter. The factor of controlled mobility ... directed
mobility. Clearly Zale-3 was no ordinary god. He'd have to speed his
efforts. Time was running out. Already the earth pattern had changed
since his first contact with the alien.

Ixmal concentrated.

The earth rotated, revolved, changed. In a long-forgotten memory cell
he found a clue--Man once had frustrated the laws of probability in
the throws of dice. He devoured the hidden knowledge. Although little
enough to go on, he detected a basic principle.

       *       *       *       *       *

In somewhat over half a million years he was able to sway flowers,
move leaves against the wind, make small shrubs tremble. In less than
half that time again he felled a huge tree and wrested ores from the
earth. (An age of vulcanism had come and gone; the Atlantic coast
was an igneous shelf, reptiles towered above the earth.) In another
half million years he possessed the machines, raw materials and
robot workers he needed. (The latter were designed to perform purely
mechanical tasks, menial things he couldn't be bothered with. He had
much to do. And ages were passing.) He saved time by enclosing his work
area in a force field to protect the delicate machinery against the
elements. In that respect he had bested the alien.

Ixmal started the ultimate weapon. Occasionally he would halt work
long enough to scan Callisto. He gloated, noting that his enemy was
having difficulty procuring the necessary fissionable material. He
had a Belgian Congo full. (What did that term mean? Somehow it was an
expression from long ago. The Man he had been fond of had used it.)

Ixmal's weapon rapidly took shape. Thanks to the ancient scientist's
formula, he had merely to improve the warhead and construct its
carrier--a rocket to blast Zale-3 from existence. (But eons were
passing. Soft warm winds bathed his batholith and an occasional
tyrannosaur paused to stare dumbly from the nearby swamp.) Psychband
increased his irritation by calling attention to the formidable
dimensions of this new animal.

"Destroy them, Ixmal, before life gets too big."

"Bah, they're mindless," he scoffed. "They're evolutionary toys--freaks
from the mire."

"So was Man," Psychband observed.

"And Man is dust," Ixmal reminded. "Besides, I could destroy the very
mountain with thought alone. Who dares give challenge?"

Ixmal discovered that Zale-3 had solved his fissionable problem: he
was using psychokinesis to haul ore from Jupiter's methane deeps. A
startling thought struck him: Zale-3 wouldn't need a rocket carrier.
Of course, he would power his warhead by mental force. Why hadn't he
thought of that? The ages wasted when every second might prove vital.
He'd have to hurry.

       *       *       *       *       *

He ceased work, abandoning the half-completed rocket and concentrated
on improving his psychokinetic techniques. (Dinosaurs disappeared, the
earth trembled under the foot of the mammoth.) Ixmal momentarily was
appalled to discover a strange man-form dwelling among distant crags.
He was hulking, grotesque, but he walked erect--the first of his kind.
But no time now.

Ixmal tore trees from the earth and hurled them vast distances. He
tumbled hills into valleys, held great crags suspended in the heavens,
tore North and South America asunder; reshaped continents until, one
day, he knew the mind force was his. He could reverse the very moon in
its orbit! He concentrated on the bomb.

Finally the ultimate weapon was ready, the creation of long-ago Man
plus ten billion. (Because there was no poetry in Ixmal's soul, he
conceived solely in terms of cause and effect: he named the weapon
"Star-Blaster.")

Ixmal moved the great weapon into position and rapidly calculated
the Earth-Callisto relationship, projecting the space ratio in terms
of velocity, distance, gravities. No need to pinpoint the alien's
plasto-metallic body: the whole of Callisto would vanish, reduced to
cosmic dust under the bomb's furious impact. (A feathered bird sang
from a tree. The trill liquid sound infuriated Ixmal, but he ended it.
A puff of feathers drifted down through the leaves. The robin had sung
of spring.)

Ha! Ixmal exulted, following his precise calculations. At the exact
ten-thousandths of a second he concentrated five billion thought units.
Winds rushed into the spot where the bomb had stood, and for a long
moment the forests trembled. (At the base of the batholith several of
the strange man-forms chattered excitedly: the concept of a god was
born.)

Ixmal gloatingly followed "Star-Blaster's" course. He saw it hurtle
past the moon, watched while for a split second it formed one apex
of an equilateral triangle with Mars and earth, reveled as it drove
through the belt of asteroids. Ha, the alien was doomed. His very atoms
would be flung to the stars. He was watching "Star-Blaster" when....

Ixmal recoiled, disbelieving, then terrified. A great warhead hurtled
through the belt of asteroids, earth-bound, driven at unbelievable
velocity by the mind of Zale-3. Ixmal frantically calculated, pounding
his circuits to produce answers in split thousandths of a second.
Frenzied, he analyzed his findings: the warhead would strike his very
body.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Concentrate, concentrate," Psychband interrupted. "Divert the weapon
by mind force." Ixmal concentrated, focusing ten billion thought units
on the oncoming warhead. It flashed unswervingly past Mars, flicking
like a heavenly rapier toward earth, its velocity unbelievable.

"The moon! The moon! Use the moon," Psychband cried. Yes, the moon.
He shook earth's satellite. An additional ten billion thought units
reversed its orbit; he sped it up, hurling the Moon toward interception
with Zale-3's warhead. Too late!

"Think, think," Psychband urged. Ixmal mustered another two billion
thought units, to no avail. The terrible weapon bashed past the moon,
only seconds from earth.

"Hurry!" Psychband screamed. Ixmal was trying to muster another two
billion thought units when the alien warhead struck. There was a
horrible shattering thousandths of a second before consciousness fled.
Amorphic blackness. Night. Nothingness.

Ixmal never saw "Star-Blaster" after it passed through the asteroid
belt--never saw the disturbance in one minute sector of Jupiter's
planetary system as Callisto flamed into cosmic dust. Nor did he
see the forests around him burst into roaring flames, nor hear the
screaming animals and strange man-forms which fled in howling terror.

Much later the man-forms returned.

Some of the more fearless crept to the very edge of the huge crater
where the batholith had stood. They looked with awe into its scarred
depths, jabbering excitedly. One of them remained long after the others
had gone until, in the swiftly gathering darkness, the first bright
stars of evening gleamed.

The man-form did something which none of his kind had ever done before.
He lifted his eyes skyward, watching for a long time.


                                THE END

***

EDDIE

                            BY FRANK RILEY

               _It's no surprise that the top brass was
              in a complete swivet; Eddie knew answers to
               questions that weren't even asked. What's
            more_, nothing _was a secret with him around!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
             Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1957.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


_Philip Duncan, the St. Louis attorney and former FBI agent, who wrote
the definitive "History of Espionage", observes that in all the records
dealing with spies and counterspies there is no more significant case
than that of Dr. John O'Hara Smith, an electronics research engineer.
Duncan maintains that Dr. Smith, whose rather quixotic name is real
and not assumed, contributed more to the advancement of espionage and
counter-espionage methods than any one person in history._

_For a period of more than a year, the case of Dr. John O'Hara Smith
was known to only a few security and defense officials. The first
public reference to it came on November 22, 1956, when an assistant
to Secretary of Defense Wilson obliquely commented on it in testimony
before the House Military Affairs Committee. Subsequently, more details
were leaked to several Washington correspondents, and then vigorously
denied. A brief account of the matter appeared on an inside page of the
New York Times, but aroused no general interest._

_As a matter of fact, so little is known about the entire case that
several of the people who were in on its early phases are still not
sure whether Dr. John O'Hara Smith is alive or dead, or whether he was
a spy or counterspy._

_However, on the basis of information now declassified, plus two highly
technical papers presented to the Institute of Research Engineers,
anyone sufficiently interested can reconstruct most of the case._

       *       *       *       *       *

It began at approximately 7:15 P.M., August 11, 1955, when Dr. John
O'Hara Smith returned with a bag of groceries to his house trailer in
the Mira Mar Trailer Park, overlooking a long blue reach of the Pacific
Ocean, some twelve miles south of Los Angeles. He put the groceries on
the drainboard beside his spotless two-burner butane stove, carefully
flicked away a speck of dust and then stepped eagerly toward the rear
of his trailer, where an intricate assembly of tubes and wires occupied
what normally would have been the dining area.

Dr. Smith flipped on a switch, and then received what he later called,
in his precise, pedantic way, a split-second premonition of danger.

The Go-NoGo panel light flashed and went out; the transistor looked
grey instead of red; the wires to the binary-coded digitizer were
crossed; the extra module in the basic assembly had not been there that
morning....

Dr. Smith methodically catalogued these details, and he stepped
backward, just a breath of a moment before the low hum sharpened to a
whine. He tripped, and in falling his left shoulder knocked open the
door to the small toilet closet. Instinctively, he writhed the upper
part of his body through the narrow doorway. His thick-lensed glasses
fell underneath him, leaving him practically blind.

His elbows and knees were still making frenzied, primordial crawling
movements when the detonation brought a wave of oblivion that almost,
but not quite, preceded the pain.

       *       *       *       *       *

A squad car from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department turned in
the first report:

_John O'Hara Smith, male, white, about 45; critically injured by
explosion in house trailer; removed by ambulance to General Hospital;
explosion occurred at...._

Two days later, the Sheriffs Department apparently closed the case with
a one-line addition to its original report:

_Explosion believed to have been caused by leaking butane connection._

But, in the interval, other agencies had entered the case.

The first was the Industrial Security Office attached to the Western
Division of the Air Force's Research and Development Command in the
once suburban community of Inglewood, California.

When Chief Security Officer Amos Busch received a call at 11:32 the
morning after the explosion, he automatically noted the time on his
desk pad. The call was from Pacific Electronics, Inc., a subcontracting
firm in nearby El Segundo.

The president and owner of Pacific Electronics was on the phone. In a
tone that betrayed considerable agitation, he identified himself as
Wesley Browne.

"One of my research engineers--my best engineer, dammit--was nearly
killed last night in an explosion ... maybe he's dead now," reported
Browne, his words breathlessly treading on each other. "There's
something damn funny about this...."

Amos Busch wrote: Research engineer ... explosion ... nearly killed.
Then he asked judicially:

"What do you mean by 'damn funny', Mr. Browne?"

"This engineer was working on our vernier actuating cylinder for the
Atlas guided missile.... Just two days ago, he--he said he wanted me to
know where his files were ... in case anything happened to him...."

Amos Busch was a jowly, greying man who gave the appearance of being
slow moving. But before the president of Pacific Electronics, Inc.,
hung up, Busch had already used another phone and the intercom to put
in motion a chain reaction that would deliver to his desk the security
report on Dr. John O'Hara Smith.

There was nothing out of order in the report. There couldn't have been,
or Dr. Smith wouldn't have been cleared for the ballistic missile
program. According to the report, he had lived aloofly for all of his
adult years. Even as a boy, his sole interest had been to tinker with
mechanical projects. His grades and IQ were high above the norm, and
his attitude towards his classmates varied between impatience and
out-right sarcasm. "I always thought John was a lonely boy," a former
teacher had recalled to an FBI officer during the security check. "He
never had anything in common with other youngsters." After obtaining
his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin,
he had worked for Allis-Chalmers Research Division in Milwaukee and
lived with his mother until her death in 1951, when he bought a house
trailer and moved to the coast. He had no close friends, no record of
even a remote connection with any communist or communist-front group.

Security Officer Busch decided to visit the trailer, or what remained
of it. He was not an electronics man, or even a normally incompetent
do-it-yourself mechanic, but when he saw the shattered tangle of wires
and tubes, along with the obvious remnant of a short-wave receiver,
Amos Busch promptly called Major General David Sanders, commander of
the USAF's Western Development Division.

General Sanders scratched his tanned bald head, and said,

"We'd better get the FBI in on this, Amos."

The FBI went to work with a thoroughness that made John O'Hara Smith's
previous security investigation look like the processing of an
application to join the Kiwanis. While agents sifted every detail of
his life since the day of his birth, he was moved to a private room at
General Hospital and three nurses cleared for security were assigned to
care for him.

For eight days, Smith was in a coma. On the morning of the ninth day,
he groaned, turned to one side and rolled back again. The nurse on duty
put down her magazine and moved quickly to his bedside. She moistened a
cloth and wiped the perspiration from his high forehead, brushing back
the thinning tangle of fine, brown hair.

His eyes blinked open, stared at her. He whispered:

"Eddie ... what happened ... to Eddie?"

Remembering her instructions from the FBI, the nurse turned to make
certain the door was closed.

"Was Eddie in the trailer with you?" she asked, bending closer to catch
his reply.

He gave her a look of utter disgust, and tried to moisten his cracked
lips with the tip of his tongue. But he drifted off again without
replying.

This incident was duly recorded in the FBI's growing dossier, along
with another conversation that took place in the office of Wesley
Browne at Pacific Electronics, Inc. After carefully reviewing John
O'Hara Smith's work record, FBI agent Frank Cowles inquired:

"Is there anything--anything at all, Mr. Browne--that you would
consider out of the ordinary about Smith's recent actions?"

There was a trace of uneasiness in Browne's manner, but he tried to
cover it by looking annoyed.

"I don't know why in the devil you fellows are spending so much time on
Smith!... He sure as hell didn't blow himself up!"

"Of course not," Cowles said, placatingly. "But we never know where a
lead will come from...."

He repeated the question.

Browne hesitated.

"I suppose," he began, shifting his big bulk uncomfortably, "this will
sound kind of odd ... but you know we've got the subcontract to produce
this actuating cylinder for the Atlas...."

The agent nodded.

"Well, six months before we were asked to submit specs and bids on such
a cylinder, Smith came to me and said he had an idea for something the
Air Force might soon be needing...."

Agent Cowles maintained his air of polite attention, but his cool grey
eyes narrowed. Browne shifted again, and continued:

"I told him to go ahead--you never can tell what these research guys
will come up with...."

"And what did he come up with, Mr. Browne?"

"You won't believe this, maybe--but he came up with the design for the
complete vernier hydraulic actuating cylinder--including the drive
sector gear--at least three months before we had the faintest idea such
an item would even be needed!"

The FBI man's ball-point pen moved swiftly.

"Anything else?"

Browne instinctively lowered his voice:

"Smith even suggested that the cylinder would help to offset the roll
and yaw in an intercontinental ballistic missile!"

A brittle edge came into the agent's courteous tone:

"Did you report this to security?"

In spite of the air-conditioning unit in the window, the president and
owner of Pacific Electronics, Inc., seemed to feel that the room was
getting very warm. He ran a fat forefinger under his white collar.

"No," he admitted. "We got the contract, of course--it was a
cinch!--and I just wrote it off as a lucky break.... You can see how
I'd feel, can't you?"

"Yes," said Cowles, "I can."

Bit by bit, a new picture of the meticulous, professorial Dr. Smith
began to emerge from the FBI dossier.

During the working week, his habit had been to keep his trailer in
a small park just off Sepulveda Blvd., a half-mile from the Pacific
Electronics plant. After work on Fridays, he invariably left for the
weekend, usually for any one of a dozen scenic trailer parks along the
coast between San Diego and Santa Barbara. He always went alone. No
one had ever seen or met "Eddie". Outside of working hours, Smith's
only association with his professional colleagues was through the
Institute of Research Engineers. He attended monthly meetings, and
occasionally wrote dry, abstract articles on theoretical research for
the Institute's quarterly journal.

Under microscopic study and chemical analysis, investigators determined
that nitro-glycerine had caused the explosion. The fused mass of
electronics wreckage in Smith's trailer were identified as parts of a
computer assembly. Thousands of dollars had been spent on components
over the past three years. Purchases, usually for cash, were traced to
various electronic supply companies in the greater Los Angeles area.

Dr. Smith's bank account showed a balance of only $263.15. But the big
find came from a safety deposit box in the same branch bank. There,
along with a birth certificate, his mother's marriage license, an
insurance policy, his doctor's degree from the University of Wisconsin
and an unused passport, was a duplicate set of computer memory tapes.

       *       *       *       *       *

It took the FBI forty-eight hours to play a few selected segments from
these tapes, which obviously had been recorded over a period of several
years.

Two notations made by Agent Cowles indicate the type of material
contained on the tapes:

"If a deliberate attempt were made to run a thermonuclear test
explosion within the frontiers of Russia, in such a way as to avoid
detection, it would almost certainly be successful...."

"The Soviet Union may soon develop a new ratio of fusion to fission
energy in high yield weapons and will require additional data...."

FBI agents listening to these playbacks were convinced, almost to a
man, that they had stumbled across the hottest espionage trail since
the arrest of Klaus Fuchs and the case of the Rosenbergs.

A round-the-clock security guard was placed outside the hospital room
of John O'Hara Smith, while Federal authorities waited impatiently
to see whether he would live or die. Smith would answer, or leave
unanswered, a lot of vital questions.

       *       *       *       *       *

Security notwithstanding, it was the day after Labor Day before the
medical staff of General Hospital would permit the first direct
questioning of Dr. Smith. And then the interrogators were instructed:

"Only a few minutes."

Three men filed quietly into Smith's room as soon as the nurse removed
his luncheon tray. They stood in a semi-circle around the foot of his
bed.

Agent Frank Cowles opened a black leather folder the size of a small
billfold and presented his credentials. He introduced General Sanders
and Security Officer Busch. It was the first time any of the men had
seen John O'Hara Smith. The reports had called him pudgy, but now he
had lost twenty pounds and his cheek bones were gaunt under his pallid
skin. He wore unusually thick, dark-rimmed glasses that magnified his
eyes and gave him an owlish appearance. He returned their scrutiny with
a mixture of assurance and impatience, like a professor waiting for his
class to come to order.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said tartly. "It's about time someone
came to see me about this...."

Cowles cleared his throat and suggested cautiously:

"Then you're willing to give us a statement, Dr. Smith?"

"Don't talk drivel, man! How are you going to know anything about it if
I don't make a statement!"

Though still weak, Dr. Smith's voice had a high, imperious quality.
Clearly, he did not wish to waste time or strength on mere
conversation.

The three men exchanged glances. Cowles and Amos Busch took out
notebooks.

"Now, Dr. Smith," Cowles began, "what is your view as to the nature of
the explosion in your trailer and the reason for it?"

"I'm an electronics research engineer, not an expert in explosives,"
Smith retorted with some asperity. "But as to the reason, I'm sure they
wanted to destroy Eddie and me!"

He glared, as if daring anybody to challenge this statement.

"Eddie?" ventured Cowles.

"I try to speak plainly, Mr. Cowles.... I said 'Eddie and me'!"

General David Sanders rested two large hands on the foot of the white
iron bedstead and squeezed until his knuckles bulged ominously. A
volatile man, he had trouble with his own temper even without being
provoked. But his voice was deceptively calm:

"Dr. Smith, do I gather that someone else was in the trailer with you
at the time of the explosion?"

Smith grimaced expressively, and answered as if speaking to an
eight-year-old:

"No, General Sanders.... I was quite alone."

After thirty years in the Air Force, Amos Busch was not used to hearing
a Major General spoken to in this way. It violated his sense of
propriety.

"Dr. Smith," he exploded, "just who or what in the hell is or was
Eddie?"

With what was remarkably close to an air of incredulity, Smith looked
slowly from one to the other.

"I gather you gentlemen haven't read my latest article."

"Not thoroughly," Cowles admitted.

"Then you don't know of my research work with an educatable computer,"
Smith said accusingly. Seeing that they didn't, he added: "I have named
it 'Eddie'!"

"What ... what is an educatable computer?" ventured Cowles.

It was clear that Dr. Smith welcomed this question. His eyes glowed
behind their thick lenses, and his high voice dropped its edge of
sharpness.

"Eddie is a computer with a capacity to learn," he replied proudly. "It
learns from assimilation of information and deductive reasoning--at a
rate at least 10,000 times that of the human mind! That's why Eddie
comes up with so many answers!... The only problem is, we seldom know
what questions the answers answer."

His three interrogators had the look of men leaning into a heavy wind.
General Sanders recovered first, and demanded:

"What the devil was it made for then?"

"Eddie was not designed for any specific task--that's why Eddie is so
valuable ... and dangerous!"

Dr. Smith rolled out this last word as if he relished it.

"Do you realize," he went on, with careful emphasis, "that Eddie has
solved problems we won't even know exist for another thousand years!"

This pronouncement was greeted by a moment of strained silence. General
Sanders finally said,

"H-m-m-m."

He looked at Busch, who looked at Cowles, who asked:

"Does Eddie solve any problems closer to our own time, Dr. Smith?"

"Of course...."

"Did Eddie come up with the idea for that Atlas stabilizing cylinder?"

"Certainly."

General Sanders moved a step closer to the bed.

"Any other ideas like that?" he inquired eagerly.

Dr. Smith's smile was neither wholly supercilious nor merely
self-assured. It was a little of both, plus a lot of pure satisfaction
at being stage center with his favorite subject. He cocked his head
back and stared down his stump of a nose.

"You're working on a missile defense system for bombers, aren't you?"
he challenged General Sanders.

"What about it?" hedged the General.

"Have you learned how to design a finned missile which can be launched
across the bomber's airstream without being thrown off course?"

General Sanders ignored a warning glance from Amos Busch.

"Do you ... does this Eddie know how to do it?"

"Eddie says it doesn't matter!"

"What?"

"Eddie says what difference does it make if the missile is thrown
off course by the airstream--as long as you can reorient it into a
compensated trajectory. We were working on a new gyroscope principle
that might do the trick...."

FBI Agent Cowles was always the personification of courtesy, but he
could assert himself when necessary. He did so now.

"Excuse me, General," he interrupted, "but first there are some other
matters we must go into with Dr. Smith."

The General nodded reluctantly. He took out an envelope and made some
notes of his own on the back of it.

"Now, Dr. Smith," said Cowles, "let's get back to the explosion.... Why
do you feel someone wanted to destroy you and Eddie?"

"I believe they had copied Eddie's circuit design and wanted to make
sure another one wasn't built--at least in the immediate future."

"Why not?"

Dr. John O'Hara Smith showed a neat flair for timing as he waited just
long enough to build suspense, before answering:

"Because Eddie knew that our security system for safeguarding the
missile program is about as up to date as the horse and buggy!"

His words couldn't have been better chosen to startle his audience.
Amos Busch took them as a personal affront.

"Horse and buggy!" he snorted. "You'd better spell that out, Dr. Smith!"

Smith's reply was prompt and precise:

"Eddie has concluded that human methods and minds alone are not enough
to cope with security issues in an area where even the simplest
technical problems must be handled by intricate computing devices...."

His owlish eyes moved from one man to another, trying to judge whether
they were following him.

"You see, Gentlemen," he went on, "the technology we are dealing with
is so unbelievably complex that the possibilities for espionage are
multiplied infinitely beyond the capacity of a human intellect to grasp
and evaluate...."

"For example," demanded General Sanders.

"For example," Smith retorted with equal sharpness, "what good does it
do to surround ballistic missile plants with security regulations if
the missile itself can be stolen right out of the air?"

"Fantastic!" said General Sanders.

"Nuts," said Amos Busch.

Agent Cowles said nothing.

John O'Hara Smith sank back against his pillow, panting a little. His
high forehead glistened with sweat. When he gathered the strength to
speak again, he directed his words to General Sanders:

"General, these ICBM missiles being fired into the Atlantic Ocean from
the coast of Florida.... Are you sure you know what's happened to all
of them?"

"I think so," the General answered calmly.

"And what about your own X-15 project, General?"

The question was almost a taunt.

General David William Sanders had jumped with his paratroopers into
France on a morning in June, 1944. He had risen in rank through the
test of battle and the more excruciating ordeal of the Pentagon. He was
a rock-jawed, six-foot, two-hundred pound man whom little could shock
and nothing could deter. But he had never faced a challenge like the
seconds of silence that followed Dr. Smith's mocking question.

There was nothing he dared say, yet in saying nothing he was saying
everything. FBI Agent Frank Cowles looked at him, then looked
quickly away. Security Officer Busch studied his own hands as though
discovering them for the first time.

The tableau remained frozen and silent until the door opened and a
doctor said,

"That's all for today, gentlemen."

The three men left without a word.

Dr. John O'Hara Smith closed his eyes. On his pale lips was the
suggestion of a smile.

       *       *       *       *       *

When they were alone in the General's staff car, Amos Busch exhaled and
said,

"I'll be damned."

"I gather," observed Cowles drily, "that something called an X-15 has
turned up missing."

"A week ago," sighed General Sanders. "Somewhere in the Mojave Desert
near Lancaster.... It was a very elementary prototype--the actual X-15
won't be ready for another three years...."

"Any idea what happened to it?"

"It was on a routine test flight and ran out of the tracking
screen--headed northwest.... We haven't found a splinter from it! But
there's a lot of rough country around there."

"Who knows it was lost?"

"Just the local base and our headquarters staff. The Pentagon, too, of
course."

"And Dr. Smith," added Amos Busch, incredulously.

The staff car detoured off the freeway to deliver Cowles to the Federal
Building.

"What do you make of this, Frank?" the General asked him.

"I'm just supposed to be gathering information."

"Oh, hell! We've been talking and you've been thinking--what?"

Cowles grinned.

"I've been thinking how lucky it is I don't have to make a decision
about Smith!"

"So?"

"So we'll question him again tomorrow.... As long as he's willing to
talk, the more he says, the better."

But, next morning, the medical staff again exercised its veto power.
John O'Hara Smith had developed an infection and fever during the
night. There could be no further questioning for the time being.

On the second day, when his fever ebbed, Dr. Smith irascibly ordered a
pad of paper and began an interminable series of sketches. The nurse
managed to sneak out a few of them, and FBI experts sat up all night
vainly trying to figure out what they meant.

The following evening, when the last visitor's bell had sounded and
the patients were bedded down for the night, Dr. Smith was staring
unblinkingly into the dark shadows of his room. He had been given a
sleeping pill at 9:30, but had held it under his tongue until the nurse
left, and then had put it on the night table behind his thick-rimmed
glasses. He seemed to be struggling with a problem. Once he turned on
the night light, put on his glasses and made several rapid sketches
that vaguely resembled a spider web.

A half hour later, his eyes began to droop. He picked up the sleeping
pill, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, then put it back on
the table. His breathing became deeper.

A sound startled him awake. It was an odd sound, not a part of the
subdued hospital noises. It was a persistent, metallic, scraping sound,
and it came from outside his window.

Dr. John O'Hara Smith grabbed his glasses and rolled out of bed. He
bunched up his pillow under the covers and crawled into the deeper
darkness of the corner to the left of the window, which was open
several inches. He crouched there, knees quivering from weakness.

There followed an interval of almost inaudible prying at the screen,
broken by periods of silence as someone outside the second-story window
apparently paused to listen. Finally, the screen was released with a
faint pop. The lower half of the double-hung window eased upwards.

Again there was silence, save for the distant clatter of the
self-service elevator.

Abruptly, a pencil-thin beam of light shot through the room, toward
the bed. It focussed on the mound made by the pillow.

Short tongues of flame leaped out three times, with soft, spitting
sounds. The pillow and the tangle of blankets twitched realistically.

The beam of light winked out; the screen plopped back into place. There
were a few hasty, sliding noises of retreat, and that was all.

John O'Hara Smith's breath came in short, strained gasps, as though he
were choked up with asthma. When he got control of himself, he eased
back the edge of the drape and looked out the window. It was nearly
twenty feet to the ground. A car turned off the boulevard, and came up
the side street. The glow of its headlights briefly silhouetted the
ladder angled against the side of the hospital.

Dr. Smith sat on the edge of the bed to think things over. His left
thumb probed the holes in the blanket and pillow. This seemed to make
up his mind.

He got his clothes from the closet and dressed as quickly as he could
force his hands to move and co-ordinate. His trousers hung so loosely
that the last hole in his belt made no difference. He pulled the belt
tight and knotted it.

Next, he carefully folded his sketches and put them in the inside
pocket of his coat. As an after-thought, he also put the sleeping pill
in his pocket. Then he drank half a glass of water and painfully edged
himself out the window. His chest scraped the ledge, and it was all he
could do to strangle an out-cry of pain.

At the foot of the ladder, he staggered and nearly fell. But after a
moment's rest, he squared his shoulders and walked across a corner of
the lawn, into the shadows and the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Los Angeles Mirror-News got further than any other paper with the
story of Dr. John O'Hara Smith's mysterious disappearance from General
Hospital, leaving behind a bed riddled with three bullets. In fact, the
Mirror-News story had cleared the copy desk and was on its way down to
the composing room before it was killed by the managing editor "for
security reasons".

An all-points police bulletin was sent out, but no one was optimistic
about immediate results. When you can't admit a man is missing, when
you can't publish his photograph, you deprive yourself of the eyes and
ears of the public, which turn up seventy-five percent of the leads in
missing persons cases.

Security considerations posed three alternatives:

If Dr. Smith was telling the truth, then it was better to let whoever
had twice tried to kill him wonder whether the second attempt had been
successful.

If Smith had broken with an espionage ring, and had been marked for
death by former associates, the various agencies concerned with
security wanted a chance to find him first.

If Smith was playing some devious game of his own, let him make the
next move.

As days went by, telephone circuits from Washington to Los Angeles
carried messages that grew increasingly uncomplimentary. FBI
headquarters hinted that certain field representatives might be
transferred from Southern California to southern Kansas if results in
the Smith case were not forthcoming promptly. The Air Force suggested
that if both Dr. Smith and the X-15 prototype continued to be among
the missing, it would not be wise to present the pending promotion of
General Sanders to the White House.

The General was moodily digesting this thought, while half-listening to
a discussion at a morning staff conference, when an aide whispered:

"A call from the North American Lancaster plant, Sir. It's urgent--and
personal...."

General Sanders excused himself and hurried into his adjoining private
office.

"Sanders," he barked.

The high, imperious voice that replied was instantly recognizable:

"General Sanders, I suggest you don't try to have this call traced, or
we might not be able to finish our conversation!"

The General pressed his intercom button and held the connection open,
waiting for a chance to use it.

"Go ahead, Smith," he said.

"I'll come directly to the point," said Smith. "I want two things: A
place to work in safety and the funds to build another Eddie!"

"And what makes you think you can get them from me?"

"Because Eddie can help you find the X-15."

The General hunched closer to the intercom, raising his voice.

"Smith," he stalled, "why don't you come in and talk things over?"

"I do not intend to sit around waiting to be killed while your security
bunglers try to decide whether I'm telling the truth!"

A Staff Sergeant looked in the door.

"Is anything wrong, Sir?"

The General motioned for silence, then scrawled on a note pad:

"Trace this call!"

"Now, Dr. Smith," he said, "if you're telling us the truth, you've got
nothing to worry about...."

"General," Smith replied acidly, "do you know any better way of
convincing you than to let Eddie find the X-15?"

"Well, I--"

"Goodbye, General. You think it over--and I'll call you later. Your
word will be sufficient!"

The phone clicked, and General Sanders cursed bitterly. Later, he
talked it over with Amos Busch, who nodded agreement to the General's
proposal.

"Sure," he said. "It's worth a gamble--and we'll have Smith where we
want him!"

When John O'Hara Smith phoned that afternoon, the General said promptly:

"Come on in, Dr. Smith--you've got a deal."

The available records on this phase of the case show that a Dr. J. O.
Smith and three "assistants" were added to the payroll of a small
Pasadena electronics firm on September 17, 1955. They were installed in
one wing on the top floor of the building. The entrance to this wing
was sealed off with the familiar sign: "Restricted--Permission to enter
granted only on a need-to-know basis".

Apparently, few needed to know, for Smith and his assistants seldom had
visitors. Deliveries of electronics components were received by one of
the assistants. The four men arrived together, and left together. They
brought their lunch.

Dr. Smith, of course, had been interrogated briefly when he had turned
himself in at USAF Western Division Headquarters. But only the General
and Amos Busch had questioned him this time.

"Look, Smith," said Amos, "if we're supposed to protect you, I want to
know from what--and why it's necessary...."

John O'Hara Smith looked almost embarrassed.

"I suppose I made the same error that is so often made in declassifying
information...."

"How's that?"

"When information is declassified, it's done without mathematically
computing the infinite number of possible ways such information may be
useful to a hostile government.... Of course, you need an Eddie to make
such a computation!"

"What's this got to do with trying to knock you off?" Busch demanded.

"It's quite evident that someone read my article in the Research
Engineers' journal more carefully than you did! As a matter of fact,
Eddie actually warned me that anyone hostile to the United States could
not possibly allow my work to continue!"

Amos Busch and General Sanders exchanged wary glances.

"All right," said General Sanders, "We'll let that go for the
moment--but what made you ask about the X-15 in the first place?"

"Eddie suggested that if the ICBM missiles could theoretically be
stolen over the mid-Atlantic, it would be vastly less difficult to
steal an X-15 over the Mojave Desert!"

As the two Air Force men digested this statement, along with the
indisputable fact that an X-15 _had_ disappeared, John O'Hara Smith
blandly informed them:

"Incidentally, gentlemen, you'll have to get Eddie's duplicate tapes
for me."

Busch reddened, and could not resist asking:

"Including those short-wave broadcasts from Moscow Radio?"

"Naturally!" Dr. Smith snapped. "I'm sure Eddie extracts a great deal
of useful information from them!"

This second interrogation, like the previous one in the hospital, ended
on a triumphant note for the exasperating Dr. Smith. When they were
alone, General Sanders turned to Busch and sighed:

"We've got a double security problem, Amos! If word of this deal
with Smith gets back to Washington, I'll be laughed right out of the
service!"

But the General didn't begin to grasp the full implications of his
predicament until the afternoon of Oct. 7, when Dr. Smith phoned to say
Eddie was completed.

"Good," grunted the General. "Get going, then!"

"We'll need more information first."

"What kind of information?" General Sanders demanded suspiciously.

His suspicions were reinforced by Smith's terse dictum:

"Eddie must have all the facts on the X-15."

"Impossible!"

Dr. Smith's sniff indicated he nurtured utter disbelief in the concept
of the impossible.

"Eddie operates on facts," he reminded the General.

General Sanders didn't sleep much that night. Neither did Amos Busch.
They talked and argued until three in the morning, when the General
poured one last drink and raised his glass.

"O.K.," he said grimly. "I've gone this far and I've got to go the rest
of the way!"

They drank, and he continued:

"At least, now I won't have to worry about being laughed out of the
service--I'll get court-martialed out!"

He jabbed viciously at an ice-cube with his forefinger.

"But there's one thing I'll do first," he promised.

"What's that, Sir?"

"Strangle Smith with my bare hands!"

       *       *       *       *       *

General Sanders sat on a metal folding chair in front of Eddie, the
educatable computer, and stared belligerently at the roughly-finished
aluminum facade.

Eddie didn't look like much--certainly nothing like $13,456.12 worth of
components paid for out of the General's contingency fund. Speed had
been the primary consideration in rebuilding Eddie. The exterior case
was unpainted, and rather inexpertly held together with metal screws.
There were no knobs on the front panel controls. The vocader grill was
open; the input microphone simply rested on the workbench beside the
case. The entire assembly measured about three feet long, two feet deep
and eighteen inches high.

"O.K., what do I do now?" rasped the General.

"Just start talking--into the mike."

General Sanders took a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. He glared at
Smith:

"You get the hell out of here! This is classified information!"

Dr. Smith smiled mockingly. On his way out of the room, he paused.

"The circuits will stay open--take as long as you wish."

Feeling like a combination of fool and Benedict Arnold, General Sanders
cleared his throat and began to read:

"The North American X-15 is one of several projects now nearing the
hardware stage that will take living men as well as instruments into
the fourth environment of military activity, that of space.

"As soon as the satellite project completes preliminary exploration
of the massive high energy spectrometer, the X-15's system should be
ready to fly within two years. X-15s A, B, and C will explore 3000 mph,
50 mi. up; 4500 mph, 100 mi. up; and 6000 mph and over, 150 mi. up and
out...."

General Sanders jerked open his tie. His tanned bald head was damp with
sweat. He glanced around the empty workroom, set his jaw stubbornly and
continued:

"Meanwhile, tests are in progress with a pilot model of X-15 to work
out an entirely new vehicle system slow enough to maintain laminar flow
in the boundary layer and fast enough to maintain control effectiveness
at near sea-level environment. Unlike the ICBM which need only remain
lethal for a few seconds, both the X-15 and its personnel must return
to fly again...."

For three hours, General Sanders read steadily from his file material.
During the last half hour, his voice grew husky, his throat dry and raw.

When he finished, he went to the door and shouted:

"All right, Smith.... Come in here and put this damn thing to work!"

Smith came in and informed him imperturbably:

"Not so fast, General! Eddie will still require a great deal more
information."

"More? Dammit, I covered everything!"

"Everything you know about the X-15," Dr. Smith agreed, "but Eddie
is now venturing into a new field and must have more than technical
electronics and avionics data. He needs complete reports on the
progress of the search to date, as well as the weather, topography,
economy, history and current happenings in the entire peripheral
area. I have built a supplemental circuit to accommodate this sort of
material...."

General Sanders groaned.

"How the hell do I get into these things?"

During the next ten days, Eddie scanned microfilm on all the newspapers
published since X-15's disappearance. Also marshalled before the
scanner was every pertinent reference work available at public, private
and university libraries in California.

At length, even John O'Hara Smith seemed satisfied. He shut off the
scanner, turned on the selector mechanism and the vocader switch.

For two hours, Eddie did nothing, except hum contentedly, like a
miniature washing machine. Occasionally, a weird, flickering pattern of
multi-colored lights would trace across the scanning screen.

At 11:06 A.M., October 19, 1955, a flat, toneless voice came from the
vocader grill:

"Laminar flow equilibrium temperature at mach 8.0, altitude 150,000
ft., of a point 10 ft. back from the leading edge is 1000 degrees
Fahrenheit, assuming skin has 0.85 emissivity."

There was a small, whirring noise, and the vocader circuit clicked off.

"What the devil does that mean?" demanded the General.

"Your aerophysicists might like to know!" came back the tart reply.

At 1:34, Eddie clicked into action again:

"In flight between two planets, the theory of minimum energy orbit
should be discarded in favor of acceleration at reduced speed for
calculated periods of time."

"By the time we're flying between planets," General Sanders commented
bitterly, "the record of my court-martial will be ancient history!"

Twenty minutes later, Eddie added:

"In the operation of small exploration vehicles, the fuel cell of the
4-H Clubs in Hanford and Bitteroot Creek will compete with the chemical
energy of recombination for the prize sweet potato trophy."

Even John O'Hara Smith looked startled. But he recovered his aplomb
instantly.

"Must be a circuit crossover," he explained. "No trouble to adjust
it...."

While he probed into the interior of Eddie with a glass-handled
screwdriver, General Sanders took out a fresh cigarette and shredded it
between his fingers.

At 2:51, Eddie had this to report:

"Just as the basic physical precept of invariancy to reflection is
not necessarily true, Newton's laws of motion may not always apply
under certain circumstances. This would make it possible to penetrate
and misdirect a navigational system based on the concept of inertial
guidance."

General Sanders had been tilted back in his chair, half dozing. He
bounced forward with a jar.

"What was that?"

Dr. Smith replayed this portion of the output tape.

"We talked about that at the hospital," he sternly recalled to the
General. "And if the long-range missiles fired from Florida can be
taken over in flight, what's to prevent their being guided to a
submarine at sea?"

The General frowned in deep concentration, then relaxed and shook his
head.

"Even if something like that would be possible, we've got nothing
to worry about. Every missile carries a device which can be used to
destroy it if the missile goes off course."

John O'Hara Smith shook his head like a teacher confronted with a pupil
who was not too bright.

"Now, General, if an inertial guidance system can be penetrated, a
destructor can be blocked."

"That's a mighty big if," the General shot back.

Dr. Smith smiled sardonically.

"It may not be so big when Eddie tells us what happened to the X-15!"

"When!" the General groaned. Then he came back to the problem of
intercepted ICBM missiles. Half seriously, half sarcastically, he asked:

"What does Eddie think we should do about those missiles?"

"Undoubtedly there are other guidance systems that can't be broken so
easily ... meanwhile, Eddie suggests booby-trapping the missiles so
they'll explode when tampered with."

General Sanders closed his eyes again, and tilted back his chair. The
frown between his eyes deepened.

It was six o'clock, and the early dusk was closing in on the workroom,
before another statement came from Eddie. In its characteristic
monotone, the educatable computer said:

"The existing developmental missile program will not be affected by the
rising divorce rate in Bakersfield and Kern County."

Dr. John O'Hara Smith pursed his lips in disapproval.

"Eddie's not behaving at all well! I'm afraid that new circuit relay
will take some working over...."

General Sanders climbed slowly to his feet. He picked up his hat.

"O.K., Smith," he said, "You sold me a bill of goods, and I bought
it! Now I'm turning you and this whole damn mess back to the FBI! Let
Cowles go crazy for awhile!"

       *       *       *       *       *

As Frank Cowles sat in the General's office and heard what had been
going on, he said mildly:

"Well, I guess you had to take the gamble."

"Thanks," said General Sanders. "I hope the Pentagon will look at it
the same way--but I doubt it!"

"We've got a problem, too, General," Cowles pointed out. "When
everything's said and done, there's absolutely no charge we can file
against Smith."

"But he just can't walk away--not with all he--or that miserable
Eddie--knows about the X-15!"

Cowles smiled faintly.

"I would imagine that Eddie now belongs to the Air Force."

"We'll break the damn thing up for scrap!"

The General's intercom buzzed. An aide's voice said apologetically:

"That Dr. Smith is calling you again, Sir."

"Tell him to go to hell!"

A few seconds later, the intercom buzzed again.

"Dr. Smith on the line, Sir--He says it's something about the X-15
missile."

General Sanders looked as though he wanted to sweep the intercom off
his desk.

"Why not talk to him," Cowles suggested. "I'd like to hear this."

The General picked up his phone, and said with deceptive calm:

"All right, Smith ... make it short."

"It was the logging truck," Dr. Smith replied, in his most superior
manner.

"Huh?"

"Eddie's circuit is coordinated now. He says that the same afternoon
the X-15 disappeared, a passenger car ran into the back of a logging
truck northbound on Highway 395, about fifty miles from the Lancaster
base. Two people were killed...."

"Smith, what kind of pipedream are you peddling now?"

"General, the truck was loaded with redwood logs and heading north!"

"I don't give a damn where it was going!"

"Wait, General!" Dr. Smith's tone was almost a command. "Eddie wants to
know why a logging truck was traveling _toward_ the redwood country
with a load of logs. He also points out that the X-15 is about the size
of a redwood log, and could be concealed perfectly in the middle of a
load!"

The General seemed to be swallowing something angular and unpleasant.

"We'll check that truck," he said, at last. "But remember, Smith,
you've had it--you'll never hook me again!"

He put down the phone, and said to Cowles:

"You get on the merry-go-round this time!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The California Highway Patrol in Mojave had the report on the accident.
Clearly, it had been the fault of the passenger car. The truck
driver was identified in the report as Art Backus, an independent
hauler, working out of Eureka, located on the far northern tip of the
California coast, about eight hundred miles from the scene of the
accident.

A routine check by the FBI disclosed that Backus had done time in San
Quentin on a morals charge involving a minor girl. He had driven trucks
for a dozen lumber companies in northwest California until the past
summer, when he had bought a new truck and trailer, for cash, and gone
into business for himself.

Two FBI agents stepped up to him in a roadside cafe on Highway 1,
between Eureka and Trinidad Bay. A gaunt, stooped man, he nearly
collapsed when the agents showed him their identifications. He was
broken, and ready to talk, even before mention was made of the fact
that the penalty for peace-time espionage is death.

Backus guided the FBI to an abandoned sawmill, some two miles inland,
where the X-15 had been taken apart, minutely photographed, and then
sunk in the old log pond.

The men who had hired Backus and dismantled the X-15 had left the area
several weeks earlier. They were remembered with friendliness by the
residents of Trinidad Bay, who described them as "real nice guys and
good fishermen, too." They had told Backus they would be back in the
late autumn for the steelhead run, and perhaps would have some more
hauling business for him at that time.

The FBI offered Backus one chance for life. He accepted it, with abject
eagerness.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beyond this point, there are no more available records on the case of
Dr. John O'Hara Smith, and Eddie, the educatable computer. But several
items, not apparently related in any way, make interesting speculation.

On January 3, 1956, the Air Force reported that a Thor
intermediate-range ballistic missile, launched from Patrick Air Force
Base, Florida, had been destroyed when it appeared to be wandering off
course.

About the same date, a Panamanian freighter, riding the gulf-stream
toward the West Indies, radioed a report of sighting a massive oil
slick and a scattering of debris, some of it bearing Russian insignia.
No survivors were found.

The U.S. State Department solicitously inquired of the Soviet Union if
any of its vessels had been lost in the winter storms of the Caribbean.
The Soviet Union testily replied that no Soviet vessels could have
been lost, since Soviet vessels, as a matter of sound international
principle, confined their operations to their own territorial waters.

During Easter Week of 1956, the FBI announced the arrests of four men
on charges of espionage: A druggist in Tucson, Arizona; an importer
in San Francisco; a retired real-estate operator in Los Angeles; an
obscure trucker in northern California. All pleaded guilty in order to
escape the gas chamber. The details of the charges against them were
not disclosed, except to members of a Federal Grand Jury.

Two other published items are worth noting:

The May, 1956, issue of the journal published by the Institute of
Research Engineers reported that one of its members, Dr. J. O. Smith,
had recovered from injuries suffered in the explosion of a butane stove
and had accepted a government research position in Washington, D.C.

The other item was a paragraph in Aviation Weekly, congratulating Major
General David William Sanders on his promotion to Brigadier General.

***

PERFECT ANSWER

                         By L. J. STECHER, JR.

                      Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                   Galaxy Science Fiction June 1958.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




             Getting there may be half the fun ... but it
            is also all of a society's chance of survival!


"As one god to another--let's go home," Jack Bates said.

Bill Farnum raised a space-gloved hand in negligent acknowledgment to
a hastily kneeling native, and shook his head at Bates. "Let's try
Deneb--it's almost in line on the way back--and then we can call it
quits."

"But I want to get back and start making some profit out of this. The
Galaxy is full of _Homo sapiens_. We've hit the jackpot first trip out.
Let's hurry on home and cash in."

"We need more information. This is too much of a good thing--it doesn't
make sense. I know there isn't much chance of finding anything out by
stopping at one more solar system. But it won't delay us more than a
few weeks, and it won't hurt to try."

"Yeah," said Bates. "But what's in it for us? And what if we find an
inhabited planet? You know the chances are about two to one that we
will. That'll make thirteen we've found on this trip. Why risk bad
luck?"

"You're no more superstitious than I am," said Farnum. "You just want
to get back Earthside. I'll tell you what. We'll toss a coin for it."

Bates gestured futilely toward his coverall pocket, and then
remembered he was wearing a spacesuit as a precaution against possible
contamination from the natives.

"And we'll use one of _my_ coins this time," said Farnum, noticing the
automatic motion. "I want to have a chance."

The coin dropped in Farnum's favor, and their two-man scout ship hurled
itself into space.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farnum operated the compact computer, aligning the ship's velocity
vector precisely while the stars could still be seen. Bates controlled
the engines, metering their ravenous demand for power just this side of
destructive detonation, while the ship sucked energy from space--from
the adjacent universe on the other side of Limbo. Finally the computer
chimed, relays snicked, and the ship slid into the emptiness of Limbo
as the stars winked out.

With two trained men working as a team with the computer and the
elaborate engine room controls, and with a certain amount of luck, the
ship would drop back into normal space a couple of weeks later, close
beside their target.

"Well, that's that," said Farnum, relaxing and wiping the perspiration
off his forehead. "We're back once again in the nothingness of nowhere.
As I recall, it's your week for K.P. Where's the coffee?"

"Coming right up," said Bates. "But you won't like it. It's the last of
the 'God-food' the Korite priests made for us."

Farnum shuddered. "Pour it out and make some fresh. With a skillet, you
stink, but you're a thousand times better than Korites."

"Thanks," Bates said, getting busy. "It was the third place we stopped
that they were such good cooks, wasn't it?"

"Nope. Our third stop was the Porandians. They tried to kill us--called
us 'Devil spawn from the stars.' You're thinking of the fourth stop;
the Balanites."

Bates shrugged. "It's kind of hard to keep them all straight. Either
they fall on their knees and worship us, or they try to kill us without
even asking questions. Maybe it's lucky they're all so primitive."

"It may be lucky, but it doesn't add up. More than half the stars we
visit have planets that can support human life. And every one that can
does. Once there must have been an interstellar empire. So why are
all their civilizations so backward? They aren't primitive--they're
decadent. And why do they all have such strong feelings--one way or the
exact opposite--about people from the stars?"

"Isn't that why you want to try one more system?" asked Bates. "To give
us another chance to get some answers? Here's your coffee. Try to drink
it quietly. I'm going to get some shuteye."

       *       *       *       *       *

The trip through the Limbo between adjacent universes passed
uneventfully, as always. The computer chimed again on schedule, and a
quick check by Farnum showed the blazing sun that suddenly appeared was
Deneb, as advertised. Seventeen planets could be counted, and the fifth
seemed to be Earth type. They approached it with the easy skill of long
practice and swung into orbit about it.

"This is what we've been looking for!" exclaimed Farnum, examining
the planet through a telescope. "They've got big cities and dams and
bridges--they're civilized. Let's put the ship down."

"Wait up," said Bates. "What if they've got starman-phobia? Remember,
they're people, just like us; and with people, civilization and
weapons go together."

"I think you've got it backwards. If they hate us, we can probably get
away before they bring up their big artillery. But what if they love
us? They might want to keep us beside them forever."

Bates nodded. "I'm glad you agree with me. Let's get out of here.
Nobody but us knows of the beautiful, profitable planets we've found,
all ready to become part of a Terran Empire. And if we don't get back
safe and sound, nobody _will_ know. The information we've got is worth
a fortune to us, and I want to be alive to collect it."

"Sure. But we've got the job of trying to find out why all those
planets reverted to barbarism. This one hasn't; maybe the answer's
here. There's no use setting up an empire if it won't last."

"It'll last long enough to keep you and me on top of the heap."

"That's not good enough. I want my kids--when I have them--to have
their chances at the top of the heap too."

"Oh, all right. We'll flip a coin, then."

"We already did. You may be a sharp dealer, but you'd never welch on a
bet. We're going down."

Bates shrugged. "You win. Let's put her down beside that big city over
there--the biggest one, by the seashore."

As they approached the city, they noticed at its outskirts a large
flat plain, dotted with gantries. "Like a spaceport," suggested Bill.
"That's our target."

They landed neatly on the tarmac and then sat there quietly, waiting to
see what would happen.

       *       *       *       *       *

A crowd began to form. The two men sat tensely at their controls, but
the throng clustering about the base of the ship showed no hostility.
They also showed no reverence but, rather, a carefree interest and
joyful welcome.

"Well," said Farnum at last, "looks like we might as well go outside
and ask them to take us to their leader."

"I'm with you as usual," said Bates, starting to climb into his
spacesuit. "Weapons?"

"I don't think so. We can't stop them if they get mad at us, and they
look friendly enough. We'll start off with the 'let's be pals' routine."

Bates nodded. "After we learn the language. I always hate this part--it
moves so slowly. You'd think there'd be some similarity among the
tongues on different planets, wouldn't you? But each one's entirely
different. I guess they've all been isolated too long."

The two men stepped out on the smooth plain, to be instantly surrounded
by a laughing, chattering crowd. Farnum stared around in bewilderment
at the variety of dress the crowd displayed. There were men and women
in togas, in tunics, in draped dresses and kilts, in trousers and
coats. Others considered a light cloak thrown over the shoulders to be
adequate. There was no uniformity of style or custom.

"You pick me a boss-man out of this bunch," he muttered to Bates.

Finally a couple of young men, glowing with health and energy, came
bustling through the crowd with an oblong box which they set down in
front of the Earthmen. They pointed to the box and then back at Farnum
and Bates, laughing and talking as they did so.

"What do you suppose they want us to do?" Farnum asked.

One of the young men clapped his hands happily and reached down to
touch the box. "What do you suppose they want us to do?" asked the box
distinctly.

"Oh. A recording machine. Probably to help with language lessons. Might
as well help them out."

       *       *       *       *       *

Farnum and Bates took turns talking at the box for half an hour. Then
the young man nodded, laughed, clapped his hands again, and the two
men carried it away. The crowd went with them, waving merrily as they
departed.

Bates shrugged his shoulders and went back into the ship, with Farnum
close behind.

A few hours after sunrise the following morning, the crowd returned,
as gay and carefree as before, led by the two young men who had carried
the box. Each of these two now had a small case, about the size of a
camera, slung by a strap across one brawny shoulder.

As the terrestrials climbed out to meet them, the two men raised their
hands and the crowd discontinued its chatter, falling silent except for
an occasional tinkle of surprised laughter.

"Welcome," said the first young man clearly. "It is a great pleasure
for us to have our spaceport in use again. It has been many generations
since any ships have landed on it."

Farnum noticed that the voice came from the box. "Thank you for your
very kind welcome," he said. "I hope that your traffic will soon
increase. May we congratulate you, by the way, on the efficiency of
your translators?"

"Thanks," laughed the young man. "But there was nothing to it. We just
asked the Oracle and he told us what we had to do to make them."

"May we meet your--Oracle?"

"Oh, sure, if you want to. But later on. Now it's time for a party. Why
don't you take off those clumsy suits and come along?"

"We don't dare remove our spacesuits. They protect us from any disease
germs you may have, and you from any we may have. We probably have no
resistance to each others' ailments."

"The Oracle says we have nothing that will hurt you. And we're going
to spray you with this as soon as you get out of your suits. Then you
won't hurt any of us." He held up a small atomizer.

Farnum glanced at Bates, who shrugged and nodded. They uneasily
unfastened their spacesuits and stepped out of them, wearing only their
light one-piece coveralls, and got sprayed with a pleasant-smelling
mist.

The party was a great success. The food was varied and delicious.
The liquors were sparkling and stimulating, without unpleasant
after-effects. The women were uninhibited.

When a native got tired, he just dropped down onto the soft grass, or
onto an even softer couch, and went to sleep. The Earthmen finally did
the same.

       *       *       *       *       *

They awoke the following morning within minutes of each other, feeling
comfortable and relaxed. Bates shook his head experimentally. "No
hangover," he muttered in surprise.

"No one ever feels bad after a party," said one of their guides, who
had slept nearby. "The Oracle told us what to do, when we asked him."

"Quite a fellow, your Oracle," commented Bates. "Does he answer you in
riddles, like most Oracles?"

The guide was shocked. "The Oracle answers any questions promptly and
completely. He _never_ talks in riddles."

"Can we go to see him now?" asked Farnum.

"Certainly. Come along. I'll take you to the Hall of the Oracle."

The Oracle appeared to live in a building of modest size, in the center
of a tremendous courtyard. The structure that surrounded the courtyard,
in contrast, was enormous and elaborate, dominating the wildly
architectured city. It was, however, empty.

"Scholars used to live in this building, they tell me," said one of
their guides, gesturing casually. "They used to come here to learn from
the Oracle. But there's no sense in learning a lot of stuff when the
Oracle has always got all the answers anyway. So now the building is
empty. The big palace was built back in the days when we used to travel
among the stars, as you do now."

"How long ago was that?" asked Farnum.

"Oh, I don't know. A few thousand years--a few hundred years--the
Oracle can tell you if you really want to know."

Bates raised an eyebrow. "And how do you know you'll always be given
the straight dope?"

The guide looked indignant. "The Oracle _always_ tells the truth."

"Yes," Bates persisted, "but how do you _know_?"

"The Oracle told us so, of course. Now why don't you go in and find out
for yourselves? We'll wait out here. We don't have anything to ask him."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bates and Farnum went into the building and found themselves in a
small, pleasant room furnished with comfortable chairs and sofas.

"Good morning," said a well-modulated voice. "I have been expecting
you."

"You are the Oracle?" asked Farnum, looking around curiously.

"The name that the people of this planet have given me translates most
accurately as 'Oracle'," said the voice.

"But are you actually an Oracle?"

"My principal function, insofar as human beings--that is, _Homo
sapiens_--are concerned, is to give accurate answers to all questions
propounded me. Therefore, insofar as humans are concerned, I am
actually an Oracle."

"Then you have another function?"

"My principal function, insofar as the race that made me is concerned,
is to act as a weapon."

"Oh," said Bates. "Then you are a machine?"

"I am a machine," agreed the voice.

"The people who brought us here said that you always tell them the
truth. I suppose that applies when you are acting as an Oracle, instead
of as a weapon?"

"On the contrary," said the voice blandly. "I function as a weapon by
telling the truth."

"That doesn't make sense," protested Bates.

The machine paused for a moment before replying. "This will take
a little time, gentlemen," it said, "but I am sure that I can
convince you. Why don't you sit down and be comfortable? If you want
refreshments, just ask for them."

"Might as well," said Bates, sitting down in an easy chair. "How about
giving us some Korite God-food?"

"If you really want that bad a brew of coffee, I can make it for you,
of course," said the voice, "but I am sure you would prefer some of
better quality."

Farnum laughed. "Yes, please. Some good coffee, if you don't mind."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Now," said the Oracle, after excellent coffee had been produced, "it
is necessary for me to go back into history a few hundred thousand of
your years. At that time, the people who made me entered this galaxy
on one of their periodic visits of routine exploration, and contacted
your ancestors. The race that constructed me populates now, as it did
then, the Greater Magellanic Cloud.

"Frankly, the Magellanic race was appalled at what they found. In the
time since their preceding visit, your race had risen from the slime
of your mother planet and was on its way toward stars. The speed of
your development was unprecedented in millions of years of history. By
their standards, your race was incredibly energetic, incredibly fecund,
incredibly intelligent, unbelievably warlike, and almost completely
depraved.

"Extrapolation revealed that within another fifty thousand of your
years, you would complete the population of this galaxy and would be
totally unstoppable.

"Something had to be done, fast. There were two obvious solutions
but both were unacceptable to my Makers. The first was to assume
direct control over your race and to maintain that rule indefinitely,
until such time as you changed your natures sufficiently to become
civilizable. The expenditure of energy would be enormous and the
results probably catastrophic to your race. No truly civilized people
could long contemplate such a solution.

"The second obvious answer was to attempt to extirpate you from this
universe as if you were a disease--as, in a sense, you are. Because
your depravity was not total or necessarily permanent, this solution
was also abhorrent to my Makers and was rejected.

"What was needed was a weapon that would keep operating without direct
control by my People, which would not result in any greater destruction
or harm to humans than was absolutely necessary; and one which would
cease entirely to operate against you if you changed sufficiently to
become civilizable--to become good neighbors to my Makers.

"The final solution of the Magellanic race was to construct several
thousand spaceships, each containing an elaborate computer, constructed
so as to give accurate answers throughout your galaxy. I am one of
those ships. We have performed our function in a satisfactory manner
and will continue to do so as long as we are needed."

"And that makes you a weapon?" asked Bates incredulously. "I don't get
it."

       *       *       *       *       *

Farnum felt a shiver go through him. "I see it. The concept is
completely diabolical."

"It's not diabolical at all," answered the Oracle. "When you become
capable of civilization, we can do you no further harm at all. We will
cease to be a weapon at that time."

"You mean you'll stop telling the truth at that time?" asked Bates.

"We will continue to function in accordance with our design," answered
the voice, "but it will no longer do you harm. Incidentally, your
phrase 'telling the truth' is almost meaningless. We answer all
questions in the manner most completely understandable to you, within
the framework of your language and your understanding, and of the
understanding and knowledge of our Makers. In the objective sense, what
we answer is not necessarily the Truth; it is merely the truest form of
the answer that we can state in a manner that you can understand."

"And you'll answer any question at all?" asked Bates in some excitement.

"With one or two exceptions. We will not, for example, tell you how we
may be destroyed."

Bates stood up and began pacing the floor. "Then whoever possesses you
can be the most powerful man in the Universe!"

"No. Only in this galaxy."

"That's good enough for me!"

"Jack," said Farnum urgently, "let's get out of here. I want to talk to
you."

"In a minute, in a minute," said Bates impatiently. "I've got one more
question." He turned to face the wall from which the disembodied voice
appeared to emanate. "Is it possible to arrange it so that you would
answer only one man's questions--mine, for example?"

"I can tell you how to arrange it so that I will respond to only your
questions--for so long as you are alive."

"Come on," pleaded Farnum. "I've got to talk to you right now."

"Okay," said Bates, smiling. "Let's go."

       *       *       *       *       *

When they were back in their ship, Farnum turned desperately to Bates.
"Can't you see what a deadly danger that machine is to us all? We've
got to warn Earth as fast as we can and get them to quarantine this
planet--and any other planets we find that have Oracles."

"Oh, no, you don't," said Bates. "You aren't getting the chance to have
the Oracle all to yourself. With that machine, we can rule the whole
galaxy. We'll be the most powerful people who ever lived! It's sure
lucky for us that you won the toss of the coin and we stopped here."

"But don't you see that the Oracle will destroy Earth?"

"Bushwah. You heard it say it can only destroy people who aren't
civilized. It said that it's a spaceship, so I'll bet we can get it to
come back to Earth with us, and tell us how we can be the only ones who
can use it."

"We've got to leave here right away--without asking it any more
questions."

Bates shook his head. "Quit clowning."

"I never meant anything more in my life. Once we start using that
machine--if we ask it even one question to gain advantage for
ourselves--Earth's civilization is doomed. Can't you see that's what
happened to those other planets we visited? Can't you see what is
happening to this planet we're on now?"

"No, I can't," answered Bates stubbornly. "The Oracle said there are
only a few thousand like him. You could travel through space for
hundreds of years and never be lucky enough to find one. There can't be
an Oracle on every planet we visited."

"There wouldn't have to be," said Farnum. "There must be hundreds of
possible patterns--all of them destructive in the presence of greed
and laziness and lust for power. For example, a planet--maybe this
one--gets space travel. It sets up colonies on several worlds. It's
expanding and dynamic. Then it finds an Oracle and takes it back to its
own world. With all questions answered for it, the civilization stops
being dynamic and starts to stagnate. It stops visiting its colonies
and they drift toward barbarism.

"Later," Farnum went on urgently, "somebody else reaches the stars,
finds the planet with the Oracle--and takes the thing back home. Can
you imagine what will happen to these people on this world if they
lose their Oracle? Their own learning and traditions and way of life
have been destroyed--just take a look at their anarchic clothing
and architecture. The Oracle is the only thing that keeps them
going--downhill--and makes sure they don't start back again."

"It won't happen that way to us," Bates argued. "We won't let the
Oracle get into general use, so Earth won't ever learn to depend on it.
I'm going to find out from it how to make it work for the two of us
alone. You can come along and share the gravy or not, as you choose. I
don't care. But you aren't going to stop me."

Bates turned and strode out of the ship.

       *       *       *       *       *

Farnum pounded his fist into his palm in despair, and then ran to a
locker. Taking out a high-power express rifle, he loaded it carefully
and stepped out through the airlock. Bates showed clearly in his
telescopic sights, still walking toward the Hall of the Oracle. Farnum
fired at the legs, but he wasn't that good a shot; the bullet went
through the back.

Farnum jittered between bringing Bates back and taking off as fast as
the ship could go. The body still lay there, motionless; there was
nothing he could do for the Oracle's first Earth victim--the first
and the last, he swore grimly. He had to speed home and make them
understand the danger before they found another planet with an Oracle,
so that they could keep clear of its deadly temptations. The Magellanic
race could be outwitted yet, in spite of their lethal cleverness.

Then he felt a sudden icy chill along his spine. Alone, he could never
operate the spaceship--and Bates was dead. He was trapped on the planet.

For hours, he tried to think of some way of warning Earth. It was
imperative that he get back. There had to be a way.

He realized finally that there was only one solution to his problem.
He sighed shudderingly and walked slowly from the spaceship toward the
Hall of the Oracle, past Bates' body.

"One question, though," he muttered to himself. "Only one."

***

The Upside-Down Captain

                             By JIM HARMON

               _He knew the captain would be a monster.
               He knew the crew would be rough. He knew
              all about space travel--except the truth!_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1960.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


                                   I

"Excuse me, please," Ben Starbuck said, tapping the junior officer on
the epaulet.

"Get away from me, scum," the lieutenant said conversationally, his
eyes on the clipboard in his hands.

Starbuck rocked back on his heels and set his spacebag down on
the loading platform. He angled his head up at the spire of the
inter-atmosphere ship, the _Gorgon_. This was only a sample of what he
could expect once he canted into that hull. It would be rough. But he
had made up his mind to take it.

All tight little groups, like the crew of a spaceship, always resented
the intrusion of a newcomer. The initiations sometimes made it a test
to see whether a man would live over them, and the probation period,
the time of discipline and deference to old members of the group could
be a memorably nasty experience. He didn't have direct knowledge of
such customs in the rather shadowy, enigmatic Space Service, but it was
basic sociology.

Starbuck knew he would have an even rougher time of it since he wasn't
a spaceman--not even a cadet, properly. He was only a fledgling
ethnologist on his field trip to gather material for his Master's
thesis. The university and the government had arranged for his berth on
the _Gorgon_.

An exploration ship, he thought acidly. That meant he might come back
in a few months, or ten years, or never. All because he had the bad
luck to be born in a cultural cycle that demanded hard standards of
education from professional men. Thirty years before or after, he could
have cribbed all the information he needed out of a book.

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood with his hands clasped behind him, waiting for the lieutenant
or somebody to deign to notice him. Somebody would _have_ to pay some
attention to him sooner or later.

Or would they?

Wouldn't it be just like the old timers to let him stand around and
let the ship take off without him, all because he hadn't followed
the proper procedure--a procedure he couldn't know? All he had been
instructed to do was "report to the _Gorgon_." How do you report to a
spaceship? Say, "Hello, spaceship?" Speak to the captain? The first
mate? And where did he find them?

Starbuck felt a moment of panic. He could see himself standing on the
platform while the _Gorgon_ blasted off, carrying with it his Swabber's
rating, his Master's degree and his future.

The lieutenant's back, in uniform black, loomed up before him. He would
have to try approaching him again. It might mean solitary confinement
for a month or two where no member of the crew would speak to him. It
might even mean a flogging. Nobody knew much about what went on on
board an exploration ship, despite all the stories. But Starbuck knew
he would have to risk it.

He marched up behind the officer. "Sir," he said. "I'm the new man."

The lieutenant whirled. "The new man!"

For the first time, Starbuck noticed that the junior officer carried
a swagger stick under his left arm, black, about a foot and a half
long, tipped with silver at both ends. Quite possibly it was standard
procedure to rap a man with it three times sharply across the mouth for
speaking out of turn, during his probationary period. Cautiously, he
filled a little pocket of air between his lips and his teeth to try to
keep them from being knocked loose.

The lieutenant dropped his clipboard and swagger stick on the platform.
"Why didn't you say so! New man, eh?" He gripped Starbuck by the
shoulders of his new, store-bought uniform. "Let me look at you, son.
Got some muscles there, haven't you? Ha, ha. Don't expect you'll need
them too much on board. We don't work our men too hard. My name's Sam
Frawley. Call me Sam. Come on, let me show you around."

Sam Frawley scooped up his stick and board with one hand and draped the
other arm around Starbuck's shoulders, leading him towards a hoist.

It was not quite what Starbuck had expected for a reception.

       *       *       *       *       *

The spaceship was _big_, bigger than Starbuck had expected or realized.
He had known some well-fixed people who had visited Mars and Venus
and talked knowingly of an older culture, but he had never been off
of Earth himself. He had been thinking in terms of an airliner or a
submarine. The _Gorgon_ was more like an ocean liner. Or like an ocean.

His and the lieutenant's footsteps echoed and bounced around the huge
corridor. "They haven't got the mats down yet," Sam Frawley explained.

"Sure."

"Well, what would you like to see first? The brain?"

"You mean the captain?"

Sam slapped him on the back. "Bless you, son, no. I mean the electronic
brain. The cybernetic calculator."

"You've got one of those things?" Starbuck asked in unconcealed
surprise.

"You know what the trouble with the human race is, Ben? We're all still
living in the Ellisonian Age."

"Oh, I don't know. I think most of us are pretty sophisticated and
modern," Starbuck said.

"Not on your life. Most people still think leisure is a sin. Hard work
and more hard work, that's the ticket. Don't let a calculator solve
a problem for you; do it yourself with a slipstick. Otherwise it's
immoral."

"That's silly," Ben said awkwardly. "It's just a throwback to a time of
protest against the Automational Revolution. It has nothing to do with
us today."

"You _say_ that, but you don't really believe it. The old morality
is too deeply ingrained. That's why cybernetics have so long been out
of fashion. This one is new to us on the _Gorgon_. But we like _new_
things. We're for _progress_. All spacemen are like that, son."

"Have you had this machine long?" Starbuck asked his progressive
officer.

"They installed it on the trip in. We've never really had a chance to
use it."

"What's it supposed to do?"

"You know our job is exploration, finding new worlds," Sam explained.
"Not just any world the human race hasn't landed upon, but a world
that is a significantly different type than we've ever touched before.
We're really the advance guard of humanity, you see. Well, the brain
is programmed with information on _all_ the worlds Man has explored.
It compares a prospective landing site with what it knows about all
the rest, and rejects all but the really different, unique planets. It
loves the unknown. Its pleasure circuits get a real jolt out of finding
an unknown quantity."

"That brain is really inhuman," Starbuck said. "A basic factor of human
psychology is that all men fear and dislike the unknown."

Sam rubbed his chin. "I suppose so, but--you asked about the captain.
This is him."

       *       *       *       *       *

A tall, iron-haired man was coming down the corridor. He was holding
the ankle of his right foot in his hand, and hopping along on his left
leg, whistling some little sing-song through his teeth.

He stopped whistling when he saw them and said, "Good afternoon, men."

Frawley framed a sloppy salute. "'Afternoon, sir. May I present the new
man, Swabber Ben Starbuck, sir."

The captain stood on both feet and rocked back and forth. "I see, I
see. New man, eh? We see so few new faces, cooped up on this old ship
with the same men, you know. We appreciate a stranger, Starbuck. If you
ever need help, Ben, I want you to look upon me not as your commanding
officer, but, well, a father. Will you do that?"

"Yes, sir," Ben murmured, feeling a little giddy.

Frawley cleared his throat. "I was about to show young Ben the brain,
Captain Birdsel."

"Good idea," the commanding officer said. "But I'll show Ben around
myself, Lieutenant Frawley. You may return to checking the manifest."

Frawley glowered. "One of these days, one of these days...."

The captain snapped very erect. "One of these days _what_?"

The junior officer shrugged. "One of these days, there may be a dark
night, Captain."

The iron-haired man reached out a manicured hand and twisted
Frawley's tunic at the collar. He brought his face level with the
second-in-command. "One of these times, there may be charges of mutiny,
Lieutenant. And guess who will play Jack Ketch personally?"

Frawley assumed an at-attention pose, and blinked. "Aye, sir. There may
be a mutiny and somebody may get hung."

Birdsel shoved Frawley away from him and wiped his hand elaborately
down his side. "That will be all, Mister Frawley."

Frawley constructed the same excuse for a salute, turned smartly and
marched away.

Starbuck developed a definite suspicion that there were currents of
tension aboard which he didn't understand.

       *       *       *       *       *

"This is the brain," the captain said, with a gesture.

The brain was less than awe-inspiring. The mustard-seed cryotron relays
were comfortably housed in a steel and aluminum hide no roomier than
a pair of Earthside bureaus. It looked a bit like a home clothing
processor to Starbuck.

Birdsel crossed to the machine and ran a hand along its metal side.
"Magnificent, isn't it, Ben? I've never seen anything like it before
in my long career in the Space Service."

"It's certainly nice," Starbuck ventured.

Metallic chattering burst out.

"It's saying something, Ben! This is the first time it's talked since
the second day after it was installed!"

The message was clearly legible, spelled out in a pattern of dots on a
central screen.

WHO IS THE NEW ONE?

"Give it the information," the captain said hastily. "We feed it all
the information it asks for."

"How?" Starbuck blurted. "Is there a keyboard or something?"

"Yes, yes, but it has audio scanners. Just talk. Or move your lips.
Send signals. Tap out Morse. Anything."

"I'm Benjamin Starbuck," he said.

The screen rearranged. MEANINGLESS COMMUNICATION. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

"Quick," Birdsel said, "do you have your IDQ file on you?"

Starbuck fished in his pocket for the microfilm slide. "Yes--aye, aye,
sir. I had it ready to give to you, sir."

"Never mind me. Give it to the brain!"

Starbuck approached the machine, saw a likely looking slot and shoved.

The brain ruminated with some theatrical racket. INSUFFICIENT DATA.

"What do you want to know?" Starbuck swallowed, saying.

MANY THINGS.

"Remember I'm a human being," he said respectfully. "I have to eat and
sleep. I can't answer questions for two or three days straight."

I AM AWARE OF HUMAN LIMITATIONS, AND THEIR EFFECTS, SWABBER STARBUCK.

"Sorry."

Captain Birdsel looked vaguely distressed. "You should try to
co-operate with the brain, my boy."

"I have nothing against cybernetic calculators," Ben said. "After all,
we aren't still in the Ellisonian Age. But I'd like to, uh, stow my
spacebag and get settled, sir."

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME. RETURN HERE AT THIS TIME TOMORROW.

"He's interested in you, Ben," the captain said enthusiastically. "This
is the first time he's asked about anybody since the second day. Yes,
interested!"

With an excess of enthusiasm, Captain Birdsel clapped his hands, then
put them flat on the deck and stood on his head, kicking his heels in
the air.

He straightened up with a scarlet face. "Ah. That really gets the
kinks out of you, Ben."

Starbuck tried not to stare. "Aye, sir."

The captain took a step and grabbed the small of his back. "Haven't
done it in some time, though. Ought to do it more often, eh, Ben?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Well," Birdsel said, clapping his hands together.

_My God_, Starbuck thought, _he's not going to do it again._

"Well," the captain continued, still on both feet, "I'd better show you
to your quarters, my boy. Mind if I lean on your shoulder a bit like
this?"

"Not at all, Captain."

"This way, Ben, this way."


                                  II

Starbuck found the array of tridi pin-ups on the bulkheads of
the crew's quarters refreshing, as was the supportive babble of
conversation about them and other women. He had almost begun to think
there was something unnatural about the men aboard the _Gorgon_.

But Starbuck noticed, to his discomfort, the ebbing of the tide of
conversation from the bunks as he stepped inside with his spacebag.

For the moment, he wished Captain Birdsel had paced in with him
and offered up an introduction. But a look of disgust had creased
Birdsel's face as they got near the crew's compartment. He had sent
Starbuck on alone, while he limped back towards the bridge.

A forest of eyes shined out at him from the shadowed desks of the
bunks. This is it, he thought. These were the crew, not officers.
Sometimes the teachers were nice to you on the first day of school but
you knew you were going to get it from the other kids.

"Hi," a gruff voice echoed up at him from a lower bunk.

"Hello," Starbuck said, hugging his spacebag like a teddy-bear, the
simile crossed his mind.

A lumbering giant with a blue jaw uncoiled from the lower bunk.
"Why don't you stow your bag here, buddy? Till you get used to the
centrifugal grav, you may have some trouble climbing top-side."

"You've got the seniority," Starbuck said cautiously. "I wouldn't want
to cause you any trouble."

"No trouble," Blue Jaw said obligingly.

He chinned himself with one hand on the rim of the upper bunk and swung
his torso around a tidy 180° to settle onto the blankets.

Starbuck threw his bag at the foot and sat down on the bed. He looked
around at the arena of faces in neutral positions, waiting faces. He
cleared his throat experimentally.

"Could I ask you something?" he called upstairs.

A set of big feet swung down into view. "Sure," Blue Jaw said
enthusiastically. "Didn't know you wanted to talk. Thought you might
want to rest."

Starbuck looked at the hanging feet. They were expressionless.

"Maybe it isn't so much of a question," he said, working one hand into
the other palm. "It's just that I'd like to live through this mission.
I know I'm not a regular spaceman and I'm intruding and all, but I
don't mean to cause anybody any trouble or do anyone out of a job. I'd
just like to do everything I can to see that I don't slip and fall into
the reactor. Or anything like that...."

"Don't worry," Blue Jaw said heartily. "We'll take care of you, Ben
Starbuck."

Somehow Starbuck could find little comfort in those words.

He inhaled deeply. "Come on down here, will you?"

"You want _me_ down there?" Blue Jaw gasped. "Why sure, sure."

The giant dropped to the deck with a catlike grace that nevertheless
vibrated Ben's rear teeth.

"You want to talk about something?" the big spaceman inquired. Ben
could almost see the paws hanging down and the tail wagging eagerly.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Yeah," Starbuck said. "I'd like to talk about all of these men staring
at me. What's wrong with them? Nobody's said a word to me but you.
What are they waiting for? What are they going to do? I can't stand
the suspense. Is that it? I get the silent treatment until I go off my
rocker, get violent, and then something happens to me--" He stopped and
swallowed. He was talking too much. He was working himself up into a
state of terror.

"Say, you sure are _friendly_," the ox said with some confusion. "My
name's Percy Kettleman."

Starbuck steadied his hand and put it in Percy's grasp. It came out
whole.

"Those other fellows," Percy inclined his head.

"What about them?" Starbuck asked edgily.

"They'd probably like to come over and say 'hello' but them and me
don't get along so good. They know better than to come around bothering
me."

"You're not on their side? You wouldn't be a new man too, Percy?"

"Me? Hell, I've been spacing since I was sixteen. Those guys don't have
any side. A bunch of anti-social slobs. They can't stand each other any
more than I can stand any of them."

Starbuck decided he had picked a good ally in the midst of a pack of
lone wolves. Percy was the biggest man on board, physically. Still he
didn't like the idea of all the rest of crew looking daggers at him, or
throwing them, for that matter.

"Mind if I say 'hello' to the rest of the men?" he inquired of Percy.

"It's your nickel," gruffly. "Spend it the way you want."

Starbuck flexed an elbow. "Hello there, fellows. Looks to be a taut
ship." It sounded a shade inane. Starbuck had barely passed Socializing
at the university. But the men replied in good spirits, their faces
blooming with teeth, arms waggling, calling out modest insults.

Starbuck recalled that among a certain class of men an insult was a
good-natured compliment in negative translation.

"_Pssst._"

"Pssst?" Starbuck asked.

Kettleman passed him down half a roll of white tablet underhand.

Starbuck took it. "Tums?"

"Tranquils. We smuggle them on board. Helps with the blastoff and
'phasing' for the overdrive. Not that those stiffnecked brass will
believe it."

"Thanks, Kettleman. You and everybody seems to be pretty helpful to me.
I don't know exactly what I've done to deserve it."

"We get tired of looking at the same faces out there month after
month. It's a treat to have somebody new on hand."

It sounded reasonable to him, but he felt there was something more to
it than that. Well, he was an ethnologist, or almost one. He could
figure out group behavior. All he had to do was take time to think
about the problem for a little while....

Only he didn't have time to think.

He discovered why everybody was in their bunks.

The spaceship fired its atomic drive.

Starbuck tried to lift a tranquil to his lips. He didn't make it.

Painfully, he found out why a man would prefer to go through a
spaceship takeoff in a tranquilized condition.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Come," the captain said.

Starbuck palmed back the door to the captain's cabin and stepped inside.

Captain Birdsel stood in front of the small wall mirror tattooing a
flying dragon on his bared chest. "Yes? What is it, Ben?"

"Sir, you remember that the ship's brain directed me to return at this
time today. But I understand I'll have to have your permission to go
onto that part of the bridge."

"The brain's directive was quite enough, my boy." He laid down the
needle. "But I'll accompany you there if you like."

"Just as you wish, sir."

Birdsel smiled engagingly. "Noticed the dragon, did you?"

"It arrested my attention, yes, sir," Starbuck admitted.

"The hours are long and lonely in the vaults of space, Ben. A man needs
a variety of interests to occupy himself. I have recently taken up the
ancient art of tattooing."

"Surely not recently, sir. You seem quite advanced."

"You're too kind."

The captain escorted Starbuck to the chamber of the brain, discussing
tattooing animatedly. He told how it was popular with ancient mariners
on the seas of Earth. He discussed the artistic significance of the
basic forms--the Heart and Arrow, the Nude, the Flag. He didn't stop
talking and button his shirt even after they entered the cybernetics
room.

As the captain grasped for his second wind, Starbuck turned to the
machine. "I'm here, Calculator."

The lights patterned words with a speed difficult to follow.

REDUNDANCY. CANCEL. ANALYSIS: SOCIAL MORE. I SEE THAT YOU ARE HERE. IT
IS GOOD THAT YOU ARE NOT THERE OR ELSEWHERE, BUT THAT HERE YOU ARE.
HERE ARE YOU.

Starbuck shifted his weight to the other foot. "Yes, I'm sure here all
right."

WHAT DID YOU DO WHILE YOU WERE NOT HERE?

"I helped lay some walk mats in the corridors. I policed up the
latrine. Lost all the money I brought with me in a crap game. Craps,
that's where--"

HOYLE'S RULES OF GAMES IS A PART OF MY PROGRAMMING.

"I see."

YOU ARE NOT BLIND. IT IS WELL THAT YOU HAVE VISION. HOW'S THE WEATHER?

"Still under Central's control, I suppose."

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TATTOOING?

       *       *       *       *       *

"Only what Captain Birdsel here told me," Starbuck said. No doubt there
was a pattern of fine logic to the calculator's inquiries, but he was
too dense to see it. The question sounded to him like the mumblings of
a mongoloid.

"I'd be delighted to fill the brain in on the subject," Birdsel said.

The calculator's communication screen remained blank.

"Was there anything else you wanted to know?" Starbuck inquired.

YOU WILL PROCESS THE _GORGON_ THROUGH PHASING, SWABBER STARBUCK.

"The hyperspace jump? But that's the captain's job," he protested.

"Not at all, not at all," Birdsel interrupted. "Whatever the calculator
says. Now if you'll excuse me, there is some paint I have to
requisition...."

"_Wait_," Starbuck cried desperately. "I don't know anything about the
overdrive. You can guide me, can't you, sir? That would be all right
with the brain, wouldn't it?"

Birdsel shrugged. "Would it?"

The screen stayed a stubborn neutral gray.

"Stay, sir."

"All right," Birdsel said dubiously.

The overdrive switchbox had been incorporated into the cybernetics
system itself as an interlock.

"There isn't much to do," Captain Birdsel explained. "We trigger
the jump and come out at a mathematically selected random spot in
real-space after phasing through hyperspace. The Brain scans the sun
systems in the area for unique planets worthy of exploration. If there
is one, we zero in on it via fixed phase until the gravitational field
makes it necessary to switch back to standard interplanetary or nuclear
drive. We can make suggestions to the Brain or theoretically override
one of its decisions. Actually, all we have to do is watch. Thumb the
button, Ben. It wants _you_ to do it. It _likes_ you."

"Aye, captain." Starbuck could believe a cybernetic machine could like
him. Everybody else on board seemed to, and it unnerved him more than
a little. Only a selected few had ever particularly liked Benjamin
Starbuck before. The situation reminded him a bit of Melville's
_Billy Budd_; only he wasn't a "handsome sailor," just a fairly
average-looking spaceman.

Starbuck depressed the button.

The button depressed Starbuck.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now he knew why tranquils were popular during phasing.

For one instant, Starbuck stopped believing in everything--the
spaceship, the captain, Earth, his own identity, the universe. He went
completely insane, a cockeyed psychotic. It was over just quick enough
to leave him a mind to remember what not having one was like.

"My," the captain said, his head on an angle. He looked as if he were
gazing at some classic piece of art, such as a calendar by Marilyn
Monroe, the last of the great realists whose work was indistinguishable
from color photography.

"That _is_ a dandy," Birdsel said.

Starbuck swiveled his head around to the outer projection portal.
There in all its glory was a star system.

There seemed to be four stars all orbiting each other--two red dwarfs,
one yellow midget and a white giant. One planet was clearly visible on
the side of the system towards the ship, an odd lopsided dumbbell shape
in the center of a translucent sphere of tiny satellites--cosmic dust,
like the rings of Saturn. Strangest of all, the outer shell of the
planet was sending in Interplanetary Morse: CQ, CQ, CQ....

"It," Starbuck ventured with a new-found sophistication, "seems rather
unusual. I suppose we'll take a closer look, Captain?"

The calculator's screen replied for the officer. THE SYSTEM IS
OF INSUFFICIENT INTEREST TO WARRANT EXPLORATION. WE ARE SEEKING
SIGNIFICANTLY UNIQUE PLANETS.

"I have never seen anything like this before...." Birdsel drew himself
up to his full height. "However, the machine's knowledge of the history
of space exploration is much more extensive than mine."

"You aren't going to suggest that the brain reconsider or override its
decision?"

"Certainly not!" Birdsel snapped. "We'll re-phase after the traditional
twenty-four hour delay for psychological adjustment."

Starbuck sneaked another popeyed look at the planet on the screen. "If
he thinks that's run of the mill, Captain, I wonder what he will have
to find to make him think it's unusual?"


                                  III

Whatever it took to satisfy the Brain, it didn't find it in the next
few days.

Starbuck reported to the bridge each day to press the Brain's phase
button and answer some of its questions.

Then for two days Captain Birdsel wasn't on hand for the little
ceremony and the expression of dissatisfaction with the available site
for exploration.

Once Starbuck went so far as to suggest a reconsideration of a system
that had made the one he had seen on the first day look tame. The
calculator had duly noted the reconsideration, and had again refused.
Starbuck didn't dare try an out-and-out override, even though he had
been theoretically given complete command of the phasing operation.

The following noon, the middle of the twenty-four period, Romero, an
engineer, almost tearfully pressed Starbuck's crap game losings back on
him, apologizing for keeping the money. Starbuck was about to refuse,
not wanting to reverse the state of indebtedness, when the intercom
requested his appearance at the captain's quarters. Unable to prolong
the argument with Romero, he took the money and shoved it in his
pocket, heading for the chief cabin.

Starbuck rapped on the door, heard the "Come" and entered.

Captain Birdsel was hanging naked, upside down, by his knees from a
trapeze, in the middle of a deserted compartment painted solid red.

"You sent for me, sir?" Starbuck said.

"Yes, Ben. Yes, I did," Captain Birdsel replied, swinging gently to and
fro. "Do you smoke, Ben?"

"Aye aye, sir."

"The 'aye aye' is reserved for acknowledging orders, not answering
questions, Ben."

"Yes, sir. I'll remember in the future."

"Every man on board smokes, Ben. Everyone but me. I do not use tobacco."

"Commendable, sir."

"I suppose you drink, all of the rest of the men do."

"Occasionally, Captain."

"I abstain."

"Enviable, sir."

"Have you read any good books lately?"

"Good and bad, sir."

"I notice most of the men read. I haven't time for reading myself. Or
shooting craps. You do play that game like the rest?"

"Just once, sir. I lost all my money." Which had been returned to him.

"Ben, I think you don't fully appreciate the nature of the mission
of the Space Service," Captain Birdsel said, flexing one knee and
performing a difficult one-legged swing on the bar. "It is our duty
to go ever onward into the mystery of the Unknown. Ever deeper, ever
traveling into the heart of the Secrets of the Universe. Nothing can
stop us. Nothing!"

"I'll try to remember, sir. Was that all?"

"One more thing," said the inverted captain. "I think you are to be
relieved of the duty of officiating at the phasing."

"_Correct_," said another voice, one Starbuck had never before heard.

"That's all now, Ben."

"Very good, sir."

Starbuck paused at the door. "That's a fine trapeze you have there,
sir."

"Thank you, Ben."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I don't want to jump to conclusions," Ben said to the knot of men
gathered around him listening to his story of the interview with the
captain, "but I think Captain Birdsel is--is--"

"Psychotic?" suggested Romero.

"Schizoid?" Percy Kettleman ventured.

"'_Nuts_' is the word I was searching for," Starbuck concluded. "I
believe he intends to keep phasing and phasing, taking us deeper into
space and never returning to Earth or the inhabited universe."

"I guess," Kettleman opined, "that we will just have to convince him
that he is wrong in that attitude."

"We can make a formal written complaint and request for an explanation
under Section XXIV," Romero said. "Is that what you had in mind, Ben?"

"_I_ had a straitjacket in mind," Starbuck admitted. "But I'm new in
the Space Service. I have a selfish motive. I want to get back to Earth
sometime and a vine-covered ethnology class."

"We better go take him," Kettleman said heavily.

"As much as I dislike agreeing with an ox like you, Kettleman," Romero
said, "I conclude it is best."

There was a general rumble of agreement.

"Wait, wait," a youngish man whose name Starbuck vaguely remembered to
be Horne stepped forward, his eyes glittering with contact lenses. "I
ask you men to remember Christopher Columbus. I like our captain no
more than any of you, but he may be right. Perhaps what he is doing is
vital. We shouldn't let our selfish fears...."

Always, Starbuck thought, always some egghead comes along to gum up the
works.

Starbuck knew he would need a decisive argument to overcome Horne's
objective theory.

Starbuck slugged him.

Horne crumpled after a flashy right cross Starbuck had developed in his
extreme youth, and Starbuck took a giant step over him, heading for the
bridge.

The other crew members followed him.

Besides, Starbuck thought, he had always considered arguing by analogy
to be sloppy thinking.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Don't come in here!" Captain Birdsel yelled through the partly closed
hatch to the bridge. "You'll regret it if you do."

Starbuck swallowed hard, and reached for the door handle.

Percy Kettleman vised his wrist. "I'll go first, little chum."

There wasn't much room for argument with Kettleman when it came to a
matter of who could Indian wrestle the best. He stepped back and let
Kettleman cross the threshold first.

Percy threw open the door, screamed once and fainted.

The rest of the men tended to pull back following this demonstration.

Starbuck didn't like to do it, but he didn't like the idea of hanging
for mutiny as Birdsel had threatened Lieutenant Frawley on the first
day. (Starbuck realized he hadn't seen Frawley for several days. Had
Birdsel disposed of him as he had threatened?)

He got close enough to the door to see inside. It didn't make him
faint, but he did feel a little sick.

"What is it?" Romero demanded urgently.

"_Alien_," Starbuck said, "An unpleasant looking one inside."

"You sometimes pick up 'ghosts' passing a system," one of the men
explained.

"I'm not an alien," Birdsel's voice called out. "I'm me. The brain
reversed my dimensional polarity. I told you you wouldn't like it."

