OPERATION HAYSTACK
by Frank Herbert
It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem Orne had was one step tougher than that!
When the Investigation & Adjustment scout cruiser landed on Marak it carried a man the doctors had no hope of saving. He was alive only because he was in a womblike creche pod that had taken over most of his vital functions.
The man's name was Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy planet native. Even in the placid repose of near death there was something clownish about his appearance. His burned, ungent-covered face looked made up for some bizarre show.
Marak is the League capital, and the I-A medical center there is probably the best in the galaxy, but it accepted the creche pod and Orne more as a curiosity than anything else. The man had lost one eye, three fingers of his left hand and part of his hair, suffered a broken jaw and various internal injuries. He had been in terminal shock for more than ninety hours.
Umbo Stetson, Orne's section chief, went back into his cruiser's "office" after a hospital flitter took pod and patient. There was an added droop to Stetson's shoulders that accentuated his usual slouching stance. His overlarge features were drawn into ridges of sorrow. A general straggling, trampish look about him was not helped by patched blue fatigues.
The doctor's words still rang in Stetson's ears: "This patient's vital tone is too low to permit operative replacement of damaged organs. He'll live for a while because of the pod, but--" And the doctor had shrugged.
Stetson slumped into his desk chair, looked out the open port beside him. Some four hundred meters below, the scurrying beetlelike activity of the I-A's main field sent up discordant roaring and clattering. Two rows of other scout cruisers were parked in line with Stetson's port--gleaming red and black needles. He stared at them without really seeing them.
It always happens on some "routine" assignment, he thought. Nothing but a slight suspicion about Heleb: the fact that only women held high office. One simple, unexplained fact ... and I lose my best agent!
He sighed, turned to his desk, began composing the report:
"The militant core on the Planet Heleb has been eliminated. Occupation force on the ground. No further danger to Galactic peace expected from this source. Reason for operation: Rediscovery & Re-education--after two years on the planet--failed to detect signs of militancy. The major indications were: 1) a ruling caste restricted to women, and 2) disparity between numbers of males and females far beyond the Lutig norm! Senior Field Agent Lewis Orne found that the ruling caste was controlling the sex of offspring at conception (see attached details), and had raised a male slave army to maintain its rule. The R&R agent had been drained of information, then killed. Arms constructed on the basis of that information caused critical injuries to Senior Field Agent Orne. He is not expected to live. I am hereby urging that he receive the Galaxy Medal, and that his name be added to the Roll of Honor."
Stetson pushed the page aside. That was enough for ComGO, who never read anything but the first page anyway. Details were for his aides to chew and digest. They could wait. Stetson punched his desk callbox for Orne's service record, set himself to the task he most detested: notifying next of kin. He read, pursing his lips:
"Home Planet: Chargon. Notify in case of accident or death: Mrs. Victoria Orne, mother."
He leafed through the pages, reluctant to send the hated message. Orne had enlisted in the Marak Marines at age seventeen--a runaway from home--and his mother had given post-enlistment consent. Two years later: scholarship transfer to Uni-Galacta, the R&R school here on Marak. Five years of school and one R&R field assignment under his belt, and he had been drafted into the I-A for brilliant detection of militancy on Hammel. And two years later--kaput!
Abruptly, Stetson hurled the service record at the gray metal wall across from him; then he got up, brought the record back to his desk, smoothing the pages. There were tears in his eyes. He flipped a switch on his desk, dictated the notification to Central Secretarial, ordered it sent out priority. Then he went groundside and got drunk on Hochar Brandy, Orne's favorite drink.
* * * * *
The next morning there was a reply from Chargon: "Lewis Orne's mother too ill to travel. Sisters being notified. Please ask Mrs. Ipscott Bullone of Marak, wife of the High Commissioner, to take over for family." It was signed: "Madrena Orne Standish, sister."
With some misgivings, Stetson called the residence of Ipscott Bullone, leader of the majority party in the Marak Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the background. Stetson stared at the grayness swimming in his desk visor. He always disliked a blank screen. A baritone husk of a voice slid: "This is Polly Bullone."
Stetson introduced himself, relayed the Chargon message.
"Victoria's boy dying? Here? Oh, the poor thing! And Madrena's back on Chargon ... the election. Oh, yes, of course. I'll get right over to the hospital!"
Stetson signed off, broke the contact.
The High Commissioner's wife yet! he thought. Then, because he had to do it, he walled off his sorrow, got to work.
At the medical center, the oval creche containing Orne hung from ceiling hooks in a private room. There were humming sounds in the dim, watery greenness of the room, rhythmic chuggings, sighings. Occasionally, a door opened almost soundlessly, and a white-clad figure would check the graph tapes on the creche's meters.
Orne was lingering. He became the major conversation piece at the internes' coffee breaks: "That agent who was hurt on Heleb, he's still with us. Man, they must build those guys different from the rest of us!... Yeah! Understand he's got only about an eighth of his insides ... liver, kidneys, stomach--all gone.... Lay you odds he doesn't last out the month.... Look what old sure-thing McTavish wants to bet on!"
On the morning of his eighty-eighth day in the creche, the day nurse came into Orne's room, lifted the inspection hood, looked down at him. The day nurse was a tall, lean-faced professional who had learned to meet miracles and failures with equal lack of expression. However, this routine with the dying I-A operative had lulled her into a state of psychological unpreparedness. Any day now, poor guy, she thought. And she gasped as she opened his sole remaining eye, said:
"Did they clobber those dames on Heleb?"
"Yes, sir!" she blurted. "They really did, sir!"
"Good!"
Orne closed his eye. His breathing deepened.
The nurse rang frantically for the doctors.
It had been an indeterminate period in a blank fog for Orne, then a time of pain and the gradual realization that he was in a creche. Had to be. He could remember his sudden exposure on Heleb, the explosion--then nothing. Good old creche. It made him feel safe now, shielded from all danger.
Orne began to show minute but steady signs of improvement. In another month, the doctors ventured an intestinal graft that gave him a new spurt of energy. Two months later, they replaced missing eye and fingers, restored his scalp line, worked artistic surgery on his burn scars.
Fourteen months, eleven days, five hours and two minutes after he had been picked up "as good as dead," Orne walked out of the hospital under his own power, accompanied by a strangely silent Umbo Stetson.
Under the dark blue I-A field cape, Orne's coverall uniform fitted his once muscular frame like a deflated bag. But the pixie light had returned to his eyes--even to the eye he had received from a nameless and long dead donor. Except for the loss of weight, he looked to be the same Lewis Orne. If he was different--beyond the "spare parts"--it was something he only suspected, something that made the idea, "twice-born," not a joke.
* * * * *
Outside the hospital, clouds obscured Marak's green sun. It was midmorning. A cold spring wind bent the pile lawn, tugged fitfully at the border plantings of exotic flowers around the hospital's landing pad.
Orne paused on the steps above the pad, breathed deeply of the chill air. "Beautiful day," he said.
Stetson reached out a hand to help Orne down the steps, hesitated, put the hand back in his pocket. Beneath the section chief's look of weary superciliousness there was a note of anxiety. His big features were set in a frown. The drooping eyelids failed to conceal a sharp, measuring stare.
Orne glanced at the sky to the southwest. "The flitter ought to be here any minute." A gust of wind tugged at his cape. He staggered, caught his balance. "I feel good."
"You look like something left over from a funeral," growled Stetson.
"Sure--my funeral," said Orne. He grinned. "Anyway, I was getting tired of that walk-around-type morgue. All my nurses were married."
"I'd almost stake my life that I could trust you," muttered Stetson.
Orne looked at him. "No, no, Stet ... stake my life. I'm used to it."
Stetson shook his head. "No, dammit! I trust you, but you deserve a peaceful convalescence. We've no right to saddle you with--"
"Stet?" Orne's voice was low, amused.
"Huh?" Stetson looked up.
"Let's save the noble act for someone who doesn't know you," said Orne. "You've a job for me. O.K. You've made the gesture for your conscience."
Stetson produced a wolfish grin. "All right. So we're desperate, and we haven't much time. In a nutshell, since you're going to be a house guest at the Bullones'--we suspect Ipscott Bullone of being the head of a conspiracy to take over the government."
"What do you mean--take over the government?" demanded Orne. "The Galactic High Commissioner is the government--subject to the Constitution and the Assemblymen who elected him."
"We've a situation that could explode into another Rim War, and we think he's at the heart of it," said Stetson. "We've eighty-one touchy planets, all of them old-line steadies that have been in the League for years. And on every one of them we have reason to believe there's a clan of traitors sworn to overthrow the League. Even on your home planet--Chargon."
"You want me to go home for my convalescence?" asked Orne. "Haven't been there since I was seventeen. I'm not sure that--"
"No, dammit! We want you as the Bullones' house guest! And speaking of that, would you mind explaining how they were chosen to ride herd on you?"
"There's an odd thing," said Orne. "All those gags in the I-A about old Upshook Ipscott Bullone ... and then I find that his wife went to school with my mother."
"Have you met Himself?"
"He brought his wife to the hospital a couple of times."
Again, Stetson looked to the southwest, then back to Orne. A pensive look came over his face. "Every schoolkid knows how the Nathians and the Marakian League fought it out in the Rim War--how the old civilization fell apart--and it all seems kind of distant," he said.
"Five hundred standard years," said Orne.
"And maybe no farther away than yesterday," murmured Stetson. He cleared his throat.
* * * * *
And Orne wondered why Stetson was moving so cautiously. Something deep troubling him. A sudden thought struck Orne. He said: "You spoke of trust. Has this conspiracy involved the I-A?"
"We think so," said Stetson. "About a year ago, an R&R archeological team was nosing around some ruins on Dabih. The place was all but vitrified in the Rim War, but a whole bank of records from a Nathian outpost escaped." He glanced sidelong at Orne. "The Rah&Rah boys couldn't make sense out of the records. No surprise. They called in an I-A crypt-analyst. He broke a complicated substitution cipher. When the stuff started making sense he pushed the panic button."
"For something the Nathians wrote five hundred years ago?"
