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Contents

BREEDER REACTION

By Winston Marks

 

The remarkable thing about Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder was that it gave you that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just the way the advertisements said it would. In fact, it also gave you a little something more!

 

The advertising game is not as cut and dried as many people think. Sometimes you spend a million dollars and get no results, and then some little low-budget campaign will catch the public's fancy and walk away with merchandising honors of the year.

Let me sound a warning, however. When this happens, watch out! There's always a reason for it, and it isn't always just a matter of bright slogans and semantic genius. Sometimes the product itself does the trick. And when this happens people in the industry lose their heads trying to capitalize on the "freak" good fortune.

This can lead to disaster. May I cite one example?

I was on loan to Elaine Templeton, Inc., the big cosmetics firm, when one of these "prairie fires" took off and, as product engineer from the firm of Bailey Hazlitt & Persons, Advertising Agency, I figured I had struck pure gold. My assay was wrong. It was fool's gold on a pool of quicksand.

Madame "Elaine", herself, had called me in for consultation on a huge lipstick campaign she was planning--you know, NOW AT LAST, A TRULY KISS-PROOF LIPSTICK!--the sort of thing they pull every so often to get the ladies to chuck their old lip-goo and invest in the current dream of non-smearability. It's an old gimmick, and the new product is never actually kiss-proof, but they come closer each year, and the gals tumble for it every time.

Well, they wanted my advice on a lot of details such as optimum shades, a new name, size, shape and design of container. And they were ready to spend a hunk of moolah on the build-up. You see, when they give a product a first-class advertising ride they don't figure on necessarily showing a profit on that particular item. If they break even they figure they are ahead of the game, because the true purpose is to build up the brand name. You get enough women raving over the new Elaine Templeton lipstick, and first thing you know sales start climbing on the whole line of assorted aids to seduction.

Since E. T., Inc., was one of our better accounts, the old man told me to take as long as was needed, so I moved in to my assigned office, in the twelve-story E. T. building, secretary, Scotch supply, ice-bags, ulcer pills and all, and went to work setting up my survey staff. This product engineering is a matter of "cut and try" in some fields. You get some ideas, knock together some samples, try them on the public with a staff of interviewers, tabulate the results, draw your conclusions and hand them over to Production with a prayer. If your ad budget is large enough your prayer is usually answered, because the American Public buys principally on the "we know what we like, and we like what we know" principle. Make them "know it" and they'll buy it. Maybe in love, absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in this business, familiarity breeds nothing but sales.

Madame Elaine had a fair staff of idea boys, herself. In fact, every other department head had some gimmick he was trying to push to get personal recognition. The Old Hag liked this spirit of initiative and made it plain to me I was to give everyone a thorough hearing.

This is one of the crosses you have to bear. Everyone but the janitor was swarming into my office with suggestions, and more than half of them had nothing to do with the lipstick campaign at all. So I dutifully listened to each one, had my girl take impressive notes and then lifted my left or my right eyebrow at her. My left eyebrow meant file them in the wastebasket. This is how the Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder got lost in the shuffle, and later I was credited with launching a new item on which I didn't even have a record.

It came about this way:

* * * * *

Just before lunch one day, one of the Old Hag's promotion-minded pixies flounced her fanny into my interview chair, crossed her knees up to her navel and began selling me her pet project. She was a relative of the Madame as well as a department head, so I had to listen.

Her idea was corny--a new dusting powder with "Atummion" added, to be called, "Atummyc Afterbath Dusting Powder"--"Atummyc", of course, being a far-fetched play on the word "atomic". What delighted her especially was that the intimate, meaningful word "tummy" occurred in her coined trade name, and this was supposed to do wonders in stimulating the imaginations of the young females of man-catching-age.

[Illustration]

As I said, the idea was corny. But the little hazel-eyed pixie was not. She was about 24, black-haired, small-waisted and bubbling with hormones. With her shapely knees and low-cut neckline she was a pleasant change of scenery from the procession of self-seeking middle-agers I had been interviewing--not that her motive was any different.

I stalled a little to feast my eyes. "This Atummion Added item," I said, "just what is Atummion?"

"That's my secret," she said, squinching her eyes at me like a fun-loving little cobra. "My brother is assistant head chemist, and he's worked up a formula of fission products we got from the Atomic Energy Commission for experimentation."

"Fission products!" I said. "That stuff's dangerous!"

"Not this formula," she assured me. "Bob says there's hardly any radiation to it at all. Perfectly harmless."

"Then what's it supposed to do?" I inquired naively.

She stood up, placed one hand on her stomach and the other behind her head, wiggled and stretched. "Atummyc Bath Powder will give milady that wonderful, vibrant, atomic feeling," she announced in a voice dripping with innuendo.

"All right," I said, "that's what it's supposed to do. Now what does it really do?"

"Smells good and makes her slippery-dry, like any other talcum," she admitted quite honestly. "It's the name and the idea that will put it across."

"And half a million dollars," I reminded her. "I'm afraid the whole thing is a little too far off the track to consider at this time. I'm here to make a new lipstick go. Maybe later--"

"I appreciate that, but honestly, don't you think it's a terrific idea?"

"I think you're terrific," I told her, raising my left eyebrow at my secretary, "and we'll get around to you one of these days."

"Oh, Mr. Sanders!" she said, exploding those big eyes at me and shoving a half-folded sheet of paper at me. "Would you please sign my interview voucher?"

In Madame Elaine's organization you had to have a written "excuse" for absenting yourself from your department during working hours. I supposed that the paper I signed was no different from the others. Anyway, I was still blinded by the atomic blast of those hazel eyes.

After she left I got to thinking it was strange that she had me sign the interview receipt. I couldn't remember having done that for any other department heads.

I didn't tumble to the pixie's gimmick for a whole month, then I picked up the phone one day and the old man spilled the news. "I thought you were making lipstick over there. What's this call for ad copy on a new bath powder?"

The incident flashed back in my mind, and rather than admit I had been by-passed I lied, "You know the Madame. She always gets all she can for her money."

The old man muttered, "I don't see taking funds from the lipstick campaign and splitting them off into little projects like this," he said. "Twenty-five thousand bucks would get you one nice spread in the Post, but what kind of a one-shot campaign would that be?"

I mumbled excuses, hung up and screamed for the pixie. My secretary said, "Who?"

"Little sexy-eyes. The Atomic Bath Powder girl."

Without her name it took an hour to dig her up, but she finally popped in, plumped down and began giggling. "You found out."

"How," I demanded, "did you arrange it?"

"Easy. Madame Elaine's in Paris. She gave you a free hand, didn't she?"

I nodded.

"Well, when you signed your okay on the Atummyc--"

"That was an interview voucher!"

"Not--exactly," she said ducking her head.

The damage was done. You don't get ahead in this game by admitting mistakes, and the production department was already packaging and labelling samples of Atummyc Bath Powder to send out to the distributors.

* * * * *

I had to carve the $25,000 out of my lipstick budget and keep my mouth shut. When the ad copy came over from my firm I looked it over, shuddered at the quickie treatment they had given it and turned it loose. Things were beginning to develop fast in my lipstick department, and I didn't have time to chase the powder thing like I should have--since it was my name on the whole damned project.

So I wrote off the money and turned to other things.

We were just hitting the market with Madame Elaine Templeton's "Kissmet" when the first smell of smoke came my way. The pixie came into my office one morning and congratulated me.

"You're a genius!" she said.

"Like the Kissmet campaign, do you?" I said pleased.

"It stinks," she said holding her nose. "But Atummyc Bath Powder will pull you out of the hole."

"Oh, that," I said. "When does it go to market?"

"Done went--a month ago."

"What? Why you haven't had time to get it out of the lab yet. Using a foreign substance, you should have had an exhaustive series of allergy skin tests on a thousand women before--"

"I've been using it for two months myself," she said. "And look at me! See any rashes?"

I focussed my eyes for the first time, and what I saw made me wonder if I were losing my memory. The pixie had been a pretty little French pastry from the first, but now she positively glowed. Her skin even had that "radiant atomic look", right out of our corny, low-budget ad copy.

"What--have you done to yourself, fallen in love?"

"With Atummyc After Bath Powder," she said smugly. "And so have the ladies. The distributors are all reordering."

Well, these drug sundries houses have some sharp salesmen out, and I figured the bath powder must have caught them needing something to promote. It was a break. If we got the $25,000 back it wouldn't hurt my alibi a bit, in case the Kissmet production failed to click.

Three days later the old man called me from the New York branch of our agency. "Big distributor here is hollering about the low budget we've given to this Atummyc Bath Powder thing," he said. "He tells me his men have punched it hard and he thinks it's catching on pretty big. Maybe you better talk the Madame out of a few extra dollars."

"The Old Hag's in Europe," I told him, "and I'm damned if I'll rob the Kissmet Lipstick deal any more. It's mostly spent anyway."

The old man didn't like it. When you get the distributors on your side it pays to back them up, but I was too nervous about the wobbly first returns we were getting on the Kissmet campaign to consider taking away any of the unspent budget and throwing it into the bath powder deal.

The next day I stared at an order from a west coast wholesaler and began to sweat. The pixie fluttered it under my nose. "Two more carloads of Atummyc Bath Powder," she gloated.

"Two more carloads?"

"Certainly. All the orders are reading carloads," she said. "This thing has busted wide open."

And it had. Everybody, like I said earlier, lost their head. The bath-powder plant was running three shifts and had back-orders chin high. The general manager, a joker name of Jennings, got excited, cabled Madame Elaine to get back here pronto, which she did, and then the panic was on.

The miracle ingredient was this Atummion, and if Atummion sold bath powder why wouldn't it sell face-cream, rouge, mud-packs, shampoos, finger-nail polish and eye-shadow?

For that matter, the Old Hag wanted to know, why wouldn't it sell Kissmet Lipstick?

The answer was, of course, that the magic legend "Contains the Exclusive New Beauty Aid, Atummion" did sell these other products. Everything began going out in carload lots as soon as we had the new labels printed, and to be truthful, I breathed a wondrous sigh of relief, because up to that moment my Kissmet campaign had promised to fall flat on its lying, crimson face.

* * * * *

The staggering truth about Atummion seeped in slowly. Item one: Although we put only a pinch of it in a whole barrel of talcum powder, it did give the female users a terrific complexion! Pimples, black-heads, warts, freckles and even minor scars disappeared after a few weeks, and from the very first application users mailed us testimonials swearing to that "atomic feeling of loveliness".

Item two: About one grain of Atummion to the pound of lipstick brought out the natural color of a woman's lips and maintained it there even after the lipstick was removed.

Item three: There never was such a shampoo. For once the ad copywriters failed to exceed the merits of their product. Atummion-tinted hair took on a sparkling look, a soft texture and a natural-appearing wave that set beauty-operators screaming for protection.

These beauticians timed their complaint nicely. It got results on the morning that the whole thing began to fall to pieces.

About ten A. M. Jennings called a meeting of all people concerned in the Atummyc Powder project, and they included me as well as the pixie and her brother, the assistant chemist.

Everyone was too flushed with success to take Jennings' opening remark too seriously. "It looks like we've got a winner that's about to lose us our shirts," he said.

He shuffled some papers and found the one he wanted to hit us with first. "The beauticians claim we are dispensing a dangerous drug without prescription. They have brought suits to restrain our use."

Madame Elaine in her mannishly tailored suit was standing by a window staring out. She said, "The beauticians never gave us any break, anyway. Hell with them! What's next?"

Jennings lifted another paper. "I agree, but they sicked the Pure Food and Drug people on us. They tend to concur."

"Let them prove it first," the Old Hag said turning to the pixie's brother. "Eh, Bob!"

"It's harmless!" he protested, but I noticed that the pixie herself, for all her radiance, had a troubled look on her face.

The general manager lifted another paper. "Well, there seems to be enough doubt to have caused trouble. The Pure Food and Drug labs have by-passed the courts and put in a word to the Atomic Energy Commission. The AEC has cut off our supply of the fission salts that go into Atummion, pending tests."

That brought us all to our feet. Madame Elaine stalked back to the huge conference table and stared at Bob, the chemist. "How much of the gunk do we have on hand?"

"About a week's supply at present production rates." He was pale, and he swallowed his adam's apple three times.

The worst was yet to come. The pixie looked around the table peculiarly unchanged by the news. She had trouble in her face but it had been there from the start of the conference. "I wasn't going to bring this up just yet," she said, "but since we're here to have a good cry I might as well let you kick this one around at the same time. Maybe you won't mind shutting down production after all."

The way she said it froze all of us except the Madame.

The Madame said, "Well, speak up! What is it?"

"I've been to twelve different doctors, including eight specialists. I've thought and thought until I'm half crazy, and there just isn't any other answer," the pixie said.

She stared at us and clenched her fists and beat on the shiny table. "You've got to believe me! There just isn't any other answer. Atummion is responsible for my condition, and all twelve doctors agreed on my condition."

Still standing, Madame Elaine Templeton grabbed the back of her chair until her knuckles turned white. "Don't tell me the stuff brings on hives or something!"

The pixie threw back her head and a near-hysterical laugh throbbed from her lovely throat. "Hives, hell. I'm pregnant!"

* * * * *

Well, we were all very sorry for her, because she was unmarried, and that sort of thing is always clumsy. At that moment, however, none of us believed the connection between her condition and Atummion.

Being a distant relative of the Madame, she was humored to the extent that we had the lab get some guinea pigs and douse them with Elaine Templeton's After Bath Powder, and they even professed to make a daily check on them.

Meanwhile, production ground to a halt on all Atummion-labelled products, which was everything, I think, but the eyebrow pencils.

With every drug-store and department store in the country screaming to have their orders filled, it was a delicate matter and took a lot of string-pulling to keep the thing off the front-pages. It wasn't the beautician's open charges that bothered us, because everyone knew they were just disgruntled. But if it leaked out that the AEC was disturbed enough to cut off our fission products, every radio, newspaper and TV commentator in the business would soon make mince-meat of us over the fact that Atummion had not been adequately tested before marketing. And this was so right!

We took our chances and submitted honest samples to the Bureau of Weights and Measures and the Pure Food and Drug labs. And held our breath.

The morning the first report came back in our favor there was great rejoicing, but that afternoon our own testing lab sent up a man to see Jennings, and he called me instantly.

"Sanford, get up here at once. The guinea pigs just threw five litters of babies!"

"Congratulations," I told him. "That happens with guinea pigs, I understand."

"You don't understand," he thundered at me. "This was test group F-six, all females, and every one has reached maturity since we bought and segregated them."

"There must be some mistake," I said.

"There better be," he told me.

I went to his office and together we picked up the Madame from her penthouse suite. She followed us into the elevator reluctantly. "Absurd, absurd!" was all she could say.

We watched the lab man check the ten adult pigs one by one. Even as inexpert as I am in such matters, it was evident that all ten were females, and the five which had not yet participated in blessed events were but hours from becoming mothers.

We went our separate ways stunned. Back in my office I pulled out a list of our big wholesale accounts where the Atummion products had been shipped by the carloads. The warehouses were distributed in every state of the union.

Then I ran my eye down the list of products which contained the devilish Atummion. There were thirty-eight, in all, including a complete line of men's toiletries, shaving lotion, shampoo, deodorant and body-dusting powder. I thanked God that men didn't have ovaries.

Dolores Donet--that was the pixie's name--opened my door and deposited herself gingerly in a chair opposite me.

I said, "You look radiant."

She said, "Don't rub it in, and I'll have a shot of that." I shared my Haig and Haig with her, and we drank to the newly departed bottom of the world.

* * * * *

My secretary tried to give me a list of people who had phoned and a stack of angry telegrams about back-orders, but I waved her away. "Dolores," I said, "there must have been a boy guinea pig loose in that pen. It's just too fantastic!"

"Are you accusing me of turning one loose just to get off the hook myself?" she snapped.

"What you've got, excuses won't cure," I told her, "but we've got to get facts. My God, if you're right--"

"We've sworn everyone to secrecy," she said. "There's a $10,000 bonus posted for each employee who knows about this. Payable when the statute of limitations runs out on possible litigation."

"You can't swear the public to secrecy," I said.

"Think a minute," she said, coldly. "The married women don't need excuses, and the single girls--who'll believe them? Half of them or better, have guilty consciences anyway. The rest? They're in the same boat I was--without a labful of guinea pigs to back them up."

"But--how did it happen in the first place?"

"Bob has been consulting the biologist we retained. He keeps asking the same question. He says parthenogenesis in higher lifeforms is virtually impossible. Bob keeps pointing at the little pigs, and they're going round and round. They're examining the other eleven test pens now, but there's no question in my mind. I have a personal stake in this experiment, and I was very careful to supervise the segregation of males and females."

My sanity returned in one glorious rush. There was the bugger factor! Dolores, herself.

In her eagerness to clear her own skirts, Dolores had tampered with the integrity of the experiment. Probably, she had arranged for artificial insemination, just to be sure. The tip-off was the hundred percent pregnancy of one whole test-batch. Ten out of ten. Even if one buck had slipped in inadvertently, and someone was covering up the mistake, why you wouldn't expect anything like a 100% "take".

"Dolores," I said, "you are a naughty girl in more ways than one."

She got up and refilled her glass shaking her head. "The ever-suspicious male," she said. "Don't you understand? I'm not trying to dodge my responsibility for my condition. The whole mess is my fault from beginning to end. But what kind of a heel will I be if we get clearance from the AEC and start shipping out Atummyc products again--knowing what I do? What's more, if we let the stuff float around indefinitely, someone is going to run comprehensive tests on it, not just allergy test patches like they're doing at the government labs right now."