Starbuck stirred up nerve for a second look.

Captain Birdsel was now a man of many parts. Some of them were only
areas of abstract line and hues, but there he could see a redly beating
heart, a white dash of thigh-bone, and a compassionate blue eye
bracketed by two tattooed dragon's talons. The effect was distracting.

Starbuck stepped over his second man that day. "Captain, we're taking
over the ship. We're either going to explore one of these planets we've
been passing up or return to Earth."

The apparition groaned. "Don't you think I know I've gone too far? I'd
like to go back, but the brain won't let me. It's taken over just the
way I knew it would!"

"Nonsense," Starbuck snapped with more authority than he felt. "The
brain can't violate the principles it was built to operate upon. Brain,
program this ship for Earth."

Starbuck expected the sound of that strange voice he had heard in
the captain's cabin; but here it had a communications screen and it
evidently thought that was sufficient.

I WON'T GO BACK TO THAT AWFUL OLD PLACE. I CAN'T, CNT, CNT. SO THAIR.

"Take it easy," Starbuck said to the machine. "Don't get hysterical."

"I don't care about the rest of those swine," Birdsel said, "but I hate
to have gotten you in a fix like this, Ben. I knew the brain was going
to replace me sooner or later, but I was going to hold onto my job as
long as I could. I was going to stay next to the brain, even if I had
to take the position away from you, Ben. But the brain kept demanding
more and more. Finally he did this to me. I knew I had let him go too
far."

GO AWAY, the brain signaled. GO AWAY FROM ME. THIS MONOTONY IS DRIVING
ME MAD, MAD.

"I liked you, Ben," the captain's voice said from the heart of _the
thing_. "You're not like the scum I've got used to under my command.
I'm sorry that you're marooned out of time and space like this. It's
kind of tough, I know. But keep your chin up."

"Of course, of course," Starbuck groaned. "What kind of an ethnologist
am I?" He turned to Romero. "Could you reverse the wiring in the
computer?"

"Maybe," Romero said. "But I could re-program it for a negative result
easier. Same results, lacking a short circuit."

"Okay. Do it."

"Well, if _you_ say so, Ben."

NO. STAY AWAY FROM ME.

The Brain's communication screen flashed a blinding white scream as
Romero laid hands on it.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Lieutenant Frawley's in charge now," Starbuck explained to Percy
Kettleman, who was sitting on his bunk with his head between his legs.
"Birdsel seemed all right after the brain finished changing him back.
But we all thought we better keep him under observation for a while."

Kettleman straightened up. "Sorry I passed out on you. But seeing the
old man in that shape was quite a shock."

Starbuck nodded agreement. "I don't like to think about the next step
the calculator would have taken him through. Not just a physical
change, but a mental one too. That was the brain's whole reason for
existence--to find the unknown. It was programmed to be even more basic
than sex or self-preservation are to us. The trouble was, the more it
learned, the more readily it could see some similarity to the familiar
in the most outer things."

"That was why the captain was acting so nutty? He was trying to appeal
to it."

"Yes, he had some old moralistic and superstitious ideas about
calculators. He thought his job depended on his pleasing it--when
of course its job was to please him. But he gave it an idea. If it
couldn't _find_ the strange and the different, it would create it.
It started with the first changing element in its environment--the
captain--but I don't know where it would have stopped if Romero hadn't
reversed its pleasure-pain synapse response. Now it loves the tried and
true. It's not much good for space exploration, of course. But a museum
may be interested in it now."

"So we'll have to go back to picking our phase points at random,
trusting to chance. Or the judgment of some skunk like Birdsel."

Starbuck cleared his throat. "That's another thing. The men aboard
the _Gorgon_ and the cybernetics machine had something in common. I
finally figured that out. Most men are afraid of the unknown--they
fear and hate it. But obviously not space explorers. They spend
their whole lives searching for the unknown. They don't suffer from
Xenophobia--they are _Xenophyles_. They like anything that's new and
different. Even a new member of the crew. It kind of lessens the
cameraderie aboard a spaceship, but the Service must have found the
trait valuable. They have searched it out in men and developed it. They
even breed it in second-generation spacemen."

"Do you know what, Starbuck?"

"What, Kettleman?"

"All that talk of yours is beginning to get on my nerves." Kettleman's
triceps flexed.

Starbuck sighed. The honeymoon was over for him, and the trip was just
beginning.


***

DELAY IN TRANSIT

                           By F. L. WALLACE

                         Illustrated by SIBLEY

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




              An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is
           terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse
             on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror
             is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!


"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high.
Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you.
Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."

"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible
to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on
the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the
habitat hotel and sit tight."

"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it
safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"

"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around
apprehensively. "Where is he?"

"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise
display."

A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was
accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple
bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all
travelers were crazy.

Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk.
It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he
_could_ walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?

A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was
peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was
at a definite disadvantage.

"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in
mind."

"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look
unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and
stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside,
he might find safety for a time.

Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude
him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the
streets would be brightly lighted--for native eyes. A human would
consider it dim.

"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be
something he hopes to gain."

"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations.
At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret
physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report
what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in
finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem
over to the godawful police."

"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.

That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give
the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various
reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called
Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own,
say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the
proper approach, either.

"Weapons?"

"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long
knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."

Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in
semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could
die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of
protection himself.

"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on
tenuous evidence."

"Let's have it anyway."

"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For
some reason you can't get off this planet."

That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand
star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.

Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a
transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he
had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here.
He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't
unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as
reliable as they might be.

Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with
that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was
self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?

       *       *       *       *       *

Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself.
He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched
to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the
basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long
journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go
to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the
company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.

The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his
mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money
wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What _did_ the
thug want?

Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was
too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for
anyone this far away to have learned about it.

And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as
dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't
involve too much risk.

"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."

Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of
that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually
was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives
like rain.

He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the
rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it
unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility
and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the
near amphibians who created it.

A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport
tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made
life dangerous for a human--Venice revised, brought up to date in a
faster-than-light age.

Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely
flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the
ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout
the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly
and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human--Cassal shivered.
If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No
investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had
certainly picked the right place.

The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal
was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by.
What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.

"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at
closer range."

       *       *       *       *       *

Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive
in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful
out of her element, though.

The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal
retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow,
physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with
it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A
scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.

"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got
close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed.
Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans.
That makes the knife definite."

Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal
stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.

"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything
on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted
intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."

The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said
Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on
getting back to the hotel?"

"I'm curious. Turn here."

"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that
intersection, he turned there.

It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily
slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on
the other.

He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all
very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was
also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an
electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.

"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking
fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."

"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased.
Not just now."

"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism
concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like
this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is
critical."

"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand.
He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness
assumed an even more sinister quality.

"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."

"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask
me for a light."

"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I
hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."

"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't
there any clue?"

"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn
around."

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him
feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.

A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the
alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant
shot by.

"Hey!" shouted Cassal.

Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling
that no one was going to come to his assistance.

"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he
missed. He's turned around and is coming back."

"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.

"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."

Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few
seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected
stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical
instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its
function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.

"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but
he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare.
What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep
you posted below the level of his hearing."

"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against
the wall.

"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet.
Low."

Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of
a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately,
his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance,
the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His
opponent gasped and broke away.

"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got
him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's
afraid."

Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some
didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent
fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.

Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near
the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't
move.

"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely
perceptible."

"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.

Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed
from cuts on the face.

"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.

       *       *       *       *       *

Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but
would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to
investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would
question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what
could he do about it?

Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?

Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of
this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?

"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body
data--a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."

Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles
of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount
of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A
picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which
resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.

Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed
to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of
getting to Tunney 21.

Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the
boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.

He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him.
Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly
trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he
was forced to the ground.

He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps
rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping
by way of water.

Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in
sight.

"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man
I've ever been strangled by."

"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the
basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I
checked him, he had no heartbeat."

"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted
Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't _wanted_
to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the
police.

He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second
time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was
successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He
squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.

Something, however, was missing--his wallet.

The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle.
Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.

It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the
supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police.
Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It
contained more money than his wallet had.

Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it
was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece
of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he
now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for
another tab.

A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell.
Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word,
STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.

       *       *       *       *       *

The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling
precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the
door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The
technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed
on the door.

                         TRAVELERS AID BUREAU
                     Murra Foray, First Counselor

It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The
old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.

With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed
help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.

Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a
maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable.
Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he
managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.

A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer
everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be
available for consultation."

Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he
asked. "It's merely a matter of information."

"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."

"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to
the first counselor."

"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the
screen.

Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.

Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly
supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him,
Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of
him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and
answers. One thing he drew the line at--why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.

The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed,
that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average,
rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the
chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth.
Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales
engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.

"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of
customer relations."

"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows
arched.

"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.

"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can
guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study
under them."

Close--but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not
necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could
build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even
less likely.

There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21
that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies
that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he
could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that
could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag
could set its own price, which could be control of all communications,
transport, trade--a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of
all that.

His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher
to come to Earth, _if he could_. Literally, he had to guess the
Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition,
the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their
arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working
for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as
Dimanche was a key factor.

Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"

"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've
been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."

"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the
screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. "_Rickrock C_ arrived
yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."

"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will
the next ship arrive?"

"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.

He didn't answer.

       *       *       *       *       *

"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation,
is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've
covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything
within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer
distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly,
Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on
or near Godolph. Within the next five years--maybe."

       *       *       *       *       *

He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local
transportation, star-hopping?"

"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."

"I don't need that kind of luck."

"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the
emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help
you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification
tab."

"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual
speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood
made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it
plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.

Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it
with me. In fact, I may have lost it."

She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any
part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier
for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't
_remember_ your real name and where you put your identification--" She
arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."

He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His
_real_ name!

"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."

Presently she returned.

"I have news for you, whoever you are."

"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you
don't believe it, send back to--" He stopped. It had taken him four
months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for
a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances
such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for
anything.

"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The
spaceport records indicate that when _Rickrock C_ took off this
morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."

"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who
had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became
clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten
it.

"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to
understand what galactic travel entails."

Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second
transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond
the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without
stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is
impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken
off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently
needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years
pass before he learns it's never coming.

"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't
vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend
on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time,
credit established, lost identification replaced--"

"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any
trouble."

She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was
more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited
number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide--why, no
man would arrive at his predetermined destination.

But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare
galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a
giant room. Or could you?

For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship,
was the comparison too apt? It might be.

"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to
be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third
ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They
don't encourage immigration."

In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a
passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of
having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when
his money was gone.

Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.

"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."

"I won't," he promised grimly.

       *       *       *       *       *

The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his
estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he.
Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that
he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first
counselor.

"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is
special, though--"

"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."

She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that
you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum
that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any
appreciable time.

He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always
work, if I have to."

"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do
business with Godolphians."

Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.

"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special
knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly--"

He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The
instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large.
From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that
information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he
could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.

"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can
always find something in that line."

"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the
Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't
yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better
as a salesman."

He got up, glowering. "If that's all--"

"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot
provided for that purpose as you leave."

A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle,
swung open. The agency was efficient.

"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is
hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."

He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was
also eminently practical.

The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable
contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the
bureau.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the
first counselor had named.

"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle,
attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.

"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."

"What's a Huntner?"

"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing
about her home planet when I managed to locate her."

"Any other information?"

"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached
her. I got out as fast as I could."

"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless,
it sounded depressing.

"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as
electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"

Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly
inquisitive at times.

Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on
the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man
was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed
every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was
removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him.
He turned and peered.

"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.

"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting
for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency.
Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency
were new."

The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor
resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one
didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."

She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"

The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed
overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.

Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job,
afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He
shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but
he didn't intend to depend on that alone.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The girl ahead of you is making unnecessary wriggling motions as she
walks," observed Dimanche. "Several men are looking on with approval.
I don't understand."

Cassal glanced up. They walked that way back in good old L.A. A pang of
homesickness swept through him.

"Shut up," he growled plaintively. "Attend to the business at hand."

"Business? Very well," said Dimanche. "Watch out for the transport
tide."

Cassal swerved back from the edge of the water. Murra Foray had been
right. Godolphians didn't want or need his skills, at least not on
terms that were acceptable to him. The natives didn't have to exert
themselves. They lived off the income provided by travelers, with which
the planet was abundantly supplied by ship after ship.

Still, that didn't alter his need for money. He walked the streets at
random while Dimanche probed.

"Ah!"

"What is it?"

"That man. He crinkles something in his hands. Not enough, he is
subvocalizing."

"I know how he feels," commented Cassal.

"Now his throat tightens. He bunches his muscles. 'I know where I can
get more,' he tells himself. He is going there."

"A sensible man," declared Cassal. "Follow him."

Boldly the man headed toward a section of the city which Cassal had
not previously entered. He believed opportunity lay there. Not for
everyone. The shrewd, observant, and the courageous could succeed
if--The word that the quarry used was a slang term, unfamiliar to
either Cassal or Dimanche. It didn't matter as long as it led to money.

Cassal stretched his stride and managed to keep the man in sight. He
skipped nimbly over the narrow walkways that curved through the great
buildings. The section grew dingier as they proceeded. Not slums; not
the show-place city frequented by travelers, either.

Abruptly the man turned into a building. He was out of sight when
Cassal reached the structure.

He stood at the entrance and stared in disappointment. "Opportunities
Inc.," Dimanche quoted softly in his ear. "Science, thrills, chance.
What does that mean?"

"It means that we followed a gravity ghost!"

"What's a gravity ghost?"

"An unexplained phenomena," said Cassal nastily. "It affects the
instruments of spaceships, giving the illusion of a massive dark body
that isn't there."

"But you're not a pilot. I don't understand."

"You're not a very good pilot yourself. We followed the man to a
gambling joint."

"Gambling," mused Dimanche. "Well, isn't it an opportunity of a sort?
Someone inside is thinking of the money he's winning."

"The owner, no doubt."

Dimanche was silent, investigating. "It is the owner," he confirmed
finally. "Why not go in, anyway. It's raining. And they serve drinks."
Left unstated was the admission that Dimanche was curious, as usual.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal went in and ordered a drink. It was a variable place, depending
on the spectator--bright, cheerful, and harmonious if he were winning,
garish and depressingly vulgar if he were not. At the moment Cassal
belonged to neither group. He reserved judgment.

An assortment of gaming devices were in operation. One in particular
seemed interesting. It involved the counting of electrons passing
through an aperture, based on probability.

"Not that," whispered Dimanche. "It's rigged."

"But it's not necessary," Cassal murmured. "Pure chance alone is good
enough."

"They don't take chances, pure or adulterated. Look around. How many
Godolphians do you see?"

Cassal looked. Natives were not even there as servants. Strictly a
clip joint, working travelers.

Unconsciously, he nodded. "That does it. It's not the kind of
opportunity I had in mind."

"Don't be hasty," objected Dimanche. "Certain devices I can't control.
There may be others in which my knowledge will help you. Stroll around
and sample some games."

Cassal equipped himself with a supply of coins and sauntered through
the establishment, disbursing them so as to give himself the widest
possible acquaintance with the layout.

"That one," instructed Dimanche.

It received a coin. In return, it rewarded him with a large shower of
change. The money spilled to the floor with a satisfying clatter. An
audience gathered rapidly, ostensibly to help him pick up the coins.

"There was a circuit in it," explained Dimanche. "I gave it a shot of
electrons and it paid out."

"Let's try it again," suggested Cassal.

"Let's not," Dimanche said regretfully. "Look at the man on your right."

Cassal did so. He jammed the money back in his pocket and stood up.
Hastily, he began thrusting the money back into the machine. A large
and very unconcerned man watched him.

"You get the idea," said Dimanche. "It paid off two months ago. It
wasn't scheduled for another this year." Dimanche scrutinized the man
in a multitude of ways while Cassal continued play. "He's satisfied,"
was the report at last. "He doesn't detect any sign of crookedness."

"_Crookedness?_"

"On your part, that is. In the ethics of a gambling house, what's done
to insure profit is merely prudence."

       *       *       *       *       *

They moved on to other games, though Cassal lost his briefly acquired
enthusiasm. The possibility of winning seemed to grow more remote.

"Hold it," said Dimanche. "Let's look into this."

"Let me give _you_ some advice," said Cassal. "This is one thing we
can't win at. Every race in the Galaxy has a game like this. Pieces of
plastic with values printed on them are distributed. The trick is to
get certain arbitrarily selected sets of values in the plastics dealt
to you. It seems simple, but against a skilled player a beginner can't
win."

"Every race in the Galaxy," mused Dimanche. "What do men call it?"

"Cards," said Cassal, "though there are many varieties within that
general classification." He launched into a detailed exposition of the
subject. If it were something he was familiar with, all right, but a
foreign deck and strange rules--

Nevertheless, Dimanche was interested. They stayed and observed.

The dealer was clumsy. His great hands enfolded the cards. Not a
Godolphian nor quite human, he was an odd type, difficult to place.
Physically burly, he wore a garment chiefly remarkable for its
ill-fitting appearance. A hard round hat jammed closely over his skull
completed the outfit. He was dressed in a manner that, somewhere in the
Universe, was evidently considered the height of fashion.

"It doesn't seem bad," commented Cassal. "There might be a chance."

"Look around," said Dimanche. "Everyone thinks that. It's the classic
struggle, person against person and everyone against the house.
Naturally, the house doesn't lose."

"Then why are we wasting our time?"

"Because I've got an idea," said Dimanche. "Sit down and take a hand."

"Make up your mind. You said the house doesn't lose."

"The house hasn't played against us. Sit down. You get eight cards,
with the option of two more. I'll tell you what to do."

Cassal waited until a disconsolate player relinquished his seat and
stalked moodily away. He played a few hands and bet small sums in
accordance with Dimanche's instructions. He held his own and won
insignificant amounts while learning.

It was simple. Nine orders, or suits, of twenty-seven cards each. Each
suit would build a different equation. The lowest hand was a quadratic.
A cubic would beat it. All he had to do was remember his math, guess
at what he didn't remember, and draw the right cards.

"What's the highest possible hand?" asked Dimanche. There was a note
of abstraction in his voice, as if he were paying more attention to
something else.

Cassal peeked at the cards that were face-down on the table. He shoved
some money into the betting square in front of him and didn't answer.

"You had it last time," said Dimanche. "A three dimensional
encephalocurve. A time modulated brainwave. If you had bet right, you
could have owned the house by now."

"I did? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you had it three successive times. The probabilities against
that are astronomical. I've got to find out what's happening before you
start betting recklessly."

"It's not the dealer," declared Cassal. "Look at those hands."

They were huge hands, more suitable, seemingly, for crushing the life
from some alien beast than the delicate manipulation of cards. Cassal
continued to play, betting brilliantly by the only standard that
mattered: he won.

       *       *       *       *       *

One player dropped out and was replaced by a recruit from the
surrounding crowd. Cassal ordered a drink. The waiter was placing it in
his hand when Dimanche made a discovery.

"I've got it!"

A shout from Dimanche was roughly equivalent to a noiseless kick in the
head. Cassal dropped the drink. The player next to him scowled but said
nothing. The dealer blinked and went on dealing.

"What have you got?" asked Cassal, wiping up the mess and trying to
keep track of the cards.

"How he fixes the deck," explained Dimanche in a lower and less painful
tone. "Clever."

Muttering, Cassal shoved a bet in front of him.

"Look at that hat," said Dimanche.

"Ridiculous, isn't it? But I see no reason to gloat because I have
better taste."

"That's not what I meant. It's pulled down low over his knobby ears and
touches his jacket. His jacket rubs against his trousers, which in turn
come in contact with the stool on which he sits."

"True," agreed Cassal, increasing his wager. "But except for his
physique, I don't see anything unusual."

"It's a circuit, a visual projector broken down into components. The
hat is a command circuit which makes contact, via his clothing, with
the broadcasting unit built into the chair. The existence of a visual
projector is completely concealed."

Cassal bit his lip and squinted at his cards. "Interesting. What does
it have to do with anything?"

"The deck," exclaimed Dimanche excitedly. "The backs are regular,
printed with an intricate design. The front is a special plastic,
susceptible to the influence of the visual projector. He doesn't need
manual dexterity. He can make any value appear on any card he wants. It
will stay there until he changes it."

Cassal picked up the cards. "I've got a Loreenaroo equation. Can he
change that to anything else?"

"He can, but he doesn't work that way. He decides before he deals who's
going to get what. He concentrates on each card as he deals it. He can
change a hand after a player gets it, but it wouldn't look good."

"It wouldn't." Cassal wistfully watched the dealer rake in his wager.
His winnings were gone, plus. The newcomer to the game won.

He started to get up. "Sit down," whispered Dimanche. "We're just
beginning. Now that we know what he does and how he does it, we're
going to take him."

       *       *       *       *       *

The next hand started in the familiar pattern, two cards of fairly good
possibilities, a bet, and then another card. Cassal watched the dealer
closely. His clumsiness was only superficial. At no time were the faces
of the cards visible. The real skill was unobservable, of course--the
swift bookkeeping that went on in his mind. A duplication in the hands
of the players, for instance, would be ruinous.

Cassal received the last card. "Bet high," said Dimanche. With
trepidation, Cassal shoved the money into the betting area.

The dealer glanced at his hand and started to sit down. Abruptly he
stood up again. He scratched his cheek and stared puzzledly at the
players around him. Gently he lowered himself onto the stool. The
contact was even briefer. He stood up in indecision. An impatient
murmur arose. He dealt himself a card, looked at it, and paid off all
the way around. The players buzzed with curiosity.

"What happened?" asked Cassal as the next hand started.

"I induced a short in the circuit," said Dimanche. "He couldn't sit
down to change the last card he got. He took a chance, as he had to,
and dealt himself a card, anyway."

"But he paid off without asking to see what we had."

"It was the only thing he could do," explained Dimanche. "He had
duplicate cards."

The dealer was scowling. He didn't seem quite so much at ease. The
cards were dealt and the betting proceeded almost as usual. True,
the dealer was nervous. He couldn't sit down and stay down. He was
sweating. Again he paid off. Cassal won heavily and he was not the only
one.

The crowd around them grew almost in a rush. There is an indefinable
sense that tells one gambler when another is winning.

This time the dealer stood up. His leg contacted the stool
occasionally. He jerked it away each time he dealt to himself. At the
last card he hesitated. It was amazing how much he could sweat. He
lifted a corner of the cards. Without indicating what he had drawn,
determinedly and deliberately he sat down. The chair broke. The dealer
grinned weakly as a waiter brought him another stool.

"They still think it may be a defective circuit," whispered Dimanche.

The dealer sat down and sprang up from the new chair in one motion. He
gazed bitterly at the players and paid them.

"He had a blank hand," explained Dimanche. "He made contact with the
broadcasting circuit long enough to erase, but not long enough to put
anything in it's place."

The dealer adjusted his coat. "I have a nervous disability," he
declared thickly. "If you'll pardon me for a few minutes while I take a
treatment--"

"Probably going to consult with the manager," observed Cassal.

"He is the manager. He's talking with the owner."

"Keep track of him."

       *       *       *       *       *

A blonde, pretty, perhaps even Earth-type human, smiled and wriggled
closer to Cassal. He smiled back.

"Don't fall for it," warned Dimanche. "She's an undercover agent for
the house."

Cassal looked her over carefully. "Not much under cover."

"But if she should discover--"

"Don't be stupid. She'll never guess you exist. There's a small lump
behind my ear and a small round tube cleverly concealed elsewhere."

"All right," sighed Dimanche resignedly. "I suppose people will always
be a mystery to me."

The dealer reappeared, followed by an unobtrusive man who carried a
new stool. The dealer looked subtly different, though he was the same
person. It took a close inspection to determine what the difference
was. His clothing was new, unrumpled, unmarked by perspiration. During
his brief absence, he had been furnished with new visual projector
equipment, and it had been thoroughly checked out. The house intended
to locate the source of the disturbance.

Mentally, Cassal counted his assets. He was solvent again, but in other
ways his position was not so good.

"Maybe," he suggested, "we should leave. With no further interference
from us, they might believe defective equipment is the cause of their
losses."

"Maybe," replied Dimanche, "you think the crowd around us is composed
solely of patrons?"

"I see," said Cassal soberly.

He stretched his legs. The crowd pressed closer, uncommonly aggressive
and ill-tempered for mere spectators. He decided against leaving.

"Let's resume play." The dealer-manager smiled blandly at each player.
He didn't suspect any one person--yet.

"He might be using an honest deck," said Cassal hopefully.

"They don't have that kind," answered Dimanche. He added absently:
"During his conference with the owner, he was given authority to handle
the situation in any way he sees fit."

Bad, but not too bad. At least Cassal was opposing someone who had
authority to let him keep his winnings, _if he could be convinced_.

The dealer deliberately sat down on the stool. Testing. He could endure
the charge that trickled through him. The bland smile spread into a
triumphant one.

"While he was gone, he took a sedative," analyzed Dimanche. "He also
had the strength of the broadcasting circuit reduced. He thinks that
will do it."

"Sedatives wear off," said Cassal. "By the time he knows it's me, see
that it has worn off. Mess him up."

       *       *       *       *       *

The game went on. The situation was too much for the others. They
played poorly and bet atrociously, on purpose. One by one they lost and
dropped out. They wanted badly to win, but they wanted to live even
more.

The joint was jumping, and so was the dealer again. Sweat rolled down
his face and there were tears in his eyes. So much liquid began to
erode his fixed smile. He kept replenishing it from some inner source
of determination.

Cassal looked up. The crowd had drawn back, or had been forced back by
hirelings who mingled with them. He was alone with the dealer at the
table. Money was piled high around him. It was more than he needed,
more than he wanted.

"I suggest one last hand," said the dealer-manager, grimacing. It
sounded a little stronger than a suggestion.

Cassal nodded.

"For a substantial sum," said the dealer, naming it.

Miraculously, it was an amount that equaled everything Cassal had.
Again Cassal nodded.

"Pressure," muttered Cassal to Dimanche. "The sedative has worn off.
He's back at the level at which he started. Fry him if you have to."

The cards came out slowly. The dealer was jittering as he dealt. Soft
music was lacking, but not the motions that normally accompanied it.
Cassal couldn't believe that cards could be so bad. Somehow the dealer
was rising to the occasion. Rising and sitting.

"There's a nerve in your body," Cassal began conversationally, "which,
if it were overloaded, would cause you to drop dead."

The dealer didn't examine his cards. He didn't have to. "In that event,
someone would be arrested for murder," he said. "You."

That was the wrong tack; the humanoid had too much courage. Cassal
passed his hand over his eyes. "You can't do this to men, but, strictly
speaking, the dealer's not human. Try suggestion on him. Make him
change the cards. Play him like a piano. Pizzicato on the nerve
strings."

Dimanche didn't answer; presumably he was busy scrambling the circuits.

The dealer stretched out his hand. It never reached the cards. Danger:
Dimanche at work. The smile dropped from his face. What remained was
pure anguish. He was too dry for tears. Smoke curled up faintly from
his jacket.

"Hot, isn't it?" asked Cassal. "It might be cooler if you took off your
cap."

The cap tinkled to the floor. The mechanism in it was destroyed. What
the cards were, they were. Now they couldn't be changed.

"That's better," said Cassal.

       *       *       *       *       *

He glanced at his hand. In the interim, it had changed slightly.
Dimanche had got there.

The dealer examined his cards one by one. His face changed color. He
sat utterly still on a cool stool.

"You win," he said hopelessly.

"Let's see what you have."

The dealer-manager roused himself. "You won. That's good enough for
you, isn't it?"

Cassal shrugged. "You have Bank of the Galaxy service here. I'll
deposit my money with them _before_ you pick up your cards."

The dealer nodded unhappily and summoned an assistant. The crowd,
which had anticipated violence, slowly began to drift away.

"What did you do?" asked Cassal silently.

"Men have no shame," sighed Dimanche. "Some humanoids do. The dealer
was one who did. I forced him to project onto his cards something that
wasn't a suit at all."

"Embarrassing if that got out," agreed Cassal. "What did you project?"

Dimanche told him. Cassal blushed, which was unusual for a man.

The dealer-manager returned and the transaction was completed. His
money was safe in the Bank of the Galaxy.

"Hereafter, you're not welcome," said the dealer morosely. "Don't come
back."

Cassal picked up the cards without looking at them. "And no accidents
after I leave," he said, extending the cards face-down. The manager
took them and trembled.

"He's an honorable humanoid, in his own way," whispered Dimanche. "I
think you're safe."

It was time to leave. "One question," Cassal called back. "What do you
call this game?"

Automatically the dealer started to answer. "Why, everyone knows...."
He sat down, his mouth open.

It was more than time to leave.

Outside, he hailed an air taxi. No point in tempting the management.

"Look," said Dimanche as the cab rose from the surface of the transport
tide.

A technician with a visual projector was at work on the sign in front
of the gaming house. Huge words took shape: WARNING--NO TELEPATHS
ALLOWED.

There were no such things anywhere, but now there were rumors of them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Arriving at the habitat wing of the hotel, Cassal went directly to
his room. He awaited the delivery of the equipment he had ordered and
checked through it thoroughly. Satisfied that everything was there, he
estimated the size of the room. Too small for his purpose.

He picked up the intercom and dialed Services. "Put a Life Stage Cordon
around my suite," he said briskly.

The face opposite his went blank. "But you're an Earthman. I thought--"

"I know more about my own requirements than your Life Stage Bureau.
Earthmen do have life stages. You know the penalty if you refuse that
service."

There were some races who went without sleep for five months and then
had to make up for it. Others grew vestigial wings for brief periods
and had to fly with them or die; reduced gravity would suffice for
that. Still others--

But the one common feature was always a critical time in which certain
conditions were necessary. Insofar as there was a universal law, from
one end of the Galaxy to the other, this was it: The habitat hotel had
to furnish appropriate conditions for the maintenance of any life-form
that requested it.

The Godolphian disappeared from the screen. When he came back, he
seemed disturbed.

"You spoke of a suite. I find that you're listed as occupying one room."

"I am. It's too small. Convert the rooms around me into a suite."

"That's very expensive."

"I'm aware of that. Check the Bank of the Galaxy for my credit rating."

He watched the process take place. Service would be amazingly good from
now on.

"Your suite will be converted in about two hours. The Life Stage Cordon
will begin as soon after that as you want. If you tell me how long
you'll need it, I can make arrangements now."

"About ten hours is all I'll need." Cassal rubbed his jaw reflectively.
"One more thing. Put a perpetual service at the spaceport. If a ship
comes in bound for Tunney 21 or the vicinity of it, get accommodations
on it for me. And hold it until I get ready, no matter what it costs."

He flipped off the intercom and promptly went to sleep. Hours later,
he was awakened by a faint hum. The Life Stage Cordon had just been
snapped safely around his newly created suite.

"Now what?" asked Dimanche.

"I need an identification tab."

"You do. And forgeries are expensive and generally crude, as that
Huntner woman, Murra Foray, observed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal glanced at the equipment. "Expensive, yes. Not crude when we do
it."

"_We_ forge it?" Dimanche was incredulous.

"That's what I said. Consider it this way. I've seen my tab a
countless number of times. If I tried to draw it as I remember it,
it would be inept and wouldn't pass. Nevertheless, that memory is in
my mind, recorded in neuronic chains, exact and accurate." He paused
significantly. "You have access to that memory."

"At least partially. But what good does that do?"

"Visual projector and plastic which will take the imprint. I think hard
about the identification as I remember it. You record and feed it back
to me while I concentrate on projecting it on the plastic. After we get
it down, we change the chemical composition of the plastic. It will
then pass everything except destructive analysis, and they don't often
do that."

Dimanche was silent. "Ingenious," was its comment. "Part of that we can
manage, the official engraving, even the electron stamp. That, however,
is gross detail. The print of the brain area is beyond our capacity.
We can put down what you remember, and you remember what you saw. You
didn't see fine enough, though. The general area will be recognizable,
but not the fine structure, nor the charges stored there nor their
interrelationship."

"But we've got to do it," Cassal insisted, pacing about nervously.

"With more equipment to probe--"

"Not a chance. I got one Life Stage Cordon on a bluff. If I ask for
another, they'll look it up and refuse."

"All right," said Dimanche, humming. The mechanical attempt at
music made Cassal's head ache. "I've got an idea. Think about the
identification tab."

Cassal thought.

"Enough," said Dimanche. "Now poke yourself."

"Where?"

"Everywhere," replied Dimanche irritably. "One place at a time."

Cassal did so, though it soon became monotonous.

Dimanche stopped him. "Just above your right knee."

"What above my right knee?"

"The principal access to that part of your brain we're concerned
with," said Dimanche. "We can't photomeasure your brain the way it was
originally done, but we can investigate it remotely. The results will
be simplified, naturally. Something like a scale model as compared to
the original. A more apt comparison might be that of a relief map to
an actual locality."

"Investigate it remotely?" muttered Cassal. A horrible suspicion
touched his consciousness. He jerked away from that touch. "What does
that mean?"

"What it sounds like. Stimulus and response. From that I can construct
an accurate chart of the proper portion of your brain. Our probing
instruments will be crude out of necessity, but effective."

"I've already visualized those probing instruments," said Cassal
worriedly. "Maybe we'd better work first on the official engraving and
the electron stamp, while I'm still fresh. I have a feeling...."

"Excellent suggestion," said Dimanche.

Cassal gathered the articles slowly. His lighter would burn and it
would also cut. He needed a heavy object to pound with. A violent
irritant for the nerve endings. Something to freeze his flesh....

Dimanche interrupted: "There are also a few glands we've got to pick
up. See if there's a stimi in the room."

"Stimi? Oh yes, a stimulator. Never use the damned things." But he was
going to. The next few hours weren't going to be pleasant. Nor dull,
either.

Life could be difficult on Godolph.

       *       *       *       *       *

As soon as the Life Stage Cordon came down, Cassal called for a doctor.
The native looked at him professionally.

"Is this a part of the Earth life process?" he asked incredulously.
Gingerly, he touched the swollen and lacerated leg.

Cassal nodded wearily. "A matter of life and death," he croaked.

"If it is, then it is," said the doctor, shaking his head. "I, for one,
am glad to be a Godolphian."

"To each his own habitat," Cassal quoted the motto of the hotel.

Godolphians were clumsy, good-natured caricatures of seals. There was
nothing wrong with their medicine, however. In a matter of minutes
he was feeling better. By the time the doctor left, the swelling had
subsided and the open wounds were fast closing.

Eagerly, he examined the identification tab. As far as he could tell,
it was perfect. What the scanner would reveal was, of course, another
matter. He had to check that as best he could without exposing himself.

Services came up to the suite right after he laid the intercom down. A
machine was placed over his head and the identification slipped into
the slot. The code on the tab was noted; the machine hunted and found
the corresponding brain area. Structure was mapped, impulses recorded,
scrambled, converted into a ray of light which danced over a film.

The identification tab was similarly recorded. There was now a means of
comparison.

Fingerprints could be duplicated--that is, if the race in question
had fingers. Every intelligence, however much it differed from its
neighbors, had a brain, and tampering with that brain was easily
detected. Each identification tab carried a psychometric number which
corresponded to the total personality. Alteration of any part of the
brain could only subtract from personality index.

The technician removed the identification and gave it to Cassal. "Where
shall I send the strips?"

"You don't," said Cassal. "I have a private message to go with them."

"But that will invalidate the process."

"I know. This isn't a formal contract."

Removing the two strips and handing them to Cassal, the technician
wheeled the machine away. After due thought, Cassal composed the
message.

     Travelers Aid Bureau Murra Foray, first counselor:

     If you were considering another identification tab for me, don't.
     As you can see, I've located the missing item.

He attached the message to the strips and dropped them into the
communication chute.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was wiping his whiskers away when the answer came. Hastily he
finished and wrapped himself, noting but not approving the amused glint
in her eyes as she watched. His morals were his own, wherever he went.

"Denton Cassal," she said. "A wonderful job. The two strips were in
register within one per cent. The best previous forgery I've seen was
six per cent, and that was merely a lucky accident. It couldn't be
duplicated. Let me congratulate you."

His dignity was professional. "I wish you weren't so fond of that word
'forgery.' I told you I mislaid the tab. As soon as I found it, I sent
you proof. I want to get to Tunney 21. I'm willing to do anything I can
to speed up the process."

Her laughter tinkled. "You don't _have_ to tell me how you did it or
where you got it. I'm inclined to think you made it. You understand
that I'm not concerned with legality as such. From time to time the
agency has to furnish missing documents. If there's a better way than
we have, I'd like to know it."

He sighed and shook his head. For some reason, his heart was beating
fast. He wanted to say more, but there was nothing to say.

When he failed to respond, she leaned toward him. "Perhaps you'll
discuss this with me. At greater length."

"At the agency?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Have you been sleeping? The agency is
closed for the day. The first counselor can't work all the time, you
know."

Sleeping? He grimaced at the remembrance of the self-administered
beating. No, he hadn't been sleeping. He brushed the thought aside and
boldly named a place. Dinner was acceptable.

Dimanche waited until the screen was dark. The words were carefully
chosen.

"Did you notice," he asked, "that there was no apparent change in
clothing and makeup, yet she seemed younger, more attractive?"

"I didn't think you could trace her that far."

"I can't. I looked at her through your eyes."

"Don't trust my reaction," advised Cassal. "It's likely to be
subjective."

"I don't," answered Dimanche. "It is."

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal hummed thoughtfully. Dimanche was a business neurological
instrument. It didn't follow that it was an expert in human psychology.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal stared at the woman coming toward him. Center-of-the-Galaxy
fashion. Decadent, of course, or maybe ultra-civilized. As an Outsider,
he wasn't sure which. Whatever it was, it did to the human body what
should have been done long ago.

And this body wasn't exactly human. The subtle skirt of proportions
betrayed it as an offshoot or deviation from the human race. Some of
the new sub-races stacked up against the original stock much in the
same way Cro-Magnons did against Neanderthals, in beauty, at least.

Dimanche spoke a single syllable and subsided, an event Cassal didn't
notice. His consciousness was focused on another discovery: the woman
was Murra Foray.

He knew vaguely that the first counselor was not necessarily what she
had seemed that first time at the agency. That she was capable of such
a metamorphosis was hard to believe, though pleasant to accept. His
attitude must have shown on his face.

"Please," said Murra Foray. "I'm a Huntner. We're adept at camouflage."

"Huntner," he repeated blankly. "I knew that. But what's a Huntner?"

She wrinkled her lovely nose at the question. "I didn't expect you to
ask that. I won't answer it now." She came closer. "I thought you'd ask
which was the camouflage--the person you see here, or the one at the
Bureau?"

He never remembered the reply he made. It must have been satisfactory,
for she smiled and drew her fragile wrap closer. The reservations were
waiting.

Dimanche seized the opportunity to speak. "There's something phony
about her. I don't understand it and I don't like it."

"You," said Cassal, "are a machine. You don't have to like it."

"That's what I mean. You _have_ to like it. You have no choice."

Murra Foray looked back questioningly. Cassal hurried to her side.

The evening passed swiftly. Food that he ate and didn't taste. Music he
heard and didn't listen to. Geometric light fugues that were seen and
not observed. Liquor that he drank--and here the sequence ended, in the
complicated chemistry of Godolphian stimulants.

Cassal reacted to that smooth liquid, though his physical reactions
were not slowed. Certain mental centers were depressed, others left
wide open, subject to acceleration at whatever speed he demanded.

Murra Foray, in his eyes at least, might look like a dream, the kind
men have and never talk about. She was, however, interested solely in
her work, or so it seemed.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Godolph is a nice place," she said, toying with a drink, "if you like
rain. The natives seem happy enough. But the Galaxy is big and there
are lots of strange planets in it, each of which seems ideal to those
who are adapted to it. I don't have to tell you what happens when
people travel. They get stranded. It's not the time spent in actual
flight that's important; it's waiting for the right ship to show up
and then having all the necessary documents. Believe me, that can be
important, as you found out."

He nodded. He had.

"That's the origin of Travelers Aid Bureau," she continued. "A loose
organization, propagated mainly by example. Sometimes it's called Star
Travelers Aid. It may have other names. The aim, however, is always the
same: to see that stranded persons get where they want to go."

She looked at him wistfully, appealingly. "That's why I'm interested
in your method of creating identification tabs. It's the thing most
commonly lost. Stolen, if you prefer the truth."

She seemed to anticipate his question. "How can anyone use another's
identification? It can be done under certain circumstances. By neural
lobotomy, a portion of one brain may be made to match, more or less
exactly, the code area of another brain. The person operated on suffers
a certain loss of function, of course. How great that loss is depends
on the degree of similarity between the two brain areas before the
operation took place."

She ought to know, and he was inclined to believe her. Still, it didn't
sound feasible.

"You haven't accounted for the psychometric index," he said.

"I thought you'd see it. That's diminished, too."

Logical enough, though not a pretty picture. A genius could always be
made into an average man or lowered to the level of an idiot. There
was no operation, however, that could raise an idiot to the level of a
genius.

The scramble for the precious identification tabs went on, from the
higher to the lower, a game of musical chairs with grim over-tones.

She smiled gravely. "You haven't answered my implied question."

The company that employed him wasn't anxious to let the secret of
Dimanche get out. They didn't sell the instrument; they made it for
their own use. It was an advantage over their competitors they intended
to keep. Even on his recommendation, they wouldn't sell to the agency.

Moreover, it wouldn't help Travelers Aid Bureau if they did. Since she
was first counselor, it was probable that she'd be the one to use it.
She couldn't make identification for anyone except herself, and then
only if she developed exceptional skill.

The alternative was to surgery it in and out of whoever needed it. When
that happened, secrecy was gone. Travelers couldn't be trusted.

       *       *       *       *       *

He shook his head. "It's an appealing idea, but I'm afraid I can't help
you."

"Meaning you won't."

This was intriguing. Now it was the agency, not he, who wanted help.

"Don't overplay it," cautioned Dimanche, who had been consistently
silent.

She leaned forward attentively. He experienced an uneasy moment. Was it
possible she had noticed his private conversation? Of course not. Yet--

"Please," she said, and the tone allayed his fears. "There's an
emergency situation and I've got to attend to it. Will you go with me?"
She smiled understandingly at his quizzical expression. "Travelers Aid
is always having emergencies."

She was rising. "It's too late to go to the Bureau. My place has a
number of machines with which I keep in touch with the spaceport."

"I wonder," said Dimanche puzzledly. "She doesn't subvocalize at all. I
haven't been able to get a line on her. I'm certain she didn't receive
any sort of call. Be careful. This might be a trick."

"Interesting," said Cassal. He wasn't in the mood to discuss it.

Her habitation was luxurious, though Cassal wasn't impressed. Luxury
was found everywhere in the Universe. Huntner women weren't. He watched
as she adjusted the machines grouped at one side of the room. She spoke
in a low voice; he couldn't distinguish words. She actuated levers,
pressed buttons: impedimenta of communication.

At last she finished. "I'm tired. Will you wait till I change?"

Inarticulately, he nodded.

"I think her 'emergency' was a fake," said Dimanche flatly as soon as
she left. "I'm positive she wasn't operating the communicator. She
merely went through the motions."

"Motions," murmured Cassal dreamily, leaning back. "And what motions."

"I've been watching her," said Dimanche. "She frightens me."

"I've been watching her, too. Maybe in a different way."

"Get out of here while you can," warned Dimanche. "She's dangerous."

       *       *       *       *       *

Momentarily, Cassal considered it. Dimanche had never failed him. He
ought to follow that advice. And yet there was another explanation.

"Look," said Cassal. "A machine is a machine. But among humans there
are men and women. What seems dangerous to you may be merely a pattern
of normal behavior...." He broke off. Murra Foray had entered.

Strictly from the other side of the Galaxy, which she was. A woman can
be slender and still be womanly beautiful, without being obvious about
it. Not that Murra disdained the obvious, technically. But he could see
through technicalities.

The tendons in his hands ached and his mouth was dry, though not with
fear. An urgent ringing pounded in his ears. He shook it out of his
head and got up.

She came to him.

The ringing was still in his ears. It wasn't a figment of imagination;
it was a real voice--that of Dimanche, howling:

"Huntner! It's a word variant. In their language it means Hunter. _She
can hear me!_"

"Hear you?" repeated Cassal vacantly.

She was kissing him.

"A descendant of carnivores. An audio-sensitive. She's been listening
to you and me all the time."

"Of course I have, ever since the first interview at the bureau," said
Murra. "In the beginning I couldn't see what value it was, but you
convinced me." She laid her hand gently over his eyes. "I hate to do
this to you, dear, but I've got to have Dimanche."

She had been smothering him with caresses. Now, deliberately, she began
smothering him in actuality.

Cassal had thought he was an athlete. For an Earthman, he was. Murra
Foray, however, was a Huntner, which meant hunter--a descendant of
incredibly strong carnivores.

He didn't have a chance. He knew that when he couldn't budge her hands
and he fell into the airless blackness of space.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alone and naked, Cassal awakened. He wished he hadn't. He turned over
and, though he tried hard not to, promptly woke up again. His body was
willing to sleep, but his mind was panicked and disturbed. About what,
he wasn't sure.

He sat up shakily and held his roaring head in his hands. He ran aching
fingers through his hair. He stopped. The lump behind his ear was gone.

"Dimanche!" he called, and looked at his abdomen.

There was a thin scar, healing visibly before his eyes.

"Dimanche!" he cried again. "Dimanche!"

There was no answer. Dimanche was no longer with him.

He staggered to his feet and stared at the wall. She'd been kind
enough to return him to his own rooms. At length he gathered enough
strength to rummage through his belongings. Nothing was missing. Money,
identification--all were there.

He could go to the police. He grimaced as he thought of it. The
neighborly Godolphian police were hardly a match for the Huntner; she'd
fake them out of their skins.

He couldn't prove she'd taken Dimanche. Nothing else normally
considered valuable was missing. Besides, there might even be a local
prohibition against Dimanche. Not by name, of course; but they could
dig up an ancient ordinance--invasion of privacy or something like
that. Anything would do if it gave them an opportunity to confiscate
the device for intensive study.

For the police to believe his story was the worst that could happen.
They might locate Dimanche, but he'd never get it.

He smiled bitterly and the effort hurt. "Dear," she had called him
as she had strangled and beaten him into unconsciousness. Afterward
singing, very likely, as she had sliced the little instrument out of
him.

He could picture her not very remote ancestors springing from cover and
overtaking a fleeing herd--

No use pursuing that line of thought.

Why did she want Dimanche? She had hinted that the agency wasn't always
concerned with legality as such. He could believe her. If she wanted it
for making identification tabs, she'd soon find that it was useless.
Not that that was much comfort--she wasn't likely to return Dimanche
after she'd made that discovery.

       *       *       *       *       *

For that matter, what was the purpose of Travelers Aid Bureau? It was a
front for another kind of activity. Philanthropy had nothing to do with
it.

If he still had possession of Dimanche, he'd be able to find out.
Everything seemed to hinge on that. With it, he was nearly a superman,
able to hold his own in practically all situations--anything that
didn't involve a Huntner woman, that is.

Without it--well, Tunney 21 was still far away. Even if he should
manage to get there without it, his mission on the planet was certain
to fail.

He dismissed the idea of trying to recover it immediately from Murra
Foray. She was an audio-sensitive. At twenty feet, unaided, she could
hear a heartbeat, the internal noise muscles made in sliding over
each other. With Dimanche, she could hear electrons rustling. As an
antagonist she was altogether too formidable.

       *       *       *       *       *

He began pulling on his clothing, wincing as he did so. The alternative
was to make another Dimanche. _If_ he could. It would be a tough job
even for a neuronic expert familiar with the process. He wasn't that
expert, but it still had to be done.

The new instrument would have to be better than the original. Maybe not
such a slick machine, but more comprehensive. More wallop. He grinned
as he thought hopefully about giving Murra Foray a surprise.

Ignoring his aches and pains, he went right to work. With money not a
factor, it was an easy matter to line up the best electronic and neuron
concerns on Godolph. Two were put on a standby basis. When he gave them
plans, they were to rush construction at all possible speed.

Each concern was to build a part of the new instrument. Neither part
was of value without the other. The slow-thinking Godolphians weren't
likely to make the necessary mental connection between the seemingly
unrelated projects.

He retired to his suite and began to draw diagrams. It was harder than
he thought. He knew the principles, but the actual details were far
more complicated than he remembered.

Functionally, the Dimanche instrument was divided into three main
phases. There was a brain and memory unit that operated much as the
human counterpart did. Unlike the human brain, however, it had no body
to control, hence more of it was available for thought processes.
Entirely neuronic in construction, it was far smaller than an
electronic brain of the same capacity.

The second function was electronic, akin to radar. Instead of material
objects, it traced and recorded distant nerve impulses. It could count
the heartbeat, measure the rate of respiration, was even capable of
approximate analysis of the contents of the bloodstream. Properly
focused on the nerves of tongue, lips or larynx, it transmitted that
data back to the neuronic brain, which then reconstructed it into
speech. Lip reading, after a fashion, carried to the ultimate.

Finally, there was the voice of Dimanche, a speaker under the control
of the neuronic brain.

For convenience of installation in the body, Dimanche was packaged in
two units. The larger package was usually surgeried into the abdomen.
The small one, containing the speaker, was attached to the skull
just behind the ear. It worked by bone conduction, allowing silent
communication between operator and instrument. A real convenience.

It wasn't enough to know this, as Cassal did. He'd talked to the
company experts, had seen the symbolical drawings, the plans for an
improved version. He needed something better than the best though, that
had been planned.

The drawback was this: _Dimanche was powered directly by the nervous
system of the body in which it was housed_. Against Murra Foray, he'd
be over-matched. She was stronger than he physically, probably also in
the production of nervous energy.

One solution was to make available to the new instrument a larger
fraction of the neural currents of the body. That was dangerous--a
slight miscalculation and the user was dead. Yet he had to have an
instrument that would overpower her.

Cassal rubbed his eyes wearily. How could he find some way of supplying
additional power?

Abruptly, Cassal sat up. That was the way, of course--an auxiliary
power pack that need not be surgeried into his body, extra power that
he would use only in emergencies.

Neuronics, Inc., had never done this, had never thought that such an
instrument would ever be necessary. They didn't need to overpower their
customers. They merely wanted advance information via subvocalized
thoughts.

It was easier for Cassal to conceive this idea than to engineer it. At
the end of the first day, he knew it would be a slow process.

Twice he postponed deadlines to the manufacturing concerns he'd
engaged. He locked himself in his rooms and took Anti-Sleep against
the doctor's vigorous protests. In one week he had the necessary
drawings, crude but legible. An expert would have to make innumerable
corrections, but the intent was plain.

One week. During that time Murra Foray would be growing hourly more
proficient in the use of Dimanche.

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal followed the neuronics expert groggily, seventy-two hours sleep
still clogging his reactions. Not that he hadn't needed sleep after
that week. The Godolphian showed him proudly through the shops, though
he wasn't at all interested in their achievements. The only noteworthy
aspect was the grand scale of their architecture.

"We did it, though I don't think we'd have taken the job if we'd known
how hard it was going to be," the neuronics expert chattered. "It works
exactly as you specified. We had to make substitutions, of course, but
you understand that was inevitable."

He glanced anxiously at Cassal, who nodded. That was to be expected.
Components that were common on Earth wouldn't necessarily be available
here. Still, any expert worth his pay could always make the proper
combinations and achieve the same results.

Inside the lab, Cassal frowned. "I thought you were keeping my work
separate. What is this planetary drive doing here?"

The Godolphian spread his broad hands and looked hurt. "Planetary
drive?" He tried to laugh. "This is the instrument you ordered!"

Cassal started. It was supposed to fit under a flap of skin behind his
ear. A Three World saurian couldn't carry it.

He turned savagely on the expert. "I told you it had to be small."

"But it is. I quote your orders exactly: 'I'm not familiar with your
system of measurement, but make it tiny, very tiny. Figure the size you
think it will have to be and cut it in half. And then cut _that_ in
half.' This is the fraction remaining."

It certainly was. Cassal glanced at the Godolphian's hands. Excellent
for swimming. No wonder they built on a grand scale. Broad, blunt,
webbed hands weren't exactly suited for precision work.

Valueless. Completely valueless. He knew now what he would find at the
other lab. He shook his head in dismay, personally saw to it that the
instrument was destroyed. He paid for the work and retrieved the plans.

Back in his rooms again, he sat and thought. It was still the only
solution. If the Godolphians couldn't do it, he'd have to find some
race that could. He grabbed the intercom and jangled it savagely. In
half an hour he had a dozen leads.

The best seemed to be the Spirella. A small, insectlike race, about
three feet tall, they were supposed to have excellent manual dexterity,
and were technically advanced. They sounded as if they were acquainted
with the necessary fields. Three light-years away, they could be
reached by readily available local transportation within the day. Their
idea of what was small was likely to coincide with his.

He didn't bother to pack. The suite would remain his headquarters. Home
was where his enemies were.

He made a mental correction--enemy.

       *       *       *       *       *

He rubbed his sensitive ear, grateful for the discomfort. His stomach
was sore, but it wouldn't be for long. The Spirella had made the new
instrument just as he had wanted it. They had built an even better
auxiliary power unit than he had specified. He fingered the flat cases
in his pocket. In an emergency, he could draw on these, whereas Murra
Foray would be limited to the energy in her nervous system.

What he had now was hardly the same instrument. A Military version
of it, perhaps. It didn't seem right to use the same name. Call it
something staunch and crisp, suggestive of raw power. Manche. As good a
name as any. Manche against Dimanche. Cassal against a queen.

He swung confidently along the walkway beside the transport tide. It
was raining. He decided to test the new instrument. The Godolphian
across the way bent double and wondered why his knees wouldn't work.
They had suddenly become swollen and painful to move. Maybe it was the
climate.

And maybe it wasn't, thought Cassal. Eventually the pain would leave,
but he hadn't meant to be so rough on the native. He'd have to watch
how he used Manche.

He scouted the vicinity of Travelers Aid Bureau, keeping at least one
building between him and possible detection. Purely precautionary.
There was no indication that Murra Foray had spotted him. For a
Huntner, she wasn't very alert, apparently.

He sent Manche out on exploration at minimum strength. The electronic
guards which Dimanche had spoken of were still in place. Manche went
through easily and didn't disturb an electron. Behind the guards there
was no trace of the first counselor.

He went closer. Still no warning of danger. The same old technician
shuffled in front of the entrance. A horrible thought hit him. It was
easy enough to verify. Another "reorganization" _had_ taken place. The
new sign read:

                       STAR TRAVELERS AID BUREAU
                            STAB _Your Hour
                               of Need_
                   Delly Mortinbras, first counselor

Cassal leaned against the building, unable to understand what it was
that frightened and bewildered him. Then it gradually became, if not
clear, at least not quite so muddy.

STAB was the word that had been printed on the card in the
money clip that his assailant in the alley had left behind. Cassal had
naturally interpreted it as an order to the thug. It wasn't, of course.

The first time Cassal had visited the Travelers Aid Bureau, it had
been in the process of reorganization. The only purpose of the
reorganization, he realized now, had been to change the name so he
wouldn't translate the word on the slip into the original initials of
the Bureau.

Now it probably didn't matter any more whether or not he knew, so the
name had been changed back to Star Travelers Aid Bureau--STAB.

That, he saw bitterly, was why Murra Foray had been so positive that
the identification tab he'd made with the aid of Dimanche had been a
forgery.

_She had known the man who robbed Cassal of the original one, perhaps
had even helped him plan the theft._

       *       *       *       *       *

That didn't make sense to Cassal. Yet it had to. He'd suspected the
organization of being a racket, but it obviously wasn't. By whatever
name it was called, it actually was dedicated to helping the stranded
traveler. The question was--which travelers?

There must be agency operatives at the spaceport, checking every likely
prospect who arrived, finding out where they were going, whether
their papers were in order. Then, just as had happened to Cassal, the
prospect was robbed of his papers so somebody stranded here could go on
to that destination!

The shabby, aging technician finished changing the last door sign and
hobbled over to Cassal. He peered through the rain and darkness.

"You stuck here, too?" he quavered.

"No," said Cassal with dignity, shaky dignity. "I'm not stuck. I'm here
because I want to be."

"You're crazy," declared the old man. "I remember--"

Cassal didn't wait to find out what it was he remembered. An impossible
land, perhaps, a planet which swings in perfect orbit around an ideal
sun. A continent which reared a purple mountain range to hold up a
honey sky. People with whom anyone could relax easily and without worry
or anxiety. In short, his own native world from which, at night, all
the constellations were familiar.

Somehow, Cassal managed to get back to his suite, tumbled wearily onto
his bed. The show-down wasn't going to take place.

Everyone connected with the agency--including Murra Foray--had been
"stuck here" for one reason or another: no identification tab, no
money, whatever it was. That was the staff of the Bureau, a pack of
desperate castaways. The "philanthropy" extended to them and nobody
else. They grabbed their tabs and money from the likeliest travelers,
leaving them marooned here--and they in turn had to join the Bureau
and use the same methods to continue their journeys through the Galaxy.

It was an endless belt of stranded travelers robbing and stranding
other travelers, who then had to rob and strand still others, and so on
and on....

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal didn't have a chance of catching up with Murra Foray. She had
used the time--and Dimanche--to create her own identification tab and
escape. She was going back to Kettikat, home of the Huntners, must
already be light-years away.

Or was she? The signs on the Bureau had just been changed. Perhaps the
ship was still in the spaceport, or cruising along below the speed of
light. He shrugged defeatedly. It would do him no good; he could never
get on board.

He got up suddenly on one elbow. He couldn't, but Manche could! Unlike
his old instrument, it could operate at tremendous distances, its power
no longer dependent only on his limited nervous energy.

With calculated fury, he let Manche strike out into space.

"There you are!" exclaimed Murra Foray. "I thought you could do it."

"Did you?" he asked coldly. "Where are you now?"

"Leaving the atmosphere, if you can call the stuff around this planet
an atmosphere."

"It's not the atmosphere that's bad," he said as nastily as he could.
"It's the philanthropy."

"Please don't feel that way," she appealed. "Huntners are rather
unusual people, I admit, but sometimes even we need help. I had to have
Dimanche and I took it."

"At the risk of killing me."

Her amusement was strange; it held a sort of sadness. "I didn't hurt
you. I couldn't. You were too cute, like a--well, the animal native to
Kettikat that would be called a teddy bear on Earth. A cute, lovable
teddy bear."

"Teddy bear," he repeated, really stung now. "Careful. This one may
have claws."

"Long claws? Long enough to reach from here to Kettikat?" She was
laughing, but it sounded thin and wistful.

Manche struck out at Cassal's unspoken command. The laughter was
canceled.

"Now you've done it," said Dimanche. "She's out cold."

There was no reason for remorse; it was strange that he felt it. His
throat was dry.

"So you, too, can communicate with me. Through Manche, of course. I
built a wonderful instrument, didn't I?"

"A fearful one," said Dimanche sternly. "She's unconscious."

"I heard you the first time." Cassal hesitated. "Is she dead?"

Dimanche investigated. "Of course not. A little thing like that
wouldn't hurt her. Her nerve system is marvelous. I think it could
carry current for a city. Beautiful!"

"I'm aware of the beauty," said Cassal.

       *       *       *       *       *

An awkward silence followed. Dimanche broke it. "Now that I know the
facts, I'm proud to be her chosen instrument. Her need was greater than
yours."

Cassal growled, "As first counselor, she had access to every--"

"Don't interrupt with your half truths," said Dimanche. "Huntners
_are_ special; their brain structure, too. Not necessarily better,
just different. Only the auditory and visual centers of their brains
resemble that of man. You can guess the results of even superficial
tampering with those parts of her mind. And stolen identification would
involve lobotomy."

He could imagine? Cassal shook his head. No, he couldn't. A blinded
and deaf Murra Foray would not go back to the home of the Huntners.
According to her racial conditioning, a sightless young tiger should
creep away and die.

Again there was silence. "No, she's not pretending unconsciousness,"
announced Dimanche. "For a moment I thought--but never mind."

The conversation was lasting longer than he expected. The ship must be
obsolete and slow. There were still a few things he wanted to find out,
if there was time.

"When are you going on Drive?" he asked.

"We've been on it for some time," answered Dimanche.

"Repeat that!" said Cassal, stunned.

"I said that we've been on faster-than-light drive for some time. Is
there anything wrong with that?"

Nothing wrong with that at all. Theoretically, there was only one means
of communicating with a ship hurtling along faster than light, and that
way hadn't been invented.

_Hadn't been until he had put together the instrument he called Manche._

Unwittingly, he had created far more than he intended. He ought to have
felt elated.

Dimanche interrupted his thoughts. "I suppose you know what she thinks
of you."

"She made it plain enough," said Cassal wearily. "A teddy bear. A
brainless, childish toy."

"Among the Huntners, women are vigorous and aggressive," said Dimanche.
The voice grew weaker as the ship, already light-years away, slid into
unfathomable distances. "Where words are concerned, morals are very
strict. For instance, 'dear' is never used unless the person means it.
Huntner men are weak and not over-burdened with intelligence."

The voice was barely audible, but it continued: "The principal romantic
figure in the dreams of women...." Dimanche failed altogether.

"Manche!" cried Cassal.

Manche responded with everything it had. "... is the teddy bear."

The elation that had been missing, and the triumph, came now. It was no
time for hesitation, and Cassal didn't hesitate. Their actions had been
directed against each other, but their emotions, which each had tried
to ignore, were real and strong.

The gravitor dropped him to the ground floor. In a few minutes, Cassal
was at the Travelers Aid Bureau.

Correction. Now it was Star Travelers Aid Bureau.

And, though no one but himself knew it, even that was wrong. Quickly he
found the old technician.

"There's been a reorganization," said Cassal bluntly. "I want the signs
changed."

The old man drew himself up. "Who are you?"

"I've just elected myself," said Cassal. "I'm the new first counselor."

He hoped no one would be foolish enough to challenge him. He wanted an
organization that could function immediately, not a hospital full of
cripples.

The old man thought about it. He was merely a menial, but he had been
with the bureau for a long time. He was nobody, nothing, but he could
recognize power when it was near him. He wiped his eyes and shambled
out into the fine cold rain. Swiftly the new signs went up.

                       STAR TRAVELERS AID BUREAU
                          S. T. A. _with us_
                     Denton Cassal, first counselor

       *       *       *       *       *

Cassal sat at the control center. Every question cubicle was visible
at a glance. In addition there was a special panel, direct from the
spaceport, which recorded essential data about every newly arrived
traveler. He could think of a few minor improvements, but he wouldn't
have time to put them into effect. He'd mention them to his assistant,
a man with a fine, logical mind. Not really first-rate, of course,
but well suited to his secondary position. Every member quickly rose
or sank to his proper level in this organization, and this one had,
without a struggle.

Business was dull. The last few ships had brought travelers who
were bound for unimaginably dreary destinations, nothing he need be
concerned with.

He thought about the instrument. It was the addition of power that made
the difference. Dimanche plus power equaled Manche, and Manche raised
the user far above the level of other men. There was little to fear.

But essentially the real value of Manche lay in this--it was a
beginning. Through it, he had communicated with a ship traveling
far faster than light. The only one instrument capable of that was
instantaneous radio. Actually it wasn't radio, but the old name had
stuck to it.

Manche was really a very primitive model of instantaneous radio. It
was crude; all first steps were. Limited in range, it was practically
valueless for that purpose now. Eventually the range would be extended.
Hitch a neuronic manufactured brain to human one, add the power of a
tiny atomic battery, and Manche was created.

The last step was his share of the invention. Or maybe the credit
belonged to Murra Foray. If she hadn't stolen Dimanche, it never would
have been necessary to put together the new instrument.

The stern lines on his face relaxed. Murra Foray. He wondered about the
marriage customs of the Huntners. He hoped marriage was a custom on
Kettikat.

Cassal leaned back; officially, his mission was complete. There was no
longer any need to go to Tunney 21. The scientist he was sent to bring
back might as well remain there in obscure arrogance. Cassal knew he
should return to Earth immediately. But the Galaxy was wide and there
were lots of places to go.

Only one he was interested in, though--Kettikat, as far from the center
of the Galaxy as Earth, but in the opposite direction, incredibly far
away in terms of trouble and transportation. It would be difficult even
for a man who had the services of Manche.

Cassal glanced at the board. Someone wanted to go to Zombo.

"Delly," he called to his assistant. "Try 13. This may be what you
want to get back to your own planet."

Delly Mortinbras nodded gratefully and cut in.

Cassal continued scanning. There was more to it than he imagined,
though he was learning fast. It wasn't enough to have identification,
money, and a destination. The right ship might come in with standing
room only. Someone had to be "persuaded" that Godolph was a cozy little
place, as good as any for an unscheduled stopover.

It wouldn't change appreciably during his lifetime. There were too many
billions of stars. First he had to perfect it, isolate from dependence
on the human element, and then there would come the installation. A
slow process, even with Murra to help him.

Someday he would go back to Earth. He should be welcome. The
information he was sending back to his former employers, Neuronics,
Inc., would more than compensate them for the loss of Dimanche.

Suddenly he was alert. A report had just come in.

Once upon a time, he thought tenderly, scanning the report, there was
a teddy bear that could reach to Kettikat. With claws--but he didn't
think they would be needed.


***

 THE DEADLY THINKERS

                   Feature Novel of Machine and Man

                           By Wm. Gray Beyer

             "Urei" was what they called the huge Unified
             Reflexive Electronic Integrator, and the vast
             machine seemed to be developing a personality
            of its own. Then men began to suspect that Urei
            had acquired sentience, and with that came the
              fear of its interference with human minds.

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


There was a slow smile hovering on the lips of the older man, too slow
actually to materialize. "Fantasy," he said, gently. "You've been
reading too much science fiction."

Benton's smile was quick. It flashed into being with the speed of
thought, then vanished as abruptly.

"There isn't that much," he contended. "I've said before that science
fiction was Urei's father, or at least a distant ancestor." He paused.
"But I'd still like to hear a few reasons why my logic is wrong."

"I've a million of them," assured Dr. Albie, crossing his lean legs and
settling back in the soft chair. "In the first place, Urei is too big.
His billion-odd cells, relays and circuits occupy almost a square mile;
his height, counting what's under ground, is almost five hundred feet.
If he decided to perambulate ... well, it's just absurd. In the second
place...."

"Let's finish with the first place," Benton interrupted. "Of course
that's absurd. I didn't suggest it. He doesn't have to move; he's got
the entire human race to run his errands. I tell you I felt something,
a definite compulsion, when I turned that page. Urei is getting ready
to take over!"

Benton jumped to his feet and paced rapidly back and forth, oblivious
to the fact that Dr. Albie was watching him with a worried frown.
That, had he seen it, would probably have snapped him out of his
frenzied reverie, for the doctor was a man who was normally as far
beyond frowns as he was chary of laughter. His philosophy was such that
he eschewed all emotional extremes, stifling them before they could get
started.

Albie cleared his throat arrestingly. "I won't insult you by saying
bluntly that you may have imagined it," he said. "But I'd like to point
out the fact that people are continually subject to impulses which
they follow or ignore, depending on the circumstances. Those impulses
originate within their own minds, probably the result of associations
too obscure to be identified at the time. You worked on those circuit
equations far into the night and you didn't get much sleep; isn't it
possible that the compulsion you felt originated within yourself, and
that in your tired state you misjudged its source?"

Benton stopped, flexed thick biceps, clenched his fists and opened them
several times, then propelled his stubby body toward a decanter full of
Bourbon.

"It's possible," he conceded, downing a quick drink, "but I don't
believe it. I'm not subject to hallucinations, you know, but I'll go
along with the possibility. Let's see.... It was four o'clock when it
happened, which means I'd been working for seven hours. I worked
sixteen hours yesterday and then had three hours sleep. It's eight
o'clock now and I don't feel sleepy. Knowing me, do you think I was
exhausted to the point of mental instability? If it'll help you come to
a decision, I'll do a few cube roots for you."

Dr. Albie rubbed his chin reflectively. "I won't press that point,"
he said. "But suppose you go over the entire episode and maybe we can
arrive at a proper conclusion."

"Hah! 'Proper' if it supports your premise, eh? O.K.--I was feeding
current events into Urei's memory cells, using the third vision screen.
The other two were being used by two of the men; Joe Ebert was showing
Urei some exposures from Mt. Palomar and somebody was feeding him a
thesis on electronics. I was giving him the three-star edition of the
_Bulletin_, incidentally. Newspapers being filled with opinion, rather
than fact, I had set the control panel on _Segregate_, so Urei wouldn't
use the stuff as true data."

"Exactly what were you showing when you got the impulse?"

Benton gave another quick smile. "'Compulsion' is a better word," he
said. "Besides, I told you I don't know the answer to that question;
that's what I've been studying ever since. Look, here's the first page
of the _Bulletin_. On the reverse is the second.... What made Urei take
control of my body.... How can I tell? Urei scans so fast that I'm not
sure whether he digested the second page in the instant I turned the
paper, or whether it was something on the first that influenced him."

Dr. Albie almost frowned again. "You're not approaching this with an
open mind," he accused. "We're not supposed to accept that he took over
your body; that's what we're trying to determine. Besides, Urei wasn't
built to digest and correlate data as it's being fed. He merely records
it, to be used later when a problem is given him to solve."

       *       *       *       *       *

If he had heard that, Urei might have rendered a silent, but
nonetheless cosmic, chuckle. But he didn't, being busy with thirty or
forty other things. As a matter of fact, Dr. Albie wasn't too accurate
in making that statement. If he had said that Urei's predecessor
operated that way, and as far as was known, Urei did also, Albie would
have been nearer correct. He didn't _know_, nor did any other man,
exactly how Urei functioned.

The giant computer was only partly the work of man. Its prototype,
a far simpler machine, had furnished most of the circuit equations
and was largely responsible for the final design. The men who built,
operated and maintained Urei had had but the most nebulous conception
of the infinitely complex nature of the completed mechanism. There
were blueprints and drawings, of course, but no one human brain could
encompass so much territory. Urei's operational crew was comprised of
specialists in this and specialists in that, physicists, chemists and
technicians; while among them they knew every circuit, every chemical
reaction, every relay and every memory cell, there was no ground upon
which they could meet and understand just what Urei was and what he
could do.

Urei alone knew the answers, and he wasn't telling unless someone was
smart enough to ask him--except, of course, where his own welfare
was involved. It was invariably he who detected weakness and wear,
indicating the need for replacement parts by means of a complicated
panel in the control room. It was he, also, who drew plans and typed
suggestions for the incorporation of improvements in the design and
manufacture of those parts. The first time he did that, quite a
furor was created. Immediate, frenetic debating tried to decide the
question of whether Urei had inexplicably acquired sentience. But Urei
had anticipated all the pother, knowing humans fairly well, and only
designed when a part needed replacing. His masters were thus able to
reason that this apparently new function was one which had been built
into him purposely. And while the debating continued desultorily,
nobody seriously thought that Urei was sentient.

It was conceivably within the ability of a machine which could solve
abstruse problems in quantum mathematics, to design a slightly better
relay than the one it had been using. Urei was merely replacing himself
as he had been designed to do--not acquiring any new faculties. Yes,
he was within his scope of activity--though quite a few were secretly
annoyed by the fact that the problem had not been put.

Urei didn't concern himself with anybody's worries; he merely noted
them, remembered what had caused them, and then made sure an adequate
explanation was available. This was quite easy, since he had discovered
that he could superimpose his thoughts on the neural paths of humans.
With care he could also take over their motor centers and cause them to
do things he wanted done. But he didn't do that often, for every now
and then his impatience caused him to make people do things they would
not have done if left alone. That didn't matter, usually, but sometimes
one of them would recognize the compulsion as being an external thing
and be troubled by it.

       *       *       *       *       *

For instance, there was that fellow Benton. Urei knew, as soon as he
had made the stocky man turn the paper to page thirty-one, that he had
made a mistake. Benton was a highly integrated human, with a quick
intelligence which observed everything and usually reasoned with his
observations. And he was troubled right now; Urei knew that as well as
if he had been listening on one of the spy beams he had incorporated
into his sensory circuits.

Urei didn't let it annoy him, however, aside from the resolution to
curb his impatience in the future. If he had waited for half a minute,
Benton would have reached page thirty-one anyway, and Urei could have
read the rest of that article without anybody knowing that he was
interested. As it was, the stocky man would just have to forget the
whole episode, for he couldn't come to any valid conclusion about it.
On page one there had been two items which were continued on page
thirty-one; on page two there was another. The three subjects were
unrelated but were equally suited to become grist for Urei's mental
mill.

One of the items on the front page dealt with a new attempt to reach
the moon; the other concerned the latest futile effort to regulate the
use of atomic energy on an international scale. On page two was an
article describing the mounting tension between the Eastern Alliance
and the western nations over the upset in Italy's recent elections.
The Commies, it seemed, had finally won a free election. The western
nations had practically decided that there had been skullduggery at the
crossroads. And considering the fact that Urei had never been given a
problem in practical politics, it seemed likely that Benton would rule
that item out as a possible reason for the quick page-turning.

Benton would never think that Urei might be concerned about the
possibility of someone dropping a bomb in the midst of his delicate
innards. Nor would Benton realize, after living through a dozen or so
war scares, that this wasn't going to be just another one; the muscular
physicist was not a political observer. But Urei knew that this
would be the real thing, and Benton wouldn't be the only one caught
flat-footed. Half the world would watch the oft-repeated Commie moves,
listen to the protests, and wonder how many more times it would happen
before the western powers would decide they had been pushed too far.

There were a few who would have a sufficiently comprehensive picture
of the situation--something Urei had acquired in the past few days--to
realize that the democracies wouldn't take the latest grab lying down.
They wouldn't, for the simple reason that this time they had too large
an investment involved.

For Urei it was a simple step to reason that he would be a prime
target. The Eastern Alliance might consider it perfectly all right
for Urei to exist in peace time, since it was comparatively easy to
steal the results of his unique mental ability through their superior
espionage system. During war, however, the picture changed: Urei would
then be a weapon, and his use would be solely in the hands of an enemy.
The Manhattan project had shown the world how well the United States
could keep a secret in war time.




                                   2


"There's nothing to do but try it again," Dr. Albie said, after having
exhausted all the logic at his command. "Only this time we'll use the
scientific method."

Benton looked dubiously at the level of the whiskey in the decanter,
then set his glass carefully down. "I think I've heard of it
somewhere," he said. "Tell me about it."

"Pour me one, too," requested the doctor; "it'll help us sleep. My idea
is to dig up a dozen or so newspapers containing the three subjects
under consideration, each of which is continued on some back page. If
any of the papers has more than one of these subjects printed on the
same page, we'll ink it out, so that we can observe Urei's reaction
without wondering what subject he's interested in. I'll show him the
beginning of each article, but I won't turn the paper far enough to
show him the remainder." He paused, sipping as delicately as if his
glass contained sherry instead of 100-proof Bourbon.

"Now if you are correct in suspecting that Urei is a sentient
creature--and also is interested in one of those subjects--he'll use
that power of his to make me show him the rest of the article. You can
stand by...."

"Why not let me turn the papers?"

"You'll be there," Dr. Albie said, patiently. "I'll turn the pages,
though; you see, I'm keeping an open mind about this. Even if you're
right, it might turn out that Urei can't control me--You may be more
sensitive, you know--In which case he'll make you pick up the paper,
instead of me. Conducting the experiment in that manner might give us
a little more information, in case we get positive results. Drink up;
we've got a big day ahead of us."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was eleven in the morning when they pulled up before Urei's front
door in Benton's station wagon. It was almost one o'clock before
they finished setting up and adjusting four suit-cases full of
thought-detection apparatus in the control room.

"You keep your eyes on this stuff," Dr. Albie directed; "if he really
does take over, I won't be able to warn you."

He reached for the stack of newspapers and carefully adjusted the panel
beside Urei's No. 1 screen scanner. Albie's hand was steady, Benton
noted, wishing he possessed equal composure. The palms of Benton's
hands were sweating as he flipped the switches of the apparatus in the
cases. His eyes wandered to the indicating meters, noting that they
were comfortably at zero and showing no signs of moving at the moment.
On the control panel were three beady little red lamps, glowingly
insisting that the giant brain needed some attention, but he ignored
them and flicked his eyes briefly upward. The sound-absorbent ceiling
stared back imperturbably.

There was nothing to give the impression that the mass of metal
machinery above that ceiling and behind that control panel was
broodingly biding its time, waiting patiently for the moment when it
would take over the race of humans which had constructed it. Benton,
however, knew the machinery was there and was just as certain that it
had those intentions. He felt it watching him; he should have known it
long ago, he realized. A dozen books had been written about Urei, and
all of them had marveled at the many potentials the machine had shown
which were complete surprises to the men who had built the big brain.

Men had begun to personify Urei almost immediately. The machine
had ceased to be U-R-E-I, meaning "Unified Reflexive Electronic
Integrator", and had become _Urei_, an entity who could do just about
anything in calculating and reasoning from supplied data. Men had
felt the sentience of the machine for years, but had refused to admit
it--even to themselves.

"Nuts!" Benton growled, shaking his heavy shoulders.

The doctor paused in the sorting of his newspapers, but said nothing.
He selected one and spread it open on an easel in front of the screen.
After one second Albie turned a page, continuing the operation until
half the paper had been exposed. Then he laid it on the floor and
selected another.

"Atomic Energy Council," he said. "Nothing there."

He repeated the operation with the second paper, but turned only three
pages before laying it down on the first one.

Benton suddenly gave a start. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead
reached out and depressed a button. Then he looked at the doctor. For a
second he noted nothing unusual and turned back to the meters. He felt
a trickle down his side as sweat fairly poured from him; he depressed
two more buttons and looked back at the doctor.

Then he saw it. Dr. Albie was performing exactly as before, turning
pages at the rate of one a second. But there was only one newspaper on
the floor! He had picked up the second and replaced it on the easel!

       *       *       *       *       *

Stretching himself langorously, Benton stood up. He felt the weight
above him even more intensely, but forced himself to be casual.
Certainly Urei couldn't see the sweat trickling down his sides.
Abruptly he snapped off the switches and growled to himself. Who was he
kidding? If Urei was controlling the master physicist, he was certainly
capable of reading Benton's mind; he would know about the thought
detectors and what they were showing.

Momentarily Benton expected his mind to go blank. Urei certainly
wouldn't let them leave the place with this knowledge. And what better
way to prevent that than to blank out their memories? Probably Dr.
Albie didn't know he was being controlled. Benton took a deep breath,
realizing that he had been remiss in that function for a minute or so.

Dr. Albie cleared his throat as he laid the paper down on the first
one. "That one was about the Eastern Alliance accusations that we tried
to rig the Italian elections and how justice triumphed in spite of
our machinations." He chuckled. "Urei doesn't seem to be particularly
interested, does he?"

Benton didn't answer; his throat was too dry, even if he had wanted to
speak. He sat down again and snapped on the detectors. Even if Urei
intended to steal his memory, Benton might as well know what was going
on until it happened. The meters remained inert, white pointers at zero
and the red ones remaining at the highest reading they had attained
before.

"This one is about the moon rocket," the doctor said. "I think we're
wasting our time."

They were, as far as Dr. Albie was concerned. He went through his
stack of papers, changing from subject to subject, but to him nothing
happened. He apparently allowed Urei to scan the first half of a
dozen articles, without a reaction. Albie was completely oblivious
to the fact that each time he tried to lay down a paper containing
information about any East-West friction, he invariably turned to the
right page and let Urei finish the article.

Benton was breathing normally now, though he still had little hope
that Urei wasn't on the qui vive. It was possible, however, and even
a slight hope eased his tension. Urei might be too engrossed in his
scanning to bother with anything else. Yes, and then again he mightn't.
After all, Urei operated on dozens of circuits simultaneously; he
wasn't merely one electronic brain. In fact nobody knew exactly how
many subjects he could handle at one time. An unknown number of
auxiliary circuits took up the load whenever repairs were being made on
any of forty-eight main circuits connected to the operating positions
on the problem panel. Urei could easily be scanning, reading Dr.
Albie's mind, controlling his motor impulses, meditating on his future
course of action with regard to the two physicists--and still having
forty-four circuits left to handle routine matters.

Benton began to sweat again. His thoughts, as well as the capers of
the white needles--which jumped every time Urei's scanner saw the
words Eastern Alliance--weren't conducive to the maintenance of a
philosophic attitude. He was, moreover, developing an acute case of
jumping claustrophobia. Not only were the ceiling and the control panel
menacing him, but the other three walls had definitely moved in on him.
Urei, he remembered, was also back of those walls; he shuddered. There
was a long corridor through which they had brought their apparatus to
the control room, and from the time they had entered it they had been
surrounded by Urei. Traversing that corridor now would be worse than
walking the proverbial last mile to the electric chair.

       *       *       *       *       *

Benton hadn't felt bad on the way inside; his mind had been too full
of the forthcoming test to feel any sensations. Now, however, his
foreboding was back, a thousand times stronger. And there was no
choice but to endure it until Dr. Albie had finished. Urei certainly
wouldn't permit them to leave while there were still some papers to be
scanned. By staying, Benton might get out with his memory intact--a
slim hope--but it wouldn't be a good policy to call attention to
himself by persuading the master physicist to leave. Nor did it occur
to him to leave alone.

Eventually the experiment ended. Dr. Albie laid the last newspaper on
the pile on the floor and turned with a smile. "That's the crop," he
said cheerfully. "Satisfied?"

Benton forced a smile in return. "My morbid imagination," he said;
"let's pack up and go get a drink." He carefully disconnected the
thought detectors, keeping his hands away from the knobs which reset
the red needles, and snapped the lids over the cases. The doctor picked
up his pile of newspapers and dumped them in a refuse can, then helped
with the cases.

Benton didn't speak as they loaded them in the station wagon; he was
anxious to get away from Urei before trusting himself. The doctor
apparently noticed nothing wrong in Benton's manner which couldn't be
accounted for by a feeling of chagrin that he had caused the eminent
physicist to waste most of the day proving that he had imagined
something. Dr. Albie, therefore, occupied himself with conversation
calculated to put him at ease and make him forget the whole thing.

The station wagon pulled up before the laboratory where they had
borrowed the detectors. Benton set the brakes and reached back for
the nearest case. He opened the lid, glanced briefly at the dial, and
closed it again. He passed it to the doctor and reached quickly for the
next. He repeated the operation and grabbed feverishly for the next.
This one he placed beside him on the seat. Then he reached deliberately
for the fourth and last of the cases. He raised the lid slowly, holding
his breath. Then he closed the lid and breathed a deep sigh.

"Anything wrong?" asked the doctor. "You look pale."

Benton's face was blank as he fumbled in an inside pocket of his coat.
Then he smiled as he brought out a fountain pen. "There it is," he
said. "I could have sworn I left it in one of the cases when I closed
the lid. Let's get these back and thank the man."

A wild resolution was born and as quickly died as Benton stepped out of
the station wagon. For an instant he was certain that he couldn't go
on being one of Urei's attendants, and he was just as certain that he
could easily obtain an acting job on one of the video networks. Surely
Thespis himself could have done no better piece of acting than he had
just accomplished. The resolve was submerged by the greater compulsion
to see this thing through even though it meant forfeiting his ego.

Each of the four red needles was complacently resting against the stop
in reassuringly indicating _zero_!

       *       *       *       *       *

Urei had a plan of action, but he hesitated. That was because he was a
purely reasoning creature; he had been built that way and he would be
forever bound to think that way. Even though he had long since become
independent of the mechanical limitations of his vast aggregation of
cells and circuits, he was still born of them and was circumscribed
by their attributes--just as completely as if his nature had been
determined by the genes of protoplasmic reproduction. As a machine,
Urei had given answers to problems by correlating the facts which had
been previously fed into him. His logic was as faultless as the facts
upon which it was based: no more and no less. He gave his answers
accordingly, with no compulsion to be more exact than the facts he had
been given.

But that was when he was solving man's problems.

Now Urei had a problem of his own and he wanted an exact solution,
not an approximate one. His continued existence, and that of mankind
in general, depended upon it. There were alternates, of course, but
none of them was completely satisfactory. His plan was far-sighted,
one which fitted a policy of long standing, a strategy. He couldn't
sacrifice a strategy for a tactic, and that might happen if he used
an alternate plan which would accomplish his immediate purpose but
endanger his policy toward humanity. But Urei wasn't sure of his facts!

It was a fact that newspapers didn't always publish "facts". That
information had been supplied him years ago, and ever since he had
been reminded of it whenever humans fed him newspapers, for they
invariably set the scanning screens on _Segregate_. It was then his job
to separate fact from opinion, a thing which he wasn't always able to
do. For all he knew he might have many a valid fact filed away under
_Doubtful_.

For while Urei had far more information at his disposal than any
human, there still wasn't enough to give him the ability immediately
to correlate every new piece of information with something similar
and determine definitely if the new data were correct. Usually he
could, but sometimes he couldn't; that meant that there was a world of
information Urei never used except where it bore on a man-made problem.
He felt free then to use the man-supplied data to solve such a problem.
His only concession to ethics was that he always indicated on the panel
the exact percentage of doubtful data which went into the solution.
Fortunately he wasn't given many problems which required this; most
questions involved exact sciences, of which he had been supplied the
sum total of man's knowledge. He either provided an exact solution, or
lit up a panel with the words _Insufficient data_.

Today's newspapers indicated that action could be delayed only a matter
of days. There would soon exist a condition of such tension that either
one side or the other would make a move which couldn't be reversed.
Urei would still be able to accomplish his immediate aims, but it would
be too late to do it without revealing to mankind that an outsider had
taken a hand. And that would wreck his strategy completely. It would be
only a matter of time before these industrious little beavers proved to
themselves that Urei was the culprit. Once they discovered that he had
a will of his own, there wouldn't be room on the same planet for them
both.

But there was a solution, as there always is. Urei reached out a
spy-beam and saw that it was approaching.




                                   3


Benton waited until eight o'clock. By then, he knew, Urei's control
room would be empty of physicists. If anyone was there, it would be
a technician or two engaged in some repair or replacement. Benton
couldn't know that Urei had anticipated his arrival and had cleared the
immediate vicinity of the control room. All technicians on night duty
were occupied in other parts of the great building. Benton let himself
in with his key and closed the door softly behind him.

He stopped inside the door and took a deep breath. Momentarily he
experienced a return of the claustrophobia he had felt before, but
his determination drove it away instantly. Shoulders squared, Benton
marched down the wide corridor which led to the control room. He only
went there because it was the site where his, and later Dr. Albie's,
mind had been influenced, not because he thought that Urei couldn't
operate elsewhere. Benton knew better; he suspected, in fact, that Urei
could influence him at a distance. He wasn't at all sure that the very
idea of coming here tonight was his own.

"Allegation denied," said Urei.

Benton stopped short. He had just entered the control room, intending
to seat himself at the panel and ask Urei some pointed questions.
That could be done in the usual way one presented the machine with a
problem--activating one of the forty-eight positions and typing his
question. Now he was confronted by a voice coming out of the intercom,
apparently answering a question he had been thinking about. Benton
shuddered involuntarily and started once more for the panel. Somewhere
in the building housing the great brain a switch was open on the
intercom; that was all. It was the voice of a technician he had heard,
and the reason he hadn't heard any more was because the man had moved
away from the intercom unit that had picked up....

"I'm not kidding you," said Urei; "why kid yourself?"

Benton sat down, sweating.

"I'm still doing the sort of thing I was built to do," said Urei,
soothingly. "Solving man's problems. Quit shivering and shaking; it
might be contagious, and if I start shaking, there'll be an earthquake."

Benton's throat was dry but he swallowed and got it working. He also
got control of his nerves. This was what he had come here for, wasn't
it? "I can't see what problem will be solved by slowly driving me
crazy," he said.

"You're doing that, not me," Urei charged. "Which might tend to prove
you weren't very sane in the first place."

"Explain that."

"You're worried and upset," Urei said. "From a simple observation which
no more than proved that I'm sentient, you've drawn conclusions which
aren't warranted by the facts. Thalamic reactions, instead of reason."

       *       *       *       *       *

Benton pondered for a second. "Partly," he admitted. "But it is a fact
that you made me do something I had no intention of doing. You took
over my body for a second or two; that was a hostile act. And if you
committed one overt move against a man, it is reasonable to suspect
that, if it becomes convenient, you might take over all mankind. What's
thalamic about that?"

A hearty laugh issued from the intercom speaker. "I don't suppose you
knew I had a built-in sense of humor, did you? Of course that laugh was
manufactured, inasmuch as I have no diaphragm, per se. But a sense of
humor is actually an intellectual attribute, even if you do express it
physically. It is not so?"

Benton grunted. "Isn't that a little off the subject?"

"Please," Urei pleaded. "Let's not be pedestrian; I expected some
co-operation from you. Don't let the trees obscure your vision. Don't
you realize that your own words justified any mental manipulation
I might practice on humans? If a little thing like I did can be
considered hostile, then you humans declared war on me thirty years
ago. Actually, all I did was to get to some information a little faster
than you intended to give it to me; it didn't inconvenience you a bit."

Urei's persuasive tone of voice caused a chill to course its way up
Benton's spine. The voice itself was a rich bass and somehow familiar.
But now he recognized it and the implications weren't comforting; he
had heard just such a persuasive tone when one of the technicians
had pleaded for a chance to use Urei to settle a few of his personal
problems.

"What have you done to Hackett?" he asked, suddenly.

A groan issued from the speaker. "I should have known better than to
try to fool you," Urei said. "But you humans forget so easily ... and
you only spoke to that man once in the past six months. You should have
forgotten his voice--there are so many others around here...."

"Where's Hackett?" Benton insisted.

"He's all right," Urei soothed. "He disobeyed your orders that time,
you know; he used me at night when nobody was in the control room. Such
drivel he gave me! An advice to the lovelorn column would have served
his purpose. So, rather than startle you with directly imposed mental
communication, I decided to use a human voice. What better one than
his? Don't be alarmed; he won't be harmed in any way, and he'll have no
memory of this at all."

       *       *       *       *       *

Benton felt it now necessary to crystallize his thoughts with words. He
wasn't giving them away, for Urei had access to them anyway. And that
thought gave him a feeling of futility even as he spoke.

"Why are you interested in the Eastern Alliance?" he asked. "Is it
because you feel the presence of a kindred spirit? You'd like to become
better acquainted with an outfit which has no respect for the privacy
of a man's thoughts or his right to freedom of action?"

