LET THERE BE LIGHT
By Horace B. Fyfe
No matter what the future, one factor must always be reckoned with--the ingenuity of the human animal.
The two men attacked the thick tree trunk with a weary savagery. In the bright sunlight, glistening spatters of sweat flew from them as the old axes bit alternately into the wood.
Blackie stood nearby, on the gravel shoulder of the highway, rubbing his short beard as he considered the depth of the white notch. Turning his broad, tanned face to glance along the patched and cracked concrete to where squat Vito kept watch, he caught the latter's eye and beckoned.
"Okay, Sid--Mike. We'll take it a while."
The rhythm of the axe-strokes ceased. Red Mike swept the back of a forearm across the semi-shaven stubble that set him as something of a dandy. Wordlessly, big Sid ambled up the road to replace Vito.
"Pretty soon, now," boasted Mike, eyeing the cut with satisfaction. "Think it'll bring them?"
"Sure," replied Blackie, spitting on his hands and lifting one of the worn tools. "That's what they're for."
"Funny," mused Mike, "how some keep going an' others bust. These musta been workin' since I was a little kid--since before the last blitz."
"Aw, they don't hafta do much. 'Cept in winter when they come out to clear snow, all they do is put in a patch now an' then."
Mike stared moodily at the weathered surface of the highway and edged back to avoid the reflected heat.
"It beats me how they know a spot has cracked."
"I guess there's machines to run the machines," sighed Blackie. "I dunno; I was too young. Okay, Vito?"
The relieving pair fell to. Mike stepped out of range of the flying chips to sit at the edge of the soft grass which was attempting another invasion of the gravel shoulder. Propelled by the strength of Vito's powerful torso, a single chip spun through the air to his feet. He picked it up and held it to his nose. It had a good, clean smell.
When at length the tree crashed down across the road, Blackie led them to the ambush he had chosen that morning. It was fifty yards up the road toward the ruined city--off to the side where a clump of trees and bushes provided shade and concealment.
"Wish we brought something to eat," Vito said.
"Didn't know it would take so long to creep up on 'em this morning," said Blackie. "The women'll have somethin' when we get back."
"They better," said Mike.
He measured a slender branch with his eye. After a moment, he pulled out a hunting knife, worn thin by years of sharpening, and cut off a straight section of the branch. He began whittling.
"You damn' fool!" Sid objected. "You want the busted spot on the tree to show?"
"Aw, they ain't got the brains to notice."
"The hell they ain't! It stands out like one o' them old street signs. D'ya think they can tell, Blackie?"
"I dunno. Maybe." Blackie rose cautiously to peer over a bed of blackberry bushes. "Guess I'll skin up a tree an' see if anything's in sight."
He hitched up his pants, looking for an easy place to climb. His blue denims had been stoutly made, but weakened by many rips and patches, and he did not want to rip them on a snag. It was becoming difficult to find good, unrotted clothing in the old ruins.
* * * * *
Choosing a branch slightly over his head, he sprang for it, pulled, kicked against the trunk, and flowed up into the foliage with no apparent effort. The others waited below. Sid glanced up occasionally, Vito idly kicked at one of the clubs made from an old two-by-four.
The other lay beneath the piled jackets; but enough of the end protruded to show that they had been chopped from the same timber, gray-painted on one side, stained and gouged on the other where boards had once been nailed. A coil of rope lay beside the axes.
High in the upper branches, Blackie braced himself with negligent confidence and stared along the concrete ribbon.
From here, he thought, you'd almost think the place was still alive, instead of crumbling around our ears.
The windows of the distant houses were dark, unglassed holes, but the sunlight made the masonry clean and shining. To Blackie, the ragged tops of most of the buildings were as natural as the tattered look of the few people he knew. Beyond, toward the center of the city, was real evidence of his race's bygone might--a vast jumble of shattered stone and fused metal. Queer weeds and mosses infected the area, but it would be centuries before they could mask the desolation.
Better covered, were the heaps along the road, seemingly shoved just beyond the gravel shoulders--mouldering mounds which legend said were once machines to ride in along the pavement.
Something glinted at the bend of the highway. Blackie peered closer.
He swarmed down the tree from branch to branch, so lithely that the trio below hardly had the warning of the vibrating leaves before he dropped, cat-footed, among them.
"They're comin'!"
He shrugged quickly into his stained jacket, emulated in silent haste by the others. Vito rubbed his hands down the hairy chest left revealed by his open jacket and hefted one of the clubs. In his broad paws, it seemed light.
They were quiet, watching Sid peer out through narrowly parted brush of the undergrowth. Blackie fidgeted behind him. Finally, he reached out as if to pull the other aside, but at that moment Sid released the bushes and crouched.
The others, catching his warning glance, fell prone, peering through shrubbery and around tree trunks with savage eyes.
The distant squawk of a jay became suddenly very clear, as did the sighing of a faint breeze through the leaves overhead. Then a new, clanking, humming sound intruded.
A procession of three vehicles rolled along the highway at an unvarying pace which took no account of patches or worn spots. They jounced in turn across a patch laid over a previous, unsuccessful patch, and halted before the felled tree. Two were bulldozers; the third was a light truck with compartments for tools. No human figures were visible.
A moment later, the working force appeared--a column of eight robots. These deployed as they reached the obstacle, and explored like colossal ants along its length.
"What're they after?" asked Mike, whispering although he lay fifty yards away.
"They're lookin' over the job for whatever sends them out," Blackie whispered back. "See those little lights stickin' out the tops o' their heads? I heard tell, once, that's how they're run."
Some of the robots took saws from the truck and began to cut through the tree trunk. Others produced cables and huge hooks to attach the obstacle to the bulldozers.
"Look at 'em go!" sighed Sid, hunching his stiff shoulders jealously. "Took us hours, an' they're half done already."
They watched as the robots precisely severed the part of the tree that blocked the highway, going not one inch beyond the gravel shoulder, and helped the bulldozers to tug it aside. On the opposite side of the concrete, the shoulder tapered off into a six-foot drop. The log was jockeyed around parallel to this ditch and rolled into it, amid a thrashing of branches and a spurting of small pebbles.
"Glad we're on the high side," whispered Mike. "That thing 'ud squash a guy's guts right out!"
"Keep listenin' to me," Blackie said, "an' you'll keep on bein' in the right place at the right time."
Mike raised his eyebrows at Vito, who thrust out his lower lip and nodded sagely. Sid grinned, but no one contradicted the boast.
"They're linin' up," Blackie warned tensely. "You guys ready? Where's that rope?"
Someone thrust it into his hands. Still squinting at the scene on the highway, he fumbled for the ends and held one out to Mike. The others gripped their clubs.
"Now, remember!" ordered Blackie. "Me an' Mike will trip up the last one in line. You two get in there quick an' wallop him over the head--but good!"
"Don't go away while we're doin' it," said big Sid. "They won't chase ya, but they look out fer themselves. I don't wanna get tossed twenty feet again!"
The eyes of the others flicked toward the jagged white scar running down behind Sid's right ear and under the collar of his jacket. Then they swung back to the road.
"Good!" breathed Blackie. "The rollin' stuff's goin' first."
The truck and bulldozers set out toward the city, with the column of robots marching a fair distance behind. The latter approached the ambush--drew abreast--began to pass.
Blackie raised himself to a crouch with just the tips of his fingers steadying him.
* * * * *
As the last robot plodded by, he surged out of the brush, joined to Red Mike by their grips on the twenty feet of rope. They ran up behind the marching machine, trailed by the others.
In his right hand, Blackie twirled the part of the rope hanging between him and Mike. On the second swing, he got it over the head of the robot. He saw Mike brace himself.
The robot staggered. It pivoted clumsily to its left, groping vaguely for the hindrance. Mike and Blackie tugged again, and the machine wound up facing them in its efforts to maintain balance. Its companions marched steadily along the road.
"Switch ends!" barked Blackie.
Alert, Mike tossed him the other end of the rope and caught Blackie's. They ran past the robot on either side, looping it in. Blackie kept going until he was above the ditch. He wound a turn of rope about his forearm and plunged down the bank.
[Illustration: With skill of long practice, they brought the robot down.]
A shower of gravel spattered after him as Mike jammed his heels into the shoulder of the highway to anchor the other end. Then he heard the booming sound of the robot's fall.
Blackie clawed his way up the bank. Vito and Sid were smashing furiously at the floundering machine. Mike danced about the melee with bared teeth, charging in once as if to leap upon the quarry with both feet. Frustrated by the peril of the whirling two-by-fours, he swept up handfuls of gravel to hurl.
Blackie turned to run for one of the axes. Just then, Sid struck home to the head of the robot.
Sparks spat out amid a tinkle of glass. The machine ceased all motion.
"All right!" panted Blackie. "All right! That's enough!"
They stepped back, snarls fading. A handful of gravel trickled through Mike's fingers and pattered loudly on the concrete. Gradually, the men began to straighten up, seeing the robot as an inert heap of metal rather than as a weird beast in its death throes.
"We better load up an' get," said Blackie. "We wanna be over on the trail if they send somethin' up the road to look for this."
Vito dragged the robot off the highway by the head, and they began the task of lashing it to the two-by-fours.
It was about two hours later when they plodded around a street corner among the ruins and stopped before a fairly intact building. By that time, they had picked up an escort of dirty, half-clad children who ran ahead to spread the news.
Two other men and a handful of women gathered around with eager exclamations. The hunters dropped their catch.
"Better get to work on him," said Blackie, glancing at the sky. "Be dark soon."
The men who had remained as guards ran inside the entrance of polished granite and brought out tools: hammers, crowbars, hatchets. Behind them hurried women with basins and large cans. The original four, weary from the weight of the robot despite frequent pauses on the trail, stepped back.
"Where first, Blackie?" asked one of the men, waiting for the women to untangle the rope and timbers.
"Try all the joints. After that, we'll crack him open down the middle for the main supply tank."
He watched the metal give way under the blows. As the robot was dismembered, the fluid that had lubricated the complex mechanism flowed from its wounds and was poured by the women into a five-gallon can.
"Bring a cupful, Judy," Blackie told his woman, a wiry blond girl. "I wanna see if it's as good as the last."
He lit a stick at the fire as they crossed the littered, once-ornate lobby, and she followed him down a dim hall. He pulled aside the skins that covered their doorway, then stumbled his way to the table. The window was still uncovered against the night chill, but it looked out on a courtyard shadowed by towering walls. To eyes adjusted to the sunny street, the room was dark.
Judy poured the oil into the makeshift lamp, waited for the rag wick to soak, and held it out to Blackie. He lit the wick from his stick.
"It burns real good, Blackie," the girl said, wrinkling her nose against the first oily smoke. "Gee, you're smart to catch one the first day out."
