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Contents

THE CALM MAN

By Frank Belknap Long

 

 

Sally watched the molten gold glow in the sky. Then knew she would not see her son and her husband ever again on Earth.

 

Sally Anders had never really thought of herself as a wallflower. A girl could be shy, couldn't she, and still be pretty enough to attract and hold men?

Only this morning she had drawn an admiring look from the milkman and a wolf cry from Jimmy on the corner, with his newspapers and shiny new bike. What if the milkman was crowding sixty and wore thick-lensed glasses? What if Jimmy was only seventeen?

A male was a male, and a glance was a glance. Why, if I just primp a little more, Sally told herself, I'll be irresistible.

Hair ribbons and perfume, a mirror tilted at just the right angle, an invitation to a party on the dresser--what more did a girl need?

"Dinner, Sally!" came echoing up from the kitchen. "Do you want to be late, child?"

Sally had no intention of being late. Tonight she'd see him across a crowded room and her heart would skip a beat. He'd look at her and smile, and come straight toward her with his shoulders squared.

There was always one night in a girl's life that stands above all other nights. One night when the moon shone bright and clear and the clock on the wall went tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. One night when each tick said, "You're beautiful! Really beautiful!"

Giving her hair a final pat Sally smiled at herself in the mirror.

In the bathroom the water was still running and the perfumed bath soap still spread its aromatic sweet odor through the room. Sally went into the bathroom and turned off the tap before going downstairs to the kitchen.

"My girl looks radiant tonight!" Uncle Ben said, smiling at her over his corned beef and cabbage.

Sally blushed and lowered her eyes.

"Ben, you're making her nervous," Sally's mother said, laughing.

Sally looked up and met her uncle's stare, her eyes defiant. "I'm not bad-looking whatever you may think," she said.

"Oh, now, Sally," Uncle Ben protested. "No sense in getting on a high horse. Tonight you may find a man who just won't be able to resist you."

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't," Sally said. "You'd be surprised if I did, wouldn't you?"

It was Uncle Ben's turn to lower his eyes.

"I'll tell the world you've inherited your mother's looks, Sally," he said. "But a man has to pride himself on something. My defects of character are pretty bad. But no one has ever accused me of dishonesty."

Sally folded her napkin and rose stiffly from the table.

"Good night, Uncle," she said.

When Sally arrived at the party every foot of floor space was taken up by dancing couples and the reception room was so crowded that, as each new guest was announced, a little ripple of displeasure went through the men in midnight blue and the women in Nile green and lavender.

For a moment Sally did not move, just stood staring at the dancing couples, half-hidden by one of the potted palms that framed the sides of the long room.

Moonlight silvered her hair and touched her white throat and arms with a caress so gentle that simply by closing her eyes she could fancy herself already in his arms.

Moonlight from tall windows flooding down, turning the dancing guests into pirouetting ghosts in diaphanous blue and green, scarlet and gold.

Close your eyes, Sally, close them tight! Now open them! That's it ... Slowly, slowly ...

He came out of nothingness into the light and was right beside her suddenly.

He was tall, but not too tall. His face was tanned mahogany brown, and his eyes were clear and very bright. And he stood there looking at her steadily until her mouth opened and a little gasp flew out.

He took her into his arms without a word and they started to dance ...

They were still dancing when he asked her to be his wife.

"You'll marry me, of course," he said. "We haven't too much time. The years go by so swiftly, like great white birds at sea."

They were very close when he asked her, but he made no attempt to kiss her. They went right on dancing and while he waited for her answer he talked about the moon ...

"When the lights go out and the music stops the moon will remain," he said. "It raises tides on the Earth, it inflames the minds and hearts of men. There are cyclic rhythms which would set a stone to dreaming and desiring on such a night as this."

He stopped dancing abruptly and looked at her with calm assurance.

"You will marry me, won't you?" he asked. "Allowing for a reasonable margin of error I seriously doubt if I could be happy with any of these other women. I was attracted to you the instant I saw you."

A girl who has never been asked before, who has drawn only one lone wolf cry from a newsboy could hardly be expected to resist such an offer.

Don't resist, Sally. He's strong and tall and extremely good-looking. He knows what he wants and makes up his mind quickly. Surely a man so resolute must make enough money to support a wife.

"Yes," Sally breathed, snuggling close to him. "Oh, yes!"

She paused a moment, then said, "You may kiss me now if you wish, my darling."

He straightened and frowned a little, and looked away quickly. "That can wait," he said.

* * * * *

They were married a week later and went to live on an elm-shaded street just five blocks from where Sally was born. The cottage was small, white and attractively decorated inside and out. But Sally changed the curtains, as all women must, and bought some new furniture on the installment plan.

The neighbors were friendly folk who knew her husband as Mr. James Rand, an energetic young insurance broker who would certainly carve a wider swath for himself in his chosen profession now that he had so charming a wife.

Ten months later the first baby came.

Lying beneath cool white sheets in the hospital Sally looked at the other women and felt so deliriously happy she wanted to cry. It was a beautiful baby and it cuddled close to her heart, its smallness a miracle in itself.

The other husbands came in and sat beside their wives, holding on tight to their happiness. There were flowers and smiles, whispers that explored bright new worlds of tenderness and rejoicing.

Out in the corridor the husbands congratulated one another and came in smelling of cigar smoke.

"Have a cigar! That's right. Eight pounds at birth. That's unusual, isn't it? Brightest kid you ever saw. Knew his old man right off."

He was beside her suddenly, standing straight and still in shadows.

"Oh, darling," she whispered. "Why did you wait? It's been three whole days."

"Three days?" he asked, leaning forward to stare down at his son. "Really! It didn't seem that long."

"Where were you? You didn't even phone!"

"Sometimes it's difficult to phone," he said slowly, as if measuring his words. "You have given me a son. That pleases me very much."

A coldness touched her heart and a despair took hold of her. "It pleases you! Is that all you can say? You stand there looking at me as if I were a--a patient ..."

"A patient?" His expression grew quizzical. "Just what do you mean, Sally?"

"You said you were pleased. If a patient is ill her doctor hopes that she will get well. He is pleased when she does. If a woman has a baby a doctor will say, 'I'm so pleased. The baby is doing fine. You don't have to worry about him. I've put him on the scales and he's a bouncing, healthy boy.'"

"Medicine is a sane and wise profession," Sally's husband said. "When I look at my son that is exactly what I would say to the mother of my son. He is healthy and strong. You have pleased me, Sally."

He bent as he spoke and picked Sally's son up. He held the infant in the crook of his arm, smiling down at it.

"A healthy male child," he said. "His hair will come in thick and black. Soon he will speak, will know that I am his father."

He ran his palm over the baby's smooth head, opened its mouth gently with his forefinger and looked inside.

Sally rose on one elbow, her tormented eyes searching his face.

"He's your child, your son!" she sobbed. "A woman has a child and her husband comes and puts his arms around her. He holds her close. If they love each other they are so happy, so very happy, they break down and cry."

"I am too pleased to do anything so fantastic, Sally," he said. "When a child is born no tears should be shed by its parents. I have examined the child and I am pleased with it. Does not that content you?"

"No, it doesn't!" Sally almost shrieked. "Why do you stare at your own son as if you'd never seen a baby before? He isn't a mechanical toy. He's our own darling, adorable little baby. Our child! How can you be so inhumanly calm?"

He frowned, put the baby down.

"There is a time for love-making and a time for parenthood," he said. "Parenthood is a serious responsibility. That is where medicine comes in, surgery. If a child is not perfect there are emergency measures which can be taken to correct the defect."

Sally's mouth went suddenly dry. "Perfect! What do you mean, Jim? Is there something wrong with Tommy?"

"I don't think so," her husband said. "His grasp is firm and strong. He has good hearing and his eyesight appears to be all that could be desired. Did you notice how his eyes followed me every moment?"

"I wasn't looking at his eyes!" Sally whispered, her voice tight with alarm. "Why are you trying to frighten me, Jim? If Tommy wasn't a normal, healthy baby do you imagine for one instant they would have placed him in my arms?"

"That is a very sound observation," Sally's husband said. "Truth is truth, but to alarm you at a time like this would be unnecessarily cruel."

"Where does that put you?"

"I simply spoke my mind as the child's father. I had to speak as I did because of my natural concern for the health of our child. Do you want me to stay and talk to you, Sally?"

Sally shook her head. "No, Jim. I won't let you torture me any more."

Sally drew the baby into her arms again and held it tightly. "I'll scream if you stay!" she warned. "I'll become hysterical unless you leave."