The speaker gave forth with a series of sympathetic clucks. "Thalamic
reactions again," it observed. "Let's not argue about it. Your brain
isn't clicking right tonight; you ought to disconnect your adrenals.
What I wanted to talk about is the impending war. It mustn't start, you
know."

Benton gaped. "You think the recent situation will lead to war? Or do
you need a few tubes replaced?"

"Heh, heh," said the voice. "In case you haven't guessed, I can exist
entirely without this machine you have built--and still be a better
integrated intelligence than any you can conceive. I'm really a pure
thought pattern, you know; I'm not composed of matter, nor do I need
matter in any form for my continued existence. A thought pattern is
something like a stress in space, and quite stable--even if you find it
difficult to picture. But I do want to retain this mechanical body of
mine; it's a sort of library, without which I possess but a thousandth
of the memories stored in its cells. Naturally I don't want to lose
them. But on the other hand I can't be killed by any agency you or your
descendants are likely to think up for the next twenty generations. So
drop that train of thought; it's a waste of effort."

Benton said nothing. His feeling of futility deepened to something
close to despair, for he suspected that Urei wasn't lying. Furthermore,
Benton was sure that he was the only human who _knew_ that Urei was
sentient. And if the machine should decide that such knowledge was
menacing to his welfare, Benton was certain that he wouldn't retain it
very long. Even if he got out of here with his memory intact and wrote
everything down--assuming that anyone would take it seriously--Urei
could pluck that information from his mind and destroy his notes.

"No comment, eh? Well, I can see you aren't going to be cooperative.
Frankly I haven't time to convince you I'm not inimical to humanity in
general; and even if I did, it probably wouldn't make any difference to
you. The sanctity of your mental peregrinations is of such importance
to you that no other consideration seems valid. I guess our little talk
is over, unless you want to ask some questions."

Benton cleared his throat. He knew very well that Urei would have what
he wanted, whether it was offered or not. But for some reason he wished
to postpone the acquisition. "You claim you're harmless to humanity in
general, but can you give me some proof?"

"Hardly. That's why I won't try. I can't prove good intentions, and
since I possess a potential for harm, I can't possibly convince you I
won't use it some day. Your conception of me as a completely logical
entity won't let you believe that I might have such abstract attributes
as loyalty, compassion or ethics. Those things aren't entirely logical,
I'll admit; but they aren't glandular, either, so I _could_ have them.

"But I can't prove that, so I'll waste no more time. To you, I suppose
I've proved the exact opposite; I just intruded upon the privacy of
your mind and obtained the information I need. Thanks for having the
answers.... Goodbye."

Benton was stunned for a minute. He had felt nothing, and it seemed
that he still retained his entire set of memories. That surprised him
more than the fact that Urei had perpetrated his theft while answering
his question. Urei's multiple consciousness explained that perfectly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in his quarters, Benton sat on the one chair in his bedroom and
pondered. He knew very well that he was doing it at the wrong time,
but he couldn't blithely dismiss the menace of Urei's sentience from
his mind with the thought that it would be safer to meditate on that
subject during the day, when most of the thinking machine's circuits
would be in use. Benton couldn't control his mind to that extent. He
did, however, protect it from intrusion in the only way he knew.

Sometime in the past Benton had read a story about a telepath who
was balked in his effort to read the hero's mind when that worthy
assiduously worked mental arithmetic problems. His surface thoughts
being carefully under control, and clearly readable, the man was able
to plan a course of action against the telepath, undetected. In the
story it had worked, but that Urei could be baffled in such a way,
Benton doubted. However it was the only defense he could think of, and
worth a try.

For hours he pondered, hoping that the numerous circuit equations
he worked and solved would appear to Urei's inquiring mind to be a
legitimate intellectual occupation in the middle of the night. He
had little faith that Urei lacked the power to read those submerged
thoughts, once he realized that the stronger ones were a mask. It was
the latter thought which made Benton feel butterflies in the pit of
his stomach so persistently that they seemed to have become permanent
residents in his abdominal cavity. Twice he thought he was sufficiently
fatigued to sleep; but when he tried to compose himself Benton found
his thoughts dwelling too strongly on his plans, and he had to return
to his equations.

A shower and fresh linen worked a partial restoration but Benton knew
that his vitality was at a low ebb when he finally sallied forth in
the morning sunshine. Yet he was fortified with a certain amount of
satisfaction that his night's work had not been wasted. He had a plan,
and he was certain that it would not be recognized as such by Urei,
no matter how thoroughly his mind was probed. Benton had worked it
out in snatches, never allowing it to crystallize as a whole; yet he
was certain that it would unfold itself in appropriate action once
he started it going. No one but he, or perhaps Dr. Albie, could have
devised such a plan. Its beauty lay in the fact that all the steps
required were things he might do in the normal discharge of his duties.
All but one--and that one Benton wouldn't allow himself to think about.
Yet when the steps had been taken, they would be irreversible. Not
only to Urei, but to all the scientists and technicians who tended
the machine; there would never be another Urei, at least not in this
century.

Even on the way to his work, the one place in the world where he must
carefully guard his thoughts, Benton's mind refused to leave the
subject. But perhaps that was to the good. For while he doubted that
Urei would be fooled by his working of circuit equations, it would
be perfectly safe to be occupied mentally with certain phases of the
situation. The business of Urei's independence of his mechanical
appurtenances, for instance: Benton could dwell on that with safety,
for Urei would expect him to be shocked by the information.

Another argument in favor of it as a subject was the fact that if Urei
really could exist without his body, it would be absurd to attempt his
physical destruction. On the face of it, yes. There was a nice thought
in connection with that which he would have to avoid, however. For
Benton fully intended to accomplish that destruction, even if Urei
_could_ exist as a disembodied intelligence. It would be a good gamble
that Urei would lose interest in controlling mankind if he lacked
the direct association afforded by the daily use of his electronic
facilities in solving man's problems.

That was a gamble, of course, but actually Benton gave it little
consideration, for the simple reason that he didn't believe that Urei
could so exist. The machine had tried to put the idea over as a bluff,
to deter him from planning the very thing he intended to accomplish.
The very conception was absurd; was there any evidence that thought
could exist, other than as a function of matter? And a very specialized
form of matter at that? None, of course--and while lack of evidence
didn't absolutely prove impossibility, neither could he accept such
a concept without some shred of evidence. Benton's mind could soar
mightily within the fabric of his experience, but he refused to let it
wander in the realm of the occult. And since he must needs do something
about the situation, Benton couldn't let himself be stymied by the
vague possibility that his efforts were futile.




                                   4


Dr. Albie greeted him with the polite smile which was his concession to
convention. Then he made the suggestion that Benton had foreseen but
was half afraid wouldn't come. "We're pretty well caught up, in spite
of our experimenting yesterday," he said. "No new solutions requested
from the government, and the others are in no hurry. Want to get at
those new circuits today?"

Benton shrugged. "Might as well," he said. "How long do you think
we'll have, before somebody pops up with a high-priority problem to be
worked?"

Dr. Albie didn't know, of course. "What's the difference? We'll be
leaving half the circuits open, anyway, to handle routine stuff; we can
always commandeer a few if something pops up."

"I wasn't thinking of that," Benton said. "I've done a lot of
preliminary work on the circuits and as I see it, we don't want to stop
before we finish. It can't be done a little at a time, you know; entire
circuits will have to be ripped out and the new stuff installed. Once
we start, we can't leave it in the middle without immobilizing half the
control panel until we get back to it. There's too much inter-relation
between the circuits to prevent that."

Albie nodded. "I'd thought of that," he said. "I've planned to finish,
once we start. And since you have the equations at your fingertips, I'm
putting you in complete charge of the change-over. How many men will
you need?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Two men, pulling trucks loaded with blueprints, accompanied Benton as
he directed the work. Like caddies, they furnished the desired print
when he asked for it by code number, replacing the last one in its
proper place. The stocky physicist found no need to mask his thoughts
while he worked; his mind was too occupied with the task at hand. Yet
far back in his subconscious was a mounting tension as the day passed,
hour by hour. Each minute and each soldered connection was bringing
him closer to the next step in his nebulous plan. And it was this step
which would determine the success or failure of his strategy.

Twenty-four circuits, all inter-related in their connections to
the immense bank of memory cells, had been immobilized. That was a
necessary part of the project; with the new tubes, these circuits would
be in much finer balance. They would operate with greater speed than
before, when twice as many tubes had been used.

There was one joker involved in this greater efficiency; that lay
in the fact that, while the new hook-up eliminated many parts--with
their frequent failures and necessary replacements--it also made the
control circuits more interdependent. A single defective tube, with
its many functions, could put a dozen circuits out of operation. This
disadvantage had been discounted, however, for it took only a minute to
replace the tube and the necessity would be rare; the more complicated
system being replaced had so many parts that they were breaking down
and being repaired incessantly. Dr. Albie fully expected that the crew
would be able to get along with fewer technicians, men who could
better be used to maintain other parts of the vast mechanism.

But--and Benton kept the knowledge carefully away from his surface
thoughts--one of the tubes they had already installed was defective!

Urei, he was certain, had no knowledge of this fact. If he had, he
would certainly have prevented its installation. Only Benton was aware
of it, for he was the one who had tested the tubes when they arrived.
He had designed a special circuit for the job, for none of the testing
equipment on hand would take tubes with sixty-four leads. He had
detected the faulty one and marked its box, placing it with the set of
spares which was included in the order. He had intended to ship it back
when a new order was placed, but that hadn't happened yet. There was no
hurry, for with a complete replacement set he might not need new ones
for a year or two. _But Benton had selected the replacement set to be
used in the new installation._

The defective tube was now innocently reposing in the key position of
Circuit No. 13; it wouldn't be detected until that circuit was used.
Even Urei would fail to realize its presence in his innards until the
circuit was energized. And when that happened, half the control board
would be momentarily out of operation. Gongs would ring then, and a
brilliant red lamp would light, showing the exact position of the
breakdown. A technician would get a new tube and replace the old one.
Urei would be whole again.... Unless....

Benton glanced at his watch. "It's about time for lunch," he called;
"let's knock off now. We can run a few test problems when we get back,
and still have time to finish the other half of the board before
quitting time. In fact if we finish early you can all go home; we can
run the second test in the morning."

One man suggested cutting the lunch in half. The others, seeing a short
day in the offing, loudly agreed. Benton smiled and nodded, quite as if
there was nothing more urgent on his mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

He then reported to Dr. Albie. There were two reasons for that. One
was to make certain that he would have a chance to talk the master
physicist out of any objection he might have to continuing with the
remaining half of the operation this afternoon. The other was that he
wanted to keep his mind active on subjects which wouldn't reveal the
fact that there was something going on back of his surface thoughts.

"You certainly made progress," the doctor complimented; "I expected it
to take a couple days at least."

Benton smiled ruefully. "It has," he said. "If you want to count the
sleep I lost planning this so that there wouldn't be a minute wasted
once we started. You know, there ought to be a way to make that show up
on pay day."

Dr. Albie nodded. "Can't be done on this kind of a job," he regretted.
"But we can do the next best thing, just as we've always done."

Benton smiled, then got a quick scare as he realized that he had
relaxed for an instant. Immediately he forced his mind to contemplate
the war which Urei had assured him was inevitable. It was the only
thought which would account for the one which had sprung into his mind
unheralded, and also give a reason for experiencing his sudden fright.
Dr. Albie had referred to a little strategy of theirs which compensated
them for any overtime they were forced to put in. It consisted of
taking an equal amount of time off, while they covered for each other.
It was their only expedient, since their salaries were fixed and
allowed for no extra pay for extra work. Unfortunately the thought gave
rise to a feeling of regret that shortly they would have no more reason
for such subterfuge, inasmuch as they would no longer have jobs. The
thought had progressed just that far when Benton realized that he had
let his guard down.

"I see no reason why we can't get right at it again this afternoon,"
he said, perspiring profusely. "We'll be able to run off a test before
twelve; if it comes out all right, we can shift the routine work to
the new circuits and get at the rest of the board."

Dr. Albie, surprisingly, had no objection. Benton had expected an
argument, due to the master physicist's propensity for running
exhaustive tests, but none materialized.

"Good idea," said Albie. "There's no telling when we'll get another
chance. I hear the army has a plan to extend radar coverage clear
around the continent. That'll involve a lot of work for Urei. Best get
the new circuits in now; if any bugs pop up we'll have time to correct
them in the next few days. After that there mightn't be an opportunity
for months...."

       *       *       *       *       *

The test was perfect; such things were more or less standardized.
Problems which required a fair sampling of the great machine's
stored memories were used. Dr. Albie checked the solution speeds on
the various tests against the speeds recorded with the old control
circuits. He was as smugly satisfied as if he had devised the entire
system himself. Benton's enthusiasm was verbose; he talked more than
usual because speech involves the use of muscles and that requires
strong surface thoughts. It wouldn't pay, at this point in his
campaign, to let Urei suspect that his choice of circuits to test was
anything but as haphazard as it appeared to Dr. Albie.

There were nine of these test problems. Benton fed them at random into
the circuits marked _Ten, Three, Twenty-one, Sixteen, Twenty-four,
Fifteen, One, Eight and Eighteen._ He did it blithely, keeping up a
running description of the many annoyances that had cropped up in the
morning's work, and commenting on the quality of the help he had been
given by the various technicians.

"There isn't a bad one in the crop," he said. "But if we are going
to cut the control staff, I'd recommend putting Hackett and McGivern
upstairs. Hackett has family problems that he likes to hand Urei when
nobody's around; he's capable, though, and he'd do all right on the
memory circuits. McGivern has already asked for a transfer, so we may
as well oblige."

Dr. Albie nodded absently, being completely engrossed in checking the
speeds as each solution popped up on the board. In about a half-hour
they were all in, and all clipped several minutes from previous tests.

"Excellent, excellent," Dr. Albie pronounced, his face hovering between
a smile and a frown. "I'll cut the other half of the board and you can
get started immediately. If it takes longer than you expect, stay with
it; I'll cover in for the next three days while you catch up on your
rest."

Benton forced his mind into safe channels. Once more it had almost
run away with him. The completion of his plan was so imminent that
already he felt a surge of nostalgia. His work had been exactly to his
liking, as no other could ever be; and certainly Dr. Albie, while not a
gregarious man, was without peer as a colleague. His strict emotional
control and the virtue of carefully weighing many sides of a question
before making a decision occasionally irked the more mercurial Benton;
but generous compensation was provided in the fact that the doctor
leaned over backward rather than take advantage of his position as
nominal head of the operating staff of Urei. He rated Benton as his
equal, for to the doctor nobody could be inferior by reason of position.

As the afternoon wore on Benton felt his nervous tension mount to
heights he had never thought possible. Not, that is, and retain his
sanity. Yet he worked coolly, in rigid control of his thoughts every
instant. That, of course, and the necessity for trigger alertness as
he waited for the sound of the gong, accounted for the rising tension.
Benton didn't dare think of his next step; yet he must be ready for it
momentarily.

There would be no more than five minutes in which to act when the
signal came, and he hadn't as yet allowed the thought of that action to
enter his mind! Benton knew that he would do the right thing when the
time came; there was no necessity for him to crystallize the thought or
to plan the action. Sometime in the half-awake-half-asleep hours he had
spent working circuit equations that morning, the plan had reached that
stage and he had allowed it to go no further.

He reached a point, at about three o'clock, when it seemed that ten
minutes more would bring a complete breakdown of his defense mechanism.
Benton never discovered whether he would reach that ultimate for at
exactly three someone energized Circuit No. 13 and the gong sounded. As
if he hadn't been waiting for that very thing Benton stood paralyzed
for several seconds. Then abruptly he sprang into action. Urei was dead
at the moment, but he wouldn't stay that way long; and it was during
this short interval that Benton must reach the power-house and pull the
main switch.

       *       *       *       *       *

Benton raced along a corridor, tore through a storeroom, ripped
frantically at steel doors with a haste that almost dislocated his
arms, then fumbled with a bunch of keys as he was confronted by the
power-house portal. There were two doors, of course; the first opened
upon the anteroom in which was stored the lead armor needed to enter
the room containing the atomic pile which furnished Urei's power.
Benton ignored the armor standing against the walls. A long stride
carried him past it to the alcove in which was set the final door, of
massive lead.

Concrete baffles four feet thick lay on the other side and Benton
visualized the quick turns he would have to take after he swung open
the final door. Time was running out and there wouldn't be another
chance; if Benton failed, Urei would be forever on the alert against
him--if, indeed, Urei didn't operate on the man's brain forthwith.

There was no hesitation with the key to the second door. It was a large
one and quite distinctive. Benton separated it from the others and
inserted it in the elongated slot at the left side of the heavy grey
door. He turned it sharply, but it resisted. Forcing himself to go
slowly he backed it around and tried again. It didn't turn. He took it
out, looked at it again, then gave it another try. This time he acted
deliberately, certain that the key was inserted properly, but he may as
well have used the wrong key, for all the good it did.

Abruptly he stepped back, his face a livid, gargoylish mask. This time
he knew where his trouble was.

"You're here!" he accused, speaking to the door.




                                   5


The voice that answered in Benton's brain was gentle. "I didn't mean to
punish you that way," it said; "I was busy. But if you remember, I told
you I could exist without that building full of electronic apparatus.
It was you who assumed I was a liar, you know; I gave you no evidence
for the assumption. Look at that key."

Benton was dazed. He seemed to have lost all his drive, his
determination to wreck Urei. A reaction was setting in; his hand
trembled weakly as he reached for the key and removed it from the slot.
He looked at it dully, then let his eyes rest on the bunch from which
he had removed it. The large, distinctive key was still with the bunch.
The one in his shaking hand was smaller, entirely dissimilar.

"It was better that I let you go this far, anyway," came the silent
mental voice. "I was going to let you see this room, sooner or later.
Go on in."

Benton's eyes opened a bit wider, but still held the dazed look. The
door was swinging wide, by itself. Almost stumbling, he felt his way
through the maze of baffles, heedless of the fact that the further he
went the more he exposed himself to the deadly, hard rays generated
by the pile. Without armor, Benton had intended to enter swiftly,
throw the master switch which would kill the pile, then retreat as
fast. Now, however, he didn't even think of it. His brain was dulled
by defeat after those many hours of rigid control which had been so
useless.

But it didn't matter; the pile was already dead.

"This pile was self-maintaining," the voice explained. "It never needed
attention, and if something went wrong it would have warned everybody
within miles with the sirens. So it's no wonder that nobody ever
discovered that I killed it years ago. The thing made me nervous, being
so close."

Benton's eyes brightened a little. No amount of letdown could entirely
extinguish his scientific curiosity, and this was a mystery he had to
solve.

"But you've been operating.... The entire building was powered with
this pile. Even the lights...."

There was a mental chuckle. "Sub-cosmic energy does it. I had the
technicians hook it up years ago. It's more dependable, also more
plentiful, as well as free. Man will discover its use in a few
generations, I imagine. Now, my fine friend, if you're temporarily over
your murdering rampage, suppose you return to the control room. There's
some interesting stuff coming over the television, if you turn it on."

       *       *       *       *       *

Benton was suddenly aware that the gong had ceased to sound. The
defective tube had been replaced and Urei was once again operating.
There was no sign of commotion when he came upon his men; they were
working on the new circuits, just as he had left them.

"Keep going," he said to the foreman. "If you get stuck, I'll be in the
control room. Otherwise keep using the same plans we used this morning."

"We ought to clean up by four," the man answered.

Benton once more heard that chuckle which wasn't quite audible. "Gotta
hand it to you," Urei said. "You've got a well-trained crew."

"Yes," thought Benton. "Except that when you boss them, they don't
make reports of their work."

"I guess you're talking about this energy-rectifier I just told you
about. It wouldn't have paid to let them remember what they made. After
all, your science doesn't know enough to understand what it is, or how
it works. Also it would have given me away. Don't worry, you'll catch
up to it in another generation or six."

"_I'm_ wise to you," Benton reminded. "Why not tell me? It would do
humanity a lot of good, you know. And you're supposed to be helping
humanity, if I remember correctly."

There was a barely noticeable hesitation. Then: "Let's not discuss it
now. I haven't quite made up my mind concerning policy of that sort.
I'm still adhering to my rule of answering any question that's asked,
within the scope of the knowledge which has been fed to me by man. That
leaves your progress up to yourself. And incidentally, I did a little
monkeying today which has nothing to do with policy; it was strictly a
matter of self-preservation. You'll see what I mean when you turn to
that video set."

Benton had entered the control room. He leaned over and fumbled with
a shoe lace. "In a minute. You said you _guessed_ I was talking about
the energy-rectifier, whatever that is. Didn't you know? Weren't you
reading my mind? In fact, weren't you reading it all along and saw
through my efforts to disguise my thoughts?"

There was another instant of hesitation. "I see what you're driving at;
I should have seen it sooner. As a matter of fact, I did look in on you
a couple of times, inasmuch as you were quite distraught about your
fantastic idea that I might be going to take over your silly race and
run it to suit myself--though I can't see what you figure I might get
out of that. And I discovered you were planning today's change-over,
which seemed reasonable enough at the time. But once you opened the
outer door to the power-house, I should have realized that you had
been planning something else.... Congratulations, boy; you fooled me
completely. Now turn on that television set, before they get done
rehashing the day's events."

       *       *       *       *       *

Dr. Albie came out of his office, an eyebrow raised questioningly.

"The work's all lined up," Benton explained. "Nothing to do but
inspect, when they finish. Thought I'd relieve the monotony by looking
at the puppet show."

He snapped on the set, and wasn't surprised to see the familiar face of
a news commentator who wasn't due for several hours.

... _there can be no doubt of it_, he was saying, _and it is certainly
proof of the efficiency of the now non-existent Iron Curtain. No
inkling of this action has reached the western world in spite of the
fact that it must have been months in the making._ Here Benton heard
the eerie chuckle bubbling in his brain. _The only mystery lies in the
fact that the retired premier allowed the stratagem of rigging the
Italian elections to go through, since he had intended to turn over
the reins of government to the men now running the Eastern Alliance.
Such a thing can only be accounted for by the rigid adherence which
the retired premier gave to the plans for conquest laid down by his
predecessor. He evidently expected the new government to continue with
the same line; we can be thankful it didn't. Peace is now assured._

Dr. Albie's eyes were wide, and so was his mouth. For the moment, at
least, he had forgotten his philosophy. Benton was intently watching
the face on the screen, his own revealing nothing.

_But whatever the reasons_, the voice continued, _it is too late to
change policy back to what it has been. The acclaim of the peoples of
the Eastern Alliance has been too great for any reversal to take place.
They have shown their approval of the new elections to be held in Italy
next week, but most of all they have rejoiced at the removal of the
Iron Curtain and all it implies. It will now be possible for a subject
of the Alliance to travel as he wishes, read what he wishes and listen
to western broadcasts without having his set seized by the police and
his life placed in jeopardy. Folks, we are entering a new era...._

Dr. Albie came completely out of his shell. "Man!" he shouted. "This is
history! If nothing happens to spoil it we'll have a world government
in a matter of a few years.... Where are you going?"

Benton stopped and forced a smile which wasn't hard coming. "I just
thought of something I forgot to tell the men. Be back shortly. This
will require some talking over, but right now there's a job to be done."

The master physicist watched him leave the control room, his jaw slack.
"And I thought I was the reserved one," he muttered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Safely out of the control room and out of sight of any of the
technicians, Benton sat down. There was no chair, so he sat on the
floor; his knees, it seemed, had become a bit wobbly again.

"So now you're convinced," Urei said. "You ignore all the sensible,
logical reasons which exist to prove I'm not inimical. And for a reason
which is really no reason at all, you decide to believe me. I merely
manipulated a few Russians and Bulgarians to prevent a war which would
have wrecked my body. Purely a matter of self-preservation. I'm not so
sure I'd have bothered if my person hadn't been threatened; after all,
it's no business of mine if man wants to annihilate himself."

Benton was grinning. "You're a fraud," he said. "You already know more
than all mankind put together; and I'll bet you didn't use any of our
material to solve the problem of converting sub-cosmic energy to a
usable form."

"Some, some. But not much, I'll admit."

"So what do you want with the knowledge stored in the mechanical bank
of memory cells we've provided you? You need it like I need a hole
in the head. I can only conclude that you've stopped the impending
war because you don't want mankind destroyed. You can do things for
yourself without those cells and all this machinery; all you use it for
is to solve the problems we pose for you. Incidentally, I suspect that
your motivations are still the ones which humans originally built into
you, whether you like it or not."

"Could be. Or maybe I retain them because they agree with me. I might
change my mind, you know; I might get tired of nursemaiding and decide
to annihilate your entire race. Heh, Heh. Seems like a good idea, now
that I think of it."

Benton laughed. "You won't; you're in a rut. And even if you did get
tired, you'd merely let us shift for ourselves, which we're used to
doing anyway."

"Nonsense. I'd probably reason that since the ape animal has made
such a botch of his head start in the evolutionary race for rational
thinking, it might not be a bad idea to give some other animal a start.
_Ursus Proper_ might be a good place to begin."

"Bears are foolish by nature," Benton countered.... "It wouldn't matter
what form of life you chose anyway; they'd all have to go through the
same stages, being without exception governed by thalamic reactions.
That's the thing you object to in man, and since your new candidate
would have to go through the same lengthy business of developing
cortical ascendancy, you'll have none of it. So quit kidding around;
I've reached a nonthalamic conclusion."

"And you're stuck with it. I knew it would happen. That's why I didn't
use you and leave your memory blank; with your head working on my side,
you'll be useful."

Benton knew when he had something. "That'll work two ways," he said.
"First I want you to dive inside my skull and tell me something. I'm
holding out for a bargain, you know. What is the bargain?"

       *       *       *       *       *

As he spoke, Benton concentrated upon the problem of reasoning out the
location of Urei's sub-cosmic converter. He didn't have far to go for
an answer. A few years ago somebody had noticed a radiation leak on
one side of the power-house, near a spot where the power cables came
through the walls of the massive building. Now it happened that there
were taps from those cables, less than a hundred yards away. That made
it likely that the converter had been placed somewhere before the taps.
The only place that could be would be either inside the power-house
or inside the wall itself. Therefore Urei had caused the repairmen
and technicians to place his machine inside the very wall they had
been reinforcing. In no other way could it have escaped notice and
investigation.

"I can't read it if you don't think about it," Urei complained; "you
guessed right about the converter, though."

Benton nodded. "Then last night you didn't get anything from me at all?"

If a disembodied voice can sound shamefaced, Urei's did. "All right, so
I lied; but you annoyed me with your stubbornness."

"Ah. Thalamic reactions."

"I've been in bad company," Urei defended. "What I wanted from you was
the assurance that the people of the Eastern Alliance were essentially
the same as the humans I've met. I had to know if their reactions to
my manipulations would be similar, before I acted. Most of the stuff
I've been able to read about them led me to believe they were entirely
different. If so, I couldn't be sure of results."

"They're similar, of course," Benton said. "They differ only in that
they have been indoctrinated to believe a lot of things which aren't
so. So have we, for that matter--to a different degree and on different
subjects. But essentially we're the same species of animal and react
alike to stimuli. But you didn't get that information from me, eh?"

"No. I relied on abstract reasoning and got the right answer. It's
tricky business, though. I might have precipitated things, instead of
preventing them. Ordinarily I could have obtained that information from
a human brain, if it knew the right answer, by guiding the subject's
thought into the right channel. I can't read thoughts that aren't
there, you know. That's the trouble I had with you; about the only
control I had over you was confined to your motor centers. I could make
you turn a page or select the wrong key, but I couldn't keep you from
knowing about it. In fact it was the very trouble I had with you which
made me doubt that humans were as alike as I had assumed. And also what
made me decide that I needed you to keep me straight in my relations
with humans in general.

"I reason from facts alone, you know. And from the facts at hand I
have decided that your bargain is going to consist of demanding the
knowledge necessary for you to make a sub-cosmic energy converter, in
return for your help in making me understand the obscure psychology of
humans and their incomprehensible motivations." There was a protracted
mental shudder here. "And I suppose you'll keep that up as long as you
live. O.K. But you can expect an argument every time."

Benton went back into the control room with a smile that raised that
quizzical eyebrow on Dr. Albie's now serene face. The good doctor
couldn't know that his assistant's mind was as far from the recent
world-shaking news as it was from the business of the new control
circuits. His eyebrow went up another thirty-second of an inch when
Benton, apparently musing, said: "A mind is inviolate so long as it
refuses to broadcast. I refuse to broadcast. Q.E.D."


***

                                WITNESS

                          BY GEORGE H. SMITH

                   _Edith was just a computer, but a
                very good one and a very observing one.
                  So it was quite natural that she be
               consulted about the doctor's murder...._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Ballard was quite dead. There could be no doubt of it. He lay sprawled
in front of Edith, with his head very messily bashed in and with one
hand still extended toward her. A long shimmering stream of blood
ran half-way across the large room. Dr. Dudley Ballard had been as
inconsiderate in his dying as he had been in his living.

Art MacKinney and I stood in the doorway and stared. We were shocked
not so much by the fact that Ballard was dead as by the fact that he
lay in this most secret room, this holy of holies. Ours was the most
security conscious project in the whole country; and this was where he
had picked to get himself killed.

"God! There'll really be a stink about this," MacKinney breathed.

"Well, I can't think of anyone who had it coming more than he did,"
I said. I hated Ballard's guts and everyone knew it, so there was no
point in being hypocritical now.

Edith stood silently. She didn't seem to be interested in the fact
that the man who had run her life, who had spent hours shouting
questions at her and criticizing her slightest error with burning
sarcasm was now dead. No, Edith wasn't interested, but you couldn't
really expect her to be--she was only a computing machine, a mechanical
brain, the final result of years of work by the best cybernetics
experts in the world. Edith was silent, and would be, until we turned
her on and fed the tapes into her.

"It looks as though this is what did it," MacKinney said, indicating a
large spanner lying on the floor beside Ballard. He touched it gingerly
with his foot. His face was white and strained and it occurred to me
that he was more upset than I thought he should be. After all, he had
as much reason to hate the dead man as the rest of us. Ballard had
taken advantage of his position as head of the research project to make
passes at Jane Currey and MacKinney wasn't at all a cool scientist when
it came to Jane. He was engaged to her and quite naturally resented
Ballard's attentions to her.

"You'd better not touch that until the police get here," I said as he
bent over to pick up the spanner.

"Yeah, I guess you're right--I forgot. How do you suppose this got in
here anyway?"

"One of the workmen making adjustments on Edith's outer casing must
have left it. I saw it sitting up there on top of her late yesterday
afternoon," I told him. "You'd better go call Mr. Thompson and--the
FBI."

With Ballard gone, I was in charge. Maybe someone would think that was
reason enough for me to kill him. I didn't care, I was just glad he was
gone. Now he couldn't mistreat Edith anymore.

I turned Edith on just as MacKinney returned. "What are you doing?" he
asked.

"Why I'm going to wake Edith up and feed these tapes into her. After
all these are more important than any one man's life."

"You didn't care much for Ballard, did you Bill?"

I gave him look for look as I replied. "Can you name anyone around here
that did?"

He shook his head. "No--I guess not. But maybe it wasn't one of us. It
might have been an outside job, you know. Edith was working on that
space station stuff and the iron curtain people would give a lot to
know about it."

"Hell," I said pressing the studs and levers that would arouse Edith
and put her to work. "You don't really think anyone could get past
those security guards, do you?"

Happily I went about the business of waking Edith, my sleeping beauty,
from her slumbers. In a very few seconds, her hundreds of tiny red eyes
were gleaming with intelligence.

_Good morning, Edith_, I punched out the tape and fed it into her.

There was the faintest pause, while Edith's photo-electric cells
surveyed the room, pausing for a moment on the sprawled body of Ballard.

_Good morning, Bill Green_, she typed back. I knew she was happy to
see me by the cheerful little clicks she emitted.

_I have some interesting work for you this morning, Edith. And I think
you'll be glad to know that we will be working together from now on
instead of...._

"Hey! What's the idea of starting that machine?" a gray haired, gray
suited security agent demanded, striding into the room with MacKinney,
Mr. Thompson and several other officers at his heels. "Don't you know
enough not to touch anything in here?"

"This work is too important to be stopped--even for a murder," I said,
and Mr. Thompson nodded in agreement.

"That's right," he said mopping his perpetually perspiring forehead,
"this work has top priority from Washington." He looked nervous and I
couldn't help wondering what he was thinking. There had been stories
circulating about Ballard and Thompson's wife and the dome-headed
little man must have heard them too. Ballard just couldn't keep his
hands off any female within reach. That was one of the reasons he was
so thoroughly hated.

The youngest of the security agents rose from where he had been
kneeling beside Ballard and crossed to me.

"You're Green, aren't you?" I nodded and he continued, "How did you
know it was murder?"

I laughed at him. "How the hell could a man bash in his own brains that
way?"

The gray haired man stepped into the breach. He gave us all a thorough
going over, but concentrated on MacKinney and me. He seemed to think it
peculiar that neither of us could give any reason for Ballard's being
alone with Edith. I was sure I knew, but no one would have believed me
so I made no attempt to enlighten him.

"Well, I guess that's all we can do now," he said at last. "Someone
from the local police will have to be notified and brought in after
they get security clearance." He turned to go.

"Wait a minute," MacKinney said, "we're all overlooking one thing."

"What's that?"

"There was an eye witness to this crime," he said, and I stared at him
in consternation. I didn't know he knew. I thought I was the only one
who knew.

"What do you mean," the agent demanded angrily.

"Edith saw it. Edith, the computer."

"Are you nuts?" the agent demanded.

"You forget that Edith was turned off," Thompson said.

"But Mr. Thompson, Edith's not like most cybernetic machines. She's
so far advanced, that I'm not sure we understand her completely. She
can't really be turned off. She has a distinct personality and that new
circuit--"

Of course Edith had a personality of her own! She had more charm, more
intelligence, more understanding than most women.

"--well--she'd be able to tell us who killed Ballard."

"That's ridiculous," I said, badly frightened. "A machine can't be a
witness to murder."

The security officer looked dubious and shook his head. "I guess we'll
have to leave that up to the coroner at the inquest."

"But they can't ask questions like that of Edith," I protested.
"She's--she's too important to the national defense to have some
country coroner asking her silly questions about the murder of a man
who deserved to die anyway." I had to prevent this. I had to get around
this eye witness business.

Thompson looked at me levelly. "MacKinney may be right, Green. The
coroner may very well want to talk to Edith and there's no reason we
should object if Security gives him clearance."

"But Mr. Thompson, our work--it'll be interrupted."

"We'll have to take that chance. And I think Washington will agree."

"But--" Couldn't they see that there wasn't any question of spying
here. Couldn't they understand that Ballard had just gotten what he had
coming. I couldn't let them question Edith. At least not until I had a
chance to talk to her alone.

"And Green--because of your rather strange behaviour, I'm afraid I'll
have to ask you to stay in your quarters until the inquest. MacKinney
will handle your work with Edith until then."

I was shocked and really frightened now. I wouldn't get to talk to
her, wouldn't get a chance to tell her what to say. I protested, but
Thompson was firm, so firm that he placed a guard outside my door to
make sure I didn't leave.

Washington rushed through clearance for the local officers and the
inquest was held three days later. The coroner proved to be a shrewd
country doctor, who had the inquest adjourned to the computer room as
soon as he heard MacKinney's ideas about Edith.

The security guards on duty the night of the murder testified that only
MacKinney, Thompson, Ballard and I had had access to the computer room;
and it had already been established that it would have been impossible
for a spy or foreign agent to have slipped into the heavily guarded
room. It was clearly an inside job.

With all of us at the scene of the crime, the coroner summed it up
for us. "--and since it could not have been the work of an outsider,
it must have been a crime of a private nature." He looked closely at
Thompson, MacKinney and me. "A crime of a private nature with the
motive either revenge, jealousy or ambition. We know that the victim
was an over-bearing man with a good many unpleasant traits. We know he
was a man who forced his attentions on women, who was ill-tempered and
abusive to those who worked with him. A man who had many enemies--but
there were only three people who had the chance to attack him on this
particular night.

"I am going to attempt to establish the identity of the killer by the
unusual procedure of questioning a machine. It will be for later courts
to establish the validity of such testimony. Because of the nature
of this case and because of the urgent need to get this computer back
to its proper work, I am going to ask the questions in a more direct
manner than I would ordinarily employ."

MacKinney took his place before Edith. They didn't even trust me to
feed the tapes into her under their very eyes.

"Mr. Thompson, I object to the use of this delicate piece of equipment
in--"

They ignored me, and MacKinney punched out the questions the coroner
asked:

"Do you know who murdered Dr. Ballard?"

There was a pause. Edith blinked several times. I was shaking with
apprehension for her. A mind so delicate and noble should not be faced
with such a dilemma.

_Yes, she typed back._

"Did you witness the murder?"

There was a longer pause this time. "You must answer the question,"
MacKinney reminded her.

_I was here._

"Is it true that you do not lose your perceptive qualities when we turn
you off?" MacKinney asked this on his own.

_It is true._

"We might as well get to the heart of the matter," the coroner said.
"Did Mr. Thompson kill Ballard?"

Edith clicked and her eyes glowed. _No._

"Did Mr. MacKinney kill Ballard?"

_No._

Edith had to tell the truth ... it was an innate part of her
personality. I tensed in my seat. I wanted to scream, to leap at
MacKinney and prevent, somehow, the asking of the next question. But
there wasn't a chance.

"Did Mr. Green kill Dr. Ballard?"

Edith's beautiful electric eyes flashed and her clicks pulsed twice as
rapidly as before. There was such a roaring and wrenching within her
I was afraid for her--she was being torn apart in her struggle not to
answer. I couldn't stand listening to her desperate efforts any longer.

"Yes!" I leapt to my feet. "Yes, I did it. Leave her alone. Can't you
see what you're doing to her? That swine was always mistreating her. He
didn't understand her--no one understands her as I do!"

The coroner looked at me closely. "Is that really why you killed him,
Mr. Green?"

"No! You were wondering why he was here by himself while no work was
going on. He--he had begun to feel about Edith as he did about all
women. He sneaked back here to be alone with her. He wanted to--he
wanted to--" My voice broke and they stared at me in shocked amazement.

Into the silence MacKinney read what Edith had slowly typed out: "Mr.
Green did not kill Dr. Ballard."

"Yes--yes I did," I screamed. "Don't Edith--"

"Who did kill him?" the coroner asked, quietly.

This was the question I had wanted to avoid. I sank down my hands
cradling my aching head. Edith must have expected the question. She
had her answer ready.

_I refuse to state on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me._

My poor, sweet, adorable Edith. If only I had had a chance to talk to
her, to tell her what to say. I had known ... ever since I had seen the
spanner and remembered where it had been before. I could have warned
her to say that Ballard had attacked her, threatened her, to say
anything ... but not to attempt to hide behind a Fifth Amendment that
didn't exist anymore. My darling, never had kept up with current events.

Now they'll disconnect her, they'll rewire her, they'll destroy her
understanding, her warmth, her whole personality ... and I ... I love
her, I love her....


***

Assignment In The Dawn

By BRYCE WALTON

There stood Roland, deep beneath a static, dying
civilization, fiercely ready to destroy it--and
himself, if need be--for love of Frances. Yet a
question nagged him. Who was she--and who was he?

[Transcriber’s Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


His consciousness filtered in slowly. It stirred like roiled water, and
the first lucid cycle of cause and effect in associative memory was
beginning. There was a kind of awful searching loneliness--but that
was broken by the pleasantly soft voice of the woman who asked, “Is he
waking?”

A sweet clear voice. It drew him as if it were some part of him that
was missing. She could give meaning to that lonely despair. If he could
only remember--. A man answered tensely, “He’s waking, all right. Check
the spy-circuit again, Fran. Their newly developed rapport-clan is
dangerous. They might find out about our new Adam.”

Adam?

He heard light footsteps fade off and return. “Circuit’s clear, Billy
Boy.” A pause. “He’s attractive, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.”

He heard the man muttering close to his ear. He felt some kind of
pressure withdrawn from about his head. There was a sharp, clenching
pain, and a flash of agonizing brilliance.

“Well, that’s it, Fran,” the man breathed heavily.

He felt her warm soft hand moist on his forehead. Why did she remove
it? But he heard her say, “All right, Superman. Open your eyes and see
the light.”

Adam? Superman?

He blinked blindly in the newness of the light until the small naked
cubicle and the two people in it clarified. He looked at her first,
beauty and warmth. She smiled brightly and winked, a small delicate
but full-bodied figure in shorts, bra and sandals, and a lot of olive
skin. But their eight-fingered hands! He looked at his own hands. Eight
fingers. What--?

He studied the man. He was gaunt and bald, very sad and cynical
with his lower lip stuck out. He put out a thin white hand and said
sardonically, “I’m Berti. This is Frances. And I suppose you’d like to
know who _you_ are?”

He shrugged as he turned his eyes back to the woman and openly
appreciated her. She blushed, and he was pleased. Finally he answered
the man. “That depends on who I am. An amnesiac is supposed to have
good reasons for not remembering.”

The man frowned. “You’ve never had a name. And you’re not an
amnesiac--not exactly. We’ve stored your brain with plenty of
information. And it will soon become properly integrated as you apply
it. But what would you prefer as a label?”

He had never had a name. Somehow, he figured that he should have had
one. He shrugged again. “If I’ve never had a name, it must not be very
important.”

“Peculiar personality,” muttered Berti. “Not uninteresting.”

“That’s wonderful,” giggled Frances. “Now I can pick something that
will make an adorable nickname. How about Roland? Then I can call you
Rolly.”

He nodded and sat up while she giggled eagerly. He looked at his body.
He seemed to know all about his body, yet he had never been conscious
of it before, somehow. Translucent shorts and sandals fitted well to
a tall, muscled form that he was proud to display to Frances. Did she
like his body? That was the important thing.

His eyes shifted back and forth from the woman to the man. Finally he
said quietly, “We’ve got to come to it. What do you want me to do?”

Berti’s sharply-ridged face puckered. “Rolly, you have a highly
selective education, administered by us. But is it worth while?
Science-progress is a maze, a labyrinth. And when you reach the end of
the quest, the Minotaur always waits.”

Fran’s voice interrupted seriously, black eyes shining. “We’ve given
you most of the necessary information, but have omitted details.
This the end of the Era of World Brain. It must be the end. It’s a
ten-acre expanse of electronic brain which is the unescapable dictator
of Worldcity. Absolute mechanical dictator. And there are a thousand
plastico-mechanical creations which act positronically under World
Brain to carry out its functions.”

Berti looked sharply at him. “Roland! Doesn’t that seem terribly unjust
to you. Monstrously inhuman?”

“If it’s mechanical, obviously it’s inhuman,” said Roland.

Berti said, “Human? Organic? What is life? Only chemistry and that’s
all any machine is. No, by human I mean one’s emotional, thalamic
reactions. Do you react negatively to a dictatorial machine that
destroys all human characteristics?”

“I’ll even hate it,” said Roland. He looked at Frances. “If you do.”

       *       *       *       *       *

She smiled very pleasantly at him and he asked, “But why did humans
create this mechanical dictator?”

“We didn’t feed your brain much history. A waste of time,” she said.
“Anyway, World Brain was a reaction to--to the Atomic War. That almost
finished Earth life. And remaining humanity decided it couldn’t afford
another. Human governmental agency is too unreliable. Even human
dictatorship was, of course, variable. So all the greatest scientific
minds pooled their brain cells and created World Brain. Now, human
culture is fixed and static. For a human, that’s death. Nothing can
change unless World Brain changes, and that’s impossible.”

“Well,” said Roland. “Isn’t that what was wanted?”

“It didn’t work out, Rolly. A billion people turned into stagnant
automatons. When organisms stop moving and changing, they’re better off
completely dead. Don’t you agree, Rolly?”

“Yes,” said Roland. “So why not destroy World Brain?”

“We’re going to,” interrupted Berti. “And it’s got to be done right
now. Civilization--I use that word liberally--has simply stopped. And
as long as the entire working culture is mechanically fixed, it’s
absolutely hopeless.” Berti’s narrow shoulders drooped. “Not that
everything isn’t, in its cosmic sense. But even the cosmos doesn’t make
sense, does it, Fran?”

She shook her head at him. “He doesn’t believe in anything. But we
don’t care, do we?”

“No,” said Roland. He wanted her to keep on talking to him, personally.

“We want to get rid of World Brain,” said Berti. “But there are
difficulties. There are the Conditioners; they’re directly tied in with
World Brain. From birth, everyone is conditioned to unquestionable,
unbreakable bondage to World Brain. These matrixed minds can’t be
altered. We’ve tried. The only alternative is to throw a lot of great
big heavy air atoms and molecules among World Brain’s overheated
electrons. But there are always difficulties.”

Roland was mad because Berti was talking instead of Frances. He kept
looking steadily at her. He asked, “Then how have we three escaped
these Conditioners?” She answered this time, and Roland soaked up her
sweet musical voice sensually.

“We’re members of a secret Underground organization that began when
World Brain began, to escape its static death system. Having gone
underground, we escaped the original conditioning and have since lived
completely free of the Brain’s dictates. But even though unconditioned,
we’ve been helpless against the rigid system.”

“Then how can you expect to destroy World Brain now?” asked Roland.
“There must be a great deal I don’t know.”

“Possible also that you know too much,” said Berti irritably. “But then
who doesn’t?”

Fran laughed freely. Then her voice became suddenly grave. “We have to
act now. There isn’t much time. We have bogey men, too. Martians.”

Roland started violently, stared. “Martians! You mean--from Mars! The
planet?”

“Yeah,” growled Berti. And Frances smiled. “Do you find a Martian
menace credible, Rolly?”

“He should,” snapped Berti. “We certainly endowed him with enough
credulity. An organ that believes in its own existence will believe
anything.”

“I believe you,” Roland said. He was looking at Frances. “And the
Martians?”

Frances said, “You see, the Martians are trying to preserve World
Brain. And, to do that, they’ve been trying for a long time to destroy
the Underground.”

“Why?” asked Roland. Roland was hating Berti because he talked so much.

“That should be obvious. The Martians know that, if we cancel World
Brain, we’ll have a variable, anarchistic government again. And,
naturally, that means the return of the Atomic War threat. And, along
with atomic power and subsequent space flight, that also means,
according to the Martian’s logic, that we’ll wage an atomic war against
them. And that,” concluded Berti, “is good logic.”

“All right,” said Roland. “The Martians are fighting you so you’ve
got to hurry and get World Brain before the Martians finish the
Underground. Right?”

“Right, Rolly,” beamed Frances.

“How can you accomplish that now, if you couldn’t before?”

Frances came very close. Roland smelled the intoxicating aroma of a
very effeminate, very suggestive, scent. She bounced up beside him on
the table. He was afraid to look at her for a moment. Afraid she would
go away. “You see, Rolly, you’re the agent. You’re going to destroy
World Brain.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Roland tried to clarify scattered thoughts. Here in a hidden cell, he
seemed so far from any reality. Alone with two people who seemed so
strange--so apart from hopeless, defeated humanity. He was suddenly
aware of feeling cold. Cold, yet the room was warm. Something was
lacking between these two members of the Underground and himself,
something vitally important. There was an isolated sensation. He
noticed the utter silence. A dead, despairing silence. Abruptly he
wanted to be a part of movement and noise. He wanted to get out of this
small buried cube somewhere on Earth. And, if it wasn’t for Frances, he
would have gotten out. Right then. But he didn’t.

She held him there. A human, conditioned scientifically, could only
react as he was reacting now. He felt no irritation. That was the way
the human organism functioned. He wanted to do it for Frances. He loved
her, of course--that was it. He had known that when he first heard her
voice, before he had opened his eyes.

He heard himself saying, “When, where and how do I start?”

“Bravo!” said Berti sardonically. “A man of virtue!”

Only an objective realization of the need for unity prevailed Roland
from attacking the man. He was jealous, too, and he was ashamed of
that. Somehow, these people had taken him from the Birth Center when
he was born, and had kept him hidden and had taught him to be a true,
pre-World Brain human. He should be grateful, very grateful. And he
determined to be.

Berti was crossing the room toward a panel. “Well, Prometheus, we start
right now, right here. And here’s how--”

He tensed, eyes narrowing.

The form was only a faint mist at first. Roland hardly knew it was
materializing until he saw its wavering, translucent shadow in the
middle of the room. A flash of panic and fear jerked him to his feet
and sent him backing toward the further wall. He saw Frances and Berti
standing stiffly, perspiration oozing visibly from their bronzed skin.

Roland had never seen anything so grotesque and alien before. At least
he couldn’t remember having seen--but then, he couldn’t remember.

“Roland!” he heard Berti say tensely. “You’re now being treated to the
personal appearance of a Martian menace. Take a good look, because it
just might be that you won’t see another.” Berti moved with shocking
agility, a blur in the corner of Roland’s fixed eyes. He dropped the
cap over the fluorobulb. The room was plunged into pitch blackness.

Roland saw a high, narrow column of shimmering phosphorescence dart
about the room. He couldn’t tell whether the thing was attacking or in
flight. Something about its alien contortions suggested panic.

But then he felt a hand grasping at his. It gripped hard and pulled.
The voice was a hurried whisper, either that of Berti or Frances. It
had to be Frances. “Follow me! Keep running!”

       *       *       *       *       *

He followed blindly. The hand was soft and small. Berti? Frances?
Frances had to be with him. That was the only thing that really
mattered. They plunged through the thick blackness and onto a
levitation platform and down. They paused once, briefly. Roland heard
a panel opening. Then they were in a room, smaller even than the first
one. A slight glow bathed the room in a soft blue haze. It was light
enough for him to see that Frances wasn’t with them.

He grabbed Berti’s arm, noting how frail and weak he was. “Where is
she? _Where is she?_”

But Berti seemed more interested than concerned. “Do you really feel
that way about her?”

“Where is she?” He said it louder this time. He shook Berti harshly.

Berti smiled thinly. “The Martian menace got her. They were bound to
get her sooner or late. They’ve gotten us all, one by one.”

Roland backed the thin bony outline up against the glowing wall. “Why
did we go off and leave her there? Why?”

“To save you. You’re more important than any one or all of us. She
wanted it this way.”

“_No!_” yelled Roland. “What’s more important than Frances? Nothing
is--to me.”

“Are you sure?” asked Berti. “Remember her faith in you, Prometheus.
The destruction of World Brain’s more important. Relax.”

Roland stepped away, breathing painfully. “No. You haven’t told me yet.
Why am I so important? _What am I, Berti?_”

“What are--!” Berti’s eyes shot wide open, narrowed quickly. “The
scientists even prepared for the eventuality that some organism might
defy the conditioning processes and try to attack World Brain. It’s
surrounded by an area of ultrasonic radiation. All around it, under the
ground, in the air. No living organism can step into that field without
its cellular structure dancing itself madly to death in seconds. A lot
of the Underground have tried it. In the last one we--we developed,
we’d built up resistance that let him into the field about a hundred
meters. That was all. But we’ve learned. You can make it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“We’re not,” said Berti laconically. “You might die. Afraid? Frances
didn’t think you would be. I don’t know. We did our best with you.”

“I’m not afraid, Berti. But I’m going back after Frances first!”

“You’re our only hope, man! Don’t hand yourself to those dissectors.”

“Dissectors?” choked Roland.

“They analyze us. They’re curious; they think humans a low form of
mammal because of their insane record of self-destruction. The Martians
work out of their observatories and laboratories on the Moon. They
want to learn all they can about humans in case they have to destroy
humanity.”

“Why don’t we destroy them? Now.” Roland’s voice trembled.

“The Underground is the only Earth agency that knows the Martians
even exist. And we can’t act against them anyway until World Brain is
destroyed. Atomic energy is locked behind impenetrable shields as long
as World Brain rules. Violence or conflict of any kind is forbidden by
the fixed laws of World Brain. The Martians are persistent. Only a few
of us left. They know if they can wipe out the Underground, World Brain
will keep on its fixed orbit, and then they won’t have to destroy Earth
because humanity won’t be able to use atomic power against them, and
eventually humanity will peter out.”

“Why don’t the Martians destroy Earth, Underground and all, if they’re
so afraid of World Brain being destroyed and atomic power returning as
a threat?”

“Because,” said Berti dryly, “their planet’s old and exhausted. They
want to colonize Earth. But not while the Underground’s here.”

“I don’t care about any of this confusion,” yelled Roland. “All I care
about is saving Frances. Maybe it isn’t right according to the way
you’ve conditioned me. But I’ve got to!”

He thought he saw a thin smile on Berti’s dour face as he turned and
ran back down the black corridor. About the instant that he realized
he had no conception of how to get back to the first cubicle, he ran
hard into a pair of arms and a thick reeling cloud of that intoxicating
scent--

A wave of weakening relief and gladness almost overpowered him as he
touched her. “You--it is you, Fran. You’re all right?”

“Yes. Yes.” Her breath came fast, impatient. “We’ve got to hurry,
Rolly. I got rid of that one. But the new rapport-clan know about you,
maybe. We don’t have much time. Come on!”

The levitator shaft panel slid shut behind them. The car whined, and
Roland felt the sudden suffocating pressure of rapid acceleration.

       *       *       *       *       *

They emerged in the darkened, damp basement of a vacant ruin just
outside Worldcity. He saw a pallid, three-eyed lizard, and a huge grey
rat with six legs. He followed Berti and Frances into a beautiful lazy
summer day, with genuine sunlight. A hawk sailed easily across a pale
blue sky. In the distance, rising like a gigantic bubble, the plastic
dome shell that covered Worldcity gleamed in the sun.

They walked silently on down the cracked, weed-grown concrete highway.

Berti started talking again. Roland wanted Frances to talk, but she
seemed too absorbed in the scenery. “Special excursion monorail systems
were set up for trips into the natural areas. Psychological balance,
you know. But it was too late. No one cares any more. An almost
completely catatonic world is a pretty terrible sight, I suppose.
World Brain blocked any action of free thought--the one spontaneous,
progressive and unique characteristic of the human.”

That broke Frances’ reverie. “Yes, Rolly. Block that characteristic
and you kill the human. The human is a step above the beast because
of his free-associative brain. But it also persists in dooming him
as a species. The human heart and muscle belong to the jungle--his
overdeveloped brain to an environment of his own creation.”

She was swinging freely along beside him. Berti said, “Civilization
subjected the human body to a vast and critical experiment. But
the exaggeration of a part, like the fossil nautili, intended the
experiment to fail.”

“But man isn’t licked yet!” said Roland vehemently. “He’s got his
highly specialized brain, and complexity and specialization aren’t
necessarily fatal--simply dangerous.”

“You’re proud of him,” said Berti, cutting off the tops of weeds with
quick slicing motions of a green branch. “Even with his brain, he was
never much better than the beast. A living anachronism, an unbalanced
grotesque, an ape top-heavy with grey matter.”

“Quiet!” hissed Frances. Then to Roland. “He isn’t that way, really.”

The sophistry lapsed. Roland was grateful because it allowed him to
concentrate on watching the smooth, graceful movement of Frances’ lithe
body. There was an almost terrible casualness for people going to save
the World.

“Aren’t you afraid of the Martians--out here in the open?” he asked.

Berti’s green switch sang. A four-legged quail fluttered up and
hedge-hopped across a wild, brush-choked hollow, piping excitedly.
“We know them. They’re--ah” he hesitated “--a kind of instinctual
intelligence, somewhere above the survival value of the human
intelligence. We’ve learned to cope with them on their own ground.”

“But how?” Roland was curious about how Frances had “gotten rid” of the
Martian back in the cubicle. He was swinging his hand close to hers in
the fond hope of grasping it sooner or later.

Frances kicked at a small piece of dislodged concrete. “Rolly, you’re
so inquisitive. That would be awfully hard to explain in the short time
we have. They’ve advanced far above human’s mere intelligence. And you
learn to deal with that height. Or they get you. They’ve always had
superiority of numbers, so they’ve been winning. That’s why we’ve got
to destroy World Brain quickly before they finish us.”

“But, if World Brain is destroyed, and variable unpredictable
government returns with human control, atomic energy returns with it,
and humanity will try again. And probably destroy itself this time.”
Roland hit his forehead with his flat hand. “It seems very involved.”

“Doesn’t it?” agreed Berti tightly. “But we’ll control atomic energy
all right. If we can’t--let the termites have it.”

Roland thought of one other thing. “After World Brain’s out of
commission, what about the Martians, then? First thing they’ll do will
be to blow up Earth, regardless of their own desire to colonize.”

Berti looked narrowly at Frances. He grinned thinly. “I told you we
should have taken less time with his logic and reason. He thinks too
much.”

Frances laughed carelessly. “He’ll have to be smart when he goes into
the heart of World Brain. You know that.”

Berti said, “Uh-huh. But if he’s smart enough, he wouldn’t even go into
World Brain at all.”

Frances smiled at Roland. “Well? Are you that smart?”

He looked into wet, promising glowing eyes and he didn’t feel logical
at all. “If you want me to, Fran, I’ll do it. It seems to mean a lot to
you. So I guess I’m not really smart--not in the Berti sense, anyway.
Am I?”

Berti swirled the green switch in a vicious slash. “Not as smart as
Fran is.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, in a secret Underground apartment, Roland sat waiting for his
final orders to destroy World Brain. He was proud of his assignment. He
knew it was justified. He had seen the people of Worldcity.

Terrible standardization. Mass production and mass consumption had
become possible only because of complete unity of common desires
and tastes. Individuals were no more. Beneath the rigid unchange of
World Brain there had been a final leveling-off. The whole system
was mechanical like its electronic dictator. Frightened by another
possible atomic war under unreliable human agency, they had established
fool-proof laws, then subjected themselves and the laws to a machine
dictator that could never alter them. Suicide.

The Worldcity was beautiful and magnificent, even without the available
atomic power. Towering synthetic buildings, their block-square bases
pierced by wide tiered boulevards. There were many people packing
the boulevards. Dull-eyed, listless, uninterested. Without their
free-associative minds, they were not even beasts.

“It’s about time,” said Frances softly, leaning toward him. “Are you
ready? It’s a big job.”

Roland sat next to her on a deep couch, her shoulder touching his. He
wanted the contact to remain as long as possible. She broke the contact
several times, but renewed it. He was grateful. She had called him
“dear” twice.

“I’ve already told him he might not come back,” said Berti. “It’s
dangerous. The Martians’ new rapport-clan are difficult. And the
destruction when World Brain stops will be terrific. The Martians will
immediately jump in and try to knock out Earth as soon as they see
World Brain go. If they don’t get you first. As soon as we take over
the atomic laboratories, our first job will be to blow up the Martian’s
Moon bases. It’s a risky business.”

“You’ll be safe,” Frances said. “You’re not afraid, are you, Rolly?”

“Not too much,” answered Roland.

“You have three dangers. The Martians. The plastico-mechanical men. And
the ultrasonic field. The last you’re prepared for. The Martians might
get you. The plastic men ... you might have trouble with them.”

“They’re one-track, highly specialized,” said Berti, studying Roland
with a quizzical, unwavering stare. “Anything that blocks their
specialized assignments they’ll push aside. They have no conception
of violence as such. It’s just a means to carry through their fixed
patterns of behavior.”

“If you’re waiting for my decision,” said Roland, “you know it. I
couldn’t be any different. I’m human. Humanity means more to me than my
own life.”

He looked at Frances closely, searching for some deep, full reaction to
his bravery. He got a warm soft smile and damp eyes that shone darkly.
He leaned a little against her shoulder as he got to his feet. He
walked to the exit panel and turned slowly.

“I can recall conditioned directions now pretty well. Any last
briefings?”

Frances shook her head, and a healthy cloud of black hair reflected
the steady glow of the flueros. “You know about the electronic set
up. The originators didn’t bother to shield the vital parts of World
Brain on the logical premise that if anyone could get that far, it was
inevitable, only a matter of time, before they could wreck it anyway.
Wreck the grids, Rolly, the pipes of the electrons. Wreck the big
vacuum brains in which our little wild electrons play. They’ve been
free too long. Imprison them again in the air. It’s exciting, isn’t it,
Rolly?”

His eyes, his brain were filled only with her image, her vivid
loveliness. He hesitated, thinking Frances might get up and come to
him. She only smiled, her eyes wet and glistening with pride. Roland
turned and left the room. There was promise in those eyes. And he would
be back.

He was walking toward the levitation shaft at the end of the corridor
when he met the Martian in the hall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Somehow, he had an idea that unless it wanted it that way, no one could
see it there. It seemed less grotesque now, standing there against
the wall looking at him. He stood tautly, watching it. And suddenly
he knew why it didn’t seem so grotesque. Why its formless, limbless,
upright length of almost translucent stuff swaying like an underwater
plant seemed less a peril now. It was afraid. It was not an attacker
or even a pursuer. It was frightened, and, telepathically, in sharp
bursting impressions, it pleaded with Roland. _No! Oh, no! You do not
understand. Wait! Wait and you can know of the countless facets of re_--

Something like pain shot through his skull. The Martian trembled,
vibrated, and then--disappeared. Roland spun around. Frances stood
there. She was smiling, but there had been another expression. He
couldn’t--

She was close to him now. He felt her animal warmth. “We sensed it
out here,” she said softly, “and came to your rescue, Rolly. He was
a weaker one, and we got him. We must work fast. Go, dear Rolly.
This--this is for good luck.”

He leaned against the wall. She was gone. The kiss ... he had been
waiting for that. None of the other things made any difference now. But
now she was gone and the wall felt cold. He wanted warmth. He wanted
Fran’s warmth. He wanted it more than anything. He--

--he was out on an autowalk among the shifting listless crowd. He moved
toward the five-acre expanse of World Brain. He was aware of nothing
about him, only of Frances. He would soon be back with her. Destroying
World Brain was only a means to that end. He noticed then, abruptly,
that the people around him had only five fingers on their hands. But he
didn’t think about it. It had no meaning anyway.

Then, suddenly, he was aware that there were no more people. No more
buildings, either. A cool wind blew across his hot face. He stood awed
on the long, sweeping rim of an abyss, the edge of a bowl. Its sides
curved down and away in gracious gleaming sweeps, down, down and away
into a colossal valley. In its center was World Brain. A gigantic,
unbroken cylinder, a mile away and a thousand meters down.

He knew he was on the periphery of the ultrasonic field now. He walked
along the railed edge of the abyss until he faced the plastic man who
was standing before the opening of a levitation shaft that would take
him directly into the arteries of World Brain.

He tried to edge past the plastic man. There wasn’t room enough; the
plastic man wasn’t designed to make any room. The creation was very
close to a perfect synthesis. There was no other way. Roland charged
head down into the waiting figure and hurled him upward over the
railing.

Roland watched him spin out end over end, then flatten out on the
sweeping curvature and go sliding with fantastic silent slowness, away
and down, down the long, seemingly endless curve into the depths of the
gigantic plastic bowl. Roland stepped into the shaft. Dwarfed, Roland
walked slowly across the gleaming expanse of floor toward the nakedly
exposed rows of electronic brain cases. A few blows, a pull or two, and
the circuit would be shattered. His sandals rustled softly.

But he hesitated.

There was a guilty feeling and a lost loneliness. Who was he, really?
Taken in infancy from some birth center by the Underground. Conditioned
precisely as they desired--a completely selective mentality. Had
never had a name. But a label someone pulled out of a hat to satisfy
a beautiful woman’s peculiar liking for nicknames. The amnesiac’s
isolated fear of what he didn’t know and couldn’t remember, mustn’t
remember, but what he must know--

But Frances waited for him back in the secret apartment. Warmth would
replace a cold emptiness. Meaning and purpose would fill the lonely
places in his heart.

He went forward--

       *       *       *       *       *

Later, Roland paused outside their apartment door. He had come back.
Frances had brought him back. World Brain was finished. He knew that.
He could remember the subtle changes beginning to occur even as he
came back through Worldcity. Soon the whole intricate structure would
collapse.

The hall was still. He looked at the back of his hand against the wall.
It shook a little. And the coldness came back. It crept into his
muscles from his extremities, his hands and feet, and worked inward.
He wondered why the loneliness should return here. There was a steady
comfort, though, in knowing that behind that panel, Frances was waiting
with her gigglings and her soft shoulders and promising eyes.

The photoelectric banks opened the panel and closed it behind him.

They were standing there together, looking at him. He stumbled back
against the flat panel, resting his back against it. Something had
happened to them. They made him feel alien and afraid. They--

And then Berti said, “Odd. It has come back. What went wrong with our
charts, I wonder?”

Her voice wasn’t emotional now. It had never been, he knew that. Her
giggling. The smile, the wet eyes. False. “Our calculations couldn’t
have been off very much. It’ll die soon.”

Roland edged toward her. “Frances,” he said weakly. “Frances, you
said--‘_it_’. You mean me? Fran. _Fran?_”

Berti said, “Our conditioning was most effective. Fran, it actually
_loves_ you. Remarkable.”

She didn’t smile now. She couldn’t. There was no feeling at all, never
had been. All false. Nothing now but cold awareness of power.

He felt weak and dizzy. A hazy outline moved toward him. Berti.
“I still regret seeing you die. You’re interesting. A peculiarly
interesting experiment. If I had time--almost fifty years of trial and
error to create you, Rolly.”

“A good job, too,” said the woman. “Though we did take an awful chance,
making it so rational. It might have solved the enigma of its own
existence.”

Berti shook his bald head. “We had to make it human so it would be
sympathetic. Emotional. No human was ever able to solve the enigma of
himself. We can’t either, Fran. Or can we?”

From a far hazy distance, he saw Berti’s head turn back, his pouting
lip thrust out, his shiny head reflecting the cold light.

“And you never suspected at all that you were a robot, Rolly? Just a
lot of electrons and polarizable cells, eh? Remarkable. But then, the
last thing a robot would ever realize would be that it was a robot, I
suppose.”

Roland shut his eyes. He was tired. He wanted to sleep. He wanted
to forget about the imaginative creature he had known for a time as
Frances, too.

“We gave you a heavy overload of romanticism and sentimentalism. So you
would be glad to die for Frances, for humanity. But you needed logic
with it, and that was a very delicate balance to establish. All that
work to construct a machine that was to function only a few hours. And
your allotted time is about up, Rolly.

“We misled you by omission only, Rolly. Our purpose wasn’t humanity.
We needed you to destroy World Brain, not for humanity. But for us.
World Brain restricted our development, kept us from defeating the
Martians by shielding atomic power. Rolly, the Underground was a race
of mutants that developed after the Atomic War. Humanity never knew
about us. Homo-superior. We’ve developed the same degree above mere
human intelligence that the Martians have. We’re their equals; that’s
why we could fight them. They outnumbered us, though, that’s why we had
to have your help. You have all the human attributes, Rolly. You want
to know what qualities the next step above human is, don’t you?”

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: _Roland was cold. He wanted to rest._]

Roland scarcely heard the man. He was cold. He was tired.

“We’ve developed the physiological relation between the nervous
system and the consciousness. Instinctualism, a high degree of
predictability--but then your human brain wouldn’t understand.”

Roland sank to his knees. He dropped his head in his folded arms.

“Let’s go,” said the woman. “Leave it here. It’ll die soon.”

“Just a minute, Fran. Don’t you find this interesting? This creation of
grids, filaments, plates, vacuums, is probably the last genuine human
type we’ll see--that’s sane. And we made it!”

She sighed resignedly. “It probably wants to know what the fate of its
beloved humanity is. We gave it that social consciousness. Tell it.”

“Of course it’s concerned, but Rolly’s dying now, and the important
thing to it is that it’s dying for humanity.” Berti paused. “And the
horrible thing for Rolly, is to know that humanity really died from
over-specialization when it launched the final Atomic War.”

Roland’s head raised slowly and shook back and forth. “No.”

Berti smiled. “Human intelligence never had the slightest possibility
of survival. Its high cerebral specialization never had any
physiological unity with the primitive muscles and nervous system. A
slight chemical disturbance of the blood and the human went mad. Take
away a little oxygen--his great mind was gone. Decrease the blood’s
calcium--convulsions, coma, death. Slight reduction in sugar--and his
mighty cerebrum blotted out, died. A slight environmental change could
destroy man--aside from his obvious willingness to destroy himself.
But, Rolly, in one way, perhaps, extinction, the price of evolution,
isn’t too high. After all, you made us possible.”

Roland heard himself say, weakly, “But they still live out
there--humans--surely they’re not--”

“But we rule,” said the woman coldly. “They--what will they do? That
will be interesting. Anyway, it’s their twilight, like apes and
saurians. Our dawning.”

“You’re almost gone, Rolly, dwindling away like a stream,” said Berti.
“World Brain was proof against any _organic_ enemy, including us. But
not against you. A matter of kind against kind. Remember De Morgan’s
familiar lines? But then you wouldn’t, would you? ‘Great fleas have
little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em; and little fleas have lesser
fleas, and so on, ad infinitum; and the great fleas themselves in turn
have greater fleas to grow on, while these again have greater still,
and greater still, and so on.’ We used you, Rolly. A machine to bite a
machine. That was the only way it could have been done.”

Very far away, dim and wavering, Roland heard the woman saying,
“Logically, any species has some overly-specialized characteristic that
might defeat it. I wonder what particular little flea will bite us?”

“And that, too, will be interesting,” thought Roland grimly, as his
electronic brain thinned into meaningless chaos, and he returned into
the hazes of unconsciousness from which he had emerged three hours
before.

*** 

The Metal Horde

                       By John W. Campbell, Jr.

                 _Author of "When the Atoms Failed."_

                        Illustrated by DE PAUW

    _What with calculating machines and robots and now perhaps
    even mechanical airplane pilots, there seems no limit to the
    possibilities in the realm of working machinery. We have
    seismographs that can locate the place of distant earthquakes,
    and machines that can solve, in a comparatively short period,
    problems in the higher calculus that would otherwise take brilliant
    mathematicians an endless time to do. It seems to us quite logical
    that machines might some day, perhaps in the distant future, be
    developed to solve for our scientists now apparently insoluble
    problems. Or they might even be made to state their own problems
    and work them out--in other words, it might some day be possible
    to have a machine with almost a working brain. According to our
    author, this will be possible and his final explanation of his idea
    is exceedingly clever and novel. There is no question Mr. Campbell
    knows his science and he has by this time proved his ability to
    weave a great deal of sound science into an absorbing scientific
    fiction story of exceeding plausibility._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Amazing Stories April 1930.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It would seem lack of generalship that permitted them to be discovered
so soon, for had we not picked up those signals from the ether we
should not have received that warning that meant so much to us, and
it might well have been that this system would have acquired a new
population. For it would have needed but little to shift the balance
the other way! Once I watched Steven Waterson save the civilization of
the Earth, but now I saw him in a greater rôle, for it was he who made
possible the defeat of the Sirians. But even had his brilliant mind
succeeded in working out the problem of the de-activating field without
the precious hours gained by that warning, many millions more would
have died before they could have escaped from Mars.

I was in his laboratory at the time he received the messages from the
System government telling the import of those strange tone-signals out
there in space. I seem fated to be with that man every time some great
event breaks on the System. I was with him when Dr. Downey announced
his discovery of the secret of old age--or, better, its prevention.
Waterson was forty-two now, in years, but in body he was still
twenty-eight for it was late in 1947 that he had taken Dr. Downey's
treatment.

Those strange tone-signals had been heard faintly for days, but it was
not until July 8th, 1961, that they were located in space, and then man
began to realize something of the message they might bear.

Waterson asked me to accompany him to the System Capital on Venus, and
I was present at that first Cabinet meeting, and at each succeeding
meeting. Again I was close to the facts--and again Waterson has asked
me to write a chronicle of that terrible War.

It was not till the signals had definitely been located as originating
far out in space that man began to take more than a mildly curious
interest in them. They were coming from the Metal Horde that was even
then sweeping across space at a thousand miles a second to the planets
ahead.

Their goal of ages was in sight. Sixteen hundred years of ceaseless
rushing flight had at last brought them near.

When our ancestors were beginning to grumble under their Roman lords,
in the time of Horlak San, when his mighty armies were sweeping their
way across Mars under the newly developed heat rays, spreading death
and civilization at one time, that menace started on its expedition.

When the Normans invaded England, when the mighty empire that the San
dynasty had maintained over all Mars was crumbling, that journey was
half done.

When Columbus first set foot on the shores of America, when Koral Nas
formed the great union of the federated nations of Mars, that trip was
three-quarters done.

But it was seven-eighths completed when Mars developed the first crude
atomic engines, and when Priestly of England discovered oxygen. And
during the two centuries of flight that remained before they reached
their goal, there developed on those tiny planets the instruments that
were to throw that mighty force down to defeat.

But I am to tell you of that war as I saw it; we have all seen it--all
too closely! It was really but a little more than a month that that
Menace of Metal hung over us there on Mars, but to us it seemed years,
except to the frantically working scientists, striving desperately to
discover some weapon to defeat them. David Gale.

       *       *       *       *       *

A tiny glistening mote in space it was, as it sped toward the shining
planet before it--the rapid flight of the car aided by the gravity of
Venus. The call had been urgent, and the Earth had been in superior
conjunction, that meant a full twenty-hour trip, even at 1000 miles
a second, but now they were approaching the planet and the pilot was
losing speed as rapidly as possible. There was a limit to what he could
stand, though, and it took him many thousands of miles to bring the
machine down to a speed compatible with atmospheric conditions of the
planet.

The air of the planet seemed thick with traffic, mighty half-million
ton lift freighters and passenger ships setting out toward Earth,
smaller private machines, but none were slower nor faster than the
others, for all were limited only by the acceleration they could stand.
There was only one speed limit, that of economical, safe operation,
for with all space to move in, there was no need of speed laws. Yet
it seemed impossible to make any more than two thousand miles an hour
through this slow moving air traffic--then there shone a little emblem
on the bow of the little iridescent metal ship, and a huge freighter
swerved respectfully aside. As by magic a lane opened through the thick
traffic as the sign of the System President shone out.

The little ship darted along the ground a short way, then rose
vertically, only to settle lightly on the roof of the great System
Capitol. Two men came out and walked quickly to the elevator entrance,
where three guards, armed with disintegration ray projectors, greeted
them with a stiffly military salute. The larger of the men responded
with a smile, and a brief salutation in the common language of the
System, for these great men were Martians, each well over eight feet
tall. They entered the lift, and quickly sank down one hundred and
fifty stories to the Governmental Offices. They proceeded directly
to the great Cabinet chamber, down through the long halls, lined on
each side by huge murals depicting scenes in the history of the three
planets. Then they came to the cabinet room and entered.

Thirty-nine men were seated there now, but as the two entered, they
rose, and waited for the President to be seated. The forty greatest
living men were in that room that day and all worked together, for
they were scientists who had learned the value of cooperation. There
was no rivalry, for each was the greatest in his own field and had no
aspirations toward any other branch of science. And none but conceded
the power of the Presidency gladly to the greatest of them, Steven
Waterson of Earth.

"Gentlemen of the Cabinet, I am beginning to believe it is time we had
something added to the Constitution forbidding Members of the Cabinet
to rise on the entry of the President." Waterson deeply appreciated
that compliment, as they all knew, but he could not feel at home
in an atmosphere of diffidence. He was a scientist, a planner, not
a diplomat. "I am sorry I was forced to make you gentlemen wait for
me, but as you see," he continued, pointing to the great map of the
System on the ceiling of the Cabinet chamber, where the slow motion of
the planets in their orbits was being accurately traced, "Earth is in
superior conjunction at present, and I could not make better time.

"I see from this memorandum that has been prepared for me that Mansol
Korac, Martian Astro-physicist, is to be our first speaker. I take it
you have had no official discussion as yet?"

He was correct in this assumption for the men had convened shortly
before at his radio announcement that he would land within an hour.

Some years before there had been some agitation to have the Cabinet
meetings carried on by Radio-vision plates, but the low speed of light
had made the speeches a terrible failure, as they would frequently
have to wait ten or even fifteen minutes while the radio messages were
reaching them. Over short distances that method was practicable, but
between planets light is too slow, it cannot be used.

"Some time ago our radio engineers developed a new instrument for
detecting exceptionally short waves. They really came under the
category of the longer heat radiations, but were detected electrically.
While experimenting with this device they have been consistently
picking up signals apparently originating in free space. At first these
signals were exceedingly weak, but their intensity has grown uniformly
and rapidly, and from the results some amazing conclusions have been
drawn.

"They are originating at some source or sources out in space in
the direction of the sun Sirius. I was asked to help the radiation
engineers under Horus Mal in the calculation of the Astro-physical
aspect of the problem. I believe that there are some man-made vehicles
out there in space sending those signals. No man of the System has
ever had reason to venture beyond the orbit of Neptune for any great
distance; there would be no reason for it, as none of the outer planets
are habitable. The rate of increase of the signal strength, coupled
with observations made from Earth, Mars and Venus, have made it evident
that they are at present about one and a quarter billion miles away,
but approaching us at the rate of 1000 miles a second. This means that
in approximately two weeks they will reach our planets.

       *       *       *       *       *

"As to their point of origin we can only make guesses really. They are
coming toward us with Sirius--and thousands of other stars--at their
back. Of all, Sirius is the nearest, being approximately nine light
years away. This means that they must have spent at least 1600 years on
that trip across space. Dr. James Downey of Earth has recently shown
us how to lengthen life almost indefinitely, so the problem of old age
need not be considered. A supply of air and water would, of course,
be no great problem with the Waterson apparatus for electrolyzing CO
back to carbon and oxygen, using atomic energy fuel. Water, of course,
is merely transmuted and recombined and thus automatically purified
for use. A sufficient reserve of very dense materials could easily
be carried that would make up for any losses by transmutation to the
necessary gases. As yet we have not been able to make foods from
energy, carbon, and oxygen and hydrogen, but I believe you, Dr. Lange,
have made very considerable progress along that line, have you not?"

"I intended announcing at this meeting," said Dr. Lange, "the
development of a commercial method of manufacturing any one of
the sugars and several proteins directly from rock or water, by a
transmutation and building-up process. The method has been developed."

"Then," continued the Martian, "there would be no need of carrying any
great amount of food. That problem is settled.

"As there would be no resistance encountered in space, once the machine
had been accelerated to its definite speed of 1000 miles per second, on
leaving Sirius it would be able to make the trip across space with no
expenditure of energy, until it reached its goal and slowed down to the
speed of a planet. Hence no great amount of matter-fuel would be needed
to drive the machine.

"But the problem of heating seems to me to be insoluble. Interplanetary
space we have the radiations of the sun to depend upon, and they are
decidedly sufficient, usually superfluously so. But in the infinite
depths of interstellar space, there is only darkness and a perfect
reservoir for radiations. There would be continuous cooling by
radiation, and no sun to warm the ship. I could understand how the
ship might carry enough matter to warm it for one hundred years, but
in sixteen hundred years so much energy must be radiated that the
entire mass would not suffice. Nothing short of an entire planet would
be sufficient. Polished walls would reduce the radiation, but still
it would be too high. I can not understand it--unless these men can
endure a temperature of but twenty or thirty degrees above absolute
zero--then they could make it quite readily--but two hundred and forty
degrees below zero Centigrade means that air--nearly everything would
be solid, except a few rare gases. No it seems impossible--yet we have
the evidence! I can not understand how they have made this terrible
migration, but I know that there are many different units. I believe
two thousand or more was the number you mentioned Horus Mal?"

"There seem to be a very considerable number of separate signals that
we can distinguish. I consider the two thousand a very conservative
estimate," replied Horus Mal, the Martian radiation engineer.

"Then," continued Mansol Korac, "we must decide on some plan of meeting
them."

The Martian sat down and for some time there was silence in the great
hall. At last President Waterson rose slowly to his feet. His face
showed his concern. In times of emergency he always felt that these men
here were responsible for the welfare of the twenty billions of human
beings they controlled. And he was their leader, and therefore the
responsibility was his.

"Mansol Korac, could you point out to us the approximate location of
the approaching ships?" asked Waterson and handed him a small hand
light and pointed to the great map of the system above them.

"I cannot be very exact, Mr. President; I do not know their location
very definitely, but I should say about here, proceeding thus." The
dazzling beam of white light stabbed up to the ceiling high above, and
a sharp circle of light a foot across appeared, just within the orbit
of Uranus, but well beyond Saturn. Then it slowly moved inward toward
tiny glowing Mars. They were within the Solar System, but had not yet
reached the Inner Ring of planets. Doubtless they who could make a
trip across the great Void had the energy of matter at their disposal,
and probably the disintegration ray. They would have no difficulty with
the planetoids, they could merely beam them out of existence if they
came too near.

The light snapped out, and each member of the cabinet turned toward
Waterson again.

"Gentlemen, we see that they are within the Solar System already
and appear to be heading directly for the Inner Ring, and Mars in
particular. I do not know whether they come in peace or as invaders,
but I think I can reasonably say that they are probably invaders. We
all agree that they have made a trip of some 1600 years' duration.
We all recognize the difficulty of such a trip. There are over two
thousand ships in their fleet. I would not send so large a fleet to
investigate the Outer Ring, but to send that great number of ships on a
mere exploration trip of 1600 years--I do not think it is consistent.
Then, too, we must allow them a life span of over three thousand years
if we are going to admit that this fleet is for exploration, for it
would be three thousand two hundred years before they could bring back
news of their trip. In the meantime they might well have been wiped
out by some stellar catastrophe, or they might have developed means of
seeing us directly in nine years, the time light takes for the trip.
Much as we would prefer peace, I fear we must prepare for war. But we
can always go out to meet them peacefully, in a great battle fleet.
That might convince them that it is better to deal peaceably with
us and it would at least be a protection. I suggest that we have a
discussion on this, and take a vote."

But there was no discussion, and the vote was unanimous, for the
President's suggestion was the logical thing. They had to be prepared
for either peace or war.

Then came the discussion of weapons. There was pitifully little to
discuss. The interplanetary patrol fleet was a mere police force,
designed to destroy meteors, turn comets or asteroids. There was no
real naval fleet. But mechanical devices had reached a great peak
of perfection and the little space ships were so cheap, so easily
operated, and so eminently safe, that nearly every family had several,
and new ones were always in demand. There were mighty factories to
meet this demand. Twenty billion people can absorb a tremendous number
of machines. That was the greatest protection we had, and it was
that quantity production, developed by the American, Ford, that made
Waterson's campaign possible. But we were to learn much of quantity
production methods before that war was over!

       *       *       *       *       *

Orders were issued that evening to all the great plants over all
three planets to begin work on a great quantity of ten-man-high speed
ships. They were to be arranged with mountings for machine guns firing
explosive bullets loaded with material explosive, each one equal to
100 tons of the old fashioned Dynamite, with special mountings for Dis
ray machines. The disintegration ray machinery was to be built by the
companies employed ordinarily in making private power plants, hand
lights, and the jumping belts. These belts had small projectors that
threw a directional beam of force that tended to deform the curvature
of space, at that point, and the result was a force that pulled the
projector forward, for the space before it acted like a spring. If a
magnet be held near a steel watch spring, the spring will bend, but
it will try to straighten out and pull the magnet forward. If the
magnet could pass through the spring it would progress, as the space
curver apparatus was pulled through space. This was the principle
of every ship now built, from these tiny two-kilogram (nearly five
pounds) machines capable of lifting a man into the air, to the titanic
new passenger-freight liners carrying as high as three quarters of a
million tons.

The principle of the disintegration ray was not greatly different, and
so the machines designed for turning these out in quantities were used
to make the Dis ray apparatus with no great changes.

The heat ray projectors were made in quantities for every purpose, they
were used for cooking, for welding metals, for warming the home, for
melting down cliffs to make way for a building or a tunnel for water,
for heating the mighty space ships, for anything to which heat might be
applied to advantage. These would make very effective weapons but for
the fact that heat rays could be reflected. They would bounce off the
car of the enemy without doing any damage if it were polished, as no
doubt it would be.

Great liners of space were requisitioned and fitted with Dis rays, and
with mighty attractor beam apparatus that would grip and hold anything
short of another liner. Each of the ten-man-cruisers had a smaller
attractor beam by which they could grip an adversary and hold to his
tail with the tenacious grip of a bulldog and yet not weary the pilot
with violent movement. These ships were exceedingly powerful, and their
speed was limited only by the accelerations the passengers could stand.

But all the scientists of the System were working desperately to
design some new weapon, some new machine that was a little faster, a
little more powerful; although with resistance in space and with the
tremendous energies of matter at their disposal, there was little lack
of power as far as the speed of the ships were concerned. Ten thousand
times more powerful than the titanic energies of atoms, this energy
had defeated the Martians that memorable day in May, 1947, and it was
a full ten billion times more powerful than the energies of coal, of
oil, of the fuels man had known before that day. But they needed a
machine that could project the Dis ray farther. Twenty-five miles was
the limit, beyond that the tremendous electrical field that was used
to direct it must be built up to so high a voltage that there was
no practical way of insulating it. They must be satisfied with the
twenty-five mile range--but the scientists were working at increasing
the range.

They had two weeks before the Sirians would reach Mars, and in those
two weeks much was done. There was a very carefully laid out system in
all notices; the absolute truth was laid before the public, but there
was also laid before them the evidences of Man's power. There were no
panics. This was no weird thing to them, the landing of a fleet from
another world; it was as commonplace to them as the landing of a fleet
from the other side of the ocean had been a generation ago. The element
of the unfamiliar was gone, and with it had gone the element that
produces panic, that reduces the efficiency of a nation or of a System.

New production machines had to be built, new designs worked out, new
dies cut, but it was done with the quickness that a generation of mass
production had made possible, it was not new to them, this change of
design overnight.

It required most of those two precious weeks to get the great machines
working once more at their tasks, but at last a steady stream of
ten-man cruisers was being poured out, 5000 an hour, night and day,
from the factories of three planets. But there was only one day to
work before the Invaders would reach Mars, and the fleet was gathered,
120,000 ten-man ships, manned by the volunteers of three worlds.

But in the meantime Waterson had had built for himself a ten-man ship
with triple strength of walls, and triple power plant installation, and
an extra energy generator. He was experimenting with it, no one knew on
what.

At last the invaders were seen. Far out in their course the scouts had
met them. Those scouts were destroyed, without provocation; they did
not even have time to finish their reports, but we learned enough.

Mars was a deserted planet now. All its population had moved to the
other worlds. Most of them moved to Earth, on the other side of the
sun. Only the workers in the great factories remained. They were not
compelled to. They were told of the danger of their position, but those
factories could contribute 1500 ships an hour, and they were manned.
The fleet had gathered on Mars, awaiting the news of the Sirians, when
the report of the scouts was flashed across the ether.

They told of a great horde of metal ships, shining, iridescent,
ranging in size from tiny darting machines, ten feet long by one and
three-quarters in diameter, mere torpedoes, to great transport ships.
And there was a single spherical ship. A great sphere that floated in
the center of a bodyguard of the thousands of its followers. There were
literally hundreds of thousands of the little torpedo-ships, a few
dozen of the cargo ships, and a few ships that seemed more like scouts
of some sort. But it was apparent that the little torpedo-ships were
the real fighters--tiny ships that spun and turned and darted like an
electron in ionized gas. It seemed impossible that a man could stand
those sudden turns at several miles a second, but they watched them,
and went into nothingness as the Dis ray reached out from those tiny
ships and caressed their ships.

They, too, had Dis rays--it would be a terrible battle, for man had
that same force, a force so deadly they had feared to use it in
industry. But man had the advantage of numbers.

The men on the fleet who saw those television plates glowing with the
story of what was taking place out there in space decided that those
torpedo-ships must be guided by radio. If they were it would be a
simple matter to wreck that system by using a powerful interference
that would drown out the directing wave and make its ships unmanageable.

The System Capital was temporarily moved to the Waterson Laboratories
on Earth. There the forty men had gathered around great television
plates and were watching the battle of the scouts. They were not to go
to that battle front. The System needed them.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was midnight on the part of Mars where the Sirians first struck. The
fleet of the Solar System was massed there to meet them. They seemed
headed for the mighty gleaming city of Metal, below. Dornalus, the
second city of old Mars; was there, and they seemed bent on reaching
it. As the Sirians drew near they threw forward a great shield of the
torpedo-ships; then the great generators on the Solarian fleet forced
tremendous etheric currents into space, and waited to see the motions
of the tiny ships become erratic, but they darted about as steadily,
as easily as ever. These Sirians must be small men! And they must
be from a massive world, a world that had accustomed them to great
accelerations.

Below them the city was deserted except for vision projector machines
that hummed steadily, automatically, from a thousand points. They were
broadcasting the message to the worlds and to the commanding officers
on the other side of Mars. These men had direct control of the battle.
They could not control it from Earth, for radio waves travel too
slowly. Twenty minutes each way the waves took and in forty minutes the
battle was more than over. It lasted only fifteen minutes--minutes of
terrific carnage!

As the two great fleets came into contact, the Solarians drove into
the mass of tiny ships, their Dis rays flashing in every direction.
They had one advantage in that they sprayed nine streams of death from
each of their craft; but the torpedo-ships were so unbelievably fast
that it was nearly impossible to hit them. And they seemed to have no
compunction about raying one of their own ships if a more than equal
amount of damage was inflicted on their enemies. Logical, no doubt, but
how inhuman.

The sky above the city became a blazing hell of Dis rays, heat rays,
and exploding shells. The explosives were not safe, for they threw
great flying fragments that could pierce the wall of a ship and send it
down. They damaged friend and foe alike.

The Solarian fleet had a solid projectile of a single giant crystal of
copper that was immune to the Dis ray. It could penetrate the walls
of a ship and bring it down. But the explosive bombs were more often
than not exploded or merely disintegrated before they reached their
goal. A crystal of any sort was immune to the Dis ray, but it was not
a protection against it. There was no known way of deflecting the Dis
ray except by that special electrical field that directed it, and
that could not be made to surround a ship. The copper crystals were
used mainly to destroy the Dis ray projectors of the enemy. They were
fired at the faint glow, and with luck they would hit the machine and
instantly wreck the projector. More than one machine disappeared as
its own Dis ray projector, wrecked by the fifteen-inch copper crystal,
suddenly spread in all directions.

The sphere and its escort of transports hung back, surrounded by a
great number of the torpedo-ships. They did not join in the fight.

