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THE LEECH

By Robert Sheckley

 

A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home ... literally!

 

The leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged at it.

A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead-seeming within its tough spore case.

One speck of dust among many, the winds blew it around the Earth, played with it, and let it fall.

On the ground, it began to stir. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew--and fed.

* * * * *

Frank Conners came up on the porch and coughed twice. "Say, pardon me, Professor," he said.

The long, pale man didn't stir from the sagging couch. His horn-rimmed glasses were perched on his forehead, and he was snoring very gently.

"I'm awful sorry to disturb you," Conners said, pushing back his battered felt hat. "I know it's your restin' week and all, but there's something damned funny in the ditch."

The pale man's left eyebrow twitched, but he showed no other sign of having heard.

Frank Conners coughed again, holding his spade in one purple-veined hand. "Didja hear me, Professor?"

"Of course I heard you," Micheals said in a muffled voice, his eyes still closed. "You found a pixie."

"A what?" Conners asked, squinting at Micheals.

"A little man in a green suit. Feed him milk, Conners."

"No, sir. I think it's a rock."

Micheals opened one eye and focused it in Conners' general direction.

"I'm awfully sorry about it," Conners said. Professor Micheals' resting week was a ten-year-old custom, and his only eccentricity. All winter Micheals taught anthropology, worked on half a dozen committees, dabbled in physics and chemistry, and still found time to write a book a year. When summer came, he was tired.

Arriving at his worked-out New York State farm, it was his invariable rule to do absolutely nothing for a week. He hired Frank Conners to cook for that week and generally make himself useful, while Professor Micheals slept.

During the second week, Micheals would wander around, look at the trees and fish. By the third week he would be getting a tan, reading, repairing the sheds and climbing mountains. At the end of four weeks, he could hardly wait to get back to the city.

But the resting week was sacred.

"I really wouldn't bother you for anything small," Conners said apologetically. "But that damned rock melted two inches off my spade."

Micheals opened both eyes and sat up. Conners held out the spade. The rounded end was sheared cleanly off. Micheals swung himself off the couch and slipped his feet into battered moccasins.

"Let's see this wonder," he said.

* * * * *

The object was lying in the ditch at the end of the front lawn, three feet from the main road. It was round, about the size of a truck tire, and solid throughout. It was about an inch thick, as far as he could tell, grayish black and intricately veined.

"Don't touch it," Conners warned.

"I'm not going to. Let me have your spade." Micheals took the spade and prodded the object experimentally. It was completely unyielding. He held the spade to the surface for a moment, then withdrew it. Another inch was gone.

Micheals frowned, and pushed his glasses tighter against his nose. He held the spade against the rock with one hand, the other held close to the surface. More of the spade disappeared.

"Doesn't seem to be generating heat," he said to Conners. "Did you notice any the first time?"

Conners shook his head.

Micheals picked up a clod of dirt and tossed it on the object. The dirt dissolved quickly, leaving no trace on the gray-black surface. A large stone followed the dirt, and disappeared in the same way.

"Isn't that just about the damnedest thing you ever saw, Professor?" Conners asked.

"Yes," Micheals agreed, standing up again. "It just about is."

He hefted the spade and brought it down smartly on the object. When it hit, he almost dropped the spade. He had been gripping the handle rigidly, braced for a recoil. But the spade struck that unyielding surface and _stayed_. There was no perceptible give, but absolutely no recoil.

"Whatcha think it is?" Conners asked.

"It's no stone," Micheals said. He stepped back. "A leech drinks blood. This thing seems to be drinking dirt. And spades." He struck it a few more times, experimentally. The two men looked at each other. On the road, half a dozen Army trucks rolled past.

"I'm going to phone the college and ask a physics man about it," Micheals said. "Or a biologist. I'd like to get rid of that thing before it spoils my lawn."

They walked back to the house.

* * * * *

Everything fed the leech. The wind added its modicum of kinetic energy, ruffling across the gray-black surface. Rain fell, and the force of each individual drop added to its store. The water was sucked in by the all-absorbing surface.

The sunlight above it was absorbed, and converted into mass for its body. Beneath it, the soil was consumed, dirt, stones and branches broken down by the leech's complex cells and changed into energy. Energy was converted back into mass, and the leech grew.

Slowly, the first flickers of consciousness began to return. Its first realization was of the impossible smallness of its body.

It grew.

* * * * *

When Micheals looked the next day, the leech was eight feet across, sticking out into the road and up the side of the lawn. The following day it was almost eighteen feet in diameter, shaped to fit the contour of the ditch, and covering most of the road. That day the sheriff drove up in his model A, followed by half the town.

"Is that your leech thing, Professor Micheals?" Sheriff Flynn asked.

"That's it," Micheals said. He had spent the past days looking unsuccessfully for an acid that would dissolve the leech.

"We gotta get it out of the road," Flynn said, walking truculently up to the leech. "Something like this, you can't let it block the road, Professor. The Army's gotta use this road."

"I'm terribly sorry," Micheals said with a straight face. "Go right ahead, Sheriff. But be careful. It's hot." The leech wasn't hot, but it seemed the simplest explanation under the circumstances.

Micheals watched with interest as the sheriff tried to shove a crowbar under it. He smiled to himself when it was removed with half a foot of its length gone.

The sheriff wasn't so easily discouraged. He had come prepared for a stubborn piece of rock. He went to the rumble seat of his car and took out a blowtorch and a sledgehammer, ignited the torch and focused it on one edge of the leech.

After five minutes, there was no change. The gray didn't turn red or even seem to heat up. Sheriff Flynn continued to bake it for fifteen minutes, then called to one of the men.

"Hit that spot with the sledge, Jerry."

Jerry picked up the sledgehammer, motioned the sheriff back, and swung it over his head. He let out a howl as the hammer struck unyieldingly. There wasn't a fraction of recoil.

In the distance they heard the roar of an Army convoy.

"Now we'll get some action," Flynn said.

* * * * *

Micheals wasn't so sure. He walked around the periphery of the leech, asking himself what kind of substance would react that way. The answer was easy--no substance. No _known_ substance.

The driver in the lead jeep held up his hand, and the long convoy ground to a halt. A hard, efficient-looking officer stepped out of the jeep. From the star on either shoulder, Micheals knew he was a brigadier general.

"You can't block this road," the general said. He was a tall, spare man in suntans, with a sunburned face and cold eyes. "Please clear that thing away."

"We can't move it," Micheals said. He told the general what had happened in the past few days.

"It must be moved," the general said. "This convoy must go through." He walked closer and looked at the leech. "You say it can't be jacked up by a crowbar? A torch won't burn it?"

"That's right," Micheals said, smiling faintly.

"Driver," the general said over his shoulder. "Ride over it."

Micheals started to protest, but stopped himself. The military mind would have to find out in its own way.

The driver put his jeep in gear and shot forward, jumping the leech's four-inch edge. The jeep got to the center of the leech and stopped.

"I didn't tell you to stop!" the general bellowed.

"I didn't, sir!" the driver protested.

The jeep had been yanked to a stop and had stalled. The driver started it again, shifted to four-wheel drive, and tried to ram forward. The jeep was fixed immovably, as though set in concrete.

"Pardon me," Micheals said. "If you look, you can see that the tires are melting down."

The general stared, his hand creeping automatically toward his pistol belt. Then he shouted, "Jump, driver! Don't touch that gray stuff."

White-faced, the driver climbed to the hood of his jeep, looked around him, and jumped clear.

There was complete silence as everyone watched the jeep. First its tires melted down, and then the rims. The body, resting on the gray surface, melted, too.

The aerial was the last to go.

The general began to swear softly under his breath. He turned to the driver. "Go back and have some men bring up hand grenades and dynamite."

The driver ran back to the convoy.

"I don't know what you've got here," the general said. "But it's not going to stop a U.S. Army convoy."

Micheals wasn't so sure.

* * * * *

The leech was nearly awake now, and its body was calling for more and more food. It dissolved the soil under it at a furious rate, filling it in with its own body, flowing outward.

A large object landed on it, and that became food also. Then suddenly--

A burst of energy against its surface, and then another, and another. It consumed them gratefully, converting them into mass. Little metal pellets struck it, and their kinetic energy was absorbed, their mass converted. More explosions took place, helping to fill the starving cells.

It began to sense things--controlled combustion around it, vibrations of wind, mass movements.

There was another, greater explosion, a taste of _real_ food! Greedily it ate, growing faster. It waited anxiously for more explosions, while its cells screamed for food.

But no more came. It continued to feed on the soil and on the Sun's energy. Night came, noticeable for its lesser energy possibilities, and then more days and nights. Vibrating objects continued to move around it.

It ate and grew and flowed.

* * * * *

Micheals stood on a little hill, watching the dissolution of his house. The leech was several hundred yards across now, lapping at his front porch.

Good-by, home, Micheals thought, remembering the ten summers he had spent there.

The porch collapsed into the body of the leech. Bit by bit, the house crumpled.

The leech looked like a field of lava now, a blasted spot on the green Earth.

"Pardon me, sir," a soldier said, coming up behind him. "General O'Donnell would like to see you."

"Right," Micheals said, and took his last look at the house.

He followed the soldier through the barbed wire that had been set up in a half-mile circle around the leech. A company of soldiers was on guard around it, keeping back the reporters and the hundreds of curious people who had flocked to the scene. Micheals wondered why he was still allowed inside. Probably, he decided, because most of this was taking place on his land.

The soldier brought him to a tent. Micheals stooped and went in. General O'Donnell, still in suntans, was seated at a small desk. He motioned Micheals to a chair.

"I've been put in charge of getting rid of this leech," he said to Micheals.

Micheals nodded, not commenting on the advisability of giving a soldier a scientist's job.

"You're a professor, aren't you?"

"Yes. Anthropology."

"Good. Smoke?" The general lighted Micheals' cigarette. "I'd like you to stay around here in an advisory capacity. You were one of the first to see this leech. I'd appreciate your observations on--" he smiled--"the enemy."

"I'd be glad to," Micheals said. "However, I think this is more in the line of a physicist or a biochemist."

"I don't want this place cluttered with scientists," General O'Donnell said, frowning at the tip of his cigarette. "Don't get me wrong. I have the greatest appreciation for science. I am, if I do say so, a scientific soldier. I'm always interested in the latest weapons. You can't fight any kind of a war any more without science."

* * * * *

O'Donnell's sunburned face grew firm. "But I can't have a team of longhairs poking around this thing for the next month, holding me up. My job is to destroy it, by any means in my power, and at once. I am going to do just that."

"I don't think you'll find it that easy," Micheals said.

"That's what I want you for," O'Donnell said. "Tell me why and I'll figure out a way of doing it."

"Well, as far as I can figure out, the leech is an organic mass-energy converter, and a frighteningly efficient one. I would guess that it has a double cycle. First, it converts mass into energy, then back into mass for its body. Second, energy is converted directly into the body mass. How this takes place, I do not know. The leech is not protoplasmic. It may not even be cellular--"

"So we need something big against it," O'Donnell interrupted. "Well, that's all right. I've got some big stuff here."

"I don't think you understand me," Micheals said. "Perhaps I'm not phrasing this very well. _The leech eats energy._ It can consume the strength of any energy weapon you use against it."

"What happens," O'Donnell asked, "if it keeps on eating?"

"I have no idea what its growth-limits are," Micheals said. "Its growth may be limited only by its food source."

"You mean it could continue to grow probably forever?"

"It could possibly grow as long as it had something to feed on."

"This is really a challenge," O'Donnell said. "That leech can't be totally impervious to force."

"It seems to be. I suggest you get some physicists in here. Some biologists also. Have them figure out a way of nullifying it."

The general put out his cigarette. "Professor, I cannot wait while scientists wrangle. There is an axiom of mine which I am going to tell you." He paused impressively. "Nothing is impervious to force. Muster enough force and anything will give. _Anything._

"Professor," the general continued, in a friendlier tone, "you shouldn't sell short the science you represent. We have, massed under North Hill, the greatest accumulation of energy and radioactive weapons ever assembled in one spot. Do you think your leech can stand the full force of them?"

"I suppose it's possible to overload the thing," Micheals said doubtfully. He realized now why the general wanted him around. He supplied the trappings of science, without the authority to override O'Donnell.

"Come with me," General O'Donnell said cheerfully, getting up and holding back a flap of the tent. "We're going to crack that leech in half."

* * * * *

After a long wait, rich food started to come again, piped into one side of it. First there was only a little, and then more and more. Radiations, vibrations, explosions, solids, liquids--an amazing variety of edibles. It accepted them all. But the food was coming too slowly for the starving cells, for new cells were constantly adding their demands to the rest.

The ever-hungry body screamed for more food, faster!

Now that it had reached a fairly efficient size, it was fully awake. It puzzled over the energy-impressions around it, locating the source of the new food massed in one spot.

Effortlessly it pushed itself into the air, flew a little way and dropped on the food. Its super-efficient cells eagerly gulped the rich radioactive substances. But it did not ignore the lesser potentials of metal and clumps of carbohydrates.

* * * * *

"The damned fools," General O'Donnell said. "Why did they have to panic? You'd think they'd never been trained." He paced the ground outside his tent, now in a new location three miles back.

The leech had grown to two miles in diameter. Three farming communities had been evacuated.

Micheals, standing beside the general, was still stupefied by the memory. The leech had accepted the massed power of the weapons for a while, and then its entire bulk had lifted in the air. The Sun had been blotted out as it flew leisurely over North Hill, and dropped. There should have been time for evacuation, but the frightened soldiers had been blind with fear.

Sixty-seven men were lost in Operation Leech, and General O'Donnell asked permission to use atomic bombs. Washington sent a group of scientists to investigate the situation.

"Haven't those experts decided yet?" O'Donnell asked, halting angrily in front of the tent. "They've been talking long enough."

"It's a hard decision," Micheals said. Since he wasn't an official member of the investigating team, he had given his information and left. "The physicists consider it a biological matter, and the biologists seem to think the chemists should have the answer. No one's an expert on this, because it's never happened before. We just don't have the data."

"It's a military problem," O'Donnell said harshly. "I'm not interested in what the thing is--I want to know what can destroy it. They'd better give me permission to use the bomb."

Micheals had made his own calculations on that. It was impossible to say for sure, but taking a flying guess at the leech's mass-energy absorption rate, figuring in its size and apparent capacity for growth, an atomic bomb _might_ overload it--if used soon enough.

He estimated three days as the limit of usefulness. The leech was growing at a geometric rate. It could cover the United States in a few months.

"For a week I've been asking permission to use the bomb," O'Donnell grumbled. "And I'll get it, but not until after those jackasses end their damned talking." He stopped pacing and turned to Micheals. "I am going to destroy the leech. I am going to smash it, if that's the last thing I do. It's more than a matter of security now. It's personal pride."

That attitude might make great generals, Micheals thought, but it wasn't the way to consider this problem. It was anthropomorphic of O'Donnell to see the leech as an enemy. Even the identification, "leech," was a humanizing factor. O'Donnell was dealing with it as he would any physical obstacle, as though the leech were the simple equivalent of a large army.

But the leech was not human, not even of this planet, perhaps. It should be dealt with in its own terms.

"Here come the bright boys now," O'Donnell said.

* * * * *

From a nearby tent a group of weary men emerged, led by Allenson, a government biologist.

"Well," the general asked, "have you figured out what it is?"

"Just a minute, I'll hack off a sample," Allenson said, glaring through red-rimmed eyes.

"Have you figured out some _scientific_ way of killing it?"

"Oh, that wasn't too difficult," Moriarty, an atomic physicist, said wryly. "Wrap it in a perfect vacuum. That'll do the trick. Or blow it off the Earth with anti-gravity."

"But failing that," Allenson said, "we suggest you use your atomic bombs, and use them fast."

"Is that the opinion of your entire group?" O'Donnell asked, his eyes glittering.

"Yes."

The general hurried away. Micheals joined the scientists.

"He should have called us in at the very first," Allenson complained. "There's no time to consider anything but force now."

"Have you come to any conclusions about the nature of the leech?" Micheals asked.

"Only general ones," Moriarty said, "and they're about the same as yours. The leech is probably extraterrestrial in origin. It seems to have been in a spore-stage until it landed on Earth." He paused to light a pipe. "Incidentally, we should be damned glad it didn't drop in an ocean. We'd have had the Earth eaten out from under us before we knew what we were looking for."

They walked in silence for a few minutes.

"As you mentioned, it's a perfect converter--it can transform mass into energy, and any energy into mass." Moriarty grinned. "Naturally that's impossible and I have figures to prove it."

"I'm going to get a drink," Allenson said. "Anyone coming?"

"Best idea of the week," Micheals said. "I wonder how long it'll take O'Donnell to get permission to use the bomb."

"If I know politics," Moriarty said, "too long."

* * * * *

The findings of the government scientists were checked by other government scientists. That took a few days. Then Washington wanted to know if there wasn't some alternative to exploding an atomic bomb in the middle of New York State. It took a little time to convince them of the necessity. After that, people had to be evacuated, which took more time.