"Tell them other dames to watch how they use it!" he warned. "This oughta last a month or more when we get him all emptied."
He blew out the dying flame on the stick and dropped the charred wood thoughtfully to the floor.
"Naw, I ain't so smart," he admitted, "or I'd figure a way to make one of them work the garden for us. Maybe someday--but this kind won't do nothin' but fix that goddam road, an' what good's that to anybody?"
His woman moved the burning lamp carefully to the center of the table.
"Anyway, it's gonna be better'n last winter," she said. "We'll have lights now."
SUITE MENTALE
by Randall Garrett
OVERTURE--ADAGIO MISTERIOSO
The neurosurgeon peeled the thin surgical gloves from his hands as the nurse blotted the perspiration from his forehead for the last time after the long, grueling hours.
"They're waiting outside for you, Doctor," she said quietly.
The neurosurgeon nodded wordlessly. Behind him, three assistants were still finishing up the operation, attending to the little finishing touches that did not require the brilliant hand of the specialist. Such things as suturing up a scalp, and applying bandages.
The nurse took the sterile mask--no longer sterile now--while the doctor washed and dried his hands.
"Where are they?" he asked finally. "Out in the hall, I suppose?"
[Illustration]
She nodded. "You'll probably have to push them out of the way to get out of Surgery."
* * * * *
Her prediction was almost perfect. The group of men in conservative business suits, wearing conservative ties, and holding conservative, soft, felt hats in their hands were standing just outside the door. Dr. Mallon glanced at the five of them, letting his eyes stop on the face of the tallest. "He may live," the doctor said briefly.
"You don't sound very optimistic, Dr. Mallon," said the FBI man.
Mallon shook his head. "Frankly, I'm not. He was shot laterally, just above the right temple, with what looks to me like a .357 magnum pistol slug. It's in there--" He gestured back toward the room he had just left. "--you can have it, if you want. It passed completely through the brain, lodging on the other side of the head, just inside the skull. What kept him alive, I'll never know, but I can guarantee that he might as well be dead; it was a rather nasty way to lobotomize a man, but it was effective, I can assure you."
The Federal agent frowned puzzledly. "Lobotomized? Like those operations they do on psychotics?"
"Similar," said Mallon. "But no psychotic was ever butchered up like this; and what I had to do to him to save his life didn't help anything."
The men looked at each other, then the big one said: "I'm sure you did the best you could, Dr. Mallon."
The neurosurgeon rubbed the back of his hand across his forehead and looked steadily into the eyes of the big man.
"You wanted him alive," he said slowly, "and I have a duty to save life. But frankly, I think we'll all eventually wish we had the common human decency to let Paul Wendell die. Excuse me, gentlemen; I don't feel well." He turned abruptly and strode off down the hall.
* * * * *
One of the men in the conservative suits said: "Louis Pasteur lived through most of his life with only half a brain and he never even knew it, Frank; maybe--"
"Yeah. Maybe," said the big man. "But I don't know whether to hope he does or hope he doesn't." He used his right thumbnail to pick a bit of microscopic dust from beneath his left index finger, studying the operation without actually seeing it. "Meanwhile, we've got to decide what to do about the rest of those screwballs. Wendell was the only sane one, and therefore the most dangerous--but the rest of them aren't what you'd call safe, either."
The others nodded in a chorus of silent agreement.
NOCTURNE--TEMPO DI VALSE
"Now what the hell's the matter with me?" thought Paul Wendell. He could feel nothing. Absolutely nothing: No taste, no sight, no hearing, no anything. "Am I breathing?" He couldn't feel any breathing. Nor, for that matter, could he feel heat, nor cold, nor pain.
"Am I dead? No. At least, I don't feel dead. Who am I? What am I?" No answer. Cogito, ergo sum. What did that mean? There was something quite definitely wrong, but he couldn't quite tell what it was. Ideas seemed to come from nowhere; fragments of concepts that seemed to have no referents. What did that mean? What is a referent? A concept? He felt he knew intuitively what they meant, but what use they were he didn't know.
There was something wrong, and he had to find out what it was. And he had to find out through the only method of investigation left open to him.
So he thought about it.
SONATA--ALLEGRO CON BRIO
The President of the United States finished reading the sheaf of papers before him, laid them neatly to one side, and looked up at the big man seated across the desk from him.
"Is this everything, Frank?" he asked.
"That's everything, Mr. President; everything we know. We've got eight men locked up in St. Elizabeth's, all of them absolutely psychotic, and one human vegetable named Paul Wendell. We can't get anything out of them."
The President leaned back in his chair. "I really can't quite understand it. Extra-sensory perception--why should it drive men insane? Wendell's papers don't say enough. He claims it can be mathematically worked out--that he did work it out--but we don't have any proof of that."
The man named Frank scowled. "Wasn't that demonstration of his proof enough?"
A small, graying, intelligent-faced man who had been sitting silently, listening to the conversation, spoke at last. "Mr. President, I'm afraid I still don't completely understand the problem. If we could go over it, and get it straightened out--" He left the sentence hanging expectantly.
"Certainly. This Paul Wendell is a--well, he called himself a psionic mathematician. Actually, he had quite a respectable reputation in the mathematical field. He did very important work in cybernetic theory, but he dropped it several years ago--said that the human mind couldn't be worked at from a mechanistic angle. He studied various branches of psychology, and eventually dropped them all. He built several of those queer psionic machines--gold detectors, and something he called a hexer. He's done a lot of different things, evidently."
"Sounds like he was unable to make up his mind," said the small man.
* * * * *
The President shook his head firmly. "Not at all. He did new, creative work in every one of the fields he touched. He was considered something of a mystic, but not a crackpot, or a screwball.
"But, anyhow, the point is that he evidently found what he'd been looking for for years. He asked for an appointment with me; I okayed the request because of his reputation. He would only tell me that he'd stumbled across something that was vital to national defense and the future of mankind; but I felt that, in view of the work he had done, he was entitled to a hearing."
"And he proved to you, beyond any doubt, that he had this power?" the small man asked.
Frank shifted his big body uneasily in his chair. "He certainly did, Mr. Secretary."
The President nodded. "I know it might not sound too impressive when heard second-hand, but Paul Wendell could tell me more of what was going on in the world than our Central Intelligence agents have been able to dig up in twenty years. And he claimed he could teach the trick to anyone.
"I told him I'd think it over. Naturally, my first step was to make sure that he was followed twenty-four hours a day. A man with information like that simply could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands." The President scowled, as though angry with himself. "I'm sorry to say that I didn't realize the full potentialities of what he had said for several days--not until I got Frank's first report."
* * * * *
"You could hardly be expected to, Mr. President," Frank said. "After all, something like that is pretty heady stuff."
"I think I follow you," said the Secretary. "You found he was already teaching this trick to others."
The President glanced at the FBI man. Frank said: "That's right; he was holding meetings--classes, I suppose you'd call them--twice a week. There were eight men who came regularly."
"That's when I gave the order to have them all picked up. Can you imagine what would happen if everybody could be taught to use this ability? Or even a small minority?"
"They'd rule the world," said the Secretary softly.
The President shrugged that off. "That's a small item, really. The point is that nothing would be hidden from anyone.
"The way we play the Game of Life today is similar to playing poker. We keep a straight face and play the cards tight to our chest. But what would happen if everyone could see everyone else's cards? It would cease to be a game of strategy, and become a game of pure chance.
* * * * *
"We'd have to start playing Life another way. It would be like chess, where you can see the opponent's every move. But in all human history there has never been a social analogue for chess. That's why Paul Wendell and his group had to be stopped--for a while at least."
"But what could you have done with them?" asked the Secretary. "Imprison them summarily? Have them shot? What would you have done?"
The President's face became graver than ever. "I had not yet made that decision. Thank Heaven, it has been taken out of my hands."
"One of his own men shot him?"
"That's right," said the big FBI man. "We went into his apartment an instant too late. We found eight madmen and a near-corpse. We're not sure what happened, and we're not sure we want to know. Anything that can drive eight reasonably stable men off the deep end in less than an hour is nothing to meddle around with."
"I wonder what went wrong?" asked the Secretary of no one in particular.
SCHERZO--PRESTO
Paul Wendell, too, was wondering what went wrong.
Slowly, over a period of immeasurable time, memory seeped back into him. Bits of memory, here and there, crept in from nowhere, sometimes to be lost again, sometimes to remain. Once he found himself mentally humming an odd, rather funeral tune:
Now, though you'd have said that the head was dead, For its owner dead was he, It stood on its neck with a smile well-bred, And bowed three times to me. It was none of your impudent, off-hand nods....
Wendell stopped and wondered what the devil seemed so important about the song.
Slowly, slowly, memory returned.
When he suddenly realized, with crashing finality, where he was and what had happened to him, Paul Wendell went violently insane. Or he would have, if he could have become violent.
MARCHE FUNEBRE--LENTO
"Open your mouth, Paul," said the pretty nurse. The hulking mass of not-quite-human gazed at her with vacuous eyes and opened its mouth. Dexterously, she spooned a mouthful of baby food into it. "Now swallow it, Paul. That's it. Now another."
"In pretty bad shape, isn't he?"
Nurse Peters turned to look at the man who had walked up behind her. It was Dr. Benwick, the new interne.
"He's worthless to himself and anyone else," she said. "It's a shame, too; he'd be rather nice looking if there were any personality behind that face." She shoveled another spoonful of mashed asparagus into the gaping mouth. "Now swallow it, Paul."
"How long has he been here?" Benwick asked, eyeing the scars that showed through the dark hair on the patient's head.
"Nearly six years," Miss Peters said.
"Hmmh! But they outlawed lobotomies back in the sixties."
"Open your mouth, Paul." Then, to Benwick: "This was an accident. Bullet in the head. You can see the scar on the other side of his head."
* * * * *
The doctor moved around to look at the left temple. "Doesn't leave much of a human being, does it?"
"It doesn't even leave much of an animal," Miss Peters said. "He's alive, but that's the best you can say for him. (Now swallow, Paul. That's it.) Even an ameba can find food for itself."
"Yeah. Even a single cell is better off than he is. Chop out a man's forebrain and he's nothing. It's a case of the whole being less than the sum of its parts."
"I'm glad they outlawed the operation on mental patients," Miss Peters said, with a note of disgust in her voice.
Dr. Benwick said: "It's worse than it looks. Do you know why the anti-lobotomists managed to get the bill passed?"
"Let's drink some milk now, Paul. No, Doctor; I was only a little girl at that time."
"It was a matter of electro-encephalographic records. They showed that there was electrical activity in the prefrontal lobes even after the nerves had been severed, which could mean a lot of things; but the A-L supporters said that it indicated that the forebrain was still capable of thinking."