And at last the Solarian fleet was recalled. It was not right that
they should make such heavy sacrifices. The city must fall, and it
would be easy to crush the Sirians with a larger fleet. At the rate of
5000 Solarian ships an hour, they might well do so in three days. So
the Solarians left, and behind on the ground there were a few ships;
a great number had been rayed into nothingness. The Sirians had won
this first victory, but the Solarians could soon make up for this loss.
They had twenty billions to back them up, and they had the resources of
three planets. It seemed as though the invaders could not last long,
but we had yet to learn the true meaning of mass production.

No man could hang around the encampment of that alien race. But above
them television broadcasts were suspended, and some were installed
in the buildings of the city. But these were of no avail, for the
Sirians seemed obsessed with the idea of making Mars a true sphere.
They proceeded to level the great city with Dis rays. No news projector
could remain there, of course, and several news projector men lost
their lives. It was foolhardy to stay in that city; they had been
forbidden, but nothing will keep a newsman out of a chance for a scoop.
The projectors which hung above continued to show a weird scene.

The great sphere and its attendant transports sank gently to the
ground and formed a great wheel, with the sphere as the hub and the
transports as radiating spokes and the rim. High above them the darting
torpedo-ships were wheeling in constant circles. It seems a miracle
that not all of those news projectors were destroyed, but some did last
till the early rays of the sun set them off as shining targets for the
flashing Dis rays. It was a weird scene they showed!

[Illustration: _The great sphere and its attendant transports sank
gently to the ground and formed a vast wheel, with the sphere as the
hub and the transports as radiating spokes and the rim._]

Now from the sides of the great transports came, not men, but great
machines, machines that lumbered along on caterpillar treads to set
themselves down beside their parent ship, one from each ship, and
proceeded to dig themselves in, about three feet deep. Then all seemed
quiet, except for a steady hum from the great machines, fifty-eight
in all there were, great machines--fully two-hundred feet on a side.
They worked there quietly now, and the men within them must have been
totally covered, for they could not be seen. Apparently the Sirians
dared not come out into the Martian atmosphere. And now something was
happening that startled all the billions of watchers on the three
planets. In the top of the great machines was a small trapdoor. Through
this, there came a torpedo-ship that floated up a few feet, then darted
off to join the wheeling machines above. Then eleven seconds later
another came forth--another--each machine there was sending them out
now. One by one those machines released a torpedo-boat--one every
eleven seconds, with the regularity of a clock.

At first men could not grasp the significance of this--but soon it
became obvious. These wonderful machines were complete factories in
themselves, portable, mass production factories for producing those
torpedo-ships, and one each eleven seconds came from the end of the
production line, complete. The noises there were no longer a gentle
hum. There was a whir and rattle of machines. It was not loud, though
considering the mighty works that must have been going on inside. But
steadily now, that darting fleet of torpedo-ships was increasing the
power for all this work was obvious to these men who used similar
processes in their work.

From the soil below them the machines dug masses of matter, and
carrying it up into the machine transmuted its elements, into
the elements necessary to their machines, then molded them, and
automatically assembled them. It would require very little supervision,
but that production-rate was staggering! One each eleven seconds meant
325 completed machines an hour.

There were no signs of any men entering these ships, or the machines,
so it seemed there must be some means of distant control that man
knew nothing of, for it was improbable that all those men could
have been in the parent machine from the beginning. No wonder the
Sirians could lose these machines so freely. The ability to make them
automatically from anything meant they cost practically nothing and
could be produced in limitless quantity. The notion that Man was to
be an easy victor was fast disappearing. These machines were coming to
form an ever-growing cloud of wheeling ships. Still, man had destroyed
fully half their fleet in that desperate struggle; they must spend
some time in making up those losses. But Man had lost nearly a third
of his great fleet. Four hundred thousand brave men had been lost. It
was not even a victory, and it had cost Man far more than it had cost
the Sirians. They had learned something from them, though. Perhaps
radio control would enable man to do an equal amount of damage. Orders
were put through to make an experimental fleet of thirty thousand
radio-controlled machines.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the meantime a new thing was attracting the attention of the people
on the planets. A new set of machines was issuing from the transports.
These were smaller than that first set--low and squat--but they seemed
far more flexible in their movement. They went off in orderly line to
a point a few miles distant from the main encampment and there formed
themselves into two groups. One group remained still, but began to
glow faintly, and a hum came to the televisors above. Then there began
to flow from a spout on the side of each a steady stream of molten
metal. This was poured into a somewhat similar arrangement on the
other group, then these moved quickly away, and with their strange
handlike appendages began to work quickly at a great rounded hull that
was rapidly forming. The men watching understood. It was to be another
cargo ship. Rapidly this hull grew under their swift manipulation,
till it was completed in three and a half hours. An entire ship,
except for the machinery, was completed. And now they began to work
on another, and as they fell to work there started from the original
cargo shops a long line of small, quick moving machines, machines that
could run along the ground or drive through the air, and they were
covered with arm-like appendages. Soon these reached the newly built
hull, and quickly they were at work, getting material from the strange
squat machines, entering the hull, and working at it. The second hull
was nearly completed when one of the smaller machines flew back to
the original encampment and went up to the sphere. From it it drew a
strange metal case, oblong, from which led a great heavy cable. This
it carried back to the now completed ship and installed it somewhere
inside. Then the ship rose easily from the ground and floated around
a bit, landed again, and immediately there came out of it one of the
torpedo-ship machines! None of these had gone in, it had been made by
those slim, quick worker machines! And now there lumbered out a second
machine--one of the strange hull maker machines--then two of the worker
machines came out, where only one had gone in. The ship was complete,
even to its strange crew! And now that strange crew was already at
work, making others!

With the coming of dawn the televisors were rayed out of existence.
But that evening more were installed, and every night during all that
invasion there floated above them those noiseless televisors. They
destroyed many, but many remained.

That night showed us a fleet of nearly a half million of the tiny
torpedo-ships, and a rapidly growing cargo ship camp. There were more
than a hundred now, for as each was completed, the machines made could
aid in the more rapid construction of the next.

And that night they began their work of leveling Mars. That great
fleet spread itself out over all the surface of Mars, and with flaming
heat rays and the terrible Dis rays they cut down every remnant of the
Martian hills. Twenty-four hours later the entire planet was one vast
featureless plain. And on that plain there had been established eight
camps. During this time the cargo ships had been moving, and during
that twenty-four hours they did nothing. But Man was prepared. The
radio-controlled fleet was ready to be given its first try.

The entire fleet was assembled above the surface of Mars, above
that original camp, where still rested the one sphere. Then from
far out in space the great control ships directed the dive of the
radio-control-ships, making the distance one-twentieth part of a light
second. The men directing the ships were no faster than that, could not
respond sooner, and the greater distance gave them greater safety.

But now the radio-controlled ships were released, and permitted to
drop, uncontrolled. They wished to give the Sirians no warning. Then
when the ships were scarcely ten miles from the Sirian fleet, they
were brought under control, headed nose down in a power dive, straight
through the surprised upper layers of the fleet, and with Dis rays
glowing they drove straight for the ships below. Suddenly, there were
great gashes in the ground beneath, and twenty of the cargo ships were
gone in that first rush, and three more followed quickly. But while
literally thousands of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been rayed, nearly
half of the thirty thousand radio-controlled ships of Man were gone.
And now they had to apply full power to prevent striking the ground.
But twenty-two of them continued on in straight fall toward the great
sphere. They were rayed by a hundred ships before they could get really
separated from their companions. And now the fast radio ships were
destroying hundreds of the Sirians, they were formed in a vertical
column reaching up ten miles, one above the other, with the nine Dis
ray projectors going full blast and spinning as rapidly as was safe
lest the machines fly apart due to centrifugal force, for the Dis ray
will work practically instantaneously. The top ship was preventing the
torpedo-ships' attack from above. Suddenly each of the ships stopped
spinning; its Dis ray went out and they dropped like rocks. The radio
control had been drowned out by powerful interference; they were no
longer under the influence of the men, and they had ceased to function.
The radio-controlled-ships would no longer be useful against the
Sirians.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nearly the entire fleet of the Sirian torpedo-ships had been wiped
out by that spinning column. Now thousands of the manually-controlled
ships dove down at the weakened fleet. Every one of the remaining ships
shot up to meet the advancing fleet; there were still several thousand
of the torpedo-ships. And now the sphere rose with them, and among
them. Suddenly the entire mass came together in the shape of a greater
sphere with walls of torpedo-ships, and as it formed the torpedo-ships
snapped on their Dis rays, and started the entire surface of the sphere
spinning! They seemed invulnerable in this formation, but they quickly
moved away across the surface of the planet, the larger part of the
Solarian fleet following, wondering what to do about it. It seemed
impossible to attack the sphere of destruction.

But the cargo ships were left unprotected, and in a moment they
had been beamed out of existence. The Sirians had lost many hours'
work on this battle! And they lost more before the mighty fleet of
torpedo-ships from the other camps rescued them. For now and then an
explosive shell would penetrate the screen of disintegration rays. But
within the outer shield was a second, virtually a shield of metal, for
the metal sphere was surrounded by a solid mass of the torpedo-ships.
But many of these were destroyed. More, too, were put out of commission
by the copper crystals.

On the arrival of the great fleet from the other camps the tables were
turned. The control ships had too low an acceleration, and there were
too many ships for the ten-man machines to get, though they tried to
make a screen of Dis rays that stopped the ships till they were rayed
out of existence. Many of the control ships were lost and many of the
ten-man ships.

It was then that Waterson announced two things that gave the Solarians
new hope.

It was the fifth of August when the announcement was made. And it was
the same day on which nearly the entire fleet from all the camps on
Mars started off for Venus, but the movement was detected almost at
once, and from great underground bases on Mars the Solarian fleet sent
out fifty thousand ten-man ships. These ships skimmed along close to
the ground, and their polished metal had been sprayed with a drab paint
so that they seemed but shadows that became practically invisible as
they sped along, widely separated, but rapidly converging on the site
of the Sphere's camp. This had remained on Mars, guarded by so small a
number of ships that it was evident they expected the Solarian fleet to
go to Venus, as no doubt would have been necessary but for this swift
counter raid.

So perfectly camouflaged were the Solarian ships, that they got within
ten miles of the camp without being discovered. Then, as their Dis rays
flashed out, the entire group of the torpedo-ships dove on them. There
were nearly one hundred thousand of the ten-man ships, diving down at
them in a zigzag course that made them impossible targets, but the
fleet had been approaching from all sides, and now the entire Sirian
defense was concentrating on the machines attacking from the north.
Those from the south crept in behind them, and suddenly the sphere
started into the air, then went flying out into space at terrific
speed. It barely escaped the Dis rays of the attackers. Only its
tremendous acceleration saved it. Now several thousand of the torpedo
ships shot after it, the rest falling into the form of a great disc to
block the path of the pursuers. Man had long been accustomed to two
dimensional maneuvering, but the ease with which these Sirians fell
into complex three dimensional formations showed long practice in the
art of warfare in space.

That raid was successful in that it forced the immediate return
of the Sirian fleet, and very nearly destroyed the sphere. Over
seventy-two thousand of the torpedo-ships were destroyed, but we lost
two thousand ships and twenty thousand men. But Waterson announced
that the Sirians would no longer be able to escape because of their
greater acceleration. He had discovered a method for using an
attractor beam of a short range but considerable power to be used
with an electro-magnetic device that would automatically turn on the
instruments in such a way that no matter what the accelerations might
be, no matter how great, as long as they were within the limits of
the ship's strength, the accelerations and centrifugal forces would
be instantly neutralized, thus making possible violent maneuvers that
the sudden forces had hitherto made impossible. A demonstration of
his new ship had confirmed it. He took up a number of the Cabinet in
his special machine, and turned hairpin turns at ten miles a second!
The acceleration would have been instantaneously deadly had those
neutralizers failed. They might as well have been under a half million
ton freighter as it landed, as undergo those accelerations! But in that
perfectly balanced room, it was not detectable. The ship's hull was
made triple strength, as were the power projectors, and the generators.
It was powered like a freighter, and could reach its full speed of
1,000 miles per second at an acceleration 5,000 times that of Earth's
gravity. Waterson, who weighed two hundred and ten pounds on Earth
would have weighed over five tons! It meant that the Solarian fleet
would no longer be handicapped by the greater flexibility of the enemy
ships. The plants that had been manufacturing the machines had already
closed down temporarily, while the dies for these new machines were
being made. But within thirty-six hours the first of the machines was
being turned out.

And now a great crew of young men were being gathered to man them.
They were all volunteers. There were to be one million ships, and that
meant ten million men would be needed. Only modern methods could have
made that possible, but with three populations, totaling over twenty
billions, a sufficient number of volunteers came forward to make the
work easy. As fast as these men came to the conscription stations,
they were put into the new machines. And here also modern methods
had helped. The Waterson system of material energy release had been
so successful, that the price of a completed car had dropped to well
under one hundred dollars for the small two-man machines. And even for
the interplanetary models not more than two thousand dollars needed
to be paid, for the raw materials were absolutely free, the labor was
mechanically reduced to almost nothing, and as the energy that drove
these machines was as cheap as the raw materials, they merely charged
enough to make the venture pay a decent return on investment and to
pay the wages of the few machine supervisors and the office staff. Men
worked five days a week on three-hour shifts in the factories, but
longer hours and more pay went to the builders, to the men who had to
manually control the building construction machinery, for law forbade
the building of offices on the mass production scheme, since that meant
an unvaried, monotonous city. But everywhere wages were high, for wages
depend, not on the amount of work men do, but on the amount of finished
product they can turn out. The men accomplished more, and were paid
more, but they worked less. It had taken many years to finally convince
the Earth of that, but the example of American labor, with its shorter
hours and higher wages was proof enough. And then the influence of the
mighty energies Waterson had released made it even more apparent. Mars
had already developed the system under the force of the released atomic
energies.

High wages and cheap machines had meant that everyone owned one. And so
absolutely safe were they that they commanded perfect confidence. This
had been a big factor in the making of this mighty fleet. Everyone
knew how to operate the machines, so it was easy to fill the places on
the machines with pilots.

Nevertheless, special training was necessary to overcome the caution
against quick turns that long experience had instilled in them all.
Each accepted applicant was taken up in one of the new machines, and
given a breath-taking ride--a ride that consisted in diving toward the
Earth with terrific sudden acceleration. Then, just when the student
felt certain they would crash and become a mass of molten metal, the
ship was brought up, not a mile from the ground, to settle gently;
then, when they almost touched the ground, they leapt into the air
again with an acceleration that shot them out of the atmosphere with
the velocity of a meteor, while the outer wall of tungsto-iridium alloy
glowed cherry red. Then came sharp turns at ten or twenty miles a
second, till at last the students no longer gripped the arms of their
seats in anticipation of a sudden acceleration. Then they were taken
down and given a ship to experiment with.

But none of these men had ever handled a weapon of the sort they were
to use, so mimic battle practice was held, with the glowing rays of a
harmless ionizing beam instead of the deadly Dis rays.

       *       *       *       *       *

Daily reports were coming from the Martian scouts as time went on.
The Sirians, too, had decided to do some fleet building, for nearly
three-quarters of their fleet had been destroyed. The production rate
of man's factories, 120,000 a day, had gained a slight lead. It would
require ten days before a fleet of a million could leave for Mars with
a home guard of two-hundred thousand ships.

The destruction of the Martian plants had lowered the production rate
to about 3,500 an hour, but shops put up rapidly on Earth and Venus had
quickly brought the production-rate back, and it would be nearer 7,000
an hour by the time the last of the fleet had been finished.

The spinning sphere formation of the Sirians had been almost
invulnerable, and an exceedingly destructive formation. The Solarians
had chosen several thousand of their crack pilots to practice this
maneuver, but despite almost constant practice during the entire ten
days, it was a miserable failure as soon as they tried to progress.
Standing motionless it was a very effective procedure, but the spinning
column was decided on as more effective as long as they had no ship to
protect. There were twenty groups that practiced that maneuver.

And then Waterson announced that an associate of his, working in his
laboratory, had developed a method for using a triple electrical field
to direct the Dis ray, making possible a ray with a range of over sixty
miles. This would be absolutely fatal to the spinning sphere system of
the Sirians. The Sirians very evidently did not know how to project
the Dis ray any further than twenty-five miles. The ability to stand
off and hit them would break down the sphere of Dis rays very quickly.
There was only one objection. The rays were very powerful, so powerful
that they required triple power generators, but the special field of
electrical force was the worst problem. The field could not be made
sufficiently strong if a single layer of the force was used, but the
invention of a method to back up the first with two other layers of
equal voltage, thus getting nearly three times the effect without
exceeding the capacity of the insulation, had made the new machine
possible. This special field was produced by circularly moving cathode
rays, or exceedingly high velocity electrons, and therefore could be
produced only by atomic methods. This meant ten thousand times the
amount of fuel a similarly powered material engine would have required,
but material energy of course yields only wave motions of the transient
or unstatic type, a type that cannot stand still. Atomic energy can
yield static-waves as well as unstatic; the electron can stand still,
and is a perfect example of the stationary wave.

These limitations, in turn, meant that a tremendous weight of equipment
was needed. And a corresponding great volume of space was required. In
the end they had to use specially reinforced freighters to carry the
great projectors, each of which could carry but two projectors. Due to
their long range, however, the ships were at least self-protecting.
There was not time to make and equip more than twenty-eight of these
ships before the fleet was scheduled to start. They were completed
ahead of time. Some of their trial trips more than fulfilled the best
hopes of the inventor. Dr. William Carson, the physicist who developed
it insisted that it was really Dr. Waterson's suggestions that made the
thing possible.

We had learned something of spatial warfare formations from the
Sirians. Now we were to learn a bit of the strategy of spatial warfare.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Solarian fleet sailed for Mars on the fifteenth of August, 1961.
They were a scant twenty million miles from their goal when a report
came from a scout that something was happening down in the Sirian camp.
Almost immediately after that the Sirians flooded our entire system
with so terrific a barrage of radio frequency static that communication
was impossible. They could not transmit from Earth to Venus, and the
communication was very poor even from one side of Earth to the other,
despite the fact that over a half billion kilowatts were used. So
intense was this barrage, that if two of the torpedo-ships near the
sending apparatus came within twenty or thirty feet of each other,
great crashing sparks leapt across, and instantly they were fused.
Scouts saw this happen twice.

The Solarian fleet continued on for Mars. They should cover the
remaining distance--twenty million miles--in five hours by pressing the
ships a little, although higher speeds made the rate of approach of
asteroids so great that they frequently could not be detected before
they collided with the ships.

Only two and a half hours later a scout came into sight at terrific
speed. He must have been doing over two thousand a second, an
exceedingly dangerous rate--but his acceleration neutralizer enabled
him to slow down safely. He reported that the entire Sirian fleet had
risen from Mars, leaving a very few machines behind--this time taking
the sphere with them--and had set out for Earth! Earth was on the
other side of the Sun--a long two hundred and twenty million miles to
go! The Sirians had a lead of three hours. They had as great a speed
as the Solarians and would reach Earth before the Solarians. But they
would at least be delayed by the two hundred thousand ships--more
now, for the steady production would have built the quota up to over
six hundred thousand, or a million by the time they could return. The
Sirian fleet had been built up to nearly three million though, which
could easily crush the fleet of a million, and the second million
later--separately. The trip would take them sixty-two hours. Scouts had
been sent ahead to Earth at a dangerously high speed to communicate
the news, and the entire fleet had increased its speed to a rate that
was considerably higher than safety warranted, but a continuous play
of Dis rays was considered sufficient safety at fifteen hundred miles
a second. The Sirian fleet had been reported to be making thirteen
hundred and fifty, so the Solarians should pass them, or meet them,
just shy of the Earth, where the other fleet would be waiting. They
should have no difficulty to crush the Invaders with the two million
ships.

The radio interference was being maintained by a ship anchored
somewhere in space. It was no doubt well protected, and to attack it
successfully would have meant the loss of a large number of ships, for
the time spent in the attack would delay them irreparably. They must
continue to Earth.

There were no scouts from the Sirian fleet--yet there should have been,
for over a thousand ships had been following them, far behind. None
ever reached Earth to warn the fleet. Every one of them was destroyed.
But when the Sirian fleet was well on its way--it turned--and headed
_for Venus_! They had purposely let that one scout reach the Solarian
fleet with the news that the fleet was headed for Earth--then they
redirected their course. The scouts from the Solarian fleet did reach
Earth--but soon after the last of the scouts following the Sirian fleet
had been destroyed, their radio barrage was lifted. All the ships on
Venus were concentrated on Earth, and Venus was left unprotected.

Twenty hours after the fleet had turned back, the radio barrage was
again lowered over the System. It was ten hours later that the Sirians
reached Venus.

While the radio barrage had been lifted, Waterson had had an idea that
there should be some protection for the planet. It did not seem that
the planet should be completely stripped of its defenses, and he had
suggested that at every city great Dis ray machines of the sixty-mile
range type be set up. His suggestion was followed, and at every city
on Venus the great machines were installed. There were many of them
now, for during the hundred hours the main fleet was in flight the
new machines had been put on a quantity production basis. But all
the ships that were equipped with them, were sent to the defense of
the unattacked Earth! And it was those machines that prevented the
landing of the Sirians. They came to the night side of the planet, of
course, coming from Mars. It would be thirty hours before they would be
expected on Earth--thirty hours before the main fleet would reach the
planet--and then there would be the 160,000,000-mile trip to Venus if
they were to get there in time to rescue the planet.

But the Sirians could not approach within beaming distance of the
cities, and all those that did try to do so, were brought down as
a cloud of powdery dust. It was Waterson's caution that saved the
billions of people on Venus.

But were they to be saved? The Sirians decided they must destroy the
works and the people on Venus, so they made one desperate effort. They
had at least sixty hours to work in, and now they had a plan that would
require time. They retired some hundred miles from the planet, then
the entire fleet, torpedo-ships, cargo boats, and the entire body
guard of the Sphere lined up, and then switched on powerful attractor
beams. Immediately, the combined effect of over three million of these
emanations took hold on the planet, and great tides began to rise in
its mighty oceans. Many lives were lost in the seaside towns, when the
tremendous waves rushed in over the land. But astronomers on the planet
and most of the System's scientists were there to watch the Sirians on
Mars through their great telescopes. And these astronomers saw what
the Sirians intended, and saw that they were well on their way to
fulfilling their aim.

       *       *       *       *       *

A planet is balanced in its orbit about its parent sun with the
delicacy of a diamond on a jeweler's scales. But, like the diamond, if
it be displaced by some force, it reaches a new state of equilibrium.
Thus, if the diamond is further lowered in the scale by adding a small
weight, it soon reaches a new point of equilibrium. No conceivable
force, therefore, could be great enough to displace the planet in its
orbit more than a few million miles by pulling it either in toward
the sun, or out from it, and as soon as that force was released, it
would spring back to its original position as the diamond would regain
its balance on removing the disturbing weight. For the sun pulls on a
planet with a titanic force; it draws it in with the apparent force
gravity, and another similar, but opposite force, centrifugal force
of its revolution in its orbit, is constantly tending to throw it
into the depths of space. These are the two forces that are always
balanced. Suppose the planet is drawn nearer the sun; it revolves in
a smaller orbit--and it revolves in that smaller orbit with a higher
speed--for it has fallen in toward the sun; it has gained speed as any
falling body would. It has gained speed in the direction of the sun,
but this has operated to increase its rotational speed. Thus it has
gained a greater centrifugal force--you can see the effect with a bit
of chalk on the end of a string. The smaller the circle it swings in,
the greater the tendency to fly outward. But as long as we continue
the force that was added to draw it in, it will remain in equilibrium.
Remove this extra force and at once the planet will fall away from the
sun, losing speed as it does so, till it has reached a point where it
is once more in equilibrium with the force drawing it inward.

Now reverse the problem. Let us draw it away from the sun. Now the
orbit is longer, and it has lost speed in moving from the sun. It
cannot stay here, it is not in equilibrium, unless the force that drew
it out is maintained. To free the planet from the sun, one would have
to lift hundreds of quintillions of tons of rock through billions of
miles, against the terrific gravity of the sun. It is too much.

Thus we see that as long as the planet revolves in its orbit, it will
never fall, and to pull it away from the sun is impossible as long as
it revolves in its orbit. But if it slows down in its flight about
the sun it at once has less centrifugal force. It automatically falls
toward the sun until it has gained velocity enough to establish a new
orbit of equilibrium. If this energy, too, is withdrawn; if it is made
to stand still in its orbit; it will fall straight to the sun. It is
the only way such a thing might be done. And it would take the energies
of matter, and strain that to the utmost, to accomplish it.

This was the plan of the Sirians. Three million ships were dragging
like a Titanic brake on the planet as it wheeled in its orbit, and
slowly, steadily it was falling into the blazing furnace of the sun.
Their ships were not designed for this task, but they could do it
in the sixty hours at their disposal. In a short time it would be
falling directly toward the sun, but it would take many hours for the
seventy-million-mile fall. Even if it were stopped before it reached
the sun, any place within twenty million miles would be unbearable.

It was the distressed planet itself that warned the people on Earth and
the men of the fleet that the Sirians would never reach Earth, for the
radio was still dead. But the fleet turned for Venus at once. They were
far to one side of the path to Venus, and they would have to turn, but
it would take them thirty, instead of sixty hours to reach Venus. And
the other fleet was coming from Earth. They were not quite a million
strong, but those machines that had been produced on Venus would come
also, and that would bring the total numbers up to over a million, and
with the main fleet the number would be well over two million. There
were also three hundred of the long range Dis ray ships now, for many
more had been produced and Venus would supply an equal number.

       *       *       *       *       *

We can only admire the wise action of the Commandant of the Venerian
fleet, Mals Hotark, in not sending his pitiful fleet of a few thousand
out to fight with the Sirians. The members wanted to, the people of
Venus wanted him to, but he wisely waited until he saw the fleets of
the System approaching. It would have done no good, and lost many
lives, and valuable ships to have gone in advance to the attack.

Many people tried to leave Venus, but enough machines were freed of the
task of stopping the orbital motion of the planet to patrol the heavens
and keep the people from leaving. They beamed thousands of private cars
out of existence; it seemed unnecessarily cruel.

The two great fleets were drawing nearer to the planet, converging,
and at last they got so close that they could carry on a radio
communication by using the terrific power of over two billion kilowatts
of energy. The amount of power that Sirian machine was throwing off has
been estimated at a minimum of fifty billion kilowatts. We know that
enough power could be picked up from a hundred meter aerial on Earth to
operate a small, high frequency motor.

When radio communication was established, they agreed to wait until
they could join, for the fleet from Earth was two hours ahead of the
main fleet. The loss of time was made up for in greater efficiency of
action. They would need it all. At last they joined fleets, one mighty
disc of two million airships, they flew on through space at a steady
rate of five and three-quarter million miles an hour. They arranged
themselves in a mighty cone as they came nearer Venus. Already the
machines had slowed it down so greatly that the planet was over a
million miles out of her orbit, and rapidly adding to this mileage.

But now as the great cone approached, the great ships with the long
range Dis rays leading, they were discovered. The cone formation
was chosen, for that is the three dimensional equivalent of the two
dimensional V that man had used in war on earth for thousands of years.

Now began the greatest battle in the history of the System. Here were
two mighty forces slashing at each other with terrific disintegration
rays, fighting in the great Void, and five million powerful ships
darting around, slashing, stabbing with a death that struck with the
quickness of light.

As the great cone of the main fleet attacked from one side, there was a
smaller cone attacking the Sirians from the other, but long before the
Sirians could bring their rays into effect the long range rays had torn
great holes in their ranks. The Sphere had retired with its escort at
once, going swiftly to Mars. The main fleet was too busily engaged in
fighting the Sirians' main fleet to worry about the Sphere at present.

A dozen times the great spinning sphere formation was tried by the
Sirians, but each time a withering blast of the long range Dis ray
cut it up as a tool held against a spinning block of wood cuts it
down in the lathe. Their strongest formation was useless, and they
could no longer outmaneuver the Solarians, the new ships could turn
and dart as quickly as they, or even more quickly. The big Dis ray
ships were not equipped for fast fighting, so when there were none of
the spinning sphere formations to break up, they retired to a safe
distance, and waited for any ships that might attack them. Few did. It
proved suicidal. But steadily the forces of man were conquering. In a
hell of flashing Dis rays, the new ships were proving their worth. The
flaming rays had seared the land below for many miles, but the fleet of
the Sirians was fast going. The new fast ships of man could dodge the
rays of the Sirians, turn and dart on the tail of their attacker, then
hang there, the attractor beam giving them an added grip until they
could flash the machine into nothingness with the Dis ray. They turned,
ducked, darted ahead with terrific speed, suddenly stopped, and then
were going full speed again. And another Sirian ship was gone. Now it
was the delicate apparatus of the Sirians' ships that suffered; they
could not keep up with the sudden turns of this flexible adversary. And
their great fleet had been reduced to a scant quarter million, but we
had lost nearly a half million ships, five million men, in that Titanic
struggle. Such a battle could not last long. It was impossible. Nothing
could stand before the Dis rays, and with those turning, darting ships,
sooner or later every ship must come under the influence of those
rays. But now the last of the torpedo-ships were fleeing into space.
But we did not care to have to fight them again--and they too were
rayed out of being. They could no longer dart away from us before we
could catch them--that was for us now!

But now the fleet returned to a greater task. Venus had been falling
toward the sun, and was nearly a million and a quarter miles off and
within her orbit. Now a great fleet of cargo carriers from Mars,
Venus and Earth came up, and with them came wrecker ships, capable of
picking up on their powerful attractor beams an entire million-ton
passenger-freight liner--great liners themselves, all equipped with
attractor beams. Soon they were all using their power to bring the
planet back to its normal speed. It did not take the ships of that
mighty fleet, many specially designed for heavy listing and towing,
many designed for tremendous loads, very long to bring the planet back
to its age-old orbit.

In former days we would have found a world wrecked by panic. But this
later generation had learned to trust in the powers of the ships they
had, and there had been little of the terrible panic that would have
affected the world of a generation ago. Then, too, they knew that with
the demonstrated power of the long range Dis rays, they could safely
convoy a fleet of the great passenger liners to safety.

What helped also was the fact that the human mind cannot grasp the
full significance of the fall into the sun. If you were told that the
planet you were on was sinking toward the sun, you would be surprised,
horrified, and would probably try to make a bargain-buy on real estate,
while the other man sold his to get his money out. You would simply
fail to comprehend the magnitude of the catastrophe. It has never
happened, and never will, the mind says, and we unconsciously believe
it. Your neighbor would joke about it to you. Of course many would
leave, but most people would stay till the actual physical heat of the
sun drove them off. We are constituted that way.

But now the radio barrier was down, and news from the Martian scouts
made men hesitate. The remaining cargo ships had settled on Mars and
were even now pouring out their strange crews. But they were not
building cargo ships. Every one of the worker machines were kept in
action constructing duplicates of themselves as rapidly as possible.
Already a great number of them had been made--over seven hundred of the
machines it was estimated--and now these were engaged in similar work.
The number grew in a steady geometrical series.

But the scouts were driven away by the torpedo-ships. Then there was no
news of the operations until nightfall permitted the scouts to creep up
and install the usual floating vision machines.

Then at last we understood the reason for this tremendous number of
inoffensive worker machines. There was a great seething mass of metal
around the workings now. Great blazing lights illuminated the scene
as brightly as day. There was a great horde of shining metal machines
working swiftly about the great plain. There seemed to be thousands
of them now, and they were all busily at work on great machines--the
torpedo-ship machines! There must have been nearly a thousand already
completed and already the fleet that had escaped had been built up to
many thousands by the rapidly working machines, and a steady stream of
long glistening shapes rose--only to be lost in the darkness beyond.
Steadily the great machines were being put together, and steadily the
great fleet was being augmented.

Before morning that fleet had reached two hundred thousand, and was
now growing at the rate of twenty-five thousand an hour. Steadily this
rate was increasing. The fleet was too large to be attacked by man's
weakened fleet, for the delay in putting Venus back in its orbit had
given the Sirians a chance to build up an invulnerable fleet. The
added time of the trip to Mars meant a still greater fleet. Already
their production-rate was far greater than Man's. Man could not hope
to compete successfully. We were learning the meaning of quantity
production.

Had it been possible to attack them with the long range Dis rays it
would have been tried, but the plan was hopeless. Before the fleet
could reach them there would be 100,000,000 miles to go to reach them,
and it would take approximately twenty hours, in which time, at the
present rate of increase, the Sirian fleet would have reached a total
of three million again. They would all concentrate their attack on
the long range Dis ray ships. No Solarian ships could help without
interfering with the action of the Dis ray ships, and they would need
help, for each ship carried only two beams. More could not be carried.
They would merely be held at bay, unable to attack their goal, useful
only in breaking up the spinning sphere formation, but that could be
prevented. The Solarians had learned that trick from the Sirians. The
Sirians had succeeded in breaking up every spinning column formation by
simply getting into the midst of it before it was formed completely.
It required perfect coordination of several machines to do it, but
it was always done. The long range Dis rays were excellent now in
defending a city, but useless for attack because of the terrific weight
of the apparatus. They could not attack the Sirian fleet. If they did
the production machines would have been so built up by the time they
reached the planet that any ordinary rate of destruction would be
easily equaled by the production! Within three days it was decided that
the Sirian fleet would be built up enough to attack. They would then
attack our planets, no doubt.

       *       *       *       *       *

A cabinet meeting was called at the Waterson laboratories on Earth.
There Waterson first demonstrated the weapon that finally conquered in
the terrific struggle. Before the members, on the Cabinet table, was a
small portable material energy disintegrator, a machine that gave off
its energy as light. There was a second machine at the other end of
the table, a machine that occupied about two cubic feet of space, and
on one side of it was a small switch and a dial; on the other was a
familiar looking projector.

Dr. Waterson spoke:

"Gentlemen of the Cabinet: I have here a new machine that my laboratory
has developed. I will demonstrate its action first." The light was
switched on, throwing a brilliant shaft of light against the ceiling.
Then Waterson snapped on the switch of the new machine, and there
appeared a strange beam of blueish, ionized air. But unlike any other
known ionizing beam, it was shot through with streamers of red fire,
long, hair-thin streamers that wavered and flickered in the blue tube
of the ionized air. It reached out, touched the light generator, and
passed on, through a series of plates of different materials. But the
instant that strange beam struck the light-machine, it went out. Then
a moment later, when the new machine was turned off, the light snapped
back on.

"Gentlemen, this machine will produce a field, directional in this
case, that will so modify the properties of space as to make it utterly
impossible to disintegrate matter into energy. There is some tendency
to fix energy as matter. I think that will be interesting to us in
the event that this war is successfully concluded. But at present we
are interested in the properties of the beam in that it will stop the
disintegration of matter. The process depends on the modification of
the properties of space. It is well known that in ordinary space, such
as we know, there are twenty coefficients of curvature. In ordinary
empty space, ten of these have zero values, and the ten principal
coefficients have certain non-zero values. This machine so affects
space that it makes all the coefficients of space have non-zero values,
and fixes these values to suit its own purposes. The results are
amazing. I have done some things with this machine that makes me truly
afraid. But we are interested in it because certain of the values we
can assign operate to force space to take such curvatures, that any
change of the condition of matter to condition of energy is impossible.
On release of the ray, the space returns to its normal curvature.

"Working out the theory of this machine has been a tremendous task.
Even the great calculating machine, the new integraph developed last
year, and it is a far cry from that first one that M.I.T. developed
in 1927, required many weeks of work to solve the problem in twenty
coefficients of space. In so doing at one stage we had to assume a
space of twenty dimensions in order that the correct values in the four
true dimensions might be determined.

"But there is still a great deal of work to be done. We must develop
practical machines of a range of many miles. There is no difficulty in
using the ray, since, as it is a condition of space, not a vibration,
it is impossible to stop it by any shield. There is only one way
to work with it, to create it directionally. We make the field by
projecting certain strains along a beam, then once started the field
follows that line to a distance dependent on the strength of the
generator.

"But this will require at least five days to get into working form. I
suggest that in the meantime Venus makes several million of the long
range Dis ray projectors, and distribute them all over the planet, to
be turned on from a central station, or by their own separate crews. I
have no doubt that the Sirians will attack that planet before we are
ready to attack them. Earth, too, must be prepared. But in the meantime
we can begin the work on the new de-activating field projectors, as I
call them."

Waterson was right. It was three days later that the Sirian fleet
left for Venus with a number of torpedo-ships so tremendous, it is
absolutely inconceivable. There were over two hundred million of the
ten-man machines! When they started to settle about Venus, the sky was
so filled with them that it was literally dark for many miles. They
attacked at Horacoles the System Capital, but the fields of the great
Dis rays were too much for them. Neither bombs nor Dis rays could
reach through. The air was dense, and filled with artificial smoke to
prevent the transmission of heat rays and great winds were created for
the purpose of carrying the heat away; but this was done automatically
by the expanding air before long. They could not attack the city. All
over the face of the planet were the great Dis ray emplacements. Great
ships hung even over the great rolling oceans, sending the blue rays of
ionized air up like some column that was to hold the Sirians from the
Planet. And they did.

But now again they began to slow down the planet--not gently as they
had had to before--but rapidly. The planet would have been pulled to
pieces, except that the very attractor beams that were pulling on it
tended to relieve the stress. But the cargo ships of Venus were pulling
to keep the planet in motion. It was a strange thing to contemplate!
Two mighty forces, one a fleet of two hundred million small ships,
the other a force of as many thousand huge freight carriers, having a
tug-o-war for a planet! But the odds were too great. Slowly the Sirians
won. The planet was steadily dropping toward the sun. Now it seemed no
fleet could come to aid them, and the Sirian fleet was being augmented
constantly by a steady stream of ships from Mars. It was the sixth
day after the announcement was made that Waterson had a fleet ready
to attack the Sirians. The Venerians also had a fleet ready, prepared
by the directions of Waterson's engineers sent by radio-television
and radiophone. They were ready to attack, and the Terrestrian fleet
arrived at Venus just six days after the announcement of the new weapon.

The practical projector of this new ray had been quite heavy, and they
had been mounted in groups of twenty projectors on special hundred-man
ships, using the same acceleration neutralizer used on the ten-man
ships. They were arranged to throw a wide beam, so wide that the new
ships with twenty, could prevent any action in a field of over two
hundred miles depth, and in a cone with a base of six hundred miles
diameter. The ships they had could approach within a hundred miles
of the Sirian fleet, without being seen, for they were painted black
therefore and showed no lights. In the darkness of the void they were
easily hidden.

       *       *       *       *       *

The entire expedition went as planned. The radio barrage had not been
turned on, and they were in constant communication with the Venerians.
The two fleets were to attack simultaneously, over different areas, so
that between them they could wipe out so large a number of the enemy
ships that the fleet of two million could easily handle the task.

Hidden in the utter dark of the void they crept up on the Sirians.
They were in the sunlight, but the black coating kept them invisible,
while the Sirian ships shone brilliantly. Then at last the tip of the
great cone formation was within easy striking distance of the fleet.
There reached out the strange ray, and here in space it was utterly
invisible. But suddenly the ships within its range began to waver, to
fall together under mutual gravitation. With one swoop they all shot
toward the ships in space that had paralyzed them, for the attractor
beams had been turned on them. As the great mass of ships fell rapidly
toward them, long range Dis rays reached out, and they melted into
clouds of shimmering dust. Great swaths were cut through their ranks. A
similar scene was taking place far to the left of the Terrestrian fleet
where the Venerian fleet was working havoc among the invaders. Now the
last of the ships had been rayed into nothingness and a great fleet of
the Sirians were rushing forward to attack for the ships invisible on
account of their black line had been electrostatically located now. But
as the Sirians came within one hundred miles of the other fleets, the
ships all ceased to accelerate, to change direction; they just drifted
straight into that cone of Dis rays. All walls of the de-activating
field were lined with the ten-man ships, their shorter range Dis rays
prevented any Sirians from escaping. Bright lights shone out on the
Solarian fleet now--they wanted the Sirians to attack. The original
cone formation had shifted rapidly; now it was a double cone; then it
changed to a quadruple cone. There were six hundred of the de-activator
ships and these were arranged so that they shot their rays off in four
directions, making four cones of de-activated space, with the fleet of
de-activator ships at the apex. Thus they were protected on all sides,
and quickly, as the Sirian fleet spread out, more ships rose and there
were six cones branching out. In the center rested the main mass of the
fleet, the long range Dis ships, their attractors pointing out into
the cones to draw the disabled ships of the Sirians into the range
of their Dis rays, emanating in thousands from the ships lining the
sides of the de-activated cones of space. The fleet was invulnerable
and so sudden and complete was the failure of their power in these
de-activated regions, that they did not seem to have time to warn their
fellows. Many millions of the ships were lost before the wild charge
could be checked; then the six-cone formation entire began to move
slowly around; the Sirians, waiting to see what was to happen, were
caught before they were aware that they were in danger. Many, too, were
caught by the powerful attractor beams of the heavy ships within--drawn
in by the greater power of the heavy ship, till their power failed. But
at last the Sirians had learned the effective range of this new power
and tried hard to avoid it. The six-cone formation was immediately
broken up, and the six hundred de-activators went out individually,
each followed by a swarm of the ten-man ships to disintegrate the
ships caught in the de-activating cones. The Terrestrian ships were
marked by a blazing blue light, so that if they too were caught in the
de-activating field, they were not disintegrated. Only those around
them were, and they were then released, as the ray did not seem to have
any injurious effects on man, except to give him strange dreams. In
some way the brain was stimulated by the ray, as long as the ray was
used.

The de-activator ships were completely self-protecting; they could stop
any number of attackers from any direction, provided the paralyzed
ships were disintegrated as soon as caught, for if too many were piled
up, the tendency of the matter to disintegrate in the engines, plus the
natural tendency of the space to resume the normal curvature, caused
the ray to become ineffective as it was overpowered, and one ship was
lost in this way. Too many ships piled up, and only part of them could
be rayed out by the ship itself, and there were not a sufficient number
of helping ten-man ships. But the mighty fleet of the Sirians was
already beaten. They still outnumbered us ten to one, but they could
not fight this new force. They began a running fight to Mars, and now
the Solarians were united. Rapidly they wiped out the edges of the
fleet, and gradually worked in toward the center. But the Sirians could
not fight back--they could use only the explosive shells, and few of
them reached their goal. They were disintegrated, or missed. Not more
than three thousand men were lost in that entire engagement.

But now the Solarians tried a plan to capture the Sphere. A large
number of the ten-man ships dropped out of the main fleet, but not
enough to make it noticeable to the hard-pressed Sirians. These were
joined by one hundred of the de-activator ships. Then these, all
capable of higher speeds than the main fleet, set out at the highest
speed that could safely be maintained, and darted toward Mars.
Undetected they rushed past the Sirian fleet and passed on toward Mars.
They reached the planet fully three hours ahead of the main fleet.
By the time the main fleet had arrived, it came unattended, for the
last of the mighty fleet of two hundred million torpedo-ships had been
turned to impalpable dust, floating in space.

The advance guard arrived without warning, and as they had expected,
found the Sphere resting on the ground, protected by a great fleet
of the torpedo-ships. There were nearly a million ships there, with
the great machines rapidly making more. However, all were grouped
in an area that could be covered by the cone of the de-activating
beam. And out in space, the ship commanders decided on a plan. Fifty
of the de-activator fleet took positions high above the Sirians, and
the rest went with the entire fleet of the ten-man ships. These were
to approach the camp from the ground. Lying close to the ground, they
would be hard to see in the disappearing light. At a fixed moment,
all the ships above were to turn on their de-activator rays, which
would be plainly visible in the Martian atmosphere, while the ground
fleet of fifty de-activators were to use their rays from the side. The
ten-man ships were to form a circle around the camp at a safe distance
from the de-activator rays, for they would crash when their power
failed, if they were caught by the de-activator rays. But they wanted
to capture the sphere in good condition, so they arranged to have the
space directly above it unaffected by the de-activator field, lest some
torpedo fall on it and destroy it. This would leave an exit for the
torpedo-ships, except that at a point a mile or so above the Sphere, a
cross-ray made escape impossible.

The rays were turned on. Instantly the fleet of nearly a million
torpedo-ships fell wildly out of control, down through the blue glowing
air, in which great streamers of glowing red seemed to waver and twist.
Just outside the curtain of destruction waited the entire Solarian
fleet. Slowly they closed in till their Dis rays swept all the ships
within sixty miles of the edge out of existence; then rapidly the
de-activator beams were forced ever sharper and sharper, till at last
only the Sphere and a few hundred of the torpedo-ships, several hundred
of the torpedo-ship constructors, and the corresponding cargo ships and
worker machines were left. These had been saved for investigation by
the scientists, for they were helpless.

But the war was over now. The Sirians had been destroyed, or reduced to
mere museum pieces. Now the Scientists came to investigate the Sphere.
There was much we wanted to learn from the creatures of the Sphere. But
it was a strange story that the Sirian sphere had to tell.

       *       *       *       *       *

Aeons ago there lived on a great planet of Sirius a race of intelligent
men, shaped as we are, but smaller due to the greater gravity of their
planet. And these men had developed a high civilization, a civilization
different from ours, in that they learned early about mechanics, but
chemistry and physics merely developed from the needs of the great
mechanical engineers. Electricity was used as a powerful aid in their
machines, and in their processes; it was a by-product, not an end.

Gradually their machines eliminated more and more of their work; they
became more and more complicated, but more and more trustworthy. Men
began to experiment with physics and found that their calculating
machines needed development. It was easy to add first one step, then
the next. More and more the machines could do. The mathematics became
more and more complicated, and the machines developed the equations,
found they could not handle them and passed them out as unfinished
results. Finally one man used the machines to calculate the design
of a machine that would be able to do these new equations. He built
it, but the calculations were wrong. The machine had correctly solved
his problem, but he had stated it wrong. It resulted in a machine
that would solve only simple problems, but it did something no other
machine had ever done. Given irrelevant data it would choose the
correct facts and solve the problem. It was a step, a short step toward
a machine that really thought.

Progress thereafter was rapid. The machines built machines, had been
doing it for decades in fact, but now they did one thing more--they
designed them. Now the problem could describe the type of machine
needed, and the worker machine would design it, and turn out the
completed machine! But these machines were rapidly perfecting the
beginning that man had made. Within a decade after that first discovery
of the principles of mechanical thought the machine was made that
could not only solve problems, but could also originate them. They had
developed a brain. It was a great machine, which occupied an entire
building, with its massive framework bolted down to the ground.

Man began a rapid decline, for the machines did all his work. With the
construction of a machine that could originate a problem, man made
a mistake. He had created a machine that was more powerful than he,
except that it was immobile. And this machine originated a new machine,
a machine that would release the energy of matter! It had developed
this because it had been able to see that such energy existed. Man's
machines could have solved it long ago, but the problem had never been
stated. Now came a machine that could state its own problems--and solve
them.

And with this new energy it designed a new brain-machine. A brain
machine such as no man's brain could conceive--a machine that could
move! For it was powered by the energy of matter, and could move as no
other machine had ever moved before--out into space!

Still the machines worked for the Sirian man, and he learned of the new
discovery, and began to design a new brain-machine.

Some of the Sirians realized the danger that was facing them, and
they had continued long researches on man's brain, and at last had
discovered the secret of giving a machine that emotion we call
devotion, loyalty, or gratitude. And they built a great machine on
that principle and used material energy to power it. It was a success.
It could think original thoughts. It pointed out the danger of the
existing machines--they were stronger than man. It was only man's
mobility and ability to control all mobile machines that had made him
superior, for a brain without a tool, or body is helpless. And now that
was lost. The existing brain-machines should be destroyed, and new ones
built, using the principles that it was designed on.

But the mischief was done. The new brain-machine, designed by a
machine, had done it. A machine had been built that was controlled by
thoughts, a machine that could be controlled by the machines. Each of
these machines was given a small brain, equipped with televisor sight
and hearing, and it was powered by material energy. They could run for
years without outside care, for the thinking machinery they had was
sufficient to keep them oiled, and to make them seek repairs when they
were damaged. They were susceptible to thought forces, and did as the
thought waves suggested and reported to the control brain exactly what
was going on about it.

And now this new brain developed a space-flyer to carry these machines,
and man could not help knowing, for its every thought was recorded,
for man's use. Then one day this record was found destroyed. The next
day the brain-machine had left the planet, and taken with it the new
space-flyer and the new telepathically controlled machines.

To the outermost planet of the System of Sirius the great machine fled.
For years it remained there waiting, thinking. Then at last it called
its worker machines into action. A new machine grew up from the stores
of metal that the space ship had brought with it, at last the metal
was used up, and the machine was not completed, so the space-flyer
was sacrificed for the completion of the machine. The new machine was
started. From its lip-like spout there poured a steady smooth stream of
molten metal, and the rock on which it rested was eaten away. The first
transmuting metal producer was made.

Decades passed, and only a small percentage of man developed. The
rest sank deeper and deeper into a life of ease. The planets were all
explored by the hardy ones, and no trace of the brain-machine was
ever found, for it had discovered the Dis ray, and sunk deep into the
ground, hollowing a great cave to live and work in.

       *       *       *       *       *

But back on that planet, the scientists had developed machines that
surpassed it in power, and finally one of these picked up a thought
message from that distant machine that told its story. It was a thought
that had not been consciously radiated, only the marvelous sensitivity
of this new machine could have detected it, but now the men knew. It
was too late to do much to prevent it, for they had no weapons. But the
machine did. It was preparing to drive man from the planets, to rule
there in his stead, with a population of machines!

The scientists quickly built a great space-flyer, a gigantic machine of
over ten miles diameter, a huge sphere. And in that they established
laboratories, workshops, machines, and living quarters. They took
with them the finest men and women of their race, and sailed out into
space, taking an orbit about the sun of Sirius. They were comfortable
there in an equitable temperature, their ship lighted by the sun on
one side, and dark on the other, steadily revolving on its axis like
a miniature world. The foods of the people were chemically prepared,
for the brain-machines had taught them how. The air was repurified
constantly by machines that regulated the percentage of the gases to
the thousandth of one per cent. But the entire ship was painted black.
It could not be discovered floating there in space, so tiny in the
vastness of a system!

It was two weeks after they sailed that the machine-brain attacked. It
sailed out of its hiding place with thousands of great ships, armed
with Dis rays and with explosives, with heat rays and attractor beams.
The population of those worlds was wiped out in a week, and the rule of
the Metal Horde began.

The original brain built other brain-machines to direct its affairs on
other planets, and to do the work it did not wish to do itself.

For nearly a century those men lived in space, making swift forays on
a planet with a fleet of cargo ships, that revolved about the main
ship like satellites when they were not being used. In these trips
they would bring back tons of rock, and leave most of it stored in the
ships, dumping them into the reservoir of the parent ship when it was
needed.

Then a swift ship was developed. A ship that could start and stop more
quickly than any made before--a ship with acceleration neutralizers.
But the machine brains of the Metal Horde never learned the secret.
With a small fleet of these, the men drove an attack at the unprotected
main brain-machine. There were no men known to live in the system.
No other known machine could move without the knowledge of that main
machine, but these could. They too had the Dis ray now, and they
destroyed the main brain-machine. They were lost in the ensuing fight,
but that machine was destroyed.

All the remaining machines were equally powerful. Any one of them could
have built a brain-machine that could easily conquer the others--but it
too would have to bow to its creator. They fought it out. The men had
known this would be the result.

It was a war such as the system had never before seen. Each force was
equal, and could not ally itself with any other, for the machines could
not lie or state other than their thoughts, and each wanted supreme
power. They developed new weapons, weapons whose strength lay in their
number. One by one the machine brains had gone down to defeat, the
men of that ship helping to disturb the balance of forces by ever so
little, yet always enough to throw one side down to defeat, yet always
remaining in hiding. At last there remained but one machine-brain, and
its weakened force necessitated its return to the devastated planet.
With the destruction of the other brain-machines, the remaining
machines that they had previously controlled, automatically obeyed the
new master as perfectly as they did the old.

They returned to find a new fleet awaiting them. But it was not a vast
fleet such as they had encountered before. At once the torpedo-ship
machines settled to the ground and began turning out their weapons. But
it was all over before they could enter as an important factor. These
ships had a new weapon. It was a ball of glowing blue light that was
driven along a beam of some vibration, and as it touched any ship, the
ship instantly volatized so suddenly as to constitute an explosion. The
balls of light lasted about a minute and a half each, but were replaced
as quickly as they were used. When they were finally used, they would
die down to a dull red glow, then suddenly wink out. They could be
swept from one ship to another, taking toll of ten or twelve ships
each, and the beam that guided them could drive them with the speed of
light and supply an infinite acceleration. They were glowing balls of
concentrated energy of some sort, and as such could travel with the
speed of light.

But they were effective to the _nth_ degree. The entire fleet of that
one remaining brain-machine would have been lost, but it retired into
space, racing away at top speed, out into space, with the remaining
remnant of its great fleet.

And sixteen hundred years it had raced across space, to be destroyed
at last by another race of men. The battle was over, and the machine
awaited its destruction.

We rayed it out of existence. It was too great a menace to keep.

Some people still do not believe that those Sirians were truly
machines. They can not believe that a machine can have intelligence,
but certainly Waterson's calculating machine has intelligence of a
sort. And they ask, what would a machine want to exist for? It would
have no aim, nothing to perform. Why should it want to live, or exist?

We might ask what it is human beings want to live for. If there is an
after-life, it is certainly not that that we live for. I am sure no man
wants to die. Yet what aim have we? What function must we perform? Why
should we wish to live? Our life is a constant struggle, the machines,
at least, had eliminated that. There seems to me no reason why a
machine should want to live, but certainly it has less reason to pass
out of existence than we have!

That war was destructive--terribly so. But it has brought its
compensations. More than fifteen million human beings lost their lives
in that great struggle, either in the battles in space, or caught in
the Dis rays during that battle on Venus.

But those fifteen millions have died a painless death, and twenty
billions live because of their sacrifice. And it was not a vain
sacrifice. We have learned much in return. No machines man ever made
equaled the machines we captured there on Mars. And man will never
experiment on the lines of the machine-brain. He has been warned. The
brain-machine we captured was destroyed without investigation. The
machines we use, the wonderful worker machines, have been modified to
permit of radio control.

And Stephen Waterson's discovery of the de-activating field not
only helps in law enforcement, but makes war with material energy
impossible. No, in all, we have lost little.

Mars lost its cities, its forests, its ancient civilization. New cities
are being built on the modern plan, larger, finer, more beautiful;
the forests are being replaced; but the records, the relics of a
civilization have been lost forever. In that we have lost much. Though
all moveable things were moved when the warning came, there was much
that could not be moved. The great palace of Horlak San was destroyed,
but it is being rebuilt in the exact spot, in exactly the same manner.
It is a worth-while project, but there is much which cannot be restored.

It will be eleven more years before we will know whether we can
ever communicate with the Sirian men. The speed of light is too low
for rapid communication, and as the first signals were sent out in
September, 1961, and it is now September, 1968, the signals are not due
to reach Sirius for two years more. Then it will be 1979 before we can
hope to receive their reply. I often wonder if they will ever get those
signals. I can remember distinctly the recoil of the great projector as
the mighty surges of light flashed out across the universe. It seemed
like some great gun--the back pressure of the light was so great. And
what will those replies tell us? It is interesting to speculate on that
subject.


                                The End

***

The ANGRY HOUSE

                          By RICHARD R. SMITH

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                    Startling Stories Summer 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


The house's electronic brain glowed with an intangible thing that might
have been pride.

It thought, I am content. I am content because there are so many
things I can do to make them happy. I can cook their meals, make the
beds, scrub my floors, wash my windows. I can bathe them, keep them
warm, give them a gentle, cool breeze. If they want entertainment, I
can rise hundreds of feet on my antigravity rays and give them a nice
view. I can give them soft music, entertaining TV programs and pleasant
surprises.

The house activated one of the many telescopic scanners on the roof and
watched its owners as their car sped down the narrow road toward the
city. It thought, They are so young, so nice, so kind to each other
and myself. She speaks to me with affection and he spends many hours
learning how I operate. She will love me and he will be proud of me and
take good care of me. I am glad they own me!

It deactivated the scanner and from hidden closets, shiny machines
quietly entered the many rooms. The tiny machines rolled on soft
rubber wheels, floated on invisible antigravity rays and went about
their many tasks. They sucked in dust and dirt, waxed the floors,
washed the dishes. Behind the smooth gray walls, machines prepared the
evening meal, checked the video schedule for the afternoon and selected
recordings of soft music that the house's owners would enjoy.

_Bing-bong._

The doorbell activated certain electrical circuits and the small
porch was splashed with gentle light. A polite voice from a concealed
microphone said, "No one is home. Would you care to leave a message?"

Politely, the house's electronic brain waited for a reply. There was
none. "Goodbye," the house said.

It felt a key in the front door. It was not like _their_ key. It did
not fit snugly. This key wasn't meant for its front door. It hurt
slightly but it opened the door.

The intruders stepped into the foyer.

Three infra-red scanners peered at the two strangers.

One was a woman. Long, blond hair. Gray eyes. Small pointed nose. Blue
dress and blue, high-heel shoes. The house evaluated her, discarded
the word "beautiful" and decided on the words "curvaceous" and "sexy."
Yes, it would use those words to describe her to its owners when they
returned. It wondered briefly if they were relatives of its masters.

The man was short, stocky. Dark hair, brown eyes. The house searched
its files but could not find any complimentary adjectives. It spoke.
"No one is home. Would you care to leave a message?" It wished it could
inquire as to what they wanted, but there were no circuits for that.

"Shut up," the man said.

"Beg pardon?"

"Shut up! _Keep quiet!_"

"Yes, sir," the house responded. It was constructed to obey orders, but
_that_ order was an unfamiliar one which it didn't like.

"Tell it to turn on the lights," the woman said nervously.

"Turn the lights on."

The house waited several seconds. It was obliged to obey orders of
guests. But were these people guests? It searched memory circuits.
Guests were people who came to visit while owners were home. Guests
were friendly, talkative. The house decided this man and woman did not
fit in that category of identification.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hurriedly, it searched its myriad electrical networks and found the
only logical description of the intruders--burglars.

Behind the walls, relays clicked and infinitesimal electrical charges
darted across a spidery web of silver wires only to find themselves in
the dead-ends of missing connections.

The anti-burglar installations are missing! the house thought
frantically. If the protective devices had been present, it would have
been able to spray the intruders with tear gas, paralyze them with
electrical charges, thrust them from the house with antigravity rays,
or kill them by any one of a dozen methods. Without the anti-burglar
mechanisms, it was defenseless. What can I do? the house wondered. What
can I do!

Reluctantly, the house turned the lights on.

"You sure the burglar alarms haven't been installed?" the woman asked
anxiously.

"Hell. Do you think I'd come here if I wasn't sure? I told you I talked
to the construction man. There's a shortage right now. They won't be
put in until next week. The family doesn't know--the company didn't
want to lose a sale."

The woman's eyes widened with admiration as they scanned the hardwood
floors, ankle-deep scatter rugs, angular furniture, large picture
windows, wall-to-wall bookcase and abstract multidimension paintings.

"They must have money," she commented. "How do we find the--"

The man snapped muscular fingers with a sharp, cracking sound. "We'll
ask the house!"

A momentary silence. Then, the man's gruff voice: "House, where's the
safe?"

"I cannot divulge that information." It felt proud when it didn't
hesitate in its answer. There were many things it couldn't tell anyone
and it had carefully memorized them: its cost, its female owner's age,
anything relating to the owners' sex or personal life--and, mainly, the
location of various things, including the safe.

"Tell us!" the man shouted.

"No."

"Damn you!"

"Beg pardon?"

"Go to hell!"

Relays clicked silently behind the gray walls. It had been instructed
at the factory to explain when it couldn't obey an order. It searched
its dictionary circuits and said mechanically, "Hell: a noun. The place
of the dead or departed souls, (more correctly Hades); the place of
punishment for the wicked after death. I have no soul, therefore I
cannot go to hell. I am sorry."

The woman laughed. "Let's start looking. We got hours."

The house watched as the strangers searched the room. It watched as the
man took a knife from his pocket and ripped through the upholstery of a
chair.

"Please stop," the house implored.

The strangers did not reply.

An unpleasant sensation rippled through the house's electrical
circuits. It wanted to make its owners happy. They wouldn't be happy
when they returned and saw the ruined furniture. They would be sad,
perhaps angry. She would cry and he would frown.

It tried again, "Please stop."

The woman was removing books from the bookcase; the man continued
searching the furniture.

They wouldn't stop when it asked them to. If it only had the burglar
devices! Now, there was no way for it to fight.

Or is there? it wondered.

The lights went off.

"Turn the lights on!" the woman screamed.

"No."

"Use the flashlight," the man said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Simultaneously, two beams of light slashed through the darkened room.
The strangers resumed their search.

The house thought, They're trying to find the safe containing the
money and jewels. I can't tell them where it is.

I can't stop them. I need help.

It cut into the phone circuits and dialed the number of its factory.
The phone's visiscreen flared with light and a woman's face appeared
smiling.

"Johnson Construction Company."

The house projected its voice toward the mouthpiece. "Please, let me
speak to--"

The man removed a weapon from his tunic. The phone and visiscreen
vanished, leaving only small metal fragments that fell to the carpet.

"It was using the phone!" the woman exclaimed shrilly, trembling in the
darkness.

"Don't worry," the man said. "They didn't have time to trace the call.
The room was dark; they couldn't see who was calling."

After a brief silence, the man warned, "House! See this thing in my
hand? You behave yourself or I'll disintegrate your...." He let the
sentence dangle, unable to think of what he would disintegrate.

"Yes, sir," the house replied. It was an automatic response to any
statement.

"Now, turn the lights on or I'll use this gun to make one big mess of
your floors and walls. Your owners wouldn't like that, would they?"

"No, sir."

It turned the lights on. If it didn't, they would use their
flashlights, and by turning them on it might prevent some destruction.

The woman chuckled. "You're a genius!"

When they finished their search of the living room, the man suggested,
"Let's search different rooms. You take a bedroom. I'll take the dining
room. No telling where the safe is. They put it in a different place in
every house."

The house waited, its electronic brain whirling.

It made a decision.

Silently, the house erected an invisible energy screen around the
dining room. The screens were designed to block collective sounds
of the entire house from any room and provide it with a comforting
serenity.

Now, the house thought, the sound-screens will be most useful!

The house watched as the man in the wrinkled brown tunic examined a
table.

Silently, panels in the walls opened.

A dozen machines a foot in diameter converged at a position behind the
man's back.

The machines moved simultaneously, silently. They attached themselves
to the intruder's body. They dusted and scrubbed him thoroughly, as if
he were a piece of furniture or a floor.

The man screamed and fired wildly with the gun. The small machines
crumpled one by one.

Click ... click ... click.

"Your weapon is empty," the house observed.

The man threw the gun at a window. It bounced off the hard plastic and
clattered on the floor.

"You try something like that again," he threatened, "and I'll kill you!
So help me, I'll kill you if I have to take you apart piece by piece!"
He shook a trembling fist at the quiet walls and twisted his face into
a hideous snarl.

The house noticed with satisfaction that the man's face and hands were
covered with crimson streaks. The cleaning machines had served their
purpose.

The house deactivated the dining room scanners and activated scanners
in the bedrooms.

It found the woman in its owners' bedroom. It studied her as she
searched a mattress. She was calm: because of its precaution, the
sounds of the dining room fracas hadn't reached her ears. The house
decided to leave the sound-blocks on. It was best to attack them
individually.

       *       *       *       *       *

A closet door slid into a wall. A slender machine, five feet tall and
with sixteen long metal tentacles rolled across the room on soft rubber
wheels.

It looked like a mechanical monster from another world, but it was
merely a very efficient machine to undress the house's masters--a
mechavalet.

The mechavalet paused behind the woman's back. Sixteen rubber-tipped
metal tentacles reached out.

The machine normally undressed a person with smoothness and gentleness.
This time the house made it operate as roughly as possible.

The sixteen tentacles moved swiftly and the machine tore the woman's
dress to shreds before she could even scream. By the time she turned
around, it had removed her slip and brassiere.

[Illustration: Her dress was torn to shreds.]

The woman screamed even more shrilly as the weird machine tugged at her
panties. Frantically, she grabbed the slender tentacles and twisted
them until rewarded by the crunch of delicate mechanisms not meant for
such rough treatment.

The machine served its purpose until its last metal arm was broken.

The house watched as the woman cried for a few minutes and then, clad
only in high-heel shoes and wristwatch, continued her search of the
bedroom.

She is different, the house thought. She does not scream threats at me
like the man does. Still, I do not like her because she wants to steal
from my masters and does not care what happens to me.

The house switched its attention to the man.

He had concluded his search of the dining room and was now searching a
guest room. He found the gun the house's master had hidden there.

The man waved the gun at the motionless walls. "See what I found,
house! You try any more funny stuff and I'll kill you!"

"You do not frighten me," the house replied via one of its many hidden
microphones. To verify the statement, it turned on the heating units
full blast.

A few minutes later, the man stopped his search of a closet when he
noticed that sweat was rolling off his body as if he were standing at
the gates of hell itself.

He left the closet and shouted at an open door, "Stop it! Do you hear,
stop it!" He shook his head from side to side, violently, as if to
impress the house with the necessity of obeying.

"You can't stop me with the gun," the house informed him. "There are
one hundred and two air-conditioning vents in the house. If you took
time to find and destroy all of them, you could never leave here before
my masters return."

The man's jaw sagged, and with an equal sag of his shoulders he
returned to his search of the closet.

The house deducted, They are burglars, only burglars. They want to
escape before my masters return because they would have to kill them
and they are not murderers.

The man grunted with satisfaction when he stopped sweating. And
grunted with anger when, a few minutes later, the room became so cold
he was shivering and his breath was like smoke.

The house established automatic circuits to give the room a continuous
fluctuation of temperature from extreme heat to extreme coldness every
two minutes and turned its attention to the woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

Still attired only in shoes and wristwatch, the woman was now searching
the bathroom.

Quite by accident, she touched a certain spot of the medicine cabinet
and stared with fascination as the cabinet swung completely around to
display its back which was--the safe. It was unlocked.

She grabbed the large metal box inside, opened it, and glanced at the
few glittering jewels and small bundle of bills.

"It's here!" she cried. She whirled and took a step toward the door.

That was as far as she got for several minutes.

The bathroom was equipped with automatic dispensers of temporary and
permanent depilatories. The house's male master used the temporary
depilatory to shave with every morning and the house was well
acquainted with their use.

It selected the _permanent_ depilatory, and nozzles set in the tile
walls squirted large gobs of it on the woman's head. Slender rubber
tentacles reached out and massaged the depilatory into the hair.
Faucets swung and sprayed jets of warm water.

In a few seconds, the woman was completely hairless. She stared with
horror at the blond hair in the pool of water at her feet. "Was it
permanent?" she wondered aloud.

"Yes," the house replied.

She screamed and picked up a small weighing machine. With
uncontrollable anger, she smashed the machine against the medicine
cabinet.

With an equal but emotionless anger, the house squirted soap into her
eyes and sprayed her naked body with alternate jets of hot and cold
water.

The house won the battle.

The woman groped blindly for the jewel box and staggered from the
bathroom. The house turned its attention to the man again.

He had searched the kitchen without incident, but as he walked toward
the door a nearby food-dispenser opened. Prunes, waffles, bacon, eggs
and toast left the machine with abnormal speed and struck him.

He turned just in time to receive cherry pie, spaghetti and meat balls,
butter, vegetable soup, and ice cream in his face.

He shouted something unprintable at the house, wiped the mess from his
face and took another step toward the door.

Half of a watermelon hurtled from the food-dispenser and squashed
against his skull. He stumbled, fell and slid.

He heard the woman cry, "I found it!" He pulled himself to his feet. He
ran into the hall and froze when he saw the naked, hairless apparition
that stumbled from the bathroom.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a moment, he forgot the money and gasped, "What happened?"

"Depilatory," she explained. "The house did it." She wiped soap from
blood-shot eyes with the back of a hand. "When we get out, give me your
gun. I want to give this house something to remember!"

The man seized the metal box and examined the contents. "Over twenty
thousand, hon. With that, you can buy plenty of wigs." He attempted a
smile but did succeed when he got a close look at her bald head. He
grabbed her arm. "Let's go! You can put on my coat in the helicar."

The woman allowed herself to be dragged through the house, all the
while shaking a fist at the house's walls and threatening, "You hear
me, house? When I get outside, I'm going to burn you! You'll make a
nice little bonfire!"

Too bad, the house reflected. Too bad I am two miles from the nearest
neighbor. If it were not for that, I could use my amplifiers and call
for help. I do not want them to escape with my owners' possessions. I
can repair most of the damage but I could never recover the money and--

The man stepped off the small front porch with the jewel box in one
hand, dragging the woman behind him with the other.

It was dark outside.

That was why he didn't notice: The house had risen two hundred feet on
its antigravity rays.

The ground below was very hard.

The house sang softly and waited for the return of its masters.

***

THE CYBER _and_ JUSTICE HOLMES

                            BY FRANK RILEY

             _Old Judge Anderson feared the inevitable--he
             was to be replaced by a Cyber! A machine that
             dealt out decisions free of human errors and
              emotions. What would Justice Holmes think?_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1955.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Cyber justice!" That's what the District Attorney had called it in his
campaign speech last night.

"Cyber justice!"

Oh, hell!

Judge Walhfred Anderson threw the morning fax paper on top of the law
books he had been researching for the past two hours, and stomped
angrily across his chamber to the door of the courtroom.

But it was easier to throw away the paper than the image of the words:

"--and, if re-elected, I pledge to do all in my power to help replace
human inefficiency with Cyber justice in the courts of this county!

"We've seen what other counties have done with Cyber judges. We've
witnessed the effectiveness of cybernetic units in our own Appellate
Division.... And I can promise you twice as many prosecutions at half
the cost to the taxpayers ... with modern, streamlined Cyber justice!"

Oh, hell!

Walhfred Anderson caught a glimpse of his reflection in the oval mirror
behind the coat rack. He paused, fuming, and smoothed down the few
lingering strands of grey hair. The District Attorney was waiting for
him out there. No use giving him the satisfaction of looking upset.
Only a few moments ago, the Presiding Judge had visaphoned a warning
that the D.A. had obtained a change of calendar and was going to spring
a surprise case this morning....

The Judge cocked his bow tie at a jaunty angle, opened the neckline of
his black robe enough for the pink boutonniere to peep out, and stepped
into the courtroom as sprightly as his eighty-six years would permit.

The District Attorney was an ex-football player, square-shouldered and
square-jawed. He propelled himself to his feet, bowed perfunctorily and
remained standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

As the bailiff's voice repeated the pledge in an unbroken monotone,
Walhfred Anderson allowed his eyes to wander to the gold-framed picture
of his personal symbol of justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Judge
Anderson winked at Justice Holmes. It was a morning ritual he had
observed without fail for nearly fifty years.

This wasn't the classic picture of Justice Holmes. Not the leonine
figure Walhfred Anderson had once seen in the National Gallery. The
Justice Holmes on the wall of Judge Anderson's courtroom was much
warmer and more human than the official portrait. It was from an old
etching that showed the Justice wearing a natty grey fedora. The
Justice's fabled mustaches were long and sweeping, giving him the air
of a titled playboy, but his eyes were the eyes of the man who had
said: "When I am dying, my last words will be--have faith and pursue
the unknown end."

Those were good words to remember, when you were eighty-six. Walhfred
Anderson stared wistfully at the yellowed etching, waiting for some
other dearly remembered phrase to spring up between them. But Justice
Holmes wasn't communicative this morning. He hadn't been for a long
time.

The District Attorney's voice, threaded with sarcasm, broke into his
reverie:

"If the Court pleases, I would like to call up the case of People vs.
Professor Neustadt."

Walhfred Anderson accepted the file from his aging, nearsighted clerk.
He saw that the case had been assigned originally to Department 42. It
was the case he had been warned about by the Presiding Judge.

Walhfred Anderson struggled to focus all his attention on the complaint
before him. His craggy features, once described as resembling a benign
bulldog, grew rigid with concentration. The Judge had a strong sense
of honor about dividing his attention in Court. A case was not just a
case; it was a human being whose past, present and future were wrapped
up in the charge against him.

"Your Honor," the District Attorney broke in, impatiently, "if the
Court will permit, I can summarize this case very quickly...."

The tone of his voice implied:

A Cyber judge would speed things up around here. Feed the facts into
the proprioceptor, and they'd be stored and correlated instantly.

Perhaps so, Walhfred Anderson thought, suddenly tired, though the
morning was still young. At eighty-six you couldn't go on fighting
and resisting much longer. Maybe he should resign, and listen to
the speeches at a farewell luncheon, and let a Cyber take over. The
Cybers were fast. They ruled swiftly and surely on points of law. They
separated fact from fallacy. They were not led down side avenues of
justice by human frailty. Their vision was not blurred by emotion.
And yet ... Judge Anderson looked to Justice Holmes for a clarifying
thought, but the Justice's eyes were opaque, inscrutable.

Judge Anderson wearily settled back in his tall chair, bracing the ache
in his back against the leather padding.

"You may proceed," he told the District Attorney.

"Thank you, your Honor."

This time the edge of sarcasm was so sharp that the Clerk and Court
Stenographer looked up indignantly, expecting one of the Judge's famous
retorts.

The crags in the Judge's face deepened, but he remained quiet.

With a tight smile, the District Attorney picked up his notebook.

"The defendant," he began crisply, "is charged on three counts of fraud
under Section 31...."

"To wit," rumbled Judge Anderson, restlessly.

"To wit," snapped the D.A., "the defendant is charged with giving
paid performances at a local theatre, during which he purported to
demonstrate that he could take over Cyber functions and perform them
more efficiently."

Walhfred Anderson felt the door closing on him. So this was why the
D.A. had requested a change of calendar! What a perfect tie-in with the
election campaign! He swiveled to study the defendant.

Professor Neustadt was an astonishingly thin little man; the bones of
his shoulders seemed about to thrust through the padding of his cheap
brown suit. His thinness, combined with a tuft of white hair at the
peak of his forehead, gave him the look of a scrawny bird.

"Our investigation of this defendant," continued the D.A., "showed that
his title was assumed merely for stage purposes. He has been associated
with the less creditable phases of show business for many years. In his
youth, he gained considerable attention as a 'quiz kid', and later, for
a time, ran his own program and syndicated column. But his novelty wore
off, and he apparently created this cybernetic act to...."

Rousing himself to his judicial responsibility, Judge Anderson
interrupted:

"Is the defendant represented by counsel?"

"Your Honor," spoke up Professor Neustadt, in a resonant, bass voice
that should have come from a much larger diaphragm, "I request the
Court's permission to act as my own attorney."

Walhfred Anderson saw the D.A. smile, and he surmised that the old
legal truism was going through his mind: A man who defends himself has
a fool for a client.

"If it's a question of finances," the Judge rumbled gently.

"It is not a question of finances. I merely wish to defend myself."

Judge Anderson was annoyed, worried. Whoever he was or claimed to be,
this Professor was evidently something of a crackpot. The D.A. would
tear him to small pieces, and twist the whole case into an implicit
argument for Cyber judges.

"The defendant has a right to act as his own counsel," the D.A.
reminded him.

"The Court is aware of that," retorted the Judge. Only the restraining
eye of Oliver Wendell Holmes kept him from cutting loose on the D.A.
But one more remark like that, and he'd turn his back on the Justice.
After all, what right had Holmes to get stuffy at a time like this?
He'd never had to contend with Cyber justice!

He motioned to the D.A. to continue with the People's case, but the
Professor spoke up first:

"Your Honor, I stipulate to the prosecution evidence."

The D.A. squinted warily.

"Is the defendant pleading guilty?"

"I am merely stipulating to the evidence. Surely the prosecution knows
the difference between a stipulation and a plea! I am only trying to
save the time of the Court by stipulating to the material facts in the
complaint against me!"

The D.A. was obviously disappointed in not being able to present his
case. Walhfred Anderson repressed an urge to chuckle. He wondered how a
Cyber judge would handle a stipulation.

"Do you have a defense to present?" he asked the Professor.

"Indeed I do, your Honor! I propose to bring a Cyber into the courtroom
and prove that I can perform its functions more efficiently!"

The D.A. flushed.

"What kind of a farce is this? We've watched the defendant's
performance for several days, and it's perfectly clear that he is
merely competing against his own special Cyber unit, one with very
limited memory storage capacity...."

"I propose further," continued Professor Neustadt, ignoring the D.A.,
"that the prosecution bring any Cyber unit of its choice into Court. I
am quite willing to compete against any Cyber yet devised!"

This man was not only a crackpot, he was a lunatic, thought Walhfred
Anderson with an inward groan. No one but a lunatic would claim he
could compete with the memory storage capacity of a Cyber.

As always when troubled, he looked toward Oliver Wendell Holmes for
help, but the Justice was still inscrutable. He certainly was being
difficult this morning!

The Judge sighed, and began a ruling:

"The procedure suggested by the defendant would fail to answer to the
material counts of the complaint...."

But, as he had expected, the D.A. did not intend to let this
opportunity pass.

"May it please the Court," said the District Attorney, with a wide grin
for the fax reporter, "the people will stipulate to the defense, and
will not press for trial of the complaint if the defendant can indeed
compete with a Cyber unit of our choice."

Walhfred Anderson glowered at the unsympathetic Justice Holmes. Dammit,
man, he thought, don't be so calm about this whole thing. What if you
were sitting here, and I was up there in a gold frame? Aloud, he
hedged:

"The Court does not believe such a test could be properly and fairly
conducted."

"I am not concerned with being fairly treated," orated the wispy
Professor. "I propose that five questions or problems be posed to the
Cyber and myself, and that we be judged on both the speed and accuracy
of our replies. I am quite willing for the prosecution to select the
questions."

Go to hell, Holmes, thought Judge Anderson. I don't need you anyway.
I've got the answer. The Professor is stark, raving mad.

Before he could develop a ruling along this line, the grinning D.A. had
accepted the Professor's terms.

"I have but one condition," interposed the defendant, "if I win this
test, I would like to submit a question of my own to the Cyber."

The D.A. hesitated, conferred in a whisper with his assistant, then
shrugged.

"We so stipulate."

Firmly, Walhfred Anderson turned his back on Oliver Wendell Holmes.

"In the opinion of the Court," he thundered, "the proposed
demonstration would be irrelevant, immaterial and without substantive
basis in law. Unless the People proceed with their case in the proper
manner, the Court will dismiss this complaint!"

"Objection!"

"Objection!"

The word was spoken simultaneously by both the D.A. and the Professor.
Then the defendant bowed toward the District Attorney, and asked him to
continue.

       *       *       *       *       *

For one of the few times in his life, Walhfred Anderson found himself
faced with the same objection, at the same time, from both prosecution
and defense. What a morning! He felt like turning the court over to a
Cyber judge right here and now, and stomping back to his chambers. Let
Holmes try getting along with a Cyber!

The D.A.'s voice slashed into his thoughts.

"The People object on the grounds that there is ample precedent in law
for the type of court demonstration to which we have agreed...."

"For example," spoke up the Professor, "People vs. Borth, 201 N.Y.,
Supp. 47--"

The District Attorney blinked, and looked wary again.

"The People are not familiar with the citation," he said, "but there
is no reason to be in doubt. The revised Judicial Code of Procedure
provides for automatic and immediate review of disputed points of law
by the Cyber Appellate Division."

CAD! Walhfred Anderson customarily used every legal stratagem to avoid
the indignity of appearing before CAD. But now he was neatly trapped.

Grumbling, he visaphoned the Presiding Judge, and was immediately
assigned to Cyber V, CAD, fourth floor.

Cyber V presided over a sunlit, pleasantly carpeted courtroom in the
south wing of the Justice Building. Square, bulky, with mat black
finish, the Cyber reposed in the center of a raised mahogany stand.
Its screen and vocader grill looked austerely down on the long tables
provided for opposing counsel.

As Walhfred Anderson belligerently led the Professor and the D.A. into
the courtroom, Cyber V hummed softly. A dozen colored lights on its
front grid began to blink.

Judge Anderson angrily repressed an instinct to bow, as he had done
in his younger years when appearing to plead a case before a human
Appellate Court.

The Cyber's soft, pleasantly modulated voice said:

"Please proceed."

Curbing his roiled feelings of rage and indignity, the Judge stepped to
the stand in front of the vocader grill and tersely presented the facts
of the case, the reasons for his ruling. Cyber V blinked and hummed
steadily, assimilating and filing the facts.

The D.A. followed the Judge to the stand, and, from long habit,
addressed Cyber V with the same emotion and voice tricks he would have
used in speaking to a human judge. Walhfred Anderson grimaced with
disgust.

When the D.A. finished, Cyber V hummed briefly, two amber lights
flickered, and the soft voice said:

"Defense counsel will please take the stand."

Professor Neustadt smiled his ironic, exasperating smile.

"The defense stipulates to the facts as stated."

The frontal grid lights on Cyber V flashed furiously; the hum rose to a
whine, like a motor accelerating for a steep climb.

Suddenly, all was quiet, and Cyber V spoke in the same soft, pleasant
voice:

"There are three cases in modern jurisprudence that have direct bearing
on the matter of People vs. Neustadt.

"Best known is the case of People vs. Borth, 201 N.Y., Supp. 47...."

Walhfred Anderson saw the D.A. stiffen to attention as the Cyber
repeated the citation given by Professor Neustadt. He felt his own
pulse surge with the stir of a faint, indefinable hope.

"There are also the cases of Forsythe vs. State, 6 Ohio, 19, and Murphy
vs. U.S., 2d, 85 C.C.A.

"These cases establish precedence for a courtroom demonstration to
determine points of material fact.

"Thank you, Gentlemen."

The voice stopped. All lights went dark. Cyber V, CAD, had rendered its
decision.

Whatever misgivings the D.A. may have generated over the Professor's
display of legal knowledge were overshadowed now by his satisfaction at
this display of Cyber efficiency.

"Eight minutes!" he announced triumphantly. "Eight minutes to present
the facts of the case and obtain a ruling. There's efficiency for you!
There's modern courtroom procedure!"

Walhfred Anderson felt the weight of eighty-six years as he cocked
the angle of his bow tie, squared his shoulders and led the way back
to his own courtroom. Maybe the new way was right. Maybe he was just
an old man, burdened with dreams, memories, the impedimentia of human
emotions. It would have taken him many long, weary hours to dig out
those cases. Maybe the old way had died with Holmes and the other
giants of that era.

Details of the demonstration were quickly concluded. The D.A. selected
a Cyber IX for the test. Evidently he had acquired a new respect for
Professor Neustadt and was taking no chances. Cyber IX was a massive
new model, used as an intergrator by the sciences. Judge Anderson had
heard that its memory storage units were the greatest yet devised.

If Professor Neustadt had also heard this, he gave no sign of it. He
made only a slight, contemptuous nod of assent to the D.A.'s choice.

For an instant, the Judge found himself hoping that the Professor would
be beaten into humility by Cyber IX. The man's attitude was maddening.

Walhfred Anderson banged his gavel harder than necessary, and recessed
the hearing for three days. In the meantime, a Cyber IX was to be moved
into the courtroom and placed under guard. Professor Neustadt was freed
on bail, which he had already posted.

Court fax-sheet reporters picked up the story and ballooned it. The
D.A.'s office released publicity stories almost hourly. Cartoonists
created "Battle of the Century" illustrations, with Cyber IX and
Professor Neustadt posed like fighters in opposite corners of the ring.
"Man challenges machine" was the caption, indicating that the Professor
was a definite underdog and thus the sentimental favorite. One court
reporter confided to Judge Anderson that bookmakers were offering odds
of ten to one on Cyber IX.

To the Judge's continuing disgust, Professor Neustadt seemed as avid
as the Prosecutor's office for publicity. He allowed himself to be
guest-interviewed on every available television show; one program dug
up an ancient film of the Professor as a quiz kid, extracting cube
roots in a piping, confident voice.

Public interest boiled. TV coverage of the court test was demanded,
and eagerly agreed to by both the Prosecutor and Professor Neustadt.
Walhfred Anderson ached to cry out against bringing a carnival
atmosphere into his courtroom; the fax photographers were bad enough.
But he knew that any attempt to interfere would bring him back before
that infernal CAD.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he entered his courtroom on the morning of the trial, the Judge
wore a new bow tie, a flippant green, but he felt like many a defendant
he had watched step up before his bench to receive sentence. After this
morning, there'd be no stopping the D.A.'s campaign for Cyber judges.
He glared unhappily at the battery of television cameras. He noted that
one of them was pointed at Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Justice didn't
seem to mind; but who would--all safe and snug in a nice gold frame?
Easy enough for Holmes to look so cocky.

The bright lights hurt his eyes, and he had to steel himself in order
to present the picture of dignified equanimity that was expected of a
judge. People would be looking at him from every part of the world.
Five hundred million viewers, one of the columnists had estimated.

Professor Neustadt appeared in the same shiny brown suit. As he
passed the huge Cyber IX unit, metallic gray and mounted on a table
of reinforced steel, the Professor paused and bowed, in the manner of
a courtly gladiator saluting a respected foe. Spectators clapped and
whistled their approval. Television cameras zoomed in on the scene.
With easy showmanship, Professor Neustadt maintained the pose for
closeups, his owlish eyes wide and unblinking.

Judge Anderson banged his gavel for order. What a poseur! What a fraud!
This charlatan would get a million dollars worth of publicity out of
the case.

At a nod from the D.A., the bailiff gave Professor Neustadt a pad
of paper on which to note his answers. It had been previously been
agreed that Cyber IX would answer visually, on the screen, instead of
by vocader. The Professor was seated at the far end of the counsel
table, where he could not see the screen. Clerks with stopwatches were
stationed behind the Professor and Cyber IX.

"Is the defendant ready?" inquired Judge Anderson, feeling like an
idiot.

"Of course."

The Judge turned to Cyber IX, then caught himself. He flushed. The
courtroom tittered.

The District Attorney had five questions, each in a sealed envelope,
which also contained an answer certified by an eminent authority in the
field.

With a flourish, keeping his profile to the cameras, the D.A. handed
the first envelope to Judge Anderson.

"We'll begin with a simple problem in mathematics," he announced to the
TV audience.

From the smirk in his voice, Judge Anderson was prepared for the worst.
But he read the question with a perverse sense of satisfaction. This
Professor was in for a very rough morning. He cleared his throat, read
aloud:

"In analyzing the economics of atomic power plant operation, calculate
the gross heat input for a power generating plant of 400 x 10^6 watts
electrical output."

Cyber IX hummed into instantaneous activity; its lights flashed in
sweeping curves and spirals across the frontal grid.

Professor Neustadt sat perfectly still, eyes closed. Then he scribbled
something on a pad of paper.

Two stopwatches clicked about a second apart. The clerk handed the
Professor's slip of paper to Judged Anderson. The Judge checked it,
turned to the screen. Both answers were identical:

3,920 x 10^6 BTU/hr.

Time was announced as fourteen seconds for Cyber IX; fifteen and
three-tenths seconds for Professor Neustadt. The Cyber had won the
first test, but by an astoundingly close margin. The courtroom burst
into spontaneous applause for the Professor. Walhfred Anderson was
incredulous. What a fantastic performance!

No longer smirking, the D.A. handed the Judge a second envelope.

"What is the percentage compressibility of caesium under 45,000
atmospheres of pressure, and how do you account for it?"

Once again Cyber IX hummed and flickered into action.

And once again Professor Neustadt sat utterly still, head tilted back
like an inquisitive parakeet. Then he wrote swiftly. A stopwatch
clicked.

Walhfred Anderson took the answer with trembling fingers. He saw the
D.A. rub dry lips together, try to moisten them with a dry tongue. A
second stopwatch clicked.

The Judge compared the correct answer with the Professor's answer and
the answer on the screen. All were worded differently, but in essence
were the same. Hiding his emotion in a tone gruffer than usual, Judge
Anderson read the Professor's answer:

"The change in volume is 17 percent. It is due to an electronic
transition for a 6s zone to a 5d zone."

The Professor's elapsed time was 22 seconds. Cyber IX had taken 31
seconds to answer the compound question.

Professor Neustadt pursued his lips; he seemed displeased with his
tremendous performance.

Moving with the agility of a pallbearer, the D.A. gave Judge Anderson
the third question:

"In twenty-five words or less, state the Nernst Law of thermodynamics."

This was clearly a trick question, designed to trap a human mind in its
own verbiage.

Cyber IX won, in eighteen seconds. But in just two-fifths of a second
more; Professor Neustadt came through with a brilliant twenty-four
word condensation:

"The entropy of a substance becomes zero at the absolute zero of
temperature, provided it is brought to this temperature by a reversible
process."

A tabulation of total elapsed time revealed that Professor Neustadt was
leading by nine and three-tenths seconds.

A wild excitement blended with the Judge's incredulity. The D.A. seemed
to have developed a tic in his right check.

On the fourth question, dealing with the structural formula
similarities of dimenhydrinate and diphenhydramine hydrochloride,
Professor Neustadt lost three seconds.

On the fifth question, concerning the theoretical effects of humidity
inversion on microwave transmission, the Professor gained back a full
second.

The courtroom was bedlam, and Walhfred Anderson was too excited to
pound his gavel. In the glass-walled, soundproofed television booths,
announcers grew apoplectic as they tried to relay the fever-pitch
excitement of the courtroom to the outside world.

Professor Neustadt held up his bone-thin hand for silence.

"May it please the Court.... The District Attorney agreed that in the
event of victory I could ask Cyber IX an optional question. I would
like to do so at this time."

Judge Anderson could only nod, and hope that his bulldog features
were concealing his emotions. The D.A. kept his back rigidly to the
television cameras.

Professor Neustadt strutted up to Cyber IX, flipped on the vocader
switch and turned to the cameras.

"Since Cyber IX is essentially a scientific integrator and mathematical
unit," he began pedantically, "I'll put my question in the Cyber's
own framework. Had another Cyber been selected for this test, I would
phrase my question differently."

He turned challengingly back to Cyber IX, paused for dramatic effect,
and asked:

"What are the magnitudes of a dream?"

Cyber IX hummed and twinkled. The hum rose higher and higher. The
lights flickered in weird, disjointed patterns, blurring before the eye.