Then orders were made out, and five atomic bombs were checked out of a cache. A patrol rocket was assigned, given orders, and put under General O'Donnell's command. This took a day more.

Finally, the stubby scout rocket was winging its way over New York. From the air, the grayish-black spot was easy to find. Like a festered wound, it stretched between Lake Placid and Elizabethtown, covering Keene and Keene Valley, and lapping at the edges of Jay.

The first bomb was released.

* * * * *

It had been a long wait after the first rich food. The greater radiation of day was followed by the lesser energy of night many times, as the leech ate away the earth beneath it, absorbed the air around it, and grew. Then one day--

An amazing burst of energy!

Everything was food for the leech, but there was always the possibility of choking. The energy poured over it, drenched it, battered it, and the leech grew frantically, trying to contain the titanic dose. Still small, it quickly reached its overload limit. The strained cells, filled to satiation, were given more and more food. The strangling body built new cells at lightning speed. And--

It held. The energy was controlled, stimulating further growth. More cells took over the load, sucking in the food.

The next doses were wonderfully palatable, easily handled. The leech overflowed its bounds, growing, eating, and growing.

That was a taste of real food! The leech was as near ecstasy as it had ever been. It waited hopefully for more, but no more came.

It went back to feeding on the Earth. The energy, used to produce more cells, was soon dissipated. Soon it was hungry again.

It would always be hungry.

* * * * *

O'Donnell retreated with his demoralized men. They camped ten miles from the leech's southern edge, in the evacuated town of Schroon Lake. The leech was over sixty miles in diameter now and still growing fast. It lay sprawled over the Adirondack Mountains, completely blanketing everything from Saranac Lake to Port Henry, with one edge of it over Westport, in Lake Champlain.

Everyone within two hundred miles of the leech was evacuated.

General O'Donnell was given permission to use hydrogen bombs, contingent on the approval of his scientists.

"What have the bright boys decided?" O'Donnell wanted to know.

He and Micheals were in the living room of an evacuated Schroon Lake house. O'Donnell had made it his new command post.

"Why are they hedging?" O'Donnell demanded impatiently. "The leech has to be blown up quick. What are they fooling around for?"

"They're afraid of a chain reaction," Micheals told him. "A concentration of hydrogen bombs might set one up in the Earth's crust or in the atmosphere. It might do any of half a dozen things."

"Perhaps they'd like me to order a bayonet attack," O'Donnell said contemptuously.

Micheals sighed and sat down in an armchair. He was convinced that the whole method was wrong. The government scientists were being rushed into a single line of inquiry. The pressure on them was so great that they didn't have a chance to consider any other approach but force--and the leech thrived on that.

Micheals was certain that there were times when fighting fire with fire was not applicable.

Fire. Loki, god of fire. And of trickery. No, there was no answer there. But Micheals' mind was in mythology now, retreating from the unbearable present.

Allenson came in, followed by six other men.

"Well," Allenson said, "there's a damned good chance of splitting the Earth wide open if you use the number of bombs our figures show you need."

"You have to take chances in war," O'Donnell replied bluntly. "Shall I go ahead?"

Micheals saw, suddenly, that O'Donnell didn't care if he did crack the Earth. The red-faced general only knew that he was going to set off the greatest explosion ever produced by the hand of Man.

"Not so fast," Allenson said. "I'll let the others speak for themselves."

The general contained himself with difficulty. "Remember," he said, "according to your own figures, the leech is growing at the rate of twenty feet an hour."

"And speeding up," Allenson added. "But this isn't a decision to be made in haste."

Micheals found his mind wandering again, to the lightning bolts of Zeus. That was what they needed. Or the strength of Hercules.

Or--

He sat up suddenly. "Gentlemen, I believe I can offer you a possible alternative, although it's a very dim one."

They stared at him.

"Have you ever heard of Antaeus?" he asked.

* * * * *

The more the leech ate, the faster it grew and the hungrier it became. Although its birth was forgotten, it did remember a long way back. It had eaten a planet in that ancient past. Grown tremendous, ravenous, it had made the journey to a nearby star and eaten that, replenishing the cells converted into energy for the trip. But then there was no more food, and the next star was an enormous distance away.

It set out on the journey, but long before it reached the food, its energy ran out. Mass, converted back to energy to make the trip, was used up. It shrank.

Finally, all the energy was gone. It was a spore, drifting aimlessly, lifelessly, in space.

That was the first time. Or was it? It thought it could remember back to a distant, misty time when the Universe was evenly covered with stars. It had eaten through them, cutting away whole sections, growing, swelling. And the stars had swung off in terror, forming galaxies and constellations.

Or was that a dream?

Methodically, it fed on the Earth, wondering where the rich food was. And then it was back again, but this time above the leech.

It waited, but the tantalizing food remained out of reach. It was able to sense how rich and pure the food was.

Why didn't it fall?

For a long time the leech waited, but the food stayed out of reach. At last, it lifted and followed.

The food retreated, up, up from the surface of the planet. The leech went after as quickly as its bulk would allow.

The rich food fled out, into space, and the leech followed. Beyond, it could sense an even richer source.

The hot, wonderful food of a sun!

* * * * *

O'Donnell served champagne for the scientists in the control room. Official dinners would follow, but this was the victory celebration.

"A toast," the general said, standing. The men raised their glasses. The only man not drinking was a lieutenant, sitting in front of the control board that guided the drone spaceship.

"To Micheals, for thinking of--what was it again, Micheals?"

"Antaeus." Micheals had been drinking champagne steadily, but he didn't feel elated. Antaeus, born of Ge, the Earth, and Poseidon, the Sea. The invincible wrestler. Each time Hercules threw him to the ground, he arose refreshed.

Until Hercules held him in the air.

Moriarty was muttering to himself, figuring with slide rule, pencil and paper. Allenson was drinking, but he didn't look too happy about it.

"Come on, you birds of evil omen," O'Donnell said, pouring more champagne. "Figure it out later. Right now, drink." He turned to the operator. "How's it going?"

Micheals' analogy had been applied to a spaceship. The ship, operated by remote control, was filled with pure radioactives. It hovered over the leech until, rising to the bait, it had followed. Antaeus had left his mother, the Earth, and was losing his strength in the air. The operator was allowing the spaceship to run fast enough to keep out of the leech's grasp, but close enough to keep it coming.

The spaceship and the leech were on a collision course with the Sun.

"Fine, sir," the operator said. "It's inside the orbit of Mercury now."

"Men," the general said, "I swore to destroy that thing. This isn't exactly the way I wanted to do it. I figured on a more personal way. But the important thing is the destruction. You will all witness it. Destruction is at times a sacred mission. This is such a time. Men, I feel wonderful."

"Turn the spaceship!" It was Moriarty who had spoken. His face was white. "Turn the damned thing!"

He shoved his figures at them.

They were easy to read. The growth-rate of the leech. The energy-consumption rate, estimated. Its speed in space, a constant. The energy it would receive from the Sun as it approached, an exponential curve. Its energy-absorption rate, figured in terms of growth, expressed as a hyped-up discontinuous progression.

The result--

"It'll consume the Sun," Moriarty said, very quietly.

The control room turned into a bedlam. Six of them tried to explain it to O'Donnell at the same time. Then Moriarty tried, and finally Allenson.

"Its rate of growth is so great and its speed so slow--and it will get so much energy--that the leech will be able to consume the Sun by the time it gets there. Or, at least, to live off it until it can consume it."

O'Donnell didn't bother to understand. He turned to the operator.

"Turn it," he said.

They all hovered over the radar screen, waiting.

* * * * *

The food turned out of the leech's path and streaked away. Ahead was a tremendous source, but still a long way off. The leech hesitated.

Its cells, recklessly expending energy, shouted for a decision. The food slowed, tantalizingly near.

The closer source or the greater?

The leech's body wanted food _now_.

It started after it, away from the Sun.

The Sun would come next.

* * * * *

"Pull it out at right angles to the plane of the Solar System," Allenson said.

The operator touched the controls. On the radar screen, they saw a blob pursuing a dot. It had turned.

Relief washed over them. It had been close!

"In what portion of the sky would the leech be?" O'Donnell asked, his face expressionless.

"Come outside; I believe I can show you," an astronomer said. They walked to the door. "Somewhere in that section," the astronomer said, pointing.

"Fine. All right, Soldier," O'Donnell told the operator. "Carry out your orders."

The scientists gasped in unison. The operator manipulated the controls and the blob began to overtake the dot. Micheals started across the room.

"Stop," the general said, and his strong, commanding voice stopped Micheals. "I know what I'm doing. I had that ship especially built."

The blob overtook the dot on the radar screen.

"I told you this was a personal matter," O'Donnell said. "I swore to destroy that leech. We can never have any security while it lives." He smiled. "Shall we look at the sky?"

The general strolled to the door, followed by the scientists.

"Push the button, Soldier!"

The operator did. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the sky lit up!

A bright star hung in space. Its brilliance filled the night, grew, and started to fade.

"What did you do?" Micheals gasped.

"That rocket was built around a hydrogen bomb," O'Donnell said, his strong face triumphant. "I set it off at the contact moment." He called to the operator again. "Is there anything showing on the radar?"

"Not a speck, sir."

"Men," the general said, "I have met the enemy and he is mine. Let's have some more champagne."

But Micheals found that he was suddenly ill.

* * * * *

It had been shrinking from the expenditure of energy, when the great explosion came. No thought of containing it. The leech's cells held for the barest fraction of a second, and then spontaneously overloaded.

The leech was smashed, broken up, destroyed. It was split into a thousand particles, and the particles were split a million times more.

The particles were thrown out on the wave front of the explosion, and they split further, spontaneously.

Into spores.

The spores closed into dry, hard, seemingly lifeless specks of dust, billions of them, scattered, drifting. Unconscious, they floated in the emptiness of space.

Billions of them, waiting to be fed.

 

 

---

Contents

THE CLEAN AND WHOLESOME LAND

By Ralph Sholto

 

Utopia had been reached. All the problems of mankind had been solved. It was the perfect State. If you doubted it, you died.

 

While Professor Cargill lectured from the rostrum, Neal Pardeau prowled the dark auditorium. This, he knew, was the place to find them. Here was where they whispered and plotted and schemed--feeling safe in this pure, hard core of patriotism.

Safe because Cargill was the Director of Education in the New State, just as Pardeau was the Director of Public Security. Safe because Cargill's lectures were given before a commanded audience, with attendance strictly mandatory.

The insistence was not really necessary of course. The people would have come to hear Cargill regardless. His was a compelling, magnetic personality. Even now his great voice was booming out:

"--and upon this anniversary of the New State, we can look out with great pride upon a clean and wholesome land. With strong emotion, we can look upon the physical manifestation of our glorious principles--that only through self-effacement--through fanatic love for the state--can the individual come to complete physical and mental fruition. Upon this anniversary we see our enemies, both within and without, broken, and completely subjugated--"

This was the place they whispered and schemed and plotted. Pardeau prowled the aisles, his eyes piercing the darkness--spotting them, cataloguing them. And thus he came upon Emil Hillerman, his Deputy of Vital Intelligence sitting dutifully in the end seat of a middle aisle. Hillerman's thick lips hung lax, his eyes squinted laboriously as he sought to follow the thread of Cargill's lecture.

Pardeau tapped Hillerman on the shoulder. The latter started guiltily. He whirled and sought to identify Pardeau in the semi-darkness. Pardeau said, "Please step outside with me. I have some questions."

There was fear in Hillerman's bearing as he got clumsily to his feet and followed Pardeau. But none of Cargill's speech was missed. A battery of loudspeakers carried it even into the foyer where Pardeau stopped and turned on Hillerman. He regarded the man through cold, calculating eyes. He seemed to be both enjoying Hillerman's discomfort and also listening to Cargill's booming words.

"--these pale weaklings, these traitors with twitching muscles and twitching minds who skulked in dark places have been finally and decisively defeated. Even their vaunted leader--"

"What have you been doing," Pardeau asked, "relative to Karl Lenster?"

The frightened Hillerman licked his fat lower lip as he sought for words. "Everything--everything possible. But Lenster is clever. You know that. You know that yourself."

Pardeau's eyes bored into those of the Intelligence Director. They were noted for their icy penetration, but upon this night they were like steel knives. It was as though he surveyed Hillerman from behind the bulwark of some new and hostile information. Even as he stared, Cargill was booming from the rostrum:

"--Karl Lenster, their peerless leader--"

And Cargill's voice crackled with the inflections of pure contempt.

"--a degenerate--a dope addict whose greatness lay only in the realms of his sensual dreams. A weak, pitiful figure bereft of followers, cringing alone in--"

When Pardeau spoke, his voice held a new sharpness to complement the new ice in his eyes. He said, "In half an hour I am attending a meeting of the Council. They will want a report. What about Lenster?"

Hillerman looked quickly to right and left, then back at his Chief. He hesitated as though fearing the consequences of what he was about to reveal. "You know of the Wyckoff Chemical Transformation Process--"

"Certainly I know of it," Pardeau blazed. "What about it?"

"I--I--" But Hillerman seemed to lose the courage he'd screwed up to continue in this direction. He straightened and a little of the hangdog servility dropped away. "I am doing all that is humanly possible to apprehend Lenster. All that any man could do. The secret jails are full. My interrogators work night and day. Even a superficial check of my records would show that more has been done in the last six months and is being done now than--"

Pardeau raised an impatient hand, opening a gap of silence into which the voice of Cargill poured.

"--land in which the voice of dissenter is not heard; in which Lenster and men of his despicable ilk are forever crushed and beaten--"

Pardeau was scowling. Almost unconsciously he had held the pause, with hand upraised, until Cargill finished his passage. As Cargill stopped for breath, Pardeau jerked his hand down sharply, completing the gesture. "I have no time for any more of this. And I resent having to seek you out. Next time report to my office as is proper and keep me posted as to your activities. Next--"

Pardeau eyed Hillerman for one blank moment and allowed the threat to reflect clearly that possibly there would not be many more next times. Then he turned and strode swiftly from the foyer.

* * * * *

Cargill's voice had hardly faded when he picked it up again on his car radio. It was a foregone conclusion that every radio in the land would be tuned to the lecture. So great was Cargill's popularity that every citizen traveling in a car would wish to hear it and turn on his receiver. It was foolish not to have a radio properly tuned when Cargill spoke. He was saying:

"--and so under the banner of complete solidarity, we will march forward, a solid phalanx against which no force can stand. Now that our own house is swept clean of vermin--rid forever of carrion like Lenster and his ilk, we can--"

Pardeau had traveled swiftly through the streets at the high speed reserved for higher servants of the New State. Lesser servants of the New State had learned caution and thus no regrettable deaths or maimings occurred; the lesser servants having grown wary and fleet of foot.

Pardeau switched off his motor but left his radio blaring. Cargill's voice followed him up the broad steps of the Executive Building and was just fading out when Pardeau was able to pick it up again from the loudspeaker under the great arches.

He entered the building and traversed the vast foyer to a niche which housed a private elevator. He entered the lift, deserting it on the ninth floor, where he entered an unobtrusive door and joined a group which consisted of the New State's well guarded pool of power and brains.

There was Blanchard of Finance; Keeley, Director of Foreign Education; Masichek, overlord of the nation's larder, and seven others.

When Pardeau entered, all conversation stopped and every man looked up from a luxurious overstuffed chair. Pardeau must certainly have swelled inwardly with pride at this unconscious tribute. It was well known that he held a key position on the chessboard of politics. His was in reality the most important job of all. It was to Pardeau that this powerful group of men looked for that which they most treasured--their own personal safety.

A chair was waiting for Pardeau. He said, "I'm sorry to be late, gentlemen. I have been on a personal tour of inspection. I'm sure you will forgive me however. I have a most interesting report."

He seated himself, timing the action so it coincided with the ebb of applause coming over the speaker--applause from the loyal multitudes who had just heard Professor Cargill end his lecture. As it was now permissible, Blanchard reached under the table and snapped a button. The speaker went silent.

"An interesting report?" Keeley asked.

"Amazingly so," Pardeau said. "I have just unearthed a traitor--a traitor in a high place."

Every man in the group strove not to react and this striving was in itself a reaction. "Most interesting," Blanchard murmured. "Are you ready to name names?"

"That is my intention, but in order to forestall a great many questions, let me give you a complete background."

Leiderman, Ambassador without Portfolio, and very close to the Man of Almost Sacred Name who never attended these meetings, felt strong enough to evince impatience. "The name, man! First the name. Then the details."

Pardeau smiled coldly. "Very well. The name is, Karl Lenster."

Leiderman sprang from his chair, his face bordering on purple. "Is this a joke, Pardeau? We all know Lenster is the arch-traitor of our times--the leader of the resistance movement. Talk sense!"

Pardeau, not in the least disconcerted, smiled coldly. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I should have said Emil Hillerman, my Deputy of Vital Intelligence, the man who holds immeasurable power in his two hands."

Blanchard was not given to outbursts. But his lips were grim as he said, "We are waiting for you to talk sense, Pardeau."