"Yeah," I said, "so we all bury the hottest promotion that ever hit the cosmetics industry and live happily ever after."

She hit the deck and threw her whiskey glass at me, which did nothing to convince me that she wasn't telling the tallest tale of the century--to be conservative.

We sat and glared at each other for a few minutes. Finally she said, "You're going to get proof, and damned good proof any minute now."

"How so?" Nothing this experiment revealed would be valid to me, I figured, now that I was convinced she had deliberately fouled it up.

"Bob and the biologist should be up here any minute. I told them I'd wait in your office. I know something you don't, I'm just waiting for them to verify it."

She was much too confident, and I began to get worried again. We waited for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. I picked up the phone and dialed the lab.

The woman assistant answered and said that the two men were on the way up right now. I asked, "What have they been doing down there?"

She said, "They've been doing Caesarian sections on the animals in test-pen M-four."

"Caesarian sections?" I repeated. She affirmed it, and Dolores Donet got a tight, little, humorless smile on her face. I hung up and said, "They're on their way up, and what's so funny?"

She said, "You know what I think? I think you've been using Atummyc products on you."

"So what?" I demanded. "I was responsible for this campaign, too. I've been waiting for a rash to develop almost as long as you have."

She said, "When Bob comes in, look at his complexion. All three of us have been guinea pigs, I guess."

"I still don't see what's so damned amusing."

She said, "You still don't tumble, eh? All right, I'll spell it out. Caesarians performed on test batch M-four."

"So?"

"The 'M' stands for male," she said.

She timed it just right. The hall door opened and Bob trailed in with a dazed look. The biologist was half holding him up. His white lab-smock was freshly blood-stained, and his eyes were blank and unseeing.

But for all his distress, he was still a good looking young fellow. His skin had that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just like mine.

THE END

 

 

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Contents

BROWN JOHN'S BODY

by Winston Marks

 

Erd Neff wanted as little to do with his fellow men as possible. So he lived alone in his big cash-vault. Alone, except for John....

 

Erd Neff dropped a thin bundle of currency into the $100 bill drawer of the flat-top desk and kicked the drawer shut with a dusty boot.

He flicked the drip from his hooked nose, which was chronically irritated by the wheat dust of the warehouse, then he wiped his fingers down the leg of his soiled denims. Across the 12 X 12, windowless room John stirred awake from the noise and began nosing in the debris of his filthy cage.

"Time for supper, John?" Neff tugged at the twine at his belt and examined his $3 watch. He pinched a dozen grains of wheat from a two-pound coffee can and let them sift through the wires of the cage. John pounced on the grain hungrily.

"Wait a minute! What do you say, dammit?" Neff's hand reached for the marshmallow-toasting fork that hung from a hook on the wall. He touched the points, filed needle sharp. "What do you say?" he repeated, twanging the tines like a tuning fork.

John skittered to the far corner, tearing new holes in the old newspaper with frantic claws. Cowering against the wires he spat half-chewed flecks of wheat trying to say the magic words that would spare him from the fork. "Tinkoo! Tinkoo!" he squeaked, straining to make the two syllables distinct.

Neff hung up the fork, and John turned to lick at the old scabs clotted from earlier jabs, taking sullen inventory to be sure there were no new crimson leaks in his louse-infested hide. Until two months ago, he had been just one more gregarious specimen of Mammalia Rodentia Simplicidentata Myomorphia Muridae decumanus. Now he had another name. Like each of his predecessors in the cage, he was a large, brown rat called John--after Erd Neff's despised and deceased father. Neff named all his rats John.

[Illustration]

"Well, don't get fat."

John finished the grain, pawed the air and squeaked, "Mur!"

"More, hey? You talk fine when you're hungry."

"Peef, mur, mur!" John begged. He did well with his vowels, but "I" and "s" sounds were beyond him. He said "f" for "s". "L's" he ignored entirely.

Neff gave him one more wheat head. "Okay, get fat!"

He turned to the door, lifted the inside, mechanical latch, shoved with his foot and snatched his revolver from his hip-holster. The vault door opened ponderously revealing an empty warehouse. Neff peeked through the crack between the hinges to clear the area concealed by the door itself.

One hoodlum hopeful had hidden there. Spotting him through the crack, Neff had simply beefed into the foot-thick slab of fireproof steel. Inertial plus surprise had disposed of that one. Neff hadn't even had to shoot.

* * * * *

Tonight there was no one. Funny. The wheat country was getting tame, or else the tin-horns had learned their lesson. It was no secret that Erd Neff never visited the local bank, yet it had been more than six months since anyone tried to hold him up.

The local bank hated him plenty. He was costing them. His five loan offices in the rich wheat county skimmed the cream of the mortgage loan business. Of course, nowadays most people paid off their loans, and the low interest rates he charged to lure the business barely paid expenses. Yet, he still picked up an occasional foreclosure. Farmers still got drunk, divorced, gambled, broke legs or committed suicide once in awhile, and Neff's loan documents were ruthless about extensions of time.

These foreclosed acreages he traded for grain elevators and warehouses when crops were small and operators were desperate. Then came the bumper years during and after World War II. Wheat on the ground and no place to store it but in Erd Neff's sheds. It wasn't cheap to store with Neff, and he had a virtual monopoly in Ulma County.

Neff swung the great door back into place with its whoosh--thunk that sealed in air, sound and nearly a hundred thousand dollars in currency. He levered the bolts into place and spun the expensive combination lock.

The vault, tucked away in the front, left-hand corner of the old frame warehouse expressed Neff's distrust and contempt for mankind. Concrete and steel. Bed, shower, toilet and desk. In this walk-in cash box he was fireproof, bomb-proof, theft-proof and, most important of all, people-proof. There he consorted unmolested with the one mammal on earth he found interesting--John, the brown rat.

He slid the broad warehouse door closed behind him with a cacophony of dry screeches and padlocked it. The dusty street was deserted except for a black sedan which two-wheeled the corner a block away and sped toward him. Neff dropped his pistol back in its holster. "Now, what the hell--?"

He waited on the splintery platform, a huge man, ugly of face, shortlegged and long-bodied with a belly swollen from regular overeating. His shaved head swivelled slowly as the police car leaned into a skid-stop.

Officer Collin Burns got out and stared up at the motionless statue in sweat-dust stained denims. Burns was half Neff's 56 years, tall and thin. He wore gray, a silver star and a big black hat. He said, "I'll take your gun, Erd."

"Now what? I got a permit."

"Not any more. It's revoked."

"For why?"

"There were witnesses this afternoon."

"Witnesses? What in hell are you--oh, no! Not that damned dog?"

"The puppy belonged to a little girl. You can't claim self-defense this time."

"He was coming down here chasing the cats away every day."

"So you shot him, like you did Greeley's collie."

"Cats count for more. You know well as I do, you can't control the rats around a warehouse without cats."

"You've shot five men, too, Erd. Three of them are dead."

"I was cleared, you know damned well! Self-defense."

"You're too handy with that pistol. Anyway, I didn't file this complaint. It was the child's mother, and she made it stick with the chief. Give me the gun, Erd."

"You got a warrant for my arrest?"

"No, but I will have in an hour if you insist."

"I got a perfect right to protect my property."

"Not with a gun. Not any more."

"I just get these punks convinced, and now you want to turn loose on me again. Who put you up to this Collin?"

"You did. When you shot that pup. I'm not here to debate it. You're breaking the law from this minute on if you don't hand over the gun."

"Dammit, Collin, you know how much money I got in there? You know how much I pack around on me sometimes?"

"That's your business. You can use the bank and bonded messengers--they get along with dogs."

"Telling me how to run my business?"

"I'm telling you to give me that gun. You'll get the same police protection as any other citizen."

Neff sneered openly. "I'd a been dead thirty years ago depending on cops."

"I don't doubt that a minute. You're easy to hate, Erd. Are you going to give me that gun?"

"No."

"You like things the hard way, don't you?" Burns got back in the squad car and drove off. Neff spat a crater in the wheat-littered dust and got into his own car.

* * * * *

Two minutes later he turned up Main Street and stopped before city hall. Inside the tiny police station he dropped his pistol on the counter. Bud Ackenbush looked up from his desk. "You could have saved Collin some trouble."

Neff stalked out without a word and crossed the street to the Palace Cafe. He ordered a double-thick steak, fried potatoes and pie. He liked the way the waitresses scrambled for the chance to wait on him. Women didn't like him. He was ugly and smelled of sweat, and on the street women looked the other way when they met him. All but the waitresses at the Palace. When he came in they showed their teeth and tongues and wiggled their hips. He was a 50-cent tipper.

The important thing was it got him his steak, really double thick and double quick. People could be real efficient. Like brown John. Prod 'em where they live and they'll do anything. Even talk to you.

"You look kinda naked tonight, Erd," Gloria kidded.

Neff wiped steak juice from his chin and stared at her breasts. It used to excite him, but now it was just habit. It was better than looking at red-smeared lips that smiled and eyes that didn't, eyes that said, "Don't forget the tip, you filthy bastard!"

Funny. Hang a gun on any other citizen in town and people would stare. Take the gun off of Erd Neff and people make cracks.

He did feel naked.

"I didn't order this damned succotash!"

"It's free with the steak dinner, Erd."

Go ahead, pinch my leg like the harvesting crews do. I'm free with the dinner, too. Like the ketchup. Like the mustard and the salt and pepper and the steak sauce and the sugar and the extra butter if you ask for it, just don't forget the tip.

Clarence Hogan, the fry-cook, came around the counter and leaned on the booth table beside Gloria. "You don't like succotash? How about some nice peas, Erd?"

Clarence was Gloria's husband.

Pimp!

"Put some ice-cream on my pie," Neff said. He looked up at Clarence. "No, I don't want any goddamned peas!"

They brought his pie and left him alone. He finished it and felt in his pocket for the tip. He changed his mind. To hell with Gloria and her fat leg! The steak was tough.

He paid the check and went out. The sky was pink yet. Later in the week the sunsets would be blood-red, as the great combines increased in number and cruised the rippling ocean of wheat, leaving bristly wakes and a sky-clogging spray of dust.

Neff's busiest season. Damn that dog! Damn Collin Burns!

His hand brushed his leg where the leather holster should be. Damned laws that men made. Laws that acquitted him of homicide and then snatched away his only weapon of self-defense because he shot a yapping dog.

As he got in his car Collin Burns came out of the station. He tossed Neff's gun through the open window onto the seat. "Here's your property. The Marshal came in, and he changed everybody's mind. It's going to cost you a hundred dollars and a new pup for the little girl, probably. Here's the subpoena. Tuesday at ten."

"I don't get it."

"The Marshal said to let you fight your own battles."

* * * * *

Neff started the car and let the clutch out. The Marshal knew his way around. The transient harvesting crews were a wild bunch. If word got out that Neff was unarmed, packing thousands of dollars the length of the county, the enforcement people would have a lot of extra work on their hands.

He parked behind the warehouse, next to the railroad tracks.

He came around front, unlocked the big door, pulled it shut behind him and bolted it. The warehouse was jet black now, but he knew every inch of the place. He could fire his pistol almost as accurately at a sound as at a visible target.

He practiced on rats.

Holding a pocket flash, he worked the combination. As the final tumbler fell silently, a faint, raspy screech came to his ears, like a board tearing its rusty nails loose under the persuasion of a wrecking bar. He listened a minute, then he levered the bolts back, stepped into the vault-room, closed the door and shot the mechanical bolts.

Sure. Someone was out there, but they'd get damned tired before morning. He flicked on the light and touched the other wall switch beside it. The powerful blower and sucker fans cleared out the musty air and rat-stink.

John rustled in the cage, blinking at the sudden light. "Hi, Neff! Meat! Meat! Meat!"

Smart little devil! Neff sometimes brought him a scrap from his dinner, but he hadn't thought to tonight. He sucked at his teeth and pulled out a tiny string of steak. "Here. Bite my finger and I'll poke both your eyes out."

John picked the thread of gristle from Neff's finger with his fore-paws and devoured it, trembling with pleasure. Neff lifted the cage. "Okay, now let's have a few tricks."

At once John made for the can of wheat. "Get outta there!" Neff scooped him up and dropped him on the desk, snapping his tail with a forefinger. John whirled, laid his ears back and opened his mouth. At bay, the brown rat, Neff knew, is the most ferocious rodent of the 2000 species, but Neff held his hand out daring John to bite.

Neff knew all about rats. More than anybody in the world knew about rats. When you live among them for three decades you find out about their cunning wariness, fecundity, secretiveness, boldness, omnivorous and voracious appetites. Fools reviled them as predators and scavengers. Neff appreciated them for what they really are: The most adaptable mammal on earth.

John was smart but no smarter than the rest. Neff had proved this by teaching every rat he captured alive to talk.

Impossible they had told him. Even parrots and parakeets only imitate sounds in their squawking--yes, and pet crows. Animals don't have thinking brains, they said. They react, trial and error, stimulus and response, but they don't think.

Neff didn't know about the others, but he knew about rats.

Keep them hungry and lonely for a mate. Hurt them. Torture them. To hell with this reward business. Rats are like men. Mentally lazy. They'll go for bait, sure, but they'll go faster to escape pain--a thousand times faster.

And rats have lived with man from the first. They have a feeling for language like the human brat. Between partitions, inches from a man's head when he lies in bed talking to his wife, under a man's feet while he's eating, over his head in the warehouse rafters while he's working. Always, just inches or feet away from man, running through sewers, hiding in woodpiles, freight-cars, ships, barns, slaughter-house, skulking down black alleys, listening, hiding, stealing, always listening.

Yes, rats know about man, but rats had never known a man like Erd Neff, a man who hated all mankind. A man who chose a rat for a companion in preference to one of his own kind. Rats named John learned about Neff. They learned that his tones and inflections had specific meaning. They learned very fast under the stabbing prod of the marshmallow fork. With just enough food to keep them alive, their blind ferocity changed into painful attention. They learned to squeak and squawk and form the sounds into a pattern with their motile tongues. In weeks and months, they learned what the human brat learned in years.

"Stand up like a goddamned man!"

* * * * *

John stood up, his tail the third point of the support.

"Say the alphabet."

"Eh--bih--fih--dih--ih--eff--jih--etch--"

Neff lit a cigar and watched the smoke float away from the ceiling blower and vanish into the overhead vent in the far corner. He bobbed one foot in time to the squeaky rhythm of the recitation. He took no exception to John's failure with "I," "s", and "z". The other Johns had been unable to handle them, too.

"Hungrih, Neff. Hungrih!"

The big man picked out three grains of wheat. He noticed the can was almost empty. One by one he handed the kernels to his pet, waiting for John's "Tinkoo!" in between.

"Mur! Mur!"

"Lazy tongue! It's more, not mur!"

John dropped to all fours and retreated. Usually Neff slapped him in the belly when he used that tone. But Neff was bemused tonight. He kept listening for sounds, sounds that he knew could never penetrate the thick walls.

They were out there, he was sure. Another damned fool or two, flashing a light around, trying to figure out something. Neff remembered one pair who had even tried nitroglycerin. He saw the burns on the outside of the door the next morning.

Amateurs! Nobody knew for sure just how much money Neff kept in the old desk, and big-time pros wouldn't tackle a job like this without a pretty fair notion of the loot. For all they knew, maybe he mailed it to an out-of-town bank.

"Okay, fetch the pencil."

John jumped from the desk and moved toward the open door of the shower-stall where Neff had thrown the pencil stub. He paused by the wheat can, then scurried on to get the pencil. He climbed Neff's leg and dropped the pencil into the open palm.

"Smart punks up at State College. So you can't teach a rat anything but mazes and how to go nuts from electric shocks, eh? Wouldn't they be surprised to meet you, John?"

"Hungrih!"

"You're always hungry!"

"Meat! Meat!"

"Yeah. You can sound your "e's" real good when you say, 'meat.' Some day I'll cut off your tail and feed it to you." He laughed, grabbed John by the coarse hair of his back and slipped him back under the cage.

Then he undressed down to his underwear, turned out the light and lay on the narrow iron bed. John rustled in his cage for a minute, then there was only the faint hum of the blower and sucker motors in the ventilating system. The incoming and outgoing air was baffled and trapped to kill sounds, and spring-loaded sliding doors poised to jam shut and seal off the room if anyone tampered with the exterior grilles in the roof.

The fans hummed softly and Erd Neff slept.

Sleck-thud, sleck-thud!

* * * * *

He was awake pawing the wall for the light switch, but even as his hand found it, and his eyes discovered the closed ventilator doors, a reddish vapor sank over his body. A single gasp and Neff was clawing his throat. Sharp, brown-tasting, acid-burning, eye-searing, nose-stinging!

He fell to his knees and clawed to the far corner, fighting for air, but the acrid stink stained his throat and nose. His eyes kept burning. The whole room must be full!

The door-lever! No, that's what they wanted. Blind! Gun's no good now. God, for a breath of air! Damned tears! Can't open my eyes! Air! Got to have it!

His throat refused to open. The stink, a little like iodine, a lot like a hospital smell but a million times stronger--raked at the tender tissues of his throat. Icepicks stabbed from his soft palate, up into his brain, his temples. He swayed against the door, caught the lever and heaved convulsively. The door fell away slowly. He stumbled forward, gashing his knee against the sharp jamb.

A light struck redly through his clenched, tear-soaked eye-lids.

"That did it. Get the gun!" The voice was high, almost girlish. A young boy?