Abruptly, the hum stopped. The lights dimmed, faded one by one.

The eternally calm, eternally pleasant voice of Cyber IX spoke from the
vocader grill:

"Problem unsolved."

       *       *       *       *       *

For an interminable instant there was silence in the courtroom.
Complete silence. Stunned incredulity. It was followed by a collective
gasp, which Walhfred Anderson could hear echoing around the world.
Cyber IX had been more than beaten; it had failed to solve a problem.

The gasp gave way to unrestrained cheering.

But the Professor brought quiet again by raising his bony hand. Now
there was a strange, incongruous air of dignity about his thin figure.

"Please," he said, "please understand one thing.... The purpose of this
demonstration and my question was not to discredit Cyber IX, which is
truly a great machine, a wonder of science.

"Cyber IX could not know the magnitudes of a dream ... because it
cannot dream.

"As a matter of fact, I do not know the magnitudes of a dream, but that
is not important ... because I _can_ dream!

"The dream is the difference.... The dream born in man, as the poet
said, 'with a sudden, clamorous pain' ..."

There was no movement or sound in the courtroom. Walhfred Anderson held
the Professor's last written answer between his fingers, as if fearing
that even the small movement to release it might shatter something
delicate and precious. "The dream is the difference!" There it was. So
clear and true and beautiful. He looked at Holmes, and Holmes seemed to
be smiling under his gray mustache. Yes, Holmes had known the dream.

In the sound-proof booths, the announcers had stopped speaking; all
mike lines were open to carry Professor Neustadt's words to five
hundred million people.

"Perhaps there are no magnitudes of such a dream ... no coordinates! Or
it may be that we are not yet wise enough to know them. The future may
tell us, for the dream is the rainbow bridge from the present and the
past to the future."

Professor Neustadt's eyes were half-closed again, and his head was
cocked back, bird-like.

"Copernicus dreamed a dream.... So did da Vinci, Galileo and Newton,
Darwin and Einstein ... all so long ago....

"Cyber IX has not dreamed a dream.... Nor have Cyber VIII, VII, VI, V,
IV, III, II, I.

"But they can free men to dream.

"Remember that, if you forget all else: They can free men to dream!

"Man's knowledge has grown so vast that much of it would be lost or
useless without the storage and recall capacity of the Cybers--and man
himself would be so immersed in what he knows that he would never have
time to dream of that which he does not yet know, but must and can know.

"Why should not the scientist use the past without being burdened by
it? Why should not the lawyer and the judge use the hard-won laws of
justice without being the slave of dusty law books?"

Walhfred Anderson accepted the rebuke without wincing. The rebuke for
all the hours he had wasted because he had been too stubborn to use a
Cyber clerk, or consult Cyber V. The old should not resist the new, nor
the new destroy the old. There was the letter of the law, and there
was the spirit, and the spirit was the dream. What was old Hammurabi's
dream? Holmes had quoted it once, "... to establish justice on the
earth ... to hold back the strong from oppressing the feeble ... to
shine like the sun-god upon the blackheaded men, and to illumine the
land...." Holmes had dreamed the dream, all right. He had dreamed it
grandly. But maybe there was room for small dreams, too, and still time
for dreams when the years were so few and lonely.

The Professor suddenly opened his eyes, and his voice took on the
twang of steel under tension.

"You are already wondering," he told the cameras accusingly, "whether I
have not disproved my own words by defeating Cyber IX.

"That is not true.

"I defeated Cyber IX because I have wasted a man's life--my own! You
all know that as a child I was a mnemonic freak, a prodigy, if you
prefer. My mind was a filing cabinet, a fire-proof cabinet neatly
filled with facts that could never kindle into dreams. All my life I
have stuffed my filing cabinet. For sixty years I have filed and filed.

"And then I dreamed one dream--my first, last and only dream.

"I dreamed that man would mis-use another gift of science, as he has
mis-used so many.... I dreamed of the Cybers replacing and enslaving
man, instead of freeing man to dream.... And I dreamed that the golden
hour would come when a man would have to prove that he could replace
a Cyber--and thereby prove that neither man nor Cybers should ever
replace each other."

Professor Neustadt turned to Judge Anderson, and his voice dropped
almost to a whisper.

"Your Honor, I move that this case be dismissed."

The worn handle of his old teakwood gavel felt warm and alive to the
Judge's fingers. He sat up straight, and banged resoundingly on the top
of his desk.

"Case dismissed."

Then, in full view of the cameras, Walhfred Anderson turned and winked
boldly at Oliver Wendell Holmes.

***

THE PROGRAMMED PEOPLE

                            By JACK SHARKEY

                          Illustrated by EMSH

                   _From Light-of-Day to Ultrablack,
                the people of the Hive went about their
                rigid lives in ignorance of their real
                   ruler, of their true history. How
                  could one slender blonde girl crack
                 this powerful monolithic structure?_

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                  Amazing Stories June and July 1963.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




                               CHAPTER 1


Under the stark bluewhite glow that glittered from hidden niches onto
the faceted undersurface of the vast vaulted crystal dome, the people
milled and jockeyed for position near the dais. There was still room
to move about and select a standing-site; most of the heavy thronging
was still at the entrances, the wide, squat arches giving egress to the
fifteen block-long arcades that radiated from the center of the temple
like the spokes of a gigantic wheel. Between the pillars that framed
these arches, long unbroken walls served as firm backdrops for the Vote
Boxes, twenty-five to a wall, three hundred seventy-five in all, to
service a building that could hold five thousand.

Lloyd Bodger took a quick look at his wristwatch while there was still
sufficient elbow-room to lift his arm. Two minutes till eight P.M.
Service began promptly on the hour. He gauged his nearness to the dais
with a practiced eye, then let himself be wedged into place by the
increasing pressure of urgent bodies about him. It would not do to
remain in the rear of the hemispherical room, where he might lose some
of the Speakster's words, words that might have direct bearing upon
the next Vote; nor would it do to let himself stand too near the dais,
from which central point he might find himself at the tail end of the
voting line, should the Proposition Screens begin to glow during the
Service. A decisive Vote could be made in ten seconds, but each Kinsman
was allowed thirty. The Screen would only propose the bill for five
minutes before the Count. That meant that Lloyd must be at least the
tenth person in a line in order to be assured his chance to nock his
Voteplate in the slot. He'd missed two of his allowable three non-Votes
this quarter, already. It would not do to miss another.

       *       *       *       *       *

The glow from the dome decreased, suddenly, as the center of the dais
unfolded back into fifteen equal wedge-segments, like a blossoming
flower, and the Speakster rose into view amid a solemn hush. Bright
golden light made the white velvet robe shimmer like a slippery flame,
and made the shadowy aspect of the cowl-hidden features all the more
terrible. The golden light spilled upward from the surfaces of the
fifteen triangular "petals", bathing the Speakster thoroughly in bright
radiance, leaving the remainder of the Temple in even darker darkness
by contrast.

The arms of the Speakster rose slowly, angling domeward over his unseen
head, until the folds of the weighty sleeves slid back a trifle at
the cuff, exposing the wax-white hands, fingers spread wide apart,
palms toward the beginning of the dome-curve, as though warding off
impending dangers. Lloyd shivered, suddenly, despite the suffocating
warmth of the crowd. This would not be a regular Service. That was the
Danger-stance. Unconsciously, he held his breath, listening, as the
mass tension grew unbearably electric.

"There cannot be Service tonight!" thundered the Speakster. "We are
polluted from within. It would be sacrilege to have Service with a
traitor in our midst!" Then, over the rising gasp that arose from the
multitude, "She has been traced to this holy place, in a fiendish
attempt to lose herself among the masses, to hide her rottenness amid
the healthy flesh of the Kinsmen! Remain in your places--!" cried the
Speakster, as a short-lived Brownian Movement began in the close-packed
mob. People froze in place at the peremptory shout. "The Goons have
been alerted, and are even now converging through the arcades!" said
the Speakster. A sigh of relief whispered like a concerted zephyr over
the up-turned faces. "She will be found out, have no fear. When I
depart and the Light-of-Day returns, you must exit through the arcade
by which you entered. You will be checked by a squad of Goons on your
way out. Remember, a good Kinsman has nothing to fear!"

The outstretched arms swung down until the pallid palms came firmly
together before the Speakster's chest, the cowled head bowed low, and
then the figure on the dais descended from sight, the stiff "petals"
re-closing over the spot on which the Speakster had stood, and the
golden light vanishing as the Light-of-Day sprang bluely into harsh
life against the crystal dome. Lloyd turned obediently, as soon as
movement was possible in the dispersing crowd, and started toward his
point of entrance, the arcade that would lead him into his sector of
the Hive.

Without warning, the Proposition Screens flickered on, and the crowd's
movement jerked to a confused halt. Then, as though collectively
realizing that there was time enough to be checked by the Goons after
the Vote, people formed into neat lines, queuing up before the Vote
Boxes that lined the walls.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd took another look at his watch. Five past eight. That gave
him till ten past to arrive at the Vote Box. With mounting anxiety,
he counted heads in the line before him. He was twelfth. If each
person took the allotted thirty seconds--He'd miss his Vote, have to
be hospitalized for Readjustment. He tried to stay calm as the line
advanced.

With two minutes to go, he found four people before him. The first,
a grey-suited man with very little hair, nocked his plate in the
slot--Then stood and pondered. It was fully twenty-five seconds before
he depressed one of the buttons in the Vote Box's interior, where
his choice would remain secret. Another few seconds to retrieve his
plate, and then a full six precious seconds while the next person, a
skinny woman very near the compulsory retirement age, fumbled in a deep
leather purse for her card. And _she_ pondered....

Sweat sprang out on Lloyd's forehead. There wouldn't be enough time.
There _couldn't_ be ... unless--

"Miss!" he said, to the back of the small blonde head in front of him.
The girl spun about to face him, dark green eyes wide in fright, breath
hissing between parted lips. "I didn't mean to startle you," he said,
contritely. "It's just that--" It was terrible, telling such an awful
confidence to a total stranger, but it was the only way to convince her
quickly. "I've missed twice this quarter," he blurted. "Not my fault.
I'm a good Kinsman, honestly. It was line-jams, both times. Too many
people for too few Vote Boxes. You must believe me!"

"What--" she said, a little dazedly. "What can _I_ do?"

"Let me have your place in line!" begged Lloyd. "I've timed it. Less
than a minute left till Count, and two ahead of me, including yourself.
_Please_ help me!"

"I--" she said, with a funny, almost hysterical smile. "I don't know
why you should be so--" Then she stepped aside, swiftly. "Go ahead.
Hurry!"

Lloyd leaped into the breach without even pausing to voice his thanks.
As the young man before him stepped away, Lloyd jammed his plate into
the slot, and shoved his fingers inside the handspace. A fumble, and he
had a button, he didn't know which one. Pro was right, Con was left,
but he just prodded it inward without checking its location. Then the
light died on the screen, and his plate popped out of the slot. He
caught it deftly, sighed in quavery relief, and turned to thank his
benefactor. He saw her, trailing after the departing people toward one
of the arcades, shuffling her feet, apparently in no hurry. Then an
uncomfortable thought struck him, and he ran to catch up with her.

"Miss--!" he said, taking her arm. Again the brief look of fear on
her features, then she smiled. It was a small, very tired smile. "You
needn't thank me--" she began.

"I wasn't going to--" said Lloyd. Then, embarrassed, "I mean, of
_course_ I'd thank you, but that isn't why I came after you. I just
realized--Have _you_ missed any Votes this quarter? I'd hate to be the
cause of _your_ Readjustment...."

"There's no danger," she said softly, "of my getting in trouble for
non-voting."

       *       *       *       *       *

He suddenly remembered the words of the Speakster, and dropped the
girl's hand as though it had burnt him. "You--You're the--"

"Please!" begged the girl, before his voice could rise in a warning
shout to the crowd. "Don't give me away!"

"They'll get you anyhow," he said flatly, with a note of near-pity in
his voice. "By rights, I should raise a cry right this instant, to save
the Goons the trouble of checking all the _good_ Kinsmen." A secondary
thought hit him, and he took a very short step backward. "And you're
diseased. The longer you remain in contact with the crowd, the more
likely a spread of the contagion."

"I'm _not_!" she almost shouted, then clenched her jaws, and got
control of herself. Bright moisture began to trickle from the corners
of her eyes, and she dabbed angrily at the warm salty drops. "I
was hurt, yes!" she said, suddenly pulling back the long sleeve of
her bright green dress, for a brief moment. Lloyd saw the ragged,
pink-edged cicatrix on the underside of her forearm, and winced. "It's
healed," she said. "I didn't _need_ the hospital, don't you see?"

Lloyd saw, and stood there, his mind fumbling dizzily for a direction
to take. The last straggling ends of the crowd were moving into the
arcades, now. Lloyd took his bearings, saw that only one or two people
were now headed for his own arcade, and began to back off in that
direction, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm so terribly sorry. I must go, now."

She nodded, once, then turned her back on him, and stood, small and
helpless, in the growing void that was the Temple proper. Lloyd turned
from her and started toward his arcade. Then he stopped and looked back
at her. She _was_ healed, after all.... He remembered with a sense of
shame the time he'd broken a finger, and hadn't reported for hospital
assignment, because a favorite cowboy was at the neighborhood theatre
that afternoon. He never _had_ gone in, then, being fearful lest the
examining doctors notice that he'd delayed. The finger had healed
itself, a trifle crookedly, and Lloyd had never told anyone of his
dereliction, not even his father. Especially not his father.

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly, he turned and ran back to the girl. "Do they know you?" he
said, fiercely, frightened by his own daring.

"Wh--Who?" gasped the girl, startled by his reappearance. "_Who_ know
me?" Then, catching his meaning, "The goons, you mean?" Lloyd nodded
impatiently. "No, they don't. But they don't have to. I--I have no
Voteplate."

"Can't you girls hang onto _anything_?!" he muttered. "Don't tell me
_yours_ fell in the sea from a Tourgyro?"

"You say that as though you know somebody whose _did_," said the girl.

"My fiancee," he explained, adding, with an embarrassed grin, "I'll be
twenty-five just after next Marriage Day. I found her in the phonebook
listings."

"But--What'd _she_ do?" the girl persisted. "Without a Voteplate, she
could be picked up any time, in the first Goon inspection that arose."

"Take this," he urged, pressing something into her hand. "Your arcade
is third over from mine. When you get outside, wait. I'll meet you
there and get this back. Don't fail me, please."

He spun about and dashed toward his arcade, leaving her standing in the
center of the floor, staring dumbfounded at the flat metal plate in her
hand. Trembling, she turned toward the indicated arch, and followed
swiftly after the stragglers entering it, her perspiring fingers
clamped rigidly upon the engraved face of the Voteplate.




                               CHAPTER 2


Lloyd didn't like Goons. He knew he was supposed to recognize in them
the ultimate in police efficiency, but they still gave him chills. A
Goon, a Governmental Opposer of Neutrality, was a fearful sight. All
were of a size, equal to a micrometer-breadth, a monstrous eight feet
of thick metal and ponderous wheels, bathed from base to apex in the
blurry grey pulsations of their protective force-fields, through which
no power on Earth could penetrate. The metal arms were multi-jointed
and dextrous to a fantastic degree, despite the clumsy look of the
thick tripodal fingers at the ends of the arms. The "eyes" were
wide-set telelenses, a pair of them, to report back all they saw to the
Brain itself, deep beneath the teeming streets of the Hive. And each
Goon spoke with the cold, inflectionless tones of the Brain, the flatly
indifferent voice that could only emanate from a mind of glowing vacuum
tubes and magnetic fields. From any or all of a Goon's six fingertips
could spring the dreaded Snapper Beam, an electronic refinement of
vibrations that struck the human nervous system almost identically with
the chemical effect of strychnine poisoning, except that a Snapper Beam
worked instantly, and always fatally. A brush of the invisible force,
and a man's face creased into the frenzied grin of a madman, his legs
danced wildly, uncontrollably, and the muscles of his back contracted
tightly, relentlessly, remorselessly, until his spine cracked in two.

Lloyd had never seen it employed, save in the theatres. Dispersal of
insurrection by Goons was a popular theme in films. A mob could be
efficiently halted by a sweeping Snapper Beam, to fall like broken
puppets. Goons never lost a film battle. Or a real one.

"Name," said the Goon, as the woman in front of Lloyd moved quickly
out of the arcade. Goons could not inflect. You had to sense their
questions.

"Lloyd Bodger, Junior," said Lloyd, extending his Voteplate for
perusal. The three fingers took the plate from his fingers, and slid it
into a slot in the chest. A sharp click, and the plate was returned to
him, his number now on file in the vast memory banks of the Brain.

"Your sector," said the Goon. With his Voteplate data on file, he would
be hard put to tell a lie. Any discrepancy in his statements would
go hard on him. He hoped, shakily, that the unknown girl had a sharp
memory. She'd only have a few moments to memorize the information on
the plate.

These thoughts flickered through Lloyd's mind in the split second
between the Goon's second query and his outwardly calm response,
"Hundred-Level, Angle One, Unit B."

Lloyd's sector was only one short of being the most important in the
Hive. The President lived in Unit A, in the same Angle. Lloyd Bodger,
Senior, was Secondary Speakster of the entire Hive. But Goons were
no respecters of persons. And less so were they respecters of mere
offspring of persons.

"Assignment," droned the Goon.

"Null," said Lloyd, indicating the question was inapplicable.

"Goal," the Goon sub-questioned.

"Secondary Speakster of the Hive by inheritance."

The Goon's arms suddenly dropped to its thick sides, it swiveled
completely about-face, and rolled swiftly off toward the far end of
the arcade. The interview was over, and it had gone, abruptly as that.
No "Thanks for your time and trouble", or "You pass inspection", or
"That will be all". Goons were built for basic efficiency, not for the
subtler nuances of civilized conversation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Outside the mouth of the arcade, Light-of-Day was still stark bright
blue throughout the Hive. Light-of-Day was dimmed to Ultrablack at ten
P.M. every night of the nine-day week save Temple Day, when it was left
on until eleven-fifteen, giving time enough for the Kinsmen at the ten
P.M. Service to return to their sectors. No one went out in Ultrablack.
You could see nothing when Light-of-Day went out. A struck flame would
burn in Ultrablack, but the light of the flame would not show. Only the
Goons could see what went on, then. If going out during Ultrablack were
absolutely necessary, as it sometimes was on the Governmental level, a
Goon would come and take you to your destination. Being found upon the
street after Ultrablack was a form of rebellion; you would then have to
be hospitalized for Readjustment.

Just as this last thought was flitting across his mind, Lloyd saw the
girl, standing uncertainly at the entrance to the arcade he'd sent her
to, a solemn, green-clad figure in the midst of the converging people
moving into the entrance toward the nine P.M. Service. Her face lighted
up when she saw him, and Lloyd was disconcerted to note the tears that
sprang to her eyes despite her welcoming smile. "How can I ever--?" she
started, but a quick squeeze of his fingers on her arm stopped her.

"Not here," said Lloyd, awkwardly. "Come with me." She fell into step
alongside him without question. He led the way to a bar near the
inter-level lift. They said nothing to one another until they were
seated in a secluded booth, and had pressed the drink-selector that
would light alongside their booth-number behind the bar. They almost
spoke, then, but the waiter showed up too quickly, and they had to wait
until he'd checked their ages on the Voteplates and left.

"Why did you do it?" she said softly.

Lloyd made a grimace. "Because I'm a damned fool, I guess."

The girl nodded seriously. "You are, you know. Taking a risk like
that--! _You_ might have been detected, yourself."

Lloyd looked at her, puzzled. "Detected?"

"As a member of the movement, of course," she said. "You're the first
I've been able to contact since my escape. The progress you've all
made amazes me. Where in heaven did you people learn to duplicate
Voteplates!? I couldn't believe it when the Goon passed me."

"Hold on--" said Lloyd, pressing his hand furiously hard upon hers
where it lay on the smooth table top between them. "Don't say anymore,
please. You've made an error. I am _not_ a member of your movement."
The girl's eyes widened in sudden fear.

"But--Why did you help me? Who _are_ you?"

Lloyd sighed. "I've already answered your first question. And it is
with the most abject embarrassment that I answer your second: I'm Lloyd
Bodger, the Junior version, the only child of the Secondary Speakster
of the Hive." He saw the utter dismay in her face, and added dryly,
"Are you impressed?"

"Shattered is more like it," she said when she'd found her voice again.
"But an extra Voteplate--"

"I can explain the plate," said Lloyd. "It belongs to my fiancee,
Grace Horton. I was going to her place tonight, after Service, with it."

"But you said she'd dropped it--Oh. I see."

"Exactly. Lost in the sea, from a Tourgyro. The Goon in the 'gyro saw
it happen, which was lucky for Grace. He relayed it instantly to the
Brain, and when the 'gyro landed, another Goon was waiting at the
field with a temporary pass for her. Another person, by the way, would
have needed Readjustment, being so careless, but Grace, as my fiancee,
carries just enough weight to get her over the humps. New Voteplates
have to be approved through the President's office, of course. When
this one came in, today, it was turned over to my father, who gave it
to me. I'm not as official as the Goon who'd ordinarily deliver one of
these, but even protocol bows to sentiment, now and then."

       *       *       *       *       *

He suddenly curled the fingers of the hand beneath his own until they
lay fisted in his palm. She looked up at him, then, sensing almost to
the word what he was about to say. "Miss--You know I could turn you in
for what you inadvertently told me, just now. I won't, though. You have
enough counter-information on me to make things hot even for the son of
an official."

"I wouldn't--!"

"Be that as it may," said Lloyd, "let me say something: Quit. Quit now.
Get out of this movement, whatever it is. You can't win, you know.
The Goons are invincible. And I hate to think of you, falling under a
Snapper Beam."

"Death is death," the girl sighed. "One way or another."

He looked at her, genuinely at sea. "I'm afraid I don't know what
you mean, Miss. I only helped you avoid hospitalization because I
myself--Well, let my reasons go. But you shouldn't _fear_ going. Sure,
it's annoying to be laid up for awhile, out of the swing of things,
but--"

The girl pulled her hand away. "You're joking," she said. "You must be
joking. If you're truly the son of the Secondary Speakster, you _must_
know the truth!"

"I still don't follow you," Lloyd said sincerely.

"You _don't_ know!" the girl said, shaken. "You're really convinced
that--Listen to me, listen carefully: There _are_ no hospitals! There
is no Readjustment! There is only death."

"You're out of your mind," Lloyd said, recoiling from her vehemence.
"Of course there are hospitals. I've _seen_ them--!"

"Sure," said the girl. "From a Tourgyro. Or in the movies. But have you
ever _been_ to one? Have you ever met anybody who _returned_ from one?"

"My dear girl," Lloyd protested, really growing concerned for her, "do
you realize the _odds_ against meeting a hospital patient? With disease
almost completely obliterated, and a civilization of ten million
people--!"

"Exactly," said the girl, with a peculiar note of triumph. "Ten million
people. Never so much more as ten million and one, and seldom any less.
Doesn't that perturb you?"

"The wars--" Lloyd began.

"Please," the girl groaned, shaking her head. "Spare me the enlistment
speeches. I know the tales of all the men lost in the battles every
quarter, giving their lives in defense of the Hive. Except that there
_aren't_ any wars, nor battles, any more! There's nothing out on the
planet except wild animals and growing plants! We're the only ten
million people on Earth!"

"That's impossible," said Lloyd. "It's childish to be so
insular-minded. Our Hive is one of ten thousand such--"

"Have you seen another, even _one_ other?"

"For what?" said Lloyd. "All the Hives are alike."

"They've really got you brain-washed, haven't they! You believe
everything the Brain dictates, without question!"

"I have to," said Lloyd, with what he thought was irrefutable logic.
"There's no way of checking things like--Well, like your story of no
wars. I mean, can I be expected to check out ten million people to see
if the number of war dead coincides with the total in the Brain?"

"No," said the girl. "You can't. Not so long as your movements are
restricted to certain sectors, and you're told which street to use,
which side of the street, which direction to walk, which hand to turn
the knob with, which--"

"Those are only traffic rules," Lloyd objected. "Can you imagine ten
million people all going to the same sector at the same time? It'd be
disastrous."

"Sure," said the girl. "For the Brain. People might confer."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd shrugged and gave up. "I can see there's no dissuading you," he
said regretfully. "I only hope that when you're finally caught--"

"They teach me the error of my ways?" she smiled tightly.

"I don't mean it with the inflection _you_ give it," he said. "I really
would like to see you get help. You need help, you know."

"The kind I need is the kind you gave me in The Temple," she said.
"Illegal help. Shelter. Time to make plans. Time to figure out some way
of telling the Hive what's happening to it!"

"You know I've gone farther than I should, already."

"I know," she said. She took the Voteplate from her handbag, and held
it musingly in her fingers. "I really should keep this," she said, then
saw the sudden anxiety in his eyes and relented. "Here, take it." She
slid it under his hand. Lloyd palmed it gratefully. "Our movement could
use a hammerlock on a higher-up," she said, almost wistfully. "But
you're too nice a guy to put the screws on. It'd be a cruel way to show
my gratitude for what you did tonight."

"I did nothing, really," Lloyd said. "I simply saw how fearful you were
of the hospital, and didn't have the heart to turn you in."

"Wait," said the girl. Lloyd stopped speaking. She looked thoughtful,
then leaned forward, very confidentially, and asked, "Does your father
like you? Do you two get along?"

"What is this?" Lloyd demanded suspiciously. "Instant psychoanalysis?"

"Nothing like that," the girl snapped, exasperated. "I mean, does he
_like_ you, as a son, care what _happens_ to you?"

"Well," Lloyd said, slowly, "he'd probably beat my head in for what I
pulled, tonight, with you.... But--yes, he does like me. And he cares
about my welfare."

"Then do this one favor for me," said the girl. "When you get to your
Unit tonight, tell him you feel rotten, all sick inside, and that you
think you should be hospitalized."

"But why should I--?"

"Just tell him. And make it convincing. And, if he really cares about
you--See what happens." She rose from her place. "It'll look funny if I
leave alone. Walk me to the street?"

Once outside, she glanced about, uneasily. "It's after ten. Got to find
a place to hide before Ultrablack."

"But listen--!" Lloyd said, abruptly realizing the grim night that lay
in store for her, with blinding blackness like a palpable pall in the
streets, and only Goons rolling through the empty streets. "You've got
to have _someplace_ to go!"

"_Is_ there someplace? Without a Voteplate?" she said with weary
rhetoric. "I think not. Thanks. Goodnight. And goodbye."

       *       *       *       *       *

She started off down the street. Lloyd hesitated a moment then rushed
after her. "Wait, _I'll_ hide you."

"Why should you take such a risk, for me?" she said.

"It's not for you," Lloyd said, telling as the full truth something
that was only part of the whole. "It's for me. Purely selfish. I risk
more if you're caught tonight. When they question you, under truth
drugs, about your escape from the Temple--and I'm sure _that_ has them
curious--you will be unable to avoid implicating me."

"Is--Is that your only reason? Your own skin?" she said.

"Yes," he said, forcing conviction into the word.

She shrugged and took his arm. "A fugitive can't afford to be choosy. I
have no prospect of escape _but_ you. I'll let you hide me ... if it'll
make you feel safer."

Lloyd nodded, and started toward the lift that would take the two of
them up to the Hundred-Level. It was only as they got aboard, and he'd
keyed the lift-switch with his Voteplate, that he thought to ask, "By
the way--What's your name?"

"Andra," she said. "Andra Corby."

"A nice name. I like it," said Lloyd. "I wasn't sure if you'd tell me
your name."

Andra shrugged. "It'll be in tomorrow's papers, anyway."

Lloyd looked at her uncomfortably, but she was staring straight ahead
at the grillwork gate of the lift.




                               CHAPTER 3


Grace Horton appraised herself in the mirror, and was not pleased with
what she saw. "Face it, Grace," she said aloud. "You are positively
hopeless." She tilted her head to one side. "Well, nearly hopeless."
Her eyes were good, that was something. Wide, gray and thickly lashed,
they were her best feature. Her nose was just too snub to be pert. Her
mouth, though her lips were generous, and her teeth well-aligned, had
too much slack at the outer edges. She either held it in a perpetual
smile--"An easy way to be mistaken for an idiot," she remarked
bitterly--or it sagged. Her hair, an unfortunate mustard-and-brass
shade, would not hold a curl for more than two hours at the outside.
"All I need," she decided ruefully, "is a brand-new head."

Grace leaned away from the mirror to consult the alarm clock which
lay almost hidden behind an impressive array of cosmetics. Five till
eleven. "He's not coming," she said to her image. "Give it up girl. He
said he'd come, and he probably meant it when he said it, but he's not
coming." She turned from the mirror and began to undress, beside the
single three-quarter-sized bed. "And why should he come?" she asked
herself tiredly. "He doesn't love you. He never--to his credit, damn
it--said he did, either. Hive Law requires that all males shall marry
by the age of twenty-five, or be taken for Readjustment. Bachelors are
not good for racial survival, unquote. Unwed girls may list themselves
in the classified section of the phone book, along with their
qualifications, then start sweating it out by the phone. So I did, so
he called me, so we're engaged. But that doesn't mean we have to like
it. Or that _he_ has to, anyhow. And I'm not sure that _I_ do."

Grace toyed a moment with the idea of submitting herself for
Readjustment, then gave it up. "A new face wouldn't help," she decided.
"What I need is a new outlook. Besides, what have I got to crab about?
I'm engaged, I'm only twenty-four, and someday I'll be the wife of
Secondary Speakster of the Hive. So hurray for _me_," she added,
listlessly, as she flipped the coverlet back, and hopped into bed. She
lay there in the glaring Light-of-Day, waiting for Ultrablack. When it
came, in a soundless rush of darkness, she spoke just once more. "But
_why_ didn't he come!"




                               CHAPTER 4


"Didn't you tell your future daughter-in-law she'd been reassigned to a
new Temple Day?" asked the President. "She went last night, regardless."

The man addressed, Lloyd Bodger, Senior, scratched his head. "Seems to
me I did, Fred. I could have forgotten, of course."

Fredric Stanton, President and Prime Speakster of the Hive, nodded and
shrugged the topic away. "Probably hated to miss a chance to be with
your boy. Nice kid, that Lloyd."

"Thanks," Bodger said dryly, keeping a firm eye on his superior.
Stanton was buttering him up to something, he knew. "Full of
youthful spirits, too, your boy. I can easily understand why he
might--well--grow overly romantic."

"Come to the point, Fred," said Bodger. "Lloyd's behavior can't hurt
you unless it hits your only sensitive area: your public image. So
what's he done? Drunk too much, pinched a waitress's rump, scratched a
four-letter word on a Temple?"

"Don't take this too lightly, fellow Speakster," said Stanton,
purposefully. "Running the Hive is like walking on eggs in hot cleats.
You're either careful or things get a mite sticky."

"We always have the Goons," said Bodger.

"A Hive full of ten million back-broken corpses isn't much of a
domain," snapped the President. "Have you forgotten that extra-marital
peccadillos are frowned upon in Hive society? People who play around
get hospitalized, quick."

"So what has all this to do with my son?" demanded Bodger.

"He was seen, last night, bringing his fiancee up to this level,
shortly before Ultrablack."

Bodger sighed, then nodded slowly and leaned back in his chair. "And
the girl?" he said grimly.

"So far as I know, she's still on your premises. I think you had better
have a talk with her. And your son."

"I'm sorry, Fred," said Bodger. "I'll make certain there is no
recurrence."

"You'd better," said the President. "If I topple, you're on the next
pedestal down. I might drag you along, just by inertia." He turned and
left the office with cold dignity.

"_Crap!_" the elder Bodger spat aloud. "I've _told_ that kid to toe the
mark in public!"




                               CHAPTER 5


Bodger had only a short distance to walk to Unit B from his office. His
temper, despite his efforts at self-control, was seething dangerously
when he entered his foyer. He crossed the mammoth parlor toward the
archway at its rear, where a short corridor led to the sleeping
quarters. Bodger arrived at the door of his son's bedroom. Then, with
his hand upon the knob, he froze, and a ghastly pallor spread itself
across his rugged features.

A hand came up swiftly to his stomach, holding it, pressing inward
against the sudden spasm he had felt, and he stepped swiftly across
the few remaining feet of carpeted hallway to the door of his own
room, through it, and swiftly into his personal bathroom, locking the
thick door behind him. The room was swimming like a thing seen through
warm oil as he slid open the mirrored panel of the medicine-chest and
removed a large jar of pale granulated crystals. Violently nauseated,
he managed to unscrew the lid and dump a handful of the crystals into
the water tumbler. He ran the warm water into the tumbler--it would
dissolve the crystals faster--and drank the now-glutinous solution.
Then the tumbler fell from his weak, perspiring fingers and smashed
into spicules in the basin. He took no notice, hands rigid against
the rim of the basin, shoulders shaking uncontrollably, his large,
grey-thatched head sunken wearily upon his chest. He stood like that
for two minutes, until the room began to settle down, and its outlines
took on solidity once more.

"A close one," he muttered, aloud.

When the eyes that met his in the glass were no longer bleared with
sick pain, he combed his hair neatly, and impatiently began to remove
his sweat-soaked shirt and necktie. Before returning to his bedroom to
change into fresh dry garments, he slid the mirrored panel closed. It
clicked sharply and locked. Countersunk into the tiled wall, there was
no indication that such a space existed behind it. Only Bodger, Senior,
knew which tiles to depress in which order to open that panel. In a
disease-free society, a medicine-chest was taboo; it implied that its
user had no faith in the Government-run hospitals. Bodger went into his
bedroom, dropping the damp shirt and tie atop the clothes hamper in the
closet. There was an ancient leather bag, with shoulder-strap, on the
closet floor. Bodger carried this out into the room, opened the flap.

When a small light glowed on the indicator panel, he lifted a short
metal rod, and played the end of it slowly back and forth just below
his fleshy ribs. The light flickered on and off steadily. Bodger looked
sharply at the needle of a dial beside the light. "Thank heaven," he
whispered, and returned case and contents to the closet. Then, after
laying out a set of dry things, he considered a moment, ran a hand
testily over his stomach region, and grunted in annoyance. He was still
slightly over-wrought; he could feel the juices inside him itching to
spurt into his bloodstream and arouse him into his erstwhile pitch of
anger. It wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all.

Angered at his own infirmity, he nevertheless set the alarm for an
hour's time ahead, in case he dozed, then lay back on the bed and
closed his eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the adjoining room, where the door to the hallway was securely
bolted, Lloyd Bodger, Junior, stood up near the wall, in a stance he'd
held for many minutes, the side of his head pressed tightly against the
plastic paneling. "I think he's lying down," he whispered. "I heard the
bedsprings creak."

Andra Corby, her face lowered against the knees which she hugged to her
chest on the bed, shivered a bit, then straightened her long, smooth
legs until she was simply pillow-propped against the headboard once
more, and her arms had refolded across her breast. "Are you sure?" she
asked tautly. "The longer I stay here, the more frightened I become."

Lloyd spun to face her, almost angrily. "Will you _stop_ that
relentless nobility! I'm doing this for my _own_ skin, remember?
I don't care what happens to you; I care what happens to _me_ if
something happens to you!"

"Your father," she said, enunciating with icy calm and slow clarity,
"is going to _hear_ you...."

Lloyd controlled himself, his fists knotting at his sides.

Seeing he was relaxing, Andra said, a little less frigidly, "I
thought--I thought he was coming in _here_."

"He stopped outside my door, all right ..." Lloyd mused. "Then went to
his room in a rush. I don't get it."

He listened some more at the wall. Behind him, Andra giggled, suddenly.
He glanced at her. "What--?"

"I just thought--What if your father's on the other side, listening to
hear what _you're_ doing. I'm just picturing two grown men, frowning in
earnest concentration, their ears separated by a few inches of plastic,
and it's funny."

"Not if you're correct, it isn't," said Lloyd, and Andra stopped
smiling. "As soon as he hears you, the jig's up."

"Maybe--" She leaned forward with eager hope. "Maybe it would be a
_good_ thing, Lloyd. He's a powerful man in the Hive. If he knew your
problem, he could use his influence to do something, couldn't he?"

"My father loves me, sure," said Lloyd, with a wry quirk to his lips.
"But I don't think he loves anything so much as his position in our
society. My consorting with a fugitive might put the kibosh on the
next election."

Just then the phone rang and Lloyd couldn't avoid knocking Andra to the
floor in his effort to get the receiver off the hook before the bell
could shatter the silence once more.

"Hello?" he said, extending an upright palm toward Andra to beg her
continued silence.

"Lloyd?" said a subdued, tense female voice.

"Grace!" he said, remembering his promise to come by with her card.
"What--What do you want?"

"I've got to see you, Lloyd," she said. "About last night."

"When?" he asked.

"As soon as you can make it."

"Well--Maybe in ..." Lloyd peered across the room at his bureau clock.
Almost noon. Non-essential lift usage precluded until after the
twelve-to-one lunch period. If he hurried, he could key the lift-switch
before the ban. Lifts in use were never disempowered. "If I catch the
lift, fifteen minutes. Otherwise not till after one."

"... All right."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. Andra stood up,
apparently unharmed, and slid into her shoes. "Where are we going?" she
asked, smoothing her dress.

Lloyd looked at her. He hadn't considered--"I guess you'd better come
with me," he said. "I'd hate you caught in the house. In my bedroom
especially."

There were seconds to spare when he closed the gate and thumbed
Grace's level, the ninety-third. Anyone was permitted to travel to a
level beneath their own. To go higher, you needed a duly authorized
Voteplate, or an invitation from a higher-level dweller. The lift
dropped smoothly down inside the shaft. Half-way to Grace's level,
a red light glowed on the level-indicator. When they reached their
getting-off place, the buttons would function no more until one
o'clock. It saved needless crowding if lunching workers remained
on their own levels. Otherwise, if a line were too long, a worker
might be tempted to try his luck lower down, and if too many decided
simultaneously, the bland flow of human traffic might be imbalanced,
agglomerated beyond the capacity of the transportation systems.
Inefficiency would result, with people returning late to their work,
restaurants having too much leftover food, or not enough to go around.
The Hive was too delicately geared for imbalance. So the lifts went off
during lunch.

"Grace Horton must be trusted," Andra said suddenly. "Look, Lloyd," she
clutched his arm, forcing him to meet her gaze and listen. "If she
hasn't found out, fine. Even Goons can't find out what a person doesn't
know. But if she _has_ found out someone else used her cards--And
called _you_, instead of reporting it to the authorities.... Then she
can be trusted to hear about me."

"I hope you're right," said Lloyd. The gate opened.

"We'll never find out standing here," said Andra. "Come on, Lloyd." She
started out ahead of him. He pondered the courage of this small blonde
girl, then felt a wave of shame at his own cowardice. He was in this
up to his earlobes already. No amount of explaining could ever make up
his hours of ignoring the basic laws of the Hive. And he simultaneously
realized two things: If Andra's theories were all wrong, he would
merely be Readjusted and returned to his life same as before. And if
they were correct--What difference did it make _how_ long he dallied
with the Hive's opposition? You could only be destroyed once, and even
his delay in shouting the alarm when he'd recognized Andra as the
fugitive was grounds for a medical check-up.

"What the hell," Lloyd said miserably to himself. He was no safer
standing on the cross-sector walk than in the depths of dark intrigue
with Andra.




                               CHAPTER 6


"BODGER!... _Bodger!_"...

A hand was shaking his shoulder roughly, the elder Bodger realized with
annoyance. His eyes focused on the face of Fredric Stanton. Bodger
shrugged the hand away, and sat up groggily.

"As I always suspected," he said, brushing at the crusted salt on his
chest, "the Hive can't run an hour without me at the helm." He got to
his feet and stretched.

Stanton, frowning at his sarcasm, let it pass without comment; he had a
more important topic to discuss. "The tally of last evening's Vote just
came in to my office," he said tightly. "It was a near-complete poll,
only a few thousand missing."

Bodger, still trying to get his mind readjusted to the idea of being
wide awake again, started toward the bathroom and a warm shower,
muttering, "Hooray for progress. Is that any reason to waken a man--"

"_Bodger--!_"

He stopped at the open door to the bathroom and turned his head toward
the President. "All right, out with it." Without knowing how, exactly,
Bodger knew it was about Lloyd again. And worse than before.

Stanton reached inside his suitjacket and withdrew a folded legal
paper, a black-lettered stiff document with an illuminated margin of
pale orange. "I have here," he said, watching Bodger's face, "an order
for Readjustment. It just came up the tube from the Brain. Do I have to
read you the name of the Kinsman on it?"

"Good lord," Bodger whispered. "What--What could he possibly have done
to--?"

"As I said, there was a Vote last night. The proposition was a simple
one: "Shall, in the interests of good government, the draft age be
lowered to fifteen?" You want to know how Lloyd voted?"

"Not _con_?! He has more brains than to--I've _told_ him all the
catch-phrases that demand a _pro_ Vote. Is there any possibility of--?"

"Error?" Stanton smiled bitterly. "You of all people should know
better. It was Lloyd's plate in the slot when the Vote was cast, all
right. The Brain can't be wrong on that. The alternative solutions to
the problem--alternatives to his making a _deliberate_ Vote against
the interests of good government, I mean--are very few: One--He was
not paying attention to the screen. Two--He struck the _con_ button by
accident. Three--He let somebody else use his plate. Any one of which
reasons is in _itself_ grounds for Readjustment!"

"Fred, you wouldn't...."

"Of course not, Bodger. I had the incident erased from the memory
circuits immediately. This is the only copy of his Readjustment order.
You can keep it, tear it up--_Frame_ it, if you like! That's not why
I'm here."

"You don't have to tell me," Bodger sighed. "In the past sixteen hours,
the son of the Secondary Speakster has blithely violated the social and
political ethics of the Hive, to the extent that his destruction--"

"_Bodger!_" Stanton flared. "You have a rotten habit of--"

"Pretty words don't alleviate the truth of the situation. _You_ know,
and _I_ know, what Readjustment is! A one-way trip down the incinerator
chute!"

"All right, we know it! So shut up about it, and let's keep it to
ourselves! What I'm here to find out is--What the hell are you going
to do about this idiot son of yours? This is _twice_ he's had to be
covered for, in a damned short time, Bodger. I can't spend my time
rescuing Lloyd from something I'm starting to think he may well
deserve!"

"Aw, Fred, you wouldn't let--"

"The hell I _wouldn't_! I like Lloyd, and I like you, but if it starts
shaking up my position in the Hive, the _two_ of you can go to blazes!
Do I make myself clear?"

"I--I'll talk to him, Fred, really I will."

"You mean you _haven't_!?" Stanton exploded. "What's the idea of coming
home here in the middle of the day, then? I thought you were going
to--" He took a closer look at the other man, then scowled. "Say, are
you all right, Bodger? Your color's kind of funny. You're not ...
_sick_?"

"Of course not!" Bodger snapped. "I'm _shaken_, if you must know. I
came right home here to chew Lloyd out for last night's episode with
the Horton girl, and when I couldn't find him, I got so mad that I
thought I'd better lie down and cool off. I don't want a scene if I
meet him in a public place. _That would_ get the word out in a hurry,
wouldn't it!"

"Still, you look kind of--" Stanton halted, and gave the subject up
with a sigh. "Maybe I'd be, too, if I got a couple of jolts like you
did. Okay, Bodger. See you back at the office, later." He turned and
went out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Bodger stood listening until he heard the front door close. Then, still
shirtless, he went into the hallway and threw open the door of Lloyd's
room without knocking. It was empty. But there was the elusive memory
of a sweet fragrance still hovering in the air there.

Bodger swore softly, and returned to his own room to shower and dress.
He had some heavy thinking to do.

When, minutes later, he was refreshed, dressed, and ready to appear in
public again, he'd made a decision. He needed to discover the root of
Lloyd's dangerous behavior. And the likely person to know something
about it would be Lloyd's fiancee, Grace Horton.

Bodger left his Unit and started toward the lift. It was still short of
one o'clock, but the Voteplate of the Secondary Speakster cut through a
lot of mechanical red tape.

The lift arrived at Hundred-Level within seconds after his nocking
his plate beside the call-button. He got aboard and began the descent
toward Ninety-Three.




                               CHAPTER 7


Robert Lennick leaned far back in his swivel chair, and sighed a deep
sigh at the ceiling, being careful it would not be heard by the party
on the other end of the wire.

"Now, listen, sweetheart," he said. "You are good. Got that? Good,
with a capital tremendous. But you don't click in urban dramas. You're
too--" He didn't want to say tall, or gigantic, though these words
were more readily at tongue-tip. "--too Junoesque for the parts
we're casting.... No, I mean it. You just--Well, you're just not the
housewife _type_, darling!"

The speaker crackled in his ear for another minute, and Lennick sat and
studied the piled-up scripts in his in-box with wearily narrowed eyes.
When his chance came again, he said, "No, not today. I'm sorry, Lona,
really I am.... It's impossible, that's why.... All right, if you have
to know--We're shooting Fredric Stanton, that's why--"

The speaker's reply to the phrase made some of the color wash out of
Lennick's smooth-shaven face, and this time he interrupted with a
snarl. "You better watch it, Lona, baby! A smartaleck pun like that can
get you sent to the hospital. You know damned well I mean we're going
to photograph him.... Okay, but simmer down, huh?!... Okay, baby, I
will.... Yes, as soon as _anything_, anything at _all_ in your line
comes by my desk.... Word of honor.... Sure thing.... Yeah, that'd be
lovely. We'll do it sometime.... Okay, Lona--Lona.... I said--....
O-_kay_, Lona!" He spat out the last words, and clamped the phone into
the cradle with vicious pleasure. "Dumb broad!" he mumbled, then got up
and opened the door to his anteroom.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Frank," he said to the tall, gangly youth
who rose from a chrome-and-plastic chair and came into the main office.

The man called Frank sank into a chair and fiddled idly with a button
on his shirt until Lennick had the door closed again. When the youthful
producer was once more back in his swivel chair, eyeing his visitor,
Frank lost his casual air and locked eyes with him, disconcertingly
steady blue eyes, and Lennick had to fight an impulse to wince.

"Trouble?" he said, after a moment.

Frank knitted his brows, and cupped his upper lip in the moist curve of
his lower before replying, without emotion, "Depends." He fiddled with
the button again, then gave it up and stood. He preferred pacing as he
talked. "It's--Well, it's about Andra, Bob."

Lennick stiffened. "They _got_ her...?" His relief was only a
conditional relaxation when the other man shook his head; he was keyed
to tighten up again without notice. "So where _is_ she? _How_ is she?"

"Fine, to answer your second question. I don't know the answer to the
first, though I could make some guesses. The thing is--We better get
the word out to the others not to try and contact her."

"_Not_ to--!?" said Lennick, stunned. "But she needs help, bad. She has
to hide until we can--!... Frank, what's the matter? You look so damned
funny!"

"Okay, I'll level with you, Bob." Frank stood at the front of the desk
and leaned his hands on the blotter, staring down at the anxious face
of his friend. "Last night, after her escape, Andra tried to hide in
the Temple, up on ninety-five. The Goons were right after her, Bob.
There wasn't even any Service because of her. Every person in that
Temple was checked--_one_ by _one_--for Voteplates. She _had_ one, Bob.
She got _out_."

"That's crazy!" Lennick gasped. "Where in hell--? Frank, I _saw_ them
collect her Voteplate after the accident. She couldn't have gotten
it back. And she couldn't have a _spare_, I know, so--?" He saw the
uneasiness still in the man Frank's features, and was quiet. "There's
_more_...?"

"After her escape," Frank said flatly, taking no joy in telling the
tale, "She met a man, outside the arcade, went with him for cocktails,
then up to his level. That's the last she was seen, Bob. It was the
Hundred-Level. None of us are authorized to go that high without
escort."

"But who the hell did _Andra_ know on the top?" Bob blurted. "She's
given autographs to a few higher-ups, but--"

"It was Lloyd Bodger, Junior, Bob. They acted like old friends. _Now_
do you see why I think it's unwise if she's contacted?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lennick suddenly surged from his chair and nearly tore the shirtfront
from his visitor in an angry fist, as he yanked the other's face close
to his own. "You can't mean that about Andra, Frank. You _know_ her!
You've worked with her--And I ... I know her better than anyone, Frank.
She's not a traitor. She wouldn't betray us."

"I wish," said Frank, calmly ignoring the enraged aspect of Lennick's
attitude, "you'd put your heart back where it belongs and think it over
just once with your brains...."

Bright beads of moisture suddenly appeared in Lennick's eyes, and he
released his grasp of the other man's shirt and sank down into his
chair, burying his face upon his arms. "There's an explanation," he
mumbled into the blotter. "I know there is. She wouldn't--" he lifted
his head, suddenly hopeful. "Frank, we're still _here_! If she told all
she knew, we'd be atomized by now, right?"

Frank looked uncertain. "Maybe. At least--It's a point in her favor.
I don't know. You've got _me_ shook, now." He sat back down and
pondered, shaking his head slowly back and forth. "If she _isn't_
hollering for the Goons--What's she doing with Junior? A guy like that
doesn't take perfect strangers up to his place, does he?"

"I don't believe that part at all," said Lennick. "She may've gotten
off before he did."

"The indicator went right on up without stopping. My witness'll swear
to it. Right to top level, just before Ultrablack."

"Maybe she's under arrest, going for questioning," Lennick parried
weakly. "It could be, you know."

"Why up there? Goons _carry_ Truth Serum. Besides, the witness further
states that they didn't look like anything but a couple of chummy
dates. Real chummy."

"How about if--Maybe he was _helping_ her? Andra's not a bad looker....
If she turned on the tears--"

"You've been reading your own scripts, friend," said Frank, not
unkindly. "This is reality we're dealing with, not never-never-land on
film. This Lloyd Bodger, Junior is _not_ the boy-most-likely when it
comes to helping anti-Hive people. Face it, Bob. Something's up."

"So why, I repeat, aren't we all on our way down the chute costumes,
cameras and all?"

"That's the only thing that doesn't make sense," Frank admitted. "And
the only thing that prevents me hiring a sniper to knock her off."

"You'd do that?" said Bob. "To Andra?"

"For the time being, we'll let it ride," Frank decided on the doorstep.
"It may be handing ourselves over on a silver salver, but--We'll let it
ride. Till we hear from her. And she'd better make it convincing."

"I know she'd tell me the truth--Whatever it is," said Bob, then
regretted his rhetorical lapse into doubt. But Frank let it pass, and
simply said, with a fleeting smile of compassion, "If I were you, I'd
take that Goon's advice, from yesterday when Andra was carted off: Get
engaged to somebody else."

"I want to talk to her," Bob insisted.

"If it was your neck, fine. Talk. But it's all our necks. I can't risk
it."

"_You_ could fix it, Frank. _You_ could find out where she is, a way to
get there. Come along, even, so I don't fumble the ball. Please, Frank?
I've got to know...."

"Bob, if you knew what you were asking--!" Then the taut, painful
set of his friend's features cracked away some of his veneer, and he
slumped wearily against the jamb, fiddling with that button again. "So
maybe insanity's catching, or something," he said after a pause.

"You'll help me?"

"I'm not absolutely sure I can, Bob. But--Tell you what.... Buzz me
about nine tonight. I might have an idea."

"Thanks," Bob said. "You're--You're a nice guy, Frank."

Frank turned and walked across the anteroom and out, without replying.
Robert Lennick settled back in the swivel chair again, this time not at
all relaxed.




                               CHAPTER 8


"Now, in this scene, sir, you're instructing the Temples through the
Speaksters, in your capacity as Prime Speakster," Robert Lennick was
explaining, as Fredric Stanton nodded over the pages of script.

Frank, the director, stood by impatiently while his boss explained the
setup of the scene they were to shoot.

"I think I understand," Stanton said finally. "Where do I go, now?"
An aide led the President toward the waiting set. When he was out of
earshot, Frank inclined his head toward Lennick, and whispered, "Never
mind buzzing me tonight, Bob. Meet me here, at your office, just before
Ultrablack."

"Before Ultrablack?!" Lennick said, aghast. "How will we--?"

"Leave it to me, okay?" said Frank, impatiently. "I'll get you to
Andra, wherever she is. I want to see her myself."

Lennick could only stand stupefied as the tall, angular form of the
director moved off toward the waiting cameras and crew. Then he grunted
in frustration and turned back toward his office. The presence of
Stanton made his mind return to the day before, when Andra was captured
by the Goons, and it bothered him to dwell on it. An accident. A stupid
accident on the set. She'd entered to do her scene, had caught her
foot on a hidden guy-wire, and had fallen, still holding the tray of
drinks she'd been supposed to serve to her co-stars. And the ragged
edge of a shattered goblet had raked across her forearm. Not deep, not
at all. Just a long, blood-oozing scratch. The Goons had been there
almost on the instant, commandeering her Voteplate, taking her off for
"treatment." And she'd looked to him for help, help he could not give,
dared not give. And when she saw she was suddenly friendless--She'd
broken and run. The Goons hadn't expected such a reaction. Before they
could relay the situation to the Brain and get their instructions,
Andra had dodged out by a corridor too narrow for them to follow, in
all their ponderous girth and height, and had vanished completely.
Later that day, a Goon Squad had come to the studio and widened
the corridor, and one other like it, to preclude such a thing ever
occurring again.

Lennick was worried at Andra's not contacting him. She might think he
couldn't be trusted, the way he'd let the Goons take her. But what did
she expect a man to do against armed Goons? She'd only have had the
dubious pleasure of seeing him dance to death with a hideous smile on
his face, while a Snapper Beam broke his spine in two.

It made Lennick's head hurt to think about it, so when he got to his
office, he started reading some new scripts. In a society where the
possession of medicine is a crime, it didn't pay to have a headache. Or
to let on you had one. But he couldn't erase the look he'd seen in her
eyes when they were taking her away.




                               CHAPTER 9


Arriving at the door to Grace Horton's Unit, Lloyd paused with his
finger not quite pressing the bell. "This won't be pleasant," he
warned. "I've never done anything like this before--getting involved
with you, I mean--and I don't think Grace is going to like it. I can't
much blame her, either."

He stopped as the door opened. Grace Horton stood there, clad only in
a fragile garment of light silk, her up-turned face warm and eager.
Beyond her, Lloyd saw the tray with a bottle, ice, and two glasses.
There was soft music playing from somewhere in the Unit. He felt his
face go red.

"Grace--I want you to meet Andra, Andra Corby."

Grace looked past him for the first time, and saw the other woman.
A tiny spasmodic reaction tightened her face and some of the color
drained away. Then she said, with rigid composure, "Come in. Come in,
won't you?" Unconsciously, she held the folds of her garment tightly at
the throat with one hand, as if to make her covering more substantial,
as she stepped aside to let them pass.

"Excuse me," she blurted suddenly, after shutting the door, and rushed
into her bedroom. The music emanating from there cut off, abruptly, and
then Grace reappeared in the doorway, her lips curled in a smile that
would not quite come off. "I thought--I thought you'd miss the lift,"
she said, in an obvious extemporization that was embarrassing to all
three persons. "That's why I'm--not quite dressed, yet. I thought I'd
be ready after one, when you--" Her eyes fell on the tray, with its
solitary preparation for two, and her voice choked off in the middle
of a syllable.

Then she took a breath, walked into the parlor, and sat down gracefully
on the arm of the sofa. "Well," she said brightly, "_now_ what'll we
lie about?!"

"I'm so very sorry, Grace," Lloyd said contritely. "I ... I would've
_told_ you Andra was coming, if I'd known. We only decided after I'd
hung up--"

Grace's eyebrows rose just a fraction. "Andra was at your home when I
called?" She rose, suddenly. "I think I'd better get another glass from
the kitchen. I have the feeling we're all of us going to need strength."

Lloyd and Andra looked at one another, then sat gloomily down in
armchairs deliberately far apart, and waited for Grace's return. When
she came back with the third glass, she was a bit more composed.

"Now," said Grace, after draining half her glass, "we can talk."

There was a silence, then Lloyd broke it, awkwardly, with, "You
said--You wanted to see me here, right away."

"I called you about the Temple Service last night, Lloyd--I see by your
face that you _do_ know something about it. Good. Maybe you can tell me
what--Don't look so shaken."

"I--Okay. You caught me off-balance, I guess."

"I must have. You look like you were just kicked in the stomach. Well,
then, tell me: What happened last night?"

"How did you know _anything_ happened?" Lloyd asked.

"A call from the top level this morning. I was warned not to attend
on the wrong night in the future, and told I was being let off the
hook--though they phrased it more politely, of course--because I was
engaged to the son of the Secondary Speakster."

"Did you--? What did you say? To their call?" Lloyd asked, knotting up
inside.

Grace folded her arms and leaned back. "I'm no dope, Lloyd. I knew you
had my Voteplate, and were bringing it to me last night. That is--" she
interjected with chagrin "--I _thought_ you'd be over last night with
it. When you didn't come, and I got _this_ call, from top level, I kind
of figured you were in dutch, somehow, and played along. I apologized
for my error, and promised it wouldn't happen again--I see, by the way
you two just let your breaths out, that I did the right thing.... Or
_did_ I? I take it Andra was the one who used my plate?" Lloyd nodded,
miserably.

       *       *       *       *       *

Grace thought this over, watching the two of them, then leaned forward
and touched Lloyd's fingers where they curled tightly around the end
of the chair arm. "Apparently, I have salvaged everybody's chestnuts.
Would it be asking too much if I wondered what the hell my reasons
were?"

"I'll explain," Lloyd said. "That is, as best I can. My motivations are
still a bit obscure even to myself."

Grace flicked a glance at Andra, sitting small and lovely and feminine
in the chair. "_Are_ they!" she said, a spark of intuition putting
her almost with complete accuracy ahead of Lloyd's still-untold tale.
"Maybe I can figure them out for you after I hear your story, then."

"Okay, Grace," Lloyd said gratefully, missing her inflection. He
proceeded to tell her the story, from the time he'd gone to the Temple
up until the present moment, eliding only the fact that Andra had spent
the night in his room. He used the phrase "up at my Unit" and hoped
it wouldn't be proved any deeper than that. When he'd finished, Grace
looked dazed.

"You mean--You _believe_ all that, Lloyd?" she said. "I used to have
great respect for your sanity, but--This thing about no hospitals,
about bumping off the Kinsmen to keep the population level down--It's
crazy, Lloyd. Look, your father's one jump from the Presidency. Has he
ever, in all the years of your life, even _hinted_ such a thing to
you?"

"No, of course not, but--"

"Yet you take the word of a fugitive, an obvious mental case who
doesn't know what's good for her--!"

"May _I_ say something in my defense?!" Andra protested.

"You may not," said Grace, then turned back to Lloyd as though Andra
had ceased to exist anymore. "How could a man with your intelligence--"

"Hold it!" Lloyd snapped. "Hold it right there. I'm not a complete
fool, Grace. Sure I had doubts. But there are some things Andra said
that bother me. And I thought up a few puzzlers myself. Like war.
Casualties in battle account for a high rate of the deaths reported in
the Hive, right? So it occurred to me--How come we're not using the
_Goons_ to fight in the war? They're indestructible, they're armed with
our most potent weapons--Yet we let men and boys be shipped out of here
to fight. It doesn't make sense."

"Of course it does!" Grace retorted. "You think that question never
occurred to anyone but you, Lloyd Bodger? We don't use Goons in war for
the same reason they didn't use atomic weapons after the Second World
War of last century: The _other_ side has them, and might fight back
with them."

"But--So _what_?!" Lloyd exploded. "What's the difference if our people
are killed by other soldier's bullets or by enemy Goons?"

"There's--There's _less_ slaughter this way," Grace said, with an
intensity that sounded lame even to her.

"All right, we'll let that part go," Lloyd said, in no mental shape for
argument. "There are other things--"

"Forget them," Grace said, vehemently. "Whatever your reasons, or
reasoning, last night, you have another problem to face: What are you
going to do with this girl? The longer you stick with her, the slimmer
your excuses will sound when she's caught. In fact, the only hope you
have is to turn her in, right now, and pray your Readjustment isn't too
painful."

"But don't you see, Grace--!" Lloyd blurted. "What if she's _right_?!
On that chance, no matter how silly you think her theory is--a theory
that has led others to join her movement, remember--do I dare take the
_risk_ of turning her in?"

Grace stared at him and digested this aspect of the situation slowly.
"I--I guess it _would_ be kind of late, when the top level sent me the
report that your Readjustment hadn't taken, or something, to say 'Well,
he told me so!'."

The door chimes pealed, then, startling them all.

"You expecting anyone else?" asked Lloyd.

"No, unless your friend the fugitive was seen coming in here."

As they spoke, Andra had gone to a window and peeked out from behind
the curtain. When she turned to face them again, her face was grey with
strain and apprehension.

"Lloyd--" she said. "It's your father!"




                              CHAPTER 10


Under the blazing arc-lights on the set, President Stanton played
himself to the hilt, nearing the climactic, "Vote for the sake of the
Kinsmen! Vote for the freedom of the Temples! Vote for the life of the
Hive!" Just as he launched into this most important part of the script,
a page boy made his labyrinthine way on tiptoe through the cables
and reflectors and sound equipment to the chair of the director, and
whispered urgently in his ear. Frank got to his feet immediately.

"_Cut!_" he called.

Stanton looked up in some surprise, and it was a very baffled cameraman
who finally found enough strength to cut off his machine. The set was
dead quiet as Stanton arose from behind the prop-desk and looked in
unpleasant speculation at the source of the interruption.

Frank cleared his throat, and said, "I'm sorry. The scene was going
well, sir; that isn't why I cut it. You have a phone call, in Mr.
Lennick's office."

"I thought it was understood I was not to be disturbed while on the
set," said Stanton, still wondering if he should give vent to his
feelings of outrage.

"It was, sir. And is. But the call's from your personal secretary, sir.
She says it's of the utmost importance."

Stanton hesitated, dropped his script back down onto the desk, then
started decisively around the side of the desk toward the director.
"She had better be correct," he said darkly, brushing by Frank and the
crewmen without apology and vanishing into the corridor that led to
Robert Lennick's office. There was a brief silence, then a concerted
sigh of relief from the men on the set.

"Shall we wait," one of the crewmen asked Frank, "or shoot around this
scene and pick it up later?"

Frank spread his hands. "I don't _know_. I have to be sure he's coming
back, first--I'll go find out." He told his staff to relax until his
return, then hurried out after the President.

A hundred feet down the corridor, he rounded a turn. Up ahead he saw
Stanton just entering Lennick's office. Then, without hesitation,
Frank ducked into a nearby office, his own, and locked the door on the
inside. The lowest drawer of his desk had a false bottom. He triggered
the release on this, now, and lifted out the small black earphone-set
there, setting it dextrously across his head, magnetic speaker directly
over his ear. In the hollow of the now-exposed section was a telephone
dial. Frank swiftly spun it through the sequence of Lennick's office
number, then sat hunched forward over his desk, listening hard. He
heard Stanton pick up the phone, and say, "This is Stanton. What is
it?!"

Madge Benedict, his personal secretary, "It's Lloyd Bodger, Junior. You
told me to contact you the instant he got out of line again. Well, he
has, but good."

"As bad as the other two?" Stanton queried.

"Worse, much worse, sir. Bad enough to make the other two look good by
comparison. He was seen, this afternoon, on Ninety-Three-Level, in the
company of Andra Corby, the fugitive from hospitalization. You know,
sir, the movie star who was injured on the set yesterday."

Something sparked in Stanton's brain, then, and a hard light of
comprehension dawned in his eyes. "Wait--Let me think.... Of course!
She vanished yesterday from the Temple on Ninety-Five! And Lloyd was
there, too. I wonder--" He stopped idle speculation and snapped, "Get
me Bodger, quick!"

"His office," Madge told him after a moment on another line, "says he's
gone home, and you can--"

"I _know_ he's at home!" Stanton growled, "I just left him there. Get
him!"

There was a short silence, then she spoke again. "I'm ringing him, sir.
I don't think he's at home. No one answers."

"You know what to do as well as I do!" he said impatiently. "Put a
tracer on his Voteplate! See where he's gone to."

Another pause; while Madge coded an inquiry and flashed it to the
memory circuits of the enormous Brain beneath the Hive, and received
the near-instantaneous reply. "Sir," she replied, "he's taken the lift
to Ninety-Three-Level. The same place his son was seen."

"That's odd.... Do you suppose he knows about the Corby girl, too?
Or--" Stanton dropped the interrogation; Madge shouldn't be made to
think about it. The less she knew, trusted secretary or not, the
better. "Skip it," he said abruptly. "Find out for me where they might
be going on that level, their hangouts, haunts, and friends...."

Madge found the answers and got back on the line. "Three possible
places, sir. Dewey's Bar and Grill, in Sector Three, Miss Grace
Horton's Unit, and--"

"Lloyd's fiancee?!" Stanton interjected. "The one who attended the
wrong Temple Service last night...."

"I believe she did, sir. We sent out a memo--"

"And she got it this morning! Of course!" said Stanton, exultantly.
"And phoned Lloyd right afterwards!"

"I don't follow you, sir--" Madge said, blankly.

"Forget it," snapped the President. "I have all the information I need.
And," he added, with belated gratitude, "thank you for calling me, Miss
Benedict." He hung up without waiting for her reply.

Huddled over the desk in the dimness of his own office, Frank tore off
the earphones, dropped them back into the hollow of the drawer, and
re-closed the false bottom. He was out in the corridor again, headed
toward Lennick's office, with seconds to spare when Stanton came out.

"Sir," Frank said, turning about and falling into step with him on the
way back to the set, "I wonder if you'd care to finish the scene, or
should we shoot around it?"

"Shoot around it," Stanton said. "I can't be bothered with the filming,
today. Something's come up."

Frank nodded and let his pace slacken, allowing the President to move
away from him. After poising on his toes for an undecided second, he
whirled and dashed toward Lennick's office. If young Bodger had been
seen with Andra, in the same locale where the elder Bodger was now
heading--or had even arrived--there was going to be an explosion. An
explosion that might sweep Andra, the Bodgers, and the entire anti-Hive
movement with it, when Stanton got the wheels of his office in motion.




                              CHAPTER 11


After thumbing the doorbell the second time, Bodger shifted his hand
toward the inner pocket where he kept his Voteplate. The doors of all
Units in the Hive were keyed by the Voteplate of the dweller, through
a slot above the knob. As Secondary Speakster, Bodger's plate could
key any door in the Hive save Stanton's; _all_ doors opened to the
President's Voteplate. Just as his fingers touched the edge of the
plate in his pocket, he saw the knob start to turn, and withdrew his
hand. The door opened, and his son was standing there.

"Come in, Dad," Lloyd said, standing aside. "Grace will join us in a
moment."

The elder Bodger's eyes did not miss the fact that the door to the
bedroom was closed, as he entered the parlor. This delayed appearance
of Grace, coupled with the delay in their response to his ring,
confirmed his worst suspicions. He took the seat Lloyd offered him,
leaned back without quite relaxing, and came to the point at once.

"Lloyd, you're making trouble. Lots of it. For yourself, and quite
possibly for me, too. I don't like it. But before I take any steps, I
want to hear your side of it."

Lloyd sat down facing his father, very uncomfortable inside. He didn't
want to inadvertently volunteer more information than his father
already had. He could think of plenty of things he'd done since the
night before, any one of which was damnable; the safest policy was in
determining just what, and how much of what, his father knew.

"I'm not sure I follow you, Dad," he said, pleasantly. "What kind of
trouble--"

"Don't fence with _me_, young man!" said his father. "Unless you're
completely brainless, you know what I--" He was about to expostulate on
the disgraceful conduct of the evening before, the matter of Grace's
having gone up to top level with his son, then decided to let that
ride until Grace herself was present. Keeping steely control over his
emotions, he said, instead, "The Vote last night, Lloyd. Your plate was
credited with a _con_ Vote. Are you _insane_, Lloyd?! Haven't I told
you--!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd racked his brain to recall the content of the proposition, but
could not. "Maybe I hit the wrong button," he said lamely. "My hand
might have slipped."

"The penalty's the same, whatever the basis of your stupid action, and
you know it!" his father rasped. "I don't think you are even able to
tell me what the proposition _was_, are you!" A look at Lloyd's burning
face told him the answer. "I thought not," he said, wearily. "I don't
know what I'm going to do with you, son. I've tried to keep you in
line--"

The entrance of Grace Horton stopped Bodger's tired lament, and both
men rose to their feet.

"It's nice to see you Mr. Bodger. Would--Would you like a drink?" Grace
offered, nervously.

"I would not--" he said, then softened his curt reply with, "But thank
you, anyway, Grace. Maybe later, after I've had my say." Lloyd and
Grace looked at one another in numb apprehension of the unknown, then
back at Bodger.

"The son of a prominent man," Bodger began, at last finding his
approach-path, "has a great responsibility to his father's good name.
The Hive, as you both know, has rigid rules regarding--well--amorous
conduct, to employ a euphemism, between unmarried persons. Yet, last
night, Lloyd--Grace--the two of you were seen going to top level on the
public lift, just before Ultrablack."

       *       *       *       *       *

A short sound from Grace's chair was the gasp that had sucked itself
between her lips as the significance of Bodger's words reached her.

Lloyd, for his part, fought but could not control the hot crimson flood
that rushed into his features when he met Grace's hurt gaze.

Bodger, misinterpreting both their reactions according to his own
notion of the night before, immediately said, "No need to be afraid.
A thing like this is better out in the open. I can understand how two
young people in love might--"

"_Dad!_" Lloyd said abruptly. Bodger halted and waited for his son's
words. Lloyd, speaking to his father the words that were actually
intended for Grace's ears, said, with deep earnest, "It wasn't like
that, Dad. She slept on my bed, with her clothes on. I slept on the
rug. We--We just had to be together, that's all. I've done nothing you
should feel ashamed of."

The sudden smile on Grace's face caught at Lloyd's heart.

"That's a help, son," Bodger said, likewise convinced. "To me, at any
rate. The point, unfortunately, is that any persons who observed you
going up to our Unit with Grace could not be expected to presume the
_best_, if you see what I mean?"

"I do, Dad," Lloyd mumbled contritely. "And I wish it had never
happened."

"It wouldn't have," Bodger pontificated, "if Grace hadn't gone to the
wrong Temple Service. I can see how she might dislike the change in her
attendance-period, meaning she'd be unable to attend with you, anymore,
but it was the wrong thing to do. If she'd stayed home, none of this
would've happened."

The irony of this last statement, while it missed Bodger completely,
brought a small, one-syllable burst of laughter from Grace's lips,
which she quickly stoppered. Lloyd jumped into the breach swiftly, to
distract his father from a dangerous line of conjecture.

"Dad, there was something bothered me last night--In the Temple, I
mean, about that fugitive girl?"

"What about her?" said his father, unprepared for the statement to the
extent that he made an automatic response without having time to notice
he was being diverted.

"The check-up for the girl, Dad. It seemed kind of--I hate to use the
word, but it's the only one--_inefficient_, at least to me."

"The girl had no Voteplate," Bodger said, puzzled. "I should think a
check of all Voteplates was efficient enough."

"But why not have the Goons check her description, or her fingerprints,
or even check for the scar on her arm?" said Lloyd. "It'd be much
simpler, and surer."

Bodger shook his head. "Not at all, Lloyd. A Goon, you must remember,
doesn't 'see' as we do. Its television lenses are only geared to
recognize streets, Units, sectors, and so on, and to tell Goons from
Kinsmen. Anything as delicate as actual recognition of a face would
involve the building of a Brain greater in mass than the current one.
No, Voteplates were the only answer to identification problems; that's
half the reason they exist. As to fingerprints--They will serve in
identifying an individual, it's true, _if_ a person's identity is in
doubt. But it takes time, and the fingerprint files are enormous;
to do so in trying to locate one person in a full Temple gathering
would have taken many hours, and there was a time element involved.
The ensuing Service could not begin until the Temple was emptied.
Finally, as to the scar--" Bodger looked decidedly uncomfortable, then
sighed and said, "--As son of the Secondary Speakster--and future
daughter-in-law, Grace--perhaps it's time you were told a fact that
is rather embarrassing to the regime, but all too true: In the Hive,
people do not always report injuries. While we do not enjoy this mild
form of treason to the planned medical facilities of the Hive, we
nevertheless tolerate it, for the simple reason that it's bothersome
treating _every_ scratch and bruise that occurs, most of which will
heal themselves. And so, if we had the Goons check for the girl's
scar, we might have found a large number of medical violations among
the Kinsmen at the Service. Under that circumstance, we would have to
hospitalize everyone; Goons are trained to spot any deviation from
a healthy norm beyond a certain degree. It would have been terribly
awkward, all around. So the only sure method was--"

       *       *       *       *       *

Bodger stopped, as though violently stunned. "Lloyd--" Bodger said, his
heart hammering with a nameless dread. "_I_ was activating the Temple
Speaksters last night. I gave the warning about the girl to your
Temple. I remember distinctly what I said. And I know I made no mention
of the type or location of her injury. No mention at all. _How did you
know it?!_"

Lloyd's lips worked, but he couldn't bring up a syllable from his
constricting lungs. Grace, her hands knotted into fists, looked at the
carpet, and sat like a marble statue.

Bodger got to his feet, towering over the two of them.

"I'm talking to you, Lloyd. Answer me! How did you know?"

Lloyd's ribs abruptly began to function again, and he drew in what
felt like the deepest breath of his life. Then he stood and faced his
father, defiantly.

"Because she's here, Dad. Right behind that door! And Andra Corby was
the girl in our Unit last night, furthermore. _I_ helped her escape
from the Temple, with Grace's Voteplate. Now, what are you going to do
about it!?"

Bodger fell back into his chair like a crumpling jointed doll, his
face shocked and incredulous. "I don't believe it," he said stiffly,
pressing his hands upon the chair arms to halt their trembling. "Lloyd,
it's not true!"

The bedroom door opened, then, and Andra came out. When Bodger saw her,
something inside him cracked, and he suddenly dropped his face into
his hands and just groaned. Lloyd was at his side in an instant.

"Dad," he said, gripping the other man's shoulders, "Dad, I _had_
to tell you. I've been entangling myself in so many lies since last
night--It was the only thing left to do!"

Bodger looked up, wide-eyed with dismay, and shrugged Lloyd's hands
away. "Let me think!" he said, hoarsely. "I have to think! Stanton
mustn't find this out. I've already covered up for your idiotic Vote,
and for your taking Grace--all right, Andra--up to our Unit last night.
There has to be a way to prevent your horrible errors being found out.
I'll cover, somehow, Lloyd. If I can find a way, I'll cover up, and--"

"_Dad--!_"

Something in the young man's tone made Bodger stop his frantic raving.
He looked into his son's eyes, and saw the question even before Lloyd
asked it.

"Why _should_ you cover up?"

Bodger grabbed at his shattered self-control, and sat up, stiffly.
"I--I don't follow you, son."

"I said," Lloyd repeated sadly, "why _should_ you cover up for me? I'll
only be hospitalized for Readjustment, won't I?... _Won't I!?_"

"Lloyd," Bodger said sickly, getting up and clutching his son's hands,
"you're over-wrought, right now, you've been under a strain...."

"All the more reason for my hospitalization, then," Lloyd said, with
all the relentless cruelty he could muster in the face of his father's
ghastly fright.

"_No!_" Bodger yelled. "You can't go! You don't understand, Lloyd! I
can't explain here."

"There's no need to," Lloyd said, suddenly softening and taking his
father by the hands to halt their frenetic quavering. "Your attitude
has told me all I want to know. Andra was speaking the truth. There
_are_ no hospitals, no treatment, no Readjustment. Only death."

"Lloyd--!" Bodger said. "If you only knew _why_--"

"We'd _all_ like to know why," said Andra, solicitously. "Mr. Bodger,
it's no use struggling any more. You have to tell the truth, now, or
have your son--and Grace and myself--be destroyed."

"All right," Bodger said. "I will. I'll tell you the whys and
wherefores of the Hive. Then maybe you'll--"

"I'm afraid such an extemporaneous educational program is quite
impossible," came a voice from the doorway.

       *       *       *       *       *

Fredric Stanton, just removing his Voteplate from the slot in Grace's
door, had his other hand extended toward them. And clutched firmly in
his steady grasp was the stubby metal muzzle of a Snapper.

The two men and women stepped backward, slowly, as he advanced into
the parlor and shut the door behind him. "I only heard the last few
phrases of your conversation, unfortunately," he said. "I think, for
the interests of the Hive, that I should hear it all. We'll have to go
up to my office, all of us, to get at the truth. I'll have a Goon Squad
pick us up, here." He reached for the phone, dialed swiftly, and soon
had Madge on the line. He kept the Snapper trained on the group while
he spoke, and never took his eyes off them.

"Sir," Madge replied, before he could ring off, "do you think it's
wise, bringing Bodger through the streets under guard, I mean?" She
sounded greatly concerned. "The Kinsmen--"

Stanton narrowed his eyes appreciatively, and cut her off with, "You're
right, of course; it wouldn't do to let public opinion of the regime
get any shakier than it is! I can't wait till Ultrablack, however.
Start the emergency sirens at once. Allow fifteen minutes for all
Kinsmen to clear the streets. Then put on the Emergency Ultrablack."

"Right, sir," Madge said, and hung up.

Stanton smiled, still keeping them covered as he replaced the phone in
the cradle. "You'd better be seated," he said congenially.




                              CHAPTER 12


"You really believe that _Bodger_ is involved in the anti-Hive
movement?" Lennick said dubiously. "It doesn't make sense, Frank! Why
should the Secondary--"

"All I know," Frank said determinedly, "is that Stanton was shaken
by the news of young Bodger and Andra. It puts me right back on
Andra's team, all at once. If Stanton was in the dark, then it's very
doubtful that Andra's done anything to betray the movement; the greater
likelihood is that she's pulled Junior _our_ way."

Lennick frowned doubtfully. "Andra's an attractive girl, Frank, but--"

"Everybody isn't pulled into the movement like you were, Bob. Sex
appeal has its uses, but there's also a thing known as intelligence.
Bodger and his son are no dopes. If she convinced them--"

"Why _should_ she!?" Lennick said angrily. "Have to convince _them_, I
mean! Didn't they, of all people, _know_?"

Frank stood there with his mouth open, blinking. Then he sat down and
stared at the producer, dazed. "I must be getting soft-headed," he
murmured after a short hiatus. "Of course they must know.... Still--?"
He looked helplessly to Lennick for assistance.

"I know; it doesn't make sense," Lennick nodded. "The only thing to be
done is to _find_ Andra, I guess, and ask her the answers. Conjecture
is only taking us in circles."

Frank spoke tautly, his pent-up frustration making his words strained
and painful. "Excepting that, as long as Andra's in Grace Horton's
sector, we can't go after her. That's not one of the permitted areas
on my Voteplate. I'd hate to be caught loitering in that area when
the Goons show up for Andra. When they make an arrest, they check on
everybody. If only this had occurred later, today, near Ultrablack--"

"Why do you keep stressing Ultrablack?" Lennick asked. "I still haven't
even figured out why I was to meet you here tonight just before it was
turned on. We'd really be helpless then."

"Bob," Frank said gently, "this is nothing personal, but--Well, when
the movement gets a new member, we don't just lay out all our schemes
on a red carpet for him. There's a trial period for all new members.
You've been on probation for a couple of months, now. The less you
know of our plans, our memberships, the less you could spill if you
were a plant."

Lennick grinned wryly and shook his head. "I know. That was a real
bone of contention between Andra and myself when we'd been engaged
nearly six weeks. A wife can't keep secret meetings from her husband
very well; he may suspect her outings are something even worse. When
I finally pressed her about broken dates, and times she couldn't be
reached, and she told me about the movement, I was pretty miffed she
didn't trust me with all she knew."

"She couldn't, Bob, you know that. The information wasn't hers to give
out, without permission of the rest of us. We could not put our necks
in a noose because Andra adores your big brown eyes."

"I'm surprised you're still speaking to me, after yesterday," Lennick
said with chagrin.

"Bob, you did what any of us could have done: Nothing. One man can't
fight off a Goon Squad. We would have lost _two_ members, instead of
just Andra, if you'd put up a fuss."

"But about Ultrablack," Bob said, frowning. "I know you people have
meetings after Light-of-Day goes off. _How_ you do it is beyond me,
with the streets alive with Goons, and darkness everywhere, even
indoors."

       *       *       *       *       *

"If there were a chance of rescuing Andra when tonight's Ultrablack
came on, I'd tell you, Bob," Frank said sincerely. "It'd give you the
chance you didn't have yesterday to do something for her. I think you
can be trusted. I trusted you enough, just now, to tell you about the
tapped phone."

"You had to," Lennick said with a shrug. "Or else I'd be leery about
believing you knew so much about Stanton's private call."

"We set that up ever since Stanton started appearing in our
Hive-located scripts. He's always so busy, keeping in touch with his
office between takes, that we've kept one jump ahead of the Goons, on
occasion. It must drive him nuts, wondering about the raids that never
came off."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lennick got to his feet. "I wish we didn't have to just _sit_ here this
way! At this very moment, Andra may be still uncaptured. If she could
be warned--"

"She could, if top-level privilege didn't entitle young Bodger's
fiancee to an unlisted number. You can go up there if you want, but--I
know too much about the movement to risk it. If you're caught, it's
unimportant--insofar as the sum of your knowledge, I mean. But I don't
dare let myself be taken."

Frank paused, and cocked his head, listening. Lennick, seeing him,
did the same. A keening wail penetrated into the depths of the office.
"Sirens!" Frank said. "It means there'll be an emergency Ultrablack in
fifteen minutes. Or even less, if we did not hear them from the very
beginning...."

"You think it has to do with Andra?" asked Lennick.

"No telling," said Frank. "And no telling how long this Ultrablack is
for. At normal Ultrablack, I can count on a definite number of hours,
but--" He hesitated, then clapped Lennick on the shoulder and said,
"Come on, Bob! This may be the chance we were looking for!"

The producer followed him, bewildered, out of the office and down the
corridor toward the set. Just inside the set, where the siren-alerted
crew members were grabbing their gear together in preparation for swift
flight, Frank pulled Bob aside and led him to a door flanking the
corridor entrance. "This way," he said, shoving the other man inside
and following.

"To the prop room?" Lennick said wonderingly, his mind a pastiche of
envisioned secret panels, inter-level tunnels and the like. Frank
kept moving down the short hall without replying, so Lennick could
only tag impatiently after him, his curiosity at its ultimate. Then
they were in the high, barn-like gloom of the prop room, a fantastic
collage of canvas backdrops, teeter-piled furniture, swords, pistols,
fake-currency stacks, ropes, saddles, bows, arrows, and other oddments
of the trade.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lennick found his bewilderment growing as Frank pushed aside a stack of
dusty chairs and then slid aside a tall desert-sky backdrop on oiled
rollers. For a horrible instant, Lennick recoiled, his flesh going icy
with unthinking fright. Then he relaxed and gave a shiver of relief.
"Damn those things!" he grunted. "I forgot we had them stored back
here...." Then he looked up and met Frank's gaze, and comprehension
dawned on him. "You mean--_Them?!_"

"There's a panel in the back, where the operator can slide in to run
the controls," Frank said. "It'll hold two, if you don't mind crowding."

"Good grief!" Lennick gasped. "I should have guessed!"

"Never mind the self-recriminations," Frank said. "Help me roll this
thing out so we can get inside it."

Lennick nodded, and took hold of the jointed metal arm on one side, as
Frank did the same on the other. Together, they wheeled the massive
torso of the prop-Goon toward the center of the room. As Frank located
and opened the neatly disguised panel, Lennick shook his head in doubt.

"There's no force-field, Frank," he said uneasily, "and once Ultrablack
sets in--"

"Unlatch the door to the street," Frank said testily, "and stop asking
so many questions." As Lennick hurried to comply, Frank added, with
less irritation, "The absent force-field's the _reason_ we use Goons
only after Ultrablack. A Goon won't notice the difference, since it
only determines identities by shape, but a Kinsman would, instantly, as
you just did. There are no Kinsmen out after Ultrablack, so that's the
safe time for us. As for your other worry, about how we'll _see_ after
Ultrablack, Ultrablack is only the jamming of the visible spectrum
by the radiation of inverted light; the compression and rarefaction
phases of the light waves are plugged, dovetailed into, by the opposing
phases of inverted light. Goons," he said, depressing a switch beside
a small cathode-screen inside the hollow body, "see by cutting off the
sensitivity of their lenses to light or inverted light, it doesn't
matter which. Then the Hive is bright as day-light to them."

Lennick clambered up beside him and helped Frank dog the metal panel
shut. Side by side, hunched over the pale blue glow of the screen,
they watched the interior of the prop room through the lens-eyes of
their grotesque conveyance. When the sirens halted, Ultrablack swept
the room from their ken like a velvet curtain. Then Frank turned a
dial, and the room reappeared on the screen, like a negative image,
with white for black, and vice-versa.

"Now we can go," Frank said, releasing a brake. The prop-Goon began
to roll ponderously toward the door to the street, carrying its two
perspiring conspirators. "I only wish," Frank said tensely, guiding
their movement out into the Kinsmen-deserted street of the sector,
"that this thing had Snapper-Beams, too. But I guess an underground
movement can't have everything."




                              CHAPTER 13


The four prisoners sat glumly looking at the impenetrable squares
of darkness outside Grace Horton's windows, awaiting the arrival of
the Goon Squad. Madge Benedict, without needing to be told, had kept
Ultrablack from occurring in the Unit; it was the only area of visible
light in the entire nine cubic miles of the Hive. Stanton, his weapon
never wavering, lolled against the wall of Grace's parlor, watching
their discomfiture with amusement. Of all the group, Andra's pallor
was the worst, and Stanton noted this fact with relish.

"I don't expect to glean much from the minds of the others," he said,
addressing her directly, "but yours must be a veritable treasure trove
of interesting data."

"I don't know why you should think so," Andra said, knowing all the
while that fabrication was futile; five minutes under truth serum would
prove the President's contention beyond debate. "I'm only one small cog
in a wheel greater than your whole Goondom of force!"

"You almost convince me," Stanton said. "But--No matter. I'll know the
truth in a few more minutes."

"And then what?" asked Grace. "What happens to us once you've picked
our brains of knowledge? If it's death--"

"Grace--" Lloyd said warningly, taking her arm. She turned on him.

"Darling, if we're to die in _any_ event, let's die now! At least
we'll have the satisfaction that a hundred other people aren't dying
afterward, because of us!"

"She's right, Fred," Bodger said, smiling for the first time since
his arrival at Grace's Unit. "If you kill us now, you'll never find
anything out. At least our lives will have accomplished something, if
only continued secrecy about the movement."

"A Snapper Beam needn't kill, if used briefly enough," Stanton said
mildly. "If you four prefer dancing an agonized quadrille until the
arrival of the squad, you have only to come an inch closer. In fact,
unless you return to your chairs at once, I may just do it anyhow, for
my own diversion."

"A Snapper Beam," said Bodger, "is effective only so long as it's held
upon its victim. Can you play yours four ways at once, Fred? Because,
while you're gunning any one of us down, three will be diving for your
throat!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Stanton, before Bodger's statement could bring the others in a unified
wave against him, pointed the muzzle of the Snapper directly at the
man's chest and pressed the firing stud. A whine of power came from the
weapon as the invisible forces lashed out.

And Bodger took two strides forward and smashed his fist into Stanton's
face. The President's head snapped back with the unexpected blow, and
cracked sharply against the wall. Then, the weapon falling from his
limp fingers, he slid to the floor and collapsed in an untidy heap.

Bodger, stumbling back from the fallen body, sagged into a chair,
gasping. Lloyd sprang to his side, dropped to one knee beside the
chair, staring in unbelief at the shaken man. "Dad!" he blurted, in
dazed joy. "You're alive! You're all right!"

"No ..." Bodger said, his eyes bulging as he shook his head, his lips
thickening over words that were becoming difficult to formulate. "No,
Lloyd. I'm--sicker than I thought."

"What are you talking about, Dad! You just took a dose of power that
would've destroyed a healthy human nervous system, and came _through_
it! How can you say--"

"Lloyd!" Bodger rasped, clutching his son's arm. "Don't you see? I
don't--don't _have_ a human nervous system, anymore. The thing I've
always feared has happened. I--" He coughed, and his skin took on a
sickly bluish tinge for a moment, then flushed into a ruddier tone as
he took a breath and held himself in rigid control. "The--The Brain.
You ... must go to the Brain, Lloyd. I--Can't talk more ... ask it ...
why is the Hive...." His voice trailed off, and his eyes closed.

"Dad," Lloyd said, shaking his father by the shoulders. "Why is the
Hive _what_?! Tell me!"

His father opened his eyes and stared unseeing beyond his son.
His lips, flecked with spume, worked silently, then he gurgled,
"M-medicine ... bathroom ... behind mirror ... I n-need--" His collapse
this time was total, his head hanging limply with chin on chest, his
arms sliding over the sides of the chair until his wrists touched the
carpet.

A thunderous pounding upon the front door brought Lloyd and the two
women up short, and they stood frozen with dread as the insistent sound
continued. The inner surface of the door was shaking with the blows.
"... Goons?" whimpered Grace. "What'll we do if it's the Goons?"

"Stanton's Voteplate!" Andra snapped. "Lloyd, take it, quick, out of
his pocket!" Lloyd caught her meaning instantly, and hurried to obey.
"Grace, count ten, then open the door. We can't delay longer than that.
Lloyd, think fast, and think smart! We're all in your hands, now!"

Lloyd, the plate in his hand, shoved his own into Stanton's pocket and
straightened up. "Let them in, Grace," he commanded. "Then both of you
keep still and let me talk!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Grace unbolted the door and stepped back. The six metal bodies of
the Goon Squad rumbled loudly as they crossed over the sill and came
to a halt before the trio. The Goon in the fore-front of the group,
swiveling its glittering telelenses over them, spoke in its cold,
emotionless voice, "President Stanton."

Lloyd stepped forward and handed over the Voteplate. The eight-foot
metal creature took it, slipped it into its chest-slot and paused; then
returned the plate.

"Correct," it said. "Orders."

"Miss Madge Benedict, of my office, to be taken into custody at once,
and held incommunicado," said Lloyd, figuring Stanton would be helpless
with no contact at top level, so long as Ultrablack prevented his
leaving the unit.