Stetson's drooping eyelids lifted. There was a cold quality to his stare. "This was a routing station for key Nathian families," he said. "Trained refugees. An old dodge ... been used as long as there've been--"
"But five hundred years, Stet!"
"I don't care if it was five thousand years!" barked Stetson. "We've intercepted some scraps since then that were written in the same code. The bland confidence of that! Wouldn't that gall you?" He shook his head. "And every scrap we've intercepted deals with the coming elections."
"But the election's only a couple of days off!" protested Orne.
Stetson glanced at his wristchrono. "Forty-two hours to be exact," he said. "Some deadline!"
"Any names in these old records?" asked Orne.
Stetson nodded. "Names of planets, yes. People, no. Some code names, but no cover names. Code name on Chargon was Winner. That ring any bells with you?"
Orne shook his head. "No. What's the code name here?"
"The Head," said Stetson. "But what good does that do us? They're sure to've changed those by now."
"They didn't change their communications code," said Orne.
"No ... they didn't."
"We must have something on them, some leads," said Orne. He felt that Stetson was holding back something vital.
"Sure," said Stetson. "We have history books. They say the Nathians were top drawer in political mechanics. We know for a fact they chose landing sites for their refugees with diabolical care. Each family was told to dig in, grow up with the adopted culture, develop the weak spots, build an underground, train their descendants to take over. They set out to bore from within, to make victory out of defeat. The Nathians were long on patience. They came originally from nomad stock on Nathia II. Their mythology calls them Arbs or Ayrbs. Go review your seventh grade history. You'll know almost as much as we do!"
"Like looking for the traditional needle in the haystack," muttered Orne. "How come you suspect High Commissioner Upshook?"
Stetson wet his lips with his tongue. "One of the Bullones' seven daughters is currently at home," he said. "Name's Diana. A field leader in the I-A women. One of the Nathian code messages we intercepted had her name as addressee."
"Who sent the message?" asked Orne. "What was it all about?"
Stetson coughed. "You know, Lew, we cross-check everything. This message was signed M.O.S. The only M.O.S. that came out of the comparison was on a routine next-of-kin reply. We followed it down to the original copy, and the handwriting checked. Name of Madrena Orne Standish."
"Maddie?" Orne froze, turned slowly to face Stetson. "So that's what's troubling you!"
"We know you haven't been home since you were seventeen," said Stetson. "Your record with us is clean. The question is--"
"Permit me," said Orne. "The question is: Will I turn in my own sister if it falls that way?"
Stetson remained silent, staring at him.
"O.K.," said Orne. "My job is seeing that we don't have another Rim War. Just answer me one question: How's Maddie mixed up in this? My family isn't one of these traitor clans."
"This whole thing is all tangled up with politics," said Stetson. "We think it's because of her husband."
"Ahhhh, the member for Chargon," said Orne. "I've never met him." He looked to the southwest where a flitter was growing larger as it approached. "Who's my cover contact?"
"That mini-transceiver we planted in your neck for the Gienah job," said Stetson. "It's still there and functioning. Anything happens around you, we hear it."
Orne touched the subvocal stud at his neck, moved his speaking muscles without opening his mouth. A surf-hissing voice filled the matching transceiver in Stetson's neck:
"You pay attention while I'm making a play for this Diana Bullone, you hear? Then you'll know how an expert works."
"Don't get so interested in your work that you forget why you're out there," growled Stetson.
* * * * *
Mrs. Bullone was a fat little mouse of a woman. She stood almost in the center of the guest room of her home, hands clasped across the paunch of a long, dull silver gown. She had demure gray eyes, grandmotherly gray hair combed straight back in a jeweled net--and that shocking baritone husk of a voice issuing from a small mouth. Her figure sloped out from several chins to a matronly bosom, then dropped straight like a barrel. The top of her head came just above Orne's dress epaulets.
"We want you to feel at home here, Lewis," she husked. "You're to consider yourself one of the family."
Orne looked around at the Bullone guest room: low key furnishings with an old-fashioned selectacol for change of decor. A polawindow looked out onto an oval swimming pool, the glass muted to dark blue. It gave the outside a moonlight appearance. There was a contour bed against one wall, several built-ins, and a door partly open to reveal bathroom tiles. Everything traditional and comfortable.
"I already do feel at home," he said. "You know, your house is very like our place on Chargon. I was surprised when I saw it from the air. Except for the setting, it looks almost identical."
"I guess your mother and I shared ideas when we were in school," said Polly. "We were very close friends."
"You must've been to do all this for me," said Orne. "I don't know how I'm ever going to--"
"Ah! Here we are!" A deep masculine voice boomed from the open door behind Orne. He turned, saw Ipscott Bullone, High Commissioner of the Marakian League. Bullone was tall, had a face of harsh angles and deep lines, dark eyes under heavy brows, black hair trained in receding waves. There was a look of ungainly clumsiness about him.
He doesn't strike me as the dictator type, thought Orne. But that's obviously what Stet suspects.
"Glad you made it out all right, son," boomed Bullone. He advanced into the room, glanced around. "Hope everything's to your taste here."
"Lewis was just telling me that our place is very like his mother's home on Chargon," said Polly.
"It's old fashioned, but we like it," said Bullone. "Just a great big tetragon on a central pivot. We can turn any room we want to the sun, the shade or the breeze, but we usually leave the main salon pointing northeast. View of the capital, you know."
"We have a sea breeze on Chargon that we treat the same way," said Orne.
"I'm sure Lewis would like to be left alone for a while now," said Polly. "This is his first day out of the hospital. We mustn't tire him." She crossed to the polawindow, adjusted it to neutral gray, turned the selectacol, and the room's color dominance shifted to green. "There, that's more restful," she said. "Now, if there's anything you need you just ring the bell there by your bed. The autobutle will know where to find us."
The Bullones left, and Orne crossed to the window, looked out at the pool. The young woman hadn't come back. When the chauffeur-driven limousine flitter had dropped down to the house's landing pad, Orne had seen a parasol and sunhat nodding to each other on the blue tiles beside the pool. The parasol had shielded Polly Bullone. The sunhat had been worn by a shapely young woman in swimming tights, who had rushed off into the house.
She was no taller than Polly, but slender and with golden red hair caught under the sunhat in a swimmer's chignon. She was not beautiful--face too narrow with suggestions of Bullone's cragginess, and the eyes overlarge. But her mouth was full-lipped, chin strong, and there had been an air of exquisite assurance about her. The total effect had been one of striking elegance--extremely feminine.
Orne looked beyond the pool: wooded hills and, dimly on the horizon, a broken line of mountains. The Bullones lived in expensive isolation. Around them stretched miles of wilderness, rugged with planned neglect.
Time to report in, he thought. Orne pressed the neck stud on his transceiver, got Stetson, told him what had happened to this point.
"All right," said Stetson. "Go find the daughter. She fits the description of the gal you saw by the pool."
"That's what I was hoping," said Orne.
He changed into light-blue fatigues, went to the door of his room, let himself out into a hall. A glance at his wristchrono showed that it was shortly before noon--time for a bit of scouting before they called lunch. He knew from his brief tour of the house and its similarity to the home of his childhood that the hall let into the main living salon. The public rooms and men's quarters were in the outside ring. Secluded family apartments and women's quarters occupied the inner section.
* * * * *
Orne made his way to the salon. It was long, built around two sections of the tetragon, and with low divans beneath the view windows. The floor was thick pile rugs pushed one against another in a crazy patchwork of reds and browns. At the far end of the room, someone in blue fatigues like his own was bent over a stand of some sort. The figure straightened at the same time a tinkle of music filled the room. He recognized the red-gold hair of the young woman he had seen beside the pool. She was wielding two mallets to play a stringed instrument that lay on its side supported by a carved-wood stand.
He moved up behind her, his footsteps muffled by the carpeting. The music had a curious rhythm that suggested figures dancing wildly around firelight. She struck a final chord, muted the strings.
"That makes me homesick," said Orne.
"Oh!" She whirled, gasped, then smiled. "You startled me. I thought I was alone."
"Sorry. I was enjoying the music."
"I'm Diana Bullone," she said. "You're Mr. Orne."
"Lew to all of the Bullone family, I hope," he said.
"Of course ... Lew." She gestured at the musical instrument. "This is very old. Most find its music ... well, rather weird. It's been handed down for generations in mother's family."
"The kaithra," said Orne. "My sisters play it. Been a long time since I've heard one."
"Oh, of course," she said. "Your mother's--" She stopped, looked confused. "I've got to get used to the fact that you're.... I mean that we have a strange man around the house who isn't exactly strange."
Orne grinned. In spite of the blue I-A fatigues and a rather severe pulled-back hairdo, this was a handsome woman. He found himself liking her, and this caused him a feeling near self-loathing. She was a suspect. He couldn't afford to like her. But the Bullones were being so decent, taking him in like this. And how was their hospitality being repaid? By spying and prying. Yet, his first loyalty belonged to the I-A, to the peace it represented.
He said rather lamely: "I hope you get over the feeling that I'm strange."
"I'm over it already," she said. She linked arms with him, said: "If you feel up to it, I'll take you on the deluxe guided tour."
By nightfall, Orne was in a state of confusion. He had found Diana fascinating, and yet the most comfortable woman to be around that he had ever met. She liked swimming, paloika hunting, ditar apples-- She had a "poo-poo" attitude toward the older generation that she said she'd never before revealed to anyone. They had laughed like fools over utter nonsense.
Orne went back to his room to change for dinner, stopped before the polawindow. The quick darkness of these low latitudes had pulled an ebon blanket over the landscape. There was city-glow off to the left, and an orange halo to the peaks where Marak's three moons would rise. Am I falling in love with this woman? he asked himself. He felt like calling Stetson, not to report but just to talk the situation out. And this made him acutely aware that Stetson or an aide had heard everything said between them that afternoon.
* * * * *
The autobutle called dinner. Orne changed hurriedly into a fresh lounge uniform, found his way to the small salon across the house. The Bullones already were seated around an old-fashioned bubble-slot table set with real candles, golden shardi service. Two of Marak's moons could be seen out the window climbing swiftly over the peaks.