A slightly heavier voice said, "Got it. Keep an eye on him while I find out why the fan stopped working."

"He's going no place. You were right. That bromine stuff really did the business. Lookit his face. Sure it won't kill him?"

"Don't care if it does now. We got the door open."

"What is this bromine, anyhow? Boy it sure stinks!"

"It's a chemical element like chlorine, only it's a liquid. It fumes if you don't keep it covered with water, and the fumes really get you. They used it in gas bombs in the war."

"That was chlorine."

"They used bromine, too. I read it."

"Air!" Neff rasped.

"Help yourself if you call this stinkin' stuff in your warehouse air."

From the vault the deadened voice came. "This must be the switch. The other switch is for the lights."

"Look out! When you turn it on don't get dosed yourself."

"I only dumped a few drops in. There. It'll blow out in a few--phew, let me outta here. That stuff does--God, it's worse than the dose I got in the chem lab!" The voice grew, coughing and cursing. "Better wait a minute or two. How's our big brave dog-killer doing?"

On his hands and knees, Neff was on the verge of passing out, but doggedly he tried to place the voices. Highschool kids? Bromine. Sounded like a chemical they might filch from the highschool laboratory.

A kick in the ribs reminded him he was still helpless. "All right, get back in there." They aimed him through the vault door and kept kicking him until he went. They hauled him up into his chair. He tried to strike out blindly, but his chest was full of licking flames that spread pain out to his shoulders.

Now rope whipped around his feet, hands, chest and neck, jerking his body hard against the castered desk-chair and cramping his head back. "Tie him good. No way to lock him in with this door."

Neff opened his eyes. The boys were wet blurs rummaging through his desk. "Look! Just look at that! We can't carry all that."

"Get one of those burlap sacks out there. By the door."

Footsteps went and returned. "Now, just the small bills. Up to twenty. No, Jerry, leave the big stuff alone. Who'd take one from a kid?"

"Okay, let's make tracks."

"Wait!" Neff said desperately. "My legs and hands. You've cut off the circulation!"

* * * * *

Something hard like the barrel of a gun rapped down on the top of his head. "I ought to blow your dirty brains out. Killing my little sister's dog, damn you. Damn you, I think I will kill you. Damn you, damn you!" the voice crested.

"Wait a minute Jerry," the other voice cut in. "I got a better idea. Here. Look at this."

Short silence. "Yeah! Yeah, that's just dandy. Look how thin he is. That's just what the doctor ordered. Okay, the top's loose. Stand by the door and don't let him get by you. Wait. Got your flash? Good! In the dark. That's real good. Which switch is it?"

"Throw them both."

"Okay. Flash it over here. Look out, here I come!"

"Hurry up! Look at that hungry, black-eyed little devil. That ought to fix up the son-of-a--" ...Thunk! The compression rammed heavily into Neff's ears. The bolts shot solidly into place from the outside, and the combination knob rang faintly as it was spun. Silence.

They'd go out the same way they came in and tack the board back in place. How long before anybody would miss him? Twenty-four hours? Hell, no. Nobody would bust a gut worrying that soon. Two days? Some weeks he was gone several days making the rounds of his loan offices.

A week? Maybe. Girls at the Palace would get suspicious. Tell Collin Burns.

But a week! They'd cut off the blower when they threw both switches. No ventilation. No air.

Neff strained at the ropes. His legs were pulled under the seat so tightly that his feet were turning numb. Hands were tingling, too. Dirty little sadists. Turning John loose thinking--

He had to get loose. Less than one day's air, then--

"John!" Thank God John wasn't an ordinary rat.

"John, come over to me. These ropes. Chew them, John. Come on, John. Come on, boy."

No sound at first, then a faint motion in the old newspapers.

"John, say the alphabet!"

"Eh--bih----"

"That's right. Go on!"

"Fih----jih----" The squeaking stopped.

"Come over to me, John. Come to me, boy."

He held his breath. The beating of his heart was so loud he couldn't be sure that John was moving. The silence was long. Even the rat was blind in this blackness. He must be patient.

Sweat began oozing and trickling down his face, his armpits, his back--even his left leg. No, wait! That wasn't sweat!

* * * * *

The throbbing in his legs was greatest at his left knee. The trickle was blood from the gash. It ran freely, now, the ropes backing up arterial pressure. Never mind that!

"John!"

The coffee can tipped over, and the racket made Neff start against his bonds. The rope sawed his Adam's apple.

Crunch!

"Leave that damned wheat alone, John. Come over to me, boy. I'll give you a whole bag full when you chew off these ropes. Hear that, John? And a chicken foot. I'll bring you a whole chicken. A live one. I'll tie her down so she won't peck you. That's what I'll do, John."

He was breathing heavily now. "Do you get me, John? Would you like a live chicken?"

"Yeff."

The crunching resumed for a minute then stopped. Neff remembered, there had been only a dozen or so grains of wheat left. John would still be hungry. The thought of a chicken should do it. If not, he could threaten him.

Neff waited. Relax! There was all night to work this out.

Finally, he felt something at his ankles. "That's the boy, John. Up here and down my arms. They're behind me. Get the rope off my hands first. Come on boy."

It was John, all right. Neff could feel the little claws coming up his left leg.

"Come on, hurry up, John. Tell you what. I'll bring you a nice, fat female, just like yourself. A live one. You can live in the cage togeth----John, don't stop there!"

The claws had paused near his knee and were clinging to the blood-soaked cloth.

"No, no, John! Don't! I'll stick you with the fork. I'll stick you--I'll kill you! John, we got to get out of here or we'll both die. Die, do you hear! We'll suffocate! Don't do that. Stop. Stop or I'll--"

Neff's threats beat hard into the rat's brain, and now as the slanting incisors tore at the cloth and chewed the luscious, blood-smothered, hot meat, Neff's screams sent tremors through the skinny, voracious body, and the tail tucked down. The words made John nervous, but it was dark. And there was food, such wonderful food, so much food!

They were harsh words, terrible, screaming words: but words are words and food is food, and after all--

John was only a rat.

THE END

 

 

---

Contents

EARTHSMITH

By Stephen Marlowe

 

Nobody at the Interstellar Space School had ever heard of Earth so naturally they treated Smith with contempt--or was it an innate fear?...

 

Someone in the crowd tittered when the big ungainly creature reached the head of the line.

"Name?"

The creature swayed back and forth foolishly, supporting the bulk of his weight first on one extremity and then on the other. His face which had a slight rosy tint anyway got redder.

"Come, come. Planet? Name?" The registrar was only a machine, but the registrar could assume an air of feminine petulance. "We want to keep the line moving, so if you will please--"

The creature drew a deep breath and let the two words come out in a rush. "Earth, Smith," he said. Being nervous, he could not modulate his voice. Unable to modulate his voice, he heard the words come out too deep, too loud.

"Did you hear that voice?" demanded the man who had tittered. "On a cold wet night they say the karami of Caulo boom like that. And look at Earthsmith. Just look at him. I ask you, what can they accept at the school and still call it a school? Hey you, Earthsmith, what courses will you take?"

"I don't know," the creature confessed. "That's what I'm here for. I don't even know what they teach at the school."

"He doesn't know." More tittering.

The registrar took all this in impassively, said: "What planet, Earthsmith?"

The creature was still uncomfortable. "Earth. Only my name is not Earthsmith. Smith--"

The titterer broke into a loud guffaw. "Earthsmith doesn't even know what planet he's from. Good old Earthsmith." He was a small thin man, this titterer, with too-bright eyes, vaguely purple skin, and a well-greased shock of stiff green hair.

Smith squared his wide shoulders and looked into the colored lights of the registrar. "It's a mistake. My name is Smith."

"What planet, Smith?"

"Earth. The planet Earth." Smith had a rosy, glistening bald head and a hairless face. A little bead of sweat rolled into his left eye and made him blink. He rubbed his eye.

"Age?" The machine had a way of asking questions suddenly, and Smith just stared.

"Tell me your age. Age. How old are you?"

Smith wanted to sit down, only there were no chairs. Just the room with its long line of people behind him, and the machine up front. The registrar.

"I'm twenty-seven."

"Twenty-seven what?"

"You asked me my age. I'm twenty-seven years old, and three months."

Except for the clicking of the machine, there was a silence. The voice of the machine, feminine again, seemed confused when it spoke. "I cannot correlate years, Smith of Earth. How old are you?"

It wasn't an ordeal, really, but Smith felt more uncomfortable every moment. Was the machine making fun of him? If it were, then it had an ally in the crowd, because the man who had tittered was laughing again, the green shock of hair on his head bobbing up and down.

"Earthsmith doesn't even know how old he is. Imagine."

The machine, which was more feminine than not, asked Smith how far the planet Earth was from its primary, and what the orbital speed of the planet was. Smith told her, but again the terminology was not capable of correlation.

"Unclassified as to age, Smith. It's not important. I wonder, are you dominant or receptive?"

"I'm a man. Male. Dom--"

"That doesn't matter. Smith, tell me, how long has it been since anyone from the planet Earth has attended the school?"

Smith said he didn't know, but, to his knowledge, no one from Earth had ever been here. "We don't get around much any more. It's not that we can't. We just go and then we don't like it, so we come back to Earth."

"Well, from the looks of you I would say you are a receptive. Very definitely receptive, Smith." Given sufficient data, the registrar could not be wrong. Given sufficient data the registrar could tell you anything you wanted to know, provided the answer could be arrived at from the data itself. "The male and female distinction no longer holds, of course. On some planets the female is dominant, on some she's not. It's generally according to the time of colonization, Smith. When was Earth colonized?"

"It wasn't."

"What do you mean, it wasn't?"

"We were always there. We colonized the rest of the galaxy. Long ago."

The registrar clicked furiously, expressed itself still more femininely this time. "Oh, that planet! You certainly are the first, Smith. The very first here at the school. Room 4027, dominant companion." Neuter voice again. "That's all, Smith of Earth. Next."

The vaguely purple-skinned man stood before the registrar, winked at the flashing lights. "You know, now I can see what they mean when we're told of a missing link in the chain between man and animal. Old Earthsmith...."

"Name?" said the machine.

The man pointed at Smith, shook with silent laughter. The back of Smith's head, which could not properly be called bald because he had never had any hair on it, was very red.

"Name's Jorak."

"Planet?" demanded the fully neuter machine.

* * * * *

There was the red star, a monstrous blotch of crimson swollen and brooding on the horizon and filling a quarter of the sky. There was the fleck of white high up near the top of the red giant, its white-dwarf companion in transit. These were the high jagged crags, falling off suddenly to the sundered, frothy sea with its blood-red sun-track fading to pink and finally to gray far away on either side.

Smith watched the waves break far below him, and he almost stumbled when someone tapped his shoulder.

"That was mean of the man named Jorak." She might have been a woman of Earth, except that she was too thin, cast in a too-delicate mould. Yet beautiful.

Smith shrugged, felt the heat rise to his face and knew that he must have looked like a mirror for the red sun.

"Is that really a blush, Smith? Are you blushing?"

He nodded. "I can't help it. I--"

"Don't be foolish. I don't want you to stop. I think it looks nice."

Smith rubbed his pate, watched the hot wind blow the girl's yellow hair about her face. "They tell me my great great grandfather had a little fringe of hair around his head. I've seen pictures."

"How nice--"

"If you're trying to make fun of me, please go away. It wasn't nice, it was ugly. Either you have hair or you don't. The men of Earth used to have it, long ago. The women still do."

She changed the subject. "I'll bet you think this place is ugly, Smith."

Smith shook his head. "No, it's stark. If you like things that way, it isn't really ugly. But Earth is a planet of green rolling hills and soft rains and--you're making fun of me."

"You say that again and I'll take it as an insult." She smiled. "We have our green rolling hills on Bortinot, only it's cold. I like it here because it's warm. And, of course, I have a lot to learn at school."

"Would you think I'm stupid if I ask you what?"

"No. And you were really serious in there when you said you didn't know what they teach."

"How could I know? I'm the first student here from Earth. Every five years--say, twenty times during the course of one lifetime--we get the application. This time the government finally decided someone should go. Me."

"Well, they teach just about everything that could be of value in a transtellar culture."

"What?"

"Things like astrogation and ethics--"

"I caught the school express at a Denebian planet. Someone told me there that the school is decadent."

She smiled up at him. "Deneb is a slothful place, then. It is true that the school never stands still, changing its courses to meet the demands of a changing society. If Deneb cannot keep pace with the changes, that could explain the feeling. Right now they'll be concentrating in dreams and dream-empathy, in some of the newer Garlonian dances, Sarchian cooking for the receptives and Wortan fighting for the dominants. Quite a virile program, Smith, provided one is up to it."

"What happened to your astrogation and ethics?"

"That? Oh, that's just a catch-all phrase. Your courses will depend on such things as your D or R classifications--"

"It makes me laugh a little," Smith admitted. "But they've classified me as a receptive. I guess they know what they're doing. Still--"

"You think you're strong, eh?"

"Well, I didn't see anyone in the registrar's room who would worry me very much in a fight."

"Society is sophisticated, Smith. There's more to strength than mere brawn. What sort of psi-powers have they cultivated on the planet Earth?"

* * * * *

In a general sense, but in a general sense only, Smith knew what she meant. "Well, there's hypnotism, and some people play at telepathy and clairvoyance. Nothing much, really."

"That isn't much, my friend."

"Why? What else is there?" Smith smiled for the first time. "I didn't know--" He shook his head, suddenly, to clear it. He felt tilted. He looked and he saw that everything was straight, but still he felt tilted. He tried to right himself, and down he went. On his stomach he lay, his legs twisted under him a little. Foolishly, he tried to get up. He couldn't.

"There's that." The girl laughed. "Suggestion without the need for hypnotism."

Smith stood up, said, "I see what you mean."

"Think so?"

It began to rain. A brisk wind came up abruptly, and off in the distance Smith heard the roar of thunder. It came closer. Still closer. Like in a straight line. Smith watched the lightnings prance.

"We'd better get back to the school!" he cried. He didn't think she could hear his voice above the thunder. He started to shout again, but lightning crackled before his eyes. Between him and the girl. Something rumbled, and Smith started to fall. They had been blasted off the crag, and now they hurtled down through the sheets of hot rain....

"Feel yourself," the girl told him. The huge crimson sun still sat on the horizon. The air was hot and warm and Smith was dry.

"Suggestion," she smiled again. "Most of us have it to some degree, but we of Bortinot have it still more. Still think you should be a dominant?"

"Well--" The girl's face swam before his eyes. Lovely. Smith took a step forward, reached out and placed his big hands on her shoulders.

"Well what?" She was smiling.

"What's your name?"

"Geria."

His lips were big and hers were little, if full. He quivered as he kissed her. "I love you, Geria."

"I know it," she said.

* * * * *

"The reason I went outside to watch the sea," Smith said, "was because I didn't know how to get to room 4027. I didn't want to ask anyone, not after--"

"That makes sense. I'll take you, Smith. I'm just down the hall from you, anyway."

"Thank you, Geria." Smith wondered how he knew her name was Geria. Nice name. "What happened after I thought there was a storm, Geria?" Smith suppressed a smile.

"Oh, nothing much. I just planted another suggestion in your mind. For now you've forgotten, but you will remember. Shall we go?"

They walked back down the path from the top of the crag, and soon Smith saw other students in groups of two and three. Ahead was the long low school, a dull rectangle of metal perhaps two miles long and half as wide. With Geria, Smith entered through one of the hundreds of doorways and followed her wordlessly up a mechanical staircase.

They flashed past many landings, and after a time Smith followed the girl across one of them and into a long hall.

"Simple," she said. "You have the twenty-seventh room here on the fortieth floor. Mine is room eighteen. Will we be seeing more of each other, Smith?"

"As much as you'd like," he said, but it made him feel foolish. He had merely spoken to the girl for a few minutes, and yet he could not quite fathom his emotions. To some extent she had made him feel the same as had the man Jorak, and yet she liked him. She wanted to see more of him. She said so.

"Smith, you're blushing again. I tell you what: if you can do that every day, then I will see you every day. It's so nice and--unaffected."

Was that the word she really had in mind? Smith remembered once when he was little, a farmer had come to the city and everyone had called him an ancient word which they said came from a still more ancient name. Rube they had called him. Rube. He didn't like it. He had had a fight, Smith recalled, and a big plateglass window was broken. He went to jail for a few weeks on the moon, and after that he didn't come to the city any more. Smith was little at the time, but he had never forgotten the look on the farmer's face when the security officers took him off to the moon rocket.

Had he known it, Jorak would have used the word rube, but what about Geria?

The green number on the white door was painted sharply--4027. "Here's my room," Smith said. He tried an indifferent wave, but it hardly worked, and he began to blush again.

Geria skipped lightly down the hall, and he couldn't see her face to tell if she were smiling. He shrugged, opened the door.

* * * * *

"Earthsmith! Oh, no ... I come half way across the galaxy to get here, so what are the odds against any particular room mate? Huge, that's what. But I got me--hello, Earthsmith."

It was the purple man, Jorak. He had just recently greased his shock of bright green hair, and he had turned away from the mirror when Smith opened the door. Now he turned back to the tinted glass and held his head at various angles.

"Well, can you change rooms if you want to?" Smith asked pleasantly.

"You're not going to chase me out of my own room, Earthsmith. You can change if you'd like. Not me."

"All right if you want me to I'll change."

"If I want you to! Don't pass the blame to me, Earthsmith. I didn't say a thing about changing, not me. Don't you think I'm good enough for you?"