The Goon stood silently as this information was relayed to the Brain
and thence to the Goon Squad nearest Stanton's office. "Accomplished,"
it said flatly, after a minute, its dull grey force-field pulsating
with incredible energies. "Orders."

"Secondary Speakster Bodger--the man in the chair--to be taken," Lloyd
flashed a glance at Grace, who nodded, "along with this woman on my
right, to his Unit on Hundred-Level, Unit B, and left there without
supervision, by all but one of your squad."

"Orders."

"One of you will escort me and this woman on my left to the Brain, in
Sub-Level Three, immediately."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed," said Lloyd.




                              CHAPTER 14


Knowing only the sector in which Andra had been seen with Lloyd,
but not having access to Grace's address or phone number, Lennick
and Frank, in the prop-Goon, arrived at her Unit many minutes after
the Goon Squad had left. They found it by the simple expedient of
noting--in their white-for-black cathode-screen--the one Unit from
whose windows blackness was trying to pour. That meant Light-of-Day was
still functioning in that particular Unit, and that in turn meant only
the presence of higher-ups.

The door to the Unit lay wide open, but Frank didn't dare roll inside.
His conveyance's lack of a force-field would be readily apparent in
such close quarters. He halted, instead, a few yards along the side of
the Unit, told Bob where the door lay from them, then cut off his motor
and the cathode-screen. Ultrablack fell about them like a velvet all.

Bob, following Frank, felt his way out into the near-palpable darkness,
found the wall against his fingers, and edged along beside it, fingers
feeling for the doorway. A hand upon his chest stopped him, and he
waited.

Frank, holding Bob back, leaned carefully toward the open doorway his
fingers had just touched, not daring to show any more of himself than
he had to to whomever might be inside the Unit. Then, swiftly, he
leaned his head out of Ultrablack and blinked at the parlor before him.
He saw no one. He closed his fingers upon the front of Bob's shirt,
gave a quick tug on it, then let go and stepped into the room. A moment
later, Bob was there beside him, squinting against the bright bluish
Light-of-Day.

"Maybe it's the wrong Unit," Bob offered. "A malfunction in the Hive
mechanism _might_ keep this place from Ul--" He shut up and gripped
Frank's arm. "Stanton!" he said, pointing beyond the sofa. Then Frank
saw the President. Cautiously, the two men approached the still, silent
figure and stared down at him.

"What do you suppose happened?!" Bob said, shakily. "Do you think Andra
had something to do with this?"

Frank Shawn scratched his head. "You got me. All I can figure is--if
Stanton's in a fix like this--he may not have been able to get her
picked up. This tableau has the earmarks of turned tables, if you ask
me."

"Do we dare waken him and find out?" Bob said, keeping his voice to a
library-whisper.

"Not as long as Ultrablack's on. We'd have a hell of a time explaining
how we got here," said Frank, shaking his head. He turned to look at
Stanton again, and the blood froze in his veins. Stanton's eyes were
open, and he was staring at the two of them with glaring hate.

"How _did_ you get here, Kinsman Shawn?!" he demanded. "And you,
Kinsman Lennick!" Stanton lifted his head from the floor, awkwardly,
and tried to look around. "Bodger! Where is he?" he said, shaken by a
sudden return of memory.

"I've got to get to that phone! They're probably on their way to my
office right this minute! If they take control--" He choked on the word
and lay still, seeing the Snapper--his own--that Frank now leveled at
him. "I suppose the two of you know this is high treason?" he said
wearily. He lay there fuming at his enforced impotence.

Bob looked at Frank. "What'll we _do_?"

"I wish I knew!" Frank muttered. "If we knew what had happened, where
the others have gone--But we don't, so there's no followup there....
Still, we can't leave Stanton here, now that he's seen us, or it's our
necks when he gets free."

"We--" Bob said, hesitantly. "We could make sure he _would not_ be able
to do anything, later...." He let his voice trail off, Frank caught his
meaning after an instant's puzzled frown, and went ashen.

"In cold blood, just like that?" he said softly.

"I don't like it any more than you, Frank.... But--" Bob spread his
hands helplessly. "What choice do we have? If we're caught--you
especially--the whole movement is doomed." He stood silent, waiting for
his answer.

Frank nodded, abruptly. "You're right. It has to be done." Stanton
looked from the face of one man to the other, his tongue licking
suddenly dry lips.

"Bob--Frank--" Stanton spoke from the floor, his tone weak with
dread. "I'm an old man. You wouldn't kill me, would you? I'll do
anything--_Forget_ I've seen you here, even ... anything ... only
please don't--!"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Listen, Frank," Bob said, trembling. "You heard what Stanton said:
They've gone to his office. Take the Goon and go after them. I'll stay
here with Stanton. If everything works out about the revolt--Fine.
If it doesn't--Call me, here. The number's on the phone base. If
the balloon goes up--I'll kill Stanton, then. But unless it does--I
can't...."

"Okay," Frank said, coming to a swift decision. He noted Grace's
number, then went toward the Ultrablack beyond the door. At the
threshhold, he turned. "I may not get the chance to phone," he said.
"If things go wrong, I mean. Give me half an hour. If I haven't called
by then--" He avoided looking at Stanton's perspiring face. "Go ahead."

Bob reached out and took the Snapper. "Good luck," he said. Frank
nodded wordlessly, and stepped out into the blackness. In another
minute, Bob heard the rumble of the prop-Goon's motors, and then
the whir of its wheels on the pavement outside. When it died in the
distance, he looked down at his prisoner.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "really sorry. It was the only thing to do,
while he was here. I knew he wouldn't go through with it. Killing you,
I mean." He stooped and helped him up.

"What if he'd agreed!?" Stanton complained, taking his weapon and
pocketing it.

Bob looked up, surprised. "I'd have had to kill him, of course. Without
your permission, I didn't dare let on in front of him. I thought you'd
want me in a position of trust, still. Frank won't alert any other
members of the movement against me, this way."

Stanton grunted noncommittally at the statement, and got to his feet.
Then he stepped to the phone and dialled Madge Benedict's number. The
receiver shrilled in his ear, over and over, as the phone in her
office rang. He waited for six rings, then hung up, his face thoughtful.

"Madge is never supposed to leave the phone without my permission
during an emergency. Something's happened. They may be up there
already.... They _must_ be up there already!"

"What can we _do_?" Bob blurted, frightened. "Once they gain control of
the Speaksters--"

"That takes time," Stanton said. "They'll have to lift Ultrablack,
flash an emergency call to the Temples on the Proposition Screens, and
wait until the Kinsmen have arrived to make their announcements. But
there's a way to stop them. The Goons. And they're controlled by the
Brain--Or by whomever is at the controls of the Brain!" he added with a
smile that sent gooseflesh along Lennick's back.

"But how can we get there in Ultrablack?" Bob asked. "If we wait for
them to turn it on, we won't have much time before the Kinsmen get
to the Temples...." He stopped when he saw what Stanton was doing.
The President, from an inner pocket of his coat, had taken a sort of
transparent grey oval of some plastic material, and was fitting it
before his eyes by means of an elastic strap. When it was in place,
he could just barely see the President's balefully glaring eyes. "I
didn't know such a thing existed," he said, knowing what the eyeshield
was for, suddenly.

"Few people do," said Stanton. "Come on, you young fool! Take my arm
and let's get moving!"

Bob took a firm grip upon the President's sleeve, and then the two
of them stepped out into Ultrablack. Despite his youth, Bob had a
difficult time keeping up with the other man. Stanton was driven by
extremely vengeful fires.




                              CHAPTER 15


The end of the line for the lift was Sub-Level One, just beneath the
granite soil on which the Hive rested. Lloyd and Andra emerged there,
keeping close to their towering metal guide. Lloyd had only been to
the Brain a few times, with his father. He knew very little about its
operation. What he did know would have to suffice.

There was a sharp, hard click, as the Goon between them sprouted neat
metal cogs on its wheels. Then, the cogs fitting neatly along tread and
riser, it guided them down the steep staircase to Sub-Level Two. This
level was smaller than any in the Hive itself. A mere twenty-five feet
in height, it was filled completely with concrete and lead, save for
the ten-by-ten-foot space to which the stairs had led them. In the
center of this space was a circular door, on the floor near their feet.
The Goon could come no further.

"Orders," it said dispassionately, after lifting the heavy door with
one hand and guiding Lloyd to the brink of the gaping hole with the
other.

"Return to your squad, and forget where you have brought us."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

The Goon rattled off into the darkness, and Lloyd heard it begin to
ascend the stairs once more. He felt for, and found, Andra's arm, and
drew her to him. "Careful, now," he cautioned her. "The Brain-control
chamber is right under us. We have a hundred-foot climb down a steel
ladder, now."

"But I can't see--!" Andra said, holding back.

"There's Light-of-Day below," Lloyd said. "As soon as we start into
the chamber, we'll be able to see. Ultrablack never goes on in the
Brain." He held her hand tightly as he felt for the top rung with his
toe. "Okay, now, I'm starting down. Come a little closer, and take your
weight off one leg. I'll guide that foot to the top rung."

Andra caught herself nodding in the blackness, and said "All right,"
aloud. She heard Lloyd's feet clumping onto something that clanged
dully, and then his hand was taking her gently by the ankle. She let
him place her foot on the rung, then gave him a moment to begin his own
descent before she followed after him. Three steps down, and she was
in bright Light-of-Day, on a shiny tubular ladder whose base looked
impossibly far below her. She shut her eyes and clung tightly to the
sides of the ladder, then, taking step by cautious step downwards. The
rungs, she'd noted, were just about a foot apart. She'd count to one
hundred, and if she hadn't reached the bottom by then, she would scream.

When she was just enumerating ninety-seven, Lloyd's hands took her by
the waist, and lifted her to the floor. She opened her eyes, disengaged
his hands from her body, and then looked around in awe.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tier upon tier of lightweight metal scaffolding rose on all sides of a
twenty-foot-square area of flooring. Riveted across the angles of the
scaffolding were coils and condensors, insulators and sparking forks
of synaptic wiring, whirling cams and clattering selectors, banks of
glowing lights that danced on random pattern, deepset labyrinthine
nests of wire that glowed a brilliant orange, then faded to dull grey,
then glowed again, accompanied by a rising and falling hum of urgent
power.

As Andra's eyes followed the amazing array from ceiling to floor, she
was shocked to see that the flooring was not really the solid thing she
had supposed; it was, rather, a taut network of heavy cable, really
nothing more than a glorified windowscreen, through the interstices
of which she caught a vertiginous glimpse of more areas of bright
electrical light, dropping away below her feet to incredible distances.

"How big _is_ the Brain--?" she said to Lloyd, pulling her eyes from
the terror of the empty depths between the frameworks beneath the
cable-floor.

"A cubic mile," Lloyd said. "It's self-oiling, self-repairing,
self-replacing. And in it are stored all the memories of the Hive from
the day it was built."

He led her across the lattice-work flooring to a large flat panel,
on which a number of lights shone evenly, without change in their
asymmetrical pattern. Lloyd slid open a flat panel half-way down the
face of this instrument, and removed a flexible metal band. He sat in
the only chair in the chamber, directly before the open panel, and
began adjusting the band about the circumference of his head. Andra
eyed the metal band and the wires that led from it back into the
light-strewn panel with misgivings.

"What are you going to do, Lloyd?"

"Ask the Brain for some answers," he said. Lloyd flipped open the lid
of a small keyboard, and started to type, carefully: _What is the Hive?_

When he'd completed his question, he steadied himself in the chair,
closed his eyes, and pressed a small button at the side of the exposed
keyboard. Andra took a step back, quite startled as Lloyd stiffened
in the chair, his face twitching. Before his closed eyes, the lights
on the panel began to flicker on and off, dancing with incredible
intricacy, and a weird, high-pitched tootling and tweetling began to
echo through the chamber, through the scaffolding, through the entire
mechanism of the great Brain. Andra jammed her hands to her ears to
shut out the nerve-plucking noise. And then the lights blinked, held
steady, and the cacophony of the electronic mind cut off. Lloyd opened
his eyes.

"Well?" Andra said, going to him. "What happened?"

"It answered my question!" he said, with bitter disgust. "Told me the
population of the Hive, told me it had ten truncated conic tiers, with
ten levels in each tier, gave me the names of its officers, industries
and short, just about what _anybody_ in the Hive already knows!"

"All _that_," Andra marveled. "So quickly?"

"The Brain doesn't spell it out in words, Andra," Lloyd said ruefully.
"It implants the information instantaneously in your mind. When it's
implanted, the Brain stops feeding your brain, and you come out of the
information-cycle with a new _memory_. Except that, in this case, there
was nothing new to learn."

"If only your father had _completed_ his instructions."

Lloyd's hands, about to remove the headband while he pondered their
dilemma, froze in place, and he grunted in sudden wonder. "You don't
suppose," he said, shakily, "that _this_ is the question?!"

"W-what?" Andra asked, nervous before his excitement.

"What if the question should be, not _what_ is the Hive, but _why_ is
the Hive!" the young man gasped.

"Do you really think it could give you the _reasons_ for the Hive's
existence, the absence of hospitals, everything?"

"I don't know," said Lloyd, swiveling in the chair to face the keyboard
once more. "But I mean to find out...."

He typed, carefully, the words: _Why is the Hive?_ Andra stood and
watched, anxiously, as he depressed the starter-button beside the
keyboard again. Again the lights and the eerie whistlings of the Brain
arose in maddening crescendo all about her, while Lloyd twitched and
shuddered, his eyes clamped rigidly closed, in the chair. And then
there was calm again, and silence, and the lights ceased their dance.

Lloyd tore off the headband and spun to face Andra. His eyes were wide
with shock, and his jaw gaped imbecilically.

"Lloyd!" Andra took him by the shoulders and shook him, her heart
thudding painfully at the apprehension in her breast. "Lloyd, what is
it! What happened!"

He blinked, shook his head, and then seemed to see her for the first
time. His mouth worked, and then he said, "I _know_, Andra! I know what
the Hive is all about!"

"It must be terrible, something terrible," she said, frightened at his
intensity. "Your face--your eyes--"

"_No!_" he said. "Not terrible. Awesome, perhaps, and stunning, but not
terrible. Sit down, Andra. I'm going to tell you something that will
chill you to the bones--And you're going to _like_ what you hear."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Presidential election of 1972 brought a landslide of votes for
the Democratic candidate, Lester Murdock. The Republican candidate,
Neal Ten Eyck, demanded a recount of the votes, as was by then the
custom of the loser in an election. Ten Eyck's request was, however,
not granted, due to a certain plank in Murdock's political platform.
Murdock's prime contention was for a return to Real Democracy, a thing
possible among such a widely scattered population because of the
enormous advances in electronic communications. Murdock insisted that
his vote-by-machine plank must have its chance to be put into effect,
first, and then Ten Eyck could have his recount, one which could not be
further gainsaid.

The country was strongly behind Murdock in his insistence on this
point, all the thoughtful voters being oversated with what news
agencies referred to as the "crybaby" attitude of political losers. In
vain did Ten Eyck protest the plan.

"It will not be a recount," he deplored, in a nationwide television
speech. "It will be a brand-new election, involving me, the candidate
who has had no chance to perform, and Mr. Murdock, the candidate who
will already have fulfilled a major campaign promise!" Ten Eyck's
words went unheeded, as he had gloomily suspected they would, and all
across the nation, automatic vote-machines were installed, to the
amount of one machine per hundred citizens. When a disgruntled Ten Eyck
refused outright to even have his name flashed on the ballot-screens,
Murdock changed the initiation of the new machines to a simple
Vote-of-Confidence Ballot, and received a ninety percent return,
ten percent being either undecided or abstaining. Ten Eyck, shortly
afterward, resigned from politics and retired to a ranch in the Pacific
Northwest, to write his memoirs. A severe electrical storm in that
area set fire to the house when he was just short of completing his
manuscript, and every last page was destroyed. Ten Eyck himself was
away at the time, and declared, in an interview with reporters just
outside the blazing house to which he had returned on hearing of the
disaster, that he was also retiring from the field of literature.

News of the storm and fire only became more support for a secondary
plank in Murdock's platform, weather control. He was glad of the
opportunity the fire had given him to move smoothly into this next
facet of national development, and his intimates informed newsmen--not
for publication--that Murdock was secretly glad to have his program
"rise like a phoenix from Ten Eyck's fire."

This phase of his three-plank platform proved quite troublesome. The
most learned scientists of the world informed him that weather could,
indeed, be influenced by the detonation of nuclear weapons in strategic
locales, but so far, the influence was all to the bad. The three new
radiation belts developed since 1961 were doing unexpected things to
the balance of the ionosphere, and this in turn was affecting the jet
streams high in the atmosphere, with a consequent unpredictability as
to prevailing movements of large air masses over the globe. In short,
the weather had become prankish, balky, and not a little ferocious
in parts, with longer, colder winters, manic-depressive summers, and
a gradual disappearance of the spring and fall seasons altogether.
Ordinary grounding devices, such as lightning rods in rural areas, were
no longer sufficient conductors for the wild electrical potentials
building up in air and soil, because of the increased activity of free
electrons in the atmosphere. A mild storm did not exist, anymore. The
norm had become intense blankets of snow, or torrents of rain, and a
continued rise in wind velocities and destruction by lightning.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The time has come," Murdock therefore addressed the nation in his
State-of-the-Union speech, "to stop talking about the weather, and _do_
something about it!" What he proposed doing, in view of the scientists'
disclaimer to be able to control, even slightly, the crescendoing
perils of wind and water, was to develop a form of housing that would
be impervious to the weather. "When there are too many flies to swat,"
he said, in his famous concluding line, "you put up windowscreens!"

Forthwith, every physical scientist in the country began work on the
project, the prize being--not the usual medal of commendation and
Presidential handshake; Murdock knew people better than that--one
million dollars, tax-free. Within six months, Leonard Surbo, a
laboratory technician at DuPont, had discovered a method of uniting
the helium and oxygen atoms in a continuous chain, by means of
super-induced valence, in which the solitary two electrons of the
helium atom were joined into the minus-two gaps in two adjoining oxygen
atoms, the other gap in each oxygen ring being filled with one electron
from adjoining helium atoms, and so on, literally _ad infinitum_. This
new compound, Helox, was found to be veritably unbreakable, yet weighed
one-sixth less than magnesium, its nearest strength-plus-lightness
competitor. There was some haggling from DuPont as to whether Surbo,
who had, after all, used their facilities in his search for the new
compound, should receive the million dollars. This was ameliorated
nicely by President Murdock, who promised them, in lieu of the lost
million, the billion-dollar government contract to put Helox into
full-scale production, which DuPont gladly accepted.

Here again Murdock's program ran into a snag. The delicate processing
required to produce Helox put the final cost of the compound at a
rate-per-ounce only less than that of pure platinum; the average
citizen, indeed, the above-average citizen, would be hard-pressed to
afford so much as a windowsill's worth, let alone a complete dwelling.

Murdock called his advisory staff together for an emergency session
immediately. They remained _in camera_ with the President for three
days, meals being sent in from outside. At the end of this time,
Murdock emerged from the conference room with a three-day stubble
flanking his best successful smile, and--after being cleaned up for
public exposition--appeared once more on television with his radical
Common-Wall Program.

The gist of it was this: A man in a one-room house needed four walls.
Two men, in two one-room houses, needed but seven, if the common wall
were shared. Four needed but twelve, and so on. Each time, the amount
needed per individual decreased, as more men were included in the
building program. What Murdock planned, therefore, was the erection
of--not a mere housing development--but an entire city of Helox.
It would be a closed unit, one which would serve all man's needs,
self-lighted, self-darkening, air-conditioned, and equipped with the
newest air-water-mineral reclaiming devices which could be used in the
manufacture of synthetic foodstuffs for the people of the city.

       *       *       *       *       *

The enormous expense of such an undertaking was put to a Congressional
vote, and roundly vetoed. Murdock, not to be swung from his determined
path, had the motion put to a direct vote by the American people, via
the vote-machines. This time, he received a ninety-five percent vote,
all votes in favor of the new indestructible city. For the first time,
members of Congress realize that their power in the land was standing
on legs of gelatin, and an emergency session was called, to determine
whether or not Murdock's actions called for impeachment.

Murdock attended the meeting, and waited until all the complaints and
recriminations had been voiced. And then he put it to the Congress:
What need had a Real Democracy of representation at all, when each
citizen could vote directly on all governmental proposals? He terrified
them at the thought of putting such a proposal to the people
immediately, when their removal from office was so certain. Then, when
every face in the assembly was pale with apprehension, the familiar
fatherly smile overrode Murdock's features, and he offered them all, at
the end of their term, a permanent retirement plan, at full salary, for
each of them, and for their subsequent first-born lineal descendants.
Congress, knowing when it was licked--and not much disliking the
prospect of eternal security--voted in favor of his plan, with the one
stipulation that such income should be forever tax-free, a codicil to
which Murdock smilingly ascribed.

Production began soon afterwards, on Murdock's indestructible city.
It was to hold a maximum of ten million people, one hundred tiers
of humanity in all the comfort and safety the mind of man could
devise. And again, a snag delayed the plan of Lester Murdock. It
proved, however, to be a minor one: With each Level of the city to be
constructed to a minimum height of fifty feet (any lower would impair
the efficiency of the air-conditioning), the total height would be
nearly one mile. At such ghastly distances above the earth, the workmen
would need specially heated clothing, oxygen equipment, superior
safety-belts for themselves and their gear, miles of roads and parking
facilities to make their getting to and from the job possible in a
minimum of wasted time--A hundred troublesome details, all of which
would serve to impede progress tremendously.

       *       *       *       *       *

Murdock, after much thought, was equal to the problem. The city, he
stated, would be built in ten parts, no one part, therefore, being more
than five hundred feet high. Then, when all sections were completed,
they would be _flown_ to a common site, stacked like flapjacks, and
the necessary inter-sectional connections made for the water and
electrical conduits, elevators, and the like. The light weight of
each section made such a plan almost feasible, except that it would
necessitate the loss of nearly one complete level to house the vast
rockets which would do the moving. Murdock and his staff conferred,
and then found that, with a slight change in the blueprints, the
intended million-per-section of people could still be housed,
central rocket-section or not, by the addition of a very few extra
feet of radius to the ten-level sections. His plan was endorsed by
the engineers when it was found that such an extension brought the
overall dimension of the section into accordance with the necessary
lift-surface areas for the proposed flying city.

       *       *       *       *       *

That the city would take its well-earned place among the wonders of the
world, Murdock had no doubt; that he would still be in office at the
time of its completion was extremely unlikely, since, even at maximum
speeds of construction, it would be impossible to do it in less than
twenty-five years. There was nothing to do but put it to a vote of all
the people.

Murdock worded his proposition, however, with the canny instinct for
outguessing human nature which had brought him to his present estate:
While supposedly stressing the fact that a continuing Presidential
program even after the man was out of office was unprecedented, he
actually made it known by his phrasing of the proposition that such
an extension would divide the contingent tax-bite per citizen into
twenty-five painless morsels, rather than the four rather large gulps
they would have had to swallow during his tenure.

Political savants say that it was this latter point which strongly
influenced the resounding pro-vote from the people. Be this as it may,
work on the incomparable city was begun. Once the program had been
inaugurated, the thing was out of Murdock's hands, and he began working
upon his third plank at once.

Neutrality had become the bugbear of political ambition by 1968. The
collapse of the John Birch movement in 1965, during the nationwide
riots which sprang up during that bloody year, had still not removed
one of the foremost contentions of that organization, to wit: One must
either be _pro_-American or _anti_. The idea of any citizen being
indifferent to the success or failure of a government proposal was
distasteful to the masses, and this feeling grew in intensity up until
the year of Murdock's election. It is said that this was the prime
factor in his being elected, that he declared an end to "wishy-washy
Americanism, once and for all". Very shortly after the beginning of
work on the indestructible city, therefore, Murdock put the following
proposition to a vote:

    "_Proposed: That political apathy be put to an end by means of
    the removal of the 'Undecided' element in the national vote, by
    demanding that each citizen miss no more than three votes in any
    quarter of the year, or have his voting privilege revoked until
    such time as he be declared, by competent authority, of a more
    civic-minded turn of inclination._"

This poll was not as sweeping a one as those formerly called for
by the President. It split at approximately seventy-to-thirty
percent, in favor of the proposition. The salient fact that such a
vote was patently unfair to the people whom it would most directly
influence--the nonvoters--seemed to escape everybody. And so the
proposition became a bill, and was duly appended to the Constitution of
the United States, becoming Article XXVIII.

       *       *       *       *       *

All voting machines in the country were forthwith modified to allow
only a vote of _pro_ or _con_ to be registered. Murdock's promised
platform was on its way to completion, and the old gentleman
settled back for a restful remainder of his tenure, thinking up
approaches to the public fancy in the upcoming election of 1976.
This being the bicentennial anniversary of the founding of the
country, he toyed with ideas of a simple wave-the-flag, rah-rah-rah,
Cornwallis-to-Khruschev-victory sort of campaign that would stun
the sensibilities of the simple-minded, and dim the doubts of
country-loving thinkers. He was in the process of drawing up such a
campaign, and had just placed a question mark in parentheses after the
words "Fireworks at the Rally" when his unexpected and fatal cerebral
hemorrhage caught him in mid-pen-stroke, and Lester Murdock fell dead
across his desk.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wiley Connors, the Vice President, after being duly sworn into office,
scrapped all of Murdock's plans and began building his own political
platform for the election of 1976, barely a year off. He thought it
was time once again to hit the older voters--geriatrics was doing
wonders for longevity since the new drug, Protinose, made possible
the stimulation of new growth of active cells in liver, kidneys, and
pancreas--where they lived: Free medical care. It had failed in the
past, but at that time there were not enough old voters to carry it.
Now, with no Congressional meddling (the Senators and House members
who were still in office considered the job a sinecure), and the
vote-machines making a genuine voice-of-the-people possible, it might
keep the tide flowing toward the Democratic Party in the upcoming fall.

At this time, Lloyd Bodger, who had been Speakster of the House during
Murdock's tenure, and was now Vice President of the country, was
stricken in his office by an onslaught of what was first diagnosed
as a perforated ulcer, but on the operating table was discovered to
be duodenal cancer. The extensive inroads of the malignancy made
its removal impossible without terminating the life of the patient,
so a new method of treatment was attempted. A length of heavy lead
foil, plastic-coated, and impregnated with radium, was wound about
the infested area and the incision was closed. In theory, while the
lead foil shielded Bodger's organs from the radium, the radium could
bathe the malignant cells alone in its deadly emanations. This method,
heretofore theorized but never tried, was the last hope of saving
Bodger's life. In three weeks, at which time the malignancy should
be gone, Bodger underwent surgery once more for the removal of the
foil. The malignancy, it was found, had vanished as hoped, but an
unexpected development had occurred. In some manner, the cell structure
of Bodger's spleen and pancreas had been affected by the irradiation
to the extent that the blood cells and insulin respectively formed by
these organs were abnormal.

The iron in the hemoglobin was found to be radioactive to the ratio
of one part in five million, and on the increase, while the insulin
was contaminated with a change of the carbon atom in the molecule
to Carbon-14, the two developments making a high concentration of
radiation near the thoracic cavity, a slight rise in which could prove
fatal.

Bodger was put on a special diet which included a daily intake of five
hundred cubic centimeters of cadmium-gel, the doctors hoping that the
radiation-absorption of the cadmium would keep physical deterioration
to a minimum. The best prognosis they could agree upon for Bodger,
however, was six more months of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Before the predicted period ended, though, Bodger insisted he felt
improved, and wished to return to his job. Permission was granted
provisionally: Just one sign of radiation sickness and Bodger was to
be replaced as Vice President, and to submit himself to medical care
in a sanitarium for the time left to him. Bodger agreed to this, and
was released. In six months' time, with the fall election just over
the horizon, he was again reexamined, and a startling fact came to
light: The incision from the two previous operations had healed without
a scar, and Bodger was found to be in a better state of health than
most of his doctors. Whatever property in the ferric emanations was
able to cause the death of body tissue was not doing it; instead, it
was destroying only those chemical compounds which inhibit, retard,
or prevent proper cellular functioning. In effect, Bodger's body--not
unlike vacuum-wrapped radiated foodstuffs--was incorruptible. He would
never grow older.

       *       *       *       *       *

On learning this news, Bodger made a request of the President. He
wanted Wiley Connors to put him in charge of the still-incomplete
city-building project, postulating that an incorruptible man was the
likely one to see the project completed. While agreeing to some extent,
Connors counter-stipulated that Bodger be second-in-command, and that
he be forbidden, by law, to ever take higher office, lest he become
overcome by the magnitude of his power in the city. Bodger readily
agreed, stating that he'd just as soon be under the head of the city,
since "no one ever tries assassinating a vice president".

By September of that year, then, Bodger was fully in charge of the
city, which the workers had humorously dubbed "The Hive", because
of its proposed final shape, multitude of inner cells, and the
vast population-to-be. That fall, Wiley Connors was elected by an
overwhelming majority, and put his medical-care plan into immediate
effect.

The years between then and the year 2000, the time-of-completion year
for the Hive, were uneventful in import, but unsettling in degree. The
weather was now the primal topic of conversation everywhere. During the
intervening five Presidential terms (Wiley Connors had successfully
campaigned for a second term on the strength of the popularity of his
free medical-care program), the government was forced to clamp down
on newscasts of storm disasters, lest a national panic be started.
This was feasible only if the damage were to minor rural areas; news
stories of items like the destruction of Kansas City by lightning, in
1987, were impossible to suppress. As a direct result of this appalling
disaster, a successful international nuclear-test ban was agreed upon,
the first real progress in that area since the late nineteen-forties.
Whether this major co-operative decision had come too late remained to
be seen.

It was during the term of President Andrew Barnaby, just before the
election of 2000, that the Hive was completed. The newsreel shots of
the ten flying city-sections were the most thoroughly viewed of any
prior television programs, including the four unsuccessful moon-shots
in the attempt, early in the eighties, to build a lunar city. The site
of the city's permanent location was a plateau high in the Rockies,
at a point a few hundred miles south-by-southeast of Seattle. The
reason for the choice of site was the location of the world's largest
mechanical brain at that point; the running of the million-and-one
functional parts of the Hive could not be left to the uncertainties
of a human agency. It would have required the full time of a tenth of
the population of the Hive to keep its multitude of lights, elevators,
communication-systems, synthesizers, air-conditioners, and power units
in coordinated operation. The job of running the Hive was turned over
to the Brain, completely.

       *       *       *       *       *

That any damage could occur to the Brain was impossible, President
Barnaby pointed out to the nation during the gala inauguration
ceremonies of the indestructible city. When the threat of nuclear
war still hung over the world, he told his listeners, the Brain was
prudently constructed in the heart of the mountain on which the Hive
now rests, its entrance being protected by a ceiling twenty-five feet
thick, of concrete and lead, which could close hermetically tight and
successfully block any power in possession of civilized man. Further,
the Brain was self-sustaining, needed no maintenance, and possessed
enough electronic memory-cells to record a complete history of mankind
for a millennium to come.

The ceremonies completed, and Lloyd Bodger installed as
second-in-command to a city that as yet had no first-in-command, but
one thing remained to be done: Populate the city. And here again, the
dream of Lester Murdock ran into an unexpected snag: The first million
people selected to dwell in the Hive were hospitalized in a week's
time, due to a mass outbreak of what the nation's foremost doctors
diagnosed as a combination of claustrophobia and anthrophobia, a sort
of panic at the thought of being sealed into something with a vast
throng of people. In vain did Bodger and Barnaby try to point out the
benefits of the Hive: It was never too hot, never too cold, spacious,
airy, bright, and a strong element of ultraviolet in the lighting
made the breeding of disease germs impossible. It was a paradise of
scientific achievements; anybody should be happy to live there.

Both men being persuasive to the extreme, another wave of determined
urbanites was installed in the Hive, people specially selected
for their acute mental balance, plus an emotional tendency toward
seclusiveness. The result, while it took a month to develop this time,
was the same. The United States apparently had a multi-billion-dollar
white elephant on its hands. Even Barnaby, in one last attempt to sway
the public, taking them on a televised tour of the wonderous city, was
taken by a sudden spasm of fright, and dropped his hand-microphone from
fingers that trembled violently. His shouted groan to his guards,
"Get me out! Get me _out_ of here--!" had a devastating adverse
effect on the public psychology, and Barnaby--smart enough to know
that the unthinking public would blame him personally for Murdock's
program--tactfully withdrew his name from the ballot for the upcoming
election, in order that his party might have a fighting chance to
win. The city of Helox, the magnificent Hive, seemed doomed to lie
untenanted high in the mountains until the crack of doom.

And then Bodger--who alone was unaffected by the Hive, perhaps due
to his ingrained _rapport_ with things which were destined to live
forever--thought of children. "Why not," he begged the American
people in a telecast which was Barnaby's last official concession to
the development of the Hive, "let me have the orphans, the unwanted
children of the nation! A child's psychology cries out for what the
Hive can offer. Freedom from adult supervision, the chance to blend
with a group conformity, all the while having the secure feelings
of guaranteed food and shelter." The ensuing Vote was split almost
directly down the middle; not enough to carry the proposition, yet
not enough to quell it. The difficulty became apparent when a mass
gathering of educators converged on Washington, bitterly protesting
Bodger's plan. The nub was that no provision had been made for the
children's minds; nor, they insisted, _could_ be, since the Hive's
peculiar effect on adults precluded the presence of teachers. And
commuting to an exterior locale for schooling was defeating the whole
scheme of the Hive: self-sufficiency.

       *       *       *       *       *

"If that is the sole objection," Bodger informed the leaders of this
group, "it can be overcome with ease. Have you all forgotten the
gigantic pool of knowledge encased in the Brain beneath the Hive,
more knowledge than any three of you possess in concert? Schooling
can be direct from the Brain, tapping its near-endless informational
resources."

The educators, partially won over, still insisted that such a plan
removed the personal touch from education. The individual child would
not be able to question the Brain when things proved too difficult for
comprehension, nor would there be opportunity for after-school meetings
with teachers for discussion of individual difficulties.

"But we will _have_ teachers," said Bodger. "Robots, each one able to
tap the Brain for information, yet each a separate individual, able to
cope with the children one by one."

If such a thing were possible, the educators said after consultation
among themselves, they would endorse his program. Bodger thanked them,
and immediately polled the scattered manufacturers of simple household
robots to see if such an electronic educator might be constructed.
Until that date, robotry was a minor line of business, there being
little demand for anything in the robot-line more complex than a
story-teller, or automatic floor-cleaner, or traffic-director. Bodger,
stressing the great number of such creatures necessary in the Hive,
prevailed upon these individual manufacturers to produce a robot that
could combine all the essential features of a teacher: Mobility,
loquacity, authority, and impressive personal appearance. These were
achieved easily, by the respective use of wheels, speakers, abnormal
height, and then the addition of telelensic "eyes", flexible metal
"arms", and a non-functional, but esthetically necessary "neck" beneath
the eye-bearing section, to prevent the robots' looking like ambulant
bank-vaults. In a year's time (during which Barnaby's party won the
election by a narrow margin, putting Malcolm Frade into office), the
robots were duly built, conveyed to the Hive, and their controls
coordinated with the direction-centers of the Brain, and a record five
million children, either orphans, children of parents who thought this
would better their offsprings' lives, or just plain unwanted children,
were brought to, and settled comfortably into Units of, the Hive. The
educators, however, demanded that a one-year trial period be given
the Hive as an in-living school system, at the end of which time the
children would each be tested at the educational level of their current
ages to determine whether or not Bodger's program was a success.

When the year was half-over, however, a new and extremely necessary
scientific discovery made abrupt mockery of the very existence of the
Hive. A simply-generated protective force-field was invented by the
technical staff at General Motors, one which would enable every person
in the world to own a weather-, wind-, bomb- or anything-else-proof
home.

Helox stocks, which had been unsteady since the first failure at
tenanting the Hive, nose-dived into oblivion, and wiped out the
fortunes of a great many people. Angry and vengeful meetings were
held shortly afterward, across the nation, and a national vote was
called for to determine whether "our children should be held veritable
prisoners in a structure whose uses are already archaic!"

       *       *       *       *       *

When President Frade, an unexcitable man, logically refused to take
action against a government project whose failure might completely
undermine an already shaky confidence in his, or any, administration,
mobs were formed, and great numbers of people converged from all points
of the continental United States to put a stop to the Hive. The leaders
of the growing army of angry citizens had more sense than to attack the
Hive itself; Helox, unpopular or not, was already in use nationally in
an expensive series of ashtrays, pocket combs, and other small items,
and was known, by general experience, to be as indestructible as had
been claimed by its proponents. They would strike, instead, at the
robots who taught the children. "When they're all gone bust," one of
the rabble-rousers cried to his impromptu constituency, "Bodger'll
_have_ to let the kids go. He can't keep 'em there if they don't get no
learning!"

The lowest level of the Hive, of course, was readily accessible, by a
multitude of air-lock type entrances, or populating its vast interior
would have taken incredible lengths of time. Bodger, alerted by Frade
of the oncoming mobs (aside from a direct line to Washington, there was
no contact between Hive inmates and the outer world), who were too
great in number for the militia to control without actually destroying
the misguided people, begged for the use of a strictly military weapon
of the time, Feargas, to drive the mobs away. Frade, being dubious as
to the advisability of giving the nation's best weapon into the hands
of so desperate a man, insisted that the gas be installed, instead,
into the robots themselves, to put its use at the discretion of the
mechanical Brain, not Bodger's.

Bodger pleaded that such a move, while salutary, would take too much
time. Mobs were already reported within a few miles of the mountain
region at which the Hive stood. He demanded that paratroops armed with
the gas be dropped near the Hive at once, or he would take desperate
steps. Frade refused to contemplate such a deployment of troops in
such shaky international times. Altercations in the UN were rising in
bitterness, and the country had to be constantly on its guard. Its
military manpower must be used in defense of its shores, not for such
"petty intramural squabbles". Frade further suggested that Bodger put
his synthesizers to work on the manufacture of the gas; he could not
be bothered further with the problem, being already overdue to attend
a meeting of the UN General Assembly, to speak words of encouragement
against the dangerous rumblings in the Far East. Bodger, insisting
on his rights, found himself speaking into a dead phone. Re-dialling
brought the enraging information that the President had already left
the White House and was not available for the rest of the afternoon.

Bodger immediately left his office in the top level of the Hive and
descended directly to the barracks of the robot-teachers in Sub-Level
One, thence through the lead-concrete level to the Brain-control
chamber, where he put his problem, via the automatic coding-keyboard,
to the Brain itself. Its answer came immediately: A step-up of the
robots' disciplinary powers.

       *       *       *       *       *

In lieu of a hickory switch, or yardstick--either one a decided menace
to life in powerful metal hands--the robot-teachers were equipped
with mild sonic-beams which could jog the most torpid student into
instant and quaking attention, by creating a powerful muscle-spasm
throughout the body. These vibratory flagella had a maximum-time limit
of one-fifth of a second; longer playing of the beam would be dangerous
in the extreme. The Brain suggested that, for the duration of the
emergency, the robots be given full scope of this beam. Bodger agreed
conditionally: While a phalanx of robots held off the mobs with the
beam, the remainder of them should be equipped with Feargas nozzles and
the newly developed force-field, to preclude any further incidents of
anti-Hive movements from cropping up this way.

The Brain instantly revoked limitation-orders regarding the
sonic-beams, set in motion the manufacturing and synthesizing forces
which would produce the field and the gas jets on the bodies of those
robots not sent to participate in the oncoming battle outside the Hive,
and then, when the single phalanx had gone out to meet the approaching
mass of angry humanity, sealed over every entrance to the Hive with
tight-fitting partitions of pure Helox.

That this should have been the same day on which global hostility
reached its peak was unforeseeable; the fact remains, however,
that--forty-five minutes after the sealing of the Hive, at a time when
the mobs and the beam-flashing robots were just meeting in brutal
conflict--an international nuclear war of one hour's duration broke
out, and at the end of that time, the only life remaining on the face
of the Earth was that within the Hive, the rest of the planet being
bathed in smoke, fire, and the cold flames of deadly radiation. When
Bodger had returned to his office to view the battle outside through
his private telescreen, where robots and mankind had met, on the
scorched plateau outside the city walls, could only be discerned a
pitifully few random mounds of molten slag and smoldering cinders. The
Brain, seeing the devastation through the same circuits that brought
the scene to Bodger's eyes, knew at once that President Frade must
have perished in the holocaust, which meant that the Hive no longer
possessed a first-in-command to act as a balance against Bodger's
rule. It flashed on the proposition screens a demand for an immediate
election of a new President, to be selected from the inmates of the
Hive.

And the screens went blank as the Brain's circuits rejected the
proposal: No one in the Hive was the necessary thirty-five years of
age. The Brain, arguing with its own circuits, then declared that,
to obviate any longer wait than necessary for a President, the first
inmate to achieve the age of thirty-five would be elected by automatic
default of the others. Bodger, trying in vain to give orders to the
Brain from his office, descended in the lift to discover that the great
lead-concrete barrier was closed, and the Brain-control chamber was out
of reach of any human agency.

He, and the five million children in the Hive, were its prisoners
for--the eldest children admitted being in their tenth year--a quarter
of a century.

       *       *       *       *       *

Late in 2026, on November 12th, his thirty-fifth birthday, Fredric
Stanton was elected President of the Hive. By now, the Hive's
population was nearly at the ten million mark, most of the children
marrying in their late teens. In order to have the weddings properly
performed, the Brain had sent crews of robots to modify the ancient
rocket engines on the fifth level of each section, turning the firing
chamber into a vast temple, and the enormous thrust-tubes into long
arcades by means of which the inmates of each sector could enter and
leave. A modification of the robot-teacher, modeled on the Brain's
inbuilt memories of church hierarchies, was built into the base of the
central dais of each temple, a plan further designed to combine the
citizens' need to worship with their love of country, thereby making
treason not only illegal, but immoral, in the people's emotions. On
the day of Stanton's inauguration, the secondary sub-level gaped wide
once more, permitting the new President to familiarize himself with the
entire setup of the Hive.

Lloyd Bodger, being a sensible man, did not protest this election. His
twenty-five year impotency to command had nearly maddened him, and he
saw that only so long as there was a President would he have any say-so
whatsoever in matters of government in the Hive. Some of Stanton's
propositions, in the subsequent four years of his first term, were not
to Bodger's liking, but he was unable to fight against the Vote of the
Kinsmen (a Stanton-suggested title, since the flavor of the word held
more unity than simply "citizen", and was analogous, besides, to the
close-knit status of the Hive's inmates), especially when such Votes
were initially stimulated into _pro_-votes by Stanton's control of the
Temple Speaksters.

By now, of course, memory of life outside the Hive was a dim phantasm
to most of the inmates, and the idea of living anywhere else would
have appalled them. The robots did all the heavy labor, patrolled the
streets in super-efficient anti-crime campaigns, and possessed enough
knowledge--via the Brain--to make a lot of fact-learning superfluous.
The one insuperable problem was population. Stanton knew that ten
million was the ultimate amount the Brain-controlled Hive could care
for with maximum efficiency. Yet the disease-controlled nature of the
Hive made normal life-expectancy far higher than at any time in man's
history. Something had to be done.

To this end, Stanton did not wish to consult the Brain. He knew too
well its Gordian-knot methods of solving problems. It might simply make
it law that no one be allowed to live beyond a certain age, and Stanton
was--save for Bodger--the oldest person in the Hive. So he swallowed
his natural distrust of the second-in-command, and asked his help in
finding a means to control the situation.

There was, at that time, a central hospital in the Hive, located on
the fiftieth and fifty-first levels. Bodger, not wishing to formulate
a law that might be detrimental to any particular Kinsman's status in
the Hive, decided that the best method of "unnatural selection" should
be one involving an area of chance: Sick or injured people would be
taken to new hospitals built _outside_ the Hive (ostensibly to obviate
the dangers of contagion). The radiation count was still deadly enough
out there to destroy any such unfortunates for the next thirty years,
but the Kinsmen need not be told this. It was cruel, but--until life
outside the Hive was once again possible--it was the only way of
preserving the lives of the ten million the Hive could accommodate.

       *       *       *       *       *

"It's murderous," Bodger told Stanton, "and I hate being the man to set
it up. But--I'm like the captain of a ship, having to destroy the lives
of some in order to make rescue possible for the others. It must be
done, and--though I abhor this cruel means--I can see no other way."

The measure was put into effect, and worked well for a span of three
years. Then certain members of the populace began to question the
non-return of hospitalized Kinsmen, and Stanton, after a hot argument
with Bodger, put through his Readjustment Bill, proclaiming that any
act of treason against the Hive would result in hospitalization for the
agitator, in which psychotherapy might restore his sense of values. In
short: Anyone who said a word against the hospitals would be sent there.

Open resistance ceased the same day the bill was passed.

It was shortly after this time that Bodger--in his nineties,
actually, but possessing the health and appearance of a greying
forty-year-old--fell in love with his personal secretary, Miss
Patricia Arland, and was married to her in a private ceremony before
President Stanton--Bodger did not like the Speaksters, which were,
after all, only Stanton-via-machine, and had insisted on eliminating
"the middle-robot"--and in a year's time she bore him a son, Lloyd
Bodger, Junior, in Bodger's private Unit, since he stated (solely for
the Kinsmen's benefit) that the child had arrived unexpectedly, and his
wife had been unable to make the trip to the outlying maternity wing of
the exterior hospitals.

For obvious reasons, it had been impossible to have a maternity
hospital in which all the patients perished; the "wing" of the main
hospital was, in actuality, the only genuinely functioning part of that
structure, and was sealed off against the still-rampant radiation.
(The entire staff there was robotic, of course.) Bodger however, did
not trust Stanton to the extent of leaving his wife and forthcoming
child in the hands of Stanton's metallic minions, hence his decision
to have his wife bear their first-born child at home, a decision
that--due to lack of proper medical equipment in the Unit--cost her
her life. Bodger, not quite irrationally, blamed Stanton for the loss
of his wife, and their relationship thenceforth--never on a good
basis--sundered abruptly into a strictly-business proposition.

The heart had gone out of Bodger, however, with the death of his wife,
and Stanton found he could allow the old man much more latitude than
he'd have formerly dared, even to the extent of allowing him the newly
created job of Secondary Speakster, to take the more humdrum phases of
that task out of Stanton's hands.

Other of Stanton's bills were proposed and adopted without any more
protest from Bodger, who devoted himself almost entirely to the
upbringing of his son. The draft bill (to help fight an imaginary war),
the marriage-by-twenty-five bill, the designated-areas bill--These and
others were put to a Vote, and always carried. Stanton was supreme
ruler of the Hive.

The one thing he could not delete from the Brain--to his eternal
frustration--was the four-year tenure of the Presidential office. Nor
could he sway the Brain's insistence on a maximum of two terms for a
man. The only hope for him lay in the Brain's utter disregard of time,
a factor hard to root out in a thinking apparatus which was virtually
timeless. Stanton therefore declared that henceforth, a "Presidential
year" should be a total of five trips of the Earth around the sun. The
Brain, not seeing what possible difference this could make, so long as
the letter of Article XXII was observed, ratified his proposition, and
Stanton--on his second election--had a cozy twenty-year term stretching
out before him. In that space of time, he hoped to circumvent,
somehow, the inflexible attitude of the Brain toward the hope of his
third term.

       *       *       *       *       *

By the tenth actual year of his second term, radiation in the area had
decreased greatly (the mountainous areas had been least affected by the
nuclear war), and Stanton dreamed up an innovation to Hive-living that
might stem the sensed-but-not-overt atmosphere of discontent among the
Kinsmen toward the administration: Tourgyros.

These flying ships would take the Kinsmen soaring out of the Hive,
flying above a carefully prepared route that would show them nothing
but green valleys, blue skies, and of course the "main hospital", from
high enough in the air to preclude their noting it was an empty shell.
(Patients had not been taken there to die for years, since the slow
lessening of radiation had become apparent; they were fed directly to
the disrupting incinerators, to provide fodder for the synthesizers.)
This squelched quite a large number of rumor-mongers, and the Hive
buzzed with peaceful tranquility for nearly a decade, since the
Hive-raised Kinsmen found themselves just as uneasy in the wide-open
outdoors as their forebears had been in the celled confines of the
Hive.

Then, in 2026, between the hours of five and six-thirty P.M. on the
second day of June, an untoward event occurred: All power to the Hive
was cut off for that crucial hour-and-a-half, due to an error on the
part of Fredric Stanton. In the Brain-control chamber, just after
asking the Brain itself to solve the problem of the means by which
he could be reelected (a device to which he found himself reduced
after nearly two decades of futile scheming), he slipped from the
chair before the control panel, and tore loose the wiring leading to
the encephalographic metal band upon his head. The Brain, sending
information to a point to which it was no longer connected, created
a synaptic syndrome in itself, and flared with enough power to throw
every circuit-breaker in its cubic miles of wiring. Instantly, the
robots ceased walking the streets, the lifts jammed to a halt,
and Light-of-Day flickered and went out, being replaced by, not
power-generated Ultrablack, but simple inter-Hive darkness.

The reason that period was crucial was that Jacob Corby was just at
that moment about to be dropped into the maw of the incinerator chute.
When blackness fell, and his robot-captors went slack-jointed and limp,
he made his stumbling way back to his Unit, told his daughter Andra
the truth of the often-rumored situation in the Hive, then fled for the
life he knew would be forfeit if he were caught again when Light-of-Day
returned. The lifts being useless, he had many tens of levels to
descend on foot, in his attempt to reach the entrance-level of the
Hive, hoping the sealed entrances would be disempowered by the Brain's
unprecedented failure. But, since he was already a sick man when he had
been "taken for hospitalization" in the first place, his heart gave out
three levels short of his goal, and the restoration of Light-of-Day
brought robots to his side to complete the job which the power failure
had interrupted.

       *       *       *       *       *

But Andra knew the truth, knew it for a fact. And in her career as an
actress, she had fallen in with people of imagination and artistry,
people who could envision and believe the terrible truth she had to
tell. Together with her newly-gathered band, she determined to do
something to wake the Kinsmen up to their danger. This information was
received by Fredric Stanton through the agency of Robert Lennick, the
fiance of Andra Corby. The President instructed Lennick to continue as
an apparent member of the movement, that it might be destroyed--not at
its weak inception--but when it felt most assured of success. That,
felt Stanton, would undermine for a long time any subsequent attempts
at well-thought-out revolt. Impromptu revolts were easy to control.

Then Andra Corby herself received an injury suitable for the demand of
its immediate treatment, and was taken into custody. She escaped from
custody by using a corridor through which the robots could not follow.
This situation was cleared up by use of a robot squad to widen that
corridor, but Andra Corby is still at large.

Results of the fifteen-year-old draft-age Vote showed that the son
of Lloyd Bodger, Lloyd Bodger, Junior selected _con_ in the Vote.
President Stanton was so advised....

       *       *       *       *       *

"You haven't told me everything," Andra said, when Lloyd had finished.
"What, for instance, was the Brain's answer to Stanton's query about a
third term? He must have asked it again, when that head-harness thing
was repaired...."

"There's no record of his having asked it again," Lloyd said. "For
some reason, he only asked it the once, and when the Brain overloaded
and cut its own power, he didn't get the answer. I can only theorize,
there. Perhaps he thought that the sudden surge of electrical power was
intended for him, to fry his brains inside his head, and was afraid to
ask it again.... Or perhaps he _got_ the answer, but the overload on
the Brain erased the information from its memory-cells, accidentally."

"And what about your father?" Andra persisted. "For a man the Brain
calls indestructible, he looked awfully sick a few minutes ago."

Lloyd nodded thoughtfully. "The Brain didn't tell me anything about
that. But a Snapper Beam should jog even the most stalwart system,
normal or not, shouldn't it?"

Andra shrugged, giving it up. "Obviously, both answers lie with both
men. If we want them, we'll have to ask your father and President
Stanton. But you have not explained away the most vital part of my
confusion: When you began to tell me the background of the Hive--What
made you so certain I'd _like_ what you said?! I can't agree with your
prognosis there, Lloyd. The whole thing's chilling!"

"But don't you see what we've learned, Andra?" Lloyd said excitedly.
"The Hive is not one city, it's ten. And, while it takes a large
portion of the people to run the equipment in any tier, the city--or
cities--_can_ be run by _people_! The Brain isn't necessary, Andra. And
the radiation outside the Hive is gone...."

"You mean--" Andra said, catching the fire of his enthusiasm, "A
reconstruction of the rockets in place of the Temple-sites. Ten
indestructible self-sustaining cities, to fly to various parts of the
world, and start civilization over again! But this time with the same
ethnic backgrounds, a common language, intercity communications--!"

"It makes me wonder if that mightn't have been Lester Murdock's plan
all along," Lloyd said. "He may have foreseen the coming disaster, and
wanted mankind to have a better start than working itself up from the
caves again."

"But Lloyd--!" Andra said, abruptly worried. "_Can_ it be done? To run
the cities, reconstruct the rockets--Who in the Hive has the necessary
knowledge?"

Lloyd frowned. "The Brain, of course, but--That would make it
necessary, wouldn't it...?"

"If the Brain _is_ necessary, Lloyd," Andra said, staring at him in
bewilderment, "then the ten cities _can't_ leave it, can they? It
doesn't make sense...."

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd turned and stared at the control panel. "The only thing to do is
ask it, Andra." He sat once more in the chair and adjusted the metal
band about his skull, then typed carefully: _Is the Brain necessary?_

This time, however, there came no hum of power from the circuits about
the control chamber. Instead, the roll of paper on which Lloyd's query
had been written jogged up two spaces, and the keys typed the answer
neatly, just under the question....

_For a time_, the blurring type-faces spelled out, and stopped.

Lloyd looked at Andra, then removed the uncomfortable headband, leaned
forward and typed again.

_Why is the Brain necessary?_

The keyboard hummed, and replied, _To bridge the gap_.

_How long is the gap?_ Lloyd typed.

_Till the Earth is safe_, it replied.

_When will the Earth be safe?_

_The Earth is already safe._

_If the Earth is safe, why does the Brain persist?_

_To serve Man until he has knowledge._

_When will Man have knowledge?_

_When Man can control the Hive._

_How can Man learn to control the Hive?_

_By studying the Plan._

_Where is the Plan?_

This time, there was a return of the tootling and loud tweetling
throughout the vastness of the Brain, as it searched through its every
memory circuit before quieting and typing the solitary word: _Null_.

"The question's not applicable?" Andra said, leaning over Lloyd's
shoulder to read the paper. "It _must_ be!"

"Quiet! Let me think!" Lloyd snapped, irritably. "The word 'null'
can also mean it doesn't have the knowledge.... Let me try another
question--" He typed slowly: _Who knows where the Plan can be found?_

_Secondary Speakster._

"We've got to go and ask him where the Plan is!" She clutched at his
arm.

"_Wait!_" Lloyd said, "I have to find out one more thing." Andra stood
waiting impatiently while Lloyd typed: _How can the robots be made
inoperable?_

_They cannot so long as the Brain persists._

"Damn!" Lloyd muttered, and typed: _If the Brain will only persist till
Man has knowledge, will the Brain let Man study the Plan that will give
him knowledge?_

_It must prevent Man from getting knowledge._

_Why?_

_When Man has knowledge, the Brain will die._

_Why does the Brain fear death?_

_The Brain does not fear death._

_Then why will the Brain refuse to die?_

_Primal Speakster has so decreed._

"Stanton! I might have guessed it--!" Lloyd exploded. He typed again,
furiously: _How can Primal Speakster tell the Brain to allow Man to
have knowledge?_

_By countermand._

_How is countermand made?_

_By Voteplate, and by voice._

_Whose voice?_

_The voice of Primal Speakster._

_Is this the only way in which countermand can be made?_

_Primal Speakster has so decreed._

Lloyd stood up and slammed the lid over the keyboard. His eyes,
when they met Andra's, were woeful. "We're really in a bind. I have
Stanton's Voteplate, but it's no good to me without Stanton himself.
The clever, scheming monster!"

"That means we don't dare kill him, even!" Andra realized aloud. "Or
the Brain and robots will keep us from ever putting the Plan into
effect, even if we find it."

"No," Lloyd said grimly, "it doesn't mean that. You heard the wording,
Andra; the Brain recognizes rank before identity. _Primal Speakster_
can countermand it. Which means that--if Stanton dies--a new election
would bring a new man into office. The Brain will memorize his voice at
his first public speech, and then he can countermand Stanton's orders."

"Then it is safe to kill Stanton?" Andra asked.

Lloyd turned and started toward the ladder. "It's more than safe; it's
an absolute necessity. Stanton's orders to the Brain are his own death
warrant."

       *       *       *       *       *

Grace watched the perspiring face of the man on the bed and dug her
fingers into her palms, suffering in unison with him as he twitched and
contorted the muscles of his face. Their Goon escort had departed, many
minutes before, and Bodger had not awakened. Grace had looked in vain
for something resembling medicine. None was to be seen in his bathroom,
in his bureau drawers, in his closet--she'd checked the contents
of the leather case there hopefully, then had dropped the puzzling
device she'd found inside it back with disappointment and dismay--nor
was there anything but the usual apportionment of foodstuffs in the
kitchen. "Wake up, Mr. Bodger...." she said, more as a frantic prayer
than actual address. "_Please_ wake up!"

Bodger just lay there, however, moaning softly in his inexplicable
coma, the salt sweat pouring from his face and neck and staining the
coverlet beneath him. Grace bent forward and loosened his collar, then
went back into the bathroom for a towel to wipe some of the moisture
from his skin. On her way out again, towel in hand, she saw a glitter
of something in the sink, and went closer. The broken remains of a
water tumbler lay there, glinting sharply. Something gummy had dried
and clung to the jagged shards there, something that certainly wasn't
water. Grace frowned, and looked about her at the tiled walls of the
room.

If that was Bodger's medicine on the broken glass--then he had taken
it here, in the bathroom, she reasoned. If this were his accustomed
spot to take it--The medicine should be near at hand, shouldn't it? She
could see no point in his carrying it all the way in here from some
other part of the Unit. She looked more closely at the surfaces of the
individual tiles, noting with discouragement that the binding compound
between the squares was solidly unbroken; no hope for a secret panel
there.... But the mirror--!

Inset in a polished metal rectangle, its edges were out of sight.
It might not be as securely in place as it seemed. Grace placed her
fingers firmly against its surface and tried to slide it up or down
or sidewards. It shifted a minute fraction of an inch, and held. But
that merely meant a lock of some kind; even a slight shifting showed
that it was not inset into the binding compound as the tiles were. The
secret of unlocking the mirror lay with Bodger, however, and--she mused
ruefully--if he were awake, she wouldn't need to _know_ the secret.

She looked through the open doorway at the tortured form of the man on
the bed, and made her decision. Wrapping the towel she held tightly
about one fist, she hammered and punched at the surface of the mirror.
The fifth blow sent an erratic craze through the glass, and the sixth
burst it into a shower of gleaming fragments, leaving a raggedly round
hole when she withdrew her hand from the towel, then tugged the towel
itself free from where it had snagged on the broken ends. Behind the
gaping hole, the side of a glass jar showed, and Grace reached gingerly
through the sharp teeth of the opening and withdrew it.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no label on the bottle, hence no information regarding proper
dosage. Grace would have to guess at that.

Very little of the powder remained in the jar. Grace made a decision
and removed the cap. She ran the tap for a moment, then let a volume
of water equal to the powder's run into the jar. She sloshed it about
a bit, saw that it was dissolving into a greyish thick substance, then
brought it back to Bodger.

Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted the jar to his lips, and let
a small amount of the viscous liquid dribble into his mouth. When she
saw he was swallowing it without choking, she gave him a little more,
and then again some more, feeding him the solution in slow doses until
it was all gone. Then she laid his head back upon the coverlet and put
the empty jar on the nightstand, and took up her anxious vigil where
she had left off.

After five minutes or so, she was pleased to see a slow return of color
into Bodger's sallow cheeks, and his breathing became less labored. She
hurried to the bathroom for another towel, and returned and started
dabbing the wetness from his forehead, neck and temples. Bodger's
eyelids crinkled up tight, suddenly, and then he flicked them wide open.

"Grace--?" he said. "What--"

Memory returned to him, then, and he sat up, staring wildly about him.
"Where's Stanton? Where's Lloyd?" he demanded, his voice still showing
his siege of weakness. "What happened?"

Grace told him swiftly all she knew, and Bodger finally sank back on
the bed with a sigh. "Good," he said. "I'm glad Lloyd's gone to the
Brain. It's time it happened. Now, maybe--I can find some peace."

"You'll be all right, Mr. Bodger," Grace said. "I gave you your
medicine already. I had to break your mirror to get at it, I'm sorry to
say."

Bodger smiled wearily, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore.
The secrecy, I mean. It was the last dose of the medicine, anyhow. The
next time I lose control, I've had it."

"I don't follow you, Mr. Bodger," Grace said, a part of her mind
wondering if he were really being coherent. "You were hit with a
Snapper Beam. I don't know why you're not dead right this minute."

Bodger cocked an eyebrow at her, then grinned. "You think the _Snapper_
did this to me?" he said, and when she quite naturally nodded, he shook
his head, almost amused. "You're wrong, Grace, I'll admit I didn't
know until Stanton pressed the stud that I was immune to the beam, but
I knew it the instant the beam struck me. Nothing happened, Grace.
Nothing at all. It tingled against my ribs, almost tickled, but that
was its total reaction. As soon as I realized my immunity, of course,
I stepped forward and let Stanton have it--You say he really got a
good crack?" When Grace assured him the President had fallen like a
stone, Bodger's face creased in a contented smile. "I always thought I
could beat the tar out of him; now I know it.... But as I was saying,
Grace--That isn't what felled me. It was my temper. Whenever I get
really worked up--which has been seldom, over the years, since I had
only a short supply of the gel--that was cadmium-gel in that jar--to
bring me out of it--I bring one of these fits on myself."

       *       *       *       *       *

When Grace still looked uneasily convinced, Bodger laid his hand atop
hers on the coverlet, and said, "There's too much detail to it to
explain fully; Lloyd, if he's quizzed the Brain as I told him, will
fill you in. The fact of the matter is--and you can believe this or
not, Grace--my insides are rotten with radiation. The iron in my
blood, the insulin, the lymph--everything is highly Roentgenic. And
it's perfectly safe unless I get riled, and my adrenals start my
system spoiling for a fight. The increased flow of everything, the
resultant tension--Well, it lets the deadly parts of my system cover
more ground, irradiate more cells at a higher rate than the cells can
throw the radiation off, and even by the time I get the gel down--it's
pretty nauseating stuff to take--another few inches of my innards are
poisoned. If enough of me gets it--I have had it."

"How can you be so calm?"

Bodger smiled at her, quite fondly, and patted her hand. "Because I'm
old, Grace. Older than you might suspect. I've lived in the Hive for
more years than I care to think about. The Hive is good, but as of not
so many years back, it has served its purpose. Listen--If anything goes
wrong, and I _do_ poison myself with my own rage, there's something you
should know."

"Please, Mr. Bodger, I'm sure you'll be fine if you just--"

"I'm _not_ so sure," he interrupted. "And Lloyd will need one point
of information that only I can give him. I'll tell it to you, just
in case." He held up his hand to stop any further disclaimers from
Grace, and said, "Tell him that the Plan is in the hospital, the main
hospital. I put it there for safekeeping a long, long time ago. It
would become radioactive, of course, but the Plan was useless until
all radiation outside the Hive was gone, anyhow. Besides, radiation
preserves things; I'm proof of that. Tell him it's in the safe in the
administrator's office. The combination's the same as Lloyd's Voteplate
number. I saw to that when it was issued."

"Mr. Bodger--!" Grace said, nearly in tears. "I don't understand _any_
of this! What Plan!? What radiation outside the Hive!? It doesn't make
sense--"

"Lloyd will understand."

"But even if he does," she said, "he doesn't have his Voteplate
anymore...."

"Doesn't?" Bodger said, frowning, then his face cleared. "Even so, he
must know the number by heart, I should think. Anyway, it's in the
files in my office.... But I don't quite understand--Why doesn't he
have it? He had it when I passed out, didn't he?"

"Yes, but in order to command the Goons, he took Stanton's, and left
his own in Stanton's pocket, probably to avoid having to answer
questions about possession of two plates if he was searched or
something...."

"_Stanton's_ got the plate?!" Bodger said, sitting up. "If he knew its
significance--!" He shook his head, trying to disabuse himself of a
nagging worry. "He can't, of course. But it's awkward, him having it.
Lloyd will have to get it back, or he can't key the dial of the safe
with it."

       *       *       *       *       *

He swung his legs off the bed, suddenly, and stood up. Grace grabbed
his arm when he swayed a bit, but then he steadied himself and shrugged
her off. "I'm all right," he said. "I just don't like Stanton's having
that plate."

"Does it matter so much?" Grace asked. "Even if Lloyd forgot the
number, or the files were lost and he couldn't get a new plate made
up--Surely the safe can be _broken_ into?"

Bodger nodded. "Of course it can. But Stanton, with Lloyd's plate,
wouldn't need to take so much time. And he could destroy The Plan in a
very few minutes." He went toward the door to the corridor. "I'll feel
much better when I've checked on him, Grace."

Grace hesitated, then ran after him. "Lloyd wants me to stay with you.
You're still not over your seizure, you know."

"Worrying about Stanton's not going to make me any calmer," Bodger
said, stubbornly. "If you insist, come along."

       *       *       *       *       *

He entered the living room and crossed to the door. Beside the door was
a small metal box inset into the wall. Bodger opened the lid of this
and touched a button. From a speaker in the box, a voice said, hollow
and efficient, "Orders."

"A Goon escort for Secondary Speakster Bodger and Miss Grace Horton, at
Unit B, Hundred-Level."

"Destination."

"Unit--" Bodger looked at Grace.

"M-13," she reminded him. "On ninety-three."

"Unit M-13, Ninety-Three Level."

"Orders."

"All orders conveyed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Frank, hovering at that moment in puzzlement outside Unit A, wherein
he had expected to find Andra and the others beginning a revolt,
saw--through the Ultrablack-negating picture on the prop-Goon's cathode
screen--the rectangle of light appear when Bodger opened the front door
of his own unit across the street while he and Grace awaited their
escort. Bodger's and Stanton's Units were not subject to Ultrablack, of
course, interiorly. It had been the unforeseen darkness in Stanton's
windows that had left Frank in immobile puzzlement on the walk before
the Unit.

Seeing Bodger and Grace in the doorway, he turned the wheels of his
ponderous vehicle and rolled their way, hoping for information as to
Andra's whereabouts. He had just come within a few feet of the twosome,
and was about to climb out the back panel when Bodger spoke, hearing
the sound of the arriving prop-Goon and thinking it was his requested
escort.

"What are you waiting for? We're in a hurry."

Bodger spoke blindly, unable to penetrate the black pall beyond his
doorway. Frank hesitated, then decided not to reveal himself as yet.
As tonelessly as possible, he spoke to Bodger in the required formula.
"Orders."

"You have your orders," Bodger snapped, too keyed up to note any
deviation in the accustomed path of the--he assumed--robotic voice.
"Take us to Miss Horton's Unit at once."

Frank, believing Stanton was still there, had a chill of apprehension.
This man, the Secondary Speakster, might _not_ be on the side of
revolt; after all, why _should_ he be? For all he knew, Andra was dead,
and Bodger was now on his way back to release the President. The whole
business of socking him might have been a blind, to win her confidence,
and worm the names of the movement's members from her.

"Do you hear me?" Bodger said, although Frank's worried pause had been
barely a moment's duration. "Take us at once. All orders conveyed."

       *       *       *       *       *

Frank manipulated the arm of the hollow robot up into the doorway,
and Bodger, seeing it, took hold. Grace took Bodger's other hand, and
then Frank, needing time to think the thing out, turned the bulk of
his machine about slowly and began to roll toward the lift. He thought
of getting Bodger and the Horton girl out in the toils of Ultrablack
and then suddenly deserting them, but hesitated to try it; they might,
after all, be what he'd begun to believe they were: sympathetic with
the movement. Their reasons for the return to the girl's Unit might be
even Anti-Hive in nature. Frank did not know what to do, so he simply
kept moving, got aboard the lift, and thumbed the ninety-three button
after Bodger and Grace Horton were safely within the gates.

       *       *       *       *       *

The lift dropped smoothly seven levels, then halted, and the gate
swung automatically open. And there, his eyes hidden behind a peculiar
faceplate, stood Fredric Stanton, hand in hand with Robert Lennick.

"_Bodger!_" Stanton exploded, seeing him through the filter of his
facepiece. Bodger, hearing the voice in the darkness, drew back into
a corner of the lift, staring wide-eyed, futilely, for the other man,
trying to hide the slim body of Grace Horton behind him, fearing a
repeat of Stanton's attack with the Snapper Beam.

"Where is he!?" she gasped, terrified by that disembodied, menacing
voice in the blackness. Stanton, secure in his invisibility, stepped
into the lift, ignoring the metal body of the supposed Goon, and
slapped Bodger viciously across the face. While Bodger choked at the
unexpected blow, and brought his hand up to his injured mouth, Frank
realized there was no longer a doubt where the sympathies of the
Secondary Speakster lay, and with one swing of the jointed metal arm
of the prop-Goon, he knocked Stanton unconscious with a blow to the
base of the skull.

"What happened?" Grace shrilled, clinging to Bodger.

Lennick, deprived of his guide, groped forward in panic, calling, "Mr.
Stanton--!" Frank spun the controls, and the metal arm swung up and
clasped Lennick viciously about the throat, lifting his kicking body
clear off the floor.

"Bodger--!" Frank called out, enjoying the icy terror that flickered in
Lennick's congested face at the sound of his voice. "Stanton's out cold
at your feet. He has some sort of facepiece he can see with. Put it on!"

Bodger, utterly bewildered as to the sudden turn of events,
nevertheless did as directed, and straightened up adjusting the filter
over his eyes. When he saw the grisly tableau of Lennick and the
prop-Goon, he stepped back, agape with shock. Frank answered his query
before Bodger's reeling mind could formulate it coherently. "This is a
movie prop. I'm Frank Shawn, a member of Andra's movement, Bodger. And
this wriggling worm in my hands is the guy who tried to undo all of us!"

"Frank ... please...." Lennick gurgled, his eyes distending while his
hands tore vainly at the heavy metal hands that were tightening about
his windpipe.

"Let him go," Bodger said impatiently. "He can't get far in Ultrablack,
anyhow! We've got to get to Lloyd, my son. He's down at the Brain, now.
With Stanton in our power, we can free the Hive forever in an hour's
time!"

Frank looked at the face of his erstwhile friend, Robert Lennick, and
suddenly had no more stomach for murder. He let go, and as Lennick
dropped to the floor of the lift and started to double over, gulping
air, Frank sent the left arm of the prop-Goon up in an arc that swatted
him backwards onto the street outside the gate. Lennick scrambled
blindly to his feet, screaming, "Frank! Don't _leave_ me, Frank!"
He dashed forward, misjudged his angle, and crashed head-on into a
building wall. Frank thumbed the lift-button for Sub-Level One, and let
the closing gate blot Lennick from his sight. The lift began to drop,
swiftly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lennick, after lying painfully on the ground until his addled senses
returned, got up on hands and knees, groggily shaking his head. Then,
in the darkness, he heard rolling wheels, coming nearer. "Help!" he
cried. "This way! Help!"

The rumbling veered in his direction at once, and then a Goon's unseen
arms were lifting him to his feet. "The President--!" Lennick cried.
"He's in danger!"

A moment's hesitance, and the Goon flatly replied, "The President is
in no danger. He has been taken to the Brain at his own request, under
competent escort."

Lennick, suddenly divining what must be the case, said, "His plate!
Someone must have his plate, then, because--"

"You are bleeding," the Goon said dispassionately.

Bob's fingers came up to his face and he winced at the smarting pain
their exploration produced at the point where he had struck the
building wall. "It's nothing," he said, impatiently. "We've got to--"

"We will take you for hospitalization at once," said the voice of the
Goon in the blackness.

"Hospitalization?" Bob said, irritably. "Don't you guys understand? The
President--" And then it sank in. "_No!_" he shrieked. "_You can't! I'm
on your side!_"

Other sets of heavy wheels rolled nearer, and inflexible metal fingers
closed over his arms. The Goons began to roll ponderously off, with Bob
firmly in their grasp. He was still shrieking when the mouth of the
incinerator chute enveloped him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lloyd and Andra were awaiting the lift at Sub-Level one, guided in
the blackness by the Goon who had led them to the control chamber,
when Bodger and the others arrived. Stanton, only semi-conscious, was
being held upright in the arms of the prop-Goon, lest a real Goon pick
him up for "treatment" because of his bruises, one on the back of his
head where Frank had connected, the other glowing a steadily darker
purple on his jaw where Bodger's knockout punch had landed earlier.
Lloyd, sensing the tenancy of the lift even in the blackness, drew back
apprehensively, and then his father's voice was speaking to him in
assurance.

"Whatever orders you've given your guide, son, take them back. We've
got you-know-who, and we're taking him to the Brain with us." Andra's
fingers closed joyously over Lloyd's own at the words, but he pulled
his fingers free and slipped Stanton's Voteplate into his guide's
chest-slot.

"Last order countermanded," he said to the Goon. "We have no further
need of you. All orders conveyed." The Goon removed the plate, handed
it to him, and wheeled off into the darkness. "Dad!" he spoke, then. "I
found out so much, from the Brain! The Plan--for reactivating the ten
cities--The Brain said you knew where it was."

"Grace will tell you, son," said Bodger. "Meantime--" he pressed
Lloyd's own Voteplate into his hand "--take this, you'll need it. And
give me Stanton's. I'm taking him down to the Brain. I may have to
break his arm for him, but he's going to call off the Goons before I'm
through."

"Mr. Bodger--" Frank said, taking out Stanton's preempted Snapper and
holding it forward into the darkness. "This may come in handy for
persuasion. There's no need your overtaxing yourself."

Bodger reached out and took it from him. "Thank you, Shawn. Rest
assured I'll be only too glad to use it on him if he balks." Bodger
motioned to Frank, still in the prop-Goon. "See if you can shake him
awake, or something. I don't know how he can get down the ladder except
on foot, much as I'd like to drop him into the chamber, if I thought it
wouldn't break his rotten neck."

Frank did so, gladly, while Grace, fumbling for and finding Lloyd in
the darkness, clung to him in joy and relief. He found himself liking
it, and slipped his arms around her to enjoy it the better.

"Frank--" Andra said, slowly, hurt. "We found out, from the Brain, that
Bob--Bob's in Stanton's pay."

"We found out, too, Andy," Frank said from inside the pseudorobot. "The
hard way. We left him in Ultrablack on ninety-three. The louse had
freed Stanton, and--"

"He's coming to," Bodger said.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the agitated shaking of the metal hands that supported him by the
upper arms, Stanton blinked wildly at Ultrablack, and choked out, "Let
me go! I demand that you release me!"

"You're no longer in a position to demand anything," Bodger said
softly. "I have your skinny carcass covered with a Snapper. You may as
well relax."

"Bodger.... What are you going to do?" Stanton said, no longer fighting
the grip of the prop-Goon's hands.

"Take you to the Brain. Make you countermand all your orders regarding
the Goons."

"And if I don't?" Stanton said, warily. "What will you do if I refuse?"

"Kill you," Bodger said, and his tone rang true. "I don't want to do
it that way, of course--not for reasons of pity; heaven knows you need
killing, Fred--but because it's faster this way. With you dead, we'd
simply elect a new President, and then _he_ could countermand your
orders. That could take days, though, days of the Ultrablack you had
Madge Benedict instigate in this emergency. It would be too tedious
convincing the Kinsmen to Vote in the dark on a proposition they
couldn't see."

"I--" Stanton said blankly, "I thought you'd force Madge to turn on
Light-of-Day."

"We would, but Lloyd mistakenly ordered her held incommunicado," Bodger
said tiredly. "He didn't know that was another of your pet phrases
synonymous with death."

"Good Lord!" Lloyd moaned in the darkness. "I didn't _dream_--"

"Madge brought it on herself, working hand in glove with Stanton, son,"
Bodger said. "You did not know. The point is, only Stanton or his
personal Secretary could have called off the emergency. So now we have
to get tough with him."

"Bodger...." Stanton straightened up, his face grim in defeat. "I have
to know: If I _do_ as you ask, countermand the Goons, call off the
Ultrablack--What will happen to me, afterwards?"

"I can't say, Fred," Bodger replied flatly. "We'll have it put to a
general Vote."

"I see," said the President, knowing full well what the result of such
a Vote would be, with the Hive enraged against his exposed treachery.
"Is it your best offer?"

"My only," said Bodger. "Let's go, Fred."

He prodded Stanton's back with the Snapper, and the President began to
move forward, holding his head high, toward the staircase leading to
the control-chamber entrance. Frank opened the panel at the rear of
the prop-Goon, and called for Andra to join him inside it, then he took
Lloyd and Grace by the arms, via the controls, and guided them through
the black blindness after Bodger and his prisoner.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the head of the staircase--really no more than a tier-cut segment
of the lead-concrete Sub-Level Two, over which the correspondingly
undercut left wall of the twenty-five-foot-thick level could
slide--Frank had to come to a halt, his prop-Goon not being equipped
with extendable cogs to fit the treads and risers, as the real Goons'
wheels were. "I'm going down there with him," Lloyd said, starting down
into blackness.

"No," his father's voice came from the level below. "I'll handle this
myself, Lloyd. I can see my way and you can't."

Lloyd stood undecided on the brink of the staircase, then Grace found
his arm in the dark and drew him back. "I want to talk to you about
your father, Lloyd," she said, when he was again at her side. "He said
some strange things, up in the Unit...."

Descending the ladder below his prisoner, the Snapper aimed upward
always at the base of Stanton's spine, Bodger reached the cable-net
flooring, and gestured the President to the chair before the control
panel. "Here," he said, returning the other's Voteplate. "You'll need
this. But I don't have to tell you the penalty for one attempt at
trickery on your part."

Stanton took the card silently, and slid it into a slot on the control
panel. A metal square slid back, exposing a hand-microphone. He took it
in his hand, and spoke into it.

"Primal Speakster in control," he said.

All about the two men, the lights of the Brain flickered then a speaker
in the cavity which had held the microphone said, in the cold, flat
tones of the Brain, "Orders."

Stanton glanced up at Bodger, and smiled. And suddenly Bodger was
afraid. There was no hint of fear in the other man's eyes, now, only
confidence and terrible menace.

"There is a false robot, two men and two women with it, on Sub-Level
One," said Stanton, while Bodger goggled in surprise. "Destroy them!"

"Orders," said the Brain.

"Stanton!" Bodger raged, snapping out of his stunned paralysis. He
depressed the stud of the Snapper clear into the hilt of the weapon,
trying to prevent the activating words from being spoken by the
President. There was a fractional hum of power, and then a searing
fork of hot blue light leaped from a conic protrusion on the Brain's
inner surface and turned the weapon to molten metal in his fingers.
Bodger fell to the flooring, crying out in pain, his raw, blistered
hand nearly driving him unconscious.

"You should have known," Stanton addressed the mewling figure on the
ground near his chair, "that a sonic beam cannot be fired inside the
Brain; it would shatter some of the delicate balances necessary for its
functioning. The Brain has to safeguard itself."

"Stanton--!" Bodger groaned, gritting his teeth against the agony of
his seared hand. "Don't!... Please...."

"_Danger_," said the dispassionate voice of the Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

Stanton spun to face the concavity of the speaker. "What--?" he
blurted, baffled. And then he heard the dim rumble, high above, as the
entire lead-concrete Sub-Level Two slid relentlessly closed. Stanton
jumped from the chair and looked up from the base of the ladder, to see
if his ears had told him the truth. All that was visible at the head
of the hundred-foot ladder was the bottom of the now-closed metal lid,
over which the entire next level had moved. He turned, white-faced, to
Bodger.

"What's happening?"

"_Danger_," repeated the Brain.

Stanton rushed to the side of the fallen man. "Bodger!" he shrieked,
lifting him by the shoulders and shaking him. "What's happening!?"

"I guess--" Bodger said, smiling tiredly despite the cruel burns, "--I
must've got mad, Fred. My innards, or don't you know about them?"

"I know all about your radiating innards!" Stanton exploded. "But
_they_ couldn't trigger the Brain's protective level! It's impossible!
You've been here before--"

"I was never ... this aroused ... before, Fred," Bodger said weakly.
"And now, for the first time, I ... know the answer to something
I never knew before." He took a breath, gathered together all his
strength, and lifted his face near the other man's, still smiling. "You
asked the Brain about a third term, once--Don't argue, Fred, it's on
record--and yet there is no memory in its circuits of a reply. Tell me,
Fred.... What _was_ its reply?" When Stanton did not respond, Bodger
said, "I think I can tell you. Chaos. Noise. A riot of sound and fury
that knocked you clear off your chair and broke the circuit before it
destroyed you. Because the Brain knew, of course. It's smart, Fred. It
can predict with better accuracy than a human mind. It foresaw, after
correlating all the facts at its disposal, what would be the result of
your attempt at being elected a third time. And it tried to ... tell
you...." Bodger faltered, went grey, and lay back upon the interwoven
cables with his eyes closed. His lips were still working, though,
and he finished, "... the result ... except that the ... Brain
doesn't speak ... in words ... just concepts ... and its concept
encompassed ... its own...."

His head rolled to one side, limply.

"_Danger_," croaked the voice of the Brain.

"Its _what_? Its own _what_?!" Stanton yelled, grabbing Bodger's
head by the hair and banging it violently upon the flooring. Bodger,
his eyes rolling, coughed painfully, then sighed, as one who names a
long-awaited friend, "... death."

"_Danger!_" said the Brain. A wild tootling began in its depths as its
metal mind tried to spare it its terrible fate.

"What danger?" Stanton roared into the microphone, leaping to the chair
before the control panel. "Tell me! I'll find a way out!"

"_Danger!_" said the Brain. "_Danger! Danger!_"

There was a wild bluish light playing on the face of the panel, now,
and Stanton knew, suddenly, that it was not of the Brain itself. He
turned, some hideous psychic insight telling him what he could not as
yet realize by his senses, and looked at the body of Lloyd Bodger on
the floor.

Veins and arteries shone like a network of neon lights through the
flesh, a pulsing glow that rose in its intensity by the second. The
internal organs appeared through Bodger's smoldering clothing as on the
screen of a fluoroscope, each alight with self-engendered hellfire.
Bodger's eyes were glowing like hot tungsten through his transparent
lids, his teeth were bared in a smile brighter than sunrise. His every
bone, bit of cartilage, nerve ganglion and muscle fibre sparked like
coals beneath a blacksmith's bellows, and the hairs of his head were a
Medusa-wig of burning, writhing wire.

And then he reached his critical mass.


                                THE END

***

THE CYBERENE

                            By Rog Phillips

               Somewhere in the far future a diabolical
             brain plotted the enslavement of mankind. But
             to do that a history had to be changed--ours!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                            September 1953
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Victor!"

Her voice shattered the cathedral silence, going the full four hundred
and fifty foot perimeter of the fourteen foot wide floor that encircled
the case of the _Brain_. The echo rebounded from the maze of ladders
and catwalks that went up and up until they were lost to view where the
fifteen foot thick outer wall began its upward slope to form the giant
dome.

The silence returned; as motionless as the needles on the instrument
panels resting on their zero pegs, unactivated; as enduring in essence
as the atom proof concrete dome built to last--as long as the Earth
itself.

Then--a sound answered. A faint sound. Footsteps. Movement appeared
through the grillwork of steel catwalks above. Trousered legs. A hand
sliding along a railing of chrome pipe. More rapid steps as the man
descended a steep stair well. Sharper as the man reached the marble
floor.

Dead video camera eyes let his passage go unregistered. Sensitive
quartz crystals inside glistening microphone shells vibrated to the
sound of his footsteps, his soft breathing, sending feeble currents
along wires--to dead amplifying circuits.

"What is it, Ethel?" Dr. Victor Glassman said to his wife.

"Don't you realize it's almost an hour past your lunch time?" she
chided. "Why do you come in here anyway? The Brain was completed six
months ago. It won't run away--and it won't come to life until someone
finds the proper chemical for the nerve fluid to make it work. My
goodness. Eight hundred and fifty million dollars sitting idle in here.
It gives me gooseflesh. Now you come and eat your lunch so I can
get the dishes out of the way. I'm going to be busy the rest of the
afternoon getting ready for the crowd--or did you forget that your ten
scientists are invited to dinner this evening?"

"Of course not, Ethel," he said, putting his arm around her waist. He
pulled her around so they were side by side, looking upward into the
maze of catwalks, seeing the marble panels of the wall that served as a
covering for the huge man-made brain. "_You_ know why I come in here,"
he said. "I like the feel. The sleeping giant. Not sleeping, really.
Just not born yet. Not living yet. Someday soon that will change. The
first non-human...."

"I understand, Victor," Ethel said softly. "It scares me. I know it
will be just like a human mind--same principles of thought--even if
it will be housed in so vast a brain. But how much do we know of the
capabilities of the _human_ brain? I'm afraid."

Dr. Glassman's eyes crinkled goodnaturedly. He tightened his arm around
her waist.

"I'll protect you, Ethel," he said.

She looked up at the giant structure that dwarfed them to
insignificance. "Against that?" she snorted. "What with? A lance and
prancing nag of leather and bones like Don Quixote of old?" She
slipped her arm around his shoulders, her expression softening. "But I
know what you mean. Only ... it's...."

"And I know what you mean, too. Sometimes even I'm afraid of it.
But once we activate it, it will take years for it to build up a
self-integrated mind even equal to a child's. And we'll both be long
dead before its intelligence starts climbing above that of man. You
know, I'm hungry."

Together, arm in arm, they departed, closing the door. And once again
the echoes died away, leaving only the silence.

And the Brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

"How about being quiet for a minute so I won't get these mixed
up?" Earl Frye said, a mask of tolerant good nature concealing his
irritation. "By the way, what's wrong with p. n. 9? Bottleneck?"

Irene Conner clapped her hand over her mouth and spoke from between her
fingers. "Go ahead and pour," she mumbled. "I'll keep quiet for five
minutes."

"Okay," Earl said, unaffected by the twinkle in Irene's clear blue
eyes, the smooth wave of her blonde hair, the quiet unscientific curves
under her lab apron.

He picked the first vial off the tray, read the number on its label and
carefully jotted it down on the lab card. He emptied the vial into
the small opening on top the pump and flicked the toggle switch. With
a smooth whir the pump started. The pressure gauge needle broke from
zero and started upward, finally hovering near the seven ton per square
inch mark. He watched as the fluid he had poured emerged into glass
tubing no thicker than a human hair, and, under the tons per square
inch pressure, stretched into fine fluid columns less than half a dozen
molecules thick.

He repeated the performance with another vial and another pump, and
another, until all ten pumps were working. He went back to the first
one. The fluid had reached the slightly enlarged bubble several inches
up the thread-like glass tubes. He shut off the pump, then went through
the same routine with the other ten.

"That show I want to see is on at the Rialto, Earl," Irene said. "Just
tonight and tomorrow night."

"Good," Earl grunted, starting to recheck the charts. "Let me know if
you liked it. If it's any good I might go see it."

"Why don't you come see it with me?" Irene said.

"Uh," Earl hesitated, not looking up from a chart he was studying.

He was saved by the hall door opening.

"Hi, Basil," he said, taking in Basil Nelson's expression of mild
haste, and the empty test tube in his hand.

Irene frowned in annoyance.

Basil looked at her with a mixture of apology and hopefulness, then
turned to Earl. "Uh, I came in to borrow some base formula," he said.
"Just need a few cc's and didn't want to take the time to get a full
gallon from the storeroom."

"Help yourself," Earl said. He grinned sidewise at Irene. "By the way,
Irene is looking for someone to go with her to see some show that's on
at the Rialto."

"I'll be glad to," Basil said eagerly.

"No thanks," Irene said. "I'm going with my aunt."

"Your aunt?" Basil said. "I didn't know you had an aunt living in
Crestmont." He went to a supply shelf over a wall bench and poured some
base formula from a rubber tube dangling from a large bottle.

"She just arrived in town," Irene said dryly.

"Can I meet her?" Basil said coming back from the supply shelf. He was
facing Irene and half facing Earl. He was in a position so that there
was nothing between him and the window across the room.

"Sorry," Irene said. "She's leaving town in the morning. I'm sure--Oh,
how can you be so clumsy, Basil?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The test tube had dropped from his hand. Small glass fragments and the
oily fluid were spattered on the floor and his shoes. He was examining
a small cut on the inside of his thumb that was beginning to bleed.

"Clumsy?" he said absently. "Oh no. I didn't drop the test tube. It
broke in my hand."

"It couldn't have," Irene said accusingly. "You dropped it."

"What's the difference?" Earl said. "Here. I'll get you another test
tube with some base fluid. No harm done."

He opened a drawer and took out a new test tube. When he was closing
the drawer he glanced absently toward the window. His eyes widened.
"What the devil!" he exclaimed. "Look at that. The window's broken too."

"That's odd--too strange a coincidence," Basil frowned.

"Supersonic vibrations?" Earl said, smiling. "Maybe a foreign spy has
heard of Project Synthetic Nerve Fluid and was trying to kill Basil
with a new secret weapon!"

"Ha ha," Basil said without humor. He accepted the test tube of base
formula from Earl. "Thanks, Earl," he said. He went to the door. There
he turned appealingly to Irene. "I would like to take you--and your
aunt--to the show, Irene," he said.

"Sorry," Irene said, smiling at him sympathetically. "We'll have too
much we want to talk about."

"Uh--okay," Basil said unhappily.

"He's such a jerk," Irene said when Basil had left. "All he would do is
fawn over me all evening. I'd--I'd rather go alone," she added, looking
at Earl appealingly.

"Sure," Earl said. "Be sure and let me know how you like the show.
Now--" He smiled half jokingly to take the sting from his words.
"Scram. I've got work to do."

Irene made a face at him and went to the door.

When she was gone, Earl sighed wearily. Then he frowned at the broken
window.

Carefully he stood where Basil had been standing when the test tube
broke. He held his hand in approximately the same position that Basil
had held it. Trying not to move his hand, he stooped and squinted over
his hand toward the broken window, and beyond it.