"Very well," her husband said. "I'll come back tomorrow."

He bent as he spoke and kissed her on the forehead. His lips were ice cold.

For eight years Sally sat across the table from her husband at breakfast, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness on the green-blue wall at his back. Calm he remained even while eating. The eggs she placed before him he cracked methodically with a knife and consumed behind a tilted newspaper, taking now an assured sip of coffee, now a measured glance at the clock.

The presence of his young son bothered him not at all. Tommy could be quiet or noisy, in trouble at school, or with an A for good conduct tucked with his report card in his soiled leather zipper jacket. It was always: "Eat slowly, my son. Never gulp your food. Be sure to take plenty of exercise today. Stay in the sun as much as possible."

Often Sally wanted to shriek: "Be a father to him! A real father! Get down on the floor and play with him. Shoot marbles with him, spin one of his tops. Remember the toy locomotive you gave him for Christmas after I got hysterical and screamed at you? Remember the beautiful little train? Get it out of the closet and wreck it accidentally. He'll warm up to you then. He'll be broken-hearted, but he'll feel close to you, then you'll know what it means to have a son!"

Often Sally wanted to fly at him, beat with her fists on his chest. But she never did.

You can't warm a stone by slapping it, Sally. You'd only bruise yourself. A stone is neither cruel nor tender. You've married a man of stone, Sally.

He hasn't missed a day at the office in eight years. She'd never visited the office but he was always there to answer when she phoned. "I'm very busy, Sally. What did you say? You've bought a new hat? I'm sure it will look well on you, Sally. What did you say? Tommy got into a fight with a new boy in the neighborhood? You must take better care of him, Sally."

There are patterns in every marriage. When once the mold has set, a few strange behavior patterns must be accepted as a matter of course.

"I'll drop in at the office tomorrow, darling!" Sally had promised right after the breakfast pattern had become firmly established. The desire to see where her husband worked had been from the start a strong, bright flame in her. But he asked her to wait a while before visiting his office.

A strong will can dampen the brightest flame, and when months passed and he kept saying 'no,' Sally found herself agreeing with her husband's suggestion that the visit be put off indefinitely.

Snuff a candle and it stays snuffed. A marriage pattern once established requires a very special kind of re-kindling. Sally's husband refused to supply the needed spark.

Whenever Sally had an impulse to turn her steps in the direction of the office a voice deep in her mind seemed to whisper: "No sense in it, Sally. Stay away. He's been mean and spiteful about it all these years. Don't give in to him now by going."

Besides, Tommy took up so much of her time. A growing boy was always a problem and Tommy seemed to have a special gift for getting into things because he was so active. And he went through his clothes, wore out his shoes almost faster than she could replace them.

Right now Tommy was playing in the yard. Sally's eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to make life miserable for her.

A thrice-widowed neighbor of seventy without a spiteful hair in her head could put up with a boy who rollicked and yelled perhaps. But peep-hole spying was another matter.

Sally muttered: "Enough of that!" and started for the kitchen door. Just as she reached it the telephone rang.

Sally went quickly to the phone and lifted the receiver. The instant she pressed it to her ear she recognized her husband's voice--or thought she did.

"Sally, come to the office!" came the voice, speaking in a hoarse whisper. "Hurry--or it will be too late! Hurry, Sally!"

Sally turned with a startled gasp, looked out through the kitchen window at the autumn leaves blowing crisp and dry across the lawn. As she looked the scattered leaves whirled into a flurry around Tommy, then lifted and went spinning over the fence and out of sight.

The dread in her heart gave way to a sudden, bleak despair. As she turned from the phone something within her withered, became as dead as the drifting leaves with their dark autumnal mottlings.

She did not even pause to call Tommy in from the yard. She rushed upstairs, then down again, gathering up her hat, gloves and purse, making sure she had enough change to pay for the taxi.

The ride to the office was a nightmare ... Tall buildings swept past, facades of granite as gray as the leaden skies of mid-winter, beehives of commerce where men and women brushed shoulders without touching hands.

Autumnal leaves blowing, and the gray buildings sweeping past. Despite Tommy, despite everything there was no shining vision to warm Sally from within. A cottage must be lived in to become a home and Sally had never really had a home.

One-night stand! It wasn't an expression she'd have used by choice, but it came unbidden into her mind. If you live for nine years with a man who can't relax and be human, who can't be warm and loving you'll begin eventually to feel you might as well live alone. Each day had been like a lonely sentinel outpost in a desert waste for Sally.

She thought about Tommy ... Tommy wasn't in the least like his father when he came racing home from school, hair tousled, books dangling from a strap. Tommy would raid the pantry with unthinking zest, invite other boys in to look at the Westerns on TV, and trade black eyes for marbles with a healthy pugnacity.

Up to a point Tommy was normal, was healthy.

But she had seen mirrored in Tommy's pale blue eyes the same abnormal calmness that was always in his father's, and the look of derisive withdrawal which made him seem always to be staring down at her from a height. And it filled her with terror to see that Tommy's mood could change as abruptly and terrifyingly cold ...

Tommy, her son. Tommy, no longer boisterous and eager, but sitting in a corner with his legs drawn up, a faraway look in his eyes. Tommy seeming to look right through her, into space. Tommy and Jim exchanging silent understanding glances. Tommy roaming through the cottage, staring at his toys with frowning disapproval. Tommy drawing back when she tried to touch him.

Tommy, Tommy, come back to me! How often she had cried out in her heart when that coldness came between them.

Tommy drawing strange figures on the floor with a piece of colored chalk, then erasing them quickly before she could see them, refusing to let her enter his secret child's world.

Tommy picking up the cat and stroking its fur mechanically, while he stared out through the kitchen window at rusty blackbirds on the wing ...

"This is the address you gave me, lady. Sixty-seven Vine Street," the cab driver was saying.

Sally shivered, remembering her husband's voice on the phone, remembering where she was ... "Come to the office, Sally! Hurry, hurry--or it will be too late!"

Too late for what? Too late to recapture a happiness she had never possessed?

"This is it, lady!" the cab driver insisted. "Do you want me to wait?"

"No," Sally said, fumbling for her change purse. She descended from the taxi, paid the driver and hurried across the pavement to the big office building with its mirroring frontage of plate glass and black onyx tiles.

The firm's name was on the directory board in the lobby, white on black in beautifully embossed lettering. White for hope, and black for despair, mourning ...

The elevator opened and closed and Sally was whisked up eight stories behind a man in a checkered suit.

"Eighth floor!" Sally whispered, in sudden alarm. The elevator jolted to an abrupt halt and the operator swung about to glare at her.

"You should have told me when you got on, Miss!" he complained.

"Sorry," Sally muttered, stumbling out into the corridor. How horrible it must be to go to business every day, she thought wildly. To sit in an office, to thumb through papers, to bark orders, to be a machine.

Sally stood very still for an instant, startled, feeling her sanity threatened by the very absurdity of the thought. People who worked in offices could turn for escape to a cottage in the sunset's glow, when they were set free by the moving hands of a clock. There could be a fierce joy at the thought of deliverance, at the prospect of going home at five o'clock.

But for Sally was the brightness, the deliverance withheld. The corridor was wide and deserted and the black tiles with their gold borders seemed to converge upon her, hemming her into a cool magnificence as structurally somber as the architectural embellishments of a costly mausoleum.

She found the office with her surface mind, working at cross-purposes with the confusion and swiftly mounting dread which made her footsteps falter, her mouth go dry.

Steady, Sally! Here's the office, here's the door. Turn the knob and get it over with ...

Sally opened the door and stepped into a small, deserted reception room. Beyond the reception desk was a gate, and beyond the gate a large central office branched off into several smaller offices.

Sally paused only an instant. It seemed quite natural to her that a business office should be deserted so late in the afternoon.

She crossed the reception room to the gate, passed through it, utter desperation giving her courage.

Something within her whispered that she had only to walk across the central office, open the first door she came to to find her husband ...

The first door combined privacy with easy accessibility. The instant she opened the door she knew that she had been right to trust her instincts. This was his office ...

He was sitting at a desk by the window, a patch of sunset sky visible over his right shoulder. His elbows rested on the desk and his hands were tightly locked as if he had just stopped wringing them.

He was looking straight at her, his eyes wide and staring.

"Jim!" Sally breathed. "Jim, what's wrong?"

He did not answer, did not move or attempt to greet her in any way. There was no color at all in his face. His lips were parted, his white teeth gleamed. And he was more stiffly controlled than usual--a control so intense that for once Sally felt more alarm than bitterness.