"I don't care one way or the other," Smith said. "I suggested you change because I thought you'd be happier that way. Look, I'll mind my own business and pretend you are not even here. How's that?"

"Pretend I'm not here? Like cepheid you will. If you want to be ornery, Smith, or Earthsmith, or whatever your name is, I'll give you plenty to be ornery about. I'm a dominant, you know, so just watch out."

"I'll change if that will make you happy." Smith didn't want any trouble. He still felt more than a little strange and out of place here, and a fight with Jorak wouldn't help matters. Briefly, he wondered what sort of psi-powers Jorak possessed.

The purple man stood up. "What kind of a slap in the face is that? We haven't even started courses or anything. You think I'd need you to help me with my work or something?"

"No, I'm quite sure you wouldn't. But I'll change my room, anyway. I'll probably get in your way--"

"Well, I wouldn't get into your hair, satellite-head! If you think you're going to leave here and say I started a fight or something.... My father made quite a record for himself here at the school, and I'll have to beat it, of course."

"Of course," Smith agreed, but he did not really know why.

"Are you implying anyone, just anyone, could top my father's record, Earthsmith? Not a man from Gyra ever did it, and intellectually Gyra is top planet in its own sector. Not a woman from Bortinot came close, but then, you probably don't even know where Bortinot is."

Smith said no, he didn't, but he had just met a woman from Bortinot. Perhaps if he changed the subject....

Jorak ran his fingers up along each side of his shock of hair. They came away greasy green. "Exquisite, those women of Bortinot. But then, you probably wouldn't appreciate them, eh, Earthsmith?"

Smith said that he could appreciate them very well indeed, especially since, except for a few minor structural differences, they looked like women of Earth. It was a mistake, and the muscles in Jorak's cheeks began to twitch.

"I say they look exquisite, you say they look like women of Earth. Which is it, Earthsmith? Not both, surely--a contradiction in terms. I believe you're trying to provoke me."

Smith sighed. He wanted no trouble--they had spent a year with him on Earth, indoctrinating that. He was to be a paragon at the school, as Earth's first student there, he had to be a paragon--even if he turned out to be more awkward in this situation than the farmer on Earth everyone had called Rube.

"I think I will go to sleep," Smith said.

"Why, don't you men of Earth ever eat, Smith?"

Smith said yes, they ate, but he wasn't very hungry now. As a matter of fact, he was ravenously hungry, but he did not relish the idea of going to some public eating place either with Jorak or alone. His heart began to beat a little faster when he thought that he might meet Geria if he did, but then he felt the heat rise up his neck and into his cheeks. He'd hardly know what to say to her, and besides, he knew there was something he should remember but couldn't quite. No, he'd skip dinner this first day at the school.

Now he watched Jorak open the door and step into the hallway, and for a moment he heard gay voices and the shuffling of many feet, and Jorak's voice louder than the rest: "Kard of Shilon! How long has it been? I can remember that day near Raginsdild...."

Smith turned to the window, and for a long time he sat watching the fat red sun.

* * * * *

He got up early and he showered, and then he heard a clicking sound. Two cards had been deposited in a tray from a slot in the wall. At the top of one were the words "Jorak of Gyra," and Smith's name and planet were printed on the other. He picked it up and began to read, and then Jorak sat up and took the other card.

"Programs," said Jorak. "Everyone takes transtellar history, of course, and a section or two in the humanities. My electives are Wortan fighting and dream-empathy."

Smith smiled. "Me too--same program. I suppose we'll be in class together, Jorak."

"Rather stupid," the purple man observed. "They've given you a dominant's program. But then, I remember you questioned your receptive classification, and the registrar's known to do this on occasion, just to put you in your place. You'll be in Garlonian dancing in a few days, Earthsmith."

"Well, I sure hope not. I didn't come here to learn how to dance--"

"Hah! So what? If you're an R you'll learn how to dance and like it. Cook, too. There's no such thing as a misfit at the school, not permanently. They'll find you out soon enough, Earthsmith. Hmmm, wait till Kard of Shilon finds out what they've put in Wortan. Kard's top man in his sector, and it's just possible they'll pair you off with him.

"Well, you going to eat this morning? I'd hate to see you in Wortan without a good meal in you. But I suppose it really wouldn't help, anyway. Coming, Earthsmith?"

There weren't any people out in the hall this early, and Smith breathed more easily when they moved in a direction opposite that of Geria's room. Soon they had descended a score of levels, and the moving ramp became more crowded. Smith tried to ignore the eager hum of conversation, but it was all around him. He realized he should be feeling that way too. But you couldn't drum up a student's eager appetite within yourself, not when you didn't feel that way, not when your entire planet waited to see how you made out here and you felt unsure of yourself, even in such simple things as eating.

That part of it at least turned out better than Smith had hoped. There were eggs, and while he was sure he would not recognize the fowl if he saw it, he could at least order his over-light and get something familiar. And there were long strips of fatty meat which almost could have been bacon, except Smith was sure the pig wouldn't be a pig at all.

And Smith was lost in the hordes of white men, green men, purple, orange and brown, and no one paid him too much attention. Jorak busied himself remembering old times with a gruff burly orange man named Kard, whose planet was Shilon, and Smith ate in silence. Once he thought he saw Geria far off at another table, but it could have been his imagination, and when he looked again she was gone.

Home, Smith always had been a quick eater, but now he found himself pawing at his food. Soon the great dining room began to clear. Jorak and Kard leaned back in their chairs, watching Smith.

Jorak yawned. "How long does it take you to breakfast?"

"Different rate of digestion on Earth," Kard suggested.

"Don't be foolish. Earthsmith's in no hurry to attend his first class, so he's loafing. Right, Earthsmith?"

Smith mumbled something about unfamiliar food under his breath, and Jorak said, "Well, no matter. We'll give you another moment or two, Earthsmith. Then we'll have to be going. We all three have transtellar history, you know."

Smith knew it all too well. Gyra and Bortinot and Shilon were so many names to him and he silently cursed Earth's provincial histories. For those here at the school, the three names and a hundred others might be magical stepping stones to the culture, the lore, the history of a galaxy--but all Smith knew now was that Jorak came from Gyra, and so some of Gyra's people at least must be purple, that Geria came from Bortinot where the women were D and the men were R and where the women looked like those of Earth, that Kard, finally, came from a place that bore the name Shilon, where some of the men at least were orange. But Shilon could have been anyplace from the hub to the fringe, Gyra might swim dizzily out near Ophiuchus or it might be the new culture name for one of Earth's near neighbors. And Bortinot--he wished he knew more about Bortinot.

* * * * *

The instructor of transtellar history was a little fat man with a round gold face and green eyes that blinked too much. He wore the tight black uniform of the instructor and his green armband proclaimed his subject to be history. He smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been practicing it a long time and now forgot what it really meant.

"Greetings!" he cried jovially, after everyone had been seated on the long low benches around the room. "I bring you history. No one is to talk unless I tell him to. Everyone is to listen unless I tell him not to. Clear?" He smiled.

No one said anything.

"Excellent. History encompasses thousands of years and countless cubic parsecs. Only the big things count. We will forget the little things. Little things belong to little people and we of the school are the elite of a transtellar culture. Questions?"

There were none.

"Good, because I have some. What would you say was the first event of importance? Luog of Panden, talk."

Said green-skinned Luog, a very young Pandenian: "You mean ever?"

"I would have specified had I meant otherwise. Yes, ever. Talk, Luog of Panden."

"Well--"

"Halt a moment, please. Who thinks the question is a relative one which cannot properly be answered? I clair it is Brandog of Hulpin."

An albino woman three seats down from Smith flushed. "I am sorry," she said.

"Who told you to talk now? This is not Hulpin, Brandog. The course is intensive. You must concentrate. Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. No extraneous thoughts." The instructor smiled. "Luog of Panden, talk."

Smith felt the little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The instructor could read minds--and how many of these others could? They just sat there as if it were the most natural thing in the world....

Only Brandog of Hulpin seemed ruffled, and it would be many moments before her albino skin looked again like soft alabaster. But no one seemed to notice. Luog was saying, "--exodus from the prehistoric Sirian worlds to the first culture in the Denebian system, the Var one. More than ten thousand Vars ago."

"Satisfactory for a Receptive, Luog of Panden," the instructor smiled. "The Dominants would go back a bit further and talk of the Sirian wars, but that much is a matter of opinion, since the wars are largely mythical, anyway. And so we have set the stage for history. We have--"

* * * * *

Smith wanted to get up indignantly and tell the instructor, tell them all, what the most glorious epochs of history really were. You would find it in the museums of earth, on the plaques and in the statues and on the old old records of Earth. There was a lot Smith wanted to tell them because there was so much only he could tell them, so much they had forgotten.

But he merely sat and stared politely at the black-uniformed instructor. You don't show yourself as a provincial--what was the word?--rube, not when your culture, while temporarily the oldest, is in a lot of ways the most neophite of them all.

You just sat and stared, looking interested.

The instructor's voice cut into his thoughts, "Earth of Smith--"

"Smith of Earth," he said, automatically.

"I did not tell you to talk, Smith of Earth. And if your card says Earth of Smith, how am I to know? A mistake, yes--but an understandable one. I'm a historian, and I have heard of neither planet. Where is this Earth? Talk, Smith!"

He stood up, although it wasn't really necessary, and he could feel his knees trembling slightly. "Earth is a few parsecs from Sirius, and Sirius I think you know."

"I know Sirius. Now talk!"

"What is it you want me to say? I don't feel much like talking--"

"Yet you speak so loud that the room fairly rocks with it. I wanted you to tell us why you did not agree with the answer just now rendered. It is, I feel, a good one. Talk."

"Then I agree, it is a good one." Smith did not want to get involved. He wanted to be a good, quietly efficient student. Nothing more. But he forgot that the instructor could read minds.

"You lie, Smith of Earth. I won't go into it any further, because it is your privilege if you want to lie. But you are not to listen for the remainder of this lecture. Do not listen."

Smith nodded, cursed himself mentally because he had made such a mess of things here at his very first lecture, and headed for the door.

"Smith of Earth! Just where under the red sun do you think you are going?"

"You told me not to listen, so--"

"I didn't say talk. Talk now."

"--so I'm leaving the room."

"No one leaves until the lecture has been concluded. Sit if you will, or stand, but stay here. And do not listen."

Smith nodded, turned back to the row of benches dumbly. He found a place next to Brandog of Hulpin, sat near the albino woman. Down the bench, he saw Jorak grinning broadly. Smith did not know how he was going to sit there without listening, but he decided he'd better not ask that question now.

* * * * *

"This is your course in Wortan fighting," boomed the giant of an instructor. "Dominants only, or such Receptives as question their classification." The instructor's massive face was beefy, the color of new-spilled blood, and the muscles rippled and bulged and seethed under his black uniform.

"Me for this!" confided Kard of Shilon, slapping Smith's back. "Perhaps Jorak has told you that I am not without ability on the Wortan mats."

Smith hardly heard him. Two dozen paces across the room, on the other side of the circle that surrounded the instructor, stood Geria, hands on hips, lips soft-smiling when she saw Smith, silver tunic to her knees, yellow hair hanging free to shoulders.

"Join me, Smith of Earth?" she called, and knees watery again, Smith made his way around the circle.

While Jorak gaped, Geria took Smith's hand when they met half way around the circle, and she smiled up at him. "I wouldn't have believed it, but you're blushing again. Earth trait, Smith?"

"No, not really," he stammered.

The slim girl was about to say something, but the instructor cleared his throat ominously, and the room became silent again. "Now, then," declared the giant, "there's no trick to fighting with psi-powers. Anyone can do that, and the women of Bortinot, as you know, are particularly adept. But the people of Wortan have no such powers, and they must depend on tooth and nail, on sinew and bone and animal cunning. Such is the way the Wortanians do battle--and, purely for sport, such is the way of Wortan fighting. Any questions?"

"Yes," Geria told him, "I have one. Are we not permitted to use any psi-powers?"

"None. They disqualify you."

"Well, then I suppose I must withdraw from the course. I can't be expected to stand up to a man physically. I'm not built that way--and very few women are, Dominant or Receptive."

Smith had not expected this, but now he felt a warm glow in his breast. He almost wanted to put his arm about the woman's shoulders, protectively. How could such a delicate beautiful thing be expected to fight?

The instructor said, "I won't argue with you. I can't remember a woman ever lasting in Wortan fighting, but if they're Dominants they're automatically entered. The rest of you can do like--"

The words came out before Smith could stop them. "In that case, can anyone tell me the difference between a Dominant and a Receptive?"

There was a lot of laughter in the room, and Smith thought it would have been the same had he, as a child, asked the difference between boy and girl. "Ah, old Earthsmith!" he heard Jorak's voice. "Everytime he opens his mouth new wisdom spews forth."

Pale eyes looked out of the instructor's blood-red face. "Obviously, you're joking. I'm here to answer questions, among other things, but you couldn't be serious."

And Smith heard his own dull voice reply:

"No, certainly not. I was only joking."

Said Geria, "Silly, a Dominant has more psi-powers, that's all. But you really didn't know, did you?"

"There are no psi-powers on Earth to speak of," Smith reminded her.

"Hmm, very true. In that case, maybe you're all Receptives--male and female. But don't feel too badly, Smith; Wortan's the same way, and Wortan has a first-rate culture. Look: they even have an instructor here at the school."

The instructor of Wortan fighting was a Wortanian, of course. And here, in Wortan fighting, Smith might feel at home. But he hardly expected to excel at the school by breaking someone's back, or pinning him helplessly to the Wortan mat. Suddenly he found himself thinking of Earth, thinking of the trust that had been put in him as Earth's first student at the school. But his thoughts did not remain there long--his eyes took in the soft yellow of Geria's hair, and Earth faded far away.

"--volunteers," the instructor was saying. "Does anyone want to step on the mat with me for a fall or two?"

"I recommend Earthsmith," came Jorak's voice. "Positively--Earthsmith's your man."

Smith felt his face becoming very red again, but Geria nudged him with an elbow. "Go ahead, Smith--why not? You told me once you didn't fear anyone in the room of the registrar, not in physical combat. Go ahead."

"I know, but--"

"Go ahead, Smith. Show me."

He could do that. Yes, he could show her. But what if he were wrong--they might know a trick or two that would make him look foolish. And he wouldn't want that, not in front of Geria. "I am tired," he said. "I didn't sleep well last night."

The instructor rescued him. "I didn't ask you to recommend. I asked for volunteers. But you who spoke, what's your name?"

"I am Jorak of Gyra," said Jorak, purple face paling.

"You'll do. On the mat, man of Gyra."

Jorak stepped forward, slowly, in no hurry to meet the giant. Smith heard Kard's mocking laugh. "Ho, Jorak--he'll tear you in half. Now if he had asked for a man of Shilon ... a real man...."

And still laughing, the Shilonian heaved mightily with both his hands and sent Jorak stumbling out onto the mat. The man of Gyra fell and skidded on his stomach, turned over once and finally came up into a sitting position at the instructor's feet. Kard was grinning, but Jorak saw nothing funny in what had happened. He stood up slowly, wheezing, and his gaze raked the circle. It flicked past Kard rapidly, kept going, poised a moment on Geria, then reached Smith. Jorak shook his fist. "All right, Earthsmith, I'll get you for this."

Geria smiled. "I would say that you have an enemy there."

The instructor bellowed a warning and came for Jorak.

* * * * *

For some reason Smith found he couldn't keep his eyes off the fray, and he found his own breath coming in ragged gasps. Geria watched with a dispassionate interest. "Poor man of Gyra," she said. "It might be a different story if he could use some of his psi-powers. The men of Gyra have a little of that, you know."

"Well, why can't he?"

"He'd be disqualified, shamed--and maybe worse. I never knew that psi-powers were not permitted on the Wortan mat, but I did know that the rules must be adhered to rigidly."

The instructor's massive body stood between them and Jorak, and one of the great arms circled the man of Gyra's neck. Jorak's purple face glared straight at Smith, and his body thrashed and wriggled furiously, like a snake, head held fast by a forked stick. Abruptly, the instructor stepped back and let go. Jorak fell and lay writhing on the mat, legs and arms pounding.

"Brute strength is what we want in Wortan," said the instructor, smoothing his black uniform.

Said Kard of Shilon: "You outweigh Jorak, but I see your point. I wonder how you would do with a man of Shilon."

The instructor smiled. "Well, we will pair off now. You can select me, if you wish. Those who want to drop out of the course, step back from the circle. We need room--"

All the women moved away, slowly, reluctantly. They were Dominants, every one, and Smith sensed they longed to use their psi-powers. Some of them trembled nervously from the exhibition they had seen, some wiped sweat from white and pink and green brow. One tall albino woman seemed hesitant, stepped back toward the circle, but she backed away again when a gold man big as Kard of Shilon strode forward eagerly.

Against the wall stood the dozen women, rapt eyes intent on the men as they paired off. And this, Smith thought bitterly, is culture. This is what Earth had missed by closing its star lanes. Well, Earth....

"Don't sulk, Smith of Earth," Geria told him, and Smith realized, shamefully, that he had slunk off with the women. "I say there is something glorious about fighting tooth and nail. Not depraved, certainly, unless you insist on judging it by a hidebound ethic. Go back to the mats, Smith--for me."

He looked long at the woman, saw no guile in her eyes. Who was he to judge? Could he dare pass judgment on a society that had left Earth behind a score of thousand years ago? The men of Earth hadn't sent him here, half way across the galaxy to do that.