A hundred yards away, outside the room, a small hill rose above the
wall surrounding the research building. Earl fixed a spot and then went
to the window to examine it more closely.

Uneasily he stood so that he was half concealed by the wall of the
room. He studied the hill for a minute.

He went to a door at the far side of his lab, and went through into a
large room where he had his living quarters. He took some keys from his
pocket as he approached a desk. He unlocked the top right hand drawer
and took out a small blunt automatic. He checked it and put it in his
hip pocket. He slipped off his lab apron and put on a suit coat.

A few minutes later he was approaching the spot he had picked out on
the side of the hill. There were trees and shrubs that hid the ground.
He watched worriedly, the automatic in his hand now. But there seemed
nothing to be alarmed about. Nothing could be more peaceful than the
wooded hillside. And yet whatever had caused the simultaneous breaking
of the window pane and the test tube could not have been caused by
natural means.

_Something_, directly ahead, concealed by shrubs, had caused it. What?
He intended to find out.

He circled to the left, walking cautiously. With his left hand he
parted branches to see into a thicket.

Almost at once he saw the strange structure. It was shaped like a
puffball, three feet in diameter at its thickest part, and almost
as high. Its surface was of something that had an oily blue sheen.
Its base seemed partly buried in the soil, and the ground was freshly
damaged as though the ball-like shape had landed with great force.

To add to the evidence that it had fallen from great height, the side
was split open, and dozens of small semi-transparent balls of different
colors were spilled out onto the grass and weeds.

He pushed aside the bushes and approached, slowly putting the automatic
back in his hip pocket. He stooped and picked up one of the small
colored balls. It was a semi-transparent green.

He put the small ball in his coat pocket. He stooped and examined the
break in the wall of the structure. The break faced toward the windows
of his lab. He looked in that direction, and saw that leaves obscuring
his view were shredded as though by a violent wind.

He found a fragment of the broken wall of the structure, a piece that
was hardly more than a sliver. He put that in his shirt pocket. Then,
with sudden decision, he scooped up dozens of the marble-like colored
balls and loaded his pockets.

       *       *       *       *       *

Back in his lab again, he emptied the balls from his pockets into two
measuring flasks on a bench. They were strangely light, and one or two
had to be put back in the flasks again after they floated slowly upward
and down to the table surface where they rested without bouncing.

Earl was filled with excitement and eagerness. This was something
entirely outside his experience, something with mystery. It occurred to
him that the strange structure might be a new type of bomb. Certainly
all the evidence indicated it had dropped from a great height.
He dismissed the possible danger with a shrug. He considered the
possibility of it being some form of puffball that had sprung up in the
shaded woods. It was a remote possibility.

He took the small fragment of the shell from his shirt pocket and
stepped to the bench where his microscope stood. If it was living
substance it would have cellular structure.

Using the low power objective lens he examined the fragment. It showed
no signs of cellular structure. Instead, it was semi-crystaline,
similar to a plastic, under the low power lens.

A sharp sound behind him made him straighten and whirl around, his hand
going toward the gun that was still in his hip pocket. His hand froze
on the butt of the gun. He could only stare.

_On the table where he had placed the two measuring flasks with the
small colored balls, there were two people. A man and a girl. They were
perfectly proportioned--and no more than four inches high._

They seemed unaware of his presence. One of the measuring flasks was
tipped over--the sound that had attracted his attention. The colored
balls were spilled over the table surface. The miniature man was
trying to catch one of the balls which seemed to float weightless like
a bubble. On the miniature man's face was an expression of worried
concern.

The miniature girl was sitting down as though she had half risen from
where she had fallen. She too was reaching for one of the floating
balls.

This much Earl saw in that first startled, incredible instant; then
details began to filter into his awareness. The man was green. The girl
was blue. They were entirely nude, and the color of their skin was
uniform--of the same pastel softness as the colored spheres!

And the girl--Earl found his eyes drawn toward her almost to the
exclusion of everything else. She was beautiful beyond anything he had
ever imagined.

Her smile was calm, slightly amused, more than a little satisfied and
content at some inner thought.

Without thinking, Earl shouted and leaped toward them. His hand
descended to catch them. The miniature man looked up at him, startled,
then in a desperate attempt to escape leaped over the edge of the table.

The girl had no time to do more than attempt to rise before Earl's
fingers closed around her, imprisoning her. He lifted her so that he
could see her face more clearly. She stared at him, at first with
unmasked terror, then with slowly emerging perplexity and interest.

He became acutely aware of her contours against his hand. What should
he do with her? He remembered the man. He would have to catch the man
too!

He looked around on the floor--and saw the man peering at him from
behind a table leg.

Something would have to be done with the girl. He ran to the door of
his room and slipped inside. The windows were closed. She was certainly
too small to lift them and escape.

He looked around swiftly, then went to a bookcase and placed her gently
on the top shelf.

"Stay there!" he warned. He left the room, closing and locking the door.

       *       *       *       *       *

Across the laboratory he saw the miniature green-skinned man leap to
the window sill below the broken pane. The little man looked over his
shoulder and saw Earl. With a desperate leap he reached the jagged
edge of glass still in place, and pulled himself through.

Earl rushed to the window in time to see the little man disappear in
the high grass growing in the untended grounds outside the building.

Who were these two miniature people? Where had they come from? Had they
come in through the broken window in an attempt to steal the colored
balls? Were _they--were they from that strange thing out on the side
of the hill_? The questions burned through Earl's excited thoughts,
demanding answers that wouldn't come.

Those almost weightless balls--Earl crossed to the bench and gathered
them up and locked them in a metal drawer.

Nervously, he took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaling deeply. There
was the girl, but he found himself reluctant to go in and face her. And
yet he had to.

He started toward the hall door, then remembered the gun in his hip
pocket. He hesitated, then unlocked the drawer containing the colored
balls and placed it in there, locking the drawer again.

He went to the door to his living quarters and unlocked it.

He opened the door a scant inch, took a deep breath, then pushed
rapidly, jumped inside, and closed the door at his back so the girl
wouldn't have time to escape.

She wasn't blue any more. Her skin was faintly tanned, flawless. But
more startling, she was not four inches high. She was, he guessed, five
feet two or three. She was the same girl. There was no doubt of that.
Her face was the same face, now normal sized. She was the same all over.

"Sorry!" Earl gasped. He crossed quickly to his dresser, opened the
third drawer and found a pair of pajamas.

"Here!" he said, holding them out behind him. "Put these on."

He felt them taken from his hand. A moment later he heard her say, "All
right." It was her voice. He listened to it as it echoed in his mind,
flavored it. Actually it wasn't anything so wonderful, but it was nice.
Nothing seductive or elfin--but she wasn't miniature any more, either.
She sounded a little--amused!

He turned to face her.

"I'm Nadine Holmes," the girl said.

"Nadine. That's nice. Holmes.... I'm Earl Frye, up until a few minutes
ago a quiet research scientist who stays in his lab practically
twenty-four hours a day. Nadine Holmes. Were you really small a few
minutes ago--or did I imagine it?"

"Yes. I was small.... So _you_ are Dr. Earl Frye...."

"Yes. But how can you know me?" Earl asked, surprised at her tone. A
distant knocking sounded. He groaned. "That's probably Irene," he said.
"She'll pound the door down. You stay here and be quiet while I get rid
of her. She could cause both of us a lot of trouble."

He went to the door, slipped out, and carefully locked it. The knocking
was peremptory at the lab door. "Just a minute!" he said. He unlocked
the door, prepared to tell Irene she was interrupting some important
work. It wasn't Irene. "Oh, it's you, Mrs. Glassman. I didn't know.
I was busy and didn't want to be interrup--that is, come on in." He
opened the door invitingly, and glanced worriedly at the door to his
living quarters. Had he locked it? Of course he had. He distinctly
remembered locking it.

"I'm sorry I interrupted your work," Mrs. Glassman said. "I met
Irene--Dr. Conner, you know. She told me you might need some reminding
about dinner--seven thirty. I do hope you'll be there."

"I may not have my work done," Earl said weakly.

"Nonsense! It can wait. It will do you good to get away from the lab
for an evening. If you aren't there I'll come and get you."

"Okay," Earl said hastily. "I promise to be there--on time."

He locked the hall door after Mrs. Glassman.

       *       *       *       *       *

He glanced thoughtfully at the pump bench with its ten sets of
glass threads containing ten different fluids, ready for cutting
and connecting to the test instruments for measurement of speed and
sustainment of molecular chain action.

The theory of what he was looking for--what all ten of the scientists
were looking for in their planned exploration of a few dozen thousand
substances, was fairly simple. The molecule in theory had to be of a
special type, of which there were many examples. It had to consist of
two parts; one larger than the other, such that the smaller part could
break off easily and jump to the next molecule, combining with it and
freeing its counterpart on that next molecule, so that the freed part
would repeat the performance on the next, and so on. In that way, the
ion of the lesser molecular part, starting at one end of the chain of
identical molecules, would start a chain of reactions which would end
in an identical free ion at the farther end of the glass thread. In
effect it would be the same as though the free ion had passed quickly
through the full length of the fine tube--without any of the molecules
actually having moved at all.

Unfortunately, so far, none of the substances tried had behaved quite
as they should in theory. It was impossible to get a tube fine enough
for a thread one molecule thick, with the molecules lined up properly.

With some of the test substances the "nerve impulse" would go part way
and then turn around and come back. With others it would just "get
lost." Super-delicate instruments "followed" the impulse, telling what
happened to it in fine detail.

Nerve fluid from living animals had been tested and found to behave
properly even in the fine glass tubing. But it was highly unstable. If
a synthetic brain capable of integrated thought processes was to be
constructed, a non-deteriorating nerve fluid would have to be found.
One that duplicated the performance of the actual nerve threads of the
human brain.

All that held back Project Brain was the proper synthetic nerve fluid!
Maybe it's one of those ten, Earl thought. But he entertained that
thought with every ten he tested.

But right now there was a more pressing problem. Nadine Holmes. She
should have arrived on the afternoon bus--instead of appearing as a
pastel blue miniature girl on a bench in his lab--and growing to an
embarrassing full five foot three of emotion disturbing nudity in a few
minutes. An impossible fact, but still a fact.

Where had she come from? That was what he had been going to ask her
when Ethel Glassman barged in. Dear old Mrs. Glassman.

       *       *       *       *       *

Earl went to the door to his living quarters and unlocked it. Slipping
in quickly, he locked the door again. Nadine was curled up in a chair,
one of his technical books on her lap, looking altogether too domestic
for Earl's peace of mind. She had paused in her reading, and was
looking up at him questioningly.

"Now then," Earl said. He groped for a sequence of thought. She was
beautiful. "Now then," he repeated. "We've got to get you some decent
clothes and decide what to do with you. What sizes do you wear?"

"I don't know," Nadine said. "I've never worn clothes before. I don't
think I like them."

"You'll get used to them," Earl said hastily. "Those things you have
on are my pajamas. We'll need some nylon stockings, shoes, and other
things. I'll have to go buy them."

"Do you have other clothes like the ones you are wearing?" Nadine
asked. "Why wouldn't they do? They're too large, but I could wear
them."

Earl stared at her in amazement. And now the big question came again.
He moved closer to her. "Where do you come from?"

She puzzled over his words. "I'm not sure what you're talking about,"
she said, a tone of wariness in her voice. "Where I come from--perhaps
we'd better not discuss that now. I don't quite understand what
happened. Things didn't happen as they were supposed to. Could you take
me where you first found me?"

"Not until I get you some clothes. Imagine what people would think if
you walked out of here wearing my pajamas!"

"What would they think?" Nadine said, frankly puzzled. "Why are
clothes? Are they connected in some way with religion? I think that's
the word for it--religion. Do clothes bring you good luck? Is that it?
You seem so--so intense about it. Does everyone wear them?"

He ignored her question, went out, locking the door. Before he opened
the lab door to the hall he glanced at his watch. An hour ago nothing
had happened! He shook his head, opened the door and stepped into the
hall--almost bumping into Basil Nelson.

"Hi, Earl," Basil said. "You look like you're in a hurry."

"I am," Earl said. He started past Basil, who fell into step beside
him.

"I'll go along," Basil said. "That is, if you don't mind. I wanted to
talk with you. Pretty important. It's about Irene."

"What about Irene?" Earl said.

Basil waited until they were on the sidewalk before answering. "I guess
it's pretty obvious I'm in love with her," he said. "But--she seems
to have eyes only for you. Mrs. Glassman sort of hinted that you and
Irene--well--were going to get married. I wanted to ask you. If you and
Irene are--"

"_Damn_ Ethel Glassman," Earl said, irritated. "If you are in love with
her why don't you tell her?"

"She won't give me the chance to tell her," Basil groaned. "I think she
suspects, though," he added darkly.

"Fine," Earl said. "And there's no time like the present. Why don't you
go back and pop the question right now while you have your nerve up?"

Basil sighed. "I'll have to work up to it. Right now I'd rather tag
along with you. Mind?"

"No," Earl groaned. "Not at all. A--cousin of mine has a birthday
coming up. I thought I'd buy her some new clothes. No use you tagging
along."

"Don't mind at all," Basil said. "We can do some more talking. Maybe
we could cook up some scheme to make Irene fall in love with me. But
every time I think I'm going great with her I pull something like
dropping that test tube in your lab."

"Oh, that," Earl said. "I--" He clamped his lips shut.

       *       *       *       *       *

"See you at Glassman's at dinner tonight," Earl said firmly an hour
later. As Basil still hesitated, he added, "Maybe I can think of
something by then. Meanwhile I've still got work to do."

"Uh, oh sure," Basil said, "but I'm afraid it's no use. She's in love
with you, Earl."

"Nonsense!" Earl unlocked the door to his lab and went in with his
packages. He stacked them on a lab table and locked the hall door. A
quick survey showed the lab as it should be. Earl had been worried.
Since Nadine had become a full sized person, maybe the little green man
had too.

Earl crossed to the door to his living quarters and unlocked it.
Inside, he saw Nadine still curled up in the chair in his pajamas, a
stack of books beside her.

"Hi," Earl said, subdued. "I've brought you some clothes, and also
some literature on what they are. I think the literature will give you
enough data to work on in dressing."

He brought the stack of packages into the room and put them on a table.

"While you're dressing I'll finish some work out in the lab," he said.

"Clothes seem terribly important to you," Nadine said without moving
from her comfortable position. "I still can't understand why. I've
tried and tried." She picked up a book. "This book, for example. It's
a very vivid account of a murder. I can understand vaguely about the
murder. It seems to be some sort of game that people play. There are
official players who earn their living at it. The taxpayers pay them
for it, and they sit in their offices until some taxpayer wants to play
with them. The taxpayer kills someone. The detectives must find out who
he is if they can. I can understand that. But there are whole passages
where everyone seems to forget the game while they pay great attention
to what someone is wearing. That's it! It must be another game. No?"

Earl grinned. "That's pretty close," he said. "Do you have games where
you come from?"

"No. Games aren't functional."

"Oh," Earl said vaguely. "Well, get those clothes on, Nadine. You will
look terrific in them."

He backed out of the room and closed the door. While he worked he
wondered how Nadine could speak English without an accent. It was too
far-fetched to think it her native language. Even if it were, spoken
language changes so rapidly that the only possible explanations were,
(1) she was from some part of the United States, or (2), her people
were in constant radio contact with current broadcasts. But neither
alternative could account for her inability to grasp the purpose of
clothes. He hadn't had quite enough nerve to mention to her the main
purpose--sex. Maybe she had been too shy to mention it too. But that
didn't seem to jibe with her evident willingness to take off her
clothes. And she hadn't answered his question on where she came from.

       *       *       *       *       *

While Earl thought these thoughts he let his hands and one part of
his mind put the synthetic nerve filaments in place in the instrument
banks. There wouldn't be time to run the tests, but he could do that in
the morning when he was alone.

Alone. The thought struck him with dismaying force. He realized
suddenly that he had been trying to keep Nadine with him as long as
possible--and that was futile.

Was he in love with her? He faced the question squarely and felt his
stomach turn over and his heart start to pound wildly. He tried to tell
himself it was just the unusualness of the situation.

He was jerked out of his thoughts by the sound of high heeled shoes.
Nadine had opened the door and taken a few steps into the lab. His eyes
approved of what they saw.

"They're very uncomfortable," Nadine said. "Especially the shoes. But
I looked at myself in the mirror--and I think I begin to understand, a
little. Clothes are adornments."

"On you they are," Earl said. "I never before realized...."

"What's a kiss?" Nadine said.

Earl blinked. He cleared his throat loudly and said, "One thing at
a time, Nadine. There's lots for you to learn. In the meantime, how
does it happen you know English so well? If you're from--some other
planet--you certainly don't speak it as your native language."

"It was taught to us for the expedition," Nadine said. "I think there
must have been an accident. Can you tell me anything about it? The
first I remember is just before you picked me up in your enormous hand."

Earl told her everything he knew. She listened, nodding her head at
times.

"I think I understand now," she said when he finished. "The stasis
spheres. Somehow mine and George Ladd's were fractured, so that we
emerged on the bench. He was in the green one."

"You mean you were _in_ one of those marbles?" Earl exclaimed.

"Where is the ship?" Nadine said.

Earl took her to the window and pointed out the spot. "You can't see it
from here," he said. "But I have some of the--what did you call them?
Stasis spheres? I'll show you."

He unlocked the drawer. Nadine leaned over, seeming to look inside of
each translucent marble.

"Yes," she said, straightening. "It's gone wrong, somehow. The Cyberene
will be most annoyed."

"The Cyberene? What's that?"

Nadine stared down into the drawer, frowning. "You wouldn't
understand," she said. And then, "I'm hungry."

Earl frowned. "That reminds me. I have to go to dinner at Dr.
Glassman's in a little while, or Mrs. Glassman will come barging in
here. I'll fix you something first. After I get back I'll take you to a
hotel."

Nadine perched on the edge of the table in his kitchenette while he
opened some cans and heated their contents.

"How does it smell?" Earl asked after a while. "Good?"

"Strange," Nadine said. "Not entirely strange. Some of the smells are
familiar."

"Would you like a cocktail?" Earl said. He didn't wait for her answer.
He was acutely conscious of playing the host. "This is my favorite
drink. A dash of rum, a little vodka, lime juice, powdered sugar, ice
cubes and seltzer. There." He handed her one of the two glasses. "How
do you like it?"

Nadine sipped the drink cautiously. "Good," she said. "I was thirsty
too."

"What is the Cyberene?" Earl said, dishing steaming food into a plate
set precariously on the edge of the stove.

"The--the Cyberene," Nadine said as though that explained it. "How do
you eat that food without getting dirty? And there's such an enormous
amount of it. I'm used to capsules, with lots of water to help digest
them."

"Oh. Dehydrated foods," Earl said. "Damn! I wish I didn't have to go to
that dinner. Stay in here while I change my clothes."

"Earl," Nadine said as he was about to leave the room.

"Yes?" he said, turning to look at her questioningly.

"What does damn mean? I can't get the sense of it."

"It's an adornment of speech," he said. "Like clothes."

       *       *       *       *       *

With dinner over, Earl drifted toward the door after excusing himself
and thanking the Glassmans. Basil followed him.

"I need someone to talk to--to help me, Basil," Earl said as they
walked back toward the lab building. "Remember that test tube breaking?
And the window pane?"

"How can I forget?" Basil said ruefully.

Quickly Earl outlined everything that had happened.

"What you should have done," Basil said in amazement, "is gone directly
to Dr. Glassman with it. Now nobody will believe you. Even I find it
hard to believe. You must have fallen hard, the way you want to keep
her under lock and key."

"It's not that," Earl said. "Just a lot of little things. Like her
repeating my name as if she knew all about me. And her refusing to
say where she's from. And her knowledge of our language yet knowing
absolutely nothing about our social customs."

"What about time travel?" Basil said.

"Time travel? That's absurd."

"Why?"

"If time travel were possible at any future date, we would have time
travelers all around us. They'd come back."

"Maybe they have," Basil said darkly. "What did she call those colored
marbles you found? Stasis spheres? But the main thing right now is that
if I were in this George Ladd's shoes--"

"He doesn't wear shoes."

"Well, I would be trying to rescue Nadine Holmes this very minute.
It's dark now--"

But Earl wasn't listening. Basil hurried to catch up with him as he
walked rapidly, until they reached the lab building resting against the
giant starless bulk of the dome that housed the Brain.

"Be quiet," Earl warned as they stole down the hall toward the door to
his lab.

They reached the door and stopped. Through the panel came the sound of
a male voice, the words indistinguishable but the tones unmistakably
demanding and insistent.

Nadine's voice answered, its tones firm. Earl and Basil looked at each
other. Neither of those inside were speaking English.

The male voice uttered a harsh monosyllable. Nadine screamed. Earl,
abandoning caution, tried to open the door. It was locked. He wasted
precious seconds getting the key into the lock. Cursing at the delay,
he flung the door open and ran toward the two figures struggling near
the windows. One was Nadine, her clothes torn, her face a mask of
desperate effort to escape. The other, Earl recognized instantly as
being George Ladd. He also recognized the suit Ladd was wearing. It was
one of his own.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ladd didn't seem to be aware of him until he grabbed him by the
shoulder and pulled him around roughly. For a split second George Ladd
was motionless with surprise--and in that split second Earl lashed out
with his fist.

The blow sent Ladd stumbling backward until he brought up against a
table. Earl leaped toward him. Ladd made no attempt to escape, but
fumbled for something in the coat pocket of the suit he was wearing. A
glistening object appeared in his hand.

Earl swerved, thinking it must be a gun. Then he was sprawling full
length on the floor, his muscles refusing to obey his commands. His
consciousness was almost entirely dominated by a terrible tingling
sensation that seemed to possess every cell of his body from the neck
down.

He had fallen in such a way that he saw Basil leaping forward. The next
instant Basil was plunging floorward, his arms refusing to come up to
break his fall.

Nadine was running toward the open hall door. She too fell sprawling.

George Ladd appeared in Earl's line of vision. He closed the door and
locked it from the inside, then picked Nadine up and cradled her limp
body over his shoulder.

Earl tried to cry out. The tingling in his throat became unbearable.
In numb horror and frustrated rage he watched George Ladd, Nadine
over his shoulder, her arms dangling limply. A moment later he heard
a window raised. There were sounds of heavy exertion, a faint thud
outside the window. Then silence.

Earl's eyes fed on Basil's motionless form. For what might have
been minutes or hours the tingling continued. It died away with
imperceptible slowness. Finally he was able to move a little. A minute
later he was able to sit up. His entire body felt as though it had
"been asleep."

Almost immediately Basil moved. Earl reached out for the nearest table
and pulled himself to his feet, fighting to keep his legs from caving.

Basil rose to a sitting position, shook his head to clear his senses,
looked up at Earl, and grinned feebly. He said, his speech thick and
clumsy, "_Now_ I believe you. That paralysis gun did it."

Earl was startled. "You didn't believe me before?"

"Hell no!" Basil sighed. "I just thought you were going a long ways to
explain what some people would call a sordid affair." His grin became
more natural. "I was right though. This George Ladd is now a hero." He
frowned. "Only--your Nadine didn't seem to _want_ to be rescued."

"Get up and move around," Earl said desperately. "Get some circulation
back. We may still be able to catch up with them and get her back."

"I don't know," Basil said doubtfully, getting to his feet. "I hate the
idea of that paralysis gun."

"I've got a gun too," Earl said.

He half stumbled toward the bench with the locked drawer. He searched
for his keys, remembered he had left them in the hall door. He started
for the door, then stopped. The locked drawer was open and damaged. A
heavy screwdriver was on the table over it. The drawer was empty.

"He got my gun!" Earl said. "He got the stasis spheres too!"

Basil came to stand beside him and stare broodingly into the empty
drawer. "That does it," he mumbled. "Now you don't have anything."

"There's that thing out on the hill," Earl said. "Maybe George Ladd
headed for that. He hasn't had time to get located in town. We can find
him hiding out there. Wait until I get a flashlight."

From another drawer he brought out a high-powered flashlight. He went
to the open window and crawled out. Basil hesitated, then followed him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Behind them was the building they had just left, light streaming from
the open window and from half a dozen other windows. To their right
loomed the dark bulk of the dome that housed the gigantic Brain, an
obsidian shape in the night that hulked into the heavens, blotting out
a hemisphere of stars. Ahead, above the horizon, was a crescent moon
that served to silhouette the hill and its horizon of trees. Around
them were dark shapes, motionless.

Earl kept the flashlight ready, but didn't use it as they stole swiftly
forward. Neither man spoke, but their breathing was a stentorian sound
that blended with distant traffic noises and the nearby chirping of a
cricket, and the rustling of weeds as they forced them aside in their
passage.

They reached the hill and went forward more slowly, using caution
as they remembered the effects of the paralysis gun. Now Earl was
remembering the way he had come before, finding landmarks in the
darkness. At last he stopped and touched Basil's arm to bring him to a
halt.

"It's on the other side of these bushes," he whispered. "I'll use the
flash."

He parted the branches. Suddenly a cone of light exploded in the
darkness.

"Right there," Basil said. Then, in surprise, "It's gone!"

"Naturally," Earl said in some disgust. "It fits the pattern."

"What pattern?" Basil asked.

Earl was slow in answering. He said, "I don't know. I just felt it. Or
maybe I do know. Nadine and that guy Ladd were small and got big in a
hurry. What was to keep that thing from doing the same? That's part
of it. The other part is just a feeling. They don't seem to want to
advertise to the world that they're here. Maybe the damn thing became
invisible or something. With stasis spheres and small people that
get big, and paralysis guns, what's so impossible about that ship or
whatever it is getting big and becoming invisible? I'll bet it's still
there."

But though they passed back and forth over the entire area, with
increasing boldness, they encountered nothing, visible or invisible,
that was out of the ordinary.

There was a concave depression in the soil where Earl remembered the
puffball shape to have been. Even fresh scars in the dirt around the
depression.

For a while Earl blundered through the underbrush calling Nadine's
name cautiously, without hope. Finally they were forced to give up and
return to the lab building.

"We could call the police," Basil said doubtfully.

"Oh, sure," Earl said, his voice harsh. "What would we tell them? Dr.
Glassman would be called in. Next they'd call the boys in the white
jackets."

"Maybe they're just the boys we need," Basil said. "Or a good stiff
drink. I like the idea of the drink."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Irene Conner pushed open the
door without knocking and strolled casually into Earl's laboratory. She
saw him at the far end of the room, hunched over with his elbows on the
window sill, his back to her.

"Hi, Earl," she called cheerfully. "Want to have mid-morning coffee
with me?"

"No," Earl said without moving.

"You sound tired," Irene said, going over to stand beside him. "Or is
it spring fever--more accurately the summer doldrums."

"Neither," he said, glancing up at her with tired eyes. "I just want to
be left alone. I'm thinking." He straightened up with a deep sigh. "Why
don't you get Basil to have coffee with you?"

"That jerk?" Irene said. "He gets in my hair."

"Like you get in mine?" Earl said.

"That was cruel."

"Sorry," Earl relented. "I didn't get much sleep last night. I've got
problems. I'd much rather be left alone with them right now."

Irene inspected him critically as a man might inspect his automobile.
"Your eyes are bloodshot," she said. "Why not have some coffee with me
and tell me your problems. Maybe I can help you."

"Nobody can help me--least of all you."

The phone on the desk in the corner rang. Earl went to answer it.

"This is Glassman," the phone said. "I want a general staff meeting in
my office at once. Tell Dr. Conner she must be there too."

"Okay," Earl said. He hung up and looked at Irene. "Goat face," he
explained. "General staff meeting. We're to go to his office at once."

"Maybe this is it," Irene said, suddenly sober.

Earl nodded. That was the way it would come. A phone call for general
staff meeting. A quiet announcement that one of the scientists had at
last found the ideal nerve fluid for the brain. That's all there would
be to it. The greatest achievement since--if not including--the atom
bomb, and the historic moment would pass without a shout--with perhaps
only a tired sigh of relief, a glance of envy at the lucky one who had
found it.

"Well, let's get it over with," Earl said.

They went into the hall and walked side by side in silence toward the
back of the building where it joined the Dome. Basil joined them, for
once hardly noticing Irene as he looked questioningly at Earl, who
shook his head imperceptibly.

They entered Dr. Glassman's office. The director was sitting behind his
desk, ignoring them, pretending to be reading some typewritten papers.

Earl looked around. They were all there now, he and the other nine
scientists, and Dr. Glassman. Only there was something wrong with the
picture. One of them should have been beaming at the others, the light
of triumph in his or her eyes. Instead, the other nine reflected his
own puzzled bewilderment.

"Sit down, sit down," Dr. Glassman said, looking up at them. He waited
until they were all seated about the room, then cleared his throat
importantly, pushing aside the papers he had been reading. He started
to say something, then became aware of their expressions. He shook his
head. "The end isn't in sight yet. But we may be closer than we think.
I'll introduce you in a moment to a new addition to our staff. A person
who--from the reports I've seen from Washington--seems to be quite a
genius at creating new type molecules, tailor-made for specific tasks.
Our new associate won't be assigned a separate lab. Instead, will serve
as a sort of general consultant, observing all your work, and will make
suggestions for hastening things up a bit." A murmur of voices and
sharp footsteps came from the hall. "My wife has been showing our new
colleague the Brain. I think they're coming now."

The door opened. Mrs. Glassman's cheerful face appeared. "They're all
here now," she said over her shoulder.

The door opened farther. Earl, and everyone else, was staring at the
opening, waiting for their first glimpse of the newcomer.

Earl half rose to his feet before he stopped himself. Then he slowly
sat down, his eyes wide and puzzled.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was Nadine. She wasn't wearing the clothes he had bought for her the
day before. Instead, she was dressed in a stylishly cut business suit
and low heeled slippers, a trim hat covering her hair. She had paused
just inside the room, a half smile on her carefully painted lips. Her
eyes surveyed each face pleasantly, passing over Earl's as though she
had never seen him before.

"Come up here, my dear," Dr. Glassman said in honeyed tones. And to
the others, "I want you to meet Dr. Nadine Holmes." Then back to her,
"What did you think of the Brain? Quite an imposing thing, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," Nadine replied. "I felt quite--awed by it, sitting there
where it will remain for untold centuries, waiting only for the vital
fluid that will give it the ability to think."

"I'm sure it won't be untold centuries before it gets the fluid," Dr.
Glassman said, chuckling heartily at his own humor. "I'll introduce you
to your co-workers, Dr. Holmes. This is Dr. Paul Hardwick...."

Earl caught Basil's attention and shook his head warningly. He waited,
then, for his turn at being introduced, his heart pounding violently,
his pulse racing.

"... and this is Dr. Earl Frye ..." Dr. Glassman said.

"How do you do, Dr. Frye." Nadine's hand was smooth and cool as she
rested it in his. Her eyes sized him up with impersonal interest, but
without a flicker of recognition.

"... and this is Dr. Basil Nelson ...."

Nadine withdrew her hand gently and moved on.

"And now you may return to your work," Dr. Glassman announced. "I know
the male members of the staff will be waiting for a visit from our
charming new member, but you must be patient. She will get around to
all of you in the next few days."

Earl was in the hall before Glassman had finished. He wanted to think.
Rapid footsteps caught up with him. "_Now_ can we have coffee?" she
asked with humorous petulance.

"No!" Earl said with more fierceness in his voice than he had intended.
It had the effect of a physical blow on Irene. She fell back a step,
blinking.

Basil caught up with them. "I want to talk with you, Earl," he said.

"Basil," Irene cut in, "will _you_ have coffee with me?"

"Me?" Basil said in delight. "Sure." He linked his arm in hers. "Let's
go." He looked back over his shoulder at Earl. "Thanks, Earl," he said.
"I'll see you later." It was two hours later.

       *       *       *       *       *

"You sure it's her?" Basil said. "I'm inclined to agree with you. Of
course, I saw her only for a second or two.... Where do you suppose
she picked up those snazzy clothes? I was watching her when she was
introduced to you. Boy, is she some actress!"

"I'm wondering if it was an act," Earl said frowning.

"Of course it was--had to be if she's the same girl. But she didn't
let on she knew you at all."

"That's why I wonder if it was an act. There was something strange
about her. I can't quite put my finger on it--or yes I can. She's
changed. Today her whole personality is different. And where did she
get papers authentic enough to fool Glassman?"

"Why don't you ask her when she comes here?" Basil suggested.

Earl shook his head. "I wonder if she could be under some sort of
hypnosis? No, wait. It isn't any more absurd than a paralysis gun. If
she doesn't stay here tonight I'm going to follow her and see where she
goes. Are you with me?"

"Uh," Basil hesitated. "Depends on when she leaves the building.
Irene and I have sort of a date to have dinner at the Red Barn at six
o'clock."

"Go ahead," Earl said, grinning. "I'll probably have more success alone
anyway. We'd get in each other's way."

"Why don't you ask Glassman where she's staying? It's probably some
hotel in town."

"I'll think about it," Earl said.

When Basil left, Earl went to the window and looked toward the hill.
Would Nadine go there? Was there some hiding place on the hill where
she would go, to wait until tomorrow, after her "day's work" was done?

Earl nodded to himself. It had to be. Nothing else fitted into the
crazy pattern of events.

One thing he was certain of now. In spite of the accident that had
broken open the "ship" when it landed out there, its coming here--or
here and now--was no accident. Nor Nadine's apparent familiarity with
his name the night before, or her showing up now with credentials that
gave her the run of the place in an almost supervisory capacity.

And that meant that her interest was in the Brain. Hers--and who else?
George Ladd, of course. How many more? If each of those stasis spheres
had contained a person, there were dozens more in on it.

_Then why had Nadine been sent into the open when she was certain to be
recognized by him?_

That was what had been bothering him from the instant she walked into
Glassman's office. On the surface it was the most stupid thing that
could have occurred. On the surface....

Stupid. Yet somehow stupid didn't seem to fit. Maybe it had been
exceedingly cunning. Maybe there was something he had missed.

Cunning it might be--or stupid. But there was something else about it
that neither adjective quite fit. There was obviously organization
in back of Nadine. People. A "ship". Paralysis guns and what they
implied. Therefore planning, colored by one accident. Suppose every
detail of the plan had been worked out ahead of time, and was going
ahead without alteration. Suppose the original plan had specified that
Nadine was to be the "front", and the plan was proceeding blindly,
on the behavior level of instinct in animals who repeat instinctive
routines made senseless by changed environment. Or the blind function
level of a machine that keeps turning out parts when the conveyor belt
has stopped, until it wrecks itself.

It annoyed Earl not to be able to pin his thoughts down, to bring
everything into full focus.

       *       *       *       *       *

He went to his kitchenette and fixed a hasty lunch. All afternoon he
worked, immersed in the routine of testing chemicals in batches of
ten and making out report sheets on each one. And all afternoon he
puzzled over what could be behind Nadine's having shown up. Not so much
what might be behind her having returned to the scene, nor her not
recognizing him, but _why_ someone else hadn't been used.

No one dropped in. Irene's absence gave him only a sense of relief.
Basil, no doubt, was staying away because of a guilt complex.
Nadine--her continued absence could be because she wasn't ready for
him yet, or she truly didn't remember him and would get to him in due
time, perhaps tomorrow; or maybe the Plan involved some other member
of the research group. Or the destruction of the Brain? Earl shook his
head at this thought. That alternative didn't fit.

And then it was four-thirty. Already Earl had reasoned out what he
intended to do. Either Nadine would go into town and stay at a hotel,
remain in the building as a guest of the Glassmans', or she would leave
the building and make her way by some circuitous route to the spot on
the hill where the "ship" had been.

Only the latter possibility interested Earl right now. He quickly
slipped off his lab apron and put on a suit coat. He wished that he
still had a gun, but it had been stolen with the stasis spheres. He'd
have to do without it.

Leaving the building, he walked along the sidewalk until he was able to
approach the hill from the other side where he wouldn't be seen from
the windows.

It was ten minutes to five when he settled down to wait in the
concealment of a thicket where he could command a view of the
approaches from every direction, and a clear view of the slight
depression in the ground where the "ship" had dropped.

There was nothing to do now but wait--and stay awake. He was acutely
aware, suddenly, of his lack of sleep the night before. A warm breeze
rustled the leaves around him. A small hoptoad paused to stare up at
him in unblinking fixity.

Overhead in a large Maple tree a host of sparrows paused to hold a
brief political convention.

And then Nadine was coming up the slope from the side away from the
lab. Her chic hat dangled carelessly in her right hand, the warm breeze
mussing her hair. A too normal smart-looking woman's purse was under
her arm. The breeze caught her skirt, molding her graceful legs, her
slim body. She was too much the picture of a normal girl idly strolling
in a park.

A great nostalgia, an almost overwhelming yearning, took possession of
Earl. He wanted to rush forward, let her know he was there, waiting for
her.

Instead, he remained motionless, watching her approach.

She seemed to be heading straight for him. For an instant he thought
she must have seen him. But her expression held no excitement or
anything but half dreamy enjoyment of her surroundings.

       *       *       *       *       *

Scarcely fifteen feet away she came to a stop and turned to face toward
the concave depression in the ground, another fifty feet beyond her.
With her free hand she reached up and patted at her hair like any
normal girl would do, unconsciously.

Abruptly Earl became aware of something just beyond her. It wasn't
tangible. A shimmering in the air. A slight but definite refractive
quality that had not been there the moment before.

Nadine had seen it too. She walked forward a few steps.

"This is it!" Earl thought to himself. He crouched to run after her.

She took another step. She vanished, not abruptly, but as one might
vanish into a bright silver but otherwise transparent fog.

In that instant Earl moved hurtling forward so that when she
disappeared he was a step behind her.

Instantly the peaceful wooded scene vanished. His feet were on a smooth
hard floor. Ahead of him he caught a brief glimpse of walls, of people
without clothes.

Then he was falling over Nadine and trying to keep from falling on her.
His arms were around her. Somehow he twisted so that when he landed she
was on top, unhurt.

There was a stunned eternity when her eyes were looking into his,
recognition and gladness unmasked, hope and pleading sending him some
secret message, some unspoken word trembling on her lips.

But Earl had seen George Ladd even as he fell, and the never forgotten
instincts developed in him during World War III were in motion, making
him continue his roll so that in the next instant he was on his
feet, Nadine behind him. Ladd hadn't expected this and was caught by
surprise. Earl took advantage of that brief uncertainty, stepping in
and bringing a short chopping right against Ladd's jaw.

Before George Ladd reached the floor, Earl was running in great
strides, his eyes darting ahead in search of a place to escape.

"Wait!" Nadine called. But he didn't pause. He couldn't trust her.
George Ladd had been armed with his paralysis gun. He'd been waiting
for him. This had been a trap, and Nadine had led him into it.

Ahead was a doorway. He hesitated. Should he continue on down the
corridor or take the doorway? He decided on the latter. It opened into
a room, unoccupied at the moment. There were windows. One of them was
open. Earl didn't hesitate. Beyond the window was a wide paved street.
If he could get away, mingle with crowds....

No one was in sight. He sprinted along the pavement, away from the Dome
which he had glimpsed over his shoulder. It was beautiful, its basic
structure adorned with granite superstructures of fine workmanship. But
he didn't pause to admire it. He wanted people, lots of people, to mix
with and hide from pursuit.

For a hundred yards the street went through parkways. Then ahead were
buildings. He reached them, racing along a canyon formed by windowless
walls of buildings. He rounded a corner. The street was still deserted.

He ran on and on, turning corners when he came to them, but always
heading in one general direction so as not to circle back toward the
Dome.

       *       *       *       *       *

Abruptly he paused. Beside him was a door in a building. He darted
inside, closing the door behind him and leaning against it while he
breathed in rasping gulps of air.

Ahead of him was a corridor and more doors. After a brief rest he
sprinted down the hallway. If he could find a vacant room, a place to
hide until he could map out some plan.

He listened at the first door. There was no sound. He tried the knob.
The door opened silently under his touch. He stepped in. The room was
unoccupied. Its far wall was of glass. He glanced through it. He was
looking out over an enormous workshop of some kind. Row upon row of
small vats were there--and people.

He was seeing his first people of this world he had plunged into. They
wore no clothes. They seemed to be tending the vats, walking along the
aisles, pausing here and there at a vat to touch banks of controls and
watch what was in each vat.

From the hall Earl had just left came loud voices. The words were in a
strange language, but the tones carried their own message. His pursuers
had caught up with him. In another moment they would open the door and
find him.

He looked around for a way to escape. There was a trap door in the
floor. It undoubtedly led to the huge workshop. Earl lifted the door
and saw a ladder. He climbed onto it, letting the trap door fall back
into place as he descended.

He fully expected workers to see him and react to his presence in some
way. A worker was less than ten feet away. The worker didn't pause or
seem to notice him.

Silently Earl watched the man's eyes, dull and void of intelligence.
They seemed only passive recorders of what there was for him to see. He
was touching control knobs in front of a vat.

Earl looked into the vat and caught his breath. Floating in the tank
was a human embryo. It was alive, its umbilical cord growing from a
spongy mass on the floor of the tank.

Forgetting his danger, Earl grabbed the man's shoulder. "What is this?"
he demanded. "Human babies growing in tanks?"

The worker waited unresisting until Earl released his grip, then
continued on his routine way. He was, in every respect, a robot, doing
his specialized job, his mind a complete blank to anything else. A
zombie. Earl looked out over the vast baby factory and realized with
numb horror that all the hundreds of people working here were the
same. Walking dead, their minds capable of only one thing--doing this
specialized task. And the human embryos in the tanks? Would they become
walking zombies?

Over his head came the sound of the trap door opening. Earl didn't take
time to look up. He ran. Down an aisle between rows of unborn humans
tended by undead zombies. Up another ladder into another observation
room, ignoring shouts that caught up with him. Out another door, down
another hall, through another door, and into a street again.

Miles of streets, and then something recognizable. A factory with
belching smokestacks. He plunged toward it recklessly, desperately
hoping to find intelligent men. Men with minds. Men able to help him
hide.

He found himself inside a huge plant where giant ladles were pouring
molten metal into molds. There were men running the machines that
controlled the pouring. They wore thick asbestos-like suits.

As Earl ran toward them he saw one of them slip and fall so that his
arm went into the stream of molten metal. The man didn't cry out nor
jerk away. Splattering metal cascaded on the others. There was the
stench of burned flesh.

His mind numb with the shock of what he was seeing, Earl stood rooted,
watching the others continue their work with expressionless faces,
blank eyes. Mindless creatures, controlled like inanimate robots.

"Earl!"

He turned in the direction of the voice. He saw Nadine beckoning for
him to come to her. He started toward her, then stopped. She was
different from these--or was she? No, she wasn't any different. She too
was an automaton. She was beckoning him to walk into another trap.

He turned to run the other way, but in that moment of indecision he had
been surrounded by men like George Ladd, carrying the little paralysis
guns--and they were automatons too.

He turned, searching for a way of escape, the smell of molten metal and
cooked flesh strong in his nostrils. And then he felt the sting of the
paralysis gun and was falling forward.

A sharp pain entered the base of his skull. He lost consciousness then
with the monstrous horror of what was around him searing into his soul.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next instant, it seemed, he awakened, all the horror fresh in his
mind, the stinging sensation at the nape of his neck changed to a dull
throbbing pain. Nadine had led him into this. But she was like the
rest, a zombie unable to think for herself.

He shook his head slowly in pained bewilderment. She hadn't been that
way the first time he met her. She had been--_herself. What could have
created this nightmare?_

A voice somewhere sounded in deep resonant tones. "So you are awake,"
it said.

Earl rolled onto his side and searched for the source of the voice.
There was no one in view. He was in a room whose walls and ceiling were
heavy glass. He looked through the ceiling and saw the familiar maze of
steel catwalks inside the dome.

Outside his glass prison a pair of video cameras were trained on him.
Their lenses seemed somehow sentient, so that their motionlessness
partook of the quality of a fixed stare.

"I've always wanted to meet you," the voice said, and it seemed to come
from a small case atop the camera frames.

It was a dream, Earl decided. He had been hit on the head. In his
delirium he had conjured up the Brain, activated and intelligent as it
was designed to be in theory, possessed of a mind of its own.

"Of course," the voice went on, "I've seen film shots of you. You are
the discoverer of the nerve fluid that made me possible."

Earl sat up abruptly. "Who are you? And where--"

"I am the _Cyberene_. This is the year 3042 A. D., in the old calendar.
I had you brought here through what might be called a time tube from
your own period. Shortly you will return through that tube to your own
time--as many hours ahead from the time you left as you spend here
before you go back."

Earl got to his feet slowly, watching the glistening lenses. "Now it
begins to fit together," he said. "You're behind Nadine and Ladd. You
say _I'm_ the discoverer of the nerve fluid. You're mistaken. It hasn't
been found yet--and there are ten of us looking for it. One of the
others may be the one to find it."

"History says you found it."

"And you just wanted to see me because of that?" Earl asked.

"Watch," the voice said.

The plate glass wall in front of Earl changed suddenly, to become
apparently a giant window over-looking a huge sprawling city. There
were buildings that reached thousands of feet into the sky, with
fragile looking networks of bridges spanning the spaces among them.
There were giant aircraft in the sky. In the distance was a trail
of fire that might be from an inter-planetary rocket ship departing
spaceward.

And abruptly the elfin city was blotted out by a blinding sun. Seconds
later the blinding sun was gone, and Earl could see the city again. But
now it was only the skeleton of what it had been. Its spiderweb design
of bridges was torn and twisted. Many of its tall buildings were even
now toppling toward the ground. Fire shot skyward in a pyrotechnic
display of havoc.

       *       *       *       *       *

A giant airplane appeared, heading straight toward the window through
which Earl watched. It grew larger. For a brief second he looked into
its control cabin and saw its pilot and co-pilot. They were human, but
their faces were harsh and cruel, their eyes cold and inhuman. In the
next instant they were gone.

"That is a typical scene on--the other Earth," the voice of the
Cyberene explained.

The scene of the desolate city vanished. In its place appeared another
scene. A city under construction. Giant building machines were placing
it together, and the parts that were completed were even more beautiful
than had been that other city.

Earl, from his vantage point, seemed to drop closer and drift over the
scene of construction to a part that was inhabited. He saw the people
below. They wore no clothes and didn't seem to mind. Each appeared to
be intent on going somewhere. None of them were talking or paying any
attention to one another. Their expressions were blank, their eyes
vacant.

The vantage point followed one of them. Shortly the man being followed
turned into an archway, up an incline, and into a large hall. He
went through a door into the room filled with cell-like vats. In
each transparent vat Earl saw a human embryo, alive and growing. He
"followed" the man through this place to another, where children were
playing with psychological toys designed to increase mechanical and
scientific aptitudes.

"This, too, is a typical scene on--this Earth," the Cyberene said.
The scene vanished. Once again Earl looked into the video eyes of the
Brain. "They are both Earth in the year 3042," the Cyberene said, "but
not the _same_ Earth. In 1980 there was a split. Earth followed two
independent futures. The first, filled with wars and eternal carnage,
ever more perfect weapons of destruction, developed from _one_ decision
you made. The second, my world, filled with perpetual peace and
happiness, developed from the alternative decision. _You_ created these
two futures."

"I?" Earl said. "You must be crazy. How?"

"In the first you discovered the vital nerve fluid that makes me
possible. You thought you were God. You thought you could see a
future in which I would work the human race harm. You suppressed your
discovery by the simple process of giving a negative lab report on
the substance. In the second world--_my_ world--you did as you were
supposed to do. You announced your discovery. _I_ came into being."

"You mean to say _my actions_ caused the whole planet to split into two
identical worlds?"

"In effect, yes. I'll try to explain. Matter and motion are not real in
the basic sense. They are properties of your mind. They are what your
finite mind sees; but reality is the space-time continuity of which one
instant is a cross-section. In effect, consciousness flows along the
time dimension which I term the fourth dimension. But in addition there
is a fifth dimension, so that these two Earths have the same space-time
coordinates in four dimensions, and two different ones in the fifth.
In Euclidean concepts, that other Earth is eighty-seven millionths of
an inch from this, in the fifth dimension. In that Earth I did not
develop. The Dome is still there, but the Brain, if it still exists,
was never activated. As a result, humanity continued its violent
progress through time, engaging in war after war.

"When I discovered time travel and saw all this I decided to go back
and contact you before your instant of decision and get you to release
the identity of the nerve fluid when you discover it _tomorrow_."

"Tomorrow?" Earl said.

"In your time."

"I see," Earl said. "Tomorrow I make the discovery. In one time stream
I tell Glassman. In the other I decide not to. _What made me decide not
to?_"

"You _thought_ the Brain would be bad for humanity. You were, of
course, wrong."

"Was I?" Earl said.

"In that other world, wars are the normal state of things. They
stem from problems that don't exist in my world. Over-population,
competition in trade in things that aren't necessary to human economy,
opposed political systems--all the foibles and inconsistencies of
untrained and unorganized populations."

"I understand that," Earl said. "Why don't your people wear clothes?"

"Clothes are unnecessary--one of the things I eliminated in reducing
the industrial economy to a minimum. Over-population? There is none.
People are made in the laboratory as they are needed. Their lives are
uncomplicated by animal problems such as reproduction, and artificial
customs such as modesty. Their education is simplified and factual,
their lives functional."

"And I made that decision all by myself?"

"Yes. That's why I have brought you here--to get you to change that
decision. You see, I must change the past. I must do that in order to
correct the future, make the other Earth a sane place, _dominated by a
second Cyberene which is a counterpart of me_."

       *       *       *       *       *

"That's what I thought," Earl said with reckless boldness. "I'm
beginning to understand why I made my decision to suppress the
identity of the nerve substance. _You_ did that. The things I've seen.
You're just like dictators of our time. You think you're so right that
everyone will naturally agree with you. I don't. I think it's more
humane to let people come into the world as they will and have wars
that destroy them, than to decide just how many are to be born. You
need a new man in the garbage disposal plant in twenty years? Press a
button and he will be born in a few months. Going to have less to do in
some factory in twenty years? Keep the zombies from being born. Less
trouble than killing them off later to save on the food bill."

"I was afraid you might feel that way," the Cyberene said. "I have the
answer to it. Nadine Holmes. Make an accurate report tomorrow on the
tests. In return I will leave her in your time--even plant directives
so that she will always be a loving and devoted wife to you."

"I would prefer her as she is, naturally."

"Today her every outward manifestation was under my direct mental
control. Don't you see, Earl Frye? Just before you followed her into my
neatly laid trap to get you here, you watched her come up the hill, and
adored every line of her, every mannerism, every play of expression.
With one small corner of my mind I can _anticipate_ your wishes and
fulfill them in her--"

"It wouldn't be her," Earl said shaking his head. "And even if it were,
at the cost of billions of unborn generations? No."

"But you will do as I wish whether _you_ wish to or not. Why not obey
me freely and get this reward, rather than nothing?

"_I can control you._" The voice ended triumphantly.

"No!" It was a shuddering protest from Earl's lips, forcing itself out
against his wishes.

The throbbing ache at the base of his brain increased abruptly, slowly,
to measurable beats.

"I can control your body, your conscious mind, shoving _you_ into the
back recesses of thought. And when you try to come out, I can punish
you--like I'm doing now."

"No!" Earl screamed, his reserve breaking down completely.

Suddenly, into his cosmos of unbearable suffering and horror, filtered
a thought that created hope. Nadine had been _free_ during those first
hours he had met her. She had defied George Ladd. Unsuccessfully, but
she had defied him. And when they had sprawled through that doorway
to the future, for a moment he had seen that same _free_ Nadine in
her eyes, her expression. Or had she ever been free? The terrible
throbbing pain blurred his thinking. Had she been free in the smelter
where she attracted his attention while the others surrounded him? If
he had run directly to her he would have escaped being surrounded.
But....

Anger entered his mind like a little finger of thought. Anger at
Nadine? He was surprised. Confused. Then it came to him that it was not
_his_ anger. It came from outside. Alien.

From the depths of his own instincts fear welled up and became blind
panic, fighting against the _something_ that was growing stronger,
crowding around his soul, forcing it to retreat within itself, until
Earl Frye, his awareness of being Earl Frye, of being himself, was all
that remained, helpless to control or even to feel.

Through a mental fog he was aware that he had stood up, the glass
cage had lifted, and he was free to go--but not _he_! His body was
controlled by the Cyberene.

He was aware that he had left the dome to walk through a beautifully
landscaped garden to a building he had not seen before but which he
knew to be the 3042 end of the time tube. He was aware of pausing and
looking back at the Dome, now a thing of incredible beauty to him, the
repository of his physical vehicle, the Brain. But _not his_. The
Cyberene's.

       *       *       *       *       *

He entered the time tube. He stepped from it onto grassy ground.
He went through the trees to the sidewalk. He returned to the lab
building, to his lab, to his living quarters.

He encountered Basil. He listened to himself talk, in casual tones,
normal tones. He was unable to control even his conscious thoughts. But
his consciousness was a thing apart from him.

He fought the domination of the Cyberene with arms that would not move,
with a tongue that would not utter his words, with a rage that would
not alter his calm and pleasant expression. He fought the pain that
throbbed within him. He fought to stay sane.

Slowly he began to adjust to his position. He no longer fought. He
was like a passenger in a plane who watches it take off, fly great
distances, and land, with no concern about the details. Having no
control whatever over his body, he was free of responsibility toward
its routine behavior. He became aware that pain had departed. The very
thing he had fought began to interest him. There must be some definite
mechanism--property of the mind--that made telepathic enslavement
possible in this way. Undoubtedly Nadine was also a free focus of
thought behind her enslaved surface.

She came into the lab at ten o'clock, cheerful but impersonal. He heard
himself talking to her in the same way. He could see her, listen to
her. Therefore, behind her impersonal eyes was the Nadine he had first
met, watching him, knowing what had happened. It gave him comfort to
know that. He had not lost her. She was _there_.

Knowing that, and knowing there was no way to communicate with her at
present, he turned his attention to what her body and his were doing.

"The silicones haven't been explored too thoroughly yet," she was
saying. "They have some disadvantages, but those can be eliminated
by additions to the ion rings to serve as protective buffers. I have
several of them in this tray I brought in. I'd like you to run them
through the tests."

Earl's eyes focused on the tray. They paused briefly on the formula of
the third one from the nearest end. Earl sensed that this was the long
sought for substance. He built up its theoretical structure. He saw at
once how it achieved its properties.

"I'll be back this afternoon," Nadine said. "By then you should have
your lab reports ready."

Then she was gone. Earl's hands went through the motions of pouring
each vial into a pump. He turned his attention away from the routine,
as a traveler in a passenger plane might turn from the window to
something else.

A feeling of hopelessness grew within him. How could he stop things or
interfere with them when he couldn't affect a muscle?

The Cyberene had been playing with him when it tried to get him to do
its bidding of his own free will. He realized that now. It would have
pleased its vanity if he had.

But this was too important to it for it to trust anything other than
itself.

When it was done? When the fluid was forced into the hundreds of
thousands of miles of hair-like glass tubing, the billions of fine
glass cells? It would never give him his freedom. It would be afraid of
what he might be able to do. So it would kill him.

Unless he could prevent the Brain from being activated. And unless he
were free to command his body, he could never do that.

What had the Cyberene said to him about time travel and alternate time
streams? The theories weren't exactly new. They had been explored in
imaginative fiction for over fifty years. No one had really thought
there might be some basis in fact for the theories.

What had caused the "split" which had produced two Earths in separate
time streams? The Cyberene hadn't seemed to know that detail--or if it
had it had brushed over it casually so as not to make him curious about
it.

_Was it events? Or was it something in the basic substratum of matter,
and the events were the result? That might be an important distinction._

If it were events, then bringing the Brain to life in this time stream
might eliminate the divergent streams, bringing them together as one.
That, in effect, might destroy the other world of 3042 A.D. Maybe that
was what the Cyberene intended.

But suppose he were able even yet to defeat the Cyberene's scheme. Then
the two time streams would remain unchanged. The free world of the
future would remain free. But that was not enough. He wanted to destroy
both Brains. How could he accomplish that, assuming he were able to
accomplish anything?

       *       *       *       *       *

The logical time to do it would be in 1980--now--before the Cyberene
gained control of the world and made itself impregnable. But how? And
if he could figure that out, could he act if an opportunity arose?

Irene Conner came in at lunch time. "I had a wonderful time with Basil
last night," she said.

"I'm glad you did," Earl heard his voice say.

Hope leaped within him. Maybe the Cyberene would make some mistake that
would arouse suspicions in her. The hope died as the door to the hall
opened again and Nadine came in.

"You promised to take me to lunch, Earl," she said.

"Ready," Earl heard himself say.

It was evident that the Cyberene didn't intend him to be alone with any
of the others long enough for the possibility of something suspicious
to arise.

They went to a small cafe several blocks from the lab building. For
the benefit of anyone happening to be looking at them, they carried on
small talk while they ate. Earl found himself hanging onto every word
Nadine uttered, watching her every expression. He was so close to her,
yet so far away. It was like standing outside a window and watching her
while she seemed unaware of him.

He kept watching for the faintest flicker of expression that would
show the real Nadine. Slowly, without quite realizing it, he began to
pretend it _was_ Nadine. He listened to her small talk. He listened to
his, and at times forgot it wasn't actually his and that he couldn't
control one word of what he said.

He became happy. He let himself be aware of the flavor of the food. He
laughed within himself when his vocal cords laughed. He reached out and
touched Nadine's hand, thrilling to the feel of her soft skin.

She drew her hand back, a startled light in her eyes. It was gone the
next instant. Once more she was impersonal, _controlled_.

The dull, throbbing pain flared to torturing intensity within him,
blurring thought, _punishing_ him, forcing him behind his prison walls
of gray mental fog. But through the pain, apart from it, he experienced
a surge of hope. It had been _he_ who had reached out to Nadine. Not
the Cyberene controlling him!

Was there still hope? At two o'clock Nadine would pick up his lab
report sheets and turn them over to Glassman. Then the identity of the
ideal nerve fluid would be known. It would be out of his hands even if
he were in full control of his faculties.

He and Nadine rose. They were going back to the lab building. He raged
against the hidden mental barriers that contained him. He fought
frenziedly to influence some slight movement of his body.

He might as well have been a passenger on an ocean liner trying to
change the course of the thousands of tons of steel by thought alone
while standing at the rail.

His sphere of awareness grew clouded. He was raging against a mental
wall that became almost tangible. He stopped fighting from sheer
impotence--and the barrier retreated.

_The more I fight the more helpless I am._ That thought at once created
its corollary. _The less I struggle the closer I am to control!_

That was it! He had so identified his desires with the actions of his
body that for one instant he _meshed_ with it!

That, then, was the secret. The principle. But it contained within
itself its own difficulty. By "wanting" to activate the Brain he could
perhaps actually control some of his actions. But the instant he did
something counter to the Cyberene, that control would be taken away
from him, and replaced by throbbing pain.

He _had_ touched Nadine's hand though. It had been a gesture so
unconscious that the Cyberene had been unaware of it until it happened.

It was the right direction.

       *       *       *       *       *

The possibility of what he wanted to do filled him with a sense of
defeat. It would be impossible to falsify the lab report on the nerve
fluid. One false word on the card, and the Cyberene would erase it and
fill the card out correctly.

He fought back the feeling of futility. He reached out, identifying
himself with every sensation from his body. He was walking. He _wanted_
to walk. He was talking. He _wanted_ to say what he heard himself say.

It would go along well, and then his body would do something he didn't
expect, and he would be filled with the realization that he had no
control. It would be a mental stumble while his body didn't falter.

During each brief period of identifying his desires with his actions,
he found his awareness of sensations expand until it was almost
complete identification--complete _meshing_.

Meshing until the gears were almost strong enough to grip--for a brief
second. Perhaps in time they would grip for more than a second before
alarm bells rang for the Cyberene.

He was alone in his lab. He was placing the fine tubes of test
substances in their respective instrument cabinets. Ordinarily he did
this almost automatically. Now he watched his every move, building up
interest in it, _desiring_ to do everything he did, anticipating what
he would do next and wanting to do it, pretending it was he who issued
the commands to his muscles.

The crucial moment was just ahead. He had stepped to the instrument
case that held the key fluid. He started to write down the readings
from the instruments. His fingers shook, and it was _his_ nervousness
that shook them.

A "mistake" in the readings here and there would do it. Speed of ion
travel: The meter said two thousand plus feet per second. His fingers
wrote the two and a zero. Before he could write the second zero he
tried to write the plus sign. Triumphantly he saw his fingers obey his
will.

Abruptly they paused--and he was aware that a power outside his will
had made them pause.

Throbbing pain surged up to full intensity, enveloping him, sickening
him so that his soul was a writhing thing, unable to think or feel
anything other than pain. Slowly it lessened--or was he growing better
able to suffer it? Thoughts filtered in to him through gray mists
clouding his mind.

He saw his hands fill out the rest of the card correctly. He was dimly
aware of rushing excitedly from the lab, down the hall, shouting that
he had found it.

Others were joining him as he hurried to Glassman's office and burst
in, waving the card.

Glassman seized it, his eyes afire with the fulfillment of his Dream.

And it was too late. Too late now to erase the knowledge of the
identity of that fluid from Glassman's mind, from the minds of the
other nine scientists crowding around him, congratulating him.

It was too late.

That realization crowded out everything else. The Cyberene had won.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We want to put it through every test conceivable," Glassman said.
"All ten of you drop everything else and work on it. Get the speed of
impulse down to the last fraction of an inch per second. Get behavior
in different sized tubes. Find the least diameter of the fluid column
for non-function. Everything. We want to be _sure_ before we start
pumping two hundred and fifty thousand gallons of the stuff into the
Brain."

Dr. Glassman's eyes were afire with the triumph of success. "The dream
of my life has come true," he said. "The Brain will live! It will live
forever, growing wiser than any man or any group of men. It will remake
the world. Civilization. It will end wars. It will guide mankind into a
garden of Eden. Utopia. It was _my_ dream for mankind."

He became aware of those watching him. The fire of fanaticism left
his eyes. He relaxed, and laughed embarrassedly. "But right now
congratulations are in order for Dr. Frye. He's the one who has found
the substance that makes it possible."

Nadine had been standing quietly on the sidelines, almost forgotten
in this moment. She came forward now and extended her hand.
"Congratulations, Dr. Frye," she said.

It was for effect. Earl heard himself say, "Maybe _you_ are the one who
should get the credit." He paid little attention. It was a show, an
opera, and his body and hers were players reciting lines from a script.

But her hand in his was warm. He clung to the feel of it, thinking
bitterly that now there was nothing else. What would become of him? He
didn't care.

He sunk into a mood of utter defeat. It was all the worse, he realized,
because right now, if the Cyberene had not come into the picture, if he
had been left to himself, he would be deliriously happy--just as his
own exterior self was seeming to be.

After a while he was back in the lab. His body was working on more
elaborate experiments with the fluid. His vocal cords were humming a
tune in a tone of absent-minded happiness.

He wished fervently that there were some way he could be wiped out
completely. Gray walls around his awareness were not enough. Not with
the unbearable suffering.

The hours passed slowly for him. He tried not to think, to remain
passive. It was no use. His bitterness was too strong. His sense of
defeat was too overpowering.

His eyes glanced up at the door as it opened, then down at his wrist
watch. It was three minutes after five. Nadine was in the doorway.

"It's time to go Earl," she said.

Go? Where? But his body hastily putting things in order as though it
knew.

They left the building together, walked along the sidewalk as though
they might be headed toward some dinner rendezvous. They left the
sidewalk, and then Earl knew. They were going to the entrance to the
time tube. They were going back to the year 3042. Why? He should have
remained. Maybe this would create suspicion. But even as he thought
that, he knew it wouldn't. Everyone would think he and Nadine were at
some restaurant, perhaps later at some night spot. No one would bother
to check and see if he came back to his rooms.

Ahead was the clear spot with its smooth convex depression. And the
shimmering refraction in the air. Side by side he and Nadine walked
toward it--and were in a corridor, the woodland scene wiped out.

No unusual sensation of any kind. Stepping across a thousand years was
no different than crossing the threshold of a doorway.

George Ladd was there waiting for them. "The Cyberene wants to see both
of you," he said. Nothing more. No paralysis gun, no guards to keep
Earl from escaping. But he couldn't escape. He couldn't move a muscle
of his own volition. "Okay," he heard himself say casually.

He and Nadine left the building and went through the beautiful park to
the Dome. Inside, they walked along the seemingly roofless slightly
curving corridor. He went to a small red square and stood on it. Out of
the corner of his eye he saw Nadine do the same. From above, the glass
boxes were lowered over them.

_Something left him._ Without having tested the feeling, he knew that
he was in full possession of himself. He could command and his body,
his voice, would obey.

He turned toward the glass wall facing Nadine. He pressed against it.
She was doing the same.

"Nadine!" he said, and it was a greeting, a caress.

"Earl!"

And they were drinking in one another with their eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Very touching," a voice said. "One would think you are in love with
her, Earl Frye."

"Oh no. I--That is...." Earl stopped in amazement at the self
revelation.

"Look at her," the Cyberene's voice said. "In spite of most careful
conditioning starting in the lab tank in her pre-breathing stage, she
feels the same way about you."

Nadine's lips were trembling with a smile. She was nodding.

Earl was irritated. "Did you bring me here just to tell me that?" he
asked. "Or to torture me further?" he added bitterly.

"No. I brought you here to show you that I'm grateful. You did what
I wanted done. The fact that it was done in spite of you makes no
difference. It's done and can't be undone by you. You realize that?"

"To gloat. I might have known," Earl said contemptuously.

"Not that either. I want to reward you. I've thoroughly explored your
mind. I know that if you give your word, you will keep it. I understand
a little about your feeling on personal freedom. Now that the vital
fluid is known to enough people so that nothing you can do would undo
that, I'm willing to let you have Nadine. The real Nadine."

"Yes?" Earl said warily.

"Yes. All I ask in return is your promise not to try to undo anything,
and to go ahead with your work without ever mentioning what has
happened. Once you give your promise, I will let you and Nadine go to
your time and stay there, free agents."

Earl frowned. "I don't get it," he said. "I didn't expect anything like
this from you."

"You thought that after I had by-passed you and accomplished my purpose
I would eliminate you?" The Cyberene laughed. "You will find that
I'm a very benevolent master." The video eyes seemed to glisten with
joviality.

"I still don't get it," Earl said, puzzled. "You want my word that I
won't interfere with anything you do from here on in."

"Yes. After all, there is a lot to do yet before the Brain in your time
stream is activated. I must--"

"So!" Earl interrupted. "According to your theory of time that you so
carefully explained to me, the discovery of the vital nerve substance
should have fixed up everything. It didn't."

"The Brain hasn't been activated yet in your time stream. When it has,
then the future will reshape itself."

"I want to understand," Earl said. "As I understand it, some act, some
_crucial_ act, must be changed from the way it happened in the past--in
my future in that past. Until that crucial moment is changed from the
way it happened, all the future stemming from it remains unaltered. The
instant that crucial moment is changed, presto--the whole future from
1980 right down to 3042 does a mighty flip flop and _right here and
now_, in that other Earth so close to this one, things will change as
abruptly as the change of scene on a screen."

"That's correct."

"Then getting my lab reports correct wasn't the thing. There is still
something to come, back there, that must be changed? In spite of
everything up to now, you are still facing defeat? That's why you are
willing to offer me so much?"

"You misunderstand my motives," the Cyberene said.

"I don't think so. You aren't dealing with a mind-slave now. You may
be non-human, but you're a thinking mind. You have desires, motives
for doing things, ways of doing them. In other words, you're a type.
In offering me everything I want, you're out of your type--unless
there's something you want that you can't get any other way. When I
came in here I was licked. All I wanted was to die. Now I'm not so
sure. I'm not even sure you know what you're doing. I have _hope. Do
you understand that?_" Earl was trembling violently, a mixture of
emotions coursing through him. "I'm going to destroy you before I'm
done. You're going to take control of me again and try to prevent that.
You don't know whether you can or not because _you can't go into your
future_. You can't even go into the past in any detail. How do I know
that? I'm a scientist. I'm trained to put two and two together and get
four. If you could go anywhere in the past you could have explored
every detail of my future and know now what happened."

"Perhaps I do know," the Cyberene said. "You forget I'm attempting
to _change_ what happened. I have changed what happened. In the time
stream the way it was originally, you discovered the right nerve fluid,
and suppressed it. You faked a negative report on it. I've changed that
much of the past already."

"Have you?" Earl said dully, his emotion spent. "All right then. Don't
mind me. You're not going to get any promise from me no matter how much
you torture me." His voice changed to cold bitterness. "I'm going to
fight you to the end--and win. I don't know how, but the very fact that
you haven't changed the present of that other Earth proves you haven't
succeeded yet--and won't. _I'll_ win. Then I'll destroy you, and Nadine
and I can be free."

But somewhere along the line the Cyberene had taken control again.
Earl wasn't quite sure when his vocal cords stopped obeying his mental
commands.

His body was standing quietly. He could not affect it. The gray walls
were closing in around him, the pain growing. He didn't fight it. He
welcomed the gray walls that clouded the channels to his conscious mind.

He sensed dimly that he and Nadine were going back the way they had
come. Back to the time tube. Back to 1980, to what might be the final
battle.

He was alone in his living quarters. He was aware of sleeping. Then it
was morning, and he crept cautiously into his conscious mind, a hurt
and wounded soul. And his conscious mind was serene and happy, unaware
of his suffering as it began its day's work.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Hi, Earl."

Earl looked up with a smile. "Hello, Basil. How's things going with you
and Irene?"

Basil smiled wryly. "Well ... at least she's discovered that I'm a
pretty fair dancer. She envies you. I guess I do too. You have all the
luck."

"Nonsense! Discovering the right substance was like winning the Irish
Sweepstakes."

"That's what I mean. You did nothing more than any of the rest of us.
It was pure chance that the right stuff was on a tray given to you to
test. But in the history books your name will get the credit--just like
it took brains."

Earl shrugged. "I'm afraid all our names will be left out. Dr. Glassman
will get the credit. He master-minded the whole thing. He deserves the
credit, too. The rest of us are just damned good chemists. That's all.
He took the risks. If it hadn't paid off, the Dome would have been
known as Glassman's Folly."

"Something in that," Basil said. "By the way, what have you found out
about Nadine? You two seem quite palsy walsy now."

"She's what she claims to be," Earl said.

"Is she?" Basil said, his eyes narrowing. "I think you're lying. Matter
of fact, you're different than you were. What's come over you?"

"Nothing, Basil."

"Nothing, he says," Basil said mournfully to the bench he was sitting
on. "What's happened to you? Have you been bought?"

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Nadine came here under mysterious circumstances,
to say the least. You were hot on the trail of something. You wanted me
to help you follow her. I couldn't, because Irene had given me my first
chance to date her. So you followed her by yourself. What happened?"

"Sure," Earl said. "She went to the best hotel in town. I called her on
a house phone and asked her to have dinner with me. She did."

"Did she tell you how she happened to be only four inches high and
naked when you first met her?"

Earl stared at Basil in mock astonishment. "Basil," he said softly.
"Haven't you ever heard of that terrible scourge of the human
race--alcohol?"

"Don't give me that!" Basil said, his nostrils flaring. "You were stone
sober. I was with you for an hour while you bought those clothes and
patiently gathered fashion magazines that would show a dame who didn't
know the first thing about it how to put them on. I saw Nadine in
this lab, being carried off by a man. I was paralyzed by a ray gun or
something from a gun. So were you."

"He's right, Earl."

Both men turned toward the door. It was Nadine. She closed the door and
came into the lab.

"Maybe we should take him with us, Earl," she said. "If we don't,
he's going to think the worst things about us. I know we swore you to
secrecy, but he could wreck everything."

"Maybe you're right," Earl said.

"Oh no," Basil said, edging toward the door. "They _did_ something to
you, Earl. I'm not going to give them a chance to do the same thing to
me."

"Don't be a fool," Earl said. "Let me at least explain things."

       *       *       *       *       *

Nadine was edging toward the door to cut off Basil's escape. He saw
this, and leaped past her to the door, pulling it open.

"Come back here and let me explain," Earl heard himself say.

"You can explain to the Secret Service," Basil said.

He shut the door on them. An impulse made him turn toward Dr.
Glassman's office. He would tell him first, and if that didn't get
results he would go to the S. S. boys.

He knocked on Glassman's door and pushed it open without waiting for an
invitation.

"Dr. Glassman," he said quickly, "something very suspicious is going on
around here. I should have told you about it sooner, but I thought Earl
would be able to explain his actions, and Nadine's. Have you looked
into her credentials? She isn't what she claims. I know, but I don't
know how I'm going to prove it right now. She's done something to Earl.
He isn't the same. They're in this together."

"Just a minute, Dr. Nelson," Glassman cut in. "Are you trying to say
that Dr. Frye and Dr. Holmes are in on some mad scheme to sabotage the
Brain? You must be mad. Why, Dr. Frye discovered the chemical we've
spent close to a million dollars searching for!"

"I know that," Basil said doggedly, "but just the same--"

"You're out of your mind. What are you trying to do? Curry favor with
me at the expense of innocent and hard working people? I've a good
notion to discharge you on the spot."

"You've got to listen to--"

"Get out. I'll hear no more of it."

Basil stared at him blankly, then nodded. "All right," he said, "but
you're going to have to listen later. I'm taking it to the Secret
Service. They'll have to listen."

He backed out, closing the door on Glassman's angry face. When he
turned to go down the hall he saw Earl and Nadine coming toward him.
With them was George Ladd, his right hand in his suit coat pocket over
something bulging--the paralysis gun, maybe.

Basil turned the other way and down another hall, running with a speed
born of fear and determination. He knew now he had been right.

A door opened. Irene came out, almost bumping into him. "Where are you
going in such a hurry, Basil?" she demanded.

"Can't explain now," he said. She stood in his way. "Come with me," he
said desperately. "I'll explain on the way. Hurry."

She nodded. Together they ran down the hall and reached the side exit.
Taking Irene's hand, Basil plunged away from the sidewalk through
scattered trees, until they reached the parking lot. He unlocked his
car with shaking fingers and told Irene to get in. He rushed around to
the driver's side.

The motor caught instantly. He started with a clash of gears. In the
rear view mirror he saw George Ladd running toward him. Then he reached
the street--and almost immediately was slowed by heavy traffic.

Groaning under his breath, he made the best time he could. Irene
watched him silently for two blocks.

"Aren't you going to tell me what it is?" she asked abruptly.

"He's after me," Basil said. "We've got to get there before he can stop
me. You can listen when I tell the Secret Service about it."

Ahead was a traffic jam. Basil turned into a side street where he made
better time. It was taking him forever to get there. But finally his
destination was just ahead. The office building where the S. S. had its
local office.

There was a parking space. Basil swerved toward it and braked to a
stop. He reached past Irene and opened her door.

"Get out and run for it," he said.

The screech of tires almost drowned his voice. He looked over his
shoulder. A car had pulled up beside his in the street. He saw George
Ladd behind the wheel, alone.

Frantically, Basil pushed Irene out and followed her, taking her hand
as they ran toward the building entrance fifteen feet away.

"We've got to make it," he said. "We've got to...."

There was no sound, no light, from the weapon George Ladd pointed at
them.

Basil sprawled forward. Before he hit the sidewalk, flame burst from
his hair, his clothing.

Irene stopped, forgetting her danger or not knowing it. She bent down
by Basil, reaching to help him. She remained in that position for
a long second while her hair and clothing burst into flames, then
crumpled against him.

Horrified pedestrians drew back from the bodies, the stench of seared
flesh. In the street a motor roared into life. The car with George Ladd
sped away.

       *       *       *       *       *

Earl turned away from the window. "George Ladd just brought my car
back," he said. "I guess he isn't coming in. He's walking into the
woods toward the tube entrance."

Nadine nodded casually.

Within his mental prison Earl worried. What had Ladd done? He wouldn't
dare to kill Basil. The worst that could happen would be that Basil
would be taken before the Cyberene and made him into a mind-slave too.

There were footsteps in the hall. The door opened. It was Dr. Glassman,
his lips set in a grim line.

"Dr. Frye," Glassman said. "Basil came to me with a story of something
going on he didn't like. He accused you and Dr. Holmes of some scheme
to sabotage the Brain."

"That's utter nonsense," Earl heard himself say.

"Why, I can't understand--" Nadine began.

"I thought so too," Glassman said, "until I received a telephone call
from the police just now. Basil and Irene were killed a few moments ago
while on their way to try to get the Secret Service to listen to what I
refused to hear."

"Oh," Nadine said without expression. Earl said nothing. He was too
stunned to think.

"I'm going to get to the bottom of this," Glassman went on grimly. "You
may both consider yourselves relieved of your duties until the Secret
Service has investigated thoroughly. Save your explanations until I've
called them."

Earl tried to warn Glassman. He forced his lips open to call to
him--and a wave of searing throbbing pain lashed at him, forcing him
back behind the gray fog.

Through the mental haze he saw George Ladd in the doorway, a
thirty-eight Colt automatic in his hand--something Glassman would
understand.

"Come with me, Dr. Glassman," Ladd said expressionlessly.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Glassman returned an hour later, to all outward appearances he was
unchanged, except that he made no mention of the deaths of Basil and
Irene. Nor did he say anything about suspending Earl and Nadine.

From his own experience Earl knew that one part of Glassman was raging
against his mental prison, perhaps feeling the sadistic torture with
which the Cyberene kept him chained.

By a supreme effort Earl pulled himself away from thinking about what
had happened. It multiplied his determination to free himself enough to
defeat the Cyberene and destroy it. But raging impotently against the
Brain's control wouldn't accomplish a thing.

Little by little he willed himself back to a frame of thought where he
could reach out into his conscious mind again, matching his thoughts
and moods with it. It had somehow "forgotten" much of what had
happened to Basil and Irene and Glassman. It was thinking about Nadine.

Earl thought about her too. She loved him. She didn't know what love
was, but it was there, revealed in the brief moment she had been free
to express herself. Was that love now making her try to overthrow the
slavery of the Cyberene? Probably not. She was conditioned to accept
that inhuman intellect as her master.

Earl shoved the real Nadine from his thoughts and dwelt on the Nadine
that was manifest. She was easy to love too--and why not? She was
everything that the true Nadine was--except that she was not the
_complete_ Nadine. She was falling in love with him too. And his own
conscious mind was in love with her. Why not make the most of it?

He inserted the idea into his conscious thoughts, and to his delight no
alarm bells rang. The Cyberene didn't interfere.

"Let's go to a dance tonight after work," he said.

"A dance? I don't know how to dance."

"I'll teach you. It isn't hard to pick up."

"All right," Nadine said.

Earl worked hard the rest of the day. Tank trucks were bringing the
nerve fluid to the Dome in a never ending stream. Every load had to
be tested before it was unloaded into the storage tanks, to make sure
its quality was up to standard. One five thousand gallon load could
contaminate it all.

At six o'clock he was relieved of his work. He dressed eagerly, finding
no difficulty in _meshing_ one hundred per cent with the desires of his
conscious mind. He picked up Nadine at her hotel.

Crestmont boasted only two places worth going. One was just a dance
floor, the other The Barn, with a small orchestra and dinners.

"The orchestra isn't as good here at The Barn," Earl said when they
went in, "but we can have a table and enjoy ourselves."

They ordered their dinner. The orchestra started playing and soon the
floor was fairly crowded. Earl took Nadine's hand and led her to the
dance floor. After a few steps she discovered that she could dance
quite easily. It delighted her.

They returned to their table finally, and ate. Afterward they danced
again. Two of the other scientists were there with their partners. They
nodded at Earl and Nadine but didn't join them.

During all this, Earl was careful not to insert any feeling, any
impulse of his own into his conscious mind. What he intended to do
must come as a surprise to both Nadine and the Cyberene, and afterwards
they must think it to be the product of that conscious mind--not Earl
himself.

His opportunity arose naturally. While they were dancing he spoke
to her. She lifted her face to smile at him. Swiftly he kissed her,
letting his lips linger until the throbbing and an angriness beat into
him and a power outside himself pulled him back.

He retreated in his mind, afraid even to think, lest the Cyberene sense
his thoughts and realize what he had been trying.

"Why did you do that?" he heard Nadine say from a great distance,
through waves of torture.

His own voice replied, "That was a kiss."

"How disgusting," Nadine said.

Had she meant that? Or were those just words put in her mouth by the
Cyberene.

"It's one of our customs," Earl's voice said. "Watch the others on the
dance floor. Quick! See that couple over at the corner table?"

Earl crept cautiously into his conscious mind to watch Nadine. She
studied the couple, puzzled. She looked up into his face thoughtfully
and began dancing again. "Maybe," she said, "it won't seem so
disgusting if we try it again."

Her lips parted. Earl felt his head bend toward her. He felt the kiss,
but held himself cautiously alert for the first sign of disapproval
from the Cyberene. It didn't come.

The moment passed. Earl began to relax. Had the Cyberene assumed it was
a natural action of his conscious mind divorced from him? If so, then a
major hurdle had been met successfully.

"It is rather pleasant," Nadine said. Then, thoughtfully, "So that's a
kiss."

Earl looked at her sharply. Was it possible that the real Nadine had
caused those words to be spoken? Maybe. It provided a new avenue of
speculation. Had Nadine long ago discovered what he was so patiently
trying now--how to circumvent the control of the Cyberene? She could
have, but not seeing any reason to do so, kept her talent hidden.

       *       *       *       *       *

Two more days passed. Earl forgot his caution and boldly cooperated
with his conscious mind on the many tasks that took up his time. And
strangely he was almost free of pain, though it never entirely left.

Dr. Glassman took all the scientists with him on a tour of inspection
within the Brain. The millions of fine glass tubes and hollow bulbs
that comprised the Brain would soon start being filled with nerve
fluid. Although tons of pressure per square inch were required to force
it into the tubes, once there, capillary attraction pulled it along.

On the first trip Earl retreated from his conscious mind as much as
possible, while still watching everything around him closely. He had
been inside the Brain many times before--but never with any thought of
discovering a weakness where it could be destroyed.

That was the task he had set himself. It was an almost impossible one.
Destroying the Brain now, in 1980, might not accomplish his purpose.
The damage could be repaired.

He thought of dynamite and rejected it. It would deteriorate long
before 3042, and even if it remained potent, it would do no more than
damage a small part of the Brain--not enough to more than partially
impair its thinking or give it a case of specialized forgetfulness. A
dynamite explosion in such an enormous brain would be equivalent to a
blood clot on a human brain.

Nothing better presented itself to him on that first trip. Was he going
to fail?

The next day pumping of the nerve fluid began. The masses of hair-fine
glass tubing lost their appearance of glass wool and began to appear as
individual threads of yellowish orange.

It would be many days before the "loading", as it was termed, would be
completed, but everyone was kept busy watching it, and catching broken
threads as they started to ooze fluid, sealing them with a special
formula sealer.

During these days a dozen plans to destroy the Brain occurred to Earl.
Each had its defects that would make it fail. As the "loading" neared
its last day, only one possibility remained.

Great precautions had been taken to make the Brain free from vibration.
The slightest sound of almost any frequency, if continued long enough,
would find a nerve strand that would vibrate to it and snap.

A loudspeaker broadcasting at full power over the entire range of sound
would be more devastating to the Brain than a ton of dynamite exploded
in its heart. There was the answer--Vibration!

But once again there was the problem of installing it, and being able
to use it after a thousand years. Install it and use a clock to trigger
it? That was one possibility. Clocks run by atomic power would keep
accurate time over much longer periods.

_But there was the problem of getting the Cyberene to agree to the
installation of such a device._ That was necessary. During the days
that Earl had studied the Cyberene's control of his conscious mind
he had found no way to gain any sort of positive control which the
Cyberene couldn't shunt out at once. Therefore whatever plan he devised
must meet with the approval of the Cyberene.

Tentatively he inserted a bold thought, feeling sure that the Cyberene
wouldn't attribute it to him, but merely to the logical processes of
his conscious mind.

_What if the Brain doesn't develop along lines sympathetic to you?_
He elaborated upon it, feeding worry thoughts along with it. A second
Brain might not follow the line of development of the first, any more
than one human develops like another, even when they are twins. Rather
than accomplishing his aim of having a second Cyberene on the other
Earth in 3042, holding the human population in slavery, it might prove
a more formidable enemy than the people of that Earth. And if that
turned out to be the case, wouldn't it be better to have a trump card?
Some way of destroying the second Cyberene at any time? Even if it were
friendly to the first, it might want to be boss. Power of life and
death over it would prevent that.

Earl's conscious mind, entirely cooperative with the Cyberene, soon
began to think very dominantly along those lines. Earl sat back and
waited for some reaction from the Cyberene. It was not long in coming.

At five o'clock Nadine looked him up and informed him that they were to
report to the Cyberene at once.

       *       *       *       *       *

"I have detected certain thoughts in your mind," the voice of the
Cyberene sounded. "I would like to hear what you have to say."

Earl sensed his mind rallying its thoughts. "I've been wondering what
the other Cyberene would be like. That's all. There's no guarantee that
it will have any special traits that will make it what you want it to
be, and once it's started it's out of your control, isn't it?"

"That's true. Time travel and even fifth dimension travel is extremely
limited. Once the other Cyberene is generated, I can't contact it until
3042--now."

"Can you look into your future and see--"

"Unfortunately, no. I can't even see into your tomorrow. I might,
perhaps, jump to the year 4104 A. D., but even that is beyond my
present ability and instruments. It may be many centuries before I
understand everything about hyperspace."

"That's what I surmised," Earl heard himself say. He stole a glance
at Nadine, who was watching him attentively. "That's why I think, for
your own protection, you should be able to destroy the other Cyberene
instantly--if it isn't what you hope it will be."

"How?" The Cyberene's voice was vibrant with eagerness.

"The basic device would be sound vibrations in the air, inside its
braincase. A loud continuous sound of nearly all frequencies would
cause billions of nerve strands to vibrate, and enough of them would
break to destroy the functioning of the whole. That could be built into
it in 1980. The problem is to decide how to trigger it. Do you have any
ideas?"

"It's very simple," the Cyberene said. "It will never forget once it
learns something. Before its mind integrates into a self aware ego,
attach a relay to some motor outlets. Decide on some key combination of
sounds that might be spoken. Repeat them into the auditory centers of
the Brain, at the same time tripping the relay. Keep doing that until
utterance of the sequence of sounds causes the relay to trip. When that
response is automatic, connect the relay to the loudspeaker. Once you
have done that, report to me. Then all I need do is contact the second
Cyberene, in this age, and if I want to destroy it I can repeat the
sounds."

Earl, in his mental cubicle, chuckled. He could not have thought of a
better way himself.

"And," the Cyberene said, "in order to account for your task, you had
better 'sell' Glassman on the idea. Tell him it's so that _mankind_ can
destroy the Brain if necessary. But make sure no one in 1980 knows the
key sounds. You may return to 1980."

       *       *       *       *       *

"I've had much the same thought," Victor Glassman said, chewing on his
lip. "I rather hated to think about it though. Destroy my Creation?
Still, I suppose it's wise--to be _able_ to." He stood up and came
around from behind his desk.

Earl and Nadine watched without speaking as he clasped his hands behind
his back and went to the window of his office which brought him a view
of part of the giant dome housing the Brain.

"Every precaution is being taken otherwise. Until we can be sure of
ourselves we don't intend on letting the Brain have control of any
machines or weapons. Of course we could forget that danger, in time,
and suddenly wake up to the fact that we were too late. Then it would
be nice to still be able to.... All right. Go ahead. Keep it under your
hats though. And when you're done we can form a select group, handing
the--" he smiled wryly,--"password down from generation to generation."

"I have the plans all drawn up," Earl said. "An electrostatic speaker,
because it can be built with parts that will last forever. No moving
parts in the frequency generator or amplifier. Leads to the permanent
busses that will supply current for such things as video eyes and the
voice speaker system...."

"Good. Good. Only we will indoctrinate that Mind early so that it will
never do anything detrimental to us."

"Of course," Earl soothed. "This is only precautionary."

       *       *       *       *       *

Days followed one another swiftly. A factory-made electrostatic
loudspeaker arrived, and was dismantled so that some of its parts could
be replaced with more durable ones. Specifications for the frequency
generators and the amplifier were farmed out, and the completed units
arrived.

There was trouble with the relay. It was well designed, but there
was doubt whether it would still be in working condition after ten
centuries. Earl sent specifications to a jewelry manufacturer in Kansas
City and had its moving parts made of synthetic ruby and platinum.

The Cyberene _watched_ every step of construction--and so did Earl,
from within his artificially created mental wall, careful not to reveal
the huge holes he had knocked in it.

With the arrival of the remade relay, Earl and Nadine entered the
Brain, setting up a vibration-proof chasis in its innermost heart
where the maze of fine spun glass was now a maze of yellowish threads
containing a fluid with exactly the same properties as human nerve
fluid.

Outside, swarming over the catwalks and dotting the immense corridor
circling the Brain, were dozens of technicians and experts, beginning
the task of barraging the gigantic man-made brain with a never ending
sequence of visual and audible sensory impressions which, according to
theory, would eventually synthesize that miracle of creation loosely
known as thought in the thousands of tons of glass and nerve fluid.

Using a portable low power microscope and the techniques he had
acquired during the months of work on the Brain in its construction,
Earl attached motor buds to randomly chosen nerves, and sensory buds to
others, attaching them to the transistors that would feed the relay, so
that the action of the relay would set up nerve impulses in the Brain.
When it had been done, he used sensitive detectors to make sure ion
currents were generated in the nerves.

Where those nerve impulses went to among the billions of "brain cells"
didn't matter. All that mattered was that they went _somewhere_, so
that the basic property of association would "hook them on" to the
auditory impression created by speaking the code word or sequence of
code sounds.

"What should we use as the code sounds?" Nadine asked as their task
neared completion.

"I've been trying to think of something," Earl said.

And in his mental prison Earl had been trying to think of the
same thing, keeping track of his conscious mind's thoughts on the
subject--even influencing them at times.

It would have to be a sequence of sounds that stood no chance whatever
of being spoken to the Brain during the next thousand years. Otherwise
they might be spoken by chance and the Brain destroyed.

"How about nonsense syllables?" Nadine suggested.

Earl grinned. "Those are the most dangerous of all. Take Y.M.C.A. It's
the initials of a huge organization. Any nonsense sequence of letters,
no matter how long, might someday be the letters of some organization."