"You turned the house," said Orne.
"We like the moonrise," said Polly. "It seems more romantic, don't you think?" She glanced at Diana.
Diana looked down at her plate. She was wearing a low-cut gown of firemesh that set off her red hair. A single strand of Reinach pearls gleamed at her throat.
Orne sat down in the vacant seat opposite her. What a handsome woman! he thought.
Polly, on Orne's right, looked younger and softer in a green stola gown that hazed her barrel contours. Bullone, across from her, wore black lounging shorts and knee-length kubi jacket of golden pearl cloth. Everything about the people and setting reeked of wealth, power. For a moment, Orne saw that Stetson's suspicions could have basis in fact. Bullone might go to any lengths to maintain this luxury.
Orne's entrance had interrupted an argument between Polly and her husband. They welcomed him, went right on without inhibition. Rather than embarrassing him, this made him feel more at home, more accepted.
"But I'm not running for office this time," said Bullone patiently. "Why do we have to clutter up the evening with that many people just to--"
"Our election night parties are traditional," said Polly.
"Well, I'd just like to relax quietly at home tomorrow," he said. "Take it easy with just the family here and not have to--"
"It's not like it was a big party," said Polly. "I've kept the list to fifty."
Diana straightened, said: "This is an important election Daddy! How could you possibly relax? There're seventy-three seats in question ... the whole balance. If things go wrong in just the Alkes sector ... why ... you could be sent back to the floor. You'd lose your job as ... why ... someone else could take over as--"
"Welcome to the job," said Bullone. "It's a headache." He grinned at Orne. "Sorry to burden you with this, m'boy, but the women of this family run me ragged. I guess from what I hear that you've had a pretty busy day, too." He smiled paternally at Diana. "And your first day out of the hospital."
"She sets quite a pace, but I've enjoyed it," said Orne.
"We're taking the small flitter for a tour of the wilderness area tomorrow," said Diana. "Lew can relax all the way. I'll do the driving."
"Be sure you're back in plenty of time for the party," said Polly. "Can't have--" She broke off at a low bell from the alcove behind her. "That'll be for me. Excuse me, please ... no, don't get up."
* * * * *
Orne bent to his dinner as it came out of the bubble slot beside his plate: meat in an exotic sauce, Sirik champagne, paloika au semil ... more luxury.
Presently, Polly returned, resumed her seat.
"Anything important?" asked Bullone.
"Only a cancellation for tomorrow night. Professor Wingard is ill."
"I'd just as soon it was cancelled down to the four of us," said Bullone.
Unless this is a pose, this doesn't sound like a man who wants to grab more power, thought Orne.
"Scottie, you should take more pride in your office!" snapped Polly. "You're an important man."
"If it weren't for you, I'd be a nobody and prefer it," said Bullone. He grinned at Orne. "I'm a political idiot compared to my wife. Never saw anyone who could call the turn like she does. Runs in her family. Her mother was the same way."
Orne stared at him, fork raised from plate and motionless. A sudden idea had exploded in his mind.
"You must know something of this life, Lewis," said Bullone. "Your father was member for Chargon once, wasn't he?"
"Yes," murmured Orne. "But that was before I was born. He died in office." He shook his head, thought: It couldn't be ... but--
"Do you feel all right, Lew?" asked Diana. "You're suddenly so pale."
"Just tired," said Orne. "Guess I'm not used to so much activity."
"And I've been a beast keeping you so busy today," she said.
"Don't you stand on ceremony here, son," said Polly. She looked concerned. "You've been very sick, and we understand. If you're tired, you go right on into bed."
Orne glanced around the table, met anxious attention in each face. He pushed his chair back, said: "Well, if you really don't mind--"
"Mind!" barked Polly. "You scoot along now!"
"See you in the morning. Lew," said Diana.
He nodded, turned away, thinking: What a handsome woman! As he started down the hall, he heard Bullone say to Diana: "Di, perhaps you'd better not take that boy out tomorrow. After all, he is supposed to be here for a rest." Her answer was lost as Orne entered the hall, closed the door.
In the privacy of his room, Orne pressed the transceiver stud at his neck, said: "Stet?"
A voice hissed in his ears: "This is Mr. Stetson's relief. Orne, isn't it?"
"Yes. I want a check right away on those Nathian records the archaeologists found. Find out if Heleb was one of the planets they seeded."
"Right. Hang on." There was a long silence, then: "Lew, this is Stet. How come the question about Heleb?"
"Was it on that Nathian list?"
"Negative. Why'd you ask?"
"Are you sure, Stet? It'd explain a lot of things."
"It's not on the lists, but ... wait a minute." Silence. Then: "Heleb was on line of flight to Auriga, and Auriga was on the list. We've reason to doubt they put anyone down on Auriga. If their ship ran into trouble--"
"That's it!" snapped Orne.
"Keep your voice down or talk subvocally." ordered Stetson. "Now, answer my question: What's up?"
"Something so fantastic it frightens me," said Orne. "Remember that the women who ruled Heleb bred female or male children by controlling the sex of their offspring at conception. The method was unique. In fact, our medics thought it was impossible until--"
"You don't have to remind me of something we want buried and forgotten," interrupted Stetson. "Too much chance for misuse of that formula."
"Yes," said Orne. "But what if your Nathian underground is composed entirely of women bred the same way? What if the Heleb women were just a bunch who got out of hand because they'd lost contact with the main element?"
"Holy Moley!" blurted Stetson. "Do you have evidence--"
"Nothing but a hunch," said Orne. "Do you have a list of the guests who'll be here for the election party tomorrow?"
"We can get it. Why?"
"Check for women who mastermind their husbands in politics. Let me know how many and who."
"Lew, that's not enough to--"
"That's all I can give you for now, but I think I'll have more. Remember that ..." he hesitated, spacing his words as a new thought struck him "... the ... Nathians ... were ... nomads."
* * * * *
Day began early for the Bullones. In spite of its being election day, Bullone took off for his office an hour after dawn. "See what I mean about this job owning you?" he asked Orne.
"We're going to take it easy today, Lew," said Diana. She took his hand as they came up the steps after seeing her father to his limousine flitter. The sky was cloudless.
Orne felt himself liking her hand in his--liking the feel of it too much. He withdrew his hand, stood aside, said: "Lead on."
I've got to watch myself, he thought. She's too charming.
"I think a picnic," said Diana. "There's a little lake with grassy banks off to the west. We'll take viewers and a couple of good novels. This'll be a do-nothing day."
Orne hesitated. There might be things going on at the house that he should watch. But no ... if he was right about this situation, then Diana could be the weak link. Time was closing in on them, too. By tomorrow the Nathians could have the government completely under control.
It was warm beside the lake. There were purple and orange flowers above the grassy bank. Small creatures flitted and cheeped in the brush and trees. There was a groomis in the reeds at the lower end of the lake, and every now and then it honked like an old man clearing his throat.
"When we girls were all at home we used to picnic here every Eight-day," said Diana. She lay on her back on the groundmat they'd spread. Orne sat beside her facing the lake. "We made a raft over there on the other side," she said. She sat up, looked across the lake. "You know, I think pieces of it are still there. See?" She pointed at a jumble of logs. As she gestured, her hand brushed Orne's.
Something like an electric shock passed between them. Without knowing exactly how it happened, Orne found his arms around Diana, their lips pressed together in a lingering kiss. Panic was very close to the surface in Orne. He broke away.
"I didn't plan for that to happen," whispered Diana.
"Nor I," muttered Orne. He shook his head. "Sometimes things can get into an awful mess!"
Diana blinked. "Lew ... don't you ... like me?"
He ignored the monitoring transceiver, spoke his mind. They'll just think it's part of the act, he thought. And the thought was bitter.
"Like you?" he asked. "I think I'm in love with you!"
She sighed, leaned against his shoulder. "Then what's wrong? You're not already married. Mother had your service record checked." Diana smiled impishly. "Mother has second sight."
* * * * *
The bitterness was like a sour taste in Orne's mouth. He could see the pattern so clearly. "Di, I ran away from home when I was seventeen," he said.
"I know, darling. Mother's told me all about you."
"You don't understand," he said. "My father died before I was born. He--"
"It must've been very hard on your mother," she said. "Left all alone with her family ... and a new baby on the way."
"They'd known for a long time," said Orne. "My father had Broach's disease, and they found out too late. It was already in the central nervous system."
"How horrible," whispered Diana.
Orne's mind felt suddenly like a fish out of water. He found himself grasping at a thought that flopped around just out of reach. "Dad was in politics," he whispered. He felt as though he were living in a dream. His voice stayed low, shocked. "From when I first began to talk, Mother started grooming me to take his place in public life."
"And you didn't like politics," said Diana.
"I hated it!" he growled. "First chance, I ran away. One of my sisters married a young fellow who's now the member for Chargon. I hope he enjoys it!"
"That'd be Maddie," said Diana.
"You know her?" asked Orne. Then he remembered what Stetson had told him, and the thought was chilling.
"Of course I know her," said Diana. "Lew, what's wrong with you?"
"You'd expect me to play the same game, you calling the shots," he said. "Shoot for the top, cut and scramble, claw and dig."
"By tomorrow all that may not be necessary," she said.
Orne heard the sudden hiss of the carrier wave in his neck transceiver, but there was no voice from the monitor.
"What's ... happening ... tomorrow?" he asked.
"The election, silly," she said. "Lew, you're acting very strangely. Are you sure you're feeling all right." She put a hand to his forehead. "Perhaps we'd--"
"Just a minute," said Orne. "About us--" He swallowed.
She withdrew her hand. "I think my parents already suspect. We Bullones are notorious love-at-first-sighters." Her overlarge eyes studied him fondly. "You don't feel feverish, but maybe we'd better--"
"What a dope I am!" snarled Orne. "I just realized that I have to be a Nathian, too."
"You just realized?" She stared at him.
There was a hissing gasp in Orne's transceiver.