Miss Peters looked a little ill. "Why--that's horrible! I wish you'd never told me." She looked at the lump of vegetablized human sitting placidly at the table. "Do you suppose he's actually thinking, somewhere, deep inside?"
"Oh, I doubt it," Benwick said hastily. "There's probably no real self-awareness, none at all. There couldn't be."
"I suppose not," Miss Peters said, "but it's not pleasant to think of."
"That's why they outlawed it," said Benwick.
RONDO--ANDANTE MA NON POCO
Insanity is a retreat from reality, an escape within the mind from the reality outside the mind. But what if there is no detectable reality outside the mind? What is there to escape from? Suicide--death in any form--is an escape from life. But if death does not come, and can not be self-inflicted, what then?
And when the pressure of nothingness becomes too great to bear, it becomes necessary to escape; a man under great enough pressure will take the easy way out. But if there is no easy way? Why, then a man must take the hard way.
For Paul Wendell, there was no escape from his dark, senseless Gehenna by way of death, and even insanity offered no retreat; insanity in itself is senseless, and senselessness was what he was trying to flee. The only insanity possible was the psychosis of regression, a fleeing into the past, into the crystallized, unchanging world of memory.
So Paul Wendell explored his past, every year, every hour, every second of it, searching to recall and savor every bit of sensation he had ever experienced. He tasted and smelled and touched and heard and analyzed each of them minutely. He searched through his own subjective thought processes, analyzing, checking and correlating them.
Know thyself. Time and time again, Wendell retreated from his own memories in confusion, or shame, or fear. But there was no retreat from himself, and eventually he had to go back and look again.
He had plenty of time--all the time in the world. How can subjective time be measured when there is no objective reality?
* * * * *
Eventually, there came the time when there was nothing left to look at; nothing left to see; nothing to check and remember; nothing that he had not gone over in every detail. Again, boredom began to creep in. It was not the boredom of nothingness, but the boredom of the familiar. Imagination? What could he imagine, except combinations and permutations of his own memories? He didn't know--perhaps there might be more to it than that.
So he exercised his imagination. With a wealth of material to draw upon, he would build himself worlds where he could move around, walk, talk, and make love, eat, drink and feel the caress of sunshine and wind.
It was while he was engaged in this project that he touched another mind. He touched it, fused for a blinding second, and bounced away. He ran gibbering up and down the corridors of his own memory, mentally reeling from the shock of--identification!
* * * * *
Who was he? Paul Wendell? Yes, he knew with incontrovertible certainty that he was Paul Wendell. But he also knew, with almost equal certainty, that he was Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was living--had lived--in the latter half of the nineteenth century. But he knew nothing of the Captain other than the certainty of identity; nothing else of that blinding mind-touch remained.
Again he scoured his memory--Paul Wendell's memory--checking and rechecking the area just before that semi-fatal bullet had crashed through his brain.
And finally, at long last, he knew with certainty where his calculations had gone astray. He knew positively why eight men had gone insane.
Then he went again in search of other minds, and this time he knew he would not bounce.
QUASI UNA FANTASIA POCO ANDANTE PIANISSIMO
An old man sat quietly in his lawnchair, puffing contentedly on an expensive briar pipe and making corrections with a fountain pen on a thick sheaf of typewritten manuscript. Around him stretched an expanse of green lawn, dotted here and there with squat cycads that looked like overgrown pineapples; in the distance, screening the big house from the road, stood a row of stately palms, their fronds stirring lightly in the faint, warm California breeze.
The old man raised his head as a car pulled into the curving driveway. The warm hum of the turboelectric engine stopped, and a man climbed out of the vehicle. He walked with easy strides across the grass to where the elderly gentleman sat. He was lithe, of indeterminate age, but with a look of great determination. There was something in his face that made the old man vaguely uneasy--not with fear but with a sense of deep respect.
"What can I do for you, sir?"
"I have some news for you, Mr. President," the younger one said.
The old man smiled wryly. "I haven't been President for fourteen years. Most people call me 'Senator' or just plain 'Mister'."
* * * * *
The younger man smiled back. "Very well, Senator. My name is Camberton, James Camberton. I brought some information that may possibly relieve your mind--or, again, it may not."
"You sound ominous, Mr. Camberton. I hope you'll remember that I've been retired from the political field for nearly five years. What is this shattering news?"
"Paul Wendell's body was buried yesterday."
The Senator looked blank for a second, then recognition came into his face. "Wendell, eh? After all this time. Poor chap; he'd have been better off if he'd died twenty years ago." Then he paused and looked up. "But just who are you, Mr. Camberton? And what makes you think I would be particularly interested in Paul Wendell?"
"Mr. Wendell wants to tell you that he is very grateful to you for having saved his life, Senator. If it hadn't been for your orders, he would have been left to die."
The Senator felt strangely calm, although he knew he should feel shock. "That's ridiculous, sir! Mr. Wendell's brain was hopelessly damaged; he never recovered his sanity or control of his body. I know; I used to drop over to see him occasionally, until I finally realized that I was only making myself feel worse and doing him no good."
[Illustration]
"Yes, sir. And Mr. Wendell wants you to know how much he appreciated those visits."
* * * * *
The Senator grew red. "What the devil are you talking about? I just said that Wendell couldn't talk. How could he have said anything to you? What do you know about this?"
"I never said he spoke to me, Senator; he didn't. And as to what I know of this affair, evidently you don't remember my name. James Camberton."
The Senator frowned. "The name is familiar, but--" Then his eyes went wide. "Camberton! You were one of the eight men who--Why, you're the man who shot Wendell!"
Camberton pulled up an empty lawnchair and sat down. "That's right, Senator; but there's nothing to be afraid of. Would you like to hear about it?"
"I suppose I must." The old man's voice was so low that it was scarcely audible. "Tell me--were the other seven released, too? Have--have you all regained your sanity? Do you remember--" He stopped.
"Do we remember the extra-sensory perception formula? Yes, we do; all eight of us remember it well. It was based on faulty premises, and incomplete, of course; but in its own way it was workable enough. We have something much better now."
The old man shook his head slowly. "I failed, then. Such an idea is as fatal to society as we know it as a virus plague. I tried to keep you men quarantined, but I failed. After all those years of insanity, now the chess game begins; the poker game is over."
"It's worse than that," Camberton said, chuckling softly. "Or, actually, it's much better."
"I don't understand; explain it to me. I'm an old man, and I may not live to see my world collapse. I hope I don't."
Camberton said: "I'll try to explain in words, Senator. They're inadequate, but a fuller explanation will come later."
And he launched into the story of the two-decade search of Paul Wendell.
CODA--ANDANTINO
"Telepathy? Time travel?" After three hours of listening, the ex-President was still not sure he understood.
"Think of it this way," Camberton said. "Think of the mind at any given instant as being surrounded by a shield--a shield of privacy--a shield which you, yourself have erected, though unconsciously. It's a perfect insulator against telepathic prying by others. You feel you have to have it in order to retain your privacy--your sense of identity, even. But here's the kicker: even though no one else can get in, you can't get out!
"You can call this shield 'self-consciousness'--perhaps shame is a better word. Everyone has it, to some degree; no telepathic thought can break through it. Occasionally, some people will relax it for a fraction of a second, but the instant they receive something, the barrier goes up again."
"Then how is telepathy possible? How can you go through it?" The Senator looked puzzled as he thoughtfully tamped tobacco into his briar.
"You don't go through it; you go around it."
* * * * *
"Now wait a minute; that sounds like some of those fourth dimension stories I've read. I recall that when I was younger, I read a murder mystery--something about a morgue, I think. At any rate, the murder was committed inside a locked room; no one could possibly have gotten in or out. One of the characters suggested that the murderer traveled through the fourth dimension in order to get at the victim. He didn't go through the walls; he went around them." The Senator puffed a match flame into the bowl of his pipe, his eyes on the younger man. "Is that what you're driving at?"
"Exactly," agreed Camberton. "The fourth dimension. Time. You must go back in time to an instant when that wall did not exist. An infant has no shame, no modesty, no shield against the world. You must travel back down your own four-dimensional tube of memory in order to get outside it, and to do that, you have to know your own mind completely, and you must be sure you know it.
"For only if you know your own mind can you communicate with another mind. Because, at the 'instant' of contact, you become that person; you must enter his own memory at the beginning and go up the hyper-tube. You will have all his memories, his hopes, his fears, his sense of identity. Unless you know--beyond any trace of doubt--who you are, the result is insanity."
* * * * *
The Senator puffed his pipe for a moment, then shook his head. "It sounds like Oriental mysticism to me. If you can travel in time, you'd be able to change the past."
"Not at all," Camberton said; "that's like saying that if you read a book, the author's words will change.
"Time isn't like that. Look, suppose you had a long trough filled with supercooled water. At one end, you drop in a piece of ice. Immediately the water begins to freeze; the crystallization front moves toward the other end of the trough. Behind that front, there is ice--frozen, immovable, unchangeable. Ahead of it there is water--fluid, mobile, changeable.
"The instant we call 'the present' is like that crystallization front. The past is unchangeable; the future is flexible. But they both exist."
"I see--at least, I think I do. And you can do all this?"
"Not yet," said Camberton; "not completely. My mind isn't as strong as Wendell's, nor as capable. I'm not the--shall we say--the superman he is; perhaps I never will be. But I'm learning--I'm learning. After all, it took Paul twenty years to do the trick under the most favorable circumstances imaginable."
"I see." The Senator smoked his pipe in silence for a long time. Camberton lit a cigaret and said nothing. After a time, the Senator took the briar from his mouth and began to tap the bowl gently on the heel of his palm. "Mr. Camberton, why do you tell me all this? I still have influence with the Senate; the present President is a protégé of mine. It wouldn't be too difficult to get you men--ah--put away again. I have no desire to see our society ruined, our world destroyed. Why do you tell me?"
* * * * *
Camberton smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid you might find it a little difficult to put us away again, sir; but that's not the point. You see, we need you. We have no desire to destroy our present culture until we have designed a better one to replace it.
"You are one of the greatest living statesmen, Senator; you have a wealth of knowledge and ability that can never be replaced; knowledge and ability that will help us to design a culture and a civilization that will be as far above this one as this one is above the wolf pack. We want you to come in with us, help us; we want you to be one of us."
"I? I'm an old man, Mr. Camberton. I will be dead before this civilization falls; how can I help build a new one? And how could I, at my age, be expected to learn this technique?"
"Paul Wendell says you can. He says you have one of the strongest minds now existing."
The Senator put his pipe in his jacket pocket. "You know, Camberton, you keep referring to Wendell in the present tense. I thought you said he was dead."