There was a rising terror in her now. And a slowly dawning horror. The sunlight streamed in, gleaming redly on his hair, his shoulders. He seemed to be the center of a flaming red ball ...

He sent for you, Sally. Why doesn't he get up and speak to you, if only to pour salt on the wounds you've borne for eight long years?

Poor Sally! You wanted a strong, protective, old-fashioned husband. What have you got instead?

Sally went up to the desk and looked steadily into eyes so calm and blank that they seemed like the eyes of a child lost in some dreamy wonderland barred forever to adult understanding.

For an instant her terror ebbed and she felt almost reassured. Then she made the mistake of bending more closely above him, brushing his right elbow with her sleeve.

* * * * *

That single light woman's touch unsettled him. He started to fall, sideways and very fast. Topple a dead weight and it crashes with a swiftness no opposing force can counter-balance.

It did Sally no good to clutch frantically at his arm as he fell, to tug and jerk at the slackening folds of his suit. The heaviness of his descending bulk dragged him down and away from her, the awful inertia of lifeless flesh.

He thudded to the floor and rolled over on his back, seeming to shrink as Sally widened her eyes upon him. He lay in a grotesque sprawl at her feet, his jaw hanging open on the gaping black orifice of his mouth ...

Sally might have screamed and gone right on screaming--if she had been a different kind of woman. On seeing her husband lying dead her impulse might have been to throw herself down beside him, give way to her grief in a wild fit of sobbing.

But where there was no grief there could be no sobbing ...

One thing only she did before she left. She unloosed the collar of the unmoving form on the floor and looked for the small brown mole she did not really expect to find. The mole she knew to be on her husband's shoulder, high up on the left side.

She had noticed things that made her doubt her sanity; she needed to see the little black mole to reassure her ...

She had noticed the difference in the hair-line, the strange slant of the eyebrows, the crinkly texture of the skin where it should have been smooth ...

Something was wrong ... horribly, weirdly wrong ...

Even the hands of the sprawled form seemed larger and hairier than the hands of her husband. Nevertheless it was important to be sure ...

The absence of the mole clinched it.

Sally crouched beside the body, carefully readjusting the collar. Then she got up and walked out of the office.

Some homecomings are joyful, others cruel. Sitting in the taxi, clenching and unclenching her hands, Sally had no plan that could be called a plan, no hope that was more than a dim flickering in a vast wasteland, bleak and unexplored.

But it was strange how one light burning brightly in a cottage window could make even a wasteland seem small, could shrink and diminish it until it became no more than a patch of darkness that anyone with courage might cross.

The light was in Tommy's room and there was a whispering behind the door. Sally could hear the whispering as she tiptoed upstairs, could see the light streaming out into the hall.

She paused for an instant at the head of the stairs, listening. There were two voices in the room, and they were talking back and forth.

Sally tiptoed down the hall, stood with wildly beating heart just outside the door.

"She knows now, Tommy," the deepest of the two voices said. "We are very close, your mother and I. She knows now that I sent her to the office to find my 'stand in.' Oh, it's an amusing term, Tommy--an Earth term we'd hardly use on Mars. But it's a term your mother would understand."

A pause, then the voice went on, "You see, my son, it has taken me eight years to repair the ship. And in eight years a man can wither up and die by inches if he does not have a growing son to go adventuring with him in the end."

"Adventuring, father?"

"You have read a good many Earth books, my son, written especially for boys. Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. What paltry books they are! But in them there is a little of the fire, a little of the glow of our world."

"No, father. I started them but I threw them away for I did not like them."

"As you and I must throw away all Earth things, my son. I tried to be kind to your mother, to be a good husband as husbands go on Earth. But how could I feel proud and strong and reckless by her side? How could I share her paltry joys and sorrows, chirp with delight as a sparrow might chirp hopping about in the grass? Can an eagle pretend to be a sparrow? Can the thunder muffle its voice when two white-crested clouds collide in the shining depths of the night sky?"

"You tried, father. You did your best."

"Yes, my son, I did try. But if I had attempted to feign emotions I did not feel your mother would have seen through the pretense. She would then have turned from me completely. Without her I could not have had you, my son."

"And now, father, what will we do?"

"Now the ship has been repaired and is waiting for us. Every day for eight years I went to the hill and worked on the ship. It was badly wrecked, my son, but now my patience has been rewarded, and every damaged astronavigation instrument has been replaced."

"You never went to the office, father? You never went at all?"

"No, my son. My stand-in worked at the office in my place. I instilled in your mother's mind an intense dislike and fear of the office to keep her from ever coming face to face with the stand-in. She might have noticed the difference. But I had to have a stand-in, as a safeguard. Your mother might have gone to the office despite the mental block."

"She's gone now, father. Why did you send for her?"

"To avoid what she would call a scene, my son. That I could not endure. I had the stand-in summon her on the office telephone, then I withdrew all vitality from it. She will find it quite lifeless. But it does not matter now. When she returns we will be gone."

"Was constructing the stand-in difficult, father?"

"Not for me, my son. On Mars we have many androids, each constructed to perform a specific task. Some are ingenious beyond belief--or would seem so to Earthmen."

There was a pause, then the weaker of the two voices said, "I will miss my mother. She tried to make me happy. She tried very hard."

"You must be brave and strong, my son. We are eagles, you and I. Your mother is a sparrow, gentle and dun-colored. I shall always remember her with tenderness. You want to go with me, don't you?"

"Yes, father. Oh, yes!"

"Then come, my son. We must hurry. Your mother will be returning any minute now."

Sally stood motionless, listening to the voices like a spectator sitting before a television screen. A spectator can see as well as hear, and Sally could visualize her son's pale, eager face so clearly there was no need for her to move forward into the room.

She could not move. And nothing on Earth could have wrenched a tortured cry from her. Grief and shock may paralyze the mind and will, but Sally's will was not paralyzed.

It was as if the thread of her life had been cut, with only one light left burning. Tommy was that light. He would never change. He would go from her forever. But he would always be her son.

The door of Tommy's room opened and Tommy and his father came out into the hall. Sally stepped back into shadows and watched them walk quickly down the hall to the stairs, their voices low, hushed. She heard them descend the stairs, their footsteps dwindle, die away into silence ...

You'll see a light, Sally, a great glow lighting up the sky. The ship must be very beautiful. For eight years he labored over it, restoring it with all the shining gifts of skill and feeling at his command. He was calm toward you, but not toward the ship, Sally--the ship which will take him back to Mars!

How is it on Mars, she wondered. My son, Tommy, will become a strong, proud adventurer daring the farthest planet of the farthest star?

You can't stop a boy from adventuring. Surprise him at his books and you'll see tropical seas in his eyes, a pearly nautilus, Hong Kong and Valparaiso resplendent in the dawn.

There is no strength quite like the strength of a mother, Sally. Endure it, be brave ...

Sally was at the window when it came. A dazzling burst of radiance, starting from the horizon's rim and spreading across the entire sky. It lit up the cottage and flickered over the lawn, turning rooftops to molten gold and gilding the long line of rolling hills which hemmed in the town.

Brighter it grew and brighter, gilding for a moment even Sally's bowed head and her image mirrored on the pane. Then, abruptly, it was gone ...

 

 

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Contents

A PLACE IN THE SUN

A "Johnny Mayhem" Adventure

By Stephen Marlowe

 

Mayhem, the man of many bodies, had been given some weird assignments in his time, but saving The Glory of the Galaxy wasn't difficult--it was downright impossible!

The SOS crackled and hummed through subspace at a speed which left laggard light far behind. Since subspace distances do not coincide with normal space distances, the SOS was first picked up by a Fomalhautian freighter bound for Capella although it had been issued from a point in normal space midway between the orbit of Mercury and the sun's corona in the solar system.

The radioman of the Fomalhautian freighter gave the distress signal to the Deck Officer, who looked at it, blinked, and bolted 'bove decks to the captain's cabin. His face was very white when he reached the door and his heart pounded with excitement. As the Deck Officer crossed an electronic beam before the door a metallic voice said: "The Captain is asleep and will be disturbed for nothing but emergency priority."

Nodding, the Deck officer stuck his thumb in the whorl-lock of the door and entered the cabin. "Begging your pardon, sir," he cried, "but we just received an SOS from--"

* * * * *

The Captain stirred groggily, sat up, switched on a green night light and squinted through it at the Deck Officer. "Well, what is it? Isn't the Eye working?"

"Yes, sir. An SOS, sir...."

"If we're close enough to help, subspace or normal space, take the usual steps, lieutenant. Surely you don't need me to--"

"The usual steps can't be taken, sir. Far as I can make out, that ship is doomed. She's bound on collision course for Sol, only twenty million miles out now."