* * * * *

He turned and walked stiffly to the mats. By now the men had paired off two and two, stood facing each other in pairs. Kard of Shilon and the thick-thewed instructor, great gold man and chunky red, reed-slender green man and giant orange, albinos two like alabaster statues.

From the circle came Jorak, hands to bruised neck. He stopped, looked Smith up and down grimly, smiled. "You have no partner, Earthsmith?"

"I'm looking for one."

"Well, look no more. I am tired and hurt, but I'd like to join you on the mat." He shrugged. "Of course, if you're afraid--"

Smith still did not feel like fighting. It might as well be Jorak as any other--he certainly had more reason to fight Jorak. Vaguely, it seemed a needless expenditure of energy. But he had done it again: he had put the shoe on the wrong foot--he, Smith, stood up for judgment, not the school. "Good enough, Jorak," he said.

In a moment, the instructor signaled them all to begin, and Smith had one brief look at the dozen pairs of men, grappling, heard the instructor shout, "one fall, and one fall only!" And then Jorak was upon him.

Jorak seemed for all the world like a snake, writhing and twisting with a deceptive sinewy strength. But calmly Smith stepped out of his reach, cuffing his ears roundly when he came too close.

"You're afraid, afraid, afraid!" Jorak taunted. "Fight!"

Smith shrugged. If he did not want to fight, he did not want to. But the women hooted, and they were hooting him, all but Geria who remained glumly silent.

"This is getting me nowhere," Jorak hissed. "You're making me look like a fool, Earthsmith." Perspiration bathed the purple face, stained the sides of Jorak's tunic darkly.

And then he smiled. Smith felt giddy, hardly could keep his legs under him, yet hardly had Jorak touched him. Then the man of Gyra was using his psi-powers, despite the sanction. Oddly, Smith felt detached from it all. Let him use his powers then--that would end it. Let him....

"Fight back, Smith!" Geria cried.

Jorak's powers were not like the woman's. He could induce giddiness, yes, but not in any overpowering quantities. Smith swayed foolishly, tipped first to left, then to right, stood for a moment with arms at sides. Jorak rushed upon him and struck out with both fists, and Smith stumbled back half a dozen steps, crashed into a pair of struggling figures, was dimly aware that both fell.

Jorak came on, cocky, confident, and Smith rocked for a moment on the balls of his feet. Once and once only he lashed out with his right arm, smeared Jorak's nose flat against his face. Jorak toppled backward and fell, writhing.

Smith looked around him, panting. The other contestants ceased their struggles, and the instructor said:

"Someone has used psi. I don't know who, but someone--"

Jorak pointed weakly, said, "Earthsmith!"

"Snap judgment," the instructor admitted. "Your word only. Still, you alone were bested, Jorak of Gyra--and, hah, that makes twice, doesn't it?"

"Once with psi," said Jorak.

"You sure?"

"I ought to know what hit me! He held me rigid, I tell you, and then he struck me. What could I do? I ask you, what?"

Smith knew that the instructor could read minds--with limitations. He knew the psi-power had been used, but he did not know who had used it.

* * * * *

Jorak wiped the blood from his face with the back of one hand. "Listen," he confided, "Earthsmith is a savage, really and truly, of the planet Earth. Terribly barbaric. Obviously, he'd have no compunctions against dirty fighting."

"Well--" said the instructor.

"There's only one thing wrong with all this," Smith told him. "Nobody on Earth uses psi-power."

Jorak slapped his hand against the mat. "Then you admit that there are psi-powers on Earth?"

"Yes," Smith said. "There are psi-powers on Earth." Things were happening to Smith. He felt vague stirrings inside of him, and he dampered them.

"There. He admits it," Jorak said. "The men of Earth are not without their psi-powers, and Smith or Earthsmith--I still don't know the barbarian's name--used them on me." He shook his fist. "You just can't trust these barbarians."

The instructor still did not seem sure of himself, but there were angry mutterings in the crowd, and the albino woman who had almost but not quite joined the fighters said, "Let me try a fall with him. Probably I would lose, but we of Nugat can perceive the psi-powers readily."

Smith stormed away from her, felt hot anger rushing through him. "I wouldn't fight with a woman."

Jorak taunted, "He's afraid she'll discover--"

"Nothing! I'm afraid of nothing, Jorak. I just won't fight a woman." He was shouting now, and he couldn't help it. Again, there was the odd feeling that part of his mind at least stood away from all this, observing, shaking its head and telling him to curb his temper.

A hand lay heavily on his shoulder, big gnarled, orange. "Kard of Shilon would like a fall with you, Earthsmith of Earth. Perhaps I am not as subtle as the woman from Nugat, but still I think I could tell."

The instructor nodded, and Kard spun Smith around, kept him spinning with a short chopping blow to his jaw. Smith hardly felt it. But something told him deep inside his whirling brain to fall, fall, fall--and the faintest shadow of a smile flickered across Jorak's lips.

Win or lose--what was the difference? Those who could would feel the psi-powers, and Smith would be their man.

By crotch and collar he caught the huge man of Shilon, lifted him. Kard's arms and legs flailed air, helplessly. He bellowed as Smith began to whirl, slowly at first, but then faster. Up he raised the great orange hulk, held it aloft on outstretched arms for one moment--hurled it.

Arms and legs still flailing wildly, Kard struck the mat, seemed almost to bounce, landed in a heap atop Jorak.

Geria jumped up and down delightedly, but the woman of Nugat scowled. "Psi," she said. "I felt it."

"As did I," admitted the instructor. "Faintly. Smith of Earth--"

"Don't tell me you didn't see me use my arms then, just my arms?"

"Kard appeared awful helpless--"

"I felt the psi," said the woman of Nugat.

"And I," a man agreed.

"As I said," Jorak declared smugly, "when you bring a barbarian to the school you must expect barbarous behavior. Oh well," he stifled a yawn, "I'll get my nose fixed, of course, but this sort of thing could continue. Unpleasant, is it not?"

The instructor nodded slowly, dismissed class.

* * * * *

"Did you or didn't you, Smith?"

"What do you think, Geria?"

"I'd say no, but I did feel the psi when you threw Kard."

"That was Jorak--and he used it on me."

"Not very strong then, because I remember how readily I--"

"Look, Geria. What's the difference? They've made up their minds, and I can't do a thing about it. I didn't use the psi, I can tell you that and you'll believe me. But it doesn't matter, really. They're convinced. What happens next?"

The woman of Bortinot frowned. "I don't know. They could expel you possibly. You forget I'm new at the school, too. Let's forget all about it. You will, anyway, in dream empathy."

It was easy for her to say that, but Smith couldn't forget. The more he had tried to convince them he had not employed the psi-power, could not employ it, the more they thought that he did. He was of Earth--primitive by their standards, a barbarian. They had said so. Culture had leaped past Earth in all directions, had leaped so far that he could not even recognize it as such, had encompassed the stars and broad new concepts as big as the parsecs of space between the stars. How could he understand--ever?

Or was there anything to understand? If he could take everything at its face value, if he could trust his own judgment, this was not culture at all. But he had forgotten again: his judgment didn't matter. He was being judged, not the school.

"--be strictly a neophyte in dream empathy," Geria was saying. "But not me. I've had my share of it on Bortinot, and they'll be pairing us off, experienced and novice. I'll take you as a partner if you'd like, Smith."

"You bet I'd like it!" He felt genuinely cheerful again, quite suddenly. Geria was the one bright spot at the school, and at least he had that. And yet there was something he could not remember, something pushing against the fringes of consciousness, and it concerned Geria. What actually had happened yesterday on the crags? He could remember, remember--but he couldn't at all, not really, and somehow he knew that the most important item of all remained tantalizingly close, yet just beyond his immediate reach.

He said, "Just what is this dream empathy?"

"Now you are joking."

"No. I don't know a thing about it."

"What do you people of Earth do for entertainment?"

"Well, we talk, or we dance, or we play games, ride horses, take walks in the country, see a show--anything anyone else does, I guess."

"No one else does any of that, because d.e.'s a lot better. You know anything about dreams, Smith?"

"A little. Very little. They've always been something of a mystery on Earth."

"Well, do you read or watch the telios on Earth?"

"Of course. But it's strictly local stuff on Earth. That's why I'm here."

"Well, if it's fiction, why do you read?"

"Excitement I guess. Interest, suspense. I watch the hero, I struggle with him, succeed when he does if the book's a good one--"

"Exactly. You go into empathy with him. Smith--how would you like to do that--with me?"

"Hunh?"

"Take a dream. I dream it, not you. It's a good one, under control. A vivid dream, more real than life itself in a lot of ways, emotions highlighted, maintained, increased--and exactly what I want to dream because I know we'll both like it.

"I dream it, not you. But you feel it with me. You grow tired of your own thoughts, so you switch in on someone else's. Control there. Gorgeous dreams, fantastic dreams, even horrible ones, if both would like it. Complete empathy--in a dream world.

"Then later, when you're experienced, you dream and I emp. How does it sound, Smith?"

He smiled. "Not much privacy. But I'd be a liar if I said I wouldn't want to take a peek at your dreams, Geria. It sounds fine."

Geria laughed softly, a lilting feminine sound. "It's a little more private than that, provided I know what I'm doing. There's a control. I can dream what I want, and can restrict it. You'll see."

Smith very much wanted to see. Almost, he forgot about Jorak and the psi-power. But briefly in his mind he saw the black uniformed giant from Wortan, felt again the flailing Kard raised high overhead, saw accusation in the woman of Nugat's eyes....

* * * * *

They lay on two adjacent couches, Smith and the woman of Bortinot. A bare cubicle of a room with just the two couches in it. A door, now closed, led into a room in which they had received their instructions. But Smith hardly had listened. Geria knew the game well enough, and he'd let it go at that. The rasping voice of the female instructor had annoyed him, anyway, but he noticed that she was a woman of Bortinot, not beautiful like Geria, but of her planet nonetheless.

"Psi-powers again," Geria told him. "Hypnotism and telepathy mostly. You'll see...."

Something which looked like a candle-flame seen through a long dark tube flickered from the ceiling. It came closer, steadied, flickered no more. Smith couldn't draw his eyes away from it.

"You're asleep," Geria told him, matter-of-factly.

He was. Not really, because in sleep there was a lack of awareness. But he could not move and everything was dark and he could only think.

He felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. A mind without a body, in complete darkness. The tingle of awareness which you hardly regard as such because it always is with you was gone. Nothing.

And then it returned. He felt his heart beating again. His ear itched and he scratched it. He shifted his left arm which had fallen asleep.

Oddly, the ceiling light had moved. It had been just to the right of center--now it was just to the left, flickering again, retreating. It was gone.

He turned over on his left side, sleepily, contentedly--on the brink of real sleep. Geria knew what she was doing. He'd rest. He looked--at his own sleeping figure!

Madness toyed with the edges of his mind, gained inroads, made him look again. The silent figure to his left--himself. He raised his hands, felt the hair, long, flowing, billowing about his head--looked down, could see the gentle rounded rise of breast.

A voice nibbled at consciousness, repeated itself, became clearer, laughing: "We will go to sleep now, Smith. How does it feel to be here with me? Let's dream. Dream--"

The voice reassured, and Smith-Geria relaxed, slept.

* * * * *

He, Geria of Bortinot--really she, then--stood on a hill. A weathered hill and aged, on a frigid world where winds of winter raged and howled and battered mountains into submissive mounds. Fearful place, grim and almost dead it was--and yet he liked it. Smiling, he stood atop the hill and bade the tempest strike. The winds hurled him headlong and he stumbled, but he felt elated, wild and free, part of the elements that did battle there in that country of the weathered hills. And there were others and they were men. They came up the hill and they tried to take him in their arms, strong men and fair, but he ran laughing with the wind. His identity faded in that wind, was torn to tatters by it--left only was Geria of Bortinot, her feelings, her thoughts, but his awareness.

She stumbled, fell, turned over and over, much too slowly. Winds still howled, but above her here at hill's bottom. Wraiths of fog swirled in eddying gusts, came closer and faded, appeared again and swept away.

She cried a name because the fog brought her an image and the name and the image were one. "Smith of Earth, of Earth, of Earth...." And he came to her, this image, on a charger, an animal much too thick through the shoulders to be a horse, with three pairs of legs. Low out of saddle he leaned, graceful, handsome bald head pink with excitement. He clutched at her, lifted her through the mists, above them. The six-legged horse soared high, above the hills, above the winds, carried her higher and higher. Smith stroked her yellow hair, kissed her. She tingled....

[Illustration]

* * * * *

"Wake up Smith! Up, come on now, the class is over for today."

He stirred. The dream--Gods of Earth, what a dream!

"Well, how'd you like it? See what I mean about dream empathy, Smith? Beats everything, doesn't it?"

Smith hardly heard her. They say dreams fulfill wishes, they say--and what was it Geria had dreamed? Suddenly, it was very important to Smith, terribly important, more important than anything, because he remembered, without knowing how or why, what had happened yesterday on the crags.

"Geria," he said. He tried to make his voice soft, but it boomed loudly, almost startled her.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Why nothing is the matter. You remember yesterday on the crag, Geria?"

She nodded.

"And your dream--Geria?"

Again, the casual nod.

"Geria, I--I love you. I think I want to marry you. I think--"

He stopped. She looked at him for what seemed a long time but really was only a few seconds, and then she grinned. There was nothing malicious about it, Smith knew, just a grin. It spread, and the woman of Bortinot began to laugh. Softly at first, but soon she was laughing very hard and Smith felt foolish. He wanted very much to be out of there, any place but in that room, but he did not know for sure that he knew how to operate the door.

"Oh, Smith, Smith," she said, "if you could see yourself now. But I suppose I deserve it. I planted the suggestion, you fought it, now you're pretending. All right, I admit defeat. But stop now; you should see your face."

Serious. She was serious. She thought he was joking. Post-suggestively you tried to get someone to do something--anything, and it was very very funny if they did. Funnier yet if they didn't, because then they beat you at your own game, made fun of you, laughed at you, but eventually with you. Of course it was like that, let her think it was like that.

He smiled. "All right, I'll--stop."

And together, laughing, they walked out of the room. Smith was surprised to find he had no trouble at all with the door.

* * * * *

Jorak had a friendly smile for Smith when he entered their room. "There's a card for you in the box, Smith. Read it." Jorak, it seemed, had stopped playing with his name.

Smith took the card, read it. "Smith of Earth, report to Registrar at once."

"You know why, don't you?" Jorak asked him. But the smile was no longer friendly.

"How should I know?"

"Trouble, that's what. But you asked for it. Psi and Wortan don't mix, barbarian."

Smith was glad when he hardly felt any impulse to strike the purple man. But he said, mocking Jorak's own tones, "Don't provoke me," and Jorak cowered in a corner.

* * * * *

Smith looked into the banks of the Registrar's lights, spoke into the speaker. "Smith of Earth," he said. This time his voice didn't boom with loudness. And it didn't seem to matter much anymore.

And this time, the Registrar's voice wasn't so femininely petulant. It sounded masculine, authoritative.

"Smith of Earth. Item. Garnot of Jlob feels you are an inferior history student, recommends withdrawal from the school.

"Item: Sog-chafka of Wortan announces your wanton use of psi-powers in Wortan fighting, recommends clemency because you are a barbarian.

"Item: Kard of Shilon wants to meet you in Wortan again. Promises to kill you.

"Item: both Jorak of Gyra and Geria of Bortinot have questioned your mentality, want you tested."

Vaguely Smith listened. He felt removed, resigned. But then certain words struck hard....

" ... Geria of Bortinot questions your mentality....

"Smith of Earth. Are you listening?"

"I'm listening," Smith said.

"I feel you have two choices," the Registrar said. "We can request your withdrawal from the school, or we can keep you here under observation and give you an exhaustive battery of tests. The decision is in your hands."

" ... Geria of Bortinot questions your mentality...."

" ... the decision is in your hands."

Jorak moved, slipped along the wall. His face was sneering and fearful too. The purple mask of his face seemed to swim before Smith's eyes like something seen through watered glass. Smith was pacing. He felt the emotions beginning to work yeastily and he longed to take that face and twist it off its snaky neck.

"You had better go back to Earth, Smith," Jorak said. "Wherever it is."

Abruptly, Smith felt the tendons writhing between his hands. He lifted. He held the squirming figure off the floor, held it there and looked into it curiously.

"You'd better use some of your psi-power, my little green friend," Smith said, "While you can."

The green face was turning purple. Words choked off somewhere down in the tubular length of the neck. Smith could feel it now! He could feel it! And he knew. The desperate tendrils of psi-power flailing out. And Smith began to smile.

"I could tell you some things, Jorak. You have some psi-power, but that and anything else you've got, including some very bad features, you got them all from Earth. You got the germs for it all a long time back. And what you have left is just something that's a kind of left-over after a few thousand years. The Earth has forgotten more psi-power, friend, than you'll ever have."

Jorak's eyes popped. Veins were coloring thickly through them.

"You're here to learn something, Jorak. Listen. We developed psi-power on Earth so long ago we don't bother remembering when it was."

Smith felt the power all right. Latent psi-power, dormant and unused and unneeded and uninteresting for aeons.

He threw Jorak into the corner. Jorak curled up there, sucking in air and rubbing his bruised neck.

"We had it. We threw it away," Smith said. "We had a defense against it too. But we don't use psi, or the defense anymore. We outgrew it. It had its day and then we forgot about it, Jorak. Why? We lost interest. Individual sanctity was better. Privacy of the human mind was something a lot more to be desired than being able to pry into someone else's brain, or vice versa. But you take a lot of pride, Jorak, in having a little residue floating around."