"The confusion comes from your not allowing me to tell it as I wished. There is a gap between Lenster and Hillerman; one which--with your permission--I will fill."

"Talk, man! Talk!"

"You have all heard of Formula 652, known also as the Wyckoff Chemical Transformation Process."

There were expressions of both understanding and bewilderment. Noting these, Pardeau said, "For those of you who haven't made a point of looking into the thing, I'll explain. Wyckoff, in case you don't recall, was a chemical engineer of more than average ability who stumbled onto this formula before he died, most regretfully, four years ago, in 1984."

Leiderman continued to scowl. "We all know each other, Pardeau. Call a spade a spade. Wyckoff was a reactionary scoundrel whom you did away with for reasons of security."

"Precisely," Pardeau said. "In its essence, the formula is a process for taking over a man's brain--his body--his personality."

"You mean--"

Pardeau refused to be interrupted. "We were of the opinion that Wyckoff, though he and Lenster were great friends, was not able to impart his knowledge to the latter. We took him into custody shortly after he perfected the formula and were fortunate in persuading him to give it to us."

"But he gave it to Lenster also?"

"We were certain, at the time of his death, that he had not been able to do that--we are still certain."

Keeley, with a gesture, requested the floor. "I wonder if you could go into a little more detail concerning the formula--for those of us who--"

"Of course," Pardeau said. "The formula is a combination of six chemicals and the process of transformation is relatively simple, yet highly dangerous to both subjects involved. It means sure death for the proposed host, and if not delicately handled will also result in death for the usurper. The transformation requires three hours to perform. Once completed successfully, the usurper can never return to his own body. It must be destroyed. Also, the mentality of the host vanishes after it is pushed from its original brain tissue through the influence of the formula."

"Then if Wyckoff didn't give the formula to Lenster, it was stolen from our vaults--or wherever it was kept?"

"Exactly. Certain investigations I have made prove beyond doubt that Lenster got to my Deputy, Hillerman. I never considered Hillerman very bright, but I thought him to be honest and loyal. But beyond all doubt, with his aid, Lenster stole the formula--possibly got it verbally--and used it to take Hillerman's body from him." Pardeau smiled grimly. "Therefore, gentlemen, we have a traitor in a high place. My Deputy of Vital Intelligence."

* * * * *

Pardeau sat silent now, seeming to enjoy the fear he had engendered in his colleagues--sat silent until Leiderman said, "You've arrested him of course."

"No. I have not."

"Then get at it, man--get at it."

"I have no intention of arresting Hillerman."

Leiderman's eyes widened as did those of the rest of the company. But Blanchard, even under the impact of such a bombshell had the presence of mind to glance at his watch. Immediately he snapped on the loudspeaker. The voice of Professor Cargill blared forth:

"--and upon this anniversary of the New State, we can look with pride upon a clean and wholesome land--"

It was the rebroadcast, from recordings, of Cargill's speech and no man in his right mind would have refrained from tuning it in because everyone wanted to hear it at least twice.

Leiderman, almost apoplectic, ignored the speech. "Not arresting him! Are you mad?"

"I'm quite sane, and the situation is well in hand." Pardeau grinned and there was wickedness in the grin--wickedness and intelligence. "As I said before, Hillerman was not a smart man. His job was too much for him and I would have been faced, soon, with the necessity of replacing him regardless. Lenster, on the other hand, is of grade-A intellect. But, gentlemen, he is frightened--badly frightened in his new environment--and, in order to insure his own safety, is doing an excellent job. Ever since the transformation, that department has gained in efficiency until it now ranks as one of the highest in our entire government."

Slowly, Pardeau's strategy dawned on the group. Blanchard suddenly smiled. Then Pardeau scowled and went on with a new and sudden ferocity. "I have the proof, and I have Lenster-Hillerman under my palm. So he stays--continues to do a good job for us. But he'll be watched, gentlemen. He won't be able to go to the bathroom without being under surveillance. We will learn a great deal from him. All we need to know."

"Then you'll arrest him?" the boss of the state larder wanted to know.

Pardeau came to his feet. His fist slammed down on the table. "I shall not arrest him--ever. When the time comes, I shall personally shoot him down in the street like a dog. There will come a day, gentlemen, when you will witness this act of vengeance--when I shall make such an example of Lenster-Hillerman as the resistance will not forget--a morale-crumbling example, I promise you."

"--in which Lenster and his ilk are forever crushed and beaten," the speaker said.

Blanchard took the floor. "Gentlemen--I move a vote of thanks and confidence for our colleague, Neal Pardeau."

The Director of Public Security stood at attention and assayed a sharp, military bow. It was a moment of rare triumph. "Thank you, gentlemen," he said.

* * * * *

An hour later, Lenster-Pardeau was alone in his apartments. He stripped off his uniform with an air of grim satisfaction. While he undressed, he thought of the martyrs to the Cause; the men who had died. He thought of Wyckoff and wished Wyckoff could have had the pleasure of knowing who had usurped the body of Neal Pardeau--Pardeau the Butcher--the infamous Pardeau.

From the speaker came the third and final rebroadcast of Cargill's speech:

"--a clean and wholesome land--"

"A clean and wholesome land," Lenster murmured, and the tone of his voice was a prayer.

THE END

 

 

---

Contents

POSTMARK GANYMEDE

By ROBERT SILVERBERG

 

Consider the poor mailman of the future. To "sleet and snow and dead of night"--things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds--will be added, sub-zero void, meteors, and planets that won't stay put. Maybe he'll decide that for six cents an ounce it just ain't worth it.

 

"I'm washed up," Preston growled bitterly. "They made a postman out of me. Me--a postman!"

He crumpled the assignment memo into a small, hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days--which was how long it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal Delivery.

Suddenly, Preston felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a man in the trim gray of a Patrolman's uniform.

"What do you want, Dawes?"

"Chief's been looking for you, Preston. It's time for you to get going on your run."

Preston scowled. "Time to go deliver the mail, eh?" He spat. "Don't they have anything better to do with good spacemen than make letter carriers out of them?"

* * * * *

The other man shook his head. "You won't get anywhere grousing about it, Preston. Your papers don't specify which branch you're assigned to, and if they want to make you carry the mail--that's it." His voice became suddenly gentle. "Come on, Pres. One last drink, and then let's go. You don't want to spoil a good record, do you?"

"No," Preston said reflectively. He gulped his drink and stood up. "Okay. I'm ready. Neither snow nor rain shall stay me from my appointed rounds, or however the damned thing goes."

"That's a smart attitude, Preston. Come on--I'll walk you over to Administration."

* * * * *

Savagely, Preston ripped away the hand that the other had put around his shoulders. "I can get there myself. At least give me credit for that!"

"Okay," Dawes said, shrugging. "Well--good luck, Preston."

"Yeah. Thanks. Thanks real lots."

He pushed his way past the man in Space Grays and shouldered past a couple of barflies as he left. He pushed open the door of the bar and stood outside for a moment.

It was near midnight, and the sky over Nome Spaceport was bright with stars. Preston's trained eye picked out Mars, Jupiter, Uranus. There they were--waiting. But he would spend the rest of his days ferrying letters on the Ganymede run.

He sucked in the cold night air of summertime Alaska and squared his shoulders.

* * * * *

Two hours later, Preston sat at the controls of a one-man patrol ship just as he had in the old days. Only the control panel was bare where the firing studs for the heavy guns was found in regular patrol ships. And in the cargo hold instead of crates of spare ammo there were three bulging sacks of mail destined for the colony on Ganymede.

Slight difference, Preston thought, as he set up his blasting pattern.

"Okay, Preston," came the voice from the tower. "You've got clearance."

"Cheers," Preston said, and yanked the blast-lever. The ship jolted upward, and for a second he felt a little of the old thrill--until he remembered.

He took the ship out in space, saw the blackness in the viewplate. The radio crackled.

"Come in, Postal Ship. Come in, Postal Ship."

"I'm in. What do you want?"

"We're your convoy," a hard voice said. "Patrol Ship 08756, Lieutenant Mellors, above you. Down at three o'clock, Patrol Ship 10732, Lieutenant Gunderson. We'll take you through the Pirate Belt."

Preston felt his face go hot with shame. Mellors! Gunderson! They would stick two of his old sidekicks on the job of guarding him.

"Please acknowledge," Mellors said.

Preston paused. Then: "Postal Ship 1872, Lieutenant Preston aboard. I acknowledge message."

There was a stunned silence. "Preston? Hal Preston?"

"The one and only," Preston said.

"What are you doing on a Postal ship?" Mellors asked.

"Why don't you ask the Chief that? He's the one who yanked me out of the Patrol and put me here."

"Can you beat that?" Gunderson asked incredulously. "Hal Preston, on a Postal ship."

"Yeah. Incredible, isn't it?" Preston asked bitterly. "You can't believe your ears. Well, you better believe it, because here I am."

"Must be some clerical error," Gunderson said.

"Let's change the subject," Preston snapped.

They were silent for a few moments, as the three ships--two armed, one loaded with mail for Ganymede--streaked outward away from Earth. Manipulating his controls with the ease of long experience, Preston guided the ship smoothly toward the gleaming bulk of far-off Jupiter. Even at this distance, he could see five or six bright pips surrounding the huge planet. There was Callisto, and--ah--there was Ganymede.

He made computations, checked his controls, figured orbits. Anything to keep from having to talk to his two ex-Patrolmates or from having to think about the humiliating job he was on. Anything to--

* * * * *

"Pirates! Moving up at two o'clock!"

Preston came awake. He picked off the location of the pirate ships--there were two of them, coming up out of the asteroid belt. Small, deadly, compact, they orbited toward him.

He pounded the instrument panel in impotent rage, looking for the guns that weren't there.

"Don't worry, Pres," came Mellors' voice. "We'll take care of them for you."

"Thanks," Preston said bitterly. He watched as the pirate ships approached, longing to trade places with the men in the Patrol ships above and below him.

Suddenly a bright spear of flame lashed out across space and the hull of Gunderson's ship glowed cherry red. "I'm okay," Gunderson reported immediately. "Screens took the charge."

Preston gripped his controls and threw the ship into a plunging dive that dropped it back behind the protection of both Patrol ships. He saw Gunderson and Mellors converge on one of the pirates. Two blue beams licked out, and the pirate ship exploded.

But then the second pirate swooped down in an unexpected dive. "Look out!" Preston yelled helplessly--but it was too late. Beams ripped into the hull of Mellors' ship, and a dark fissure line opened down the side of the ship. Preston smashed his hand against the control panel. Better to die in an honest dogfight than to live this way!

It was one against one, now--Gunderson against the pirate. Preston dropped back again to take advantage of the Patrol ship's protection.

"I'm going to try a diversionary tactic," Gunderson said on untappable tight-beam. "Get ready to cut under and streak for Ganymede with all you got."

"Check."

Preston watched as the tactic got under way. Gunderson's ship traveled in a long, looping spiral that drew the pirate into the upper quadrant of space. His path free, Preston guided his ship under the other two and toward unobstructed freedom. As he looked back, he saw Gunderson steaming for the pirate on a sure collision orbit.

He turned away. The score was two Patrolmen dead, two ships wrecked--but the mails would get through.

Shaking his head, Preston leaned forward over his control board and headed on toward Ganymede.

* * * * *

The blue-white, frozen moon hung beneath him. Preston snapped on the radio.

"Ganymede Colony? Come in, please. This is your Postal Ship." The words tasted sour in his mouth.

There was silence for a second. "Come in, Ganymede," Preston repeated impatiently--and then the sound of a distress signal cut across his audio pickup.

It was coming on wide beam from the satellite below--and they had cut out all receiving facilities in an attempt to step up their transmitter. Preston reached for the wide-beam stud, pressed it.

"Okay, I pick up your signal, Ganymede. Come in, now!"

"This is Ganymede," a tense voice said. "We've got trouble down here. Who are you?"

"Mail ship," Preston said. "From Earth. What's going on?"

There was the sound of voices whispering somewhere near the microphone. Finally: "Hello, Mail Ship?"

"Yeah?"

"You're going to have to turn back to Earth, fellow. You can't land here. It's rough on us, missing a mail trip, but--"

Preston said impatiently, "Why can't I land? What the devil's going on down there?"

"We've been invaded," the tired voice said. "The colony's been completely surrounded by iceworms."

"Iceworms?"

"The local native life," the colonist explained. "They're about thirty feet long, a foot wide, and mostly mouth. There's a ring of them about a hundred yards wide surrounding the Dome. They can't get in and we can't get out--and we can't figure out any possible approach for you."

"Pretty," Preston said. "But why didn't the things bother you while you were building your Dome?"

"Apparently they have a very long hibernation-cycle. We've only been here two years, you know. The iceworms must all have been asleep when we came. But they came swarming out of the ice by the hundreds last month."

"How come Earth doesn't know?"

"The antenna for our long-range transmitter was outside the Dome. One of the worms came by and chewed the antenna right off. All we've got left is this short-range thing we're using and it's no good more than ten thousand miles from here. You're the first one who's been this close since it happened."

"I get it." Preston closed his eyes for a second, trying to think things out.

* * * * *

The Colony was under blockade by hostile alien life, thereby making it impossible for him to deliver the mail. Okay. If he'd been a regular member of the Postal Service, he'd have given it up as a bad job and gone back to Earth to report the difficulty.

But I'm not going back. I'll be the best damned mailman they've got.

"Give me a landing orbit anyway, Ganymede."

"But you can't come down! How will you leave your ship?"

"Don't worry about that," Preston said calmly.

"We have to worry! We don't dare open the Dome, with those creatures outside. You can't come down, Postal Ship."

"You want your mail or don't you?"

The colonist paused. "Well--"

"Okay, then," Preston said. "Shut up and give me landing coordinates!"

There was a pause, and then the figures started coming over. Preston jotted them down on a scratch-pad.

"Okay, I've got them. Now sit tight and wait." He glanced contemptuously at the three mail-pouches behind him, grinned, and started setting up the orbit.

Mailman, am I? I'll show them!

* * * * *

He brought the Postal Ship down with all the skill of his years in the Patrol, spiralling in around the big satellite of Jupiter as cautiously and as precisely as if he were zeroing in on a pirate lair in the asteroid belt. In its own way, this was as dangerous, perhaps even more so.

Preston guided the ship into an ever-narrowing orbit, which he stabilized about a hundred miles over the surface of Ganymede. As his ship swung around the moon's poles in its tight orbit, he began to figure some fuel computations.

His scratch-pad began to fill with notations.

Fuel storage--

Escape velocity--

Margin of error--

Safety factor--

Finally he looked up. He had computed exactly how much spare fuel he had, how much he could afford to waste. It was a small figure--too small, perhaps.

He turned to the radio. "Ganymede?"

"Where are you, Postal Ship?"

"I'm in a tight orbit about a hundred miles up," Preston said. "Give me the figures on the circumference of your Dome, Ganymede?"

"Seven miles," the colonist said. "What are you planning to do?"

Preston didn't answer. He broke contact and scribbled some more figures. Seven miles of iceworms, eh? That was too much to handle. He had planned on dropping flaming fuel on them and burning them out, but he couldn't do it that way.

He'd have to try a different tactic.

Down below, he could see the blue-white ammonia ice that was the frozen atmosphere of Ganymede. Shimmering gently amid the whiteness was the transparent yellow of the Dome beneath whose curved walls lived the Ganymede Colony. Even forewarned, Preston shuddered. Surrounding the Dome was a living, writhing belt of giant worms.

"Lovely," he said. "Just lovely."

Getting up, he clambered over the mail sacks and headed toward the rear of the ship, hunting for the auxiliary fuel-tanks.

Working rapidly, he lugged one out and strapped it into an empty gun turret, making sure he could get it loose again when he'd need it.

He wiped away sweat and checked the angle at which the fuel-tank would face the ground when he came down for a landing. Satisfied, he knocked a hole in the side of the fuel-tank.

"Okay, Ganymede," he radioed. "I'm coming down."

He blasted loose from the tight orbit and rocked the ship down on manual. The forbidding surface of Ganymede grew closer and closer. Now he could see the iceworms plainly.

Hideous, thick creatures, lying coiled in masses around the Dome. Preston checked his spacesuit, making sure it was sealed. The instruments told him he was a bare ten miles above Ganymede now. One more swing around the poles would do it.

He peered out as the Dome came below and once again snapped on the radio.

* * * * *

"I'm going to come down and burn a path through those worms of yours. Watch me carefully, and jump to it when you see me land. I want that airlock open, or else."

"But--"

"No buts!"

He was right overhead now. Just one ordinary-type gun would solve the whole problem, he thought. But Postal Ships didn't get guns. They weren't supposed to need them.

He centered the ship as well as he could on the Dome below and threw it into automatic pilot. Jumping from the control panel, he ran back toward the gun turret and slammed shut the plexilite screen. Its outer wall opened and the fuel-tank went tumbling outward and down. He returned to his control-panel seat and looked at the viewscreen. He smiled.

The fuel-tank was lying near the Dome--right in the middle of the nest of iceworms. The fuel was leaking from the puncture.