"The identical patterns in our families," he said. "Even to the houses. And there's the real key. What a dope!" He snapped his fingers. "The head! Polly! Your mother's the grand boss woman, isn't she?"
"But, darling ... of course. She--"
"You'd better take me to her and fast!" snapped Orne. He touched the stud at his neck, but Stetson's voice intruded.
"Great work, Lew! We're moving in a special shock force. Can't take any chances with--"
Orne spoke aloud in panic: "Stet! You get out to the Bullones! And you get there alone! No troops!"
Diana had jumped to her feet, backed away from him.
"What do you mean?" demanded Stetson.
"I'm saving our stupid necks!" barked Orne. "Alone! You hear? Or we'll have a worse mess on our hands than any Rim War!"
There was an extended silence. "You hear me, Stet?" demanded Orne.
"O.K., Lew. We're putting the O-force on standby. I'll be at the Bullones' in ten minutes. ComGO will be with me." Pause. "And you'd better know what you're doing!"
It was an angry group in a corner of the Bullones' main salon. Louvered shades cut the green glare of a noon sun. In the background there was the hum of air-conditioning and the clatter of roboservants preparing for the night's election party. Stetson leaned against the wall beside a divan, hands jammed deeply into the pockets of his wrinkled, patched fatigues. The wagon tracks furrowed his high forehead. Near Stetson, Admiral Sobat Spencer, the I-A's Commander of Galactic Operations, paced the floor. ComGO was a bull-necked bald man with wide blue eyes, a deceptively mild voice. There was a caged animal look to his pacing--three steps out, three steps back.
Polly Bullone sat on the divan. Her mouth was pulled into a straight line. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that the knuckles showed white. Diana stood beside her mother. Her fists were clenched at her sides. She shivered with fury. Her gaze remained fixed, glaring at Orne.
"O.K., so my stupidity set up this little meeting," snarled Orne. He stood about five paces in front of Polly, hands on hips. The admiral, pacing away at his right, was beginning to wear on his nerves. "But you'd better listen to what I have to say." He glanced at the ComGO. "All of you."
Admiral Spencer stopped pacing, glowered at Orne. "I have yet to hear a good reason for not tearing this place apart ... getting to the bottom of this situation."
"You ... traitor, Lewis!" husked Polly.
"I'm inclined to agree with you, Madame," said Spencer. "Only from a different point of view." He glanced at Stetson. "Any word yet on Scottie Bullone?"
"They were going to call me the minute they found him," said Stetson. His voice sounded cautious, brooding.
"You were coming to the party here tonight, weren't you, admiral?" asked Orne.
"What's that have to do with anything?" demanded Spencer.
"Are you prepared to jail your wife and daughters for conspiracy?" asked Orne.
A tight smile played around Polly's lips.
Spencer opened his mouth, closed it soundlessly.
"The Nathians are mostly women," said Orne. "There's evidence that your womenfolk are among them."
The admiral looked like a man who had been kicked in the stomach. "What ... evidence?" he whispered.
"I'll come to that in a moment," said Orne. "Now, note this: the Nathians are mostly women. There were only a few accidents and a few planned males, like me. That's why there were no family names to trace--just a tight little female society, all working to positions of power through their men."
Spencer cleared his throat, swallowed. He seemed powerless to take his attention from Orne's mouth.
"My guess," said Orne, "is that about thirty or forty years ago, the conspirators first began breeding a few males, grooming them for really choice top positions. Other Nathian males--the accidents where sex-control failed--they never learned about the conspiracy. These new ones were full-fledged members. That's what I'd have been if I'd panned out as expected."
Polly glared at him, looked back at her hands.
"That part of the plan was scheduled to come to a head with this election," said Orne. "If they pulled this one off, they could move in more boldly."
"You're in way over your head, boy," growled Polly. "You're too late to do anything about us!"
"We'll see about that!" barked Spencer. He seemed to have regained his self-control. "A little publicity in the right places ... some key arrests and--"
"No," said Orne. "She's right. It's too late for that. It was probably too late a hundred years ago. These dames were too firmly entrenched even then."
* * * * *
Stetson straightened away from the wall, smiled grimly at Orne. He seemed to be understanding a point that the others were missing. Diana still glared at Orne. Polly kept her attention on her hands, the tight smile playing about her lips.
"These women probably control one out of three of the top positions in the League," said Orne. "Maybe more. Think, admiral ... think what would happen if you exposed this thing. There'd be secessions, riots, sub-governments would topple, the central government would be torn by suspicions and battles. What breeds in that atmosphere?" He shook his head. "The Rim War would seem like a picnic!"
"We can't just ignore this!" barked Spencer. He stiffened, glared at Orne.
"We can and we will," said Orne. "No choice."
Polly looked up, studied Orne's face. Diana looked confused.
"Once a Nathian, always a Nathian, eh?" snarled Spencer.
"There's no such thing," said Orne. "Five hundred years' cross-breeding with other races saw to that. There's merely a secret society of astute political scientists." He smiled wryly at Polly, glanced back at Spencer. "Think of your own wife, sir. In all honesty, would you be ComGO today if she hadn't guided your career?"
Spencer's face darkened. He drew in his chin, tried to stare Orne down, failed. Presently, he chuckled wryly.
"Sobie is beginning to come to his senses," said Polly. "You're about through, son."
"Don't underestimate your future son-in-law," said Orne.
"Hah!" barked Diana. "I hate you, Lewis Orne!"
"You'll get over that," said Orne mildly.
"Ohhhhhh!" Diana quivered with fury.
"My major point is this," said Orne. "Government is a dubious glory. You pay for your power and wealth by balancing on the sharp edge of the blade. That great amorphous thing out there--the people--has turned and swallowed many governments. The only way you can stay in power is by giving good government. Otherwise--sooner on later--your turn comes. I can remember my mother making that point. It's one of the things that stuck with me." He frowned. "My objection to politics is the compromises you have to make to get elected!"
Stetson moved out from the wall. "It's pretty clear," he said. Heads turned toward him. "To stay in power, the Nathians had to give us a fairly good government. On the other hand, if we expose them, we give a bunch of political amateurs--every fanatic and power-hungry demagogue in the galaxy--just the weapon they need to sweep them into office."
"After that: chaos," said Orne. "So we let the Nathians continue ... with two minor alterations."
"We alter nothing," said Polly. "It occurs to me, Lewis, that you don't have a leg to stand on. You have me, but you'll get nothing out of me. The rest of the organization can go on without me. You don't dare expose us. We hold the whip hand!"
* * * * *
"The I-A could have ninety per cent of your organization in custody inside of ten days," said Orne.
"You couldn't find them!" snapped Polly.
"How?" asked Stetson.
"Nomads," said Orne. "This house is a glorified tent. Men on the outside, women on the inside. Look for inner courtyard construction. It's instinctive with Nathian blood. Add to that, an inclination for odd musical instruments--the kaithra, the tambour, the oboe--all nomad instruments. Add to that, female dominance of the family--an odd twist on the nomad heritage, but not completely unique. Check for predominance of female offspring. Dig into political background. We'll miss damn few!"
Polly just stared at him, mouth open.
Spencer said: "Things are moving too fast for me. I know just one thing: I'm dedicated to preventing another Rim War. If I have to jail every last one of--"
"An hour after this conspiracy became known, you wouldn't be in a position to jail anyone," said Orne. "The husband of a Nathian! You'd be in jail yourself or more likely dead at the hands of a mob!"
Spencer paled.
"What's your suggestion for compromise?" asked Polly.
"Number one: the I-A gets veto power on any candidate you put up," said Orne. "Number two: you can never hold more than two thirds of the top offices."
"Who in the I-A vetoes our candidates?" asked Polly.
"Admiral Spencer, Stet, myself ... anyone else we deem trustworthy," said Orne.
"You think you're a god or something?" demanded Polly.
"No more than you do," said Orne. "This is what's known as a check and balance system. You cut the pie. We get first choice on which pieces to take."
There was a protracted silence; then Spencer said: "It doesn't seem right just to--"
"No political compromise is ever totally right," said Polly. "You keep patching up things that always have flaws in them. That's how government is." She chuckled, looked up at Orne. "All right, Lewis. We accept." She glanced at Spencer, who shrugged, nodded glumly. Polly looked back at Orne. "Just answer me one question: How'd you know I was boss lady?"
"Easy," said Orne. "The records we found said the ... Nathian (he'd almost said 'traitor') family on Marak was coded as 'The Head.' Your name, Polly, contains the ancient word 'Poll' which means head."
Polly looked at Stetson. "Is he always that sharp?"
"Every time," said Stetson.
"If you want to go into politics, Lewis," said Polly, "I'd be delighted to--"
"I'm already in politics as far as I want to be," growled Orne. "What I really want is to settle down with Di, catch up on some of the living I've missed."
Diana stiffened. "I never want to see, hear from or hear of Mr. Lewis Orne ever again!" she said. "That is final, emphatically final!"
Orne's shoulders drooped. He turned away, stumbled, and abruptly collapsed full length on the thick carpets. There was a collective gasp behind him.
Stetson barked: "Call a doctor! They warned me at the hospital he was still hanging on a thin thread!"
There was the sound of Polly's heavy footsteps running toward the hall.
"Lew!" It was Diana's voice. She dropped to her knees beside him, soft hands fumbling at his neck, his head.
"Turn him over and loosen his collar!" snapped Spencer. "Give him air!"
Gently, they turned Orne onto his back. He looked pale, Diana loosed his collar, buried her face against his neck. "Oh, Lew, I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I didn't mean it! Please, Lew ... please don't die! Please!"
Orne opened his eyes, looked up at Spencer and Stetson. There was the sound of Polly's voice talking rapidly on the phone in the hall. He could feel Diana's cheek warm against his neck, the dampness of her tears. Slowly, deliberately, Orne winked at the two men.
THE END
I'LL KILL YOU TOMORROW
By Helen Huber
It was not a sinister silence. No silence is sinister until it acquires a background of understandable menace. Here there was only the night quiet of Maternity, the silence of noiseless rubber heels on the hospital corridor floor, the faint brush of starched white skirts brushing through doorways into darkened and semi-darkened rooms.