Again Camberton gave him the odd smile. "I didn't say that, Senator; I said they buried his body. That's quite a different thing. You see, before the poor, useless hulk that held his blasted brain died, Paul gave the eight of us his memories; he gave us himself. The mind is not the brain, Senator; we don't know what it is yet, but we do know what it isn't. Paul's poor, damaged brain is dead, but his memories, his thought processes, the very essence of all that was Paul Wendell is still very much with us.
"Do you begin to see now why we want you to come in with us? There are nine of us now, but we need the tenth--you. Will you come?"
"I--I'll have to think it over," the old statesman said in a voice that had a faint quaver. "I'll have to think it over."
But they both knew what his answer would be.
THE MEASURE OF A MAN
By Randall Garrett
What is desirable is not always necessary, while that which is necessary may be most undesirable. Perhaps the measure of a man is the ability to tell one from the other ... and act on it.
Alfred Pendray pushed himself along the corridor of the battleship Shane, holding the flashlight in one hand and using the other hand and his good leg to guide and propel himself by. The beam of the torch reflected queerly from the pastel green walls of the corridor, giving him the uneasy sensation that he was swimming underwater instead of moving through the blasted hulk of a battleship, a thousand light-years from home.
He came to the turn in the corridor, and tried to move to the right, but his momentum was greater than he had thought, and he had to grab the corner of the wall to keep from going on by. That swung him around, and his sprained ankle slammed agonizingly against the other side of the passageway.
Pendray clenched his teeth and kept going. But as he moved down the side passage, he went more slowly, so that the friction of his palm against the wall could be used as a brake.
He wasn't used to maneuvering without gravity; he'd been taught it in Cadets, of course, but that was years ago and parsecs away. When the pseudograv generators had gone out, he'd retched all over the place, but now his stomach was empty, and the nausea had gone.
He had automatically oriented himself in the corridors so that the doors of the various compartments were to his left and right, with the ceiling "above" and the deck "below." Otherwise, he might have lost his sense of direction completely in the complex maze of the interstellar battleship.
Or, he corrected himself, what's left of a battleship.
And what was left? Just Al Pendray and less than half of the once-mighty Shane.
The door to the lifeboat hold loomed ahead in the beam of the flashlight, and Pendray braked himself to a stop. He just looked at the dogged port for a few seconds.
Let there be a boat in there, he thought. Just a boat, that's all I ask. And air, he added as an afterthought. Then his hand went out to the dog handle and turned.
The door cracked easily. There was air on the other side. Pendray breathed a sigh of relief, braced his good foot against the wall, and pulled the door open.
The little lifeboat was there, nestled tightly in her cradle. For the first time since the Shane had been hit, Pendray's face broke into a broad smile. The fear that had been within him faded a little, and the darkness of the crippled ship seemed to be lessened.
Then the beam of his torch caught the little red tag on the air lock of the lifeboat. Repair Work Under Way--Do Not Remove This Tag Without Proper Authority.
That explained why the lifeboat hadn't been used by the other crewmen.
Pendray's mind was numb as he opened the air lock of the small craft. He didn't even attempt to think. All he wanted was to see exactly how the vessel had been disabled by the repair crew. He went inside.
The lights were working in the lifeboat. That showed that its power was still functioning. He glanced over the instrument-and-control panels. No red tags on them, at least. Just to make sure, he opened them up, one by one, and looked inside. Nothing wrong, apparently.
Maybe it had just been some minor repair--a broken lighting switch or something. But he didn't dare hope yet.
He went through the door in the tiny cabin that led to the engine compartment, and he saw what the trouble was.
The shielding had been removed from the atomic motors.
He just hung there in the air, not moving. His lean, dark face remained expressionless, but tears welled up in his eyes and spilled over, spreading their dampness over his lids.
The motors would run, all right. The ship could take him to Earth. But the radiation leakage from those motors would kill him long before he made it home. It would take ten days to make it back to base, and twenty-four hours of exposure to the deadly radiation from those engines would be enough to insure his death from radiation sickness.
His eyes were blurring from the film of tears that covered them; without gravity to move the liquid, it just pooled there, distorting his vision. He blinked the tears away, then wiped his face with his free hand.
Now what?
He was the only man left alive on the Shane, and none of the lifeboats had escaped. The Rat cruisers had seen to that.
* * * * *
They weren't really rats, those people. Not literally. They looked humanoid enough to enable plastic surgeons to disguise a human being as one of them, although it meant sacrificing the little fingers and little toes to imitate the four-digited Rats. The Rats were at a disadvantage there; they couldn't add any fingers. But the Rats had other advantages--they bred and fought like, well, like rats.
Not that human beings couldn't equal them or even surpass them in ferocity, if necessary. But the Rats had nearly a thousand years of progress over Earth. Their Industrial Revolution had occurred while the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes were pushing the Britons into Wales. They had put their first artificial satellites into orbit while King Alfred the Great was fighting off the Danes.
They hadn't developed as rapidly as Man had. It took them roughly twice as long to go from one step to the next, so that their actual superiority was only a matter of five hundred years, and Man was catching up rapidly. Unfortunately, Man hadn't caught up yet.
The first meeting of the two races had taken place in interstellar space, and had seemed friendly enough. Two ships had come within detector distance of each other, and had circled warily. It was almost a perfect example of the Leinster Hypothesis; neither knew where the other's home world was located, and neither could go back home for fear that the other would be able to follow. But the Leinster Hypothesis couldn't be followed to the end. Leinster's solution had been to have the parties trade ships and go home, but that only works when the two civilizations are fairly close in technological development. The Rats certainly weren't going to trade their ship for the inferior craft of the Earthmen.
The Rats, conscious of their superiority, had a simpler solution. They were certain, after a while, that Earth posed no threat to them, so they invited the Earth ship to follow them home.
The Earthmen had been taken on a carefully conducted tour of the Rats' home planet, and the captain of the Earth ship--who had gone down in history as "Sucker" Johnston--was convinced that the Rats meant no harm, and agreed to lead a Rat ship back to Earth. If the Rats had struck then, there would never have been a Rat-Human War. It would have been over before it started.
But the Rats were too proud of their superiority. Earth was too far away to bother them for the moment; it wasn't in their line of conquest just yet. In another fifty years, the planet would be ready for picking off.
Earth had no idea that the Rats were so widespread. They had taken and colonized over thirty planets, completely destroying the indigenous intelligent races that had existed on five of them.
It wasn't just pride that had made the Rats decide to wait before hitting Earth; there was a certain amount of prudence, too. None of the other races they had met had developed space travel; the Earthmen might be a little tougher to beat. Not that there was any doubt of the outcome, as far as they were concerned--but why take chances?
But, while the Rats had fooled "Sucker" Johnston and some of his officers, the majority of the crew knew better. Rat crewmen were little short of slaves, and the Rats made the mistake of assuming that the Earth crewmen were the same. They hadn't tried to impress the crewmen as they had the officers. When the interrogation officers on Earth questioned the crew of the Earth ship, they, too, became suspicious. Johnston's optimistic attitude just didn't jibe with the facts.
So, while the Rat officers were having the red carpet rolled out for them, Earth Intelligence went to work. Several presumably awe-stricken men were allowed to take a conducted tour of the Rat ship. After all, why not? The Twentieth Century Russians probably wouldn't have minded showing their rocket plants to an American of Captain John Smith's time, either.
But there's a difference. Earth's government knew Earth was being threatened, and they knew they had to get as many facts as they could. They were also aware of the fact that if you know a thing can be done, then you will eventually find a way to do it.
During the next fifty years, Earth learned more than it had during the previous hundred. The race expanded, secretly, moving out to other planets in that sector of the galaxy. And they worked to catch up with the Rats.
They didn't make it, of course. When, after fifty years of presumably peaceful--but highly limited--contact, the Rats hit Earth, they found out one thing. That the mass and energy of a planet armed with the proper weapons can not be out-classed by any conceivable concentration of spaceships.
Throwing rocks at an army armed with machine guns may seem futile, but if you hit them with an avalanche, they'll go under. The Rats lost three-quarters of their fleet to planet-based guns and had to go home to bandage their wounds.
The only trouble was that Earth couldn't counterattack. Their ships were still out-classed by those of the Rats. And the Rats, their racial pride badly stung, were determined to wipe out Man, to erase the stain on their honor wherever Man could be found. Somehow, some way, they must destroy Earth.
And now, Al Pendray thought bitterly, they would do it.
* * * * *
The Shane had sneaked in past Rat patrols to pick up a spy on one of the outlying Rat planets, a man who'd spent five years playing the part of a Rat slave, trying to get information on their activities there. And he had had one vital bit of knowledge. He'd found it and held on to it for over three years, until the time came for the rendezvous.
The rendezvous had almost come too late. The Rats had developed a device that could make a star temporarily unstable, and they were ready to use it on Sol.
The Shane had managed to get off-planet with the spy, but they'd been spotted in spite of the detector nullifiers that Earth had developed. They'd been jumped by Rat cruisers and blasted by the superior Rat weapons. The lifeboats had been picked out of space, one by one, as the crew tried to get away.
In a way, Alfred Pendray was lucky. He'd been in the sick bay with a sprained ankle when the Rats hit, sitting in the X-ray room. The shot that had knocked out the port engine had knocked him unconscious, but the shielded walls of the X-ray room had saved him from the blast of radiation that had cut down the crew in the rear of the ship. He'd come to in time to see the Rat cruisers cut up the lifeboats before they could get well away from the ship. They'd taken a couple of parting shots at the dead hulk, and then left it to drift in space--and leaving one man alive.
In the small section near the rear of the ship, there were still compartments that were airtight. At least, Pendray decided, there was enough air to keep him alive for a while. If only he could get a little power into the ship, he could get the rear air purifiers to working.
He left the lifeboat and closed the door behind him. There was no point in worrying about a boat he couldn't use.
He made his way back toward the engine room. Maybe there was something salvageable there. Swimming through the corridors was becoming easier with practice; his Cadet training was coming back to him.
Then he got a shock that almost made him faint. The beam of his light had fallen full on the face of a Rat. It took him several seconds to realize that the Rat was dead, and several more to realize that it wasn't a Rat at all. It was the spy they had been sent to pick up. He'd been in the sick bay for treatments of the ulcers on his back gained from five years of frequent lashings as a Rat slave.
Pendray went closer and looked him over. He was still wearing the clothing he'd had on when the Shane picked him up.
Poor guy, Pendray thought. All that hell--for nothing.
Then he went around the corpse and continued toward the engine room.
The place was still hot, but it was thermal heat, not radioactivity. A dead atomic engine doesn't leave any residual effects.