"That's too bad, lieutenant," the Captain said with genuine sympathy in his voice. "I'm sorry to hear that. But what do you want me to do about it?"

"The ship, sir. The ship that sent the SOS--hold on to your hat, sir--"

"Get to the point now, will you, young man?" the Captain growled sleepily.

"The ship which sent the SOS signal, the ship heading on collision course for Sol, is the Glory of the Galaxy!"

For a moment the Captain said nothing. Distantly, you could hear the hum of the subspace drive-unit and the faint whining of the stasis generator. Then the Captain bolted out of bed after unstrapping himself. In his haste he forgot the ship was in weightless deep space and went sailing, arms flailing air, across the room. The lieutenant helped him down and into his magnetic-soled shoes.

"My God," the Captain said finally. "Why did it happen? Why did it have to happen to the Glory of the Galaxy?"

"What are you going to do, sir?"

"I can't do anything. I won't take the responsibility. Have the radioman contact the Hub at once."

"Yes, sir."

The Glory of the Galaxy, the SOS ship heading on collision course with the sun, was making its maiden run from the assembly satellites of Earth across the inner solar system via the perihelion passage which would bring it within twenty-odd million miles of the sun, to Mars which now was on the opposite side of Sol from Earth. Aboard the gleaming new ship was the President of the Galactic Federation and his entire cabinet.

* * * * *

The Fomalhautian freighter's emergency message was received at the Hub of the Galaxy within moments after it had been sent, although the normal space distance was in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand light years. The message was bounced--in amazingly quick time--from office to office at the hub, cutting through the usual red tape because of its top priority. And--since none of the normal agencies at the Hub could handle it--the message finally arrived at an office which very rarely received official messages of any kind. This was the one unofficial, extra-legal office at the Hub of the Galaxy. Lacking official function, the office had no technical existence and was not to be found in any Directory of the Hub. At the moment, two young men were seated inside. Their sole job was to maintain liaison with a man whose very existence was doubted by most of the human inhabitants of the Galaxy but whose importance could not be measured by mere human standards in those early days when the Galactic League was becoming the Galactic Federation.

The name of the man with whom they maintained contact was Johnny Mayhem.

"Did you read it?" the blond man asked.

"I read it."

"If it got down here, that means they can't handle it anywhere else."

"Of course they can't. What the hell could normal slobs like them or like us do about it?"

"Nothing, I guess. But wait a minute! You don't mean you're going to send Mayhem, without asking him, without telling--"

"We can't ask him now, can we?"

"Johnny Mayhem's elan is at the moment speeding from Canopus to Deneb, where on the fourth planet of the Denebian system a dead body is waiting for him in cold storage. The turnover from League to Federation status of the Denebian system is causing trouble in Deneb City, so Mayhem--"

"Deneb City will probably survive without Mayhem. Well, won't it?"

"I guess so, but--"

"I know. The deal is we're supposed to tell Mayhem where he's going and what he can expect. The deal also is, every inhabited world has a body waiting for his elan in cold storage. But don't you think if we could talk to Mayhem now--"

"It isn't possible. He's in transit."

"Don't you think if we could talk to him now he would agree to board the Glory of the Galaxy?"

"How should I know? I'm not Johnny Mayhem."

"If he doesn't board her, it's certain death for all of them."

"And if he does board her, what the hell can he do about it? Besides, there isn't any dead body awaiting his elan on that ship or any ship. He wouldn't make a very efficacious ghost."

"But there are live people. Scores of them. Mayhem's elan is quite capable of possessing a living host."

"Sure. Theoretically it is. But damn it all, what would the results be? We've never tried it. It's liable to damage Mayhem. As for the host--"

"The host might die. I know it. But he'll die anyway. The whole shipload of them is heading on collision course for the sun."

"Does the SOS say why?"

"No. Maybe Mayhem can find out and do something about it."

* * * * *

"Yeah, maybe. That's a hell of a way to risk the life of the most important man in the Galaxy. Because if Mayhem boards that ship and can't do anything about it, he'll die with the rest of them."

"Why? We could always pluck his elan out again."

"If he were inhabiting a dead one. In a live body, I don't think so. The attraction would be stronger. There would be forces of cohesion--"

"That's true. Still, Mayhem's our only hope."

"I'll admit it's a job for Mayhem, but he's too important."

"Is he? Don't be a fool. What, actually, is Johnny Mayhem's importance? His importance lies in the very fact that he is expendable. His life--for the furtherance of the new Galactic Federation."

"But--"

"And the President is aboard that ship. Maybe he can't do as much for the Galaxy in the long run as Mayhem can, but don't you see, man, he's a figurehead. Right now he's the most important man in the Galaxy, and if we could talk to him I'm sure Mayhem would agree. Mayhem would want to board that ship."

"It's funny, we've been working with Mayhem all these years and we never even met the guy."

"Would you know him if you saw him?"

"Umm-mm, I guess not. Do you think we really can halt his elan in subspace and divert it over to the Glory of the Galaxy?"

"I take it you're beginning to see things my way. And the answer to your question is yes."

"Poor Mayhem. You know, I actually feel sorry for the guy. He's had more adventures than anyone since Homer wrote the Odyssey and there won't ever be any rest for him."

"Stop feeling sorry for him and start hoping he succeeds."

"Yeah."

"And let's see about getting a bead on his elan."

The two young men walked to a tri-dim chart which took up much of the room. One of them touched a button and blue light glowed within the chart, pulsing brightly and sharply where space-sectors intersected.

"He's in C-17 now," one of the men said as a gleaming whiteness was suddenly superimposed at a single point on the blue.

"Can you bead him?"

"I think so. But I still feel sorry for Mayhem. He's expecting to wake up in a cold-storage corpse on Deneb IV but instead he'll come to in a living body aboard a spaceship on collision course for the sun."

"Just hope he--"

"I know. Succeeds. I don't even want to think of the possibility he might fail."

In seconds, the gleaming white dot crawled across the surface of the tri-dim chart from sector C-17 to sector S-1.

* * * * *

The Glory of the Galaxy was now nineteen million miles out from the sun and rushing through space at a hundred miles per second, normal space drive. The Glory of the Galaxy thus moved a million miles closer to fiery destruction every three hours--but since the sun's gravitational force had to be added to that speed, the ship was slated to plunge into the sun's corona in little more than twenty-four hours.

Since the ship's refrigeration units would function perfectly until the outer hull reached a temperature of eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit, none of its passengers knew that anything was wrong. Even the members of the crew went through all the normal motions. Only the Glory of the Galaxy's officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion passage.

Something--unidentified as yet--in all the thousands of intricate things that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously--and not because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life always is at stake. There are too many imponderables: you are, to a certain degree, expendable. The commissioned contingent aboard the Glory of the Galaxy was a dedicated group, hand-picked from all the officers in the solar system.

* * * * *

But they could find nothing. And do nothing.

Within a day, their lives along with the lives of the enlisted men aboard the Glory of the Galaxy and the passengers on its maiden run, would be snuffed out in a brilliant burst of solar heat.

And the President of the Galactic Federation would die because some unknown factor had locked the controls of the spaceship, making it impossible to turn or use forward rockets against the gravitational pull of the sun.

Nineteen million miles. In normal space, a considerable distance. A hundred miles a second--a very considerable normal space speed. Increasing....

* * * * *

Ever since they had left Earth's assembly satellites, Sheila Kelly had seen a lot of a Secret Serviceman named Larry Grange, who was a member of the President's corps of bodyguards. She liked Larry, although there was nothing serious in their relationship. He was handsome and charming and she was naturally flattered with his attentions. Still, although he was older than Sheila, she sensed that he was a boy rather than a man and had the odd feeling that, faced with a real crisis, he would confirm this tragically.

It was night aboard the Glory of the Galaxy. Which was to say the blue-green night lights had replaced the white day lights in the companionways and public rooms of the spaceship, since its ports were sealed against the fierce glare of the sun. It was hard to believe, Sheila thought, that they were only nineteen million miles from the sun. Everything was so cool--so comfortably air-conditioned....

She met Larry in the Sunside Lounge, a cabaret as nice as any terran nightclub she had ever seen. There were stylistic Zodiac drawings on the walls and blue-mirrored columns supporting the roof. Like everything else aboard the Glory of the Galaxy, the Sunside Lounge hardly seemed to belong on a spaceship. For Sheila Kelly, though--herself a third secretary with the department of Galactic Economy--it was all very thrilling.