But there was something wrong with the silence in the "basket room" of Maternity, the glass-walled room containing row on row, the tiny hopes of tomorrow. The curtain was drawn across the window through which, during visiting hours, peered the proud fathers who did the hoping. The night-light was dim.
The silence should not have been there.
Lorry Kane, standing in the doorway, looked out over the rows of silent baskets and felt her blonde hair tighten at the roots. The tightening came from instinct, even before her brain had a chance to function, from the instincts and training of a registered nurse.
Thirty-odd babies grouped in one room and--complete silence.
Not a single whimper. Not one tiny cry of protest against the annoying phenomenon of birth.
Thirty babies--dead? That was the thought that flashed, unbidden, into Lorry's pretty head. The absurdity of it followed swiftly, and Lorry moved on rubber soles between a line of baskets. She bent down and explored with practiced fingers.
A warm, living bundle in a white basket.
The feeling of relief was genuine. Relief, even from an absurdity, is a welcome thing. Lorry smiled and bent closer.
Staring up at Lorry from the basket were two clear blue eyes. Two eyes, steady and fixed in a round baby face. An immobile, pink baby face housing two blue eyes that stared up into Lorry's with a quiet concentration that was chilling.
Lorry said, "What's the matter with you?" She spoke in a whisper and was addressing herself. She'd gone short on sleep lately--the only way, really, to get a few hours with Pete. Pete was an interne at General Hospital, and the kind of a homely grinning carrot-top a girl like Lorry could put into dreams as the center of a satisfactory future.
But all this didn't justify a case of jitters in the "basket room."
Lorry said. "Hi, short stuff," and lifted Baby Newcomb--Male, out of his crib for a cuddling.
Baby Newcomb didn't object. The blue eyes came closer. The week-old eyes with the hundred-year-old look. Lorry laid the bundle over her shoulder and smiled into the dimness.
"You want to be president, Shorty?" Lorry felt the warmth of a new life, felt the little body wriggle in snug contentment. "I wouldn't advise it. Tough job." Baby Newcomb twisted in his blanket. Lorry stiffened.
Snug contentment?
Lorry felt two tiny hands clutch and dig into her throat. Not just pawing baby hands. Little fingers that reached and explored for the windpipe.
She uncuddled the soft bundle, held it out. There were the eyes. She chilled. No imagination here. No spectre from lack of sleep.
Ancient murder-hatred glowing in new-born eyes.
* * * * *
"Careful, you fool! You'll drop this body." A thin piping voice. A shrill symphony in malevolence.
Fear weakened Lorry. She found a chair and sat down. She held the boy baby in her hands. Training would not allow her to drop Baby Newcomb. Even if she had fainted, she would not have let go.
* * * * *
The shrill voice: "It was stupid of me. Very stupid."
Lorry was cold, sick, mute.
"Very stupid. These hands are too fragile. There are no muscles in the arms. I couldn't have killed you."
"Please--I ..."
"Dreaming? No. I'm surprised at--well, at your surprise. You have a trained mind. You should have learned, long ago, to trust your senses."
"I don't understand."
"Don't look at the doorway. Nobody's coming in. Look at me. Give me a little attention and I'll explain."
"Explain?" Lorry pulled her eyes down to the cherubic little face as she parroted dully.
"I'll begin by reminding you that there are more things in existence than your obscene medical books tell you about."
"Who are you? What are you?"
"One of those things."
"You're not a baby!"
"Of course not. I'm ..." The beastly, brittle voice drifted into silence as though halted by an intruding thought. Then the thought voiced--voiced with a yearning at once pathetic and terrible: "It would be nice to kill you. Someday I will. Someday I'll kill you if I can find you."
"Why? Why?" Insane words in an insane world. But life had not stopped even though madness had taken over. "Why?"
The voice was matter-of-fact again. No more time for pleasant daydreams. "I'm something your books didn't tell you about. Naturally you're bewildered. Did you ever hear of a bodyless entity?"
Lorry shuddered in silence.
"You've heard of bodyless entities, of course--but you denied their existence in your smug world of precise tidy detail. I'm a bodyless entity. I'm one of a swarm. We come from a dimension your mind wouldn't accept even if I explained it, so I'll save words. We of the swarm seek unfoldment--fulfillment--even as you in your stupid, blind world. Do you want to hear more?"
"I ..."
"You're a fool, but I enjoy practicing with these new vocal chords, just as I enjoyed flexing the fingers and muscles. That's why I revealed myself. We are, basically of course, parasites. In the dimension where we exist in profusion, evolution has provided for us. There, we seek out and move into a dimensional entity far more intelligent than yourself. We destroy it in a way you wouldn't understand, and it is not important that you should. In fact, I can't see what importance there is in your existing at all."
"You plan to--kill all these babies?"
"Let me congratulate you. You've finally managed to voice an intelligent question. The answer is, no. We aren't strong enough to kill them. We dwelt in a far more delicate dimension than this one and all was in proportion. That was our difficulty when we came here. We could find no entities weak enough to take possession of until we came upon this roomful of infants."
"Then, if you're helpless ..."
"What do we plan to do? That's quite simple. These material entities will grow. We will remain attached--ingrained, so to speak. When the bodies enlarge sufficiently ..."
"Thirty potential assassins...." Lorry spoke again to herself, then hurled the words back into her own mind as her sickness deepened.
The shrill chirping: "What do you mean, potential? The word expresses a doubt. Here there is none." The entity's chuckle sounded like a baby, content over a full bottle. "Thirty certain assassins."
"But why must you kill?"
Lorry was sure the tiny shoulders shrugged. "Why? I don't know. I never thought to wonder. Why must you join with a man and propagate some day? Why do you feel sorry for what you term an unfortunate? Explain your instincts and I'll explain mine."
Lorry felt herself rising. Stiffly, she put Baby Newcomb back into his basket. As she did so, a ripple of shrill, jerky laughter crackled through the room. Lorry put her hands to her ears. "You know I can't say anything. You'd keep quiet. They'd call me mad."
"Precisely."
Malicious laughter, like driven sleet, cut into her ears as she fled from the room.
* * * * *
Peter Larchmont, M.D., was smoking a quick cigarette by an open fire-escape door on the third floor. He turned as Lorry came down the corridor, flipped his cigarette down into the alley and grinned. "Women shouldn't float on rubber heels," he said. "A man should have warning."
Lorry came close. "Kiss me. Kiss me--hard."
Pete kissed her, then held her away. "You're trembling. Anticipation, pet?" He looked into her face and the grin faded. "Lorry, what is it?"
"Pete--Pete. I'm crazy. I've gone mad. Hold me."
He could have laughed, but he had looked closely into her eyes and he was a doctor. He didn't laugh. "Tell me. Just stand here. I'll hang onto you and you tell me."
"The babies--they've gone mad." She clung to him. "Not exactly that. Something's taken them over. Something terrible. Oh, Pete! Nobody would believe me."
"I believe the end result," he said, quietly. "That's what I'm for, angel. When you shake like this I'll always believe. But I'll have to know more. And I'll hunt for an answer."
"There isn't any answer, Pete. I know."
"We'll still look. Tell me more, first."
"There isn't any more." Her eyes widened as she stared into his with the shock of a new thought. "Oh, Lord! One of them talked to me, but maybe he--or it--won't talk to you. Then you'll never know for sure! You'll think I'm ..."
"Stop it. Quit predicting what I'll do. Let's go to the nursery."
They went to the nursery and stayed there for three-quarters of an hour. They left with the tinny laughter filling their minds--and the last words of the monstrous entity.
"We'll say no more, of course. Perhaps even this incident has been indiscreet. But it's in the form of a celebration. Never before has a whole swarm gotten through. Only a single entity on rare occasions."
Pete leaned against the corridor wall and wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket. "We're the only ones who know," he said.
"Or ever will know." Lorry pushed back a lock of his curly hair. She wanted to kiss him, but this didn't seem to be the place or the time.
"We can never tell anyone."
"We'd look foolish."
"We've got a horror on our hands and we can't pass it on."
"What are we going to do?" Lorry asked.
"I don't know. Let's recap a little. Got a cigarette?"
They went to the fire door and dragged long and deep on two from Lorry's pack. "They'll be quiet from now on. No more talking--just baby squalls."
"And thirty little assassins will go into thirty homes," Lorry said. "All dressed in soft pink and blue, all filled with hatred. Waiting, biding their time, growing more clever." She shuddered.
"The electric chair will get them all, eventually."
"But how many will they get in the meantime?"
Pete put his arms around her and drew her close and whispered into her ear. "There's nothing we can do--nothing."
"We've got to do something." Lorry heard again the thin, brittle laughter following her, taunting her.
"It was a bad dream. It didn't happen. We'll just have to sleep it off."
She put her cheek against his. The rising stubble of his beard scratched her face. She was grateful for the rough touch of solid reality.
Pete said, "The shock will wear out of our minds. Time will pass. After a while, we won't believe it ourselves."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
"It's got to be that way."
"We've got to do something."
Pete lowered his arm wearily. "Yeah--we've got to do something. Where there's nothing that can be done. What are we--miracle workers?"
"We've got to do something."
"Sure--finish out the watch and then get some sleep."
* * * * *
Lorry awoke with the lowering sun in her window. It was a blood red sun. She picked up the phone by her bedside. "Room 307 Resident's extension."
Pete answered drowsily. Lorry said, "Tell me--did I dream, or did it really happen."
"I was going to ask you the same thing. I guess it happened. What are you doing?"
"Lying in bed."
"So am I. But two different beds. Things are done all wrong."
"Want to take a chance and sneak over? I've got an illegal coffee pot."
"Leave the door unlocked."
Lorry put on the coffee. She showered and got into her slip. She was brushing her hair when Pete came in. He looked at her and extended beckoning, clutching fingers. "The hell with phantoms. Come here."
After a couple of minutes, Lorry pulled away and poured the coffee. She reached for her uniform. Pete said, "Don't put it on yet."
"Too dangerous--leaving it off."