The iceworms writhed in from all sides.

"Now!" Preston said grimly.

The ship roared down, jets blasting. The fire licked out, heated the ground, melted snow--ignited the fuel-tank! A gigantic flame blazed up, reflected harshly off the snows of Ganymede.

And the mindless iceworms came, marching toward the fire, being consumed, as still others devoured the bodies of the dead and dying.

Preston looked away and concentrated on the business of finding a place to land the ship.

* * * * *

The holocaust still raged as he leaped down from the catwalk of the ship, clutching one of the heavy mail sacks, and struggled through the melting snows to the airlock.

He grinned. The airlock was open.

Arms grabbed him, pulled him through. Someone opened his helmet.

"Great job, Postman!"

"There are two more mail sacks," Preston said. "Get men out after them."

The man in charge gestured to two young colonists, who donned spacesuits and dashed through the airlock. Preston watched as they raced to the ship, climbed in, and returned a few moments later with the mail sacks.

"You've got it all," Preston said. "I'm checking out. I'll get word to the Patrol to get here and clean up that mess for you."

"How can we thank you?" the official-looking man asked.

"No need to," Preston said casually. "I had to get that mail down here some way, didn't I?"

He turned away, smiling to himself. Maybe the Chief had known what he was doing when he took an experienced Patrol man and dumped him into Postal. Delivering the mail to Ganymede had been more hazardous than fighting off half a dozen space pirates. I guess I was wrong, Preston thought. This is no snap job for old men.

Preoccupied, he started out through the airlock. The man in charge caught his arm. "Say, we don't even know your name! Here you are a hero, and--"

"Hero?" Preston shrugged. "All I did was deliver the mail. It's all in a day's work, you know. The mail's got to get through!"

THE END

 

 

---

Contents

THE MOST SENTIMENTAL MAN

by EVELYN E. SMITH

 

Once these irritating farewells were over with, he could begin to live as he wished and as he'd dreamed.

 

Johnson went to see the others off at Idlewild. He knew they'd expect him to and, since it would be the last conventional gesture he'd have to make, he might as well conform to their notions of what was right and proper.

For the past few centuries the climate had been getting hotter; now, even though it was not yet June, the day was uncomfortably warm. The sun's rays glinting off the bright metal flanks of the ship dazzled his eyes, and perspiration made his shirt stick to his shoulder blades beneath the jacket that the formality of the occasion had required. He wished Clifford would hurry up and get the leave-taking over with.

But, even though Clifford was undoubtedly even more anxious than he to finish with all this ceremony and take off, he wasn't the kind of man to let inclination influence his actions. "Sure you won't change your mind and come with us?"

Johnson shook his head.

The young man looked at him--hatred for the older man's complication of what should have been a simple departure showing through the pellicule of politeness. He was young for, since this trip had only slight historical importance and none of any other kind, the authorities had felt a junior officer entirely sufficient. It was clear, however, that Clifford attributed his commandership to his merits, and he was very conscious of his great responsibility.

"We have plenty of room on the ship," he persisted. "There weren't many left to go. We could take you easily enough, you know."

Johnson made a negative sign again. The rays of the sun beating full upon his head made apparent the grey that usually blended into the still-thick blond hair. Yet, though past youth, he was far from being an old man. "I've made my decision," he said, remembering that anger now was pointless.

"If it's--if you're just too proud to change your mind," the young commander said, less certainly, "I'm sure everyone will understand if ... if ..."

Johnson smiled. "No, it's just that I want to stay--that's all."

But the commander's clear blue eyes were still baffled, uneasy, as though he felt he had not done the utmost that duty--not duty to the service but to humanity--required. That was the trouble with people, Johnson thought: when they were most well-meaning they became most troublesome.

Clifford lowered his voice to an appropriately funeral hush, as a fresh thought obviously struck him. "I know, of course, that your loved ones are buried here and perhaps you feel it's your duty to stay with them...?"

At this Johnson almost forgot that anger no longer had any validity. By "loved ones" Clifford undoubtedly had meant Elinor and Paul. It was true that Johnson had had a certain affection for his wife and son when they were alive; now that they were dead they represented an episode in his life that had not, perhaps, been unpleasant, but was certainly over and done with now.

Did Clifford think that was his reason for remaining? Why, he must believe Johnson to be the most sentimental man on Earth. "And, come to think of it," Johnson said to himself, amused, "I am--or soon will be--just that."

The commander was still unconsciously pursuing the same train of thought. "It does seem incredible," he said in a burst of boyish candor that did not become him, for he was not that young, "that you'd want to stay alone on a whole planet. I mean to say--entirely alone.... There'll never be another ship, you know--at least not in your lifetime."

Johnson knew what the other man was thinking. If there'd been a woman with Johnson now, Clifford might have been able to understand a little better how the other could stick by his decision.

Johnson wriggled, as sweat oozed stickily down his back. "For God's sake," he said silently, "take your silly ship and get the hell off my planet." Aloud he said, "It's a good planet, a little worn-out but still in pretty good shape. Pity you can't trade in an old world like an old car, isn't it?"

"If it weren't so damned far from the center of things," the young man replied, defensively assuming the burden of all civilization, "we wouldn't abandon it. After all, we hate leaving the world on which we originated. But it's a long haul to Alpha Centauri--you know that--and a tremendously expensive one. Keeping up this place solely out of sentiment would be sheer waste--the people would never stand for the tax burden."

"A costly museum, yes," Johnson agreed.

How much longer were these dismal farewells going to continue? How much longer would the young man still feel the need to justify himself? "If only there were others fool enough--if only there were others with you.... But, even if anybody else'd be willing to cut himself off entirely from the rest of the civilized universe, the Earth won't support enough of a population to keep it running. Not according to our present living standards anyway.... Most of its resources are gone, you know--hardly any coal or oil left, and that's not worth digging for when there are better and cheaper fuels in the system."

He was virtually quoting from the Colonial Officer's Manual. Were there any people left able to think for themselves, Johnson wondered. Had there ever been? Had he thought for himself in making his decision, or was he merely clinging to a childish dream that all men had had and lost?

"With man gone, Earth will replenish herself," he said aloud. First the vegetation would begin to grow thick. Already it had released itself from the restraint of cultivation; soon it would be spreading out over the continent, overrunning the cities with delicately persistent green tendrils. Some the harsh winters would kill, but others would live on and would multiply. Vines would twist themselves about the tall buildings and tenderly, passionately squeeze them to death ... eventually send them tumbling down. And then the trees would rear themselves in their places.

The swamps that man had filled in would begin to reappear one by one, as the land sank back to a pristine state. The sea would go on changing her boundaries, with no dikes to stop her. Volcanoes would heave up the land into different configurations. The heat would increase until it grew unbearable ... only there would be no one--no human, anyway--to bear it.

Year after year the leaves would wither and fall and decay. Rock would cover them. And some day ... billions of years thence ... there would be coal and oil--and nobody to want them.

"Very likely Earth will replenish herself," the commander agreed, "but not in your time or your children's time.... That is, not in my children's time," he added hastily.

The handful of men lined up in a row before the airlock shuffled their feet and allowed their muttering to become a few decibels louder. Clifford looked at his wrist chronometer. Obviously he was no less anxious than the crew to be off, but, for the sake of his conscience, he must make a last try.

"Damn your conscience," Johnson thought. "I hope that for this you feel guilty as hell, that you wake up nights in a cold sweat remembering that you left one man alone on the planet you and your kind discarded. Not that I don't want to stay, mind you, but that I want you to suffer the way you're making me suffer now--having to listen to your platitudes."

The commander suddenly stopped paraphrasing the Manual. "Camping out's fun for a week or two, you know, but it's different when it's for a lifetime."

Johnson's fingers curled in his palms ... he was even angrier now that the commander had struck so close to home. Camping out ... was that all he was doing--fulfilling childhood desires, nothing more?

Fortunately Clifford didn't realize that he had scored, and scuttled back to the shelter of the Manual. "Perhaps you don't know enough about the new system in Alpha Centauri," he said, a trifle wildly. "It has two suns surrounded by three planets, Thalia, Aglaia, and Euphrosyne. Each of these planets is slightly smaller than Earth, so that the decrease in gravity is just great enough to be pleasant, without being so marked as to be inconvenient. The atmosphere is almost exactly like that of Earth's, except that it contains several beneficial elements which are absent here--and the climate is more temperate. Owing to the fact that the planets are partially shielded from the suns by cloud layers, the temperature--except immediately at the poles and the equators, where it is slightly more extreme--is always equable, resembling that of Southern California...."

"Sounds charming," said Johnson. "I too have read the Colonial Office handouts.... I wonder what the people who wrote them'll do now that there's no longer any necessity for attracting colonists--everybody's already up in Alpha Centauri. Oh, well; there'll be other systems to conquer and colonize."

"The word conquer is hardly correct," the commander said stiffly, "since not one of the three planets had any indigenous life forms that was intelligent."

"Or life forms that you recognized as intelligent," Johnson suggested gently. Although why should there be such a premium placed on intelligence, he wondered. Was intelligence the sole criterion on which the right to life and to freedom should be based?

The commander frowned and looked at his chronometer again. "Well," he finally said, "since you feel that way and you're sure you've quite made up your mind, my men are anxious to go."

"Of course they are," Johnson said, managing to convey just the right amount of reproach.

Clifford flushed and started to walk away.

"I'll stand out of the way of your jets!" Johnson called after him. "It would be so anticlimactic to have me burned to a crisp after all this. Bon voyage!"

There was no reply.

Johnson watched the silver vessel shoot up into the sky and thought, "Now is the time for me to feel a pang, or even a twinge, but I don't at all. I feel relieved, in fact, but that's probably the result of getting rid of that fool Clifford."

He crossed the field briskly, pulling off his jacket and discarding his tie as he went. His ground car remained where he had parked it--in an area clearly marked No Parking.

They'd left him an old car that wasn't worth shipping to the stars. How long it would last was anybody's guess. The government hadn't been deliberately illiberal in leaving him such a shabby vehicle; if there had been any way to ensure a continuing supply of fuel, they would probably have left him a reasonably good one. But, since only a little could be left, allowing him a good car would have been simply an example of conspicuous waste, and the government had always preferred its waste to be inconspicuous.

He drove slowly through the broad boulevards of Long Island, savoring the loneliness. New York as a residential area had been a ghost town for years, since the greater part of its citizens had been among the first to emigrate to the stars. However, since it was the capital of the world and most of the interstellar ships--particularly the last few--had taken off from its spaceports, it had been kept up as an official embarkation center. Thus, paradoxically, it was the last city to be completely evacuated, and so, although the massive but jerry-built apartment houses that lined the streets were already crumbling, the roads had been kept in fairly good shape and were hardly cracked at all.

Still, here and there the green was pushing its way up in unlikely places. A few more of New York's tropical summers, and Long Island would soon become a wilderness.

The streets were empty, except for the cats sunning themselves on long-abandoned doorsteps or padding about on obscure errands of their own. Perhaps their numbers had not increased since humanity had left the city to them, but there certainly seemed to be more--striped and solid, black and grey and white and tawny--accepting their citizenship with equanimity. They paid no attention to Johnson--they had long since dissociated themselves from a humanity that had not concerned itself greatly over their welfare. On the other hand, neither he nor the surface car appeared to startle them; the old ones had seen such before, and to kittens the very fact of existence is the ultimate surprise.

The Queensborough Bridge was deadly silent. It was completely empty except for a calico cat moving purposefully toward Manhattan. The structure needed a coat of paint, Johnson thought vaguely, but of course it would never get one. Still, even uncared for, the bridges should outlast him--there would be no heavy traffic to weaken them. Just in case of unforeseeable catastrophe, however--he didn't want to be trapped on an island, even Manhattan Island--he had remembered to provide himself with a rowboat; a motorboat would have been preferable, but then the fuel difficulty would arise again....

How empty the East River looked without any craft on it! It was rather a charming little waterway in its own right, though nothing to compare with the stately Hudson. The water scintillated in the sunshine and the air was clear and fresh, for no factories had spewed fumes and smoke into it for many years. There were few gulls, for nothing was left for the scavenger; those remaining were forced to make an honest living by catching fish.

In Manhattan, where the buildings had been more soundly constructed, the signs of abandonment were less evident ... empty streets, an occasional cracked window. Not even an unusual amount of dirt because, in the past, the normal activities of an industrial and ruggedly individual city had provided more grime than years of neglect could ever hope to equal. No, it would take Manhattan longer to go back than Long Island. Perhaps that too would not happen during his lifetime.

Yet, after all, when he reached Fifth Avenue he found that Central Park had burst its boundaries. Fifty-ninth Street was already half jungle, and the lush growth spilled down the avenues and spread raggedly out into the side streets, pushing its way up through the cracks it had made in the surface of the roads. Although the Plaza fountain had not flowed for centuries, water had collected in the leaf-choked basin from the last rain, and a group of grey squirrels were gathered around it, shrilly disputing possession with some starlings.

Except for the occasional cry of a cat in the distance, these voices were all that he heard ... the only sound. Not even the sudden blast of a jet regaining power ... he would never hear that again; never hear the stridor of a human voice piercing with anger; the cacophony of a hundred television sets, each playing a different program; the hoot of a horn; off-key singing; the thin, uncertain notes of an amateur musician ... these would never be heard on Earth again.

He sent the car gliding slowly ... no more traffic rules ... down Fifth Avenue. The buildings here also were well-built; they were many centuries old and would probably last as many more. The shop windows were empty, except for tangles of dust ... an occasional broken, discarded mannequin.... In some instances the glass had already cracked or fallen out. Since there were no children to throw stones, however, others might last indefinitely, carefully glassing in nothingness. Doors stood open and he could see rows of empty counters and barren shelves fuzzed high with the dust of the years since a customer had approached them.

Cats sedately walked up and down the avenue or sat genteelly with tails tucked in on the steps of the cathedral--as if the place had been theirs all along.

Dusk was falling. Tonight, for the first time in centuries, the street lamps would not go on. Undoubtedly when it grew dark he would see ghosts, but they would be the ghosts of the past and he had made his peace with the past long since; it was the present and the future with which he had not come to terms. And now there would be no present, no past, no future--but all merged into one and he was the only one.

At Forty-second Street pigeons fluttered thickly around the public library, fat as ever, their numbers greater, their appetites grosser. The ancient library, he knew, had changed little inside: stacks and shelves would still be packed thick with reading matter. Books are bulky, so only the rare editions had been taken beyond the stars; the rest had been microfilmed and their originals left to Johnson and decay. It was his library now, and he had all the time in the world to read all the books in the world--for there were more than he could possibly read in the years that, even at the most generous estimate, were left to him.

He had been wondering where to make his permanent residence for, with the whole world his, he would be a fool to confine himself to some modest dwelling. Now he fancied it might be a good idea to move right into the library. Very few places in Manhattan could boast a garden of their own.

He stopped the car to stare thoughtfully at the little park behind the grimy monument to Neoclassicism. Like Central Park, Bryant had already slipped its boundaries and encroached upon Sixth Avenue--Avenue of the World, the street signs said now, and before that it had been Avenue of the Nations and Avenue of the Americas, but to the public it had always been Sixth Avenue and to Johnson, the last man on Earth, it was Sixth Avenue.

He'd live in the library, while he stayed in New York, that was--he'd thought that in a few weeks, when it got really hot, he might strike north. He had always meant to spend a summer in Canada. His surface car would probably never last the trip, but the Museum of Ancient Vehicles had been glad to bestow half a dozen of the bicycles from their exhibits upon him. After all, he was, in effect, a museum piece himself and so as worth preserving as the bicycles; moreover, bicycles are difficult to pack for an interstellar trip. With reasonable care, these might last him his lifetime....

But he had to have a permanent residence somewhere, and the library was an elegant and commodious dwelling, centrally located. New York would have to be his headquarters, for all the possessions he had carefully amassed and collected and begged and--since money would do him no good any more--bought, were here. And there were by far too many of them to be transported to any really distant location. He loved to own things.

He was by no means an advocate of Rousseau's complete return to nature; whatever civilization had left that he could use without compromise, he would--and thankfully. There would be no electricity, of course, but he had provided himself with flashlights and bulbs and batteries--not too many of the last, of course, because they'd grow stale. However, he'd also laid in plenty of candles and a vast supply of matches.... Tins of food and concentrates and synthetics, packages of seed should he grow tired of all these and want to try growing his own--fruit, he knew, would be growing wild soon enough.... Vitamins and medicines--of course, were he to get really ill or get hurt in some way, it might be the end ... but that was something he wouldn't think of--something that couldn't possibly happen to him....

For his relaxation he had an antique hand-wound phonograph, together with thousands of old-fashioned records. And then, of course, he had the whole planet, the whole world to amuse him.

He even had provided himself with a heat-ray gun and a substantial supply of ammunition, although he couldn't imagine himself ever killing an animal for food. It was squeamishness that stood in his way rather than any ethical considerations, although he did indeed believe that every creature had the right to live. Nonetheless, there was the possibility that the craving for fresh meat might change his mind for him. Besides, although hostile animals had long been gone from this part of the world--the only animals would be birds and squirrels and, farther up the Hudson, rabbits and chipmunks and deer ... perhaps an occasional bear in the mountains--who knew what harmless life form might become a threat now that its development would be left unchecked?