"Hello, Larry," she said as the Secret Serviceman joined her at their table. He was a tall young man in his late twenties with crewcut blond hair; but he sat down heavily now and did not offer Sheila his usual smile.

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" Sheila asked him.

"Nothing. I need a drink, that's all."

The drinks came. Larry gulped his and ordered another. His complete silence baffled Sheila, who finally said:

"Surely it isn't anything I did."

"You? Don't be silly."

"Well! After the way you said that I don't know if I should be glad or not."

"Just forget it. I'm sorry, kid. I--" He reached out and touched her hand. His own hand was damp and cold.

"Going to tell me, Larry?"

"Listen. What's a guy supposed to do if he overhears something he's not supposed to overhear, and--"

"How should I know unless you tell me what you overheard? It is you you're talking about, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I was going off duty, walking by officer quarters and ... oh, forget it. I better not tell you."

"I'm a good listener, Larry."

"Look, Irish. You're a good anything--and that's the truth. You have looks and you have brains and I have a hunch through all that Emerald Isle sauciness you have a heart too. But--"

"But you don't want to tell me."

"It isn't I don't want to, but no one's supposed to know, not even the President."

"You sure make it sound mysterious."

"Just the officers. Oh, hell. I don't know. What good would it do if I told you?"

"I guess you'd just get it off your chest, that's all."

"I can't tell anyone official, Sheila. I'd have my head handed to me. But I've got to think and I've got to tell someone. I'll go crazy, just knowing and not doing anything."

"It's important, isn't it?"

* * * * *

Larry downed another drink quickly. It was his fourth and Sheila had never seen him take more than three or four in the course of a whole evening. "You're damned right it's important." Larry leaned forward across the postage-stamp table. A liquor-haze clouded his eyes as he said: "It's so important that unless someone does something about it, we'll all be dead inside of twenty-four hours. Only trouble is, there isn't anything anyone can do about it."

"Larry--you're a little drunk."

"I know it. I know I am. I want to be a lot drunker. What the hell can a guy do?"

"What do you know, Larry? What have you heard?"

"I know they have the President of the Galactic Federation aboard this ship and that he ought to be told the truth."

"No. I mean--"

"They sent out an SOS, kid. Controls are locked. Lifeboats don't have enough power to get us out of the sun's gravitational pull. We're all going to roast, I tell you!"

Sheila felt her heart throb wildly. Even though he was well on the way to being thoroughly drunk, Larry was telling the truth. Instinctively, she knew that--was certain of it. "What are you going to do?" she said.

He shrugged. "I guess because I can't do a damned thing I'm going to get good and drunk. That's what I'm going to do. Or maybe--who the hell knows?--maybe in one minute I'm going to jump up on this table and tell everyone what I overheard. Maybe I ought to do that, huh?"

"Larry, Larry--if it's as bad as you say, maybe you ought to think before you do anything."

"Who am I to think? I'm one of the muscle men. That's what they pay me for, isn't it?"

"Larry. You don't have to shout."

"Well, isn't it?"

"If you don't calm down I'll have to leave."

"You can sit still. You can park here all night. I'm leaving."

"What are you going to do?"

"Oh ... that." Larry got up from the table. He looked suddenly green and Sheila thought it was because he had too much to drink. "You don't have to worry about that, Sheila. Not now you don't. I all of a sudden don't feel so good. Headache. Man, I never felt anything like it. Better go to my cabin and lie down. Maybe I'll wake up and find out all this was a dream, huh?"

"Do you need any help?" Sheila demanded, real concern in her voice.

"No. 'Sall right. Man, this headache really snuck up on me. Pow! Without any warning."

"Let me help you."

"No. Just leave me alone, will you?" Larry staggered off across the crowded dance floor. He drew angry glances and muttered comments as he disturbed the dancers waltzing to Carlotti's Danube in Space.

Why don't you admit it, Grange, Larry thought as he staggered through the companionway toward his cabin. That's what you always wanted, isn't it--a place of importance?

A place in the sun, they call it.

"You're going to get a place in the sun, all right," he mumbled aloud. "Right smack in the middle of the sun with everyone else aboard this ship!"

The humor of it amused him perversely. He smiled--but it was closer to a leer--and lunged into his cabin. What he said to Sheila was no joke. He really did have a splitting headache. It had come on suddenly and it was like no headache he had ever known. It pulsed and throbbed and beat against his temples and held red hot needles to the backs of his eyeballs, almost blinding him. It sapped all his strength, leaving him physically weak. He was barely able to close the door behind him and stagger to the shower.

An ice cold shower, he thought would help. He stripped quickly and got under the needle spray. By that time he was so weak he could barely stand.

A place in the sun, he thought....

Something grabbed his mind and wrenched it.

* * * * *

Johnny Mayhem awoke.

Awakening came slowly, as it always did. It was a rising through infinite gulfs, a rebirth for a man who had died a hundred times and might die a thousand times more as the years piled up and became centuries. It was a spinning, whirling, flashing ascent from blackness to coruscating colors, brightness, giddiness.

And suddenly, it was over.

A needle spray of ice-cold water beat down upon him. He shuddered and reached for the water-taps, shutting them. Dripping, he climbed from the shower.

And floated up--quite weightless--toward the ceiling.

Frowning with his new and as yet unseen face, Johnny Mayhem propelled himself to the floor. He looked at his arms. He was naked--at least that much was right.

But obviously, since he was weightless, he was not on Deneb IV. During his transmigration he had been briefed for the trouble on Deneb IV. Then had a mistake been made somehow? It was always possible--but it had never happened before.

Too much precision and careful planning was involved.

Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League--now, Galactic Federation--post, must have a body in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required. No one knew when Mayhem's services might be required. No one knew exactly under what circumstances the Galactic Federation Council, operating from the Hub of the Galaxy, might summon Mayhem. And only a very few people, including those at the Hub and the Galactic League Firstmen on civilized worlds and Observers on frontier planets, knew the precise mechanics of Mayhem's coming.

* * * * *

Johnny Mayhem, a bodiless sentience. Mayhem--Johnny Marlow then--who had been chased from Earth a pariah and a criminal seven years ago, who had been mortally wounded on a wild planet deep within the Sagittarian Swarm, whose life had been saved--after a fashion--by the white magic of that planet. Mayhem, doomed now to possible immortality as a bodiless sentience, an elan, which could occupy and activate a corpse if it had been preserved properly ... an elan doomed to wander eternally because it could not remain in one body for more than a month without body and elan perishing. Mayhem, who had dedicated his strange, lonely life to the services of the Galactic League--now the Galactic Federation--because a normal life and normal social relations were not possible to him....

It did not seem possible, Mayhem thought now, that a mistake could be made. Then--a sudden change in plans?

It had never happened before, but it was entirely possible. Something, Mayhem decided, had come up during transmigration. It was terribly important and the people at the Hub had had no opportunity to brief him on it.

But--what?

* * * * *

His first shock came a moment later. He walked to a mirror on the wall and approved of the strong young body which would house his sentience and then scowled. A thought inside his head said:

So this is what it's like to have schizophrenia.

What the hell was that? Mayhem thought.

I said, so this is what it's like to have schizophrenia. First the world's worst headache and then I start thinking like two different people.

Aren't you dead?

Is that supposed to be a joke, alter ego? When do the men in the white suits come?

Good Lord, this was supposed to be a dead body!

At that, the other sentience which shared the body with Mayhem snickered and lapsed into silence. Mayhem, for his part, was astounded.

Don't get ornery now, Mayhem pleaded. I'm Johnny Mayhem. Does that mean anything to you?

Oh, sure. It means I'm dead. You inhabit dead bodies, right?

Usually. Listen--where are we?

Glory of the Galaxy--bound from Earth to Mars on perihelion.

And there's trouble?

How do you know there's trouble?

Otherwise they wouldn't have diverted me here.

We've got the president aboard. We're going to hit the sun. Then, grudgingly, Larry went into the details. When he finished he thought cynically: Now all you have to do is go outside yelling have no fear, Mayhem is here and everything will be all right, I suppose.

Mayhem didn't answer. It would be many moments yet before he could adjust to this new, unexpected situation. But in a way, he thought, it would be a boon. If he were co-inhabiting the body of a living man who belonged on the Glory of the Galaxy, there was no need to reveal his identity as Johnny Mayhem to anyone but his host....

* * * * *

"I tell ya," Technician First Class Ackerman Boone shouted, "the refrigeration unit's gone on the blink. You can't feel it yet, but I ought to know. I got the refrigs working full strength and we gained a couple of degrees heat. Either she's on the blink or we're too close to the sun, I tell you!"