Five out of the six engines were utterly ruined, but the sixth seemed to be in working condition. Even the shielding was intact. Again, hope rose in Alfred Pendray's mind. If only there were tools!
A half hour's search killed that idea. There were no tools aboard capable of cutting through the hard shielding. He couldn't use it to shield the engine on the lifeboat. And the shielding that been on the other five engines had melted and run; it was worthless.
Then another idea hit him. Would the remaining engine work at all? Could it be fixed? It was the only hope he had left.
Apparently, the only thing wrong with it was the exciter circuit leads, which had been sheared off by a bit of flying metal. The engine had simply stopped instead of exploding. That ought to be fixable. He could try; it was something to do, anyway.
It took him the better part of two days, according to his watch. There were plenty of smaller tools around for the job, although many of them were scattered and some had been ruined by the explosions. Replacement parts were harder to find, but he managed to pirate some of them from the ruined engines.
He ate and slept as he felt the need. There was plenty of food in the sick bay kitchen, and there is no need for a bed under gravity-less conditions.
After the engine was repaired, he set about getting the rest of the ship ready to move--if it would move. The hull was still solid, so the infraspace field should function. The air purifiers had to be reconnected and repaired in a couple of places. The lights ditto. The biggest job was checking all the broken leads to make sure there weren't any short circuits anywhere.
The pseudogravity circuits were hopeless. He'd have to do without gravity.
* * * * *
On the third day, he decided he'd better clean the place up. There were several corpses floating around, and they were beginning to be noticeable. He had to tow them, one by one, to the rear starboard air lock and seal them between the inner and outer doors. He couldn't dump them, since the outer door was partially melted and welded shut.
He took the personal effects from the men. If he ever got back to Earth, their next-of-kin might want the stuff. On the body of the imitation Rat, he found a belt-pouch full of microfilm. The report on the Rats' new weapon? Possibly. He'd have to look it over later.
On the "morning" of the fourth day, he started the single remaining engine. The infraspace field came on, and the ship began moving at multiples of the speed of light. Pendray grinned. Half gone, will travel, he thought gleefully.
If Pendray had had any liquor aboard, he would have gotten mildly drunk. Instead, he sat down and read the spools of microfilm, using the projector in the sick bay.
He was not a scientist in the strict sense of the word. He was a navigator and a fairly good engineer. So it didn't surprise him any that he couldn't understand a lot of the report. The mechanics of making a semi-nova out of a normal star were more than a little bit over his head. He'd read a little and then go out and take a look at the stars, checking their movement so that he could make an estimate of his speed. He'd jury-rigged a kind of control on the hull field, so he could aim the hulk easily enough. He'd only have to get within signaling range, anyway. An Earth ship would pick him up.
If there was any Earth left by the time he got there.
He forced his mind away from thinking about that.
It was not until he reached the last spool of microfilm that his situation was forcibly brought to focus in his mind. Thus far, he had thought only about saving himself. But the note at the end of the spool made him realize that there were others to save.
The note said: These reports must reach Earth before 22 June 2287. After that, it will be too late.
22 June!
That was--let's see....
This is the eighteenth of September, he thought, June of next year is--nine months away. Surely I can make it in that time. I've got to.
The only question was, how fast was the hulk of the Shane moving?
It took him three days to get the answer accurately. He knew the strength of the field around the ship, and he knew the approximate thrust of the single engine by that time. He had also measured the motions of some of the nearer stars. Thank heaven he was a navigator and not a mechanic or something! At least he knew the direction and distance to Earth, and he knew the distance of the brighter stars from where the ship was.
He had two checks to use, then. Star motion against engine thrust and field strength. He checked them. And rechecked them. And hated the answer.
He would arrive in the vicinity of Sol some time in late July--a full month too late.
What could he do? Increase the output of the engine? No. It was doing the best it could now. Even shutting off the lights wouldn't help anything; they were a microscopic drain on that engine.
He tried to think, tried to reason out a solution, but nothing would come. He found time to curse the fool who had decided the shielding on the lifeboat would have to be removed and repaired. That little craft, with its lighter mass and more powerful field concentration, could make the trip in ten days.
The only trouble was that ten days in that radiation hell would be impossible. He'd be a very well-preserved corpse in half that time, and there'd be no one aboard to guide her.
Maybe he could get one of the other engines going! Sure. He must be able to get one more going, somehow. Anything to cut down on that time!
He went back to the engines again, looking them over carefully. He went over them again. Not a single one could be repaired at all.
Then he rechecked his velocity figures, hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake somewhere, dropped a decimal point or forgotten to divide by two. Anything. Anything!
But there was nothing. His figures had been accurate the first time.
For a while, he just gave up. All he could think of was the terrible blaze of heat that would wipe out Earth when the Rats set off the sun. Man might survive. There were colonies that the Rats didn't know about. But they'd find them eventually. Without Earth, the race would be set back five hundred--maybe five thousand--years. The Rats would would have plenty of time to hunt them out and destroy them.
And then he forced his mind away from that train of thought. There had to be a way to get there on time. Something in the back of his mind told him that there was a way.
He had to think. Really think.
* * * * *
On 7 June 2287, a signal officer on the Earth destroyer Muldoon picked up a faint signal coming from the general direction of the constellation of Sagittarius. It was the standard emergency signal for distress. The broadcaster only had a very short range, so the source couldn't be too far away.
He made his report to the ship's captain. "We're within easy range of her, sir," he finished. "Shall we pick her up?"
"Might be a Rat trick," said the captain. "But we'll have to take the chance. Beam a call to Earth, and let's go out there dead slow. If the detectors show anything funny, we turn tail and run. We're in no position to fight a Rat ship."
"You think this might be a Rat trap, sir?"
The captain grinned. "If you are referring to the Muldoon as a rat trap, Mr. Blake, you're both disrespectful and correct. That's why we're going to run if we see anything funny. This ship is already obsolete by our standards; you can imagine what it is by theirs." He paused. "Get that call in to Earth. Tell 'em this ship is using a distress signal that was obsolete six months ago. And tell 'em we're going out."
"Yes, sir," said the signal officer.
It wasn't a trap. As the Muldoon approached the source of the signal, their detectors picked up the ship itself. It was a standard lifeboat from a battleship of the Shannon class.
"You don't suppose that's from the Shane, do you?" the captain said softly as he looked at the plate. "She's the only ship of that class that's missing. But if that's a Shane lifeboat, what took her so long to get here?"
"She's cut her engines, sir!" said the observer. "She evidently knows we're coming."
"All right. Pull her in as soon as we're close enough. Put her in Number Two lifeboat rack; it's empty."
* * * * *
When the door of the lifeboat opened, the captain of the Muldoon was waiting outside the lifeboat rack. He didn't know exactly what he had expected to see, but it somehow seemed fitting that a lean, bearded man in a badly worn uniform and a haggard look about him should step out.
The specter saluted. "Lieutenant Alfred Pendray, of the Shane," he said, in a voice that had almost no strength. He held up a pouch. "Microfilm," he said. "Must get to Earth immediately. No delay. Hurry."
"Catch him!" the captain shouted. "He's falling!" But one of the men nearby had already caught him.
In the sick bay, Pendray came to again. The captain's questioning gradually got the story out of Pendray.
"... So I didn't know what to do then," he said, his voice a breathy whisper. "I knew I had to get that stuff home. Somehow."
"Go on," said the captain, frowning.
"Simple matter," said Pendray. "Nothing to it. Two equations. Little ship goes thirty times as fast as big ship--big hulk. Had to get here before 22 June. Had to. Only way out, y'unnerstand.
"Anyway. Two equations. Simple. Work 'em in your head. Big ship takes ten months, little one takes ten days. But can't stay in a little ship ten days. No shielding. Be dead before you got here. See?"
"I see," said the captain patiently.
"But--and here's a 'mportant point: If you stay on the big ship for eight an' a half months, then y' only got to be in the little ship for a day an' a half to get here. Man can live that long, even under that radiation. See?" And with that, he closed his eyes.
"Do you mean you exposed yourself to the full leakage radiation from a lifeboat engine for thirty-six hours?"
But there was no answer.
"Let him sleep," said the ship's doctor. "If he wakes up again, I'll let you know. But he might not be very lucid from here on in."
"Is there anything you can do?" the captain asked.
"No. Not after a radiation dosage like that." He looked down at Pendray. "His problem was easy, mathematically. But not psychologically. That took real guts to solve."
"Yeah," said the captain gently. "All he had to do was get here alive. The problem said nothing about his staying that way."
THE SPHERE OF SLEEP
By Chester S. Geier
Brad Nelson had a perfect way to kill Big Tim without any danger of being accused. Then his foot slipped and he was hurled into an unknown world.
"I've got to kill you, Big Tim. I've just got to kill you! I want Laura--and you're standing in my way...."
The thought beat urgently and continuously in Brad Nellon's mind. He was absorbed in it to the extent that the terrible Titanian gale which roared beyond the shelter of his thermalloy suit was forgotten.
Beside him, the object of his deadly thoughts strode unknowing. His large, brown face crinkled in a grin of boyish enjoyment, Tim Austin was fighting his way through the fierce drive of wind and snow. That grin was always there. It was as much a part of him as his thick, tow hair, his gentle brown eyes and giant's frame. He was big and carefree, and life ran rich and full in his veins.
On Brad Nellon's face there was no enjoyment in the battle against the storm. There was not even his usual resentment of the bitter cold and the thick, white snow. His grey eyes were covered with a heavy film of thought. He walked in a world where there was no storm save that of his emotions, no reality outside of the imagery constructed by his brain. His stocky, powerful form plodded along mechanically.
They moved in a world of snow and ice and screaming wind. Great pinnacles and ridges, worn into fantastic shapes by the gale, towered on every side. The curtain of snow occasionally lifted to reveal white hills marching upon white hills, huge, glittering ice sheets, yawning chasms. And sometimes, farther in the distance, there would be awesome alien vistas.
The dark thread of Brad Nellon's thoughts was broken abruptly by the sudden hum of his helmet earphones. He looked up with guilty quickness. Awareness of his companion, of the frigid hell of his Titanian surroundings, rushed back in a flood.
"On the watch, guy," the voice of Big Tim Austin cautioned. "We're almost near Tower Point."
Nellon moved his head in a jerky nod of understanding. His eyes probed momentarily into those of the other, then dropped quickly back to the snow. His earphones hummed again.
"Say, Brad, anything wrong?"
Nellon's face tautened in sudden panic. Again his eyes flashed to Austin. But he did not find in them the suspicion which he expected. There was only solicitous wonder.
"I'm all right," Nellon answered. "Just a bit tired, that's all." He realized that his voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. With masked gaze, he tried to learn its effect upon Austin.