Smith grinned more widely. It was funny in a way, and sad too. And he didn't particularly care about pushing it any further.

" ... the decision is in your hands."

* * * * *

He wished his thoughts would organize, fuse somehow with the stirring, rebelling emotions. Integration right now was vital. You lose, or you're not equal to something. And a really top-notch defense-mechanism will turn the whole thing around and say IT is not equal to YOU. That's a danger. And of that he was afraid.

Could he, should he, pass judgment? On a culture that had left Earth wallowing in the cosmic back-waters? Twice, thrice, he had tried to pass that judgment, but he could not. He should be judged, theoretically, not the school.

So what if their concept of history was primitive, basking in its own importance, ignoring the philosophical precepts upon which the social sciences are based? Surely they had reason, and he shouldn't question....

And if they valued Wortan fighting above all else ... if it made their women look like eager animals waiting to see the blood spill ... how could he question? Why should he dare assume that the whole culture was depraved, simply because he regarded it that way by Earth standards?

And their dream empathy was enjoyable, he had to admit that--but it was too enjoyable. No wonder Earth had dropped that sort of thing long ago. It was a good gimmick to divert attention from important things. It was also regressive, a kind of sick introversion. It was decadence, an invasion of privacy, an offense against the dignity of human privacy of the mind--the individual's last precarious citadel.

He jumped a little when the Registrar barked: "Your decision, Smith of Earth."

He smiled at the bank of lights. He had broad duties. He had a duty to Earth. And an indirect duty to the Galaxy. He should report all this. And Earth should try to do something to bring many worlds out of sloth, decadence, regression and inverted self-importance.

But first of all, a man had a duty to himself, his own psychic health. Maybe the two weren't inseparable either. Maybe Earth would share the humiliation if he, Smith, suffered its scars to remain on him.

He wanted to consider himself as more than a mere projection of Earth, more than a mere symbol. He was of Earth, sure. But first of all he was Smith. Just plain Smith. A guy with a human spirit, with dignity that could be affronted and had been here.

He thought of Geria, of what that dream empathy had suggested. He felt her lips again, the softly curving line of her hips under the silver tunic to her knees, the yellow hair falling free to shoulders....

"Your decision, Smith of Earth," the Registrar's voice was louder.

"I'm not going back to Earth," said Smith softly. "Yet."

He watched Jorak slipping up the side of the wall, then rushing out the exit.

Smith went to the exit too, then into the hall. He started walking down it, and the smile clung to his lips like an old memory.

* * * * *

From the monochromatic light harmonies playing softly from the walls, from the abstract gentleness of music that never stopped filtering through the gardens and over the mists of fountains, from the ever-coruscating and subdued twilight that surrounded the school--from these things, Smith extracted the tone of decadence, the static, hidebound turning of a wheel upon itself.

The women from Bortinot stared oddly at him as his bulk, high and broad passed near. He heard their whispers ... "barbarian ... savage...."

His smile broadened. The cycle closed. Strange, how the old became decadent, and the young revolted and itself became sophisticated and sick, and the old became young again and the old values turned fresh and clear like a tree blooming out of winter's snow.

The sounds of voices died abruptly as Smith went in. Faces turned ... Brandog of Hulpin with the albino skin like alabaster; Luog the young, green-skinned Pandenian ... varieties of form and color ... the white, pink, orange and green brows. But there was the sameness of inversion and static culture.

Mouths gaped as Smith strode up to the front of the class room in transtellar history and looked curiously at the little man with the round gold face and green eyes that still blinked too much, and who, even now, smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been practicing a long time and had forgotten what it meant.

But Garnot of Jlob's smile was slightly strained now and his face had a pale look, under its sheath of gold.

"What a boorish intrusion," the instructor said. His voice got higher. "The entire school knows of course, Earth of Smith...."

"Smith of Earth," Smith said softly.

"Whatever it is, the entire school knows that already you have disgraced yourself and your planet--which was to be expected. And that I have recommended your withdrawal from the school as an inferior student."

"And so," Smith said.

"Therefore, it should be obvious that you are not particularly welcome as a member of this class. Surely you have not chosen to remain, and even if you have, it should be obvious that you will not be part of any class of mine until you have successfully passed certain tests, and have been kept under observation. Need I add that after you have taken these tests, we will not be expecting you to remain...."

Several students tittered.

"I'm going to talk now, Garnot of Jlob," Smith said. "You asked me questions earlier. Now I'm going to answer them."

"But I did not...."

"They're questions that should be answered, even though I'm not at all sure that there's enough free-thought here to grasp the real meaning of what I'm going to say."

"I did not tell you to talk."

"I'm Smith of Earth, and this is supposedly a free institution. On Earth I wasn't accustomed to being told when I could talk, when I could listen, when I could think. You asked me once where Earth is. I'll tell you."

"But I do not care and...."

"Earth, interstellarly speaking, is a few parsecs from Sirius. Spaceo-graphically speaking, it isn't very important where it is, not really. Historically, it was at the apex of civilized culture before Jlob ever existed except as a steaming carboniferous swamp peopled largely by a species of amphibian. Socio-psychologically, Earth is a few aeons ahead of the worlds so badly represented here."

"You have not been told to talk!" screamed Garnot of Jlob.

"But you are supposed to listen," Smith insisted. A gasp sounded through the room. "You asked what was the first interstellar event of importance. I'm going to tell you." He turned so that he was looking at the class. "It wasn't the exodus from the prehistoric Sirian worlds to the first culture in the Denebian system. Nor was it the Sirian wars. Those things didn't set the stage for Interstellar history. Interstellar history had already begun and grown old on the planet Earth, half a million years before...."

An intensity boiled up through the wick of Smith's body. "The question itself is shallow, meaningless in an academic sense. It was asked only to be answered in such a way as to reinforce egotistical concepts of culture. The most important event in Interstellar history was when men on the planet Earth developed speech perhaps, or some other event even long before that ... and started the scientific process that led finally to the most glorious epoch in history. And what was that? I can remember with pride the engravings of the first proud Earth ships that blasted off for the Centaurian system aeons ago. And other pictures of the early days of the new Centaurian culture, and still others. Of discontent and over-population. And the migration to Sirius.

"Or even earlier, of the stern, thin-lipped face of Matthew Merkle whose tincan of a spaceship carved a loop in space around the Moon--a satellite of Earth--and returned.

"You think of history in terms of challenge and response, and the earlier challenges were the most significant ones. It was harder to get a spaceship across a mere quarter of a million miles to the Moon then, than it is to send it, translight, to the farthest star today."

Garnot of Jlob was quivering. His face had a deep purplish cast.

Smith turned completely around, his back to the instructor.

"If you want the truth about interstellar history, my friends, come to Earth. That was where it started. That's where anything decent about it has remained. And I'm not at all sure that Earth isn't where it will end ... if it ever really ends."

Half way to the exit, he turned to Garnot of Jlob. "You can stop trying to use psi-power to make me shut up, you pompous phony."

Laughing softly, Smith went out and down the hall. Behind him he heard a loud coughing as though someone was choking.

* * * * *

The word had spread before him to the room where Sog-chafka of Wortan, and Kard of Shilon, and the crowd waited. The two giants were on the mats and around the rows of up-circling benches, were the eager, hungry faces of the women of Bortinot. The Dominants, their lips moist and slightly open and their eyes shiny with anticipation.

Geria stared at him, her body shifting slightly, her lips apart and her teeth shining white, eyes glistening. He remembered how the kiss had been. He smiled at her. She seemed scornful now, a little sad, pitying, as he walked onto the mats.

"Ah, Earthsmith," boomed the instructor. His massive blood-colored face was shiny as he stood there, muscles rippling and seething under the black uniform. Kard of Shilon grinned. The spectators laughed as Smith tripped on the mat and almost sprawled.

Kard of Shilon said, "I'm going to kill you, Earthsmith."

Smith said, "That's an odd way to express your elite tastes, Kard, but I can understand how you feel. Earth knew a lot of killing in its day."

To Sog-chafka, Smith said, "You accused me of using psi-power in Wortan fighting. It was kind of you to recommend clemency. However, I deny the accusation."

"He has psi-power," screamed Jorak of Gyra from the top bench. He shook green fists.

"You said only a few Earthmen had psi-power," Sog-chafka said.

"I didn't. I said it's never used on Earth. There's a difference."

"You said you...."

"Didn't use it," Smith said. "What psi-power you have, came from Earth. We of Earth developed it. But it's been a long time since we have bothered with it. But though I'm a little bit rusty now, I'll show you--"

None of them ever knew what a dreadful moment that was for Smith ... who knew his capacity for psi-power, but had never bothered to use it before.

He concentrated.

Twenty Dominant women of Bortinot fell writhing on the mats.

They writhed for a while, then got up and sat down again. Perspiration was heavy on their faces, and they panted heavily, and their eyes were slightly glazed with psychic shock.

Smith's head ached. But he would never show it. He was rusty all right.

Sog-chafka and Kard shifted once and seemed uneasy.

Smith said. "I did that to demonstrate a point, which is that if I want to use psi-power here, I'll not fool around with any puny amount of it such as I was accused of doing earlier. I prefer fighting the Wortan way. Psi-power fighting is pretty unhealthy stuff. Minds getting all wrapped up together in combat. It's finally like beating yourself...."

Smith laughed at the two giants. "Well," he said.

Kard rushed. Smith dropped to hands and knees, pinched Kard's legs, held them perpendicular from the knees down. Kard's rushing weight carried his body on over. His knees popped. He screamed and fell moaning on the mat.

Sog-chafka was already rushing and he tried to duck as Smith lunged upward. The sound in the room was cracking and sharp. Sog-chafka, the instructor in Wortan fighting, stumbled back and his thick arms dug at the air and a laxness showed under the skin-tight black uniform. Blood ran on the mats as Sog-chafka refused to go down any further than his knees. His head hung loosely and he slowly raised his blood-shot eyes.

His massive face twisted. Kard of Shilon lay groaning a little, nursing dislocated knees.

Sog-chafka remained bent, powerful thighs driving as his toes dug into the mat in a pounding, hurtling running dive, head down, hands reaching. It was a ferocious thing to see. Smith could hear the gasps of anticipation as he waited.

* * * * *

Smith chopped down with cupped hands as he stepped aside. He brought his knee up into Sog-chafka's face and the instructor spun crazily across the mat, his body sinking lower and lower and finally sliding forward on his belly and lying there without moving at all. "Brute strength," Smith said, "is what you want on Wortan."

Smith glanced at Geria. "As you said earlier, Geria, there's something glorious about fighting tooth and nail. That's what you said."

Smith's foot was jerked from under him as Kard heaved. Smith's heavy body thudded on the mat. Before he could twist around, Kard's powerful arm was around his throat. Smith's wind was cut off. He felt his eyes bulge, and he knew that Kard would kill him. "I think, Earthsmith, it only right you should come down here with me!"

Smith put his right hand under Kard's right elbow. He clenched Kard's right wrist with the other hand. He pushed up with his right hand, heaved down with his left. Kard screamed a second time as his elbow popped.

He had to let go or his arm would break, so he let go. As Kard rolled free, Smith aimed for that vital point just to the left of the tip of Kard's chin. The back of Kard's head thudded on the mat, his eyes rolled up.

Smith got to his feet. He could hear Jorak of Gyra yelling. "He used psi! He used psi!"

Smith hated to acquire another headache, but he felt this had to be done. He concentrated on Jorak who started to sweat. Then Jorak came down to the mats and began to writhe and hop around in a weird and formless dance. Round and round the mats Jorak danced, his face working fitfully.

Sog-chafka was on one knee. His face was swelling and blood ran from his chin. He grinned and a broken tooth fell out. He looked up at the row of spectators. "He didn't use any psi on me. I guess you could say it wasn't necessary."

There was no applause from the spectators. There was a kind of bitter ferment working, a wonderment and a suspicion and a dull kind of shock that blanks out facing unpleasant truths.

Smith started past the first row, then stopped and looked down at the woman. He'd miss her, she had seen to that, and she had only been jesting. He'd think of how it might have been, at another time, in another way--but he'd forget in time. You forgot and you grew. Especially, when you had a job to do.

"There's one thing this school has," he said, "that Earth doesn't have ... and never did ... and probably never will. And that is Geria of Bortinot."

When he went out, she was staring after him with an odd expression he couldn't identify. And behind her, Jorak of Gyra danced round and round the mats.

* * * * *

The Registrar's lights blinked with what might almost have been nervousness.

"Smith of Earth. Item: Garnot of Jlob has withdrawn his recommendation that you leave the school. However, his transtellar history class will have a new instructor for a week. His name is Khrom of Khaldmar.

"Item: Sog-chafka of Wortan withdraws his accusation that you used psi-power in Wortan fighting. Wortan fighting classes have been dropped for two weeks.

"Item: Kard of Shilon does not wish to meet you again in Wortan.

"Item: Jorak of Gyra and Geria of Bortinot do not question your mentality and formally request that you release Jorak from psi-power suggestion which is causing Jorak to dance himself to death."

Smith listened rather absently and then went to the window and looked out over the strange landscape.

"Smith of Earth ... as yet you have not taken the battery of tests here, and the tests will determine your stay here. The choice is yours. We can request your withdrawal from the school, or we can keep you here. Your Dominant classification has been thoroughly validated. We are sure you would be happy here, and the tests will be presented in such a way that you will...."

Well, he hadn't let himself down. He'd defended his integrity as a human being. But he'd been told not to let Earth down.

Well, would he be letting Earth down by leaving? Would he be? If he returned and said that the galaxy had a school but we'd better not send students because the school is decadent--could Earth stand up in the face of its pricked bubble?

What is, and what is not, letting your planet down? Smith knew it for an almost meaningless phrase, standing here before the clicking Registrar. The important thing was to learn, for from learning are sowed the seeds of progress, and surely he had learned.

Yes, he had learned a great deal about the Galactic culture.

The Registrar's voice droned on, being very logical and again petulant in a feminine way. It was a compliant machine. It got along well, maintaining a nice balance, with everyone. With Dominants it became slightly recessive. With Receptives, it was just a little bit Dominant.

He watched the monstrous blotch of the red star, swelling and crimson, old and fading, yet filling a quarter of the sky, like a fat old man, getting fatter while his brain rotted away in his skull.

He turned as the door opened. His breath shortened as she came toward him. Smith rubbed his bald pate, and felt the heat rise to his face.

"You made a fool of me, Smith," she whispered. "Now you're blushing ... and that's just an act isn't it? You're still making a fool of me."

"No," he said. "The way I felt about you and the things I said, I meant them. I still do."

"But you let me use that psi-power on you ... and ... and if you'd wanted to ... you could have...." He stared. She was sobbing a little.

He had felt it before, but the feeling was strong enough now to motivate action. He put his arms about her, protectively. He looked out the window at the cragged horizon and the dying red star behind.

"The psi-power," he said. "I didn't realize I had it then. When you used it ... and later, the dream-empathy, it stirred up a lot of old capacities. I wasn't trying to fool anyone. I love you, Geria of Bortinot. And I'm not fooling...."

"Your decision, Smith of Earth...."

Well, he had learned a great deal about Galactic culture, so what should he do? A duty to Earth, to civilization. He had learned:

... That the superior cultures out here among the stars were a myth.

... That something had gone haywire in the startrails, that everyone you met was either psychotic or highly neurotic by Earth standards.

... That the exceptions might be the hope of the Galaxy. But they were very few.

... That Earth had better seek out the reasons for all this, try to eliminate them at their sources if possible, but certainly keep them from contaminating the home planet.

... That Earth had a big job, but if he came back and reported and worked at it, he might convince Earth she was up to it.

That was one way.

"Your decision, Smith of Earth, the battery of tests or...."

She was looking up at him. "Well?"

"What do you think, Geria?"

She put her face against his chest. "Whatever you decide," she whispered. "You're the Dominant...."

He smiled at the banks of lights. "When's the next ship for Deneb?" he asked. "We're going back to Earth."

 

 

---

Contents

WORLD BEYOND PLUTO

A "Johnny Mayhem" Adventure

By Stephen Marlowe

 

Johnny Mayhem, one of the most popular series characters ever to appear in AMAZING, has been absent too long. So here's good news for Mayhem fans; another great adventure of the Man of Many Bodies.

 

They loaded the over-age spaceship at night because Triton's one spaceport was too busy with the oreships from Neptune during the day to handle it.

"Symphonies!" Pitchblend Hardesty groaned. Pitchblend Hardesty was the stevedore foreman and he had supervised upwards of a thousand loadings on Triton's crowded blastways, everything from the standard mining equipment to the innards of a new tavern for Triton City's so-called Street of Sin to special anti-riot weapons for the Interstellar Penitentiary not 54 miles from Triton City, but never a symphony orchestra. And most assuredly never, never an all-girl symphony orchestra.

"Symphonies!" Pitchblend Hardesty groaned again as several stevedores came out on the blastway lugging a harp, a base fiddle and a kettle drum.

"Come off it, Pitchblend," one of the stevedores said with a grin. "I didn't see you staying away from the music hall."

That was true enough, Pitchblend Hardesty had to admit. He was a small, wiry man with amazing strength in his slim body and the lore of a solar system which had been bypassed by thirtieth century civilization for the lures of interstellar exploration in his brain. While the symphony--the all-girl symphony--had been playing its engagement at Triton's make-shift music hall, Hardesty had visited the place three times.