He eyed her dreamily. "I'll dredge up will power. I'll also get scads of fat rich clients. Then we'll get married so I can assault you legally."
Lorry studied him. "You're not even listening to yourself. What is it, Pete? What have you dreamed up?"
"Okay. I've got an idea. You said something would have to be done."
"What?"
"A drastic cure for a drastic case. With maybe disaster as the end product."
"Tell me."
"I'll tell you a little, but not too much."
"Why not all?"
"Because if we ever land in court. I want you to be able to say under oath, 'He didn't tell me what he planned to do.'"
"I don't like that."
"I don't care if you like it or not. Tell me, what's the one basic thing that stands out in your mind about these--entities?"
"That they're ..."
"Fragile?"
"Yes--fragile."
"Give me some more coffee."
* * * * *
Lorry demanded to know what was in Pete's mind. All she got was kissed, and she did not see Pete again until eleven o'clock that night. He found her in the corridor in Maternity and motioned her toward the nursery. He carried a tray under a white towel. He said, "You watch the door. I'm going inside. I'll be about a half an hour."
"What are you going to do?"
"You stay out here and mind your business. Your business will be to steer any nosey party away. If you can't, make noise coming in."
Doc Pete turned away and entered the nursery. Lorry stood at the doorway, in the silence, under the brooding night-light, and prayed.
Twenty-five minutes later, Pete came out. His face was white and drawn. He looked like a man who had lately had a preview of Hell's inverted pleasures. His hands trembled. The towel still covered the tray. He said, "Watch them close. Don't move ten steps from here." He started away--turned back. "All hell is scheduled to break loose in this hospital shortly. Let's hope God remains in charge."
Lorry saw the sick dread of his heart underneath his words.
* * * * *
It could have been a major scandal. An epidemic of measles on the maternity floor of a modern hospital indicates the unforgivable medical sin--carelessness. It was hushed up as much as possible, pending the time when the top people could shake off the shock and recover their wits. The ultimate recovery of thirty babies was a tribute to everyone concerned.
Wan, done-in, Doc Pete drank coffee in Lorry's room. Lorry gave him three lumps of sugar and said, "But are you sure the sickness killed the entities?"
"Quite sure. Somehow they knew when I made the injections. They screamed. They knew they were done for."
"It took courage. Tell me: why are you so strong, so brave? Why are you so wonderful?"
"Cut it out. I was scared stiff. If one baby had died, I'd have gone through life weighing the cure against the end. It isn't easy to risk doing murder--however urgent the need."
She leaned across and kissed him. "And you were all alone. You wouldn't let me help. Was that fair?"
He grinned, then sobered. "But I can't help remembering what that--that invisible monster said: 'Never before has a whole swarm gotten through. Only a single entity on rare occasions.'
"I can't help wondering what happens to those single entities. I think of the newspaper headlines I've seen: Child Kills Parents in Sleep. Youth Slays Father. I'll probably always wonder--and I'll always remember...."
Lorry got up and crossed to him and put her arms around him. "Not always," she whispered. "There will be times when I'll make you forget. For a little while, anyhow."
THE END
THE LONG VOYAGE
By Carl Jacobi
The secret lay hidden at the end of nine landings, and Medusa-dark was one man's search for it--in the strangest journey ever made.
A soft gentle rain began to fall as we emerged from the dark woods and came out onto the shore. There it was, the sea, stretching as far as the eye could reach, gray and sullen, and flecked with green-white froth. The blue hensorr trees, crowding close to the water's edge, were bent backward as if frightened by the bleakness before them. The sand, visible under the clear patches of water, was a bleached white like the exposed surface of a huge bone.
We stood there a moment in silence. Then Mason cleared his throat huskily.
"Well, here goes," he said. "We'll soon see if we have any friends about."
He unslung the packsack from his shoulders, removed its protective outer shield and began to assemble the organic surveyor, an egg-shaped ball of white carponium secured to a segmented forty-foot rod. While Brandt and I raised the rod with the aid of an electric fulcrum, Mason carefully placed his control cabinet on a piece of outcropping rock and made a last adjustment.
The moment had come. Even above the sound of the sea, you could hear the strained breathing of the men. Only Navigator Norris appeared unconcerned. He stood there calmly smoking his pipe, his keen blue eyes squinting against the biting wind.
Mason switched on the speaker. Its high-frequency scream rose deafeningly above us and was torn away in unsteady gusts. He began to turn its center dial, at first a quarter circle, and then all the way to the final backstop of the calibration. All that resulted was a continuation of that mournful ululation like a wail out of eternity.
Mason tried again. With stiff wrists he tuned while perspiration stood out on his forehead, and the rest of us crowded close.
"It's no use," he said. "This pickup failure proves there isn't a vestige of animal life on Stragella--on this hemisphere of the planet, at least."
Navigator Norris took his pipe from his mouth and nodded. His face was expressionless. There was no indication in the man's voice that he had suffered another great disappointment, his sixth in less than a year.
"We'll go back now," he said, "and we'll try again. There must be some planet in this system that's inhabited. But it's going to be hard to tell the women."
Mason let the surveyor rod down with a crash. I could see the anger and resentment that was gathering in his eyes. Mason was the youngest of our party and the leader of the antagonistic group that was slowly but steadily undermining the authority of the Navigator.
This was our seventh exploratory trip after our sixth landing since entering the field of the sun Ponthis. Ponthis with its sixteen equal-sized planets, each with a single satellite. First there had been Coulora; then in swift succession, Jama, Tenethon, Mokrell, and R-9. And now Stragella. Strange names of strange worlds, revolving about a strange star.
It was Navigator Norris who told us the names of these planets and traced their positions on a chart for us. He alone of our group was familiar with astrogation and cosmography. He alone had sailed the spaceways in the days before the automatic pilots were installed and locked and sealed on every ship.
A handsome man in his fortieth year, he stood six feet three with broad shoulders and a powerful frame. His eyes were the eyes of a scholar, dreamy yet alive with depth and penetration. I had never seen him lose his temper, and he governed our company with an iron hand.
He was not perfect, of course. Like all Earthmen, he had his faults. Months before he had joined with that famed Martian scientist, Ganeth-Klae, to invent that all-use material, Indurate, the formula for which had been stolen and which therefore had never appeared on the commercial market. Norris would talk about that for hours. If you inadvertently started him on the subject a queer glint would enter his eyes, and he would dig around in his pocket for a chunk of the black substance.
"Did I ever show you a piece of this?" he would say. "Look at it carefully. Notice the smooth grainless texture--hard and yet not brittle. You wouldn't think that it was formed in a gaseous state, then changed to a liquid and finally to a clay-like material that could be worked with ease. A thousand years after your body has returned to dust, that piece of Indurate will still exist, unchanged, unworn. Erosion will have little effect upon it. Beside it granite, steel are nothing. If only I had the formula ..."
But he had only half the formula, the half he himself had developed. The other part was locked in the brain of Ganeth-Klae, and Ganeth-Klae had disappeared. What had become of him was a mystery. Norris perhaps had felt the loss more than any one, and he had offered the major part of his savings as a reward for information leading to the scientist's whereabouts.
Our party--eighteen couples and Navigator Norris--had gathered together and subsequently left Earth in answer to a curious advertisement that had appeared in the Sunday edition of the London Times.
WANTED: A group of married men and women, young, courageous, educated, tired of political and social restrictions, interested in extra-terrestrial colonization. Financial resources no qualification.
After we had been weeded out, interviewed and rigorously questioned, Norris had taken us into the hangar, waved a hand toward the Marie Galante and explained the details.
The Marie Galante was a cruiser-type ship, stripped down to essentials to maintain speed, but equipped with the latest of everything. For a short run to Venus, for which it was originally built, it would accommodate a passenger list of ninety.
But Norris wasn't interested in that kind of run. He had knocked out bulkheads, reconverted music room and ballroom into living quarters. He had closed and sealed all observation ports, so that only in the bridge cuddy could one see into space.
"We shall travel beyond the orbit of the sun," he said. "There will be no turning back; for the search for a new world, a new life, is not a task for cowards."
Aside to me, he said: "You're to be the physician of this party, Bagley. So I'm going to tell you what to expect when we take off. We're going to have some mighty sick passengers aboard then."
"What do you mean, sir?" I said.
He pointed with his pipe toward the stern of the vessel. "See that ... well, call it a booster. Ganeth-Klae designed it just before he disappeared, using the last lot of Indurate in existence. It will increase our take-off speed by five times, and it will probably have a bad effect on the passengers."
So we had left Earth, at night from a field out in Essex. Without orders, without clearance papers, without an automatic pilot check. Eighteen couples and one navigator--destination unknown. If the Interstellar Council had known what Norris was up to, it would have been a case for the Space-Time Commission.
Of that long initial lap of our voyage, perhaps the less said the better. As always is the case when monotony begins to wear away the veneer of civilization, character quirks came to the surface, cliques formed among the passengers, and gossip and personalities became matters of pre-eminent importance.
Rising to the foreground out of our thirty-six, came Fielding Mason, tall, taciturn, and handsome, with a keen intellect and a sense of values remarkable in so young a man. Mason was a graduate of Montape, the French outgrowth of St. Cyr. But he had majored in military tactics, psychology and sociology and knew nothing at all about astrogation or even elemental astronomy. He too was a man of good breeding and refinement. Nevertheless conflict began to develop between him and Navigator Norris. That conflict began the day we landed on Coulora.
Norris stepped out of the air lock into the cold thin air, glanced briefly about him and faced the eighteen men assembled.
"We'll divide into three groups," he said. "Each group to carry an organic surveyor and take a different direction. Each group will so regulate its marching as to be back here without fail an hour before darkness sets in. If you find no sign of animal life, then we will take off again immediately on your return."
Mason paused halfway in the act of strapping on his packsack.
"What's that got to do with it?" he demanded. "There's vegetation here. That's all that seems to be necessary."
Norris lit his pipe. "If you find no sign of animal life we will take off immediately on your return," he said as if he hadn't heard.