A cat sitting atop one of the stately stone lions outside the library met his eye with such a steady gaze of understanding, though not of sympathy, that he found himself needing to repeat the by-now almost magic phrase to himself: "Not in my lifetime anyway." Would some intelligent life form develop to supplant man? Or would the planet revert to a primeval state of mindless innocence? He would never know and he didn't really care ... no point in speculating over unanswerable questions.

He settled back luxuriously on the worn cushions of his car. Even so little as twenty years before, it would have been impossible for him--for anyone--to stop his vehicle in the middle of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue purely to meditate. But it was his domain now. He could go in the wrong direction on one-way streets, stop wherever he pleased, drive as fast or as slowly as he would (and could, of course). If he wanted to do anything as vulgar as spit in the street, he could (but they were his streets now, not to be sullied) ... cross the roads without waiting for the lights to change (it would be a long, long wait if he did) ... go to sleep when he wanted, eat as many meals as he wanted whenever he chose.... He could go naked in hot weather and there'd be no one to raise an eyebrow, deface public buildings (except that they were private buildings now, his buildings), idle without the guilty feeling that there was always something better he could and should be doing ... even if there were not. There would be no more guilty feelings; without people and their knowledge there was no more guilt.

A flash of movement in the bushes behind the library caught his eye. Surely that couldn't be a fawn in Bryant Park? So soon?... He'd thought it would be another ten years at least before the wild animals came sniffing timidly along the Hudson, venturing a little further each time they saw no sign of their age-old enemy.

But probably the deer was only his imagination. He would investigate further after he had moved into the library.

Perhaps a higher building than the library.... But then he would have to climb too many flights of stairs. The elevators wouldn't be working ... silly of him to forget that. There were a lot of steps outside the library too--it would be a chore to get his bicycles up those steps.

Then he smiled to himself. Robinson Crusoe would have been glad to have had bicycles and steps and such relatively harmless animals as bears to worry about. No, Robinson Crusoe never had it so good as he, Johnson, would have, and what more could he want?

For, whoever before in history had had his dreams--and what was wrong with dreams, after all?--so completely gratified? What child, envisioning a desert island all his own could imagine that his island would be the whole world? Together Johnson and the Earth would grow young again.

No, the stars were for others. Johnson was not the first man in history who had wanted the Earth, but he had been the first man--and probably the last--who had actually been given it. And he was well content with his bargain.

There was plenty of room for the bears too.

 

 

---

Contents

SUBJECTIVITY

by NORMAN SPINRAD

Boredom on a long, interstellar trip can be quite a problem ... but the entertainment technique the government dreamed up for this one was a leeetle too good...!

 

Interplanetary flight having been perfected, the planets and moons of the Sol system having been colonized, Man turned his attention to the stars.

And ran into a stone wall.

After three decades of trying, scientists reluctantly concluded that a faster-than-light drive was an impossibility, at least within the realm of any known theory of the Universe. They gave up.

But a government does not give up so easily, especially a unified government which already controls the entire habitat of the human race. Most especially a psychologically and sociologically enlightened government which sees the handwriting on the wall, and has already noticed the first signs of racial claustrophobia—an objectless sense of frustrated rage, increases in senseless crimes, proliferation of perversions and vices of every kind. Like grape juice sealed in a bottle, the human race had begun to ferment.

Therefore, the Solar Government took a slightly different point of view towards interstellar travel—Man must go to the stars. Period. Therefore, Man will go to the stars.

If the speed of light could not be exceeded, then Man would go to the stars within that limit.

When a government with tens of billions of dollars to spend becomes monomaniacal, Great Things can be accomplished. Also, unfortunately, Unspeakable Horrors.

Stage One: A drive was developed which could propel a spaceship at half the speed of light. This was merely a matter of technological concentration, and several billion dollars.

Stage Two: A ship was built around the drive, and outfitted with every conceivable safety device. A laser-beam communication system was installed, so that Sol could keep in contact with the ship all the way to Centaurus. A crew of ten carefully screened, psyched and trained near-supermen was selected, and the ship was launched on a sixteen-year round-trip to Centaurus.

It never came back.

Two years out, the ten near-supermen became ten raving maniacs.

But the Solar Government did not give up. The next ship contained five near-supermen, and five near-superwomen.

They only lasted for a year and a half.

The Solar Government intensified the screening process. The next ship was manned by ten bona-fide supermen.

They stayed sane for nearly three years.

The Solar Government sent out a ship containing five supermen and five superwomen. In two years, they had ten super-lunatics.

The psychologists came to the unstartling conclusion that even the cream of humanity, in a sexually balanced crew, could not stand up psychologically to sixteen years in a small steel womb, surrounded by billions of cubic miles of nothing.

One would have expected reasonable men to have given up.

Not the Solar Government. Monomania had produced Great Things, in the form of a c/2 drive. It now proceeded to produce Unspeakable Horrors.

The cream of the race had failed, reasoned the Solar Government, therefore, we will give the dregs a chance.

The fifth ship was manned by homosexuals. They lasted only six months. A ship full of lesbians bettered that by only two weeks.

Number Seven was manned by schizophrenics. Since they were already mad, they did not go crazy. Nevertheless, they did not come back. Number Eight was catatonics. Nine was paranoids. Ten was sadists. Eleven was masochists. Twelve was a mixed crew of sadists and masochists. No luck.

Maybe it was because thirteen was still a mystic number, or maybe it was merely that the Solar Government was running out of ideas. At any rate, ship Number Thirteen was the longest shot of all.

Background: From the beginnings of Man, it had been known that certain plants—mushrooms, certain cacti—produced intense hallucinations. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists—and others less scientifically minded—had begun to extract those hallucinogenic compounds, chiefly mescaline and psilocybin. The next step was the synthesis of hallucinogens—L.S.D. 25 was the first, and it was far more powerful than the extracts.

In the next few centuries, more and more different hallucinogens were synthesized—L.S.D. 105, Johannic acid, huxleyon, baronite.

So by the time the Solar Government had decided that the crew of ship Number Thirteen would attempt to cope with the terrible reality of interstellar space by denying that reality, they had quite an assortment of hallucinogens to choose from.

The one they chose was a new, as-yet-untested ("Two experiments for the price of one," explained economy-minded officials) and unbelievably complex compound tentatively called Omnidrene.

Omnidrene was what the name implied—a hallucinogen with all the properties of the others, some which had proven to be all its own, and some which were as yet unknown. As ten micrograms was one day's dose for the average man, it was the ideal hallucinogen for a starship.

So they sealed five men and five women—they had given up on sexually unbalanced crews—in ship Number Thirteen, along with half a ton of Omnidrene and their fondest wishes, pointed the ship towards Centaurus, and prayed for a miracle.

In a way they could not possibly have foreseen, they got it.

As starship Thirteen passed the orbit of Pluto, a meeting was held, since this could be considered the beginning of interstellar space.

The ship was reasonably large—ten small private cabins, a bridge that would only be used for planetfalls, large storage areas, and a big common room, where the crew had gathered.

They were sitting in All-Purpose Lounges, arranged in a circle. A few had their Lounges at full recline, but most preferred the upright position.

Oliver Brunei, the nominal captain, had just opened the first case of Omnidrene, and taken out a bottle of the tiny pills.

"This, fellow inmates," he said, "is Omnidrene. The time has come for us to indulge. The automatics are all set, we won't have to do a thing we don't want to for the next eight years."

He poured ten of the tiny blue pills into the palm of his right hand. "On Earth, they used to have some kind of traditional ceremony when a person crossed the equator for the first time. Since we are crossing a far more important equator, I thought we should have some kind of ceremony."

The crew squirmed irritably.

I do tend to be verbose, Brunei thought.

"Well ... anyway, I just thought we all oughta take the first pills together," he said, somewhat defensively.

"So come on, Ollie," said a skinny, sour-looking man of about thirty years.

"O.K., Lazar, O.K." Marashovski's gonna be trouble, Brunei thought. Why did they put him on the ship?

He handed the pills around. Lazar Marashovski was about to gulp his down.

"Wait a minute!" said Brunei. "Let's all do it together."

"One, two, three!"

They swallowed the pills. In about ten minutes, thought Brunei, we should be feeling it.

He looked at the crew. Ten of us, he thought, ten brilliant misfits. Lazar, who has spent half his life high on baronite; Vera Galindez, would-be medium, trying to make herself telepathic with mescaline; Jorge Donner.... Why is he here?

Me, at least with me it's simple—this or jail.

What a crew! Drug addicts, occultists, sensationalists ... and what else? What makes a person do a thing like this?

It'll all come out, thought Brunei. In sixteen years, it'll all come out.

"Feel anything yet, Ollie?" said Marsha Johnson. No doubt why she came along. Just an ugly old maid liking the idea of being cooped up with five men.

"Nothing yet," said Brunei.

He looked around the room. Plain steel walls, lined with cabinets full of Omnidrene on two sides, viewscreen on the ceiling, bare floor, the other two walls decked out like an automat. Plain, gray steel walls....

Then why were the gray steel walls turning pink?

"Oh, oh ..." said Joby Krail, rolling her pretty blond head, "oh, oh ... here it comes. The walls are dancing...."

"The ceiling is a spiral," muttered Vera, "a winding red spiral."

"O.K., fellow inmates," said Brunei, "it's hitting." Now the walls were red, bright fire-engine red, and they were melting. No, not melting, but evaporating....

"Like crystal it is," said Lin Pey, waving his delicate oriental hands, "like jade as transparent as crystal."

"There is a camel in the circle," said Lazar, "a brown camel."

"Let's all try and see the camel together," said Vera Galindez sharply. "Tell us what it looks like, Lazar."

"It's brown, it's the two-humped kind, it has a two-foot tail."

"And big feet," said Lin Pey.

"A stupid face," said Donner.

"Very stupid."

"Your camel is a great bore," said the stocky, scowling Bram Daker.

"Let's have something else," said Joby.

"Okay," replied Brunei, "now someone else tell what they see."

"A lizard," said Linda Tobias, a strange, somber girl, inclined to the morbid.

"A lizard?" squeaked Ingrid Solin.

"No," said Lin Pey, "a dragon. A green dragon, with a forked red tongue...."

"He has little useless wings," said Lazar.

"He is totally oblivious to us," said Vera.

Brunei saw the dragon. It was five feet long, green and scaly. It was a conventional dragon, except for the most bovine expression in its eyes....

Yes, he thought, the dragon is here. But the greater part of him knew that it was an illusion.

How long would this go on?

"It's good that we see the same things," said Marsha. "Let's always see the same things...."

"Yes."

"Yes!"

"Now a mountain, a tall blue mountain."

"With snow on the peak."

"Yes, and clouds...."

One week out:

Oliver Brunei stepped into the common room. Lin Pey, Vera, and Lazar were sitting together, on what appeared to be a huge purple toadstool.

But that's my hallucination, thought Brunei. At least, I think it is.

"Hello Ollie," said Lazar.

"Hi. What're you doing?"

"We're looking at the dragon again," said Vera. "Join us?"

Brunei thought of the dragon for a moment. The toadstool disappeared, and the by-now-familiar bovine dragon took its place. In the last few days, they had discovered that if any two of them concentrated on something long enough to "materialize" it, anyone else who wanted to could see it in a moment.

"What's so interesting about that silly dragon?" said Brunei.

"How about the camel?" said Lazar.

The dragon turned into the two-humped brown camel.

"Phooey!" said Lin Pey.

"O.K.," said Vera, "so what do you want?"

Lin Pey thought for a moment.

"How about a meadow?" he said. "A soft lawn of green grass, the sky is blue, and there are a few white clouds...."

"Clover is blooming," said Lazar. "Smell it."

Brunei reclined on the soft green grass. The smell of the earth beneath him was warm and moist. "A few apple trees here and there," he said, and there was shade.

"Look over the hill!" said Lazar. "There's the dragon!"

"Will you please get rid of that dragon?" snapped Brunei.

"O.K., Ollie, O.K."

One month out:

"Get out of the way!" yelled Brunei. He gave the dragon a kick. It mooed plaintively.

"That wasn't very nice, Ollie," said Lazar.

"That dragon is always underfoot," said Brunei. "Why don't you get rid of it?"

"I've taken a liking to it," said Lazar. "Besides, what about your Saint Bernard?"

"This ship is getting too cluttered up with everyone's hallucinations," said Brunei. "Ever since ... when was it, a week ago?... ever since we've been able to conjure 'em up by ourselves, and make everyone else see 'em."

Daker dematerialised the woman on his lap. "Why don't we get together?" he said.

"Get together?"

"Yes. We could agree on an environment. Look at this common room for example. What a mess! Here, it's a meadow, there it's a beach, a palace, a boudoir."

"You mean we should make it the same for all of us?" asked Lazar.

"Sure. We can have whatever we want in our cabins, but let's make some sense out of the common room."

"Good idea," said Brunei. "I'll call the others."

Three months out:

Brunei stepped through the stuccoed portal, and into the central Spanish garden. He noticed that the sky was blue, with a few fleecy white clouds.

But then, the weather was always good. They had agreed on it.

Lazar, Ingrid, Lin Pey and Vera were sitting on the green lawn surrounding the fountain.

Daker, Joby, Linda and Donner preferred the shade, and lounged against the white arabesqued wall which enclosed the garden on four sides, broken only by four arched entrance portals.

The garden had been a good compromise, thought Brunei. Something for everyone. Fresh air and sun-shine, but also the mental security offered by the walls, which also provided shade for those who wanted it. A fountain, a few palm trees, grass, flowers, even the little formal Japanese rock garden that Lin Pey had insisted on.

"Hello, Ollie," said Lazar. "Nice day."

"Isn't it always?" replied Brunei. "How about a little shower?"

"Maybe tomorrow."

"I notice a lot of sleeping people today," said Brunei.

"Yes," said Lin Pey. "By now, the garden seems to be able to maintain itself."

"You think it has a separate existence?" asked Ingrid.

"Of course not," said Vera. "Our subconscious minds are maintaining it. It's probably here when we're all asleep."

"No way of telling that," said Brunei. "Besides, how can it exist when we're asleep, when it doesn't really exist to begin with?"

"Semantics, Ollie, semantics."

Brunei took a bottle of Omnidrene out of his pocket. "Time to charge up the old batteries again," he said.

He passed out the pills.

"I notice Marsha is still in her cabin."

"Yeah," said Lazar, "she keeps to herself a lot. No great—"

Just then, Marsha burst into the garden, screaming: "Make it go away! Make it go away!"

Behind her slithered a gigantic black snake, with a head as big as a horse's, and bulging red eyes.

"I thought we agreed to leave our private hallucinations in our cabins," snapped Brunei.

"I tried! I tried! I don't want it around, but it won't go away! Do something!"

Ten feet of snake had already entered the garden. The thing seemed endless.

"Take it easy," said Lazar. "Let's all concentrate and think it away."

They tried to erase the snake, but it just rolled its big red eyes.

"That won't work," said Vera. "Her subconscious is still fighting us. Part of her must want the snake here. We've all got to be together to erase it."

Marsha began to cry. The snake advanced another two feet.

"Oh, quiet!" rasped Lazar. "Ollie, do I have your permission to bring my dragon into the garden? He'll make short work of the snake."

Brunei scowled. "You and your dragon.... Oh, maybe it'll work."

Instantly, the green dragon was in the garden. But it was no longer five feet long and bovine.

It was a good twelve feet long, with cold reptilian eyes and big yellow fangs.

It took one look at the snake, opened its powerful jaws, and belched a huge tongue of orange flame.

The serpent was incinerated. It disappeared.

Brunei was trembling. "What happened, Lazar?" he said. "That's not the same stupid little dragon."

"Hah ... hah...." squeaked Lazar. "He's ... uh ... grown...."

Brunei suddenly noticed that Lazar was ashen. He also noticed that the dragon was turning in their direction.

"Get it out of here, Lazar! Get it out of here!"

Lazar nodded. The dragon flickered and went pale, but it was over a minute before it disappeared entirely.

Six months out:

Things wandered the passageways and haunted the cabins. Marsha's snake was back. There was Lazar's dragon, which seemed to grow larger every day. There was also a basilisk, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspread, an old-fashioned red spade-tailed demon and other assorted horrors.

Even Oliver Brunei's friendly Saint Bernard had grown to monstrous size, turned pale green, and grown large yellow fangs.

Only the Spanish garden in the common room was free of the monstrosities. Here, the combined conscious minds of the ten crew members were still strong enough to banish the rampaging hallucinations.

The ten of them sat around the fountain, which seemed a shade less sparkling.

There were even rainclouds in the sky.

"I don't like it," said Bram Daker. "It's getting completely out of control."

"So we just have to stay in the garden, that's all," said Brunei. "The food's all here, and so is the Omnidrene. And they can't come here."

"Not yet," said Marsha.