Ackerman Boone was a big man, a veteran spacer with a squat, very strong body and arms like an orangutan. Under normal circumstances he was a very fine spacer and a good addition to any crew, but he bore an unreasonable grudge against the officer corps and would go out of his way to make them look bad in the eyes of the other enlisted men. A large crowd had gathered in the hammock-hung crew quarters of the Glory of the Galaxy as Boone went on in his deep, booming voice: "So I asked the skipper of the watch, I did. He got shifty-eyed, like they always do. You know. He wasn't talking, but sure as my name's Ackerman Boone, something's wrong."

"What do you think it is, Acky?" one of the younger men asked.

"Well, I tell ya this: I know what it isn't. I checked out the refrigs three times, see, and came up with nothing. The refrigs are in jig order, and if I know it then you know it. So, if the refrigs are in jig order, there's only one thing it can be: we're getting too near the sun!" Boone clamped his mouth shut and stood with thick, muscular arms crossed over his barrel chest.

* * * * *

A young technician third class said in a strident voice, "You mean you think maybe we're plunging into the sun, Acky?"

"Well, now, I didn't say that. Did I, boy? But we are too close and if we are too close there's got to be a reason for it. If we stay too close too long, O.K. Then we're plunging into the sun. Right now, I dunno."

They all asked Ackerman Boone, who was an unofficial leader among them, what he was going to do. He rubbed his big fingers against the thick stubble of beard on his jaw and you could hear the rasping sound it made. Then he said, "Nothing, until we find out for sure. But I got a hunch the officers are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of them politicians we got on board. That's all right with me, men. If they want to, they got their reasons. But I tell ya this: they ain't going to pull any wool over Acky Boone's eyes, and that's a fact."

Just then the squawk box called: "Now hear this! Now hear this! Tech/1 Ackerman Boone to Exec's office. Tech/1 Boone to Exec."

"You see?" Boone said, smiling grimly. As yet, no one saw. His face still set in a grim smile, Ackerman Boone headed above decks.

* * * * *

"That, Mr. President," Vice Admiral T. Shawnley Stapleton said gravely, "is the problem. We would have come to you sooner, sir, but frankly--"

"I know it, Admiral," the President said quietly. "I could not have helped you in any way. There was no sense telling me."

"We have one chance, sir, and one only. It's irregular and it will probably knock the hell out of the Glory of the Galaxy, but it may save our lives. If we throw the ship suddenly into subspace we could pass right through the sun's position and--"

"I'm no scientist, Admiral, but wouldn't that put tremendous stress not only on the ship but on all of us aboard?"

"It would, sir. I won't keep anything from you, of course. We'd all be subjected to a force of twenty-some gravities for a period of several seconds. Here aboard the Glory, we don't have adequate G-equipment. It's something like the old days of air flight, sir: as soon as airplanes became reasonably safe, passenger ships didn't bother to carry parachutes. Result over a period of fifty years: thousands of lives lost. We'd all be bruised and battered, sir. Bones would be broken. There might be a few deaths. But I see no other way out, sir."

"Then there was no need to check with me at all, I assure you, Admiral Stapleton. Do whatever you think is best, sir."

The Admiral nodded gravely. "Thank you, Mr. President. I will say this, though: we will wait for a miracle."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"Well, I don't expect a miracle, but the switchover to subspace so suddenly is bound to be dangerous. Therefore, we'll wait until the last possible moment. It will grow uncomfortably warm, let me warn you, but as long as the subspace drive is in good working order--"

"I see what you mean, Admiral. You have a free hand, sir; let me repeat that. I will not interfere in any way and I have the utmost confidence in you." The President mopped his brow with an already damp handkerchief. It was growing warm, come to think of it. Uncomfortably warm.

As if everyone aboard the Glory of the Galaxy was slowly being broiled alive....

* * * * *

Ackerman Boone entered the crew quarters with the same smile still on his lips. At first he said nothing, but his silence drew the men like a magnet draws iron filings. When they had all clustered about him he spoke.

"The Exec not only chewed my ears off," he boomed. "He all but spit them in my face! I was right, men. He admitted it to me after he saw how he couldn't get away with anything in front of Ackerman Boone. Men, we're heading on collision course with the sun!"

A shocked silence greeted his words and Ackerman Boone, instinctively a born speaker, paused dramatically to allow each man the private horror of his own thoughts for a few moments. Then he continued: "The Admiral figures we have one chance to get out of this alive, men. He figures--"

"What is it, Acky?"

"What will he do?"

"How will the Admiral get us out of this?"

Ackerman Boone spat on the polished, gleaming floor of the crew quarters. "He'll never get us out alive, let me tell you. He wants to shift us into subspace at the last possible minute. Suddenly. Like this--" and Ackerman Boone snapped his fingers.

"There'd be a ship full of broken bones!" someone protested. "We can't do a thing like that."

"He'll kill us all!" a very young T/3 cried hysterically.

"Not if I can help it, he won't," shouted Ackerman Boone. "Listen, men. This ain't a question of discipline. It's a question of living or dying and I tell you that's more important than doing it like the book says or discipline or anything like that. We got a chance, all right: but it ain't what the Admiral thinks it is. We ought to abandon the Glory to her place in the sun and scram out of here in the lifeboats--every last person aboard ship."

"But will they have enough power to get out of the sun's gravitational pull?" someone asked.

Ackerman Boone shrugged. "Don't look at me," he said mockingly. "I'm only an enlisted man and they don't give enlisted men enough math to answer questions like that. But reckoning by the seat of my pants I would say, yes. Yes, we could get away like that--if we act fast. Because every minute we waste is a minute that brings us closer to the sun and makes it harder to get away in the lifeboats. If we act, men, we got to act fast."

"You're talking mutiny, Boone," a grizzled old space veteran said. "You can count me out."

"What's the matter, McCormick? Yellow?"

"I'm not yellow. I say it takes guts to maintain discipline in a real emergency. I say you're yellow, Boone."

"You better be ready to back that up with your fists, McCormick," Boone said savagely.

"I'm ready any time you're ready, you yellow mutinous bastard!"

* * * * *

Ackerman Boone launched himself at the smaller, older man, who stood his ground unflinchingly although he probably knew he would take a sound beating. But four or five crewmen came between them and held them apart, one saying:

"Look who's talking, Boone. You say time's precious but you're all set to start fighting. Every minute--"

"Every second," Boone said grimly, "brings us more than a hundred miles closer to the sun."

"What can we do, Acky?"

Instead of answer, Ackerman Boone dramatically mopped the sweat from his face. All the men were uncomfortably warm now. It was obvious that the temperature within the Glory of the Galaxy had now climbed fifteen or twenty degrees despite the fact that the refrigs were working at full capacity. Even the bulkheads and the metal floor of crew quarters were unpleasantly warm to the touch. The air was hot and suddenly very dry.

"I'll tell you what we ought to do," Ackerman Boone said finally. "Admiral Stapleton or no Admiral Stapleton, President of the Galactic Federation or no President of the Galactic Federation, we ought to take over this ship and man the life boats for everyone's good. If they don't want to save their lives and ours--let's us save our lives and theirs!"

Roars of approval greeted Boone's words, but Spacer McCormick and some of the other veterans stood apart from the loud speech-making which followed. Actually, Boone's wild words--which he gambled with after the first flush of enthusiasm for his plan--began to lose converts. One by one the men drifted toward McCormick's silent group until, finally, Boone had lost almost his entire audience.

Just then a T/2 rushed into crew quarters and shouted: "Hey, is Boone around? Has anyone seen Boone?"

This brought general laughter. Under the circumstances, the question was not without its humorous aspect.

"What'll you have?" Boone demanded.

"The refrigs, Boone! They are on the blink. Overstrained themselves and burned themselves out. Inside of half an hour this ship's going to be an oven hot enough to kill us all!"

"Half an hour, men!" Ackerman Boone cried. "Now, do we take over the ship and man those lifeboats or don't we!"

The roar which followed his words was a decidedly affirmative one.

* * * * *

"These are the figures," Admiral Stapleton said. "You can see, Mr. President, that we have absolutely no chance whatever if we man the lifeboats. We would perish as assuredly as we would if we remained with the Glory of the Galaxy in normal space."

"Admiral, I have to hand it to you. I don't know how you can think--in all this heat."

"Have to, sir. Otherwise we all die."

"The air temperature--"

"Is a hundred and thirty degrees and rising. We've passed salt tablets out to everyone, sir, but even then it's only a matter of time before we're all prostrated. If you're sure you give your permission, sir--"

"Admiral Stapleton, you are running this ship, not I."