But the strangeness of Coulora tempered bad feelings then. The blue hensorr trees were actually not trees at all but a huge cat-tail-like growth, the stalks of which were quite transparent. In between the stalks grew curious cabbage-like plants that changed from red to yellow as an intruder approached and back to red again after he had passed. Rock outcroppings were everywhere, but all were eroded and in places polished smooth as glass.
There was a strange kind of dust that acted as though endowed with life. It quivered when trod upon, and the outline of our footsteps slowly rose into the air, so that looking back I could see our trail floating behind us in irregular layers.
Above us the star that was this planet's sun shown bright but faintly red as if it were in the first stages of dying. The air though thin was fit to breathe, and we found it unnecessary to wear space suits. We marched down the corridors of hensorr trees, until we came to an open spot, a kind of glade. And that was the first time Mason tuned his organic surveyor and received absolutely nothing.
There was no animal life on Coulora!
* * * * *
Within an hour we had blasted off again. The forward-impact delivered by the Ganeth-Klae booster was terrific, and nausea and vertigo struck us all simultaneously. But again, with all ports and observation shields sealed shut, Norris held the secret of our destination.
On July twenty-second, the ship gave that sickening lurch and came once again to a standstill.
"Same procedure as before," Norris said, stepping out of the airlock. "Those of you who desire to have their wives accompany you may do so. Mason, you'll make a final correlation on the organic surveyors. If there is no trace of animal life return here before dark."
Once our group was out of sight of the ship, Mason threw down his packsack, sat down on a boulder and lighted a cigarette.
"Bagley," he said to me, "has the Old Man gone loco?"
"I think not," I said, frowning. "He's one of the most evenly balanced persons I know."
"Then he's hiding something," Mason said. "Why else should he be so concerned with finding animal life?"
"You know the answer to that," I said. "We're here to colonize, to start a new life. We can't very well do that on a desert."
"That's poppycock," Mason replied, flinging away his cigarette. "When the Albertson expedition first landed on Mars, there was no animal life on the red planet. Now look at it. Same thing was true when Breslauer first settled Pluto. The colonies there got along. I tell you Norris has got something up his sleeve, and I don't like it."
Later, after Mason had taken his negative surveyor reading, the flame of trouble reached the end of its fuse!
Norris had given orders to return to the Marie Galante, and the rest of us were sullenly making ready to start the back trail. Mason, however, deliberately seized his pick and began chopping a hole in the rock surface, preparatory apparently to erecting his plastic tent.
"We'll make temporary camp here," he said calmly. "Brandt, you can go back to the ship and bring back the rest of the women." He turned and smiled sardonically at Navigator Norris.
Norris quietly knocked the ashes from his pipe and placed it in his pocket. He strode forward, took the pick from Mason's hands and flung it away. Then he seized Mason by the coat, whipped him around and drove his fist hard against the younger man's jaw.
"When you signed on for this voyage, you agreed to obey my orders," he said, not raising his voice. "You'll do just that."
Mason picked himself up, and there was an ugly glint in his eyes. He could have smashed Norris to a pulp, and none knew it better than the Navigator. For a brief instant the younger man swayed there on the balls of his feet, fists clenched. Then he let his hands drop, walked over and began to put on his packsack.
But I had seen Mason's face, and I knew he had not given in as easily as it appeared. Meanwhile he began to circulate among the passengers, making no offers, yet subtly enlisting backers for a policy, the significance of which grew on me slowly. It was mutiny he was plotting! And with his personal charm and magnetism he had little trouble in winning over converts. I came upon him arguing before a group of the women one day, among them his own wife, Estelle. He was standing close to her.
"We have clothing and equipment and food concentrate," Mason said. "Enough to last two generations. We have brains and intelligence, and we certainly should be able to establish ourselves without the aid of other vertebrate forms of life.
"Coulora, Jama, Tenethon, Mokrell, R-9, and Stragella. We could have settled on any one of those planets, and apparently we should have, for conditions have grown steadily worse at each landing. But always the answer is no. Why? Because Norris says we must go on until we find animal life."
He cleared his throat and gazed at the feminine faces before him. "Go where? What makes Norris so sure he'll find life on any planet in this system? And incidentally where in the cosmos is this system?"
One of the women, a tall blonde, stirred uneasily. "What do you mean?" she said.
"I mean we don't know if our last landing was on Stragella or Coulora. I mean we don't know where we are or where we're going, and I don't think Norris does either. We're lost!"
That was in August. By the last of September we had landed on two more planets, to which Norris gave the simple names of R-12 and R-14. Each had crude forms of vegetable life, represented principally by the blue hensorr trees, but in neither case did the organic surveyor reveal the slightest traces of animal life.
There was, however, a considerable difference in physical appearance between R-12 and R-14, and for a time that fact excited Norris tremendously. Up to then, each successive planet, although similar in size, had exhibited signs of greater age than its predecessor. But on R-12 there were definite manifestations of younger geologic development.
Several pieces of shale lay exposed under a fold of igneous rock. Two of those pieces contained fossils of highly developed ganoids, similar to those found on Venus. They were perfectly preserved.
It meant that animal life had existed on R-12, even if it didn't now. It meant that R-12, though a much older planet than Earth, was still younger than Stragella or the rest.
For a while Norris was almost beside himself. He cut out rock samples and carried them back to the ship. He personally supervised the tuning of the surveyors. And when he finally gave orders to take off, he was almost friendly to Mason, whereas before his attitude toward him had been one of cold aloofness.
But when we reached R-14, our eighth landing, all that passed. For R-14 was old again, older than any of the others.
And then, on October sixteenth, Mason opened the door of the locked cabin. It happened quite by accident. One of the arelium-thaxide conduits broke in the Marie Galante's central passageway, and the resulting explosion grounded the central feed line of the instrument equipment. In a trice the passageway was a sheet of flame, rapidly filling with smoke from burning insulation.
Norris, of course, was in the bridge cuddy with locked doors between us and him, and now with the wiring burned through there was no way of signalling him he was wanted for an emergency. In his absence Mason took command.
That passageway ran the full length of the ship. Midway down it was the door leading to the women's lounge. The explosion had jammed that door shut, and smoke was pouring forth from under the sill. All at once one of the women rushed forward to announce hysterically that Mason's wife, Estelle, was in the lounge.
Adjoining the lounge was a small cabin which since the beginning of our voyage had remained locked. Norris had given strict orders that that cabin was not to be disturbed. We all had taken it as a matter of course that it contained various kinds of precision instruments.
Now, however, Mason realized that the only way into the lounge was by way of that locked cabin. If he used a heat blaster on the lounge door there was no telling what would happen to the woman inside.
He ripped the emergency blaster from its wall mounting, pressed it to the magnetic latch of the sealed cabin door and pressed the stud. An instant later he was leading his frightened wife, Estelle, out through the smoke.
The fire was quickly extinguished after that and the wiring spliced. Then when the others had drifted off, Mason called Brandt and me aside.
"We've been wondering for a long time what happened to Ganeth-Klae, the Martian inventor who worked with Norris to invent Indurate," he said very quietly. "Well, we don't need to wonder any more. He's in there."
Brandt and I stepped forward over the sill--and drew up short. Ganeth-Klae was there all right, but he would never trouble himself about making a voyage in a locked cabin. His rigid body was encased in a transparent block of amber-colored solidifex, the after-death preservative used by all Martians.
Both of us recognized his still features at once, and in addition his name-tattoo, required by Martian law, was clearly visible on his left forearm.
* * * * *
For a brief instant the discovery stunned us. Klae dead? Klae whose IQ had become a measuring guide for the entire system, whose Martian head held more ordinary horse sense, in addition to radical postulations on theoretical physics, than anyone on the planets. It wasn't possible.
And what was the significance of his body on Norris' ship? Why had Norris kept its presence a secret and why had he given out the story of Klae's disappearance?
Mason's face was cold as ice. "Come with me, you two," he said. "We're going to get the answer to this right now."
We went along the passage to the circular staircase. We climbed the steps, passed through the scuttle and came to the door of the bridge cuddy. Mason drew the bar and we passed in. Norris was bent over the chart table. He looked up sharply at the sound of our steps.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion?" he said.
It didn't take Mason long to explain. When he had finished, he stood there, jaw set, eyes smouldering.
Norris paled. Then quickly he got control of himself, and his old bland smile returned.
"I expected you to blunder into Klae's body one of these days," he said. "The explanation is quite simple. Klae had been ill for many months, and he knew his time was up. His one desire in life was to go on this expedition with me, and he made me promise to bury him at the site of our new colony. The pact was between him and me, and I've followed it to the letter, telling no one."
Mason's lips curled in a sneer. "And just what makes you think we're going to believe that story?" he demanded.
Norris lit a cigar. "It's entirely immaterial to me whether you believe it or not."
But the story was believed, especially by the women, to whom the romantic angle appealed and Mason's embryonic mutiny died without being born, and the Marie Galante sailed on through uncharted space toward her ninth and last landing.
As the days dragged by and no word came from the bridge cuddy, restlessness began to grow amongst us. Rumor succeeded rumor, each story wilder and more incredible than the rest. Then just as the tension had mounted to fever pitch, there came the sickening lurch and grinding vibration of another landing.
Norris dispensed with his usual talk before marching out from the ship. After testing the atmosphere with the ozonometer, he passed out the heat pistols and distributed the various instruments for computing radioactivity and cosmic radiation.
"This is the planet Nizar," he said shortly. "Largest in the field of the sun Ponthis. You will make your survey as one group this time. I will remain here."
He stood watching us as we marched off down the cliff side. Then the blue hensorr trees rose up to swallow him from view. Mason swung along at the head of our column, eyes bright, a figure of aggressive action. We had gone but a hundred yards when it became apparent that, as a planet, Nizar was entirely different from its predecessors. There was considerable top soil, and here grew a tall reed-shaped plant that gave off varying chords of sound when the wind blew.
It was as if we were progressing through the nave of a mighty church with a muted organ in the distance. There was animal life too, a strange lizard-like bird that rose up in flocks ahead of us and flew screaming overhead.