They all shuddered.

"What went wrong?" asked Ingrid.

"Nothing," said Donner. "They didn't know what would happen when they sent us out, so we can't say they were wrong."

"Very comforting," croaked Lazar. "But can someone tell me why we can't control them any more?"

"Who knows?" said Brunei. "At least we can keep them out of here. That's—"

There was a snuffling at the wall. The head of something like a Tyrannosaurus Rex peered over the wall at them.

"Ugh!" said Lin Pey. "I think that's a new one."

The dragon's head appeared alongside the Tyrannosaur's.

"Well, at least there's a familiar face," tittered Linda.

"Very funny."

Marsha screamed. The huge black snake thrust its head through a portal.

And the flap of leathery wings could be heard. And the smell of sulphur.

"Come on! Come on!" shouted Brunei. "Let's get these things out of here!"

After five minutes of intense group concentration, the last of the horrors was banished.

"It was a lot harder this time," said Daker.

"There were more of them," said Donner.

"They're getting stronger and bolder."

"Maybe some day they'll break through, and...." Lin Pey let the sentence hang. Everyone supplied his own ending.

"Don't be ridiculous!" snapped Brunei. "They're not real. They can't kill us!"

"Maybe we should stop taking the Omnidrene?" suggested Vera, without very much conviction.

"At this point?" said Brunei. He shuddered. "If the garden disappeared, and we had nothing but the bare ship for the next fifteen and a half years, and we knew it, and at the same time knew that we had the Omnidrene to bring it back.... How long do you think we'd hold off?"

"You're right," said Vera.

"We just have to stick it out," said Brunei. "Just remember: They can't kill us. They aren't real."

"Yes," the crew whispered in a tiny, frail voice, "they aren't real...."

Seven months out:

The garden was covered with a gloomy gray cloud layer. Even the "weather" was getting harder and harder to control.

The crew of starship Number Thirteen huddled around the fountain, staring into the water, trying desperately to ignore the snufflings, flappings, wheezes and growls coming from outside the walls. But occasionally, a scaly head would raise itself above the wall, or a pterodactyl or bat would flap overhead, and there would be violent shudders.

"I still think we should stop taking the Omnidrene," said Vera Galindez.

"If we stopped taking it," asked Brunei, "which would disappear first, them ... or the garden?"

Vera grimaced. "But we've got to do something," she said. "We can't even make them disappear at all, any more. And it's becoming a full time job just to keep them outside the walls."

"And sooner or later," interjected Lazar, "we're not going to be strong enough to keep them out...."

"Brr!"

"The snake! The snake!" screamed Marsha. "It's coming in again!"

The huge black head was already through a portal.

"Stop the snake, everyone!" yelled Brunei. Eyes were riveted on the ugly serpent, in intense concentration.

After five minutes, it was obviously a stalemate. The snake had not been able to advance, nor could the humans force it to retreat.

Then smoke began to rise behind the far wall.

"The dragon's burning down the wall!" shrieked Lazar. "Stop him!"

They concentrated on the dragon. The smoke disappeared.

But the snake began to advance again.

"They're too strong!" moaned Brunei. "We can't hold them back."

They stopped the snake for a few moments, but the smoke began to billow again.

"They're gonna break through!" screamed Donner. "We can't stop 'em!"

"What are we gonna do?"

"Help!"

Creakings, cracklings, groanings, as the walls began to crack and blister and shake.

Suddenly Bram Daker stood up, his dark eyes aflame.

"Only one thing's strong enough!" he bellowed. "Earth! Earth! EARTH! Think of Earth! All of you! We're back on Earth. Visualize it, make it real, and the monsters'll have to disappear."

"But where on Earth?" said Vera, bewildered.

"The Spaceport!" shouted Brunei. "The Spaceport! We all remember the Spaceport."

"We're back on Earth! The Spaceport!"

"Earth!"

"Earth!"

"EARTH! EARTH!"

The garden was beginning to flicker. It became red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, invisible; then back again through the spectrum the other way—violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, invisible.

Back and forth, like a pendulum through the spectrum....

Oliver Brunei's head hurt unbearably, he could see the pain on the other faces, but he allowed only one thought to fill his being—Earth! The Spaceport! EARTH!

More and more, faster and faster, the garden flickered, and now it was the old common room again, and that was flickering.

Light was flickering, mind was flickering, time, too, seemed to flicker....

Only Earth! thought Brunei. Earth doesn't flicker, the Spaceport doesn't flicker.

Earth! EARTH!

Now all the flickerings, of color, time, mind and dimensions, were coalescing into one gigantic vortex, that was a thing neither of time, nor space, nor mind, but all three somehow fused into one....

They're screaming! Brunei thought. Listen to the horrible screams! Suddenly he noticed that he, too, was screaming.

The vortex was growing, swirling, undulating, and it, too, began to flicker....

There was an unbearable, impossible pain, and....

The sight of starship Number Thirteen suddenly appearing out of nowhere, and sitting itself calmly down in the middle of the Spaceport was somewhat disconcerting to the Spaceport officials. Especially since at the very moment it appeared, and even afterward, they continued to have visual and laser contact with its image, over three light-months from Earth.

However, the Solar Government itself was much more pragmatic. One instant, starship Thirteen had been light-months from Earth, the next it was sitting in the Spaceport. Therefore, starship Thirteen had exceeded the speed of light somehow. Therefore, it was possible to exceed the speed of light, and a thorough examination of the ship and its contents would show how.

Therefore.... You idiots, throw a security cordon around that ship!

In such matters, the long-conditioned reflexes of the Solar Government worked marvelously. Before the air-waves had cooled, two hundred heavily armed soldiers had surrounded the ship.

Two hours later, the Solar co-ordinator was on the scene, with ten Orders of Sol to present to the returning heroes, and a large well-armored vehicle to convey them to laboratories, where they would be gone over with the proverbial fine-tooth comb.

An honor guard of two hundred men standing at attention made a pathway from the ship's main hatch to the armored carrier, in front of which stood the Solar Co-ordinator, with his ten medals.

They opened the hatch.

One, two, five, seven, ten dazed and bewildered "heroes" staggered past the honor guard, to face the Co-ordinator.

He opened his mouth to begin his welcoming speech, and start the five years of questioning and experiments which would eventually kill five of the crew and give Man the secret of faster-than-light drive.

But instead of speaking, he screamed.

So did two hundred heavily armed soldiers.

Because, out of starship Thirteen's main hatch sauntered a twelve-foot green dragon, followed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a pterodactyl, a vampire bat with a five-foot wingspan, an old-fashioned red, spade-tailed demon, and finally, big as a horse's, the pop-eyed head of an enormous black serpent....

 

 

---

Contents

IN THE ORBIT OF SATURN

By R. F. Starzl

 

The Celestia, gliding through space toward Titan, major satellite of Saturn, faltered in her course. Her passengers, mostly mining engineers and their wives, stockholders, and a sprinkling of visitors, were aware of a cessation of the heavens' apparent gyrations, due to the halting of the ship's rotation on its axis. At the same time the ship's fictitious gravity, engendered by the centrifugal force of its rotation, ceased, so that passengers, most of whom were assembled in the main salon, which occupied the entire midship section, drifted away from the curved floor, whose contour followed that of the outer skin, to flounder in helpless confusion.

A woman screamed. A rasping sound, as of metal scraping against the hull, came from one point in the circumference, and here the portholes were obscured by a dark mass that blotted out the stars.

An old man, clinging to a luxuriously upholstered chair, and pale with fright, cried:

"It's those damned pirates. If they find out who I am it'll break the company to ransom me."

"If the company thinks it worth while to ransom you," retorted his youngish, saturnine companion, who seemed less scared than annoyed.

Questions darted back and forth. No word came from the control room forward, and little of what transpired outside could be seen through the thick glass ports. The pirate ship loomed over them like a monstrous leech, its bolts sharply etched in black and white by the sunlight from their stern. Beyond that was only the velvety darkness--the absolute vacuity of space that carries no sound, refracts no light. A battle was raging out there, but of that nothing could be seen or heard in the salon. Only a dull, booming vibration through the flyer's hull, made by the rockets in a useless effort to shake off their captor.

* * * * *

Of all the passengers, none understood the situation as well as Quirl Finner. In imagination he followed the desperate struggle that was going on out there, for the men who were selling their lives were his companions in arms, the ship's guard of the redoubtable I.F.P., the Interplanetary Flying Police who carried the law of white men to the outermost orbit of the solar system.

Quirl bristled, but he maintained his pose of indifference--of the sightseeing passenger who depended blindly on the ship's crew for his own safety. In appearance he might easily have been the pampered son of some millionaire that he impersonated. His close-fitting silken tunic of blue, with its bright yellow roll-collar, the turban of fine yellow lace, the close-fitting trousers that showed his lithe yet powerfully molded legs, the thin-soled low boots--all proclaimed him the typical time-killing dandy of the times. His superb proportions made him look smaller, lighter than he really was, and his lean features, which under the I.F.P. skullcap would have looked hawk-like, were sufficiently like the patrician fineness of the character part he was playing. Young men of means in the year 2159 were by no means without their good points. They indulged in athletic sports to counteract the softening influence of idleness, and so Quirl Finner had no misgivings about the success of his disguise.

Yet he could not refrain from listening intently for every sound that penetrated the hull. His part was to be captured by the pirate, who had been named "The Solar Scourge" by sensational newscasters, and to learn all he could, and eventually to be ransomed by a "wealthy father" with his priceless information. So he waited, chafing, while men he knew, men who had faced the perils of space with him, met their death.

After a time there came the sudden crackling of the air-tight bulkhead which separated the salon from the forward sections. Quirl knew what this meant. The pirates had succeeded in breaching a hole through the ship's skin, and the air of the forward section had rushed into space. It was sickening to think of those brave men up there caught in the suddenly formed vacuum. Long before the bulkhead had ceased crackling he knew they were dead, and that the pirate crew had entered, wearing vacuum suits, and was even then replenishing the air so the passengers could be taken alive.

* * * * *

They had been in the prison hold of the pirate ship for five days, terrestrial time. This was nothing like the spacious quarters they had occupied before. A cross-section of their prison would have looked like a wedge with a quarter circle for its blunt end. The curved wall of the great cylindrical projectile, nearly a hundred feet in diameter, was their floor, on which they could walk like flies on the inside of a wheel rim. The walls of the room, on two sides, converged toward the top, until they joined the sides of a well-like tunnel that ran from the nose of the ship to its tail, where the rocket nozzles were. A door pierced the tunnel side, and under this door was a metal platform, from which one could either climb into the passage or down a ladder into the hold. A pirate guard held this platform, from where he could peer over the top of a curtain which gave scant privacy to the men and women prisoners on either side of it.

On the floor-plates, without even the meager comfort of the dried Martian weeds that had been given to the women, sat or lay the men. They showed their dejection, their faces covered with new growths of beard, their clothes crumpled and torn. The only furniture consisted of a long, light metal table on the women's side, securely bolted to the floor. The prisoners were obliged to stand at this when eating their meals. The whole cheerless scene was coldly illuminated by a single light-emanating disk just under the guard's platform.

Steps echoed hollowly metallic from above. Quirl wondered if it was already time for the galley boy to bring the immense bowl of hot stew for the noon meal.

* * * * *

It was not. It was Moby Gore, the huge and overbearing first mate of the pirates on his daily mission of inspection and prisoner baiting. Quirl crept further into his corner. It would be fatal to his plan for him to attract the attention of this petty tyrant. It was hard enough to keep away from him--to crush back the almost overwhelming desire to fly at him, fists hammering.

Gore came down the ladder deliberately, pausing on the lower steps to look around with his little, pig's eyes. His head was set well forward on his thick, muscular neck, so that he had to look out from under his beetling brows in a manner peculiarly ape-like. His heavy face was smooth-shaven, and his blue-black jowls and chin looked painfully smooth. His coarse, black hair was brushed back and plastered firmly to his bullet head.

His body was heavy, but moved with deadly smoothness and precision. The customary harness which passed around his naked torso supported a double-barreled ironizing electrocution pistol, and also a short, savagely knobbed riot club. Depending from the belt at his waist were short pants, which displayed the thick, hairy legs with their cable-like muscles. On his feet were thick socks, so that his toes were able to curl around the rungs of the ladder.

Satisfied with his quick, darting inspection, Gore now came all the way down. At the foot of the ladder lay an elderly man in the oblivion of sleep. Gore's foot came down on the thin chest. With savage pleasure he bore down, so that the old man's startled squawk ended in a fit of coughing. Gore cuffed him aside roughly, growling:

"Old squiffer! Let that learn you to sleep out of the way!" He laughed coarsely when one of the prisoners, with the temerity of anonymity, started to boo, but received no support.

* * * * *

Carelessly Gore passed among the prisoners. Here and there he halted, snatching some article of finery or inconspicuous bit of jewelry that he had overlooked before. They shrank from him, only too glad to see him pass on to the next unfortunate.

"You, there!" Gore rasped, indicating Quirl with his stubby forefinger. "Come on out o' there, you!"

Quirl hoped that the brutal mate would not hear the thudding of his beating heart, or that if he did, he would take it for fear. He came slowly toward Gore, who was greedily eyeing the young man's brightly colored and valuable tunic. Quirl came too slowly.

"What do you take me for?" Gore bellowed in unreasonable anger. He strode forward, the prisoners scattering before him. His large, knotty hand closed on Quirl's arm, and jerked, with the intention of whirling this reluctant prisoner across the room. But Quirl was heavier, and his arm harder, than Gore had supposed. The hand came away, and with a tearing scream, the beautiful silk garment ripped off, ruined, disclosing Quirl's white and well-knit body.

"You done that a-purpose!" Gore roared, and then his great ape's arms were around Quirl, trying to break his back.

But that seemingly slight body would not bend, and, as much as Gore might tug and heave, he could not force Quirl back. The little pig-eyes glared, and there was death in them. Suddenly Gore let go. His hand leaped to the short club at his side, and he swung the weapon in a vicious arc. Quirl's relaxed forearm met it, sapping most of its force. Yet when it struck his head it seemed to burst like a ball of fire. He crashed against the wall and sank to the floor only half conscious.

"Gore! Gore!" yelled the guard from the platform, "'member how sore the Old Man was about the last terrie you killed? Better lay off."

"Shut yo'r damned mug!" Gore yelled back. But he gave up his idea of kicking the prisoner, and with a menacing glare for the guard, passed on.

* * * * *

As Quirl's mind slowly cleared he congratulated himself for his repression. During his struggle with Gore his hand had come in contact with the butt of the mate's electrogun. He could easily have pulled it out of its holster and turned it against its owner. But this hasty action would not only have assured his own death, but would have destroyed the only chance the I.F.P. had of learning "The Scourge's" secrets.

Gore slowly worked his way to the women's side of the hold. Here, much to the amusement of the guard and himself, he began stripping off their long, flowing robes, disclosing their nude bodies. He seemed to see particular humor to heaping indignity on the older women, commenting coarsely on their shortcomings. The men viewed this with set, pale faces. But none dared to interfere. In their midst was an object lesson, his head swathed in bandages. He had been the first to resent this exhibition, an almost daily event, when the mate's roving eye had happened to alight upon his wife.

All at once Gore's careless and derogatory progress was halted, and he stared with terrifying intentness at the girl who had until that day managed to escape his notice. Gore had torn off a nondescript black cape that had covered her head and face, and the golden silk robe she wore. To Quirl, watching from a space of some sixty feet, her beauty came like a shock. He remembered her as Lenore Hyde, whom he had seen only once before as she emerged briefly from her stateroom.

About five feet, six inches tall, her slim figure was dwarfed by the huge bulk of the mate. Her golden hair tumbled over her slim shoulders, almost to her waist, where a tasseled cord held the clinging silk close to her. Her face, so white that it seemed like silver in that gorgeous setting, was cold and defiant. There was no fear in those deep blue eyes under the straight brows--only loathing and contempt.

Gore was not concerned with the personal feelings of his prize. He licked his wide, cruel lips, seizing the girl's arms as in a vise. His other big, dirty hand slipped into the collar of her robe.

* * * * *

But the ripping of fabric did not come. Instead there was a sharp crack, and Gore, too surprised even to move, stared at the little man who had hit him.

Again crack! The impact of fist on jaw. The blow was too weak to hurt this toughened veteran of countless battles. But slowly a tide of dull red welled up over the bull neck, turning the blue-black jowls to purple, and the walls echoed to Gore's roar of anger.

Again the fists of the smaller man smacked, this time drawing a trickle of blood from Gore's mouth. Then the thick fingers closed on the brave passenger's wrist, and the tremendous muscles swelled as, with a quick movement, Gore thrust his adversary back of him, grasping the other wrist also. Then with slow, irresistible motion, he began drawing the thin arms forward, stretching them, until the unfortunate man, drawn against the barrier of Gore's back, began to shriek with pain.

Still Gore pulled, grinning evilly, and his victim's shoulder blades lifted under the tight skin of his back as they took the strain. Shriek followed shriek, until the guard on the platform glanced furtively out into the central well. There came a dry, tearing crackle as the bones of the arms were drawn out of their sockets, and then the shrieks ceased as merciful unconsciousness came. Gore tossed the limp body carelessly away.