* * * * *
But it was the content of his voice, not its tone which had registered upon Big Tim. Nellon was startled by the unexpected flood of vehemence which poured in through his earphones.
"That's the result of short rations, damn it! I knew it would get us sooner or later. We should've been on our way home long ago. The whole expedition has been a mess from beginning to end.
"You shouldn't have come with me, Brad, when I volunteered to go after old Ryska's stuff. But I thought it would be all right, because we're the only real he men among all those runty scientists. They're good for nothing but theory-spinning. They've thrown the expedition off schedule with their mental butterfly chasing, and got the rest of us down on short rations. And now, just as we're ready to leave at last, one of them has to remember that he left a pile of valuable equipment lying around somewhere in the snow."
Austin was silent a while. When he spoke again, the old laughter-lights were back twinkling in his eyes.
"Oh, hell, Brad. I guess I'm just sore because I'm being kept away from Laura every second the brain-gang holds us back. I can't wait to see her again."
"Yes, I know how it is," Nellon muttered.
"Swell kid, isn't she?"
"Yes." Nellon forced out the answer with difficulty.
"Well, keep your eyes peeled for Tower Point up there. As soon as we've got old Ryska's junk, we'll all be heading for home."
Nellon felt a weary sort of satisfaction. No, Big Tim didn't suspect. Big Tim didn't know that he was never going home again. Nellon had accompanied him on this final little trip to make sure of that.
They were nearing the lower end of a long ravine. Here, the invisible trail which they followed rose steeply and entered a narrow cleft between two huge slabs of ice. Then it dipped around the base of a great pinnacle, which thrust like an undaunted finger into the rage of the storm. This was the unique landmark which the expedition members had christened Tower Point.
Tower Point served as a great, white warning signal. For the trail skirting it gave way abruptly from powdery snow to ice of mirror slickness and slanted down sharply to a frozen lake which, unsheltered from the terrible wind, was polished constantly. One end of the lake had once been a falls, for here it ended, dropping down as sheerly as a precipice for hundreds of feet.
The way around Tower Point was one of the chief dangers, for there was no telling where the snow ended and the ice began. A sudden slip meant a swift slide down and onto the frozen surface of the lake. There, where the wind swept in all its unbroken force, one would be blown helplessly over the icy edge of the falls and dashed to death on the jagged ice teeth far below. Dick Fulsom, metallurgist, had already lost his life that way.
And that was the way Nellon had planned Big Tim Austin would die. Tower Point would mark the scene of another tragedy. Just the merest of shoves on that deadly borderline between ice and snow, and Big Tim would go flashing down to the lake and over the falls.
* * * * *
It was as simple as that. Nellon knew that nothing could ever be proved against him. Nor would the faintest thought of suspicion ever enter the minds of the others. For to them he and Big Tim had always been pals in the truest, deepest sense of the word.
No, he had nothing to fear. The only reckoning would be with his conscience, but he did not allow that to trouble him now, for all he wanted to think of was Laura. Laura would be his. He knew that with a grim, satisfying certainty.
Now they were starting up the difficult rise which led to Tower Point. Nellon slipped gradually behind, until he walked in Austin's rear. His eyes settled and fixed to the metal back of the other's suit.
Very soon, now, it would be over. And then he would be on his way back home to Earth. Laura would be there on Earth, waiting. Laura.
Laura had silky chestnut hair that glinted with deep, red lights and fell in thick curls to her shoulders. Her eyes were very brown and level and filled with dancing motes of laughter. Her nose was short and pert, and he remembered the tiny mole which lay like a speck of soot just near the left nostril. Her lips were a little too wide, but they were firm and full and could quirk up in a smile that was rich and warming. Her body was small and sweet in the gentle swelling of its curves.
But it was her smile which Nellon thought of now. A bitter pain shot through him as he recalled it. Though in his thoughts it was all for him, he knew that its actual warmth was shed upon Tim Austin. Big Tim, who was so large and happy and tousled that he looked like an overgrown boy.
It was together that they had met Laura. And it was together that they had dated her. But as the three-sided friendship deepened, the inevitable change had occurred.
Strangely enough, it had been Nellon himself who brought it about. It had happened the evening he had had Laura with him alone for the first time. The spell of her charm had been concentrated upon him alone, and he had lost his head to such an extent that he proposed.
Laura had said no, and things had never been the same between them again. Though Big Tim may have wondered at times, he hadn't been sensitive enough to realize the change. Nellon had, in fact, concealed his pain and desire so effectively that Big Tim had never awakened to the truth.
* * * * *
Nellon remembered almost the exact words Laura used that evening. Even now the tones of her voice rang in his ears, gentle and sad.
"I'm sorry, Brad," she had said. "Please try to understand. I really do like you--an awful lot. You're like a rock, solid and strong, something to cling to. But Tim is like a big, clumsy playful dog--so terribly lovable. I can't help it. Really, Brad, if it wasn't for Tim, I'd never hesitate to marry you."
For two and a half years her words had drummed in his mind. "If it wasn't for Tim--"
At first he had tried to ignore the early thoughts of murder which had crept insidiously into his brain. But they persisted, grew stronger, and before long he had been making actual plans. Several times the cold hand of death had reached for Tim Austin, but each time Nellon's instincts had revolted and the thing had remained undone.
But now the members of the expedition were preparing to return home to Earth. Nellon knew that if Big Tim reached Earth alive the Laura he remembered and wanted would be lost to him forever. If Big Tim was to die, it would have to be done before the ship left, for once sealed within its confines, the risks would be too overwhelmingly large.
It had been old Sigmund Ryska who had presented Nellon with what he had realized was his final and only chance. Old Ryska had left several pieces of valuable scientific equipment lying in a small hut which he had set up for some experiments. He had remembered them at the last moment. Someone had to fetch them before leaving, and Big Tim Austin had volunteered. Nellon, because of the purpose which motivated him, had gone along.
He had made up his mind at last. This time he would allow no scruples to stay his hand. This time Big Tim would die.
* * * * *
They had reached Tower Point. Nellon's breathing had quickened, and a fine perspiration had broken out upon his face. Fine lines were etched around his eyes and mouth.
Nellon and Austin stood side by side a moment upon the summit which was crowned by the great pinnacle of Tower Point. Down below glittered the surface of the frozen lake. White and desolate, the frozen wastes of Titan tumbled and leaped on every side. Snow swirled about them, whipped into angry life by the gale.
Austin turned.
"Well, down we go. Watch it, guy." For a second his eyes locked with Nellon's. A frown of perplexity and concern narrowed them.
"Brad--anything wrong? You don't look right, somehow."
Nellon felt himself go icy cold. Words of hoarse denial tumbled to his lips.
"No--it's nothing. I--I'm all right."
But Big Tim was not assured.
"Listen, Brad, Ryska's hut isn't much further, now. You'd better wait here, and I'll go on ahead and get the stuff. It's hard and dangerous going, and if you aren't well--"
"I tell you I'm all right!" Nellon blurted. He was hot now with a feverish warmth that made the perspiration which covered his body feel clammily cold. The old fear of murder was gone. Nellon knew only a burning desire to get the thing done, a wild alarm that his opportunity would vanish before he got the chance.
Big Tim shrugged.
"Come on, then. But watch it, guy, and sing out if you need me." With a last troubled glance at Nellon, he turned to the downward sloping trail and began the descent. He moved slowly and carefully, testing each foot of the way with a ponderous, insulated boot for the sudden slickness that would announce the dangerous ice.
Nellon was swept with relief. His blood rushed through his veins in a sudden fierce singing. Now, now! The broad, metal back of Big Tim's suit spread before him. Far down below the gleaming ice waited.
Nellon took swift steps forward, his arms coming up. The rushing in his ears leaped to a high pitch. He sucked in a breath, held it. Then--
Nellon slipped. It must have been a small patch of ice undetected by Austin. But Nellon slipped, lost balance, crashed into the other. Together they went whizzing down the trail toward the frozen lake. It was a long slide, but incredibly swift, and confusion and surprise made it seem all the shorter. What happened took place too quickly for thought to follow or prevent.
* * * * *
They caromed onto the ice of the lake. With a gleeful, demoniac howl, the terrible wind swooped down upon them, swept them with increased speed toward the edge of the falls. Though still half stunned by the sudden catastrophe, they reacted with the instinct of long conditioning, tried frantically to retard their swift flight over the ice. But it was futile. Their gouging metal fingers could find no purchase in the glassy smoothness over which they sped. And before friction could slow them even the merest of trifles, they were swept over the edge of the falls.
They went over, but not down upon the jagged ice teeth bared hungrily below. Nellon's attempted shove had given them both an added impetus, and they had shot over the ice at an angle which landed them upon the snow banked on the farther side of the gorge.
In that far distant day when the heat of Saturn had been great enough to cloak its satellites in warmth, the gnawing of the falls had worn steep sides in the gorge. And though the snow upon which the two men had fallen was thick and soft, it was not enough to hold them, and they went rolling end over end, in great clouds of powdery white, to stop only when they had reached the bottom.
[Illustration: Helplessly the two men hurtled down the snowy slope]
For long moments they lay still. A thick pall of settling snow hung on the frigid air. The wind seized portions of this and sent them whirling and twisting in fantastic gyrations.
The thermalloy suits were essentially compact, mobile shelters, and had been designed more for protection against inimical extra-terrestrial elements rather than for comfort. Brad Nellon had been bruised and shaken until it seemed that his body was one throbbing ache. His senses whirled giddily in a black mist shot through with flames of pulsing red.
Of a sudden the pain leaped to intolerable heights. His battered muscles screamed an anguished protest along his nerves. Then the pain was gone, and momentarily the blackness closed in again. But something like a fresh wind sprang up, and sent the engulfing fog thinning away. Nellon's brain cleared. He opened his eyes.
He looked into Big Tim's face. Big Tim was bending over him, worried and anxious. Nellon began to understand.
Big Tim had recovered first from the plunge. He had propped Nellon up, then turned the valve which increased the flow of oxygen inside his suit. They were alive. Nellon felt a dull wonder at it.
"Brad--all right?" It was Big Tim, his voice strained and hoarse.
Nellon nodded mechanically.
"All right."
"What happened, Brad?"
Nellon looked away. He looked up the gorge, at the tip of Tower Point. He licked his lips.
"I--I don't know. Didn't feel well--slipped on a patch of ice."
Big Tim shook his head.
"I told you to stay up there, didn't I? I knew you were in no condition to make the descent, but you were just stubborn enough to do so. It's lucky we didn't get our necks broken." He looked down and across to where, directly under the falls, the ice fangs jutted, cruel and gleaming.
* * * * *
Nellon was fully recovered now. He followed the direction of Austin's gaze, and though his eyes saw the same thing, his mind pictured it in a different way.