"Well, it wasn't the music, sure as heck," he told his critic now. "Who ever saw a hundred girls in one place at one time on Triton?"

The stevedore rolled his eyes and offered Pitchblend a suggestive whistle. Hardesty booted him in the rump, and the stevedore had all he could do to stop from falling into the kettle drum.

* * * * *

Just then a loud bell set up a lonely tolling and Pitchblend Hardesty exclaimed: "Prison break!"

The bell could be heard all over the two-hundred square miles of inhabitable Triton, under the glassite dome which enclosed the small city, the spaceport, the immigration station for nearby Neptune and the Interstellar Penitentiary. The bell hadn't tolled for ten years; the last time it had tolled, Pitchblend Hardesty had been a newcomer on Neptune's big moon. That wasn't surprising, for Interstellar Penitentiary was as close to escape-proof as a prison could be.

"All right, all right," Pitchblend snapped. "Hurry up and get her loaded."

"What's the rush?" one of the stevedores asked. "The gals ain't even arrived from the hotel yet."

"I'll tell you what the rush is," Pitchblend declared as the bell tolled again. "If you were an escaped prisoner on Triton, just where would you head?"

"Why, I don't know for sure, Pitchblend."

"Then I'll tell you where. You'd head for the spaceport, fast as your legs could carry you. You'd head for an out-going spaceship, because it would be your only hope. And how many out-going spaceships are there tonight?"

"Why, just two or three."

"Because all our business is in the daytime. So if the convict was smart enough to get out, he'll be smart enough to come here."

"We got no weapons," the stevedore said. "We ain't even got a pea-shooter."

"Weapons on Triton? You kidding? A frontier moon like this, the place would be blasted apart every night. Interstelpen couldn't hold all the disturbers of the peace if we had us some guns."

"But the convict--"

"Yeah," Pitchblend said grimly. "He'll be armed, all right."

Pitchblend rushed back to the manifest shed as the bell tolled a third time. He got on the phone and called the desk of the Hotel Triton.

"Hardesty over at the spaceport," he said. "Loading foreman."

"Loading foreman?" The mild, antiseptic voice at the other end of the connection said it as you would say talking dinosaur.

"Yeah, loading foreman. At night I'm in charge here. Listen, you the manager?"

"The manager--" haughtily--"is asleep. I am the night clerk."

"O.K., then. You tell those hundred girls of yours to hurry. Don't scare them, but have you heard about the prison break?"

"Heard about it? It's all I've been hearing. They--they want to stay and see what happens."

"Don't let 'em!" roared Pitchblend. "Use any excuse you have to. Tell 'em we got centrifigal-upigal and perihelion-peritonitus over here at the spaceport, or any darn thing. Tell 'em if they want to blast off tonight, they'll have to get down here quick. You got it?"

"Yes, but--"

"Then do it." Pitchblend hung up.

The escape bell tolled a fourth time.

* * * * *

His name was House Bartock, he had killed two guards in his escape, and he was as desperate as a man could be. He had been sentenced to Interstelpen for killing a man on Mars in this enlightened age when capital punishment had been abolished. Recapture thus wouldn't mean death, but the prison authorities at Interstelpen could make their own interpretations of what life-in-prison meant. If House Bartock allowed himself to be retaken, he would probably spend the remaining years of his life in solitary confinement.

He walked quickly now, but he did not run. He had had an impulse to run when the first escape bell had tolled, but that would have been foolish. Already he was on the outskirts of Triton City because they had not discovered his escape for two precious hours. He could hole up in the city, lose himself somewhere. But that would only be temporary.

They would find him eventually.

Or, he could make his way to the spaceport. He had money in his pocket--the dead guard's. He had a guardsman's uniform on, but stripped of its insignia it looked like the jumper and top-boots of any spaceman. He had false identification papers, if needed, which he had worked on for two years in the prison printshop where the prison newspaper was published. He had....

Suddenly he flattened himself on the ground to one side of the road, hugging the gravel and hardly daring to breathe. He'd heard a vehicle coming from the direction of Interstelpen. It roared up, making the ground vibrate; its lights flashed; it streaked by trailing a jet of fire.

House Bartock didn't move until the afterglow had faded. Then he got up and walked steadily along the road which led from Interstelpen to Triton City.

* * * * *

"Girls! Hurry with your packing! Girls!"

Sighing, Matilda Moriarity subsided. The girls, obviously, were in no hurry. That would have been out of character.

Matilda Moriarity sighed again. She was short, stocky, fifty-two years old and the widow of a fabulously wealthy interstellar investment broker. She had a passion for classical music and, now that her husband had been dead three years, she had decided to exercise that passion. But for Matilda Moriarity, a very out-going fifty-two, exercising it had meant passing it on. The outworlds, Matilda had told her friends, lacked culture. The highest form of culture, for Matilda, was classical music. Very well. She would bring culture to the outworlds.

* * * * *

Triton was her first try and even now sometimes she had to pinch herself so she'd know the initial attempt had been a smashing success. She didn't delude herself completely. It had been a brainstorm selecting only girls--and pretty young things, at that--for the Interstellar Symphony. On a world like Triton, a world which played host to very few women and then usually to the hard types who turned up on any frontier in any century, a symphony of a hundred pretty girls was bound to be a success.

But the music, Matilda Moriarity told herself. They had listened to the music. If they wanted to see the girls in their latest Earth-style evening gowns, they had to listen to the music. And they had listened quietly, earnestly, apparently enjoying it. The symphony had remained on Triton longer than planned, playing every night to a full house. Matilda had had the devil's own time chaperoning her girls, but that was to be expected. It was their first taste of the outworlds; it was the outworlds' first taste of them. The widow Moriarity had had her hands full, all right. But secretly, she had enjoyed every minute of it.

"They say the bell means a prison break!" First Violin squealed excitedly. First Violin was twenty-two, an Earth girl named Jane Cummings and a student at the conservatory on Sirtus Major on Mars, but to the widow Moriarity she was, and would remain, First Violin. That way, calling the girls after their instruments, the widow Moriarity could convince herself that her symphonic music had been of prime importance on Triton, and her lovely young charges of secondary importance.

"How many times do I have to tell you to hurry?"

"But these gowns--"

"Will need a pressing when you return to Mars anyway."

"And a prison break. I never saw a prison break before. It's so exciting."

"You're not going to see it. You're just going to hear about it. Come on, come on, all of you."

At that moment the room phone rang.

"Hello?" the widow Moriarity said.

"This is Jenkins, ma'am, desk. The spaceport called a few minutes ago. I'm not supposed to frighten you, but, well, they're rather worried about the prison break. The escaped convict, they figure, will head for the spaceport. Disguised, he could--"

"Let him try masquerading as a member of my group!" the widow Moriarity said with a smile.

"All the same, if you could hurry--"

"We are hurrying, young man."

"Yes, ma'am."

The widow Moriarity hung up. "Gi-irls!"

The girls squealed and laughed and dawdled.

* * * * *

House Bartock felt like laughing.

He'd just had his first big break, and it might turn out to be the only one he needed. On an impulse, he had decided to strike out directly for the spaceport. He had done so, and now stood on the dark tarmac between the manifest shed and the pilot-barracks. And, not ten minutes after he had reached the spacefield a cordon of guards rushed there from Interstelpen had been stationed around the field. Had Bartock arrived just a few minutes later, he would have been too late, his capture only a matter of time. As it was now, though, he had a very good chance of getting away. Circumstances were in his favor.

He could get so far away that they would never find him.

It was simple. Get off Triton on a spaceship. Go anyplace that had a big spaceport, and manage to tranship out in secret. Then all the police would have to search would be a few quadrillion square miles of space!

But first he had to leave Triton.

From the activity at the port, he could see that three ships were being made ready for blastoff. Two of them were purely cargo-carriers, but the third--Bartock could tell because he saw hand-luggage being loaded--would carry passengers. His instinct for survival must have been working overtime: he knew that the third ship would be his best bet, for if he were discovered and pursued, hostages might make the difference between recapture and freedom.

Bartock waited patiently in the darkness outside the pilot-barracks. The only problem was, how to discover which pilot belonged to which ship?

The cordon of police from Interstelpen had set up several score arc-lights on the perimeter of the field. The spaces between the lights were patrolled by guards armed, as Bartock was, with blasters. Bartock could never have made it through that cordon now. But it wasn't necessary. He was already inside.

The barracks door opened, and a pilot came out. Tensing, ready, Bartock watched him.

The three ships were scattered widely on the field, Venus Bell to the north, Star of Hercules to the south, Mozart's Lady to the east. Venus Bell and Star of Hercules were straight cargo carriers. Mozart's Lady--what a queer name for a spaceship, Bartock couldn't help thinking--had taken in hand luggage. So if the pilot who had just left the barracks headed east, Bartock would take him. The pilot paused outside, lit a cigarette, hummed a tune. The scent of tobacco drifted over to Bartock. He waited.

The pilot walked east toward Mozart's Lady.

* * * * *

"Ready, girls?"

"Ready, Mrs. Moriarity. But couldn't we--well--sort of hang around until we see what happens?"

"You mean the escaped convict?"

"Yes, ma'am." Hopefully.

"They'll catch him. They always catch them."

"But--"

"Come on."

"Aw, gosh, Mrs. Moriarity."

"I said, come on."

Reluctantly, the hundred girls trooped with their chaperone from the hotel.

* * * * *

Bartock struck swiftly and without mercy.

The blaster would make too much noise. He turned it around, held it by the barrel, and broke the pilot's skull with it. In the darkness he changed clothing for the second time that night, quickly, confidently, his hands steady. In the darkness he could barely make out the pilot's manifest. The man's ship was Mozart's Lady, all right. Outbound from Triton City for Mars. Well, Bartock thought, he wouldn't go to Mars. Assuming they learned what ship he had boarded, they would be guarding the inner orbits too closely.

He would take Mozart's Lady daringly outward, beyond Neptune's orbit. Naturally, the ship wouldn't have interstellar drive, but as yet Bartock wasn't going interstellar. You couldn't have everything. You couldn't expect a starship on Triton, could you? So Bartock would take Mozart's Lady outward to Pluto's orbit--and wait. From the amount of hand luggage taken aboard, Mozart's Lady would be carrying quite a number of passengers. If that number were reduced--drastically reduced--the food, water and air aboard would last for many months. Until the fuss died down. Until Bartock could bring Mozart's Lady, long since given up for lost, in for a landing on one of the inner planets....

Now he dragged the dead pilot's body into the complete darkness on the south side of the pilot-barracks, wishing he could hide it better but knowing he didn't have the time or the means.

Then he walked boldly across the tarmac, wearing a pilot's uniform, toward Mozart's Lady.

Fifteen minutes later, House Bartock watched with amazement while a hundred pretty young women boarded the ship. Of all the things that had happened since his escape, this came closest to unnerving him, for it was the totally unexpected. Bartock shrugged, chain-smoked three cigarettes while the women boarded slowly, taking last-minute looks at dark Triton, the spaceport, the cordon of guards, the arc-lights. Bartock cursed impotently. Seconds were precious now. The pilot's body might be found. If it were....

At last the port clanged shut and the ground-crew tromped away. Since even an over-age ship like Mozart's Lady was close to ninety percent automatic, there was no crew. Only the pilot--who was Bartock--and the passengers.

Bartock was about to set the controls for blastoff when he heard footsteps clomp-clomping down the companionway. He toyed with the idea of locking the door, then realized that would arouse suspicion.

A square woman's face over a plump middle-aged figure.

"I'm Mrs. Moriarity, pilot. I have a hundred young girls aboard. We'll have no nonsense."

"No, sir. I mean, no ma'am."

"Well, make sure."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And I want an easy trip, without fuss or incidents. For half of our girls it's the second time in space--the first being when they came out here. You understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What happened to the pilot who took us out?"

"Uh, pressed into service last week on a Mercury run. I'm surprised the control board didn't tell you."

"They didn't. It doesn't matter. You do your job, and that's all."

"Yes, ma'am," House Bartock said. "Just my job."

A few moments later, Mozart's Lady blasted off.

* * * * *

"Stop! Hey, wait!" Pitchblend Hardesty bawled at the top of his voice. But it didn't do any good. The police rushed up behind Pitchblend, not daring to fire.

Moments before, they had found the dead pilot's body.

They knew at once what it meant, of course. They had been not more than a minute too late.

"Call Central Control on Neptune," a police officer said. "We'll send a cruiser after them."

"Won't do any good," Pitchblend Hardesty groaned.

"What are you talking about, fellow?"

"Unless the cruiser's brand new."

"On Neptune? Don't be silly. Newest one we've got is ten years old."

"Like I said, won't do any good. I worked that ship over, mister. I know what she's like inside. She may look like an over-age tub on the outside, but don't let that fool you. She's got power, mister. She's probably the fastest thing this side of the Jovian moons, except for those experimental one-man rocket-bombs down at Neptune Station. But chasing a big tub in a one-man space-bound coffin--" here Pitchblend used the vernacular for the tiny one-man experimental ships--"ain't going to do anybody any good. Best thing you can do is track Mozart's Lady by radar and hope she'll head sunward. Then they could intercept her closer in."

But Mozart's Lady did not head sunward. Radar tracking confirmed this moments later. Mozart's Lady was outward bound for Pluto's orbit. And, with Pluto and Neptune currently in conjunction, that could even mean a landing, although, the police decided, that wasn't likely. There were no settlements on Pluto. Pluto was too weird. For the strangest reason in a solar system and a galaxy of wonders, Pluto was quite uninhabitable. More likely, Mozart's Lady would follow Pluto's orbit around, then make a dash sunward....

The radar officer threw up his hands. "I give up," he said. "She's heading for Pluto's orb all right. Call Neptune Station."

"Neptune Station, sir?"

"You bet. This job's too big for me. The brass will want to handle it."

Seconds later, sub-space crackled with energy as the call was put through from Triton City to Neptune Station.

* * * * *

Whatever else history would write about him, it would certainly call Johnny Mayhem the strangest--and literally most death-defying--test-pilot in history. Of course, testing the sleek experimental beauties out of Neptune Station and elsewhere wasn't Mayhem's chief occupation. He was, in a phrase, a trouble-shooter for the Galactic League. Whenever he had a spare few weeks, having completed an assignment ahead of schedule in his latest of bodies, he was likely to turn up at some testing station or other and volunteer for work. He was never turned down, although the Galactic League didn't approve. Mayhem was probably the galaxy's best pilot, with incredible reflexes and an utter indifference toward death.

For the past two weeks, having completed what turned out to be an easier-than-expected assignment on Neptune, he had been piloting the space-bound coffins out of Neptune Station, and with very satisfactory experimental results.

A few minutes ago he had been called into the station director's office, but when he entered he was surprised to see the Galactic League Firstman of Neptune waiting for him.

"Surprised, eh?" the Firstman demanded.

"I'll bet you want me to quit test-flying," Mayhem said with a smile which, clearer than words, told the Firstman his advice would be rejected.

The Firstman smiled too, "Why, no, Mayhem. As a matter of fact, I want you to take one of the coffins into deep space."

"Maybe something's wrong with my hearing," Mayhem said.

"No. You heard it right. Of course, it's up to you. Everything you do, you volunteer."

"Let's hear it, Firstman."

So the Firstman of Neptune told Johnny Mayhem about Mozart's Lady which, six hours ago, had left Triton for Pluto's orbit with an eccentric wealthy widow, a hundred girls, and a desperate escaped killer.

"The only thing we have out here fast enough to overtake them, Mayhem, is the one-man coffins. The only man we have who can fly them is you. What do you say?"

Mayhem's answer was a question, but the question didn't really require an answer. Mayhem asked: "What are we waiting for?"

The Firstman grinned. He had expected such an answer, of course. The whole galaxy, let alone the solar system, knew the Mayhem legend. Every world which had an Earthman population and a Galactic League post, however small, had a body in cold storage, waiting for Johnny Mayhem if his services were required. But of course no one knew precisely when Mayhem's services might be required. No one knew exactly under what circumstances the Galactic League Council, operating from the hub of the Galaxy, might summon Mayhem. And only a very few people, including those at the Hub and the Galactic League Firstmen on civilized worlds and Observers on primitive worlds, knew the precise mechanics of Mayhem's coming.

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

"One thing, Mayhem," the Firstman said, now, on Neptune. "How much longer you have in that body of yours?"

"Five days. Possibly six."

"That doesn't give you much time. If you're caught out there when your month is up--"

"I won't be. We're wasting time talking about it."

"--it would mean your death."

"Then let's get started."

* * * * *

The Firstman stared at him levelly. "You're a brave man, Mayhem."

"Let's say I'm not afraid to die. I've been a living dead man for eight years. Come on."

One of the so-called coffins, a tiny one-man ship barely big enough for a prone man, food concentrates and water, was already waiting at the station spacefield.

Ten minutes after hearing about Mozart's Lady, without fanfare, Mayhem blasted off in pursuit.

* * * * *

Maintaining top speed all the way, House Bartock brought Mozart's Lady across almost two billion miles of space from Neptune's to Pluto's orbit in three days. He was delighted with the speed. It would have taken the average space-tub ten days to two weeks and, since as far as Bartock knew there were nothing but average space-tubs on Neptune, that gave him a considerable head-start.

It was Jane Cummings-First Violin who discovered Bartock's identity. Bartock was studying the star-map at the time and considered himself safe from discovery because he kept the control door of Mozart's Lady locked. However, Jane Cummings had established something of a liaison with the pilot outward bound from Earth and Mars, so she had been given a spare key which she'd kept, secretly, all the time the symphony was on Triton. Now, curious about the new pilot for the same reason that the miners on Triton had been curious about the symphony, Jane made her way forward, inserted her key in the lock, and pushed open the control door.