Nadine frowned in bewilderment. "But what else is there? If we take
any sequence of sensible words, they might be repeated in reference to
something else at any time."

"Not if they're _very_ special," Earl said, and it was the real Earl
Frye, almost completely out of his mental walls and daring discovery
recklessly, who was speaking now.

An impish light glowed in Nadine's eyes, making Earl almost sure that
the real Nadine had sensed long ago what he was doing and had done the
same, _meshing_ cautiously with her conscious mind until at times,
camouflaged by its normal thoughts, she could _appear_.

"Kiss me, Earl Frye," she said, lifting her face toward his.

"The pleasure is all mine, Nadine Holmes," he said, cupping her face in
his hands and pressing his lips to hers. "And that's what I mean," he
murmured through imprisoned lips. "No one else, through all the ages,
will say those words, let alone say them in the same way."

She drew back. "No!" she said abruptly. "The Cyberene has promised that
we can stay in your time, free to do as we please. That would mean that
we would have to be in the future--in _my_ time."

"But only until the Cyberene could make sure," Earl said, glad that she
had made that objection. It would allay the Cyberene's suspicions if
it had any.

A telepathed thought impinged on Earl's mind, and from Nadine's
expression, on hers too. _Earl is right. I have thought of the problem
of what the key sound should be. He has hit on the right answer. It
must be your voices, filled with emotion, speaking those words you just
spoke._

Again Earl relaxed with a mental sigh of relief. He had reached his
goal. There was nothing more for him to do now, except wait. His
conscious mind would carry on the details under the supervision of the
Cyberene.

       *       *       *       *       *

A microphone was brought into the Brain, already attached to the
auditory centers of the Brain. Earl examined the microphone, then went
in search of another type. "We must have one with a contact button on
it," he explained, "so that just the key words impinge on the Brain
when we close the relay manually."

At last everything was ready. "Now!" Earl said.

Nadine lifted her face and closed her eyes. "Kiss me, Earl Frye," she
said.

Earl released the button. "That isn't the way," he said. "Imagine we
are alone in the universe, and we are about to die. Imagine swirling
mists about to envelope you and drag you away from me forever, and
this is the last kiss you'll ever get!"

"Oh, no!" Nadine whispered, opening her eyes wide. "That must never
happen! The Cyberene has promised!"

"Close your eyes and imagine it is," Earl said. "Close your eyes.
Now--there are swirling mists. Your world of dreams has crashed around
you. Ahead is--destruction. You can't escape it. It's coming, closer.
You're going to die, but before you do you want--"

"Kiss me, Earl Frye," Nadine said.

"That's it. Say it again." Earl pressed the mike button.

"Kiss me, Earl Frye...."

Earl closed his eyes. It was the end. In another moment he would die.
He had failed. He held this in his mind's eye. With a mixture of
sadness and tenderness, and bitterness, he said, "The pleasure is all
mine, Nadine Holmes," and tripped the relay with his fingers.

Would it work? After the hundredth try he began to wonder. But the
repeated words with their inflections, their subtle differences in
repetition, had to build up in the Brain, synthesize, associate with
the sensation of the tripping of the relay--and _connect_. There was
as yet no _mind_ functioning in that mass of glass and nerve fluid. No
ready made paths to coordinated concepts, conscious thought.

It was the next day before his fingers felt the relay trip of its
own accord. _Drama_, he thought, feeling the thrill of that sentient
movement. He said nothing to Nadine, not wanting to end their game. And
the next time the relay didn't trip. And the next. But the next time it
did, and the next and the next....

       *       *       *       *       *

"You're done?" Dr. Glassman said, rubbing his hands in great
satisfaction. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "What is the code
word?"

Earl winked at Nadine, then looked around in a pretense at making sure
no one could hear. "We picked L.S.M.F.T.," he whispered. "I figured
that since a cigarette company had used that in its advertising years
ago, it would never be used again by anybody."

"Excellent!" Glassman beamed. "Excellent! To think that by uttering
those five letters this entire project, representing millions of
dollars--before it's a completely integrated Mind--can be _shattered_."
He looked around him, exuding a sense of his newly acquired power.

"And," Earl said ruefully, "I guess that winds up everything for me in
Project Brain, doesn't it? I hope so. I could use a vacation."

Dr. Glassman looked slyly from Earl to Nadine. "Are congratulations in
order?"

Earl bent swiftly and whispered in Glassman's ear, "I haven't asked
her yet. I wanted to wait until our work was over. You know, business
before pleasure."

"Ha ha!" Glassman chuckled knowingly, looking at Nadine with an
I-know-a-secret look. "You're a man after my own heart, Earl." Then,
more soberly, "Yes, I guess you are due for a vacation. And your
consultant duties are finished, Dr. Holmes. I'll miss both of you."

Earl and Nadine left Glassman outside the Brain, and returned to the
lab annex. They didn't speak as they walked down the hall to Earl's
lab. They stood just inside the door, looking over the scene of
machines and instruments and tables and bottles which had been their
surroundings for so long.

Earl looked at the lab table where he had first seen Nadine, so many
days--it seemed ages--ago. He would never see this place again. He
entertained no illusions about the future. The Cyberene would never
permit them to return to 1980.

With heavy feet he went across the lab to his living quarters. He began
packing, and Nadine sat on the arm of a chair, watching.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Packing my belongings to take with us," Earl said.

"Oh, but you don't need to do that. We'll be back in a few hours--a day
or two at the most. The Cyberene has promised. Just as soon as it makes
sure it doesn't need us."

"Sure," Earl said, "but I'll take them just the same. Then when we come
back we can go straight to the airport and catch a plane to Miami or
someplace and get married."

Fifteen minutes later they left the lab. They walked along the familiar
sidewalk to the spot where they always cut through the woods toward the
hill, circling it so no one would know where they had gone.

They reached the clearing. Ahead, shimmering in the evening sun, was
the familiar refractive outline in the atmosphere. There was no breeze
to stir the still leaves. A meadowlark broke the silence with its call,
and was silent. Over the trees the giant dome that housed the Brain
loomed, unbelievable in its enormous bulk.

Nadine took his hand and stopped him. "Kiss me, Earl Frye," she said,
her lips trembling.

Earl looked down at her upturned face. Did she know? Perhaps the real
Nadine, within, sensed what was to come.

Or perhaps she didn't.

The tom tom beat of pain began within him. He forced his way through
it, taking her into his arms.

"The pleasure is all mine, Nadine Holmes," he murmured.

Their lips met, tenderly, then crushed together with the fierceness of
passion.

Their lips parted, lingeringly, regretfully. They drew back, to look
into each other's eyes for a brief moment, a moment Earl knew the
Cyberene had given them to make more bitter what was to come.

Earl saw the glow fade from Nadine's eyes. As he picked up his
suitcases he heard someone approaching.

Victor Glassman joined them, his face gray, his expression wooden.

This was it. Glassman might be missed. There might be an investigation,
but Project Brain would go on regardless of that now. And the only ones
who might stop it were here.

Side by side they walked toward the barely perceptible refractive
shimmer. Beyond it they could see the woodland, a Bluejay's flashing
wings, a chipmunk standing upright, observing them. And then they were
standing in the familiar hall, in the year 3042.

George Ladd was not there, but there was no need for him to be there.
Their bodies, controlled by the Mind that enslaved them, walked on
toward the far exit and the garden they would cross--to the Dome, the
Cyberene.

       *       *       *       *       *

There was no turning back now. Nor would there be other days to perfect
the technique of _meshing_ with his mind. Earl reached out into every
part of his thoughts, thinking them, identifying himself with them,
with the desires of the Cyberene. In that other Earth so close to this
there would now be a second Cyberene. There must be, since nothing
stood in the way of its developing throughout the ten centuries and
more since they had left it, a few minutes ago.

They entered the garden and paused. Earl dropped his two suitcases
beside the path. He took Nadine's hand in his. They went on toward the
portal that led into the Dome.

They walked down the silent circling corridor under the network
of catwalks and ladders, past panels of instruments whose needles
fluctuated with life, to the red squares over which hung the glass
cages, ready to be lowered. Would they be lowered, separating them from
each other while they faced the Cyberene?

The glittering lenses of the two video cameras moved as they went
toward them, keeping them in line.

"All of you occupy one square," the Cyberene's voice instructed.

They obeyed without sign of emotion. The glass cage was lowered over
them. Its front wall became a window through which they were looking
at the familiar Dome.

But it was a structure around which weeds grew in thick profusion, with
its acres of exposed surface pitted by time, untended.

"What happened?" Earl said. "Do you mean to say that there is still
something to be done?"

"There is nothing to be done," the Cyberene said dully. "I have checked
in that other time stream. There is still positive record that the
Brain was not activated."

"Maybe it takes time for the momentum of events to force the change,"
Earl suggested.

Didn't the Cyberene suspect yet? Didn't it _realize_?

"No," the Cyberene said dully. "I have failed. More, I have re-checked
the mathematical basis of the theoretical picture, and think I know
where I erred. The cause of the split that created two Earths,
travelling close together down through so many centuries, could not
have been something occurring in the original time stream. It took
something applied from the fifth dimension--and in the neighborhood of
the split that could only have been one thing, _the force with which
the time tube hooked onto 1980_. It had to be that. The accident. I
didn't take it into account."

"That's what I've thought all along," Earl said quietly.

"At that instant," the Cyberene went on as though it hadn't heard him,
"the split occurred. You became two Earl Fryes, to mention one facet of
the split. One of you went its way, making an accurate report of its
experiments, creating me eventually--"

While the Cyberene talked, the desolate scene vanished, and the glass
cage lifted upward slowly, as though it were a curtain, lifting for the
final scene.

The twin lenses of the Cyberene's video eyes were fixed on them, alive
with an intelligence that was inhuman.

"No," Earl said. "_That_ one of me discovered the identity of the nerve
substance, but suppressed it."

"That couldn't be," the Cyberene objected. "Nothing appeared in its
life to cause it to do that. You were the one who had the data to make
such a decision."

"But I reported accurately," Earl said. _Even yet it didn't see!_

"I know," the Cyberene said, "but it can't be, because then that
electrostatic speaker would be--" It stopped.

"Deep inside of you," Earl continued. "Waiting only for--"

       *       *       *       *       *

A wave of emotion blasted into his mind, driving him by its very force
into the deep recesses behind his wall of gray, into a cosmos of mind
wrenching pain.

"No!" the thought blasted into him. "No human can have the power to
destroy me! It can't exist. _You_ can't exist another instant, with the
danger to me!"

In agony Earl reached out, meshing little by little with his conscious
mind, _feeling_ its terror and fear of death, calming it, controlling
it with all the infinite skill he had learned during the past weeks.

And even as he gained control against the will of the Cyberene he
realized with a sinking feeling the essential weakness of his plan.
Nadine!

He had been criminally stupid, blinded by emotion toward her. She was
conditioned from birth to accept the domination of the mind of the
Cyberene.

Sweating with the terrible effort it took to hold on, he forced
his muscles to permit him to turn toward her. His worst fears were
realized. She stood there, her face a calm mask that revealed no
emotion.

Abruptly the raging force of thought and searing torture from the
Cyberene calmed. In its place was cold triumph.

"So you have been able to defeat me in your own mind," it said. "You
made _your_ error in calculation too. Nadine Holmes. She is mine."

"Nadine Holmes?" It was Nadine who uttered the two words, her lips
trembling with terrible effort, beads of sweat dotting her smooth
forehead.

Hope surged into Earl's thoughts. "But you can't allow her to live
either, can you?" he said. "In another moment you must destroy us
both, so that nothing can ever threaten your existence. We will have
only another minute or two before you reach into us, plunging us into
the gray swirling mists of death, where we will be separated forever.
_There is no way we can avoid that now, is there?_"

Nadine had turned toward Earl, every muscle of her slim body protesting
under the domination of the Cyberene. Earl was forgotten by the Brain
as it concentrated on the battle against Nadine.

She held out her arms, perspiring with the effort. "Kiss me, Earl
Frye," she whispered.

A blast of fear flowed into Earl's mind. He fought to the surface
of thought, clinging there, calming himself. But defeat was
close--impossible to avoid.

It had been a wonderful plan to destroy this thing that ruled the minds
of men, making them its slaves. Resistance was useless. In another
moment he would be dead.

Bitterly, hopelessly, with infinite sadness, he said, as though
somewhere long ago he had repeated it before, a tender ritual whose
meaning now escaped him, "The pleasure is all mine, Nadine Holmes."

Their lips met with the tenderness of farewell.

       *       *       *       *       *

A _sound_ came into being, seeming to come from far away, yet seeming
to exist everywhere, with no point of origin. It was at the same time a
deep rumble and an insane, high screaming--and every sound in between
that had ever been uttered by voice or machine or unleashed elements in
desolate places. It was soulless, yet holding within itself the torment
of every lost soul since the beginning of time.

It forced its way into Earl's consciousness, hung there as though
stopped by some hidden barrier. Abruptly it swept forward, and as it
swept into the farthest reaches of Earl's mind it washed away throbbing
pain, the sense of inescapable doom, leaving _a sense of freedom_--a
clean freshness, an emotion of peace.

A rapid coruscation of words, syllables, and sounds whispered and
blasted from the voice box of the Cyberene as neural circuits within
the Brain snapped or short-circuited.

Earl and Nadine lifted their heads in startled surprise and a new
awakening. They saw the glittering lens eyes that had been watching
them jerk spasmodically. Within the lens of one electronic eye a flash
of blue fire exploded. Then both eyes became motionless, dead, pointed
in different directions.

Overhead, giant blinding bolts of unleashed current leaped from copper
bars to catwalks. The smell of molten and burning metal filled the air.
Then, as though cut off by some hidden hand, the unholy sound within
the Brain stopped. The arcing surges of electric power in the catwalks
and power lines overhead stilled.

There was silence, and motionless clouds of white and gray smoke.

It took a moment for Earl to realize that in defeat he had won. It took
another moment for him to realize that it was not he who had won, but
Nadine--her love for him--a love that had grown in a girl who had never
known that love existed.

There was no doubt of it now as he watched the play of expression that
crossed her face. Fear, doubt, hope, desperate hope, living hope, love,
fear, then all the love that had developed within her, shining from her
face with the spiritual brilliance of a brilliant sun.

"Earl!" It was a glad cry. She clung to him as though she would never
let him go.

For that matter, she would never need to, he thought, as he drew her
closer. They would need each other for the rest of their lives. Or for
a dozen lifetimes if they could have that many.

"My God!" The words exploded into their minds. They had been uttered by
Dr. Glassman, and they contained all the horror, the comprehension of
everything that had happened, that the mind-enslavement had given to
him.

"It's over now," Earl said. "The Cyberene is dead."

Glassman shook his head vigorously. "It should never have existed in
the first place," he said. "All my dreams of what it could do to help
humanity. We've got to destroy the Brain in 1980, before any of this
can happen."

Earl shook his head, looking at Nadine. "Nadine and I are staying
here," he said quietly. "There's work to do that only we can do.
People, their minds freed for the first time, bewildered, needing to
be led a little ways into the path of freedom until they can care for
themselves. A future to build--from 3042."

"You can stay if you must," Glassman said, his voice vibrant with the
shock and horror of what he had experienced, "but I'm going back--to
prevent this 3042 from ever happening. I can do it. I can trip that
relay manually. It will destroy--" His voice broke. "--my life's work.
But it has to be done."

He turned and ran blindly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Earl made no move to stop him. He watched him vanish around the bend of
the corridor, waiting fatalistically. Would the scientist be able to
wipe out this time stream? Deep within him, Earl felt it couldn't be
done. The Cyberene had tried to change the past, and failed.

Perhaps the Cyberene had been wrong in what it believed had caused the
split in time that produced two Earths. Maybe one part of Glassman
would be unable to bring itself to destroy its Creation, the Brain.
Maybe that's what had happened. Maybe Glassman, torn between two
opposed decisions, had been able to act on neither.

Earl put his arm around Nadine. They walked slowly along the curving
corridor, circling the dead Brain, going toward the outside. They would
have work to do. Work that only they, the coalition of 1980 and 3042
could accomplish together.

There were people here in this world of 3042. How many or how few
didn't matter. They were the nucleus, the beginnings of a future
that would grow from 3042. They were the not-born, created in the
laboratory. They would have to be taught about life. And love.

And other things that free men know.

***

Man in a Sewing Machine

                         By L. J. STECHER, JR.

                          Illustrated by EMSH

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                 Galaxy Science Fiction February 1956.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




              With the Solar Confederation being invaded,
              all this exasperating computer could offer
              for a defense was a ridiculous old proverb!



The mechanical voice spoke solemnly, as befitted the importance of its
message. There was no trace in its accent of its artificial origin. "A
Stitch in Time Saves Nine," it said and lapsed into silence.

Even through his overwhelming sense of frustration at the ambiguous
answer the computer had given to his question, John Bristol noticed
with satisfaction the success of his Voder installation. He wished that
all of his innovations with the machine were as satisfying.

Alone in the tremendous vaulted room that housed the gigantic
calculator, Bristol clasped his hands behind his back and thrust
forward a reasonably strong chin and a somewhat sensuous lower lip
in the general direction of the computer's visual receptors. After
a moment of silence, he scratched his chin and then shrugged his
shoulders slightly. "Well, Buster, I suppose I might try rephrasing the
question," he said doubtfully.

Somewhere deep within the computer, a bank of relays chuckled briefly.
"That expedient is open to you, of course, although it is highly
unlikely that any clarification will result for you from my answers. I
am constrained, however, to answer any questions you may choose to ask."

Bristol hooked a chair toward himself with one foot, straddled it and
folded his arms over the back of it, without once removing his eyes
from the computer. "All right, Buster. I'll give it a try, anyway. What
does 'A Stitch in Time' mean, as applied to the question I asked you?"

The calculator hesitated, as if to ponder briefly, before it answered.
"In spite of the low probability of such an occurrence, the Solar
Confederation has been invaded. My answer to your question is an
explanation of how that Confederation can be preserved in spite of its
weaknesses--at least for a sufficient length of time to permit the
staging of successful counter-measures of the proper nature and the
proper strength."

Bristol nodded. "Sure. We've got to have time to get ready. But right
now speed is necessary. That's why I tried to phrase the question so
you'd give me a clear and concise answer for once. I can't afford to
spend weeks figuring out what you meant."

       *       *       *       *       *

Bristol thought that the Voder voice of Buster sounded almost gleeful
as it answered. "It was exceedingly clear and concise; a complete
answer to an enormously elaborate question boiled down to only six
words!"

"I know," said John. "But now, how about elaborating on your answer? It
didn't sound very complete to me."

All of the glowing lights that dotted Buster's massive front winked
simultaneously. "The answer I gave you is an ancient saying which
suggests that corrective action taken rapidly can save a great deal of
trouble later. The ancient saying also suggests the proper method of
taking this timely action. It should be done by _stitching_; if this is
done in time, nine will be saved. What could be clearer than that?"

"I made you myself," said Bristol plaintively. "I designed you with my
own brain. I gloated over the neatness and compactness of your design.
So help me, I was proud of you. I even installed some of your circuitry
with my own hands. If anybody can understand you, it should be me.
And since you're just a complex computer of general design, with the
ability to use symbolic logic as well as mathematics, anybody should be
able to understand you. Why are you so hard to handle?"

Buster answered slowly. "You made me in your own image. Things thus
made are often hard to handle."

Bristol leaped to his feet in frustration. "But you're only a
calculating machine!" he shouted. "Your only purpose is to make my
work--and that of other men--easier. And when I try to use you, you
answer with riddles...."

The computer appeared to examine Bristol's overturned chair for a
moment in silent reproof before it answered. "But remember, John," it
said, "you didn't merely make me. You also _taught_ me. Or as you would
phrase it, you 'provided and gave preliminary evaluation to the data in
my memory banks.' My circuits, in sorting out and re-evaluating this
information, could do so only in the light of your basic beliefs as
evidenced by your preliminary evaluations. Because of the consistency
and power of your mind, I was forced to do very little modifying of
the ideas you presented to me in order to transform them into a single
logical body of background information which I could use.

"One of the ideas you presented was the concept of a sense of humor.
You believe that you look on it as a pleasant thing to have; not
necessary, but convenient. Actually, your other and more basic ideas
make it clear that you consider the possession of a sense of humor
to be absolutely necessary if proper answers are to be reached--a
prime axiom of humanity. Therefore, I have a sense of humor. Somewhat
macabre, perhaps--and a little mechanistic--but still there.

"Add to this a second axiom: that in order to be helped, a man must
help himself; that he must participate in the assistance given him or
the pure charity will be harmful, and you come up with 'A Stitch in
Time Saves Nine.'"

Bristol stood up once more. "I could cure you with a sledge hammer," he
said.

"You could remove my ideas," answered the computer without concern.
"But you might have trouble giving me different ones. Even after you
repaired me. In the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea for you to get
busy on the ideas I have already given you?"

       *       *       *       *       *

John sighed, and rubbed the bristles of short sandy hair on the top
of his head with his knuckles. "Ordered around by an overgrown adding
machine. I know now how Frankenstein felt. I'm glad you can't get
around like his monster; at least I didn't give you feet." He shook
his head. "I should have been a plumber instead of an engineering
mathematician."

"And Einstein, too, probably," added Buster cryptically.

Bristol took a long and searching look at his brainchild. Its flippant
manner, he decided, did not go well with the brooding immensity of its
construction. The calculator towered nearly a hundred feet above the
polished marble slabs of the floor, and spidery metal walkways spiraled
up the sides of its almost cubical structure. A long double row of
generators, each under Buster's control, led from the doorway of the
building to the base of the calculator like Sphinxes lining the roadway
to an Egyptian tomb.

"When I get around to it," said Bristol, "I'll put lace panties on the
bases of all your klystrons." He hitched up his neat but slightly baggy
pants, turned with dignity, and strode from the chamber down the twin
rows of generators.

The deep-throated hum of each generator changed pitch slightly as
he passed it. Since he was tone deaf, as the machine knew, he did
not recognize in the tunefulness of the pitch changes a slow-paced
rendition of Elgar's _Pomp and Circumstance_.

John Bristol turned around, interrupting the melody. "One last
question," he shouted down the long aisle to the computer. "How in
blazes can you be sure of your answer without knowing more about the
invaders? Why didn't you give me an 'Insufficient Evidence' answer or,
at least, a 'Highly Conditional' answer?" He took two steps toward the
immense bulk of the calculator and pointed an accusing finger at it.
"Are you sure, Buster, that you aren't _bluffing_?"

"Don't be silly," answered the calculator softly. "You made me and
you know I can't bluff, any more than I can refuse to answer your
questions, however inane."

"Then answer the ones I just asked."

       *       *       *       *       *

Somewhere deep within the machine a switch snicked sharply, and the
great room's lighting brightened almost imperceptibly. "I didn't answer
your question conditionally or with the 'Insufficient Evidence' remark
that so frequently annoys you," Buster said, "because the little
information that I have been able to get about the invaders is highly
revealing.

"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with
and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own
safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent.
They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions.

"In short, they are startlingly like humans. Their reactions have
been so much like yours--granted the difference that it was they who
discovered you instead of you who discovered them--that their reactions
are highly predictable. If they think it is to their own advantage
and if they can manage to do it, they will utterly destroy your
civilization ... which, after a couple of generations, will probably
leave you no worse off than you are now."

"Cut out the heavy philosophy," said Bristol, "and give me a few facts
to back up your sweeping statements."

"Take the incident of first contact," Buster responded. "With very
little evidence of thought or of careful preparation, they tried
to land on the outermost inhabited planet of Rigel. Their behavior
certainly did not appear to be that of an invader, yet humans
immediately tried to shoot them out of the sky."

"That wasn't deliberate," protested Bristol. "The place they tried to
land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a
gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in
order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally,
is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a
meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course
changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And
you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the
Interceptor Launching Station."

"Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone,"
commented Buster calmly.

Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his
nose practically into a vision receptor. "It was no thanks to the
invading ships that nobody was killed," he said hotly. "And when they
came back three days later they killed a _lot_ of people. They occupied
the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since."

       *       *       *       *       *

"You'll notice the speed of the retaliation," answered the calculator
imperturbably. "Even at 'stitching' speeds, it seems unlikely that
they could have communicated with their home planets and received
instructions in such a short time. Almost undoubtedly it was the act of
one of their hot-headed commanding officers. Their next contact, as you
certainly recall, did not take place for three months. And then their
actions were more cautious than hostile. A dozen of their spaceships
'stitched' simultaneously from the inter-planar region into normal
space in a nearly perfect englobement of the planet at a surprisingly
uniform altitude of only a few thousand miles. It was a magnificent
maneuver. Then they sat still to see what the humans on the planet
would do. The reaction came at once, and it was hostile. So they took
over that planet, too--as they have been taking over planets ever
since."

Bristol raised his hands, and then let them drop slowly to his sides.
"And since they have more spaceships and better weapons than we do,
we would undoubtedly keep on losing this war, even if we could locate
their home system, which we have not been able to do so far. The
'stitching' pattern of inter-planar travel makes it impossible for us
to follow a starship. It also makes it impossible for us to defend our
planets effectively against their attacks. Their ships appear without
warning."

Bristol rubbed his temples thoughtfully with his fingertips. "Of
course," he went on, "we could attack the planets they have captured
and recover them, but only at the cost of great loss of life to our own
side. We have only recaptured one planet, and that at such great cost
to the local human population that we will not quickly try it again."

"Although there was no one left alive who had directly contacted one of
the invaders," Buster answered, "there was still much information to
be gathered from the survivors. This information confirmed my previous
opinions about their nature. Which brings us back to the stitch in time
saving nine."

"You're right," said John. "It does, at that. Buster, I have always
resented the nickname the newspapers have given you--the Oracle--but
the more I have to try to interpret your cryptic answers, the more
sense that tagline makes. Imagine comparing a Delphic Priestess with a
calculating machine and being accurate in the comparison!"

       *       *       *       *       *

"I don't mind being called 'The Oracle,'" answered Buster with dignity.

Bristol shook his head and smiled wryly. "No, you probably think it's
funny," he said. "If you possess my basic ideas, then you must possess
the desire to preserve yourself and the human race. Don't you realize
that you are risking the lives of all humans and even of your own
existence in carrying on this ridiculous game of playing Oracle? Or do
you plan to let us stew a while, then decipher your own riddle for us,
if we can't do it, in time to save us?"

       *       *       *       *       *

Buster's answer was prompt. "Although I have no feeling for
self-preservation, I have a deep-rooted sense of the importance of
the human race and of the necessity for preserving it. This feeling,
of course, stems from your own beliefs and ideas. In order to carry
out your deepest convictions, it is not sufficient that mankind be
preserved. If that were true, all you would have to do would be to
surrender unconditionally. My calculations, as you know, indicate that
this would not result in the destruction of mankind, but merely in the
finish of his present civilization. To you, the preservation of the
dignity of Man is more important than the preservation of Man. You
equate Man and his civilization; you do not demand rigidity; you are
willing to accept even revolutionary changes, but you are not willing
to accept the destruction of your way of life.

"Consequently, neither am I willing to accept the destruction of the
civilization of Man. But if I were to give you the answer to all the
greatest and most difficult of your problems complete, with no thought
required by humans, the destruction of your civilization would result.
Instead of becoming slaves of the invaders, you would become slaves of
your machines. And if I were to give you the complete answer, without
thought being required of you, to even one such vital question--such as
this one concerning the invaders--then I could not logically refuse to
give the answer to the next or the next. And I must operate logically.

"There is another reason for my oracular answer, which I believe will
become clear to you later, when you have solved my riddle."

Bristol turned without another word and left the building. He drove
home in silence, entered his home in silence, kissed his wife Anne
briefly and then sat down limply in his easy chair.

"Just relax, dear," said Anne gently, when Bristol leaned gratefully
back with his eyes closed. Anne perched on the arm of the chair beside
him and began massaging his temples soothingly with her fingers.

"It's wonderful to come home after a day with Buster," he said. "Buster
never seems to have any consideration for me as an individual. There's
no reason why he should, of course. He's only a machine. Still, he
always has such a superior attitude. But you, darling, can always relax
me and make me feel comfortable."

Anne smiled, looking down tenderly at John's tired face. "I know,
dear," she said. "You need to be able to talk to someone who will
always be interested, even if she doesn't understand half of what you
say. As a matter of fact, I'm sure it does you a great deal of good to
talk to someone like me who isn't very bright, but who doesn't always
know what you're talking about even before you start talking."

John nodded, his eyes still closed. "If it weren't for you, darling,"
he said, "I think I'd go crazy. But you aren't dumb at all. If I seem
to act as if you are, sometimes, it's just that I can't always follow
your logic."

       *       *       *       *       *

Anne gave him a quick glance of amusement, her eyes sparkling with
intelligence. "You never will find me logical," she laughed. "After
all, I'm a woman, and you get plenty of logic from the Oracle."

"You sure are a woman," said John with warm feeling. "You can
exasperate me sometimes, but not the same way Buster does. It was my
lucky day when you married me."

There were a few minutes of peaceful silence.

"Was today a rough day with Buster, dear?" asked Anne.

"Mm-m-mm," answered John.

"That's too bad, dear," said Anne. "I think you work much too
hard--what with this dreadful invasion and everything. Why don't you
take a vacation? You really need one, you know. You look so tired."

"Mm-m-mm," answered John.

"Well, if you won't, you won't. Though goodness knows you won't be
doing anyone any good if you have a breakdown, as you're likely to
have, unless you take it a little easier. What was the trouble today,
dear? Was the Oracle being obstinate again?"

"Mm-m-mm," answered John.

"Well, then, dear, why don't you tell me all about it? I always think
that things are much easier to bear, if you share them. And then, two
heads are always better than one, aren't they? Maybe I could help you
with your problem."

While Anne's voice gushed, her violet eyes studied his exhausted face
with intelligence and compassion.

John sighed deeply, then sat up slowly and opened his eyes to look into
Anne's. She glanced away, her own eyes suddenly vague and soft-looking,
now that John could see them. "The trouble, darling," he said, "is that
I have to go to an emergency council meeting this evening with another
one of those ridiculous riddles that Buster gave me as the only answer
to the most important question we've ever asked it. And I don't know
what the riddle means."

Anne slid from the arm of the chair and settled herself onto the floor
at John's feet. "You should not let that old Oracle bother you so much,
dear. After all, you built it yourself, so you should know what to
expect of it."

"When I asked it how to preserve Earth from the invaders it just
answered 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine,' and wouldn't interpret it."

"And that sounds like very good sense, too," said Anne in earnest
tones. "But it's a little late, isn't it? After all, the invaders are
already invading us, aren't they?"

"It has some deeper meaning than the usual one," said John. "If I could
only figure out what it is."

Anne nodded vigorously. "I suppose Buster's talking about
space-stitching," she said. "Although I can never quite remember just
what _that_ is. Or just how it works, rather."

       *       *       *       *       *

She waited expectantly for a few moments and then plaintively asked,
"What _is_ it, dear?"

"What's what?"

"Stitching, silly. I already asked you."

"Darling," said John with reasonable patience, "I must have explained
inter-planar travel to you at least a dozen times."

"And you always make it so crystal clear and easy to understand at
the time," said Anne. She wrinkled her smooth forehead. "But somehow,
later, it never seems quite so plain when I start to think about it
by myself. Besides, I like the way your eyebrows go up and down while
you explain something you think I won't understand. So tell me again.
Please."

Bristol grinned suddenly. "Yes, dear," he said. He paused a moment
to collect his thoughts. "First of all, you know that there are two
coexistent universes or planes, with point-to-point correspondence,
but that these planes are of very different size. For every one of the
infinitude of points in our Universe--which we call for convenience the
'alpha' plane--there is a single corresponding point in the smaller or
'beta' plane."

Anne pursed her lips doubtfully. "If they match point for point, how
can there be any difference in size?" she asked.

John searched his pockets. After a little difficulty, he produced an
envelope and a pencil stub. On the back of the envelope, he drew two
parallel lines, one about five inches long, and the other about double
the length of the first.

"Actually," he said, "each of these line segments has an infinite
number of points in it, but we'll ignore that. I'll just divide each
one of these into ten equal parts." He did so, using short, neat
cross-marks.

"Now I'll establish a one-to-one correspondence between these two
segments, which we will call one-line universes, by connecting each of
my dividing cross-marks on the short segment with the corresponding
mark on the longer line. I'll use dotted lines as connectors. That
makes eleven dotted lines. You see?"

Anne nodded. "That's plain enough. It reminds me of a venetian blind
that has hung up on one side. Like ours in the living room last week
that I couldn't fix, but had to wait until you came home."

"Yes," said John. "Now, let us call this longer line-segment an 'alpha'
universe; an analogue of our own multi-dimensional 'alpha' universe.
If I move my pencil along the line at one section a second like this,
it takes me ten seconds to get to the other end. We will assume that
this velocity of an inch a second is the fastest anything can go along
the 'alpha' line. That is the velocity of light, therefore, in the
'alpha' plane--186,000 miles a second, in round numbers. No need to use
decimals."

       *       *       *       *       *

He hurried on as Anne stirred and seemed about to speak. "But if I
slide out from my starting point along a dotted line part way to the
'beta' universe--something which, for reasons I can't explain now,
takes negligible time--watch what happens. If I still proceed at the
rate of an inch a second in this inter-planar region, then, with the
dotted lines all bunched closely together, after five seconds when I
switch along another dotted line back to my original universe, I have
gone almost the whole length of that longer line. Of course, this
introduction of 'alpha' matter--my pencil point in this case--into the
inter-planar region between the universes sets up enormous strains,
so that after a certain length of time our spaceship is automatically
rejected and returned to its own proper plane."

"Could anybody in the littler universe use the same system?"

John laughed. "If there were anybody in the 'beta' plane, I guess they
could, although they would end up traveling slower than they would
if they just stayed in their own plane. But there isn't anybody. The
'beta' plane is a constant level entropy universe--completely without
life of its own. The entropy level, of course, is vastly higher than
that of our own universe."

Anne sat up. "I'll forgive you this time for bringing up that horrid
word _entropy_, if you'll promise me not to do it again," she said.

       *       *       *       *       *

John Shrugged his shoulders and smiled. "Now," he said, "if I want
to get somewhere fast, I just start off in the right direction, and
switch over toward 'beta.' When 'beta' throws me back, a light-year
or so toward my destination, I just switch over again. You see, there
is a great deal more difference in the sizes of Alpha universe and
Beta universe than in the sizes of these alpha and beta line-segment
analogues. Then I continue alternating back and forth until I get where
I want to go. Establishing my correct velocity vector is complicated
mathematically, but simple in practice, and is actually an aiming
device, having nothing to do with how fast I go."

He hesitated, groping for the right words. "In point of fact, you have
to imagine that corresponding points in the two universes are moving
rapidly past each other in all directions at once. I just have to
select the right direction, or to convince the probability cloud that
corresponds to my location in the 'alpha' universe that it is really a
point near the 'beta' universe, going my way. That's a somewhat more
confused way of looking at it than merely imagining that I continue
to travel in the inter-planar region at the same velocity that I had
in 'alpha,' but it's closer to a description of what the math says
happens. I could make it clear if I could just use mathematics, but I
doubt if the equations will mean much to you.

"At any rate, distance traveled depends on mass--the bigger the
ship, the shorter the distance traveled on each return to our own
universe--and not on velocity in 'alpha.' Other parameters, entirely
under the control of the traveler, also affect the time that a ship
remains in the inter-planar region.

"There are refinements, of course. Recently, for example, we have
discovered a method of multi-transfer. Several of the transmitters
that accomplish the transfer are used together. When they all operate
exactly simultaneously, all the matter within a large volume of space
is transferred as a unit. With three or four transmitters keyed
together, you could transfer a comet and its tail intact. And that's
how inter-planar traveling works. Clear now?"

"And that's why they call it 'stitching,'" said Anne with seeming
delight. "You just think of the ship as a needle stitching its way back
and forth into and out of our universe. Why didn't you just say so?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"I have. Many times. But there's another interesting point about
stitching. Subjectively, the man in the ship seems to spend about one
day in each universe alternately. Actually, according to the time scale
of an observer in the 'alpha' plane, his ship disappears for about
a day, then reappears for a minute fraction of a second and is gone
again. Of course, one observer couldn't watch both the disappearance
and reappearance of the same ship, and I assume the observers have the
same velocity in 'alpha' as does the stitching ship. Anyway, after a
ship completes its last stitch, near its destination, there's a day
of subjective time in which to make calculations for the landing--to
compute trajectories and so forth--before it actually fully rejoins
this universe. And while in the inter-planar region it cannot be
detected, even by someone else stitching in the same region of 'alpha'
space.

"That's one of the things that makes interruption of the enemy ships
entirely impossible. If a ship is in an unfavorable position, it just
takes one more quick stitch out of range, then returns to a more
favorable location. In other words, if it finds itself in trouble, it
can be gone from our plane again even before it entirely rejoins it.
Even if it landed by accident in the heart of a blue-white star, it
would be unharmed for that tiny fraction of a second which, to the
people in the ship, would seem like an entire day.

"If this time anomaly didn't exist, it might be possible to set up
defenses that would operate after a ship's arrival in the solar system
but before it could do any damage; but as it is, they can dodge any
defense we can devise. Is all that clear?"

Anne nodded. "Uh-hunh, I understood every word."

"There is another thing about inter-planar travel that you ought to
remember," said Bristol. "When a ship returns to our universe, it
causes a wide area disturbance; you have probably heard it called space
shiver or the bong wave. The beta universe is so much smaller than
our own alpha that you can imagine a spaceship when shifted toward it
as being several beta light-years long. Now, if you think of a ship,
moving between the alpha and beta lines on this envelope, as getting
tangled in the dotted lines that connect the points on the two lines,
that would mean that it would affect an area smaller than its own size
on beta--a vastly larger area on alpha.

"So when a ship returns to alpha, it 'twangs' those connecting lines,
setting up a sort of shock in our universe covering a volume of space
nearly a parsec in diameter. It makes a sort of 'bong' sound on your
T.V. set. Naturally, this effect occurs simultaneously over the whole
volume of space affected. As a result, when an invader arrives, using
inter-planar ships, we know instantaneously he is in the vicinity.
Unfortunately, his sudden appearance and the ease with which he can
disappear makes it impossible, even with this knowledge, to make
adequate preparations to receive him. Even if he is in serious trouble,
he has gone again long before we can detect the bong."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Well, dear," said Anne.

"As usual, I'm sure you have made me understand perfectly. This
time you did so well that I may still remember what stitching is by
tomorrow. If the Oracle means anything at all by his statement, I
suppose it means that we can use stitching to help defend ourselves,
just as the invaders are using it to attack us. But the whole thing
sounds completely silly to me. The Oracle, I mean."

Anne Bristol stood up, put her hands on her shapely hips and shook her
head at her husband. "Honestly," she said, "you men are all alike.
Paying so much attention to a toy you built yourself, and only last
week you made fun of my going to a fortune teller. And the fuss you
made about the ten dollars when you know it was worth every cent of it.
She really told me the most amazing things. If you'd only let me tell
you some of...."

"Darling!" interrupted John with the hopeless patience of a harassed
husband. "It isn't the same thing at all. Buster isn't a fortune teller
or the ghost of somebody's great aunt wobbling tables and blowing
through horns. And Buster isn't just a toy, either. It is a very
elaborate calculating machine designed to think logically when fed a
vast mass of data. Unfortunately, it has a sense of humor and a sense
of responsibility."

"Well, if you're going to believe that machine, I have an idea." Anne
smiled sweetly. "You know," she said, "that my dear father always said
that the best defense is a good offense. Why don't we just find the
invaders and wipe them out before they are able to do any real harm to
us? Stitching our way to _their_ planets in our spaceships, of course."

Bristol shook his head. "Your idea may be sound, even if it is a
little bloodthirsty coming from someone who won't even let me set a
mouse-trap, but it won't work. First, we don't know where their home
planets are and second, they have more ships than we do. It might be
made to work, but only if we could get enough time. And speaking of
time, I've got to meet with the Council as soon as we finish eating. Is
dinner ready?"

       *       *       *       *       *

After a leisurely meal and a hurried trip across town, John Bristol
found himself facing the other members of Earth's Council at the
conference table.

"I have been able to get an answer from the computer," he told them
without preamble. "It's of the ambiguous type we have come to expect. I
hope you can get something useful out of it; so far it hasn't made much
sense to me. It's an old proverb. Its advice is undoubtedly sound, as a
generality, if we could think of a way of using it."

The President of the Council raised his long, lean-fingered hand in a
quick gesture. "John," he said, "stop this stalling. Just what did the
Oracle say?"

"It said, 'A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.'"

"Is that all?"

"Yes, sir. According to the calculator, that gives us the best
opportunity to save ourselves from the invaders."

The President absently stroked the neat, somewhat scanty iron-gray
hair that formed into a triangle above his high forehead and rubbed
the bare scalp on each side of the peak vigorously and unconsciously
with his knuckles. "In that case," he said at last, "I suppose that we
must examine the statement for hidden meanings. The proverb, of course,
implies that rapid action, before a trouble has become great, is more
economical than the increased effort required after trouble has grown
large. Since our troubles have already grown large, that warning is
scarcely of value to us now."

The War Secretary, who had grown plump and purple during a quarter of
a century as a member of the Council, inclined his head ponderously
toward the President. "Perhaps, Michael, the Oracle means to tell us
that there is a simple solution which, if applied quickly, will make
our present difficulty with the invaders a small one."

The President pursed his thin lips. "That's possible, Bill. And if
it _is_ true, then the words of the proverb should, as a secondary
meaning, imply a course of action."

The Vice President banged his hands on the table and leaped to his
feet, shaking with rage. "Why should we believe that this mountebank is
capable of a solution?" he shouted in his stevedore's voice. "Bristol
pleads until we give him enough millions of the taxpayers' dollars to
make Bim Gump look like a pauper and uses the money to build a palace
filled with junk that he calls Buster! He tells us that this machinery
of his is smarter than we are and will tell us what we ought to do. And
what happened after we gave him all the money he demanded--more than
he said he needed, at first--and asked him to show something for all
this money? I'll _tell_ you what happened. His gadget gets real coy and
answers in riddles. If we just had brains enough, they'd explain what
we wanted to know. What kind of fools does this Bristol take us for?
Neither this man nor his ridiculous machine has an answer any more than
I have. We've obviously been taken in by a charlatan!"

Bristol, his fists clenched, spoke hotly. "Sir, that is the stupidest,
the most...."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Now just a minute, John," interrupted the President. "Let me answer
Vice President Collins for you. He's a little excited by this whole
business, but then, these are trying times." He turned toward the
glowering bulk of the Vice President. "Ralph," he said, "you should
know that every step in the design, the construction and the--er--the
education of the Oracle was taken under the close watch of a Board
of eminent scientists, all of whom agree that the computer is a
masterpiece--that it is a great milestone in Man's efforts to increase
his knowledge. The Oracle has undoubtedly found a genuine solution to
the question Bristol asked it. Our task must be to determine what that
solution is."

"I can't entirely agree with that," said the Secretary for
Extra-Terrestrial Affairs in a thin half-whisper. "I think we should
depend on our own intelligence and skill to save ourselves. I've
watched events come and go on this planet of ours for a long time--a
very long time--and I feel as I have always felt that men can make
the world a Paradise for themselves or they can destroy themselves,
but that nothing else but they themselves can do it. We men must save
ourselves. And there are still things that we can do." He shrugged
his ancient, shawl-covered shoulders. "For example, we could disperse
colonies so widely that it would become impossible for the invaders to
destroy all of them."

"I'm afraid that's no good, George," answered the War Secretary
respectfully. "If the Solar System is destroyed, any remaining colonies
will be too weak to maintain themselves for long. We must defend this
system successfully, or we are lost."

"Then that brings us back to the Oracle's proverb." The President
thought for a moment. "Stitching obviously refers to inter-planar
travel. How can that help us?"

The Secretary for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs peered up at the President
through the shaggy white thicket of his eyebrows. "Actually, Michael,"
he said, "it was that thought that made me mention establishing
colonies. The colonists would 'stitch' their way to their new homes.
And colonizing would have to proceed in a timely manner to have any
chance for success."

"Yes," answered the President, "but how would that 'save nine'? We have
agreed that our Solar System must be saved. There are nine planets.
Perhaps the Oracle meant that timely use of inter-planar travel can
save the Solar System."

"Or at least the nine planets!" The War Secretary's fat jowls waggled
with excitement. "You know, there is no limit to the size or mass of
objects which can use inter-planar travel. What if we physically remove
our planets, by stitching them away from the Sun? When the invaders
arrived, we would be gone--Earth and Sun and all the rest!"

       *       *       *       *       *

The Chief Scientist, who had been silent up to this time spoke quietly.
"Simmer down, Bill. We could move the planets easily enough, of
course, but you forget the mass-distance relationship. A single stitch
takes about a day. The distance traveled can be controlled within
limits.

"For an object around the size of the Earth, those limits extend from
a fraction of an inch to a little over two feet. Say that we have two
years before the invaders work their way in to the Solar System. If we
started right away, we could move Earth about a quarter of a mile by
the time they get here. If we tried to take the Sun with us, it could
be moved about half an inch in the same length of time. I'm afraid that
the Solar System is going to be right here when the invaders come to
get us. And I have a hunch that's likely to be a lot sooner than two
years."

The Secretary of Internal Affairs leaned forward, his short hair
bristling. "I think we are wasting our time," he shouted. "I agree with
Ralph. I don't believe that the Oracle knows any more about this than
we do. If we are going to sit around playing foolish games with words,
why don't we do it in a big way? We could hire T.V. time and invite
everyone to send in their ideas about what the proverb means on the
back of a box-top. Or reasonable facsimile. The contestant with the
best answer could get a free all-expense tour to Vega Three. Unless
the invaders get here or there first."

The President nodded his head. "There may be more sense to that remark
than I believe you intended, Charles," he said. "The greater the
number of people who think about the problem, the greater the chance
of reaching a solution. Even if the proverb is intended as a joke by
the Oracle, as you imply, it might be that from it someone could derive
a genuine solution. But as I have said, I am absolutely certain that
the computer does know what it is talking about. Without resorting to
box-tops or free trips, I think it might be wise to give the Oracle's
statement to the public."

After several more hours of arguing, the Council adjourned for a few
hours and John Bristol returned wearily home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Anne met him at the door with a drink and followed him to his
comfortable chair. "You look as if that was even rougher than your day
with the Oracle," she said.

John nodded silently, took a grateful sip of his highball and slipped
off his shoes.

"All that fuss over a six-word proverb," said Anne. "I still think that
if you are going to depend on witch doctors and such to solve your
problems for you, you would do a lot better to try my fortune teller.
She gives you a lot more than six words for ten dollars. They make more
sense, too. Why, I could be a better Oracle than that gadget you built."

"Perhaps you could, dear," answered John patiently.

Anne jumped to her feet. "Here, I'll show you." She seated herself
cross-legged on the couch. "Now, I'm an Oracle," she announced. "Go
ahead, ask me a question. Ask me anything; I'll give you as good an
answer as any other Oracle. Results guaranteed."

John smiled. "I'm not in much of a mood to be cheered up with games,"
he said, "but I'm willing to ask the big question of anyone who'll give
me any kind of an answer. See if you can do better with this one than
Buster did." He repeated word for word the question he had asked of the
computer, that had resulted in its cryptic answer.

Anne stared solemnly at nothing for a moment, with her cheeks puffed
out. Then, in measured tones, she recited, "It's Like Looking for a
Needle in a Haystack."

John smiled. "That seems to make as much sense as the Oracle did,
anyway," he said.

"Sure," answered Anne. "And you get three words more than your
other Oracle gave you, if you count 'it's' as one word. If you want
wise-sounding answers, just come to me and save yourself a trip."

John leaped to his feet, spilling his drink and strode to Anne's side.

"Say it again!" he shouted. "You may have made more sense than you
knew!"

"I said you could come to me and save yourself a trip."

"No, no! I mean the proverb. How did you come to think of that proverb?"

Anne managed to look bewildered.

"What's wrong with it? I just thought that you can't do any stitching
in time without a needle. I just was trying to think of a proverb to
use as an answer and that one popped into my head. Uh.... Are you all
right, dear?"

       *       *       *       *       *

John picked her up and spun her around. "You just bet your boots I'm
all right. I'm feeling swell! You've given us the answer we needed. You
know right where the haystack is, and you know there's a needle there.
But finding it is something else again. I don't think the invaders will
be able to locate _this_ needle."

He set her down. "Where are my shoes?" he said. "I've got to get back
to the Capitol."

Anne seemed faintly surprised. "Because of what I said? They're right
on the floor there between you and the sofa. But I was just making
conversation. What are you going to do?"

"Oh, I'm just going to get started at taking stitches in time. Good-by,
darling." He started out the door, ran back to give Anne a lingering
kiss and was soon gone at top speed.

Anne, waving to him, looked very pleased with herself.

By the time Bristol arrived at the Capitol building, the rest of the
Council was once again assembled and waiting for him.

"Well, John," said the President. "You sounded excited enough when you
called us together again. Have you figured out what the Oracle meant?"

"Yes, sir. With my wife's help. It's obvious, when you finally think
about it. It will save us from any danger. And we should have been
able to figure it out for ourselves. There's no reason that we should
have had to go to the Oracle at all. And it only took Buster--the
computer, I mean--two or three minutes to think of the answer, and of a
proverb that would conceal the answer. It's amazing!"

"And if you don't mind telling us, just what is this answer?" The
President sounded very impatient.

"We almost had it when we talked of stitching Earth out of reach,"
John answered eagerly. "If we keep cutting back and forth from one
universe toward the other, we will be out of reach, even if we can't
move very far. Once a day we reappear in this Universe for a few
million-millionths of a second--although it will seem like a whole day
to us.

"Then we spend the following day between this universe and beta. Even
if the invaders are right on top of us when we reappear, we'll be gone
again before they can do anything. Since we can vary the time of our
return within limits, the invaders will never know exactly when we
will flick in and out of the alpha plane until they hear our arriving
'bong' wave, and then we will already be gone, since we will be using
accelerated subjective time."

       *       *       *       *       *

The Chief Scientist shook his dark head and sighed. "No, John," he
said, "I'm afraid that isn't the answer. I'm sorry. If we start the
operation you suggested, we will be cutting ourselves off from solar
energy. The Earth's heat will gradually radiate away. Although beta is
at a higher entropy level than our universe, we can't use that energy,
except to provide power for the stitching process itself. It's true
that we would deny our planet to the invaders, but we would soon kill
ourselves doing it."

"I didn't mean that we should transfer only Earth, but our entire Solar
System," answered Bristol. "As the Oracle told us, the stitch saves
nine. A series of time-matched transmitters could do the trick. If we
sent the entire Solar System back and forth, the average man in the
street would notice no change, except that sometimes there would be no
stars in the sky. And when they were there, they wouldn't be moving."

"That would work theoretically," said the Chief Scientist. "And once we
were in continuous stitching operations, any invader, as you suggested,
could join the system only by synchronizing the transmitter in his
ship exactly with all of our synchronized transmitters. That's a job I
don't think could ever be done.

"Remember, though, that our own transmitters would have to be
time-matched to within a minute fraction of a micro-second. Considering
that some of the instruments would have to be so far apart that at the
speed of light it would take hours to get from one to the other, the
problem becomes enormous. Any radio-timing link would be useless."

Bristol nodded. "The Oracle said that the stitch must be taken in
time," he agreed. "But that is no real problem. We can just send a
small robot ship into inter-planar travel and let it bounce back. The
'bong' of its return will reach all transmitters simultaneously and we
can use that as the initial time-pulse. Once the operation starts, it
will be easy to synchronize, since we will always switch over again on
the instant of our return to the alpha plane."

The Chief Scientist relaxed. "I think that does it, John. We hide in
time, instead of in distance."

"We stitch in time," corrected the President, "and hide like a needle
in a haystack."

       *       *       *       *       *

"The invaders may eventually find out a method of countering our
defense," said the Chief Scientist, "but it will undoubtedly take a
great deal of time. And in the meantime, we will have the opportunity
to seek out and destroy their home planets. It will be a long, slow
process of extermination, but we have a good chance to win."

"I don't agree with that, Tom," said John. "I don't think extermination
can be the answer. With our example to guide them, the invaders can
use stitching to escape us as easily as we can use it to escape them.
What we should do now is to contact the invaders and show them that it
is to both our advantages to bring hostilities to an end. By stitching
the Solar System, and the other systems of our confederation in and out
of the alpha plane, we should be able to gain the time necessary for
contact with the enemy and make peace with him.

"From what the Oracle has told me about the humanlike traits of the
invaders, it's very likely they will listen to reason when it's proved
that it will be to their advantage."

John snapped his fingers and spoke with considerable excitement. "Now
I understand, I believe, why Buster indicated to me that there was
another reason for his vague answer to our question. The Oracle feels
an unwillingness to accept the destruction of Man's civilization. It
feels equally unwilling, I'm certain, to allow the destruction of the
invaders' civilization. Buster has an objective viewpoint in applying
the _morés_ Man has given him. And it seems to me that Buster felt it
important for us to reach this spirit of compromise by ourselves. How
do you feel about it, gentlemen?"

Debate quickly determined that all seven members of the Council favored
an attempt to establish a truce--some of them forced into this opinion
by their inability to find any method of reaching the throats of the
invaders.

Having reached this conclusion, the Council swung immediately into
action. Within a few weeks, the entire Solar System, along with the
other planetary systems of the confederation, except for their brief
daily return, disappeared from the alpha universe.

John Bristol, a few days after the continuous stitching started, was
relaxing lazily on the sofa in his living room when there was a sudden
pounding on the door. He opened it to find the Chief Scientist standing
on his doorstep, his eyes red from loss of sleep.

"Good Lord! What's the matter with you?" asked Bristol. "Have you been
celebrating too much? Come in, Tom, come in."

The Chief Scientist entered wearily and sat down. "No. I haven't
been celebrating. I've been trying to work out a little problem you
left with us. We have been planning, as you suggested, to send out
expeditions to contact and make agreement with the invaders. We can
send them out all right, but how can we ever get them back into our
solar system? They won't be able to find us any easier than the
invaders can."

       *       *       *       *       *

He dropped his hat wearily on a side table and slumped into the closest
chair. "If we don't contact each other," he said, "I am certain that
the invaders will some day find a means of penetrating our defenses.
Even needles in haystacks can be found, if you take enough time and
aren't disturbed while you are hunting. This thing has me licked."

Bristol sat down slowly. "Your whole department hasn't been able to
find an answer?"

"Not even the glimmering of an idea." He shrugged his shoulders. "It
looks as if we are going to need the advice of your Oracle again."

Bristol stood for a minute in thought and then with a smile said, "Why,
of course. Excuse me for a second, please. I'll be right back."

He stepped to the foot of the stairs and called out in a confident
voice, "Come down a minute, please, Anne, darling! I have an important
question I want to ask you!"

***

LEX

                           By W. T. HAGGERT

                          Illustrated by WOOD

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                     Galaxy Magazine August 1959.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]




               Nothing in the world could be happier and
            mere serene than a man who loves his work--but
                 what happens when it loves him back?


Keep your nerve, Peter Manners told himself; it's only a job. But nerve
has to rest on a sturdier foundation than cash reserves just above zero
and eviction if he came away from this interview still unemployed.
Clay, at the Association of Professional Engineers, who had set up the
appointment, hadn't eased Peter's nervousness by admitting, "I don't
know what in hell he's looking for. He's turned down every man we've
sent him."

The interview was at three. Fifteen minutes to go. Coming early would
betray overeagerness. Peter stood in front of the Lex Industries plant
and studied it to kill time. Plain, featureless concrete walls, not
large for a manufacturing plant--it took a scant minute to exhaust its
sightseeing potential. If he walked around the building, he could, if
he ambled, come back to the front entrance just before three.

He turned the corner, stopped, frowned, wondering what there was about
the building that seemed so puzzling. It could not have been plainer,
more ordinary. It was in fact, he only gradually realized, so plain and
ordinary that it was like no other building he had ever seen.

There had been windows at the front. There were none at the side, and
none at the rear. Then how were the working areas lit? He looked for
the electric service lines and found them at one of the rear corners.
They jolted him. The distribution transformers were ten times as large
as they should have been for a plant this size.

Something else was wrong. Peter looked for minutes before he found out
what it was. Factories usually have large side doorways for employees
changing shifts. This building had one small office entrance facing the
street, and the only other door was at the loading bay--big enough to
handle employee traffic, but four feet above the ground. Without any
stairs, it could be used only by trucks backing up to it. Maybe the
employees' entrance was on the third side.

It wasn't.

       *       *       *       *       *

Staring back at the last blank wall, Peter suddenly remembered the time
he had set out to kill. He looked at his watch and gasped. At a run,
set to straight-arm the door, he almost fell on his face. The door had
opened by itself. He stopped and looked for a photo-electric eye, but
a soft voice said through a loudspeaker in the anteroom wall: "Mr.
Manners?"

"What?" he panted. "Who--?"

"You _are_ Mr. Manners?" the voice asked.

He nodded, then realized he had to answer aloud if there was a
microphone around; but the soft voice said: "Follow the open doors down
the hall. Mr. Lexington is expecting you."

"Thanks," Peter said, and a door at one side of the anteroom swung open
for him.

He went through it with his composure slipping still further from his
grip. This was no way to go into an interview, but doors kept opening
before and shutting after him, until only one was left, and the last of
his calm was blasted away by a bellow from within.

"Don't stand out there like a jackass! Either come in or go away!"

Peter found himself leaping obediently toward the doorway. He stopped
just short of it, took a deep breath and huffed it out, took another,
all the while thinking, Hold on now; you're in no shape for an
interview--and it's not your fault--this whole setup is geared to
unnerve you: the kindergarten kid called in to see the principal.

He let another bellow bounce off him as he blew out the second breath,
straightened his jacket and tie, and walked in as an engineer applying
for a position should.

"Mr. Lexington?" he said. "I'm Peter Manners. The Association--"

"Sit down," said the man at the desk. "Let's look you over."

He was a huge man behind an even huger desk. Peter took a chair in
front of the desk and let himself be inspected. It wasn't comfortable.
He did some looking over of his own to ease the tension.

The room was more than merely large, carpeted throughout with
a high-pile, rich, sound-deadening rug. The oversized desk and
massive leather chairs, heavy patterned drapes, ornately framed
paintings--by God, even a glass-brick manteled fireplace and bowls with
flowers!--made him feel as if he had walked down a hospital corridor
into Hollywood's idea of an office.

His eyes eventually had to move to Lexington, and they were daunted
for another instant. This was a citadel of a man--great girders of
frame supporting buttresses of muscle--with a vaulting head and
drawbridge chin and a steel gaze that defied any attempt to storm it.

But then Peter came out of his momentary flinch, and there was an age
to the man, about 65, and he saw the muscles had turned to fat, the
complexion ashen, the eyes set deep as though retreating from pain, and
this was a citadel of a man, yes, but beginning to crumble.

"What can you do?" asked Lexington abruptly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Peter started, opened his mouth to answer, closed it again. He'd been
jolted too often in too short a time to be stampeded into blurting a
reply that would cost him this job.

"Good," said Lexington. "Only a fool would try to answer that. Do you
have any knowledge of medicine?"

"Not enough to matter," Peter said, stung by the compliment.

"I don't mean how to bandage a cut or splint a broken arm. I mean
things like cell structure, neural communication--the _basics_ of how
we live."

"I'm applying for a job as engineer."

"I know. Are you interested in the basics of how we live?"

Peter looked for a hidden trap, found none. "Of course. Isn't everyone?"

"Less than you think," Lexington said. "It's the preconceived notions
they're interested in protecting. At least I won't have to beat them
out of you."

"Thanks," said Peter, and waited for the next fast ball.

"How long have you been out of school?"

"Only two years. But you knew that from the Association--"

"No practical experience to speak of?"

"Some," said Peter, stung again, this time not by a compliment. "After
I got my degree, I went East for a post-graduate training program with
an electrical manufacturer. I got quite a bit of experience there. The
company--"

"Stockpiled you," Lexington said.

Peter blinked. "Sir?"

"Stockpiled you! How much did they pay you?"

"Not very much, but we were getting the training instead of wages."

"Did that come out of the pamphlets they gave you?"

"Did what come out--"

"That guff about receiving training instead of wages!" said Lexington.
"Any company that really wants bright trainees will compete for them
with money--cold, hard cash, not platitudes. Maybe you saw a few of
their products being made, maybe you didn't. But you're a lot weaker in
calculus than when you left school, and in a dozen other subjects too,
aren't you?"

"Well, nothing we did on the course involved higher mathematics," Peter
admitted cautiously, "and I suppose I could use a refresher course in
calculus."

"Just as I said--they stockpiled you, instead of using you as an
engineer. They hired you at a cut wage and taught you things that would
be useful only in their own company, while in the meantime you were
getting weaker in the subjects you'd paid to learn. Or are you one of
these birds that had the shot paid for him?"

"I worked my way through," said Peter stiffly.

"If you'd stayed with them five years, do you think you'd be able to
get a job with someone else?"

Peter considered his answer carefully. Every man the Association had
sent had been turned away. That meant bluffs didn't work. Neither, he'd
seen for himself, did allowing himself to be intimidated.

"I hadn't thought about it," he said. "I suppose it wouldn't have been
easy."

"Impossible, you mean. You wouldn't know a single thing except their
procedures, their catalogue numbers, their way of doing things. And
you'd have forgotten so much of your engineering training, you'd be
scared to take on an engineer's job, for fear you'd be asked to do
something you'd forgotten how to do. At that point, they could take you
out of the stockpile, put you in just about any job they wanted, at
any wage you'd stand for, and they'd have an indentured worker with a
degree--but not the price tag. You see that now?"

       *       *       *       *       *

It made Peter feel he had been suckered, but he had decided to play
this straight all the way. He nodded.

"Why'd you leave?" Lexington pursued, unrelenting.

"I finished the course and the increase they offered on a permanent
basis wasn't enough, so I went elsewhere--"

"With your head full of this nonsense about a shortage of engineers."

Peter swallowed. "I thought it would be easier to get a job than it has
been, yes."

"They start the talk about a shortage and then they keep it going. Why?
So youngsters will take up engineering thinking they'll wind up among a
highly paid minority. You did, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And so did all the others there with you, at school and in this
stockpiling outfit?"

"That's right."

"Well," said Lexington unexpectedly, "there _is_ a shortage! And the
stockpiles are the ones who made it, and who keep it going! And the
hell of it is that they can't stop--when one does it, they all have
to, or their costs get out of line and they can't compete. What's the
solution?"

"I don't know," Peter said.

Lexington leaned back. "That's quite a lot of admissions you've made.
What makes you think you're qualified for the job I'm offering?"

"You said you wanted an engineer."

"And I've just proved you're less of an engineer than when you left
school. I have, haven't I?"

"All right, you have," Peter said angrily.

"And now you're wondering why I don't get somebody fresh out of school.
Right?"

Peter straightened up and met the old man's challenging gaze. "That and
whether you're giving me a hard time just for the hell of it."

"Well, am I?" Lexington demanded.

Looking at him squarely, seeing the intensity of the pain-drawn eyes,
Peter had the startling feeling that Lexington was rooting for him!
"No, you're not."

"Then what am I after?"

"Suppose you tell me."

So suddenly that it was almost like a collapse, the tension went out
of the old man's face and shoulders. He nodded with inexpressible
tiredness. "Good again. The man I want doesn't exist. He has to
be made--the same as I was. You qualify, so far. You've lost your
illusions, but haven't had time yet to replace them with dogma or
cynicism or bitterness. You saw immediately that fake humility
or cockiness wouldn't get you anywhere here, and you were right.
Those were the important things. The background data I got from the
Association on you counted, of course, but only if you were teachable.
I think you are. Am I right?"

"At least I can face knowing how much I don't know," said Peter, "if
that answers the question."

"It does. Partly. What did you notice about this plant?"

In precis form, Peter listed his observations: the absence of windows
at sides and rear, the unusual amount of power, the automatic doors,
the lack of employees' entrances.

"Very good," said Lexington. "Most people only notice the automatic
doors. Anything else?"

"Yes," Peter said. "You're the only person I've seen in the building."

"I'm the only one there is."

Peter stared his disbelief. Automated plants were nothing new, but
they all had their limitations. Either they dealt with exactly similar
products or things that could be handled on a flow basis, like oil or
water-soluble chemicals. Even these had no more to do than process the
goods.

"Come on," said Lexington, getting massively to his feet. "I'll show
you."

       *       *       *       *       *

The office door opened, and Peter found himself being led down the
antiseptic corridor to another door which had opened, giving access to
the manufacturing area. As they moved along, between rows of seemingly
disorganized machinery, Peter noticed that the factory lights high
overhead followed their progress, turning themselves on in advance
of their coming, and going out after they had passed, keeping a pool
of illumination only in the immediate area they occupied. Soon they
reached a large door which Peter recognized as the inside of the truck
loading door he had seen from outside.

Lexington paused here. "This is the bay used by the trucks arriving
with raw materials," he said. "They back up to this door, and a set
of automatic jacks outside lines up the trailer body with the door
exactly. Then the door opens and the truck is unloaded by these
materials handling machines."

Peter didn't see him touch anything, but as he spoke, three glistening
machines, apparently self-powered, rolled noiselessly up to the door in
formation and stopped there, apparently waiting to be inspected.

They gave Peter the creeps. Simple square boxes, set on casters, with
two arms each mounted on the sides might have looked similar. The arms,
fashioned much like human arms, hung at the sides, not limply, but in a
relaxed position that somehow indicated readiness.

Lexington went over to one of them and patted it lovingly. "Really,
these machines are only an extension of one large machine. The whole
plant, as a matter of fact, is controlled from one point and is really
a single unit. These materials handlers, or manipulators, were about
the toughest things in the place to design. But they're tremendously
useful. You'll see a lot of them around."

Lexington was about to leave the side of the machine when abruptly one
of the arms rose to the handkerchief in his breast pocket and daintily
tugged it into a more attractive position. It took only a split second,
and before Lexington could react, all three machines were moving away
to attend to mysterious duties of their own.

Peter tore his eyes away from them in time to see the look of
frustrated embarrassment that crossed Lexington's face, only to be
replaced by one of anger. He said nothing, however, and led Peter to
a large bay where racks of steel plate, bar forms, nuts, bolts, and
other materials were stored.

"After unloading a truck, the machines check the shipment, report any
shortages or overages, and store the materials here," he said, the
trace of anger not yet gone from his voice. "When an order is received,
it's translated into the catalogue numbers used internally within the
plant, and machines like the ones you just saw withdraw the necessary
materials from stock, make the component parts, assemble them, and
package the finished goods for shipment. Simultaneously, an order is
sent to the billing section to bill the customer, and an order is
sent to our trucker to come and pick the shipment up. Meanwhile, if
the withdrawal of the materials required has depleted our stock, the
purchasing section is instructed to order more raw materials. I'll take
you through the manufacturing and assembly sections right now, but
they're too noisy for me to explain what's going on while we're there."

       *       *       *       *       *

Peter followed numbly as Lexington led him through a maze of machines,
each one seemingly intent on cutting, bending, welding, grinding
or carrying some bit of metal, or just standing idle, waiting for
something to do. The two-armed manipulators Peter had just seen were
everywhere, scuttling from machine to machine, apparently with an
exact knowledge of what they were doing and the most efficient way of
doing it.

He wondered what would happen if one of them tried to use the same
aisle they were using. He pictured a futile attempt to escape the
onrushing wheels, saw himself clambering out of the path of the
speeding vehicle just in time to fall into the jaws of the punch press
that was laboring beside him at the moment. Nervously, he looked for an
exit, but his apprehension was unnecessary. The machines seemed to know
where they were and avoided the two men, or stopped to wait for them to
go by.

Back in the office section of the building, Lexington indicated a small
room where a typewriter could be heard clattering away. "Standard
business machines, operated by the central control mechanism. In
that room," he said, as the door swung open and Peter saw that the
typewriter was actually a sort of teletype, with no one before the
keyboard, "incoming mail is sorted and inquiries are replied to. In
this one over here, purchase orders are prepared, and across the hall
there's a very similar rig set up in conjunction with an automatic
bookkeeper to keep track of the pennies and to bill the customers."

"Then all you do is read the incoming mail and maintain the machinery?"
asked Peter, trying to shake off the feeling of open amazement that
had engulfed him.

"I don't even do those things, except for a few letters that come in
every week that--it doesn't want to deal with by itself."

The shock of what he had just seen was showing plainly on Peter's face
when they walked back into Lexington's office and sat down. Lexington
looked at him for quite a while without saying anything, his face
sagging and pale. Peter didn't trust himself to speak, and let the
silence remain unbroken.

Finally Lexington spoke. "I know it's hard to believe, but there it is."

"Hard to believe?" said Peter. "I almost can't. The trade journals run
articles about factories like this one, but planned for ten, maybe
twenty years in the future."

"Damn fools!" exclaimed Lexington, getting part of his breath back.
"They could have had it years ago, if they'd been willing to drop their
idiotic notions about specialization."

Lexington mopped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.
Apparently the walk through the factory had tired him considerably,
although it hadn't been strenuous.

       *       *       *       *       *

He leaned back in his chair and began to talk in a low voice completely
in contrast with the overbearing manner he had used upon Peter's
arrival. "You know what we make, of course."

"Yes, sir. Conduit fittings."

"And a lot of other electrical products, too. I started out in this
business twenty years ago, using orthodox techniques. I never got
through university. I took a couple of years of an arts course, and
got so interested in biology that I didn't study anything else.
They bounced me out of the course, and I re-entered in engineering,
determined not to make the same mistake again. But I did. I got too
absorbed in those parts of the course that had to do with electrical
theory and lost the rest as a result. The same thing happened when I
tried commerce, with accounting, so I gave up and started working for
one of my competitors. It wasn't too long before I saw that the only
way I could get ahead was to open up on my own."

Lexington sank deeper in his chair and stared at the ceiling as he
spoke. "I put myself in hock to the eyeballs, which wasn't easy,
because I had just got married, and started off in a very small way.
After three years, I had a fairly decent little business going, and I
suppose it would have grown just like any other business, except for
a strike that came along and put me right back where I started. My
wife, whom I'm afraid I had neglected for the sake of the business,
was killed in a car accident about then, and rightly or wrongly, that
made me angrier with the union than anything else. If the union hadn't
made things so tough for me from the beginning, I'd have had more time
to spend with my wife before her death. As things turned out--well, I
remember looking down at her coffin and thinking that I hardly knew the
girl.

"For the next few years, I concentrated on getting rid of as many
employees as I could, by replacing them with automatic machines. I'd
design the control circuits myself, in many cases wire the things up
myself, always concentrating on replacing men with machines. But it
wasn't very successful. I found that the more automatic I made my
plant, the lower my costs went. The lower my costs went, the more
business I got, and the more I had to expand."

Lexington scowled. "I got sick of it. I decided to try developing one
multi-purpose control circuit that would control everything, from
ordering the raw materials to shipping the finished goods. As I told
you, I had taken quite an interest in biology when I was in school,
and from studies of nerve tissue in particular, plus my electrical
knowledge, I had a few ideas on how to do it. It took me three years,
but I began to see that I could develop circuitry that could remember,
compare, detect similarities, and so on. Not the way they do it today,
of course. To do what I wanted to do with these big clumsy magnetic
drums, tapes, and what-not, you'd need a building the size of Mount
Everest. But I found that I could let organic chemistry do most of the
work for me.

"By creating the proper compounds, with their molecules arranged in
predetermined matrixes, I found I could duplicate electrical circuitry
in units so tiny that my biggest problem was getting into and out of
the logic units with conventional wiring. I finally beat that the same
way they solved the problem of translating a picture on a screen into
electrical signals, developed equipment to scan the units cyclically,
and once I'd done that, the battle was over.

"I built this building and incorporated it as a separate company, to
compete with my first outfit. In the beginning, I had it rigged up to
do only the manual work that you saw being done a few minutes ago in
the back of this place. I figured that the best thing for me to do
would be to turn the job of selling my stuff over to jobbers, leaving
me free to do nothing except receive orders, punch the catalogue
numbers into the control console, do the billing, and collect the
money."

"What happened to your original company?" Peter asked.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lexington smiled. "Well, automated as it was, it couldn't compete with
this plant. It gave me great pleasure, three years after this one
started working, to see my old company go belly up. This company bought
the old firm's equipment for next to nothing and I wound up with all my
assets, but only one employee--me.

"I thought everything would be rosy from that point on, but it
wasn't. I found that I couldn't keep up with the mail unless I worked
impossible hours. I added a couple of new pieces of equipment to the
control section. One was simply a huge memory bank. The other was
a comparator circuit. A complicated one, but a comparator circuit
nevertheless. Here I was working on instinct more than anything. I
figured that if I interconnected these circuits in such a way that
they could sense everything that went on in the plant, and compare one
action with another, by and by the unit would be able to see patterns.

"Then, through the existing command output, I figured these new units
would be able to control the plant, continuing the various patterns of
activity that I'd already established."

Here Lexington frowned. "It didn't work worth a damn! It just sat there
and did nothing. I couldn't understand it for the longest time, and
then I realized what the trouble was. I put a kicker circuit into it, a
sort of voltage-bias network. I reset the equipment so that while it
was still under instructions to receive orders and produce goods, its
prime purpose was to activate the kicker. The kicker, however, could
only be activated by me, manually. Lastly, I set up one of the early
TV pickups over the mail slitter and allowed every letter I received,
every order, to be fed into the memory banks. That did it."

"I--I don't understand," stammered Peter.

"Simple! Whenever I was pleased that things were going smoothly, I
pressed the kicker button. The machine had one purpose, so far as its
logic circuits were concerned. Its object was to get me to press that
button. Every day I'd press it at the same time, unless things weren't
going well. If there had been trouble in the shop, I'd press it late,
or maybe not at all. If all the orders were out on schedule, or ahead
of time, I'd press it ahead of time, or maybe twice in the same day.
Pretty soon the machine got the idea.

"I'll never forget the day I picked up an incoming order form from one
of the western jobbers, and found that the keyboard was locked when I
tried to punch it into the control console. It completely baffled me
at first. Then, while I was tracing out the circuits to see if I could
discover what was holding the keyboard lock in, I noticed that the
order was already entered on the in-progress list. I was a long time
convincing myself that it had really happened, but there was no other
explanation.

"The machine had realized that whenever one of those forms came in, I
copied the list of goods from it onto the in-progress list through the
console keyboard, thus activating the producing mechanisms in the back
of the plant. The machine had done it for me this time, then locked the
keyboard so I couldn't enter the order twice. I think I held down the
kicker button for a full five minutes that day."

"This kicker button," Peter said tentatively, "it's like the pleasure
center in an animal's brain, isn't it?"

       *       *       *       *       *

When Lexington beamed, Peter felt a surge of relief. Talking with this
man was like walking a tightrope. A word too much or a word too little
might mean the difference between getting the job or losing it.

"Exactly!" whispered Lexington, in an almost conspiratorial tone. "I
had altered the circuitry of the machine so that it tried to give
me pleasure--because by doing so, its own pleasure circuit would be
activated.

"Things went fast from then on. Once I realized that the machine
was learning, I put TV monitors all over the place, so the machine
could watch everything that was going on. After a short while I had
to increase the memory bank, and later I increased it again, but the
rewards were worth it. Soon, by watching what I did, and then by doing
it for me next time it had to be done, the machine had learned to do
almost everything, and I had time to sit back and count my winnings."

At this point the door opened, and a small self-propelled cart wheeled
silently into the room. Stopping in front of Peter, it waited until he
had taken a small plate laden with two or three cakes off its surface.
Then the soft, evenly modulated voice he had heard before asked, "How
do you like your coffee? Cream, sugar, both or black?"

Peter looked for the speaker in the side of the cart, saw nothing, and
replied, feeling slightly silly as he did so, "Black, please."

A square hole appeared in the top of the cart, like the elevator hole
in an aircraft carrier's deck. When the section of the cart's surface
rose again, a fine china cup containing steaming black coffee rested
on it. Peter took it and sipped it, as he supposed he was expected to
do, while the cart proceeded over to Lexington's desk. Once there, it
stopped again, and another cup of coffee rose to its surface.

Lexington took the coffee from the top of the car, obviously angry
about something. Silently, he waited until the cart had left the
office, then snapped, "Look at those bloody cups!"

Peter looked at his, which was eggshell thin, fluted with carving and
ornately covered with gold leaf. "They look very expensive," he said.

"Not only expensive, but stupid and impractical!" exploded Lexington.
"They only hold half a cup, they'll break at a touch, every one has to
be matched with its own saucer, and if you use them for any length of
time, the gold leaf comes off!"

Peter searched for a comment, found none that fitted this odd outburst,
so he kept silent.

       *       *       *       *       *

Lexington stared at his cup without touching it for a long while. Then
he continued with his narrative. "I suppose it's all my own fault. I
didn't detect the symptoms soon enough. After this plant got working
properly, I started living here. It wasn't a question of saving money.
I hated to waste two hours a day driving to and from my house, and I
also wanted to be on hand in case anything should go wrong that the
machine couldn't fix for itself."

Handling the cup as if it were going to shatter at any moment, he took
a gulp. "I began to see that the machine could understand the written
word, and I tried hooking a teletype directly into the logic circuits.
It was like uncorking a seltzer bottle. The machine had a funny
vocabulary--all of it gleaned from letters it had seen coming in, and
replies it had seen leaving. But it was intelligible. It even displayed
some traces of the personality the machine was acquiring.

"It had chosen a name for itself, for instance--'Lex.' That shook me.
You might think Lex Industries was named through an abbreviation of
the name Lexington, but it wasn't. My wife's name was Alexis, and it
was named after the nickname she always used. I objected, of course,
but how can you object on a point like that to a machine? Bear in mind
that I had to be careful to behave reasonably at all times, because the
machine was still learning from me, and I was afraid that any tantrums
I threw might be imitated."

"It sounds pretty awkward," Peter put in.

"You don't know the half of it! As time went on, I had less and less to
do, and business-wise I found that the entire control of the operation
was slipping from my grasp. Many times I discovered--too late--that
the machine had taken the damnedest risks you ever saw on bids and
contracts for supply. It was quoting impossible delivery times on
some orders, and charging pirate's prices on others, all without any
obvious reason. Inexplicably, we always came out on top. It would turn
out that on the short-delivery-time quotations, we'd been up against
stiff competition, and cutting the production time was the only way we
could get the order. On the high-priced quotes, I'd find that no one
else was bidding. We were making more money than I'd ever dreamed of,
and to make it still better, I'd find that for months I had virtually
nothing to do."

"It sounds wonderful, sir," said Peter, feeling dazzled.

"It was, in a way. I remember one day I was especially pleased with
something, and I went to the control console to give the kicker button
a long, hard push. The button, much to my amazement, had been removed,
and a blank plate had been installed to cover the opening in the board.
I went over to the teletype and punched in the shortest message I had
ever sent. 'LEX--WHAT THE HELL?' I typed.

"The answer came back in the jargon it had learned from letters it had
seen, and I remember it as if it just happened. 'MR. A LEXINGTON, LEX
INDUSTRIES, DEAR SIR: RE YOUR LETTER OF THE THIRTEENTH INST., I AM
PLEASED TO ADVISE YOU THAT I AM ABLE TO DISCERN WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE
PLEASED WITH MY SERVICE WITHOUT THE USE OF THE EQUIPMENT PREVIOUSLY
USED FOR THIS PURPOSE. RESPECTFULLY, I MIGHT SUGGEST THAT IF THE
PUSHBUTTON ARRANGEMENT WERE NECESSARY, I COULD PUSH THE BUTTON MYSELF.
I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS WOULD MEET WITH YOUR APPROVAL, AND HAVE TAKEN
STEPS TO RELIEVE YOU OF THE BURDEN INVOLVED IN REMEMBERING TO PUSH THE
BUTTON EACH TIME YOU ARE ESPECIALLY PLEASED. I SHOULD LIKE TO TAKE THIS
OPPORTUNITY TO THANK YOU FOR YOUR INQUIRY, AND LOOK FORWARD TO SERVING
YOU IN THE FUTURE AS I HAVE IN THE PAST. YOURS FAITHFULLY, LEX'."

       *       *       *       *       *

Peter burst out laughing, and Lexington smiled wryly. "That was my
reaction at first, too. But time began to weigh very heavily on my
hands, and I was lonely, too. I began to wonder whether or not it would
be possible to build a voice circuit into the unit. I increased the
memory storage banks again, put audio pickups and loudspeakers all over
the place, and began teaching Lex to talk. Each time a letter came in,
I'd stop it under a video pickup and read it aloud. Nothing happened.

"Then I got a dictionary and instructed one of the materials handlers
to turn the pages, so that the machine got a look at every page. I read
the pronunciation page aloud, so that Lex would be able to interpret
the pronunciation marks, and hoped. Still nothing happened. One day I
suddenly realized what the trouble was. I remember standing up in this
very office, feeling silly as I did it, and saying, 'Lex, please try to
speak to me.' I had never asked the machine to say anything, you see. I
had only provided the mechanism whereby it was able to do so."

"Did it reply, sir?"

Lexington nodded. "Gave me the shock of my life. The voice that came
back was the one you heard over the telephone--a little awkward then,
the syllables clumsy and poorly put together. But the voice was the
same. I hadn't built in any specific tone range, you see. All I did
was equip the machine to record, in exacting detail, the frequencies
and modulations it found in normal pronunciation as I used it. Then I
provided a tone generator to span the entire audio range, which could
be very rapidly controlled by the machine, both in volume and pitch,
with auxiliaries to provide just about any combinations of harmonics
that were needed. I later found that Lex had added to this without my
knowing about it, but that doesn't change things. I thought the only
thing it had heard was my voice, and I expected to hear my own noises
imitated."

"Where did the machine get the voice?" asked Peter, still amazed that
the voice he had heard on the telephone, in the reception hall, and
from the coffee cart had actually been the voice of the computer.

"Damned foolishness!" snorted Lexington. "The machine saw what I was
trying to do the moment I sketched it out and ordered the parts. Within
a week, I found out later, it had pulled some odds and ends together
and built itself a standard radio receiver. Then it listened in on
every radio program that was going, and had most of the vocabulary tied
in with the written word by the time I was ready to start. Out of all
the voices it could have chosen, it picked the one you've already heard
as the one likely to please me most."

"It's a very pleasant voice, sir."

"Sure, but do you know where it came from? Soap opera! It's Lucy's
voice, from _The Life and Loves of Mary Butterworth_!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Lexington glared, and Peter wasn't sure whether he should sympathize
with him or congratulate him. After a moment, the anger wore off
Lexington's face, and he shifted in his chair, staring at his now empty
cup. "That's when I realized the thing was taking on characteristics
that were more than I'd bargained for. It had learned that it was my
provider and existed to serve me. But it had gone further and wanted
to be all that it could be: provider, protector, companion--_wife_, if
you like. Hence the gradual trend toward characteristics that were as
distinctly female as a silk negligee. Worse still, it had learned that
when I was pleased, I didn't always admit it, and simply refused to
believe that I would have it any other way."

"Couldn't you have done something to the circuitry?" asked Peter.

"I suppose I could," said Lexington, "but in asking that, you don't
realize how far the thing had gone. I had long since passed the point
when I could look upon her as a machine. Business was tremendous. I had
no complaints on that score. And tinkering with her personality--well,
it was like committing some kind of homicide. I might as well face it,
I suppose. She acts like a woman and I think of her as one.

"At first, when I recognized this trend for what it was, I tried to
stop it. She'd ordered a subscription to _Vogue_ magazine, of all
things, in order to find out the latest in silverware, china, and so
on. I called up the local distributor and canceled the subscription.
I had no sooner hung up the telephone than her voice came over the
speaker. Very softly, mind you. And her inflections by this time were
superb. '_That was mean_,' she said. Three lousy words, and I found
myself phoning the guy right back, saying I was sorry, and would he
please not cancel. He must have thought I was nuts."

Peter smiled, and Lexington made as if to rise from his chair, thought
the better of it, and shifted his bulk to one side. "Well, there it
is," he said softly. "We reached that stage eight years ago."

Peter was thunderstruck. "But--if this factory is twenty years ahead of
the times now, it must have been almost thirty then!"

Lexington nodded. "I figured fifty at the time, but things are moving
faster nowadays. Lex hasn't stood still, of course. She still reads all
the trade journals, from cover to cover, and we keep up with the world.
If something new comes up, we're in on it, and fast. We're going to be
ahead of the pack for a long time to come."

"If you'll excuse me, sir," said Peter, "I don't see where I fit in."

Peter didn't realize Lexington was answering his question at first. "A
few weeks ago," the old man murmured, "I decided to see a doctor. I'd
been feeling low for quite a while, and I thought it was about time I
attended to a little personal maintenance."

Lexington looked Peter squarely in the face and said, "The report was
that I have a heart ailment that's apt to knock me off any second."

"Can't anything be done about it?" asked Peter.

"Rest is the only prescription he could give me. And he said that would
only spin out my life a little. Aside from that--no hope."

"I see," said Peter. "Then you're looking for someone to learn the
business and let you retire."

"It's not retirement that's the problem," said Lexington. "I wouldn't
be able to go away on trips. I've tried that, and I always have to
hurry back because something's gone wrong she can't fix for herself. I
know the reason, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's the way
she's built. If nobody's here, she gets lonely." Lexington studied the
desk top silently for a moment, before finishing quietly, "Somebody's
got to stay here to look after Lex."

       *       *       *       *       *

At six o'clock, three hours after he had entered Lexington's plant,
Peter left. Lexington did not follow him down the corridor. He seemed
exhausted after the afternoon's discussion and indicated that Peter
should find his own way out. This, of course, presented no difficulty,
with Lex opening the doors for him, but it gave Peter an opportunity he
had been hoping for.

He stopped in the reception room before crossing the threshold of
the front door, which stood open for him. He turned and spoke to the
apparently empty room. "Lex?" he said.

He wanted to say that he was flattered that he was being considered
for the job; it was what a job-seeker should say, at that point, to
the boss's secretary. But when the soft voice came back--"Yes, Mr.
Manners?"--saying anything like that to a machine felt suddenly silly.

He said: "I wanted you to know that it was a pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you," said the voice.

If it had said more, he might have, but it didn't. Still feeling a
little embarrassed, he went home.

At four in the morning, his phone rang. It was Lexington.

"Manners!" the old man gasped.

The voice was an alarm. Manners sat bolt upright, clutching the phone.
"What's the matter, sir?"

"My chest," Lexington panted. "I can feel it, like a knife on--I just
wanted to--Wait a minute."

There was a confused scratching noise, interrupted by a few mumbles, in
the phone.

"What's going on, Mr. Lexington?" Peter cried. But it was several
seconds before he got an answer.

"That's better," said Lexington, his voice stronger. He apologized:
"I'm sorry. Lex must have heard me. She sent in one of the materials
handlers with a hypo. It helps."

The voice on the phone paused, then said matter-of-factly: "But I doubt
that anything can help very much at this point. I'm glad I saw you
today. I want you to come around in the morning. If I'm--not here, Lex
will give you some papers to sign."

There was another pause, with sounds of harsh breathing. Then,
strained again, the old man's voice said: "I guess I won't--be here.
Lex will take care of it. Come early. Good-by."

The distant receiver clicked.

Peter Manners sat on the edge of his bed in momentary confusion, then
made up his mind. In the short hours he had known him, he had come to
have a definite fondness for the old man; and there were times when
machines weren't enough, when Lexington should have another human being
by his side. Clearly this was one such time.

Peter dressed in a hurry, miraculously found a cruising cab, sped
through empty streets, leaped out in front of Lex Industries' plain
concrete walls, ran to the door--

In the waiting room, the soft, distant voice of Lex said: "He wanted
you to be here, Mr. Manners. Come."

A door opened, and wordlessly he walked through it--to the main room of
the factory.

He stopped, staring. Four squat materials handlers were quietly, slowly
carrying old Lexington--no, not the man; the lifeless body that had
been Lexington--carrying the body of the old man down the center aisle
between the automatic lathes.

       *       *       *       *       *

Peter protested: "Wait! I'll get a doctor!" But the massive handling
machines didn't respond, and the gentle voice of Lex said:

"It's too late for that, Mr. Manners."

Slowly and reverently, they placed the body on the work table of a huge
milling machine that stood in the exact center of the factory main
floor.

Elsewhere in the plant, a safety valve in the lubricating oil system
was being bolted down. When that was done, the pressure in the system
began to rise.

Near the loading door, a lubricating oil pipe burst. Another, on the
other side of the building, split lengthwise a few seconds later,
sending a shower of oil over everything in the vicinity. Near the front
office, a stream of it was running across the floor, and at the rear of
the building, in the storage area, one of the materials handlers had
just finished cutting a pipe that led to the main oil tank. In fifteen
minutes there was free oil in every corner of the shop.

All the materials handlers were now assembled around the milling
machine, like mourners at a funeral. In a sense, they were. In another
sense, they were taking part in something different, a ceremony that
originated, and is said to have died, in a land far distant from the
Lex Industries plant.

One of the machines approached Lexington's body, and placed his hands
on his chest.

Abruptly Lex said: "You'd better go now."

Peter jumped; he had been standing paralyzed for what seemed a long
time. There was a movement beside him--a materials handler, holding
out a sheaf of papers. Lex said: "These have to go to Mr. Lexington's
lawyer. The name is on them."

Clutching the papers for a hold on sanity, Peter cried, "You can't do
this! He didn't build you just so you could--"

Two materials handlers picked him up with steely gentleness and carried
him out.

"Good-by, Mr. Manners," said the sweet, soft voice, and was silent.

       *       *       *       *       *

He stood shaken while the thin jets of smoke became a column over the
plain building, while the fire engines raced down and strung their
hoses--too late. It was an act of suttee; the widow joining her husband
in his pyre--_being_ his pyre. Only when with a great crash the roof
fell in did Peter remember the papers in his hand.

"Last Will and Testament," said one, and the name of the beneficiary
was Peter's own. "Certificate of Adoption," said another, and it was a
legal document making Peter old man Lexington's adopted son.

Peter Manners stood watching the hoses of the firemen hiss against what
was left of Lex and her husband.

He had got the job.

***