Those ice teeth should have meant Big Tim's death. He, Nellon, had failed, had narrowly escaped losing his own life because of his blunder. Intent upon the shove which was to have sent Tim Austin hurtling to his death, he had forgotten the snow-concealed ice in the trail, as lethal with hidden treachery as a patch of quick-sand.
But he was still alive. They hadn't, as yet, even reached Ryska's hut, and Nellon knew another chance would present itself. He considered this with a curious mixture of impatience and reluctance.
"If it wasn't for Big Tim--" Nellon was hearing Laura say the words again, and once again the realms of unutterable bliss he read into them strengthened his resolve. One more chance--and this time he would not fail or waver.
"Brad--look!"
Vibrant with surprise and urgency, the words ripped aside the veil of Nellon's thoughts. His head jerked up.
Big Tim was on his feet. He was pointing up at the steep bank of the gorge down which they had tumbled.
Most of the disturbed snow had settled and the wind had carried away the rest. Nellon could see quite clearly.
There up on the bank, a small snow slide had taken place. And now, against the unbroken monotony of white, something gleamed in vivid contrast.
Nellon squinted. Gradually he began to make out details. The strange surface revealed by the slide seemed to have the mellow hue of bronze, but Nellon could not be sure, since it was queerly dappled and flecked with tones of gold and red. He thought it must be from the strain on his eyes, and closed them momentarily. But when he looked again the colors were as weird as he had last seen them. This time, however, he made out a detail which he had missed previously. The surface seemed to be crossed by a black line or stripe.
"Now what in the world can that be?" Tim Austin's voice was wondering, vaguely troubled. "It's like no sample of rock or soil we've taken. Metal--that's what it is!" he exclaimed of a sudden. "It's an exposed vein of some metal. Come on, Brad, let's have a look at it."
Nellon got to his feet, his eyes fixed upon that uncanny patch of something which stood out against the surrounding whiteness like a smear of blood.
Big Tim was already started up the bank. Nellon sucked in a breath and followed after him.
* * * * *
The climb was a hard and difficult one, and their recent physical jarring caused by the fall made it all the harder. But curiosity pulled them on like a vast magnet. In the exertion they forgot their aches and bruises. Slipping and sliding, clutching for handholds, floundering in loose drifts which filled pockets of hardened crust, they made their way slowly but surely up the bank.
Finally they stood before that strangely mottled patch of red and brown and gold. The mood of awed wonder which gripped them at once heightened and deepened.
"It is metal!" Tim Austin breathed. "But--but, Brad, it's not a vein. It's--"
"It's a door!" Nellon finished hoarsely.
It was a door, a metal door in the snow covered bank of a falls that had, in some long, long ago, solidified to ice. A door to what? Where did it lead? What would be on the other side of it? What could be on the other side of a metal door on a world where it was doubtful that living beings had ever existed at all?
There was a rasp in Nellon's earphones. And then Big Tim Austin's voice followed it.
"Brad--I'm going in. This--why, this is the biggest find of the whole expedition!"
"It might be dangerous," Nellon pointed out, before he could become aware of the wealth of irony which lay behind the words. "We don't know what sort of life--"
"But this door has been hidden under snow for the Lord only knows how many years, Brad. Look where the crust had split here. It's thick, thick. Nothing has gone in or out for a hell of a long time. If there were beings, they're either gone or dead."
And, as if having satisfied himself on this last account, Big Tim stepped directly up to the door. He was a tall man, yet he seemed dwarfed beside it. And it was obviously very massive, for it was partly open and the width of the edge revealed could not have been spanned by the long, flexible metal fingers of their protecting gloves. The opening was a mere crack, as if someone had once made it so for a cautious glimpse of the world outside and never closed it again.
Big Tim placed his gloves against the projecting edge.
"Give me a hand, Brad. We'll see if we can open it further."
Together, they shoved. They drew upon ebbing reserves of strength, but what energy they managed to summon they threw into a brief, terrific effort to move the portal. But it did not move. Their combined strength seemed pitifully small against the weight they sought to budge.
They were about to relax their efforts in despair when, suddenly, transmitted from the metal of the door to that of their gloved hands, they felt what seemed to be a coughing whir. The sound smoothed out, deepened, and became a steady hum.
Startled, they leaped away. Their faces took on an intent, incredulous expression.
The door was opening. Slowly, majestically, it was swinging wide.
* * * * *
No force that they could see was behind it. The door seemed to move of its own volition. They stood as still as a pair of weird, metal statues, watching. Every sense, keyed to its highest, was directed at the widening gap.
At last all movement ceased, and the door hung wide. The humming note which had accompanied its opening dwindled to a whisper and died away. Revealed was a tunnel of utter blackness.
Tim Austin released his breath. The sound roused Nellon from the trance which gripped him.
"It's probably controlled by an automatic mechanism. When we shoved against it, we must have set that mechanism in motion."
"I'm going in, Brad," Big Tim said suddenly. "I'm going to see what's inside." He strode impulsively to the door. But at the threshold he stopped and turned and looked at Nellon.
Nellon smiled faintly and nodded. He strode after Big Tim. Together they entered the doorway.
Lights, built into the helmets of their suits, but up to this time unused, were turned on to illuminate the way. The tunnel, they saw, was a rectangular corridor or passageway. It was lined with the same metal as that of the door.
At two intervals down the corridor they found it necessary to squeeze through half-opened doorways. The doors here were of the slide type and seemed to be controlled by machinery as was the one which they had opened to gain entrance to the corridor. But these could not be moved, nor did their efforts awaken any hum of machinery.
"You know," Big Tim remarked, "this arrangement of doors sort of reminds me of an airlock."
"I've noticed the same thing," Nellon responded. "But an airlock--" He shook his head, for this was one of the many things he couldn't understand.
Soon the corridor came to an end. Nellon and Austin found themselves in a small, square room, each side of which was lined with small glass cubicles or cabinets. In each reposed a transparent sphere with various inexplicable attachments and a compactly folded mass of some strange material.
"Helmets!" Big Tim breathed. "Brad, those are helmets. And unless I'm mistaken the other stuff must be suits of some kind. What have we stumbled onto, anyway?"
Nellon passed a slow, almost-knowing glance about the room, his helmet lights glinting on the glass of the cabinets.
"I've got a crazy idea," he said. "But let that wait until we see more. There's another doorway over there. Let's go on."
* * * * *
They went on. There were more corridors, but this time there were rooms opening from them. Each was uniformly alike, filled with the same articles and furnishings. Nothing with which they were familiar had any counterpart here. Everything, from strange, rounded furniture to bizarre clothing, was weirdly alien.
But of the beings who had once inhabited these rooms they found no trace. There were only the garments they had once worn, the chairs in which they had sat. About these clung the ghosts of their presences. Over all was an air of desertion and long neglect.
They entered another section. Here there were rooms as large as halls, spread with queer tables and chairs. One they found to be a library, for on shelves they found large, tablet-like books whose stiff pages were covered with glowing hieroglyphs.
Then they found their first stairway, a succession of small ramps leading to some floor above. They ascended slowly, with the feelings of men entering some new portion of strange and utterly alien world.
Here they found but one, huge room, and this their lights revealed to be perfectly circular. In the center, glowing greenly, was what appeared to be an immensely thick column, rising from floor to ceiling. About this banks of strange instruments and machinery were grouped.
"Brad," Big Tim whispered. "This place--What on earth could it have been for?"
Nellon made small, slow shakes of his head.
"That's what bothers me. I can't imagine any possible use. They knew utility, the beings who built these rooms. There was a good purpose for this room, I'm sure. Yet I can't imagine what it could have been. None of the activities which we normally carry on in life would seem to fit in with these surroundings."
"Brad--that's it! This room was for no normal use. It was for something--oh, I don't know. But it must have been something tremendously important to them. I feel--" Big Tim did not finish. His strained, low voice died away, and he moistened his lips. The reverie heavy upon his face showed clearly how oblivious he was of the act.
"Let's take a closer look at that column, or whatever it is," Nellon suggested. "We might find a clue."
* * * * *
The column was big. Just how big they had never realized. It was only when halfway to it, and still approaching, that awareness of its size began to dawn upon them.
The vastness of the room had dwarfed it somewhat, but now, almost upon it and with their own sizes as standards of comparison, they were amazed and awed at its cyclopean girth. Slow understanding of the heroic dimensions of the place in its mysterious entirety began to dawn upon them.
And then Nellon became conscious of something else besides size. With closer and closer approach to the column, a strange comfort and well-being was growing within him. The stiff soreness of his bruises was easing. The sense of restless confinement which he always associated with the wearing of his thermalloy suit was dimming. The first pangs of rising hunger of which he had earlier become aware were now dulling, as though he were in the midst of a bountiful and delicious meal. He experienced a rising tide of physical and mental satisfaction, as if every want of these two components were being realized and generously administered to.
Momentarily, he thought of Laura and, because it had grown to be synonymous with her, the murder of Big Tim. His mental picture of the girl had never been more beautiful, desirable, or appealing. Every quality which she had ever possessed, real in actuality or imaginary as a result of his idealizations, was now transcended beyond all mortal planes. She became the very embodiment of every human aspiration and desire.
Surely, he found himself reasoning with that curious pleasure and contentment which had come over him, the murder of Big Tim for so glorious and wonderful a girl could be no base act. And the scruples which had forever risen to bar him mockingly from the actual deed, were now so smoothed away that he would never have known he had had them. Big Tim would die, of course. And he would take great pleasure in killing him. There would be no regrets, no self-accusations, no torturing pangs of conscience. There would only be complete satisfaction, comfort, and happiness. And Laura would be his. There was no doubt about that. There was no doubt anywhere in his mind. There was only complete gratification of every whimsical and vagrant thought or desire.
Then a sudden jar shook him. For a moment he had the sensation of struggling up from warm, drowsy depths. And then, suddenly, he was looking into Big Tim Austin's puzzled and incredulous face, and that eery mental surcease was gone.
"Brad--did you feel it, too?"
Nellon nodded wordlessly. He was a little frightened of the weird force that had held them both in thrall. A glance at the column looming gigantically before him showed that he and Big Tim had walked a good distance without any conscious knowledge of having done so. It was the chance collision which had aroused them both from their sleep-walking state.
* * * * *
Nellon could feel the force yet, brushing at the fringes of his mind with warm, soothing fingers. But he soon found that, with active resistance, there was no fear of it overcoming him again. One thing persisted, however, and that was the curiously refreshed and stimulated condition of his body. Nor was he anxious that this should go away.
They were within yards of the great column, now, and at an ever shortening range their eyes began to make out certain details which they had missed during their progress under that inexplicable half-trance.