"Hello there," she said.

House Bartock whirled. The turning of a key in the lock had so unnerved him--it was the last thing he expected--that he forgot to shut off the star-map. Its tell-tale evidence glowed on the wall over his head.

"What do you want?" he managed to ask politely.

"Oh, just to say hello."

"You already said it."

Jane Cummings pouted. "You needn't bite my head off. What's your name? Mine's Jane, and I play the violin. It wouldn't hurt you to be polite."

Bartock nodded, deciding that a little small talk wouldn't hurt if he could keep the girl from becoming suspicious. That was suddenly important. If this girl had a key to the control room, for all he knew there could be others.

"My, you have been hurrying," Jane said. "I could tell by the acceleration. You must be trying to break the speed records or something. I'll bet we're almost to Earth--"

Her voice trailed off and her mouth hung open. At first Bartock didn't know what was the matter. Then he saw where she was staring.

The star-map.

"We're not heading for Earth!" she cried.

Bartock walked toward her. "Give me that key," he said. "You're going to have to stay here with me. Give me that key."

Jane backed away. "You--you couldn't be our pilot. If you were--"

"The key. I don't want to hurt you."

Bartock lunged. Jane turned and ran, slamming the door behind her. It clanged, and echoed. The echo didn't stop. Bartock, on the point of opening the door and sprinting down the companionway after her, stopped.

It wasn't the echo of metal slamming against metal. It was the radar warning.

Either Mozart's Lady was within dangerous proximity of a meteor, or a ship was following them.

Bartock ran to the radar screen.

The pip was unmistakable. A ship was following them.

A ship as fast--or faster--than Mozart's Lady.

Cursing, Bartock did things with the controls. Mozart's Lady, already straining, increased its speed. Acceleration flung Bartock back in the pilot's chair. Pluto loomed dead ahead.

* * * * *

Johnny Mayhem knew at what precise moment he had been discovered, for suddenly the speed of Mozart's Lady increased. Since this had occurred an hour and a half after Mayhem had first got a clear pip of the bigger ship on his radar, it meant he'd been spotted.

Prone with his hands stretched forward in the coffin-like experimental ship, Mayhem worked the controls, exactly matching speed with Mozart's Lady.

He tried to put himself in the position of the escaped convict. What would he do? His best bet would be to swing in close around Pluto, as close as he dared. Then, on the dark side of the planet, to change his orbit abruptly and come loose of its gravitational field in a new direction. It was a dangerous maneuver, but since the escaped convict now knew for sure that the tiny ship could match the speed of Mozart's Lady, it was his only hope. The danger was grave: even a first-rate pilot would try it only as a last resort, for the gravitational pull of Pluto might upset Mozart's Lady's orbit. If that happened, the best the convict could hope for was an emergency landing. More likely, a death-crash would result.

Seconds later, Mayhem's thinking was confirmed. Mozart's Lady executed a sharp turn in space and disappeared behind the white bulk of Pluto.

Mayhem swore and followed.

"He's trying to kill us all!"

"He doesn't know how to pilot a ship! We're helpless, helpless!"

"Do something, Mrs. Moriarity!"

"Now girls, whatever happens, you must keep calm. We can only assume that Jane was right about what she saw, but since none of us can pilot a spaceship, we'll have to bide our time...."

"Bide our time!"

"We're all as good as dead!"

One of the girls began screaming.

Mrs. Moriarity slapped her. "I'm sorry, dear. I had to hit you. Your behavior bordered on the hysterical. And if we become hysterical we are lost, lost, do you understand?"

"Yes'm."

"Good. Then we wait and see what happens."

* * * * *

What was happening was an attempt at what test-pilots term planet-swinging. Moving in the direction of Pluto's orbit, Mozart's Lady swung in very close behind the planet. Then, as the rotation of Pluto on its axis hurled it forth again, as a sling-shot hurls a pellet, Mozart's Lady's rockets would alter the expected direction of flight. Unless a pursuing ship followed exactly the same maneuver, it would be flung off into space at top-speed in the wrong direction. It might be hours before the first ship's trail could be picked up again--if ever.

House Bartock, aware of all this--and one other factor--sat sweating it out at the controls.

The one other factor was closeness to Pluto. For if you got too close, and the difference was only a matter of miles covered in an elapsed time of mili-seconds, Pluto might drag you into a landing orbit. If that happened, traveling at tremendous speed, there'd be the double danger of overheating in the planet's atmosphere and coming down too hard. Either way the results could be fatal.

His hands sweating, Bartock struggled with the controls. Now already he could see Pluto bulking, its night-side black and mysterious, in the viewport. Now he could hear the faint shrill scream of its atmosphere. Now....

Trying to time it perfectly, he slammed on full power.

A fraction of a mili-second too late.

Mozart's Lady stood for an instant on its tail, shuddering as if it were going to come apart and rain meteoric dust over Pluto's surface. That had happened too in such a maneuver, but it didn't happen now.

Instead, Mozart's Lady went into a landing orbit.

But its speed was still terrific and, lowering, it whizzed twice around Pluto's fifteen thousand mile circumference in twenty minutes. Atmosphere screamed, the heat siren shrilled, and a cursing House Bartock applied the braking rockets as fast as he could.

Pluto's surface blurred in the viewport, coming closer at dizzying speed. Bartock stood Mozart's Lady on its tail a second time, this time on purpose.

The ship shuddered, and struck Pluto.

Bartock blacked out.

* * * * *

When Mayhem's radar screen informed him that Mozart's Lady had failed to break free of Pluto's field of gravity, Mayhem immediately went to work. First he allowed the tiny scout-ship to complete its planet-swing successfully, then he slowed down, turned around in deep space, and came back, scanning Pluto with radar scopes and telescope until he located the bigger ship. That might have taken hours or days ordinarily, but having seen Mozart's Lady go in, and having recorded its position via radar, Mayhem had a pretty good idea as to the landing orbit it would follow.

It took him three-quarters of an hour to locate the bigger ship. When he finally had located it, he brought it into close-up with the more powerful of the two telescopes aboard the scout.

Mozart's Lady lay on its side in a snow-tundra. It had been damaged, but not severely. Part of the visible side was caved in, but the ship had not fallen apart. Still, chances were that without extensive repairs it would not be able to leave Pluto.

There was no way, Mayhem knew, of making extensive repairs on Pluto. Mozart's Lady was there to stay.

The safe thing to do would be to inform Neptune and wait in space until the police cruisers came for House Bartock. The alternative was to planetfall near Mozart's Lady, take the convict into custody, and then notify Neptune.

If Bartock were alone the choice would have been an easy one. But Bartock was not alone. He had a hundred girls with him. He was desperate. He might try anything.

Mayhem had to go down after him.

* * * * *

The trouble was, though, that of all the worlds in the galaxy--not merely in Sol System--Pluto was the one most dangerous to Johnny Mayhem. He had been pursuing House Bartock for three days. Which meant he had two days left before it was imperative that he leave his current body. This would mean notifying the hub of the Galaxy by sub-space radio to pull out his elan, but Pluto's heavyside layer was the strongest in the solar system, so strong that sub-space radio couldn't penetrate it.

And that was not the only thing wrong with Pluto. It was, in fact, an incredible anomaly of a world. Almost four billion miles from the sun at its widest swing, it still was not too cold to support life. Apparently radioactive heat in its core kept it warm. It even had an Earth-type atmosphere, although the oxygen-content was somewhat too rich and apt to make you giddy. And it was a slow world.

Time moved slowly on Pluto. Too slowly. When you first landed, according to the few explorers who had attempted it, the native fauna seemed like statues. Their movement was too slow for the eye to register. That was lucky, for the fauna tended to be enormous and deadly. But after a while--how long a while Mayhem didn't know--the fauna, subjectively, seemed to speed up. The animals commenced moving slowly, then a bit faster, then normally. That, Mayhem knew, was entirely subjective. The animals of Pluto were not changing their rate of living: the visitor to Pluto was slowing down to match their laggard pace.

* * * * *

Two days, thought Mayhem. That was all he had. And, hours after he landed, he'd start to slow down. There was absolutely no way of telling how much time elapsed once that happened, for the only clocks that did not go haywire on Pluto were spring-wind clocks, and there hadn't been a spring-wind clock in the solar system for a hundred and fifty years.

Result? On Pluto Mayhem would slow down. Once he reached Pluto's normal time rate it might take him, say, ten minutes to run--top-speed--from point A to point B, fifteen yards apart. Subjectively, a split-second of time would have gone by in that period.

Two days would seem like less than an hour, and Mayhem would have no way of judging how much less.

If he didn't get off Pluto in two days he would die.

If he didn't land, House Bartock, growing desperate and trying to scare him off or trying to keep control of the hundred girls while he made a desperate and probably futile attempt to repair the damaged Mozart's Lady, might become violent.

Mayhem called Neptune, and said: "Bartock crash-landed on Pluto, geographical coordinates north latitude thirty-three degrees four minutes, west longitude eighteen degrees even. I'm going down. That's all."

He didn't wait for an answer.

He brought the space-bound coffin down a scant three miles from Mozart's Lady. Here, though, the tundra of Pluto was buckled and convoluted, so that two low jagged ranges of snow-clad hills separated the ships.

Again Mayhem didn't wait. He went outside, took a breath of near-freezing air, and stalked up the first range of hills. He carried a blaster buckled to his belt.

* * * * *

When he saw the scout-ship come down, Bartock didn't wait either. He might have waited had he known anything about what Pluto did to the time-sense. But he did not know. He only knew, after a quick inspection, that the controls of Mozart's Lady had been so badly damaged that repair was impossible.

He knew too that the scout-ship had reported his whereabouts. He had, on regaining consciousness, been in time to intercept the radio message. True, it would take any other Neptune-stationed ship close to two weeks to reach Pluto, so Bartock had some temporal leeway. But obviously whoever was pursuing him in the one-man ship had not come down just to sit and wait. He was out there in the snow somewhere. Well, Bartock would go out too, would somehow manage to elude his pursuer, to get behind him, reach the scout-ship and blast off in it. And, in the event that anything went wrong, he would have a hostage.

He went arearships to select one.

Went with his desperation shackled by an iron nerve.

And a blaster in his hand.

"... very lucky," Matilda Moriarity was saying, trying to keep the despair from her voice. "We have some cuts and bruises, but no serious casualties. Why, we might have all been killed."

"Lucky, she says! We're marooned here. Marooned--with a killer."

Before the widow Moriarity could defend her choice of words, if she was going to defend them, House Bartock came into the rear lounge, where the entire symphony and its chaperone was located. They would have locked the door, of course; they had locked it ever since they had learned who Bartock was. But the door, buckled and broken, had been one of the casualties of the crash-landing.

"You," Bartock said.

He meant Jane Cummings.

"Me?"

"Yes, you. We're going outside."

"Out--side?"

"That's what I said. Let's get a move on."

Jane Cummings didn't move.

The widow Moriarity came between her and Bartock. "If you must take anyone, take me," she said bravely.

"The girl."

Still the widow Moriarity didn't move.

House Bartock balled his fist and hit her. Three of the girls caught her as she fell. None of them tried to do anything about Bartock, who had levelled his blaster at Jane Cummings.

Trembling, she went down the companionway with him.

A fierce cold wind blew as they opened the airlock door.

* * * * *

It looked like a sea-serpent floundering in the snow.

Only, it was caught in the act of floundering, like an excellent candid shot of a sea-serpent floundering in snow.

Its movements were too slow for Mayhem's eyes to register.

Which meant, he realized gratefully, that he hadn't begun to slow down yet.

He had to be careful, though. If he were Bartock he would make immediately for the scout-ship. It would be his only hope.

Realizing this, Mayhem had gone through deep snow for what he judged to be fifteen minutes, until he had reached a spine of rock protruding from the snow. Then he had doubled back, now leaving no footprints, along the spine. He was waiting in the first low range of hills not four hundred yards from the scout-ship, his blaster ready. When Bartock prowled into view, Mayhem would shout a warning. If Bartock didn't heed it, Mayhem would shoot him dead.

It seemed like an airtight plan.

And it would have been, except for two things. First, Bartock had a hostage. And second, Pluto-time was beginning to act on Mayhem.

He realized this when he looked at the sea-serpent again. The long neck moved with agonizing slowness, the great gray green bulk of the monster, sixty feet long, shifted slowly, barely perceptibly, in the snow. Mountains of powdery snow moved and settled. The spade-shaped head pointed at Mayhem. The tongue protruded slowly, hung suspended, forked and hideous, then slowly withdrew.

The neck moved again, ten feet long, sinuous. And faster.

Faster? Not really.

Mayhem was slowing down.

* * * * *

Then he saw Bartock and the girl.

They were close together. Bartock held her arm. Walking toward the scout-ship, they were too far away and too close together for Mayhem to fire. Bartock would know this and wouldn't heed any warning.

[Illustration: Mayhem was blocked. The gun was useless.]

So Mayhem didn't give any warning. He left the spine of rock and rushed down through the snow toward the space-bound coffin.

A low rumble of sound broke the absolute stillness.

It was the monster, and now that his own hearing had slowed down, Mayhem was able to hear the slower cycles of sound. How much time had really passed? He didn't know. How much time did he have left before death came swiftly and suddenly because he had been too long in his temporary body? He didn't know that either. He sprinted toward the scout-ship. At least it felt like he was sprinting. He didn't know how fast he was really moving. But the sea-serpent creature was coming up behind him, faster. No place near what would have been its normal apparent speed, but faster. Mayhem, his breath coming raggedly through his mouth, ran as fast as was feasible.

So did Bartock and the girl.

It was Bartock, spotting Mayhem on the run, who fired first. Mayhem fell prone as the raw zing of energy ripped past. The sea-serpent-like-creature behind him bellowed.

And reared.

It didn't look like a sea-serpent any longer. It looked like a dinosaur, with huge solid rear limbs, small forelimbs, a great head with an enormous jaw--and speed.

Now it could really move.

Subjectively, time seemed normal to Mayhem. Your only basis was subjective: time always seemed normal. But Mayhem knew, as he got up and ran again, that he was now moving slower than the minute hand on a clock. Slower ... as objective time, as measured in the solar system at large, sped by.

He tripped as the creature came behind him. The only thing he could do was prop up an elbow in the snow and fire. Raw energy ripped off the two tiny forelimbs, but the creature didn't falter. It rushed by Mayhem, almost crushing him with the hind limbs, each of which must have weighed a couple of tons. It lumbered toward Bartock and Jane Cummings.

Turning and starting to get up, Mayhem fired again.

His blaster jammed.

Then the bulk of the monster cut off his view of Bartock, the girl and the scout-ship. He heard the girl scream. He ran toward them.

Jane Cummings had never been so close to death. She wanted to scream. She thought all at once, hysterically, she was a little girl again. If she screamed maybe the terrible apparition would go away. But it did not go away. It reared up high, as high as a very tall tree, and its fangs were hideous.

Bartock, who was also frightened, raised his blaster, fired, and missed.

Then, for an instant, Jane thought she saw someone running behind the monster. He had a blaster too, and he lifted it. When he fired, there was only a clicking sound. Then he fired again.

Half the monster's bulk disappeared and it collapsed in the snow.

That was when Bartock shot the other man.

Mayhem felt the stab of raw energy in his shoulder. He spun around and fell down, his senses whirling in a vortex of pain. Dimly he was aware of Bartock's boots crunching on the snow.

They fired simultaneously. Bartock missed.

And collapsed with a searing hole in his chest. He was dead before he hit the snow.

The girl went to Mayhem. "Who--who are you?"

"Got to get you back to the ship. No time to talk. Hurry."

"But you can't walk like that. You're badly hurt. I'll bring help."

"... dangerous. I'll take you."

He'd take her, flirting with death. Because, for all he knew, his time on Pluto, objectively, had already totalled forty-eight hours. If it did, he would never live to get off Pluto. Once his thirty days were up, he would die. Still, there might be danger from other animals between the scout-ship and Mozart's Lady, and he couldn't let the girl go back alone. It was almost ludicrous, since she had to help him to his feet.

He staggered along with her, knowing he would never make it to Mozart's Lady and back in time. But if he left her, she was probably doomed too. He'd sacrifice his life for hers....

They went a hundred yards, Mayhem gripping the blaster and advancing by sheer effort of will. Then he smiled, and began to laugh. Jane thought he was hysterical with pain. But he said: "We're a pair of bright ones. The scout-ship."

Inside, it was very small. They had to lie very close to each other, but they made it. They reached Mozart's Lady.

Mayhem didn't wait to say good-bye. With what strength remained to him, he almost flung the girl from the scout-ship. The pain in his shoulder was very bad, but that wasn't what worried him. What worried him was the roaring in his ears, the vertigo, the mental confusion as his elan drifted, its thirty days up, toward death.

He saw the girl enter Mozart's Lady. He blasted off, and when the space-bound coffin pierced Pluto's heavyside layer, he called the Hub.

The voice answered him as if it were mere miles away, and not halfway across a galaxy: "Good Lord, man. You had us worried! You have about ten seconds. Ten seconds more and you would have been dead."

Mayhem was too tired to care. Then he felt a wrenching pain, and all at once his elan floated, serene, peaceful, in limbo. He had been plucked from the dying body barely in time, to fight mankind's lone battle against the stars again, wherever he was needed ... out beyond Pluto.

Forever? It wasn't impossible.