"Very well, sir. I've sent our subspace officer, Lieutenant Ormundy, to throw in the subspace drive. We should know in a few moments--"

"No crash hammocks or anything?"

"I'm sorry, sir."

"It isn't your fault, Admiral. I was merely pointing out a fact."

The squawk box blared: "Now hear this! Now hear this! T/3 Ackerman Boone to Admiral Stapleton. Are you listening, Admiral?"

Admiral Stapleton's haggard, heat-worn face bore a look of astonishment as he listened. Ackerman said, "We have Lieutenant Ormundy, Admiral. He's not killing us all by putting us into subspace in minutes when it ought to take hours, you understand. We have Ormundy and we have the subspace room. A contingent of our men is getting the lifeboats ready. We're going to abandon ship, Admiral, all of us, including you and the politicians even if we have to drag you aboard the lifeboats at N--gunpoint."

Admiral Stapleton's face went ashen. "Let me at a radio!" he roared. "I want to answer that man and see if he understands exactly what mutiny is!"

While Ackerman Boone was talking over the squawk box, the temperature within the Glory of the Galaxy rose to 145° Fahrenheit.

* * * * *

"Fifteen minutes," Larry Grange said. "In fifteen minutes the heat will have us all unconscious." Only it wasn't Larry alone who was talking. It was Larry and Johnny Mayhem. In a surprisingly short time the young Secret Serviceman had come to accept the dual occupation of his own mind. It was there: it was either dual occupation or insanity and if the voice which spoke inside his head said it was Johnny Mayhem, then it was Johnny Mayhem. Besides, Larry felt clear-headed in a way he had never felt before, despite the terrible, sapping heat. It was as if he had matured suddenly--the word matured came to him instinctively--in the space of minutes. Or, as if a maturing influence were at work on his mind.

"What can we do?" Sheila said. "The crew has complete control of the ship."

"Secret Service chief says we're on our own. There's no time for co-ordinated planning, but somehow, within a very few minutes, we've got to get inside the subspace room and throw the ship out of normal space or we'll all be roasted."

"Some of your men are there now, aren't they?"

"In the companionway outside the subspace room, yeah. But they'll never force their way in time. Not with blasters and not with N-guns, either. Not in ten minutes, they won't."

"Larry, all of a sudden I--I'm scared. We're all going to die, Larry. I don't want--Larry, what are you going to do?"

They had been walking in a deserted companionway which brought them to one of the aft escape hatches of the Glory of the Galaxy. Their clothing was plastered to their bodies with sweat and every breath was agonizing, furnace hot.

"I'm going outside," Larry said quietly.

"Outside? What do you mean?"

"Spacesuit, outside. There's a hatch in the subspace room. If their attention is diverted to the companionway door, I may be able to get in. It's our only chance--ours, and everyone's."

"But the spacesuit--"

"I know," Larry said even as he was climbing into the inflatable vacuum garment. It was Larry--and it wasn't Larry. He felt a certain confidence, a certain sense of doing the right thing--a feeling which Larry Grange had never experienced before in his life. It was as if the boy had become a man in the final moments of his life--or, he thought all at once, it was as if Johnny Mayhem who shared his mind and his body with him was somehow transmitting some of his own skills and confidence even as he--Mayhem--had reached the decision to go outside.

"I know," he said. "The spacesuit isn't insulated sufficiently. I'll have about three minutes out there. Three minutes to get inside. Otherwise, I'm finished."

"But Larry--"

"Don't you see, Sheila? What does it matter? Who wants the five or ten extra minutes if we're all going to die anyway? This way, there's a chance."

He buckled the spacesuit and lifted the heavy fishbowl helmet, preparing to set it on his shoulders.

"Wait," Sheila said, and stood on tiptoes to take his face in her hands and kiss him on the lips. "You--you're different," Sheila said. "You're the same guy, a lot of fun, but you're a--man, too. This is for what might have been, Larry," she said, and kissed him again. "This is because I love you."

Before he dropped the helmet in place, Larry said. "It isn't for what might have been, Sheila. It's for what will be."

The helmet snapped shut over the shoulder ridges of the spacesuit. Moments later, he had slipped into the airlock.

* * * * *

"I say you're a fool, Ackerman Boone!" one of the enlisted men rasped at the leader of the mutiny. "I say now we've lost our last chance. Now it's too late to get into the lifeboats even if we wanted to. Now all we can do is--die!"

There were still ten conscious men in the subspace room. The others had fallen before heat prostration and lay strewn about the floor, wringing wet and oddly flaccid as if all the moisture had been wrung from their bodies except for the sweat which covered their skins.

"All right," Ackerman Boone admitted. "All right, so none of us knows how to work the subspace mechanism. You think that would have helped? It would have killed us all, I tell you."

"It was a chance, Boone. Our last chance and you--"

"Just shut up!" Boone snarled. "I know what you're thinking. You're thinking we ought to let them officers and Secret Servicemen to ram home the subspace drive. But use your head, man. Probably they'll kill us all, but if they don't--"

"Then you admit there's a chance!"

"Yeah. All right, a chance. But if they don't kill us all, if they save us by ramming home the subspacer, what happens? We're all taken in on a mutiny charge. It's a capital offense, you fool!"

"Well, it's better than sure death," the man said, and moved toward the door.

"Allister, wait!" Boone cried. "Wait, I'm warning you. Any man who tries to open that door--"

Outside, a steady booming of blaster fire could be heard, but the assault-proof door stood fast.

"--is going to get himself killed!" Boone finished.

Grimly, Allister reached the door and got his already blistered fingers on the lock mechanism.

Ackerman Boone shot him in the back with an N-gun.

* * * * *

Larry's whole body felt like one raw mass of broken blisters as, flat on his belly, he inched his way along the outside hull of the Glory of the Galaxy. He had no idea what the heat was out here, but it radiated off the hot hull of the Glory in scalding, suffocating waves which swept right through the insulining of the spacesuit. If he didn't find the proper hatch, and in a matter of seconds....

* * * * *

"Anyone else?" Ackerman Boone screamed. "Anyone else like Allister?"

But one by one the remaining men were dropping from the heat. Finally--alone--Ackerman Boone faced the door and stared defiantly at the hot metal as if he could see his adversaries through it. On the other side, the firing became more sporadic as the officers and Secret Servicemen collapsed. His mind crazed with the heat and with fear, Ackerman Boone suddenly wished he could see the men through the door, wished he could see them die....

* * * * *

It was this hatch or nothing. He thought it was the right one, but couldn't be sure. He could no longer see. His vision had gone completely. The pain was a numb thing now, far away, hardly a part of himself. Maybe Mayhem was absorbing the pain-sensation for him, he thought. Maybe Mayhem took the pain and suffered with it in the shared body so he, Larry, could still think. Maybe--

His blistered fingers were barely able to move within the insulined gloves, Larry fumbled with the hatch.

* * * * *

Ackerman Boone whirled suddenly. He had been intent upon the companionway door and the sounds behind him--which he had heard but not registered as dangerous for several seconds--now made him turn.

The man was peeling off a space suit. Literally peeling it off in strips from his lobster-red flesh. He blinked at Boone without seeing him. Dazzle-blinded, Boone thought, then realized his own vision was going.

"I'll kill you if you go near that subspace drive!" Boone screamed.

"It's the only chance for all of us and you know it, Boone," the man said quietly. "Don't try to stop me."

Ackerman Boone lifted his N-gun and squinted through the haze of heat and blinding light. He couldn't see! He couldn't see....

Wildly, he fired the N-gun. Wildly, in all directions, spraying the room with it--

Larry dropped blindly forward. Twice he tripped over unconscious men, but climbed to his feet and went on. He could not see Boone, but he could see--vaguely--the muzzle flash of Boone's N-gun. He staggered across the room toward that muzzle-flash and finally embraced it--

And found himself fighting for his life. Boone was crazed now--with the heat and with his own failure. He bit and tore at Larry with strong claw-like fingers and lashed out with his feet. He balled his fists and hammered air like a windmill, arms flailing, striking flesh often enough to batter Larry toward the floor.

Grimly Larry clung to him, pulled himself upright, ducked his head against his chest and struck out with his own fists, feeling nothing, not knowing when they landed and when they did not, hearing nothing but a far off roaring in his ears, a roaring which told him he was losing consciousness and had to act--soon--if he was going to save anyone....

He stood and pounded with his fists.

Pounded--air.

He did not know that Boone had collapsed until his feet trod on the man's inert body and then, quickly, he rushed toward the control board, rushed blindly in its direction, or in the direction he thought it would be, tripped over something, sprawled on the hot, blistering floor, got himself up somehow, crawled forward, pulled himself upright....