"The beast!" Quirl gritted his teeth. But he stayed where he was, hiding his clenched fist, for his was a specific assignment, and men of the I.F.P. know the meaning of the word "duty."

In a better humor again, Gore looked around.

"Come on, you little ginny!" he chortled. "I see you! Come to Moby, my beauty. You'll be queen of the hold, and this scurvy litter will kiss your feet every day."

* * * * *

He pursued her as she ran, bowling over or trampling on the fear-stricken prisoners as they tried to scramble out of his way, men and women alike. But she made up in agility what she lacked in strength, lifting up the hem of her robe so that her legs twinkled bare, ducking under Gore's outstretched arms, or leaping over the fallen form of some stumbling, panic-stricken unfortunate.

Only in her eyes was there a true picture of her terror. Gore's uncertain temper was changing again, and in a few moments he was cursing foully, his little red-rimmed eyes glistening, as he dashed after her with short, boar-like rushes.

Again she skimmed past where Quirl cowered in simulated fear, and the look she gave him struck straight at the disguised officer's heart. So it was that when she slipped and fell to her knees, and Gore charged in with a triumphant laugh, Quirl met him with no thought of anything, no feeling but the joy of battle, the delight of a strong man when he meets a foe whom he hates. And to that heady, feral emotion was added the unforgettable picture of a lovely face whose obvious fear was somehow tempered by hope and confidence--in him!

As Gore lunged past, Quirl struck him. It was a short, sharp, well-timed jab that would have knocked out an ordinary man. But Gore was by no means ordinary. The blow laid open his cheek against the jawbone, but Gore scarcely slowed as he swerved. With a bellow of rage, he came straight at Quirl, arms outstretched.

Philosophers have said that no matter how far the human race advances in the sciences, its fundamental reactions will still be atavistic. Gore could have dispatched Quirl in a second with his ray weapon, with perfect safety. Yet it is doubtful that the weapon even entered his mind. As he came to the battle he was driven only by the primitive urge to fight with his hands, to maim, to tear limb from limb like the great simians whom he resembled.

* * * * *

To Quirl, coolly poised, the picture of Gore did not inspire terror. In the passengers, it did. They saw a brutal giant, gorilla-like, and roaring like a beast, charging at a half-naked youth apparently only half his size. It seemed that those tremendous arms must break him at the first touch.

But the grasping hands slipped off the lithe body as if it were oiled, leaving only angry red welts along Quirl's ribs. As the officer edged away he planted two blows on Gore's nose, which began to bleed freely.

Again Gore rushed, and spat! spat! two seemingly light blows landed on his face, opening a cut above his eye and another on his cheek bone. In a few seconds of battling he had become a shocking sight, with his features almost obscured by welling blood.

Again Quirl measured him, and this time, instead of evading the grasp of the mate's eager arms, he stepped right between them. Like a wraith he slipped into their embrace, and before they could grasp him, standing so close that his chest almost touched his adversary's, he whipped a right to Gore's jaw. It was the kind of punch that makes champions, a whiplike lash of the forearm, with relaxed muscles that tighten at the moment of impact. A punch with "follow-through" fit to knock out ninety-nine men out of a hundred.

But it did not knock out Gore, and Quirl had to pay dearly for his error. Gore was staggered, but his mighty arms closed, hugging his slighter opponent to his hairy chest so that the breath was choked out of him, and the metal studs on his harness gouged cruelly into Quirl's flesh. His face was blue before he could work his arm loose, and begin to prod with stiffened fingers at Gore's throat. Gore had to let go then, and Quirl broke away, boxed for a few moments until he had recovered, and then proceeded to chop Gore's face beyond any semblance of humanity.

The mate had dropped his ray weapon, and now searched for it with blinded eyes. He flung his riot club, and it flew wide of the mark. It was obvious that he was going to be beaten into insensibility.

* * * * *

The guard on the platform, seeing the trend of the battle, shouted hoarsely up the well, and in a few minutes four men, hard-bitten, villainous looking fellows, tumbled down the ladder and joyously joined in the fray. It was then only a matter of seconds before Quirl lay on the floor-plates, battered and bleeding, but still feebly fighting, while Gore sat astride him, seeking with vicious fingers for Quirl's eyes. At the same time his men were kicking at the helpless man's body wherever they could reach him.

At the sight of this brutality the other prisoners, forgetting for the moment their own cowed condition, set up such a bedlam of noise that the guard began to look furtively up the passage, and to shout at the ruffians.

Suddenly he was whirled aside, and a figure in uniform, moving with uncanny speed for a man so massive, appeared upon the platform and bounded down the ladder. He was among the struggling men on the floor in a moment, and became a maze of flailing arms and legs. Like ten-pins the pirates scattered, and the giant pulled off the mate. Gore could not see, but as he writhed he knew he was in the grip of the pirate captain. Captain Strom's harsh, ascetic face was dangerous, and his steely gray eyes compelling. The men managed slovenly salutes.

"Gore," Strom snapped, "have your men get some water and mop up this blood. How many times have I told you to quit mauling the prisoners? D'ye think I'm in this business to provide amusement for you? Henceforth keep out of this hold. Hear?"

"Yes, sir," Gore muttered sullenly.

"Took five of you bums to handle him, did it?" Strom remarked sardonically, stooping to pick up the unconscious Quirl. He carried him easily, up the ladder. As they disappeared Strom's voice boomed out:

"Dr. Stoddard! Stoddard! Messenger, have Stoddard report at my cabin."

* * * * *

The mate was wiping the blood off his face with a rag.

"I tried to call yer," the guard whined.

"That tears it!" Gore exclaimed fiercely, bursting into a string of abuse. But one of his henchmen nudged him.

"Keep yer tongue in yer face, Gore, till the time comes."

Gore said nothing, but glared savagely at the prisoners.

"Get the buckets and mops!" he snarled at his men, and they fled precipitately.

A long, wailing noise came through the hatch:

"Soopson! S-o-o-pson!"

"Here comes yer grub, damn you," Gore growled at the prisoners in general. A shuffling sound followed the singsong call, and then a "galley boy" of forty years or so, badly crippled by club-feet, shuffled up to the hatch and laboriously let himself down to the platform. The huge bowl of stew he was carrying was far too heavy for him, and his strained, thin face was beady with sweat.

"Get a move on, Sorko!" Gore bellowed up at him. "Get your swill down here. Some o' these swine are goin' short this time, anyway."

Sorko set the big bowl down at the top of the steps and began to descend backward. Then he resumed his burden.

But he was nervous, and had barely started when his crippled feet, far too big for his thin shanks, became entangled. He gave a giddy shriek and fell over backward, landing on his back, and lay still. His pale, freckled face became greenish.

But the bowl, filled to the brim by its greasy, scalding hot contents, flew in a sweeping parabola, tipping as it fell, so that the entire contents cascaded on Gore, drenching him from head to foot. Howling with rage and pain he danced around. He was utterly beside himself. When he was able to see he rushed for Sorko, who was moaning with returning consciousness, and picked up the frail body to hurl it against the floor.

"Stop, or you're dead!"

* * * * *

That voice, so incisive and clear, was a woman's. Gore found himself looking into the little twin funnels of his own ray projector. They were filled with a milky light, and the odor of ozone was strong. The girl had only to press the trigger and a powerful current would leap along the path of those ionizing beams. And Gore would murder no more.

Stupidly, he let Sorko slide to the floor, where the poor fellow recovered sufficiently from his paralyzing fright and his fall to scuttle away.

Looking past the menacing weapon, Gore saw the girl, Lenore Hyde. Her limpid eyes under their straight brows were blazing, and he read in them certain death for himself.

"Up that ladder!" she ordered sharply, "and stay out! Guard, when this beast is gone I will give you this weapon. Now, connect up your skipper."

Too surprised to disobey, the guard threw the televisor switch, and in a moment Strom's stern face appeared on the screen. He comprehended the situation immediately.

"Do as she says," he ordered brusquely. "Stoddard is coming to take care of that man of hers that Gore beat up."

A few minutes later she was tearfully assisting the ship's doctor to put the man with the dislocated shoulders on a stretcher.

"Your husband?" asked Stoddard, who resembled a starved gray rat.

"My brother," she exclaimed simply.

"Want to take care of him?" And at her eager assent, he said, "Can't afford to let him die. Your family got money?"

"Yes, yes! They will pay anything--anything--to get him back safely."

The doctor grinned with satisfaction.

* * * * *

Memory returned to Quirl with the realization that he was lying on a metal bunk in an outside stateroom, where he could see the orderly procession of the stars through the floor ports as the ship rotated. His body was racked with pain, and his head seemed enormous. His sensation, he discovered, was due to a thick swathing of bandages.

As he stirred something moved in an adjoining bunk, and Dr. Stoddard's peaked face came into view.

"How do you feel?" he asked professionally.

"Rotten!"

"We'll fix that." He left, returning a few minutes later with a portable apparatus somewhat resembling its progenitor, the diathermy generator. He disposed a number of insulated loops about Quirl's body and head, connecting them through flexible cables to his machine. As a gentle humming began, Quirl was conscious of an agreeable warmth, of a quickening all over his body. A great lassitude followed, and he slept.

When he awoke again Captain Strom was standing beside him. He had taken off his coat, and his powerful body filled the blouse he was wearing. He had evidently just come off duty, for he still had on his blue trousers, with the stripes of gold braid down the sides.

"It may interest you, Mr. Finner, that I have selected you as one of the chosen," he remarked casually.

"One of the chosen what?"

"The chosen race. You didn't take me for an out-and-out damned pirate, did you?"

"Excuse me if I seem dumb!" Quirl hoisted himself on his elbow. "Yes, I figure you're a pirate. What else?"

* * * * *

Strom's stern face relaxed in a smile. It was a strange smile, inscrutably melancholy. It revealed, beneath the hardness of a warrior, something else; the idealism of a poet. When he spoke again it was with a strange gentleness:

"To attain one's end, one must make use of many means, and sometimes to disguise one's purpose. For instance, it is perfectly proper for an officer of the I.F.P. to disguise himself like a son of the idle rich in order to lay the infamous 'Scourge' by the heels, isn't it?"

Quirl felt himself redden. And a cold fear seemed to overwhelm him. He realized that Strom was a zealot, and he knew he would not hesitate to kill. This prompt penetration of his disguise was something he had not bargained for.

"What makes you think," he asked shortly, "that I'm an I.F.P. man?"

"The fight you gave Gore and his men. Do you expect me to think that a coupon clipper could have done that? I know the way of--"

He checked himself. Quirl said:

"My people have money. I don't know what you mean about--"

"Oh, yes, you do," Strom interrupted. "If you were what you claim to be perhaps I would let you go for the ransom, though you took my eye from the first."

"The ransom will be paid."

"It will not. You will be one of those who do not return. There is only one price I will accept from you."

"Yes? What is that?"

"The formula of the new etheric ray."

"I don't know the I.F.P. secrets. I told you that."

"You know how to operate the ray. All its men do. I want you to tell me what you know. I can deduce the rest."

* * * * *

Quirl thought rapidly. Strom was right. The I.F.P. had developed a new ray that was far superior to the ionizer ray, for the latter required an atmosphere of some kind for its operation, while the new one would work equally well in a vacuum.

"I never heard of any," he lied stubbornly. "Anyway, what do you want a ray for? Your guns, with no gravity to interfere and no air to stop the bullets, have just about unlimited range, haven't they?"

"Spoken like a soldier!" Again Strom permitted himself a brief triumphant smile. "And we have the further advantage of invisibility. The ship is surrounded by a net of wires that create a field of force which bend light rays around us. That explains why your men have never caught us. But to get back to our subject. I will tell you something. Do you know who I am?"

Quirl looked at him. Strom appeared to be at least sixty years old. But the fine, erect figure, the rugged features told nothing.

"Did you ever hear of Lieutenant Burroughs?" Strom asked casually.

"Burroughs--the man without a planet!" Quirl ejaculated. "Are you Burroughs, the traitor?" Immediately he regretted his heedlessness. Strom's face darkened in anger, and for a moment the pirate captain did not reply. When he did he was a little calmer.

"Traitor they called me!" he exclaimed vehemently. "I a traitor--the most loyal man in the solar system guard. Surrounded by rottenness and intrigue--

"But you wouldn't know. You were but a lad learning to fly your first toy helics when that happened. Years later the Martian Cabal was exposed, and the leading plotters--the traitors--were punished. But that was not till later, and the court's irreversible decree against me had been carried out. I, the unsuspecting messenger, the loyal, eager dupe, was made the cat's-paw. I was put on an old, condemned freighter, with food and supplies supposed to last me a lifetime, but with no power capsules and no means of steering the ship. I was set adrift in a derelict on a lonely orbit of exile around the sun--the man without a planet!

* * * * *

"Picture that, lad. That rusty, dead old cylinder, coursing around and around the sun, and inside, sitting on his bales and boxes, a young man like you. A young man in the pride and prime of his life, expiating the treason that had betrayed him. Day after day, through the thick ports, I saw the same changeless scene. And every two years, when I drew near the Earth, I watched the beautiful green ball of it, with what bitter longings! As I watched it dwindle away again into the blackness of space, I thought of the fortunate, selfish, stupid and cruel beings who lived on it, and hated them. They had banished me, an innocent man, to whirl forever and ever around the sun, in my steel tomb!

"But that cruel judgment was never executed. Seven years ago this Gore found me. He is an escaped convict, and he came in a little five-man rocket he had stolen. We loaded up all of the supplies the little ship would hold, for Gore had no food, and escaped to Titan, landing on an island on the side opposite to where the mines are.

"Gore wanted to become a pirate, and as he could get men, I consented. He scraped them up, fugitives from justice, every one of them. We built this ship, and I invented the invisibility field of force--"

"Just a moment," Quirl interrupted, vastly interested. "I saw your ship through the ports that day."

"True. The presence of your ship in the field distorted it so much that it was ineffective. But at all other times--right now--we are utterly invisible. One of the I.F.P. patrols may pass within a mile of us and never see us.

"As we raided the interplanetary commerce, I began to weed out the people we captured. Those that showed the highest intelligence, sense of justice and physical perfection I selected to be the nucleus of a new race, to be kept on Titan for a time and then to be transplanted to a new planet of one of the nearer solar systems.

"My principal trouble is with the crew. They can collect ransom only on those I reject, and there are constant clashes between me and Gore. It is now my intention to let them go their way, and to fit out a new ship, with a new crew. I offer you the place of first mate."

"No!" Quirl replied crisply. "You say you understand the honor of the Force, and then offer me a job pirating with you. No, thanks!"

* * * * *

Strom, or Burroughs, made no attempt to conceal his disappointment. The recital of his wrongs had brought out the bitter lines of his face, and the weariness of one who plays his game alone and can call no one friend.

"I should have known better," he said quietly. "There was none more loyal to the I.F.P. than I--when I still belonged to it. Yet, I thought if I laid all my cards before you--You realize what this means?"

"Yes," Quirl replied soberly. "It means you will never dare to let me be ransomed nor to free me among your selected people. It means--death!"

"Not death! I will parole you."

Quirl felt an overmastering surge of sympathy. He saw this pirate as later historians have come to see him--a man of lofty and noble purpose who was made the victim of shrewder, meaner minds in the most despicable interplanetary imbroglio ever to disgrace a solar system. The thought of his own fate, should he refuse the offer, did not depress Quirl as much as the necessity of heaping more disappointment on this deeply wronged "man without a planet."

"Captain," he said slowly, with deep regret. "You remember the I.F.P. oath?" And at the other's flush he hurried on. "Knowing that oath you know what my answer must be. Put me in irons or kill me!"

"I know," Strom added wistfully. "Would you--if I could just once more shake the clean hand of a brave man and a gentleman--"

Quirl's hand shot out and gripped the long, powerful fingers of the pirate captain.

* * * * *

Quirl was willing to compromise to the extent of not revealing anything to the other passengers, for the privilege of being kept in the prison hold rather than in solitary confinement. Here he would be under the vigilant eye of a guard, with possibly less chance of effecting an escape in some way, but he felt a great desire to be near the girl Lenore, and to know that she was safe and in good spirits.

They fastened him by means of a light chain and hoop that locked around his waist to a staple set in the floor near one wall. The other prisoners regarded him as a hero, for since the day of the epic fight the mate had kept away, and they had been treated with tolerable decency. Quirl was able to cheer them up with predictions that the most of them would be eligible to ransom. But as he looked at the pale beauty of Lenore he felt grave misgivings, for he knew that a man of Strom's discernment would want her for his projected Utopia without question.

She did not speak to him while the hero-worshipping crowd were fluttering about him to their heart's content. When they finally left him alone she came up to him silently, and sat on the floor beside him.

"I want to thank you," she said quietly, clearly, "for what you did for me and my brother, Mr.--"

"Finner. Quirl Finner. I have thought of you as Lenore, and wondered how you were. How long has it been since they took me out? You see--" he grinned, "I was asleep."