It was not actually a column, they realized, for it was hollow and they could dimly make out the shapes of objects within. It was a vast, room-like cylinder or enclosure, with walls of transparent green. In the center, and midway between floor and ceiling, there hung what seemed to be a ball of vivid green fire.
Upon reaching the cylinder, they pressed closely to its hard surface and peered intently within. But at first the great, flaming ball obscured such early details as they could discern. It was like looking upward through water at the blinding disc of the sun. Then, as their eyes grew accustomed to the emerald brilliance, they found themselves gazing at an unbelievable scene.
High above floated the fiery, green ball. Directly below it glittered the complex mass of a great machine. This was spread upon a huge base and narrowed as it rose. Circling the apex were a multitude of rod-like projections, the ends of which terminated in large crystal cones. The bases of these were pointed upward, and from each a pale, almost invisible, beam shot up and into the green ball, as though at once nourishing and supporting it.
But it was not this which held the incredulous fixity of their gaze. For arranged in concentric circles about the machine were hundreds of tables or low platforms and upon each a still figure lay. The nearest table was some distance from the wall through which Nellon and Austin peered, and this, added to the weird, green light of the globe, made a clear delineation of physical characteristics impossible. Yet they were able to make out enough to become convinced, that, as their earlier examination of the clothing in the rooms had suggested, the figures were hauntingly human.
* * * * *
For a long moment they stood there. Then Big Tim turned, and Nellon, looking around in response to the action, was amazed at the bright and feverish gleam in the other's eyes. Words tumbled from Big Tim's lips in a hoarse rush.
"Brad, this is going to make interplanetary history. It's the biggest thing since the discovery of the first dead city on Mars. We've got to go back to the ship and bring the others. They've got to see this. But, Brad, before they do, I'm going in there. I want to be the first to see what these people looked like. There must be a door somewhere--"
And before Nellon could voice the protest which rose to his lips, Big Tim had started away on an eager circuit of the green wall. Nellon stood looking after him in indecision, torn between conflicting impulses. Then he tightened his lips and followed in the direction which Big Tim had taken. But before Nellon could reach him, the other's excited voice crashed in his earphones.
"I've found it, Brad! There is a door here."
Nellon jerked into a run. He found Big Tim standing upon a short ramp before a section of the wall which was different from the rest. It was a dark area, rectangular in shape. At one side, seen dimly through the strange green substance, was an arrangement of rods and gears which was obviously an operating mechanism. Protruding from a slot in the wall, and clearly connected with the mechanism, was a short lever.
Big Tim's blue eyes glittered with daring. His tow hair awry, he looked more than ever the picture of an overgrown, impulsive boy.
"Good heavens, guy, you surely don't intend to go in there!" Nellon exclaimed. "We don't know what sort of--"
Big Tim gave a short, excited laugh. "Look--there's nothing to be afraid of. There's just that green light up there and the people, and they are dead. Everything in this place is dead. Brad, this is the chance of a lifetime. We'll be the first to look upon the faces of an extra-terrestrial race since the Martians."
Big Tim pulled the opening lever. There was a moment of appalled and complete quiet. Then hidden motors hummed into alien life, and slowly the door before them slid aside. Undimmed now by its confining walls, the green radiance poured through the opening in a blinding flood.
"Come on," Big Tim urged. And without any hesitation on his own part, he stepped through, to be bathed instantly in the emerald glow.
* * * * *
Nellon moved to the open doorway. The emerald rays from the globe fell upon him with an almost sensible warmth. Again that weird peace and comfort was upon him, but more overpoweringly now. He felt a rising tide of drowsiness. In some strange way, he knew it would be good to allow himself to succumb to the softly-blanketing darkness which was filling his mind. It would be a blessed surcease from all the troubles and cares of his present world. But something held him back.
And though a great, calm voice seemed to give him every assurance of safety, a stubborn, small one screamed him its warning. In a turmoil, he watched Big Tim stride toward the nearest of the platforms.
It became evident to Nellon almost immediately that Big Tim was never going to reach his goal. For shortly after the first several steps, the blonde giant's purposeful walk slowed to a bemused shamble. And, watching with a curiously disembodied attention, Nellon saw him waver, stop, and then collapse upon the floor, as though he had suddenly become very, very tired.
The warning voice was shrieking now. Nellon felt a swift rush of terror that ripped him free of the force which enclosed him in its lulling folds. He shot a wide-eyed glance from the gleaming, inert shape of Big Tim's suit to the globe flaming high above. He wanted suddenly to run.
He struggled in panic against the invisible bonds of peace and comfort which were so reluctant to let him go. His determination to be free was the fierce and frenzied one of utter fear. Flailing his arms as if against some material foe, he managed to stumble down from the ramp, to one side of the doorway where the green light would not reach him.
Exhausted from the herculean struggle, he slumped to the floor. A soft, warm blackness was settling over him, and he was powerless to fend it off. But he knew that he was safe, and the satisfaction which he felt was increased by the radiation which he had absorbed, so that when he finally swooped into unconsciousness, it was amidst a thunderous, victorious singing.
* * * * *
Nellon's next sensations were curious ones. He seemed to awaken in another realm. It was a vast and formless place with no distinguishable feature or color, but it was curiously sentient, pulsing with awesome possibilities.
Now, as though stirred by his reflection upon it, the nebulous stuff began to writhe. And then, taking shape from the formless jumble of thoughts in his subconscious, a dream-world began to grow. Bits were added here, others discarded there, but every compartment in the storehouse of his mind contributed something. And all assembled in accordance with the pattern Nellon had fashioned in two and a half years of brooding. Finally his dream paradise was complete to the last detail of his hopes and imaginings.
It was the world which he had built around Laura taken on an immaterial, but to him nonetheless real, life. There was Laura and there was himself. And there was the complete bliss for which he had planned Big Tim's murder to achieve.
He became aware of a change. The outlines of his world were dimming, dissolving, fading. Even Laura, radiantly lovely, was beginning to blur before his eyes.
In horror he sought to clutch the evaporating structure to him and stabilize it once again. But it slipped through his fingers like an impalpable mist. Before he was fully alive to it, his dream Eden was gone, and he was back in that formless void in which he had found himself. And even that was thinning.
Nellon awoke. He looked around for Laura and that idyllic dream land in which they had loved. But only the great, green cylinder with its flaming globe and the vast room beyond met his gaze.
Nellon climbed to his feet. With the action, he became aware that he felt wonderfully refreshed and stimulated. He looked around for Big Tim, then he remembered. Avoiding the open doorway through which the rays still poured, he peered through the green wall. Big Tim was lying there on the floor within. He was very still in his thermalloy suit.
Nellon began a chain of reasoning. As it progressed, there went with it a rising tide of exultation.
As long as Big Tim remained there under the influence of the globe, he would remain unconscious, living, perhaps, a dream as real and vivid as his own had been. It would be just as though Big Tim were dead. None of the expedition members knew of the doorway through which he and Big Tim had entered. With the almost continuous storms which raged on Titan, the door would soon become covered again. Ages might pass before a chance accident revealed it once more.
He, Nellon, could go back to the ship with a tale of how he had lost Big Tim in the bitter storm. The men might search, but he knew it would be futile.
Laura would grieve, of course, when he returned and told her the news. But he would be there to comfort her, and she would get over it. And he knew that she would marry him, with Big Tim out of the way. He could look forward to a happiness more satisfying than that of the dream.
Nellon saw his course clear. He knew just what he had to do.
* * * * *
First he released the lever, and the door slid shut, entombing Big Tim within the great cylinder. Then he retraced his way down to the lower level and through the maze of rooms and corridors. It was not long before the snow of Titan once more keened against his suit.
He threw his weight against the great door. Only the impulse was necessary to close it, for the operating mechanism hummed into vibrant life and it swung shut where it had not been shut before--and locked! Nor would it open again.
Even if he had wanted to re-enter, that was impossible.
Nellon started back to the ship. With the curious vigor he felt, the dangers and difficulties of the return trip hardly registered upon him at all. Gone was his sullen dislike of the ever-raging storm. He plowed through it with a careless smile, fighting his way over the wild and tumbled terrain. And it was with no feeling of exhaustion at all that he finally sighted the great, toothed ice ridge which marked the site of the camp.
As Nellon shouldered through the narrow cleft which led into the protected, tiny valley, he remembered to remove the smile of eager triumph upon his face. It would not go with the story he was to tell.
But it was hardly necessary for him to make the effort. For at the sight that met his eyes, an involuntary grimace of appalled amazement flashed over his features.
Where the ship had rested there now was nothing at all, save a smooth surface of snow. And to his incredulously searching gaze, there was no indication that anything had ever been here. The little valley was virgin of any sign of human habitation. Only the bitter wind existed here, as always it had, keening along glittering ice surfaces, sporting with the snow.
* * * * *
Nellon felt the sudden nausea and weakness of a terrible fear. But a bit of flotsam presented itself out of the turbulence of his thoughts, and he clutched at it with the eagerness of despair.
He must, he told himself, have accidentally encountered a site similar to the one in which the ship had lain. He had but to find the correct ridge and everything would be all right.
Nursing this hope, he started on a tour of the vicinity. Soon he realized, however, that there was no other ridge, and he had to face the fact that he had originally been at the real site. The only difference was that the ship was gone.
But Nellon felt that he had to make certain. Returning to the valley over which the ridge rose like a sheltering wall, he searched about in the deep snow. One of the first objects he discovered was a large, metal box. On one side were stenciled words which burned into his brain:
The Harton-Finston Institute.
He knew now beyond any lingering doubt that he was in the right place and that the ship was gone, for it was the Institute which had sponsored the expedition. And he had seen other boxes like that piled compactly in the holds of the ship.
Nellon was stunned, crushed. But out of his despair a slow wonder rose. How long had he been unconscious there beside the great green cylinder? The degree to which the snow had blotted out the litter of the camp suggested that it must have been many months. For a moment it seemed incredible that his momentary exposure to the emerald rays of the globe could have produced such a result. Then he remembered the beings, circular row upon circular row of them, lying beneath it, and an awesome knowledge flooded over him.
Those beings were not dead. Exposed constantly to the rays of the globe, they were merely held in a state of slumber, dreaming dreams, undoubtedly, just as curiously real and poignant as his own had been. They were sleeping and dreaming, and the green globe brooded over them like some vast guardian, soothing, nourishing.
And Big Tim slept with them. When they awoke, Big Tim would wake and live again. But he, Nellon, would not live again. Suddenly his fear and hate of the storm returned in full and terrible force. Because when his batteries were exhausted, his suit would cool--and the storm would kill him. Slowly, inexorably, death would come to him. And death was a sleep from which there was no awakening....