There was no sensation in his fingers. He did not know if he had actually reached the control board but abruptly he realized that he had not felt Mayhem's presence in his mind for several minutes. Was Mayhem conserving his energy for a final try, letting Larry absorb the punishment now so he--

Yes, Larry remembered thinking vaguely. It had to be that. For Mayhem knew how to work the controls, and he did not. Now his mind receded into a fog of semi-consciousness, but he was aware that his blistered fingers were fairly flying across the control board, aware then of an inward sigh--whether of relief or triumph, he was never to know--then aware, abruptly and terribly, of a wrenching pain which seemed to strip his skin from his flesh, his flesh from his bones, the marrow from....

* * * * *

"Can you see?" the doctor asked.

"Yes," Larry said as the bandages were removed from his eyes. Three people were in the room with the doctor--Admiral Stapleton, the President--and Sheila. Somehow, Sheila was most important.

"We are now in subspace, thanks to you," the Admiral said. "We all have minor injuries as a result of the transfer, but there were only two fatalities, I'm happy to say. And naturally, the ship is now out of danger."

"What gets me, Grange," the President said, "is how you managed to work those controls. What the devil do you know about sub-space, my boy?"

"The two fatalities," the Admiral said, "were Ackerman Boone and the man he had killed." Then the Admiral grinned. "Can't you see, Mr. President, that he's not paying any attention to us? I think, at the moment, the hero of the hour only has eyes for Miss Kelly here."

"Begging your pardons, sirs, yes," Larry said happily.

Nodding and smiling, the President of the Galactic Federation and Admiral Stapleton left the dispensary room--with the doctor.

"Well, hero," Sheila said, and smiled.

Larry realized--quite suddenly--that, inside himself, he was alone. Mayhem had done his job--and vanished utterly.

"You know," Sheila said, "it's as if you--well, I hope this doesn't get you sore at me--as if you grew up overnight."

Before he kissed her Larry said: "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll tell you about it someday. But you'd never believe me."

THE END

 

 

---

Contents

PIPE OF PEACE

By James McKimmey, Jr.

 

There's a song that says "it's later than you think" and it is perhaps lamentable that someone didn't sing it for Henry that beautiful morning....

 

The farmer refused to work. His wife, a short thin woman with worried eyes, watched him while he sat before the kitchen table. He was thin, too, like his wife, but tall and tough-skinned. His face, with its leather look was immobile.

"Why?" asked his wife.

"Good reasons," the farmer said.

He poured yellow cream into a cup of coffee. He let the cup sit on the table.

"Henry?" said the woman, as though she were really speaking to someone else. She walked around the kitchen in quick aimless bird steps.

"My right," said Henry. He lifted his cup, finally, tasting.

"We'll starve."

"Not likely. Not until everybody else does, anyway."

The woman circled the room and came back to her husband. Her eyes winked, and there were lines between them. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table. "You've gone crazy," she said, as though it were a half-question, a half-pronouncement.

The farmer was relaxing now, leaning back in his chair. "Might have. Might have, at that."

"Why?" she asked.

The farmer turned his coffee cup carefully. "Thing to do, is all. Each man in his own turn. This is my turn."

The woman watched him for a long time, then she sat down on a chair beside the table. The quick, nervous movement was gone out of her, and she sat like a frozen sparrow.

The farmer looked up and grinned. "Feels good. Just to sit here. Does well for the back and the arms. Been working too hard."

"Henry," the woman said.

The farmer tasted his coffee again. He put the cup on the table and leaned back, tapping his browned fingers. "Just in time, I'd say. Waited any longer, it wouldn't have done any good. Another few years, a farmer wouldn't mean anything."

The woman watched him, her eyes frightened as though he might suddenly gnash his teeth or leap in the air.

"Pretty soon," the farmer said, "they'd have it all mechanical. Couldn't stop anything. Now," he said, smiling at his wife, "we can stop it all."

"Henry, go out to the fields," the woman said.

"No," Henry said, standing, stretching his thin, hard body. "I won't go out to the fields. Neither will August Brown nor Clyde Briggs nor Alfred Swanson. None of us. Anywhere. Not until the food's been stopped long enough for people to wake up."

The farmer looked out of the kitchen window, beyond his tractor and the cow barn and the windmill. He looked at rows of strong corn, shivering their soft silk in the morning breeze. "We'll stop the corn. Stop the wheat. Stop the cattle, the hogs, the chickens."

"You can't."

"I can't. But all of us together can."

"No sense," the woman said, wagging her head. "No sense."

"It's sense, all right. Best sense we've ever had. Can't use an army with no stomach. Old as the earth. Can't fight without food. Takes food to run a war."

"You'll starve the two of us, that's all you'll do. Nobody else will stop work."

The farmer turned to his wife. "Yes, they will. Everywhere a farmer is the same. He works the land. He reads the papers. He votes. He listens to the radio. He watches the television. Mostly, he works the land. Alone, with his own thoughts and ideas. He isn't any different in Maine than he is in Oregon. We've all stopped work. Now. This morning."

"How about those across the ocean? Are they stopping, too? They're not going to feed up their soldiers? To kill us if we don't starve first? To--"

"They stopped, too. A farmer is a farmer. Like a leaf on a tree. No matter on what tree in what country on whose land. A leaf is a leaf. A farmer's the same. A farmer is a farmer."

"It won't work," the woman said dully.

"Yes, it will."

"They'll make you work."

"How? It's our own property."

"They'll take it away from you."

"Who'll work it then?"

The woman rocked in her chair, her mouth quivering. "They'll get somebody."

The farmer shook his head. "Too many people doing other things, like making shells and guns, like sitting in fox-holes or flying planes."

The woman sat rocking, her hands together in her lap. "It won't work," she repeated.

"It'll work," said the farmer. "Right now, it'll work. Yes, we've got milkers and shuckers, and we've got hatchers for the chickens. We've got tractors and combines and threshing machines. They're all mechanical, all right. But we don't have mechanical farmers, yet. The pumps, the tractors, the milkers don't work by themselves. In time, maybe. Not now. We're still ahead of them on that. It'll work."

"Go out to the fields, Henry," his wife said, her voice like the sound of a worn phonograph record.

"No," the farmer said, taking a pipe from his overalls. "I think instead, I'll just sit in the sun and watch the corn. Watch the birds on top of the barn, maybe. I'll fill my pipe and sit there and smoke and watch. And when I get sleepy, I'll sleep. After a while I might go see August Brown or Clyde Briggs or maybe Alfred Swanson. We'll sit and talk, about pleasant things, peaceful things. We'll wait."

The farmer put the pipe between his teeth and walked to the door. He put on his straw hat, buttoned the sleeves of his blue shirt and stepped outside.

His wife sat at the table, staring at nothing in the room.

The farmer walked across the barnyard, listening to the sound of the chickens and the sound of the breeze going through the corn. Near the barn, he sat upon an old tree stump and filled his pipe with tobacco. He lit the pipe, cupping his hands, and sat there, smoking, the smoke spiraling up into the bright warm air.

He took his pipe from his teeth and looked at it. "Pipe of peace," he said, laughing inside himself.

The breeze was soft and the sun warm on his back. He sat there, smoking, feeling the quiet of the morning, the peace of the great sky above.

He had no time to stand or to take his pipe from his mouth, when the two men crossed the yard and lifted him up by the arms. He dropped the pipe, while he was dragged past the house, to the road beyond. He had no time to yell or scream, before his hat was swept from his head, the overalls and the blue shirt stripped from his body.

He had not even thought about what it was that had happened, before he was thrust inside a white truck, with strong steel sides and with grilled windows like those of a cell.

He was just sitting there, in the truck, without his clothes, speeding away with August Brown and Clyde Briggs and Alfred Swanson.

* * * * *

Outside, the sun was warm upon the earth. Chickens clucked in their pens, while birds fluttered about the top of the barn. A pig squealed. The corn rustled. And beside the farmhouse, on the ground, lay a pipe, its tobacco spilled, the last of its smoke swirling out of its bowl into the air, disappearing.

The woman sat in the kitchen of the farmhouse and turned her head when the door opened. She widened her eyes and caught at her throat with her hand.

The sun through the doorway shone down on metallic hands and a metallic face, gleaming on the surface which the straw hat and the overalls and the blue shirt didn't hide. The door snapped shut, and there was a sound of heavy metal footsteps against the kitchen floor.

The woman pressed against her chair. "Who are you?" she screamed.

"Henry," said the mechanical thing.

THE END