"I don't exactly like it, Bagley," he said. "There's something unwholesome about this planet. The evolution is obviously in an early state of development, but I get the impression that it has gone backward; that the planet is really old and has reverted to its earlier life."
Above us the sky was heavily overcast, and a tenuous white mist rising up from the hensorr trees formed curious shapes and designs. In the distance I could hear the swashing of waves on a beach.
Suddenly Mason stopped. "Look!" he said.
Below us stretched the shore of a great sea. But it was the structure rising up from that shore that drew a sharp exclamation from me. Shaped in a rough ellipse, yet mounted high toward a common point, was a large building of multiple hues and colors. The upper portion was eroded to crumbling ruins, the lower part studded with many bas-reliefs and triangular doorways.
"Let's go," Mason said, breaking out into a fast loping run.
The building was farther away than we had thought, but when we finally came up to it, we saw that it was even more of a ruin than it had at first appeared. It was only a shell with but two walls standing, alone and forlorn. Whatever race had lived here, they had come and gone.
We prowled about the ruins for more than an hour. The carvings on the walls were in the form of geometric designs and cabalistic symbols, giving no clue to the city's former occupants' identity.
And then Mason found the stairs leading to the lower crypts. He switched on his ato-flash and led the way down cautiously. Level one ... level two ... three ... we descended lower and lower. Here water from the nearby sea oozed in little rivulets that glittered in the light of the flash.
We emerged at length on a wide underground plaisance, a kind of amphitheater, with tier on tier of seats surrounding it and extending back into the shadows.
"Judging from what we've seen," Mason said, "I would say that the race that built this place had reached approximately a grade C-5 of civilization, according to the Mokart scale. This apparently was their council chamber."
"What are those rectangular stone blocks depending from the ceiling?" I said.
Mason turned the light beam upward. "I don't know," he said. "But my guess is that they are burial vaults. Perhaps the creatures were ornithoid."
Away from the flash the floor of the plaisance appeared to be a great mirror that caught our reflections and distorted them fantastically and horribly. We saw then that it was a form of living mold, composed of millions of tiny plants, each with an eye-like iris at its center. Those eyes seemed to be watching us, and as we strode forward, a great sigh rose up, as if in resentment at our intrusion.
There was a small triangular dais in the center of the chamber, and in the middle of it stood an irregular black object. As we drew nearer, I saw that it had been carved roughly in the shape of this central building and that it was in a perfect state of preservation.
Mason walked around this carving several times, examining it curiously.
"Odd," he said. "It looks to be an object of religious veneration, but I never heard before of a race worshipping a replica of their own living quarters."
Suddenly his voice died off. He bent closer to the black stone, studying it in the light of the powerful ato-flash. He got a small magnifying glass out of his pocket and focused it on one of the miniature bas-reliefs midway toward the top of the stone. Unfastening his geologic hammer from his belt, he managed, with a sharp, swinging blow, to break off a small protruding piece.
He drew in his breath sharply, and I saw his face go pale. I stared at him in alarm.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
He motioned that I follow and led the way silently past the others toward the stair shaft. Climbing to the top level was a heart-pounding task, but Mason almost ran up those steps. At the surface he leaned against a pillar, his lips quivering spasmodically.
"Tell me I'm sane, Bagley," he said huskily. "Or rather, don't say anything until we've seen Norris. Come on. We've got to see Norris."
* * * * *
All the way back to the Marie Galante, I sought to soothe him, but he was a man possessed. He rushed up the ship's gangway, burst into central quarters and drew up before Navigator Norris like a runner stopping at the tape.
"You damned lying hypocrite!" he yelled.
Norris looked at him in his quiet way. "Take it easy, Mason," he said. "Sit down and explain yourself."
But Mason didn't sit down. He thrust his hand in his pocket, pulled out the piece of black stone he had chipped off the image in the cavern and handed it to Norris.
"Take a look at that!" he demanded.
Norris took the stone, glanced at it and laid it down on his desk. His face was emotionless. "I expected this sooner or later," he said. "Yes, it's Indurate all right. Is that what you want me to say?"
There was a dangerous fanatical glint in Mason's eyes now. With a sudden quick motion he pulled out his heat pistol.
"So you tricked us!" he snarled. "Why? I want to know why."
I stepped forward and seized Mason's gun hand. "Don't be a fool," I said. "It can't be that important."
Mason threw back his head and burst into an hysterical peal of laughter. "Important!" he cried. "Tell him how important it is, Norris. Tell him."
Quietly the Navigator filled and lighted his pipe. "I'm afraid Mason is right," he said. "I did trick you. Not purposely, however. And in the beginning I had no intention of telling anything but the truth. Actually we're here because of a dead man's vengeance."
Norris took his pipe from his lips and stared at it absently.
"You'll remember that Ganeth-Klae, the Martian, and I worked together to invent Indurate. But whereas I was interested in the commercial aspects of that product, Klae was absorbed only in the experimental angle of it. He had some crazy idea that it should not be given to the general public at once, but rather should be allocated for the first few years to a select group of scientific organizations. You see, Indurate was such a departure from all known materials that Ganeth-Klae feared it would be utilized for military purposes.
"I took him for a dreamer and a fool. Actually he was neither. How was I to know that his keen penetrating brain had seen through my motive to get control of all commercial marketing of Indurate? I had laid my plans carefully, and I had expected to reap a nice harvest. Klae must have been aware of my innermost thoughts, but Martian-like he said nothing."
Norris paused to wet his lips and lean against the desk. "I didn't kill Ganeth-Klae," he continued, "though I suppose in a court of law I would be judged responsible for his death. The manufacture of Indurate required some ticklish work. As you know, we produced our halves of the formula separately. Physical contact with my half over a long period of time would prove fatal, I knew, and I simply neglected to so inform Ganeth-Klae.
"But his ultimate death was a boomerang. With Klae gone, I could find no trace of his half of the formula. I was almost beside myself for a time. Then I thought of something. Klae had once said that the secret of his half of the formula lay in himself. A vague statement, to say the least. But I took the words at their face value and gambled that he meant them literally; that is, that his body itself contained the formula.
"I tried everything: X-ray, chemical analysis of the skin. I even removed the cranial cap and examined the brain microscopically. All without result. Meanwhile the police were beginning to direct their suspicions toward me in the matter of Klae's disappearance.
"You know the rest. It was necessary that I leave Earth at once and go beyond our system, beyond the jurisdiction of the planetary police. So I arranged this voyage with a sufficient complement of passengers to lessen the danger and hardship of a new life on a new world. I was still positive, however, that Klae's secret lay in his dead body. I took that body along, encased in the Martian preservative, solidifex.
"It was my idea that I could continue my examination once we were safe on a strange planet But I had reckoned without Ganeth-Klae."
"What do you mean?" I said slowly.
"I said Klae was no fool. But I didn't know that with Martian stoicism he suspected the worst and took his own ironic means of combating it. He used the last lot of Indurate to make that booster, a device which he said would increase our take-off speed. He mounted it on the Marie Galante.
"Mason, that device was no booster. It was a time machine, so devised as to catapult the ship not into outer space, but into the space-time continuum. It was a mechanism designed to throw the Marie Galante forward into the future."
A cloud of fear began to well over me. "What do you mean?" I said again.
Navigator Norris paced around his desk. "I mean that the Marie Galante has not once left Earth, has not in fact left the spot of its moorings but has merely gone forward in time. I mean that the nine 'landings' we made were not stops on some other planets but halting stages of a journey into the future."
Had a bombshell burst over my head the effect could have been no greater. Cold perspiration began to ooze out on my forehead. In a flash I saw the significance of the entire situation. That was why Norris had been so insistent that we always return to the ship before dark. He didn't want us to see the night sky and the constellations there for fear we would guess the truth. That was why he had never permitted any of us in the bridge cuddy and why he had kept all ports and observation shields closed.
"But the names of the planets ... Coulora, Stragella, and the others and their positions on the chart...?" I objected.
Norris smiled grimly. "All words created out of my imagination. Like the rest of you, I knew nothing of the true action of the booster. It was only gradually that truth dawned on me. But by the time we had made our first 'landing' I had guessed. That was why I demanded we always take organic surveyor readings. I knew we had traveled far into future time, far beyond the life period of man on Earth. But I wasn't sure how far we had gone, and I lived with the hope that Klae's booster might reverse itself and start carrying us backwards down the centuries."
For a long time I stood there in silence, a thousand mad speculations racing through my mind.
"How about that piece of Indurate?" I said at length. "It was chipped off an image in the ruins of a great building a mile or so from here."
"An image?" repeated Norris. A faint glow of interest slowly rose in his eyes. Then it died. "I don't know," he said. "It would seem to presuppose that the formula, both parts of it, was known by Klae and that he left it for posterity to discover."
All this time Mason had been standing there, eyes smouldering, lips an ugly line. Now abruptly he took a step forward.
"I've wanted to return this for a long time," he said.
He doubled back his arm and brought his fist smashing onto Norris' jaw. The Navigator's head snapped backward; he gave a low groan and slumped to the floor.
And that is where, by all logic, this tale should end. But, as you may have guessed, there is an anticlimax--what story-tellers call a happy conclusion.
Mason, Brandt, and I worked, and worked alone, on the theory that the secret of the Indurate formula would be the answer to our return down the time trail. We removed the body of Ganeth-Klae from its solidifex envelope and treated it with every chemical process we knew. By sheer luck the fortieth trial worked. A paste of carbo-genethon mixed with the crushed seeds of the Martian iron-flower was spread over Klae's chest and abdomen.
And there, in easily decipherable code, was not only the formula, but the working principles of the ship's booster--or rather, time-catapult. After that, it was a simple matter to reverse the principle and throw us backward in the time stream.
We are heading back as I write these lines. If they reach print and you read them, it will mean our escape was successful and that we returned to our proper slot in the epilogue of human events.
There remains, however, one matter to trouble me. Navigator Norris. I like the man. I like him tremendously, in spite of his cold-blooded confession, and past record. He must be punished, of course. But I, for one, would hate to see him given the death penalty. It is a serious problem.