"Five days. At least, they turned off the lights five times for the sleeping periods."

"The man who fought for you--how is he?"

"My brother--is dead!"

Quirl looked away so that he should not see the quick tears springing to her eyes. But a few moments later he felt her cool hand on his scarred forehead, and she was smiling bravely.

"Tragedies such as these, Quirl, were common in the lives of our ancestors. They were able to bear them, and we can bear them. All his life my poor brother has lived as a gentleman, sheltered, protected by class barriers. When he died of pneumonia caused by the jagged end of a broken rib--so Dr. Stoddard says--I think he had a lively sense of satisfaction that he should end in such a way. If it had not been for me--"

* * * * *

She came to him often, after that, to sit quietly by his side, and to bring his food to him from the big community bowl which even the most fastidious of the prisoners had come to look forward to. She told of her life as the daughter of a capitalist who owned large mine holdings on Titan. It would be about time for the Celestia to reach Titan, and her non-arrival would be causing anxiety to Lenore's father awaiting her there. The void would be swarming with I.F.P. patrols, but as the pirate ship was invisible nothing would be found but the mysteriously looted and abandoned Celestia.

There was no longer any reason for concealing from her the fact that he himself was a member of the I.F.P., and Quirl told Lenore of the adventurous life he and his companions had led. Of forays to far-away and as yet undisciplined Pluto, of tropical Venus and Mercury, where the rains never cease, of the hostile and almost unknown planet of Aryl, within the orbit of Mercury, where no man has ever seen a true image of the landscape because of the stupendous and never-ending mirages.

As time passed they were drawn together by the bonds of propinquity and mutual interest--this obscure police officer and the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the solar system. But Quirl did not name his love, for always there was the grim present of their captivity, the ghastly uncertainty of the future.

The little "galley boy" Sorko seemed daily more frail. Apparently the fall he had sustained had done him some internal injury. Often the guard, with many a ribald comment, had to help him get his emptied bowl back up the ladder.

* * * * *

One day he seemed overcome by great weakness. Staggering, he held his hand to his sweat-dewed forehead. Erratically he waltzed across the floor, to crumple in a heap where Quirl and the girl were sitting. Moved by compassion, Lenore composed his body in a more comfortable position, and with a bit of handkerchief moistened the pirate's wrinkled, old-young face with some of Quirl's drinking water. The guard looked on indifferently.

"Guard!" Quirl shouted. "He's going to die. Come and take him to the lazaret."

"Sez you!" returned the guard callously. "Me, I stay on post till relieved. Sorko'll be all right. He's been throwin' them fits right regular."

Sorko's lips moved feebly, and Lenore bent down to catch his words. They were barely audible:

"I'm all right, lady. You done me a good turn when you made Gore put me down, and I'm doin' you one now. I wouldn't do this for no one else." He gasped.

"Water!" Lenore exclaimed sharply, and Quirl handed her the rest of his cup.

"Ain't water he wants," the amused guard observed. "The blighter's playin' for a good chew of merclite!"[1]

[Footnote 1: Merclite, a highly stimulating gum. It was prohibited by interplanetary proclamation, but was always obtainable through the surreptitious channels of a highly profitable traffic.]

"I ain't as bad as I'm makin' out," Sorko whispered. "Got to do it to tell you this, 'cause you was square with me. Gore is fixin' to have a mut'ny. Kill captain, kill all these dubs here--this guy of yourn, too. He wants to take you for his--" the weazened little face twisted in unwonted shy delicacy--"take you for him, pretty lady. I don't want him to. I'm not--a--bad feller--"

"What the hell, Sorko!" the puzzled guard exclaimed over the delay. "You bandy-legged rat, get up there, or I'll give you a jolt."

Lenore looked up, indignant.

"You heartless wretch! Would you let this man--"

"Comin'!" Sorko scrambling to his feet, shuffling to the table, where he retrieved his bowl. Quirl and Lenore watched his painful progress up the ladder, until at last he disappeared into the passage.

"Quirl," she murmured, as her hand sought his, "take this."

He felt a small bit of metal, and looking at it cautiously, saw that he had a rough key, filed out of a piece of flat metal.

"The key to that hoop around your waist. He copied it from the one the captain has, I suppose."

* * * * *

His hopes high all at once, Quirl sought the compact little lock in the small of his back. It took a long time to get the key in, and then it would not turn. It had been unskillfully made, and was probably not a true reproduction. Nevertheless, by constant effort, he succeeded at last in turning it, and was rewarded by hearing a faint click. He tested the hoop, felt it slip, and knew that at any time he chose he could free himself.

"Lenore, dear," he told her. "Go with the other women now. We must do nothing to make the guard suspicious. We don't know when this mutiny is to come off, but we are close to Saturn now; it can't be long. Go now."

"Good-by, dear. Be careful!"

It seemed an eternity until the emanation disk became dim and went out and the prisoners made sleepy sounds. A relief guard took station, and the ship became silent, so that one could hear the rumbling of the propelling rockets. As there were no ports in this hold, there was no light whatever except the faint glow that came from the central passage above the platform. Against this the pirate was outlined as he sat on his stool. As Quirl's eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see the play of faint highlights on his muscular torso, and so he waited.

He thought over the situation. The safest and easiest course would be to create such a disturbance that Captain Strom would be attracted to the scene. This would probably not involve anything more than a severe beating for himself, and he would then find opportunity to acquaint Strom with the projected mutiny somehow. That Strom would know how to deal with it he never doubted. Lenore might then still be forcibly impressed as a citizen of Strom's new planet, but at least she would not be exposed to the infinitely worse fate of becoming the plaything of Gore and his villainous crew.

* * * * *

The flaw of this plan was that Quirl himself would still be under practical sentence of death. Strom would not let his gratitude carry him so far as to release a man who knew as much as Quirl did, and who would not promise to keep his secrets.

The preferable, though far more dangerous course was to strike before the mutineers could. Quirl knew something about the structure of the ship. It was built around the tubular passage, and every hold or group of rooms opened on this well, from the bow where the navigators were to the stern where the rockets were located. Somewhere there would be a generating room where the invisibility field was being produced. If he could find this and wreck the generators one of the I.F.P. ships with which this part of space doubtless swarmed, would sight them, and after that everything was in the hands of fate.

Quirl nervously waited for the guard to nod. At any moment he expected to hear a hellish bedlam break loose--the beginning of the mutiny. And the guard seemed alert. There was nothing to do but take a chance.

Quirl sighed as if he were turning in his sleep, so that the clink of the released chain would not seem out of place. The guard did not stir. Slowly, very slowly, Quirl crept across the floor. He had been robbed of all his clothing except his torn silk trousers; and his boots were gone, so he was able to move as quietly as a cat.

With tense silence he ascended the ladder, praying that his weight would not send up a warning vibration. But his luck held. He was nearly at the top before it broke.

"Take him off! Take him off!" It was an eery, strangled shriek from one of the male prisoners in the throes of a nightmare. With a startled curse the guard thudded to his feet, peered tensely into the darkness, his weapon sending twin milky beams of the powerful ionizing ray toward the source of the sound.

* * * * *

The dreamer had awakened, still gasping in the grip of fear, and other disturbed sleepers were grumbling.

"Better go easy, you fools," the pirate warned them. "Yer just in luck that I didn't let loose a couple bolts on ye. Got a good notion to do it, anyway." He played the dangerous little spots of light around, amused as the prisoners scrambled for safety, but with no real intention of releasing the deadly electric charge along the paths provided for it. This cruel pleasure cost him his life. As he turned his back Quirl leaped. His iron-hard forearm rose and fell, and the edge of his hand came down on the back of the pirate's thick neck. There was a muffled crack and he slumped to the platform grating.

Quickly the officer stripped off the man's harness and buckled it around his own naked chest. The electrogun had been uninjured, and hooked to the belt was also the riot club, a truly appalling thing at close quarters. Quirl carried the body down, laid it prone in the corner he had occupied, snapped on the waistlock, and threw a ragged old blanket over the hairy legs. In the forthcoming disturbance, if anyone looked in, he would think the inert form a sleeping prisoner, and that the guard had deserted post.

Quirl had feared an outbreak among the prisoners, but they were so apathetic that they paid little attention. Perhaps they thought it was Quirl who had been killed, and he did not dare even a whispered farewell to the girl he knew was watching somewhere in the darkness.

Much to Quirl's delight, the long, tubular passage was deserted. Here the centrifugal gravity was less than it had been in the hold. A weird place, this central tube, where every direction was down, and a man could walk on his ceiling, his floor, his walls with equal facility. No top nor bottom--just a long, smooth tube with numerous enigmatic doors leading to--where?

At least it was easy to tell where the bow of the ship was. A light shone through a transom over the door to the navigating room. Should he try to hold up the navigating officer? He decided against that. There would be at least three men in there, and it was the custom to keep those quarters locked.

"If only I knew where they generate the invisibility field!" he muttered, as he stood irresolute.

* * * * *

Opportunity came at that moment. A crack of light appeared along the passage. A door was opening there. A moment later a head and shoulders showed. Someone was climbing up. Swiftly the officer ran to the place. The pirate did not even suspect anything wrong until he felt the spots of milky light on his face. He showed his terror plainly.

"Get up!" Quirl hissed. The man obeyed with alacrity. Quirl glanced down. He saw tiers of bunks, evidently one of the crew's dormitories.

He now turned to the cowering pirate.

"I'd as soon kill you as not!" Quirl snarled.

"You got me wrong, brother!" the pirate whined. "I'm with Gore in this deal. Lay off!"

"Where you bound for?"

"I have to relieve Burke at the ventilating turbines."

"Let Burke wait. Lead on to the invisibility generators."

"Oh, I can't do that, mister! I got to have a pass. Say, mister, I was just kidding about being one of Gore's men. I'm for the cap'n, yes, sir!"

"You lying scum!" Quirl barked impatiently. "Get going!"

The white-faced and bewildered pirate led the way down the tube to the after end. He unlatched a door and tried to enter, but as soon as he had dropped through to the platform he was met by a guard with leveled ionizer.

"This gem'man," he started to explain. But Quirl dropped after him and gave him a powerful shove, so that he crashed into the guard. The latter pulled the trigger, and the unfortunate pirate crashed over the platform's edge to the floor. Quirl had out his own electrogun and dispatched the guard. At the same time he felt a stunning shock. His senses reeled, but the grating had taken part of the discharge loosed by a pirate electrician at the foot of the ladder. Quirl threw his riot club and followed that up with another lightning bolt.

* * * * *

He was then the only living person in the room, in which two generators hummed softly. Connected to them was a bank of U-shaped tubes, each as tall as a man, which were filled with silent livid fire. Quirl picked up a wrench and started hammering at the thick tubes until the glass cracked. Each time he was engulfed by a wave of heat, and the tube became black. The great generators idled and automatically came to a stop. Quirl was certain now that the pirate ship would be visible, but the position of the captives was still desperate. He hoped that none of the surviving pirates would think of calling at the generator room, or find out in some other way that they were now visible in the eternal day of space.

Quietly he climbed back to the passage and closed the hatch. He cast about for his next move. He was looking toward the bow, but on hearing the subdued clink of metal on metal, he turned.

A dozen of the pirates were coming toward him.

It would have been useless to draw his weapon. Theirs were out and could have burned him to a crisp before he could move. Silently and with deadliness apparent in every move they approached him.

"Hope they try to capture me alive!" he thought. "What a dog-fight that'll be!"

Now they were nearly up to him.

"Come along, you fool!" barked the leader of the group as they were all around him. "Sapheads like you'll give the whole game away."

Quirl could have laughed. This was evidently part of the mutineers' crew bent on their errand of murder. In the dim light they had taken him for one of their number. He went with them, meekly.

"Unlocked!" The leader whom Quirl had not seen before, exclaimed with satisfaction. He pulled the hatch open softly and the hinges had been oiled. Quietly as panthers they descended the ladder. They stood at the bottom. Still another door barred the way. Quirl now realized that they were attacking the captain's quarters. But the leader produced a key, and silently swung the door open.

"So, you dogs! You've come!"

* * * * *

Like an infuriated bull Captain Strom charged them, a riot club in each hand. He could have killed them all with a ray, but he chose to vent in physical action his consuming anger at their treachery, which he had in some way anticipated. Three or four went sprawling under his mighty blows. The others sought shelter behind tables and chests, and began stabbing at him with their electroguns. Electricity crackled, and the air became pungent with ozone. A pair of the twin rays struck the captain's gold braid, and he went down. With a triumphant yell a man dashed at him, murderous club up-raised. But Quirl was faster, and the pirate fell dead with a crushed skull.

Strom was up again, fighting beside Quirl. The pirates remaining fell under their furious blows, and the two dashed out. Strom said nothing, and Quirl was not sure that he had been recognized. The captain charged straight for the navigating bow. Here, unless he should be attacked by the I.F.P. he could still control the situation. He was perhaps still ignorant of the ship's visibility.

But Quirl made for the prisoners' hold. They would be cowering there, probably in darkness, not knowing what was going on. It was his intention to rally them, provide them with the weapons of the fallen pirates, and so be in a position to advantageously make terms with whoever was victorious in this battle.

He saw, as he approached that the light was on. He was hardly a dozen feet away when the door was darkened. Quirl did not have to hear her cry to know that Gore had Lenore.

* * * * *

Running with remarkable speed, the mate carried his prize toward the after end of the tube. A hatch stood open there, and he dropped through, slamming it after him.

Quirl picked up a bar that someone had dropped. It was but a matter of moments to break the lock and pull open the hatch. The hold was lighted, and empty. In its middle, holding the helpless Lenore, stood Gore, the electrogun in his hand covering the platform.

"Boy scout to the rescue again!" Gore sneered. He was even more repulsive than before, with the marks Quirl had left on him in the last battle. But he was fearless and utterly reckless. "Well, m'lad, I know when I'm done. And when a fellow's done he don't care what happens. So here's the lay: When I get out of here, I'll be dead. And she'll be dead, or you'll wish she was. Get it? She'll be killed, too, if you jolt me--the shock'll pass to her. And the first man-jack who crosses that grating'll get his from me. Now then, go ahead and pull! Goin' to kill us both, or leave her to me?" He laughed defiantly, like one who counts himself already dead.

Quirl tentatively placed one foot on the platform. Instantly a fat spark jumped from the metal to his foot, and sent him sprawling into the tube. He saw Strom coming toward him. He had killed his enemies in the control room and was now on the hunt for more.

"Thanks for what you did," he grunted. As a forlorn hope, Quirl explained the situation. Strom smiled a rare smile.

"That's all right," he said mildly. "Quirl, you're a square man, and I'd rather do something for a square enemy than a false friend. Oh, I can do it cheaply. The jig's up for me, anyway!"

Quickly he dropped through the door and launched himself. Gore saw him coming, and Strom's body shuddered as the bolt struck squarely. He was dead when he hit, but his great weight knocked Gore down.

* * * * *

Quirl had time to jump after him, knocking the wind out of Gore before he could rise. Lenore picked up Gore's weapon, but dared not use it for fear of injuring her lover. As the two fighting men circled warily, seeking openings in this battle that must be fatal to one of them, they did not see the slight, shadowy figure that dropped down to them. There was a flash, and Gore slumped, a knife in his back.

"I done it! I done for him!" chattered Sorko. "The dirty, lousy--"

"Come, Lenore, let's get up to the bow before the pirates think of it." They dashed up the ladder. Some more of the disks were out, and it was nearly dark. Three sinewy forms pounced on Quirl the moment he entered the passage. The girl, too, was caught, though she fought and bit.

"Lights! Let's have some lights!" commanded an authoritative voice.

"Coming, sir!" came a far-away answer.

The passage became bright, and Quirl looked into the faces of his captors, in the uniforms of the I.F.P.

"Got you, you dirty pirate!" gloated the husky young man on his chest.

"Mike!" Quirl gasped, "don't you know me? How'd you get here?"

"Dog-gone! Finner! Leggo his legs, you eggs."

"Trailed you," he added. "Glommed our magnets on the navigating bow. Expected a fight, but some big guy let us in through an airlock. Well, he'd done plenty of scrapping--all the clothes torn off him. Half a dozen dead pirates in there. Who is he?"

Quirl thought of the stiffening body of Lieutenant Burroughs, alias Captain Strom, who had just purchased his life and that of Lenore at the cost of his own. Was his undeserved shame now to follow him to his grave? Quirl was no lawyer, and he decided not to take any chances with the law's mercy. He said:

"I don't know his name. A prisoner from some other ship, I think. He was very homesick for Earth, and I'll see he gets a decent grave on Earth. He died to save me."

"As for the lady," he added, "let her go. She's a captive. And, anyway, I think she is the future Mrs. Quirl Finner."

She smiled, and the men of the Force looked somewhat enviously at Quirl.

"Say," Quirl said, taking Lenore's hand and anxious to be rid of them, "if you find a little monkey-faced guy down in that hold, go easy with him. He's a good man, too, and I'm going to recommend